Ch17. A teensy bit of respect
Tony continued to work, leaving Natasha to her silent contemplation. He wasn't much interested in the conclusion she will arrive at. It was not his problem. He gave her his opinion and what she will do with it was on her.
He didn't even notice when but as he briefly looked away from the computer screen after half an hour of silence and checked up on her, Natasha was already sleeping.
Tony exasperatedly sighed and stood up. Walking towards her, he took a nearby blanket and covered her with it before returning to resume his work.
He could already imagine the rumors that will course through the Stark Industries tomorrow. The new girl entered Mr. Stark's office and did not come out for hours! Wonder what they were doing together all that time! Or something along those lines...
Meh, just another unsavory rumor about him. Tony couldn't muster the effort to care.
The security systems of Stark Industries were a bit outdated according to his standards. Well, considering he was from the 'future', his standards were obviously a bit advanced but... this served him well. It wasn't hard for Tony to hack the internal network of the SI and gain access to Obadiah's computer through them.
It might not have been connected to the internet but like every other computer in Stark Industries, it was connected to the private internal network.
Nobody could blame Obadiah for this oversight. The man was just a businessman. If he really understood the technology half as well as he was good at selling it, he would not have needed the Stark Industries employees to put the Iron Monger armor back together for him.
And just like that, Tony gained proof about Obadiah's crimes.
Even he was surprised at how easy it went. And all it required was just a bit of thinking outside the box.
Needless to say, since he gained access to Obadiah's computer, he could easily find out his passwords. It didn't take Tony long before he had access to Obadiah's accounts and stock portfolio. A very useful thing considering Uncle Obie was quickly losing his usefulness for Tony.
The following few hours Tony spend doing a mind-numbing scan of the financial matters of the company. He knew what he was looking for but... let's just say it was a very annoying web to unravel.
In the 2014th year when SHIELD ceased to exist, Tony was suddenly informed about a massive increase in the company's earnings. He was like, 'What the fuck?'. An understandable thing, considering his company's profit literally almost tripled overnight.
It didn't take JARVIS even an hour to find out the reason.
Stark Industries supported multiple charity and non-profit organizations. So many of them, in fact, that Tony wondered why his father did not get a Nobel Prize yet. There were some other businessmen that didn't donate even half as much as Howard Stark to charity and got some kind of award for it. Yet, Howard did not. Nor did Tony.
There was some clamor in the company about cutting off the funding for these organizations at various times but nothing came of it. The Last Will of Howard Stark explicitly stated he wished the funding to continue so the company just decided to listen to his last wishes.
For over two decades after Howard's death, Tony had no idea where his company's money was going and when SHIELD was disbanded, he understood.
Stark Industries was funding at least 40% of SHIELD's almost unlimited budget through various fake charities and organizations.
Stark Industries supported hundreds of those and it was a pain in the ass to filter which ones were real and which were fake. It didn't surprise Tony that nobody really noticed this for so long despite its massive scale.
But it still irked him a great deal. He was a businessman and as such, he wanted to get something in return for his investments. That was how these kinds of things were supposed to work, was it not?
So... what the heck did SHIELD provide him or his company for being spoon-fed his money? Protection? Good fat load of good that did him! He could vividly remember being kidnapped and held captive for three friggin' months! What protection!
Oh... they gave him his father's research and helped him survive the palladium poisoning? Er... correct him if he is wrong but... his father's research and things were supposed to be handed to Tony upon his death as was stated in his Last Will, no? Tony distinctly remembered the clause, 'And everything I own will be inherited by my son, Anthony Edward Stark.' from that last will.
They had no right to keep them for two freaking decades and Tony couldn't help but wonder what SHIELD did not hand over to him that was supposed to be his.
And anyway, they only helped when Tony was at the end of the rope, no doubt to make him feel indebted to SHIELD for 'saving' his life.
Fury and his fucking emotional manipulations...
Tony might not have ever cared much about money. He had them enough as it was for every expensive luxury he needed in life but losing half of his company's earnings each month to fund an organization that gave exactly nothing back to him was... it didn't feel good.
Considering the same organization was infested by Hydra and ordered around by 'World Council' made of politicians with their own agendas and Tony's mood was soured completely.
World Council... a bunch of high-level politicians that contributed very little to SHIELD and usually used it for their own goals had more say in it than Tony.
Tony wasn't asshole enough to tell Natasha that quite a few of her targets were not actual criminals but obstacles in the path of the members of the World Council. That would have destroyed her.
Well, Tony doubted even Fury was aware of that so there was that. Contrary to the popular belief, Fury didn't oversee every single thing SHIELD did. He was the Director and had control but he couldn't be everywhere at once. He was just one man.
More often than not, especially in a time when Natasha just joined the organization and was not so important, maybe even deemed as a flight risk and threat, she got her missions from people other than Fury.
There was nothing to confirm if her hits were enemies of Hydra, political enemies of the World Council, or the real criminals that SHIELD was supposed to focus on.
That was a fairly normal thing for such an organization. One person can not oversee so many things going on at once so the leadership has to be compartmentalized and spread out to people with lesser ranks but the ability to give their own orders whereas Fury's attention was on the real big stuff rather than day-to-day missions concerning small-time targets.
Nevertheless, back to the important stuff...
Tony didn't even have a freaking say in SHIELD's activities and he was their biggest cash cow! He took offense to that. A massive one.
There is this thing called respect, ya know?
Tony didn't care about the money but SHIELD had no respect for him. If you take someone's money, you don't just act as if they are just fucking passersby when you meet them. A small thank you would not go amiss. Just a small little tiny teensy show of respect. That's all Tony would have wanted from them.
But that seemed like too much effort for them. Fury and his cronies opted to keep where they got their funding secret and act as if nothing was happening.
The one-eyed shit even had the gall to tell to Tony's face that, "We have unlimited funding, Stark!" and grin at him! Tony didn't get the reference then but when he did, he felt like trashing his laboratory!
Even Avengers Initiative gave something back to Tony for his effort. He felt good about himself for helping others, for being a better man. Yes, it was just his vanity and it was also utterly ruining him mentally over time but he did it because he got the feeling of gratification from it. When the team turned on him and openly mistrusted him, he still did it because he felt self-important. Because he believed he was doing the right thing.
That's why he spent a disgusting amount of money on it.
If he donated the money he had to pay for reparations for collateral damages and the subsequent bribed so the countries won't sue Avengers to charity, the children in Africa would probably not go hungry for decades!
Of course, hindsight is 20/20...
But SHIELD? There was nothing but irritation at them taking his money without even having the common courtesy to inform him about it for two freaking decades...
When Tony realized that in his past, it was a very hard pill to swallow.