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quigonejinn

Yeah, I thought I was done with clones, too, but

hrdazka started suggesting some variants that neither I nor

jamaillith had thought of. Which, for those of you who are following along at home,

jamaillith and me put together five fics about five different Clony Starks:

#1 - The Prototype. [PG - 490 words.]
#2 - The Golden Goose. [PG-13 - 404 words.]
#3 - The Ghosts In The Machine. [R - 4,871 words.]
#4 - The Patient Man. [PG - 1,440 words.]
#5 - The Happy Ending. [R - 2,584 words.]

#5 - The Happy Ending, which is 99.99% by

jamaillith, is hands down my favorite. Read it if you don't read any of the others. It's just spectacular and heartbreaking. Seriously. She has an ear for the way that Tony and Rhodey talk to each other, and oh man. Oh man.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

deiseach.livejournal.com

Oh my sweet Lord above. Yeah, rip out my still-beating heart, toss it on the floor, and dance the tarantella on top of it, why don't youse guys?

Poor Tony. Poor Jarvis. Poor Pepper and Happy. Poor, poor Rhodey.

Even poor Obadiah, because "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" is not the reaction of a guy who's going "Experiment No. 2 is crashing and burning. Bummer. Ah, well, put this one down and fire up the Clone-A-Tron once again, I guess."

Damnation. I can't decide whether #4 or #5 are sadder.

From:

quigonejinn.livejournal.com

Five gets my vote because it's Rhodey, kind of doing the right thing, and what does it get him? A mouthful of ashes and the realization that SHIELD was watching him the whole time, waiting to swoop in if he didn't do it. Plus, oh God, the Tony - Rhodey dialogue.

jamaillith is a fucking genius.

not the reaction of a guy who's going "Experiment No. 2 is crashing and burning. Bummer. Ah, well, put this one down and fire up the Clone-A-Tron once again, I guess."

Dude is weak against a Tony that he can totally, totally control. And hee, I'm so glad that worked for you. I almost wrenched my arm out of the socket after I put the sentence together, so yay for it being vivid for somebody else.

Then again, Obie, MAYBE YOU SHOULD STOP FUCKING CLONING THEM. Alas, I think his solution will be to have them more lab-raised.

Anyways. Thanks for reading. :D

From:

deiseach.livejournal.com

No. 1 just has lovely writing and use of language.

No. 5 - there is always the remote possibility of doubt, in that could it really be Tony after all? And the little details, such as "Rhodey points at one of them, says "I bought him that shirt", and has to be escorted out of the room to calm down" - oh, heart-breaking.

And of course - why is Obadiah so easy about Rhodey showing up and heading off with Tony? Does he suspect what's going to happen? Is he glad (in a way) to have this charade end? Or does he reckon that S.H.I.E.L.D. will cut some sort of a deal with him?

Because what are S.H.I.E.L.D. going to do with Tony's body? Are they going to manufacture some kind of "Tonight, Tony Stark succumbed to his injuries sustained in the car accident" story to account for Tony being dead, or are they going to try cloning their very own Tony Stark, Engineering Genius?

And yeah, somehow I get the impression that Obie will be left in control of Stark Industries - as long as he plays ball with S.H.I.E.L.D. - because it's more convenient all round for everyone that way. Which leaves poor Rhodey being the guy who killed the (clone of) his best friend - and for what?

No. 4 hurts in a different way because we get hints of an Obadiah who had some kind of affection, at least at the start, for young Tony; who was a part of the Stark family (in all its glorious disfunctionality) and who is not completely 100% a total evil asshole. And of course, that just makes him scarier when he RIPS OUT TONY'S HEART ON THE COUCH, SMILING ALL THE WHILE. :-)

From:

quigonejinn.livejournal.com

"Rhodey points at one of them, says "I bought him that shirt", and has to be escorted out of the room to calm down"

GOD. I love that line. And I love how it's both integrated into the story, but also set apart. So great. So awesome.

why is Obadiah so easy about Rhodey showing up and heading off with Tony? Does he suspect what's going to happen? Is he glad (in a way) to have this charade end? Or does he reckon that S.H.I.E.L.D. will cut some sort of a deal with him?

I can't answer for sure for

jamaillith, who is off at a music festival, but I'll point her towards this when she comes back. We were kicking around some ideas, though, when we were putting the piece together -- and yeah, Obadiah knowing that Rhodey was with SHIELD was one of the things we talked about?

No. 4 hurts in a different way because we get hints of an Obadiah who had some kind of affection, at least at the start, for young Tony

Yeah. There's something weirdly. . . intimate? About the way he goes about tearing Tony's heart out on the couch. It's nice and close and in your face, and it really makes want to put a spin on that bit from the red carpet scene during the photo op, when Obadiah's parting shot is that it was the only way to protect Tony. One way of reading it is that he thought Tony might still buy it. The other, which I'm trying to figure out works or not, is that he really. and honestly. thought it was how he went about keeping Tony from the dirty business. Sure, yeah, he'll kill Tony for control of the company, but he doesn't want Tony to be doing the double-dealing.

I don't have it straight in my head, but it's interesting. And it's interesting to think about what Tony's life would have been like if he'd just never stepped up to take a role at Stark Industries. Or if he'd left running the company entirely to O.

From:

deiseach.livejournal.com

"I don't have it straight in my head, but it's interesting. And it's interesting to think about what Tony's life would have been like if he'd just never stepped up to take a role at Stark Industries. Or if he'd left running the company entirely to O."

It raises a lot of questions. Like, if Howard was still alive and running the company, would Obie have had the opportunity to do the same kind of under-the-table deals? Did Obie start these kinds of deals when Howard was alive? Would Howard have gotten his hands dirty in these kinds of deals - that's a big question, and a hell of a one regarding 'the Stark legacy'.

If Obie had left Stark Industries early, would it have achieved the same level of success? I get the impression that Howard (and Tony even more so) were great at the inventing, great at the charming and the PR, not so great at the nuts and bolts details of running a company.

Obadiah probably is largely to thank for Tony being a billionaire (in the sense of building up the company to that level). How much of the business involved dodgy deals, though? Maybe an awful lot more than Tony would like to know about.