quigonejinn

"Who is this, Tony?"

"He's my friend. We went to school together, but I don't trust him now."

"What's his name, Tony? You gotta say his name."

"Rhodey."

*

"Who is this, Tony? Say her name."

"Pepper. I love her."

"That's right. Why don't you hang onto that picture? You can keep it."

*

Winter lasts a long time in this part of America. The coast of Massachusetts is an unusual place for a man with plenty of resources and money, but very little free time, to take his first extended vacation in almost fifteen years, but Obadiah Stane explains it to the Wall Street Journal reporter who asks. He's tired of the standard places. He's tired of seeing the same faces. He'll be back, of course, but he just wants a break. Do some new things. Regroup. Get charged up about things again. The company is fine; he hadn't been ousted. Where did Ben hear that ridiculous rumor? This is totally voluntary. In fact, he had to twist the Board's arms to let him go do this especially with --

"Yeah, Tony. No, he's still the same. No change. Nothing new to tell you," Obadiah says, and puts his hands on his hips. "Good talking to you, Ben. I'll call you when I get back. Maybe I'll have good news for you about Tony."

*

Winter lasts a long time, and the gales from the sea make the walls of the house rock back and forth. Obadiah is the only person in the complex, but he draws Tony's blood once a day, puts it in the scanner, and sends the data through encrypted transmission to the main facility in Arizona. He does a little business work to make sure the company isn't imploding in his absence, but mostly, he catches up on fifteen years of neglected reading, listens to NPR and makes chili. He teaches Tony how to drink his coffee with a little bourbon in it, but no cream or sugar.

*

"Who is this, Tony?"

"My -- my."

"Your parents. Howard is your father. Maria is your mother."

"I thought you were my fa -- "

"No, no, Tony. I'm just a friend taking care of you while you get better. You had an accident, and you forgot everything. That's why I'm helping you remember."

*

"Who is this, Tony?"

"He's my friend. We went to school together, but I don't trust him now. Rhodey betrayed me."

*

When they were running the tests, this Tony didn't score highly on either intelligence or personality conformation with the original. In fact, Obadiah was pretty sure that he remembered one of the guys saying that 3B was, for a clone of the greatest engineering prodigy to walk on American soil since Nikola Tesla, just this side of retarded. Still, though. The kid maxed out the meters with trainability and good temperament. He was docile. Almost preternaturally so.

"We'll go with this one," Obadiah said, looking at the results, which had been pinned up on the lightboard for his inspection. The scientist looked at him, a little surprised, and Obadiah shrugged. "We've been going with IQ, conformation, IQ, conformation every time, concentrating on what we get out of the tube, and look where it's gotten us. Get the head-shrinkers to put together a program. I'll run him through the end stages myself, if we have to."

The heads around the room nodded.

"What should we do with the others?"

Obadiah shrugged. "The usual. Freeze samples, though. If this doesn't work out, I don't want to start back at zero."

*

The floors in the house have electric heat, and there's also plenty of wood in the stove, but the air is still chilly. Thick sweaters and socks are the order of the day, and as the snow piles up around the house, then blows away in a gale, then piles up again. Obadiah goes down to the cellar and gets one of the frozen chickens from the fridge, and Tony offers to help peel the carrots and potatoes.

"I came up here a couple times with your dad."

"Howard?"

"Yeah," Obadiah says, drying his hands on a towel. "We used to go fishing out on a boat. Summertime. He and your mother would fight if they were around each other too long, so I'd get a call asking if I wanted to take a trip in a biplane. We'd fly up here -- he was pilot, you know. Stay a couple days. I cooked. He complained. If the weather wasn't so terrible, we could go out on the water."

*

Obadiah Stane is a patient man. He waited fourteen years for his chance. What are two months?

*

"What's this, Tony?"

"A -- a 1930 Ford Roadster. It's on 1932 framerails."

"Why is it important to you?"

"I used to own one. It used to belong to Dad, and we worked on it together. Before he died."

"You like it? Why don't you keep it? Put it with your picture of Pepper."

*

"What instrument do I play, Tony?"

"The piano."

"What instrument do you play?"

"I don't really play one. But I used to take lessons on the piano."

"Show me which one is a piano -- yeah, that's a piano."

*

One afternoon, they drive into Boston to see part of the team that's flown in to make sure that Tony's headaches aren't anything more serious. Tony sits in the passenger's seat, fidgets with his suit, which he's not used to wearing, then falls asleep fro the rest of the way in. Obadiah puts Strauss until they get into range of WCRB, at which point he switches over, and then it's snowing, a soft, white fluffy precipitation, so it's not very cold at all, and he guides Tony into into the back entrance at Massachuesetts General. A very, very large donation has secured use of the MRI machines for their use this afternoon.

Tony carries Pepper's photo inside his suit pocket.

*

"What happened to Pepper, Obadiah? Why isn't she here?"

"She left you, Tony. After you had the accident."

Obadiah lets this information sink in, and later that morning, when he's done working with Tony and goes up stairs to get the book he'd been reading before bed last night, Obadiah happens to look in on Tony's bedroom. The door is open, as always, and Tony is downstairs, reading one of the books that Obadiah brought for him, but the picture of Pepper is missing from its usual place on the dresser. The only ones on there now are of Howard, Maria, and Obadiah. The Stark Building in Manhattan, the 1930 Roadster, and the YH-22 in front of the Los Angeles corporate office.

Tony is quiet and withdrawn for the rest of the day.

*

The first time Tony laughs at a joke without being prompted to, it's while listening to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Obadiah was chuckling along himself, then realized that Tony was laughing along with him. Tony got extra bourbon in his after-dinner coffee.

*

"Dad, Mom, you. A Shelby Cobra, a Saleen S7. That's the front of the apartment where I grew up in New York. On the 20th, 21st, and 22nd floors. This is the director of Aerospace R&D, Cory Specter, and that's Senator Ted Stevens on the Senate Defense Subcommitte of Appropriations."

The headaches are so bad that Tony does the flashcards with only one eye open, and that one only open a fraction, just enough to see past his eyelashes. Two nights later, Tony wakes screaming from pain, and Obadiah has to hold him down on the ground. He sends two vials of blood to the lab the next day and spends three hours haranguing them over the phone over the lack of answers over why Tony is suffering like this, then slams down the phone and goes outside into the snow to cool off.

When he comes back in, Tony still hasn't moved from his spot on the couch.

*

"Tony, time to go upstairs for bed."

Tony makes a low noise, but doesn't open his eyes, and he's too heavy to carry. With a sigh, Obadiah sits down next to Tony. He notices that the picture Tony now carries in his pocket is of him, Obadiah.

*

Snow falls the next morning, and the wind eases. The sea looks like it's made of slate.

Tony doesn't wake up.

*

Obadiah has them take a sample from Tony, but elects to thaw out one of the samples from 2A to use as the basis for the next batch.