2

Tony had been busy, recently.

Between recovering and helping clean up the mess that was AIM and Extremis, he'd had a rough few weeks, though they'd been worth it. He'd learned a few harsh lessons in between, such as: who he could and couldn't trust, people had absurdly long memories for grudges, and that he really, really needed to step up his game if he couldn't so much as defend his people, when he needed to get the planet ready for war 'on a higher level' [No pressure, Thor. Got it. Thanks]. Not to mention that AIM was a major pain in the neck for an alleged 'think tank', and the paperwork for the private sector alone kept him up late at night [even if the nightmares hadn't been something to contend with]. It was a mess, and he was still wrangling what he could even after Pepper took up some of the workload herself, once she got a handle on her new abilities.

But that wasn't all—since Tony was an innovator and futurist, he looked at the statistics, news reports and camera footage of the entire mess, and started to plan. He looked at what went right, what went wrong, and what he could do to fix it. [Maybe if he treated it like a thought exercise he'd be able to handle the fallout better.] It started out as a bit of a side project, something to mull over in between meeting with lawyers and liaisons and representatives from security firms, but it grew legs quickly as he started to think about it. Hmm…his suits had been very useful, and for all that he'd meant it at the time, Tony couldn't help but see the practical applications of having what was essentially a support crew at hand, with JARVIS at the helm. Just get rid of a few bugs, but they'd helped save the day even despite the idea having been conceived of little more than a whim and a prayer. But it'd worked, he'd helped save the staff of Air Force One, and wouldn't have survived the last fight his suits hadn't been capable of remote control. So, with that in mind, Tony decided to rig up an experimental group of fifteen or so, nothing unmanageable for JARVIS at present.

And hey, looks like it was working, this 'keeping busy' thing. Well, that, and whatever J had found online in lieu of Tony's reluctance to get an actual therapist. He appreciated it, immensely— it wasn't anyone's fault, that he'd been born and raised by Howard "men don't cry" Stark, or that his decades of dealing with the media meant he was very good at masks, but...well. After yet another discreet appointment in an attempt to reach out ended in yet another catastrophic failure, because it turns out that therapy needed trust to work [pfft—once bitten, twice shy, and he still had scar tissue from last time], JARVIS decided to step up and…it was working. Slow going, sure, but after everything, it was a breath of fresh air when he'd been drowning.

Once the adequate protocols had been put into place, things went far more smoothly, JARVIS found. While he may have resorted to unorthodox measures at some points, it had been necessary in order for Sir's recovery. Filtering and warning for possible triggers, switching to the closest approximation of cognitive therapy he could manage, and incorporating as much as he could manage from all the pertinent articles he could sift through.

It had been slow going, and several missteps had already been made, but until Sir could lower his guard enough to deal with an actual therapist, he was the best they had. And the likelihood of Sir ever trusting anyone to that extent was currently at microscopic levels, even before his sole attempt to reach out.

But things were going well; Sir was actually getting REM sleep for once, his long-term readings were gradually approaching homeostasis, and while he still dealt with panic attacks and severe anxiety, the controlled environment helped manage them. That, as well as the added peace of mind that accompanied the removal of the arc reactor and recovery of his friends, meant Sir was healing, was getting better—which was always a good thing.

…and then, just as he was wrapping things up with AIM in the private sector and foisting the nightmarish conglomeration onto SHIELD, something went down in London. [Thor, what the hell?! Earth wasn't ready yet!]

JARVIS let him know when the readings were off, when SHIELD started buzzing about Thor appearing and abruptly screaming about how their leading expert in Einstein-Rosen bridges was MIA. He nearly had a panic attack before realizing that no, he hadn't been called yet, so things weren't that serious. [Hopefully. Right?] Even with that in mind, though, it still did not bode well when the London branch of Stark Industries called, asking for backup and help with future cleanup because "aliens are duking it out and only one of them's on the friendly list".

What the hell was going on with SHIELD, if the civilians were the ones calling him for backup? He trusted the entire organization as far as he could throw them, but this was new, and he didn't like it— did they really value their super-spy reputation over the security of the people they'd sworn to protect?

"J, make a note to look into SHIELD. Something's not right, and…I think that the chaos going on might weaken security on the trickier PANs, you know we didn't have enough time to get past the first set of firewalls during the Tesseract fiasco- see if you can find anything, will you?" Tony asked, and looked at his tablet screen to see live footage of portals opening and closing.

Oh, no.

He didn't think- he just pressed his forehead to the nearby countertop and cursed short, sharp, and sweet for half a minute even as his heart rate accelerated and if his lungs didn't have a different capacity now than they did before, he'd probably be hyperventilating and then where would they be? Okay, he could do this. He could. The world needed him, he couldn't afford to panic, but the world wasn't ready yet and— no he still needed to recover his cool, okay. Better to have a level head than put more people at risk. Okay. He was calm, he was in control.

Okay.

"Sir, it appears that whatever convergence this was, the fight is over, and the portals have stopped. The injury list, however, is growing, and so is the damages, and—"

"JARVIS, mind shifting that data to a list and update it while we send out aid for cleanup?" Tony asked, and then a tab on his tablet caught his eye. "No, strike that— J, how's our standing in international law?"

"Sir?"

"I have a side project I want to test out, and I don't think the English'll knock relief aid for this mess. You up for it?"

"Ah, yes, the Iron Squadron, was it? Are you certain they won't mind a minor invasion of a robotic mob, so shortly after this incident? Media is already calling it an alien invasion."

"Mm…send an airspace request to the locals, J, and mention it's for aid. I don't think they'll rebuff it, not right now. We've got an all hands on deck situation."

"Confirmed. Routing request through SI servers as an internal matter, getting feedback from a terminal— request accepted."

"Perfect." Tony looked at his tablet once more, and no portals were to be found, but the growing list of casualties and wounded were not much better. "Okay, J. Let's do this."

Collaboration with the local officials ended up going a bit smoother than he'd expected, probably because the time delay for the Iron Squadron to get there meant he was able to go through the proper channels and give them a heads up as to the aid being sent. Even if SHIELD seemed to have lost his number, he was able to use the 'I'm a consultant' card to get what he needed, up to and including expedited airspace allowances. His track record as a philanthropist helped, too, but for the more professional portions, it was his affiliation to a group that answered to the World Security Council that opened doors. Overall, things were going good— SI's London branch served as an excellent base of operations, his Legal department was already having a field day debating the definition of 'act of god' once again, as the damages were being logged, and cleanup was already being accelerated by what looked like 300%.

Of course, because he was Tony Stark, and his life seemed to be set to 'give the man a headache', SHIELD got involved in the cleanup, too. He didn't know why they took so damn long, not when they apparently had a team at Ground Zero, or why the hell he was only getting a call after some agent caught sight of one of the Iron Squadron using its scanners to find and clear rubble off a survivor. Which…seriously? For all he was on the roster as a consultant, he was getting called in for the weirdest of pretenses— and who the hell didn't even go 'hey, the genius was involved in the repulsion and cleanup of an alien force of a very populated area, maybe he might have some tips for this round'? Something was off, and he'd be getting to the bottom of it, seriously.

…And, of course, because SHIELD seemed to exist solely to throw a wrench in his plans, they butted in late and only made things a tangled snarl from there. His rather smooth collaboration between JARVIS and the local officials got jarred violently when SHIELD swept in, because jurisdiction over anything involving Thor was a pain in the neck like that. Add to that their bad habit of keeping secrets and messing with alien tech, even during cleanups, and the apparently intense rivalry between MI-5, MI-7 and SHIELD, and…well. Less than half an hour into SHIELD's stepping in, and Tony already had a headache. JARVIS continued working, but the Iron Squadron could only do so much [note: expand project— maybe call it Iron Legion? It showed promise, even with how small it currently was], even when collaborating with the first responders who, in their defense, rolled with the new additions admirably.

No, in this case, it was the various agencies milling around who were the biggest issue— the police and paramedics didn't bat an eye beyond logging anything beyond their pay grade, news crews were busier cataloging the damage done and letting the world see what happened at the epicenter of this fiasco than seeing Tony's latest contribution to robotics, but SHIELD was fighting over confiscated alien technology to the point of nearly delaying the initial wave of clean up. On the plus side, Tony got a front-row seat as to how rivalries could get, but it wasn't worth the headache that came with coordinating the Iron Squadron in a foreign country as a consultant to multiple groups currently squabbling over comms.

Well…at least they weren't making things worse, although Tony was now curious in regards to the story behind whatever had SHIELD and MI-7 fighting like cats and dogs. This was more intense than the company picnics when the Army and the Navy vets decided to show off during the annual relay race, which was… an impressive achievement, to say the least. And entertaining, once the fires got put out and the nearby hospitals and clinics shuffled patients around until resources weren't stretched to the breaking point. MI-5 had some good shots to throw in there, too, and he could tell that they had good blackmail somewhere up the chain, if the hush that followed a mention of a "Christmas party of '68" was any indicator.

Bonus for it apparently distracting the intelligence community about his most recent forays into robotics— looked like nobody'd noticed the suits were empty, the entire time, or that it was a single AI behind it all. Well…at least no screaming, or torches and pitchforks, so Tony didn't really care. Once cleanup was wrapped up, the Iron Squadron quietly went home, and their retroreflectors helped their discreet exodus. He still had a headache at the end of the day, though.

As Tony saw the footage of both the incident and the fallout starting to make the rounds, he took note of what needed to be done, and that at this rate he'd be needing to make something dedicated solely for Thor's visits, because the dude seemed to come with a side of 'alien interference', and each time only escalated.

The only good things from the entire mess, in the end, were the new data regarding the Iron Squadron's applications for aid, and a new contact out of it because finally, somebody understood that there were unfriendly aliens out there and was willing to do something about it!

Even if Dr. Foster's willingness to keep in touch was mainly because of help in funding and encryption services [—but at least that was one person who was up-front about what they wanted, so he knew what to expect]. But hey, ally in the 'how the hell are we going to protect the Earth when the rest of the galaxy sees us as cavemen' team.

Nice.

Notes:

Here's our first instance of unreliable narrator shining through: Tony's seeing that nobody's calling him and assuming SHIELD hates him.

What he doesn't know [and will bite literally everyone later, this is why communication's key,] is that a psychologist on SHIELD's payroll [an actual one, not...whatever Natasha was playing at] took one look at Tony and his situation as of IM3, and went 'yep dude's clearly got PTSD, let's give him some space to recover— oh hey he's reaching out to his friends, yeah okay he's got this, but he needs space, make a note on his file'.

Which...yeah.