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Toni isn’t sure, exactly, how everything turned out so wrong.
No.
Wait.
That’s a goddamn lie.
“This is your fault,” Toni hisses at Rhodey as they duck around the corner and out of the line of fire, both of them white-knuckling their guns.
“Don’t blame me,” Rhodey bites back vicious and just the tiniest bit afraid. “Those are your monsters. You created them. You’re responsible.”
“I didn’t create all of them!” Toni refuses to take all of the blame for this … this mayhem. “Some of those came pre-programmed and you know it. You’re the one who thought unleashing them all on the Tower at the same time would be a good idea.”
“I thought it would be,” Rhodey says. “Some socialization, some time with their own kind. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Famous last words,” Toni taunts.
“How the hell was I supposed to know it would turn out like this?” Rhodey argues.
“When the Tower comes crashing down on all of us I’m gonna enjoy saying ‘I told you so',” Toni swears. “Matter of fact I’m gonna fucking skywrite it. Take out a front page add in the Times, ‘Toni Stark Announces ‘I Told You So’ To Woefully Wrong James Rhodes’. I think that’ll make an excellent headline.”
“I think you two are taking this a little far,” Steve’s voice interrupts their back and forth.
“Excuse me?” Toni freezes and turns just enough to look up and behind her and sure enough, there’s Steve. He’s got a sketchbook under one arm and a tall glass of what looks like orange juice in the other. He looks easy, relaxed, ready for a day of sketching and calm.
Toni both envies and pities him because he has no idea as to what has really happened. Has no idea what kind of horrors have been unleashed upon the Tower.
This might just be the most dangerous enemy they’ve ever faced.
“There’s just the two of them,” Steve shrugs as he moves towards the couch. “They can’t be that hard to handle.”
“Poor man,” Toni says mournfully as she shares a long, meaningful look with Rhodey. “Poor uninformed man.”
“Toni,” Steve sighs, “it can’t be that serious.”
His naivety knows no bounds apparently.
“It’s not just the two of them anymore,” Rhodey is the one who answers him, attention locked on the doorway with a grimness that Toni more than understands.
What’s happened is beyond anything either of them could have truly anticipated.
“How?” Steve’s brows are furrowed when Toni sneaks a glance back over her shoulder towards him. “Did you get another one and not tell anybody again?”
“Not this time, thank Thor,” Rhodey reassures him. “Plus, JARVIS is in charge of telling everyone when Toni expands her collection from now on.”
“That’s good,” Steve actually sounds relieved. “He’s a good influence.”
‘Poor misguided soul’, Toni can’t help but think. None of them know the truth.
“JARVIS is a traitor,” Toni informs them soulfully. “He’s abandoned me. All of us really.”
“I have simply declared myself a neutral space in this … altercation,” JARVIS announces primly to the room at large. “If I aided you in this, Miss, I fear you would not learn from your mistakes.”
“My mistakes?” Toni asks incredulously. “This isn’t my fault. I didn’t tell the little monsters to malfunction and go homicidal on each other or whatever the hell it is they’re doing. Hell, Rhodey’s the one who wanted them to meet.”
“And yet you agreed,” JARVIS points out. “Perhaps some forethought would have served you well.”
“Forethought?” Toni carefully doesn’t screech. “I’m going to show you some fore-”
“The point is,” Rhodey overrides their bickering with the ease that comes with long familiarity, “they’ve called in reinforcements, Steve.”
“What kind of reinforcements are we talking about exactly?” Steve sets his glass down on the table with a clink, voice finally beginning to take on an appropriately cautious tone.
“They’ve indoctrinated the others,” Toni tells him seriously. “Clint and Natasha fell first and with no warning. One minute everything was fine, me and Rhodey were holding our own, and then the next ...
“Chaos,” Rhodey finishes her sentence grimly.
“They got to Nat?” Steve asks surprised and when Toni looks back at him again he’s left the sketchbook abandoned on the couch and is making his way over to them. “Clint’s not that surprising really but Nat? That’s … unexpected.”
“It gets worst too,” Toni presses forward, “they’ve split into two warring factions now and the last we checked Bucket O’ Bolts and Sam both had been compromised. They’re on opposing sides now and it has gotten fucking brutal.”
“Pretty sure one of them got to Thor too.” Rhodey adds grimly.
“Shit.” Toni sighs. Thunderstruck is high on her list of people she’d rather not tangle with.
“Only one’s left are us,” Rhodey points between himself and Toni, “you, and Banner. Especially since JARVIS has declared himself Switzerland. He’s not even letting Toni use the security cameras to scout the terrain.”
“Bruce and Hulk will totally side with us once I get to their level,” Toni tells Rhodey firmly. “So that’ll bring our numbers up a bit, especially since we’ve found Cap.”
“Ah,” Steve hums lowly, a line of heat and muscle where he’s crowded into Toni’s space, peering over her and further down the hall. “There might be a problem with that.”
“Problem?” Toni asks, just the slightest bit distracted with Steve being so close to her. “What kind of prob-”
There’s a flash of movement and then the gun Toni’s been holding is no longer in her hands. Before she can turn around the sound of it being cocked freezes both Toni and Rhodey in their tracks.
“Steve,” Toni’s voice is whisper quiet but that does nothing to hide the betrayal that’s layered within it. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m sorry about this Toni,” Steve tells her quietly as one of his arms, thick and heavy with muscle, comes forward to wrap around Toni’s waist. He moves so fast that both of her wrists are captured in one of his hands before she can blink. He draws her back against his chest even as his other hand rises up to point his stolen gun in Rhodey’s direction. “I really am.”
“Rogers,” Rhodey straightens up from where he’s been crouched by the wall. His eyes are trained on Steve’s arm around her waist more so than on the gun that’s pointed in his direction.
For that alone Toni loves him so so much.
“You’re gonna want to think twice about this,” Rhodey tells him calmly even as Toni sees the way he grips his own gun just a bit tighter before he forces his hand to relax.
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way but sometimes,” Toni feels more than sees the way Steve shrugs, “sometimes you just don’t have a choice. Sometimes you’ve got to take a stand, even if it’s one you never thought you’d take.”
“How could you?” Toni rasps out. “Of all people …”
“And that’s why they sent me,” Steve points out almost gently. “Because they knew you’d never suspect me. Because they knew I could get close. Close enough to do the one thing they couldn’t do.”
“And what, exactly,” Rhodey bites the words out, “is that?”
“Seperate the two of you,” Steve tells him softly. “Everybody knows you’re even more of a force to be reckoned with when you’re working together. We needed you two split up. This was the best way.”
“Steve,” Toni feels a breathless sort of fear come over her, “don’t do this. Please.”
“I’m sorry, Toni,” Steve repeats. “Any last words Rhodes?”
“I’m going to get you for this.” Rhodey seethes.
“No,” Steve denies easily, “you won’t.”
“Avenge me, Toni,” Rhodey demands, teeth bared and eyes narrowed. “Make these assholes pay.”
“I will,” Toni swears, “I promise.”
“That’s enough of that,” Steve interrupts them abruptly. “It’s time to end this.”
“Do it then you traitor,” Rhodey spits.
Toni feels it when Steve takes aim but his grip on her is too tight, too solid, for her to do more than buck ineffectively against his arm.
“Sorry it had to end this way,” Steve says one last time. “But just know that Mr. Keener sends his regards.”
And then, Steve fires.
~~~
“Really, Rogers?” Rhodey bitches as he scrubs at the gold paint covering half of his face with the rag an amused Bruce had tossed him a few moments earlier. “You just had to go for the head shot didn’t you? Asshole.”
“Sorry,” Steve shrugs, blatantly and obviously unsorry, as he picks at the glittering gold paint that’s practically covering his chest and neck.
Steve may have gotten the drop on her, may have taken her by surprise in the moment and cost her and Rhodey their flawless partnership, but Toni had been vicious and swift in her revenge.
She’s pretty sure she managed to get paint in his ears. Which, if she did, it would only serve him right.
“You all look kind of pathetic,” Bruce chimes in. He’s the only one of the lot of them who isn’t almost completely covered in paint.
Mainly because he’d spent the majority of the war in his lab.
Well that and the fact that the little impromptu paintball war had ended pretty swiftly once Toni had managed to get to him.
Which isn’t all that surprising really. Toni would have admitted defeat too if Hulk had come at her with roughly a gallon of gold paintballs and a serious determination to win.
Maybe.
Then again, knowing how fond of her Hulk on his own is, Toni probably would’ve just tried to get him to switch sides.
Either way it doesn’t matter because Toni, outnumbered and outgunned on all sides, had still managed to eke out a win thanks to her herding skills and Hulk’s … Hulkness.
Thor, unable to resist the challenge, had gone down first after she’d recruited Hulk, much to the Spiderling’s dismay.
Clint, firmly entrenched on Harley’s side since the beginning, had been the last to be taken out. He’d holed himself up in the ceiling struts screaming about ‘baseline solidarity’ and sniping out anyone who came within his impressive range.
Even then it had only been because Natasha, covered in blue paint from his earlier assault, had slithered into the vents after him and sent him crashing down into Toni’s line of fire before Bucky could stop her.
Clint been pouting about it ever since but Toni’s pretty sure he’ll get over it before too long. Besides she’s almost certain that was just Natasha’s way of paying him back for whatever trick he’d used to get the drop on her for once.
“They’re still at it,” Bucky speaks up from her side. He’s been lounging in the chair beside her as he tends to do these days, seemingly uncaring of the single, perfect red splotch on his chest courtesy of Natasha. There’s a matching one on his ass too, but that one, Toni knows, was courtesy of Sam.
“I know,” Toni huffs with a small grimace as she looks over at the corner of the kitchen where Harley and Penny are clustered together and obviously still arguing over whose team did better.
They’re both covered in at least two kinds of paint, are red in the face, and arguing in a heated whisper that’s rapidly beginning to escalate. From the stubborn set on both of their faces and the way their arms and hands are becoming more and more wild as they gesture, Toni’s got a sinking feeling that this is only the beginning.
“Just think,” Sam speaks up with a smirk as he leans back in his chair, gold and blue paint splattered across his face and a beer in one hand, “this is only day one. And you signed up for nine whole more.”
Toni glances over to where Penny’s just upended her bowl of ice cream over Harley’s head and very firmly doesn’t whimper.
She doesn’t.
But if she had, which she didn’t, then she would be entitled.
She isn’t sure if she, the team, or the Tower will survive nine more days of this grudge match that had sprung up out of nowhere between her two baby proteges.
Toni’s giving considerable thought of sneaking off to Malibu for the rest of the week but she already knows it wouldn’t do any good.
They’d just hunt her down.
Plus if she ran Toni knows that Rhodey and JARVIS both would help them find her, not to mention the rest of the team.
No, there’s nowhere Toni can run and hide from this catastrophe.
Instead she’s going to have to stick around and weather the storm.
~~~
Day two dawns bright and early for Toni with JARVIS’ voice in her ear.
“Miss,” JARVIS calls for her attention, “perhaps you should attend to your guests. Sooner would be preferable to later.”
“Any reason for the urgency J?” Toni asks as she moves about her room, hands steady and sure as she twists her hair up and into place.
“Not particularly,” JARVIS replies. “Unless you consider a relatively small, and so far controlled, fire in the kitchen a matter of much urgency.”
“Yeah, no, that’s fine,” Toni tells him absently. “Small fires are kind of par for the course around here. Merida knows where the extinguisher is.”
“Indeed they are, and indeed he does, Miss,” JARVIS agrees. “Except it is not Agent Barton who is responsible for this particular blaze.”
“Thor leave a fork in the microwave again?” Toni asks.
“Mr. Odinson is still asleep, Miss.” JARVIS informs her. “But Ms. Parker is, however, awake and in the kitchen. As well as Mr. Keener. That is to say, they are in the kitchen … together.”
“Oh shit,” Toni feels panic, pure and sharp, slice down her spine as she jerks the zipper of her skirt the rest of the way up and turns to rush towards her bedroom door.
“Indeed, Miss,” JARVIS agrees.
~~~
Day three goes something like this:
“Don’t do that,” Toni warns Harley, “it’s going to explode. Trust me on this, I’m an engineer.”
“How about I do it anyways?” Harley answers back cheerfully, a vicious, tooth filled smile on his face that would, under any other circumstance, make Toni more than a bit proud.
Unfortunately pride is a bit further down on the list of what she’s feeling when she watches the board they’ve been working on for most of the morning begin to smoke.
At the workstation to their right Penny’s snorting laugh is filled with an unsettling amount of glee.
~~~
It also goes something like this:
“Don’t do that,” Toni warns Penny a few hours later, “it’s a bad idea. Trust me on this, I’m Iron Queen. Learn from my mistakes.”
“How about I try it anyways?” Penny shouts back cheerfully, voice bright and manic in a way that Toni knows from personal experience doesn’t bode well for any of them.
Unfortunately Toni’s feelings are proven to be spot on when Penny fails the simulation with almost impressive speed.
Standing on Toni’s left side Harley cackles with vindictive joy.
~~~
By the night of day four Toni’s come to a solid conclusion that Dante was wrong.
There aren’t nine levels of Hell.
There are ten and Toni’s currently living in that lowest level. The level that’s reserved for pissy teenagers with unreasonable grudges and zero compunction as to who or what gets caught in the crossfire.
So, overall, Toni’s more than a bit ready to take her chances and run away to Malibu.
Or maybe the moon.
The moon should be far enough.
Maybe. Barely.
Either way it’ll do in a pinch because she’s not feeling all that picky at the moment.
She’ll take JARVIS and Rhodey with her of course, and maybe Bruce.
Bucky, Steve, and the rest of the unsympathetic assholes living in her Tower can stay here with the hellspawn for all she cares.
The bots can stay too because, as much as she loves her boys, they’ve become hellions in their own right during this entire thing.
They have, in an unprecedented move, chosen sides.
Sides that rather firmly don’t belong to Toni.
Her normally gentle and level headed U, in a upset that no one saw coming, has gravitated to Penny’s camp. Together they’re a force of pettiness that Toni waffles between impressed with and kind of afraid of.
Butterfingers, to absolutely no one’s surprise, is firmly on Harley’s side. Toni’s pretty sure it’s because he can sense the murder that dwells in Harley’s little, black soul.
Like calls to like afterall.
DUM-E, the little idiot, pingpongs between the two groups with a reckless kind of glee. From what Toni can gather he’s extremely excited about all of the activity and is, apparently, just happy to be in the thick of things.
And JARVIS is, of course, still playing at being some kind of digital, omnipotent Switzerland.
His only contribution to the entire debacle, besides warning Toni everytime something new catches on fire, is to play the Mortal Kombat theme song over the Tower’s speakers everytime Penny and Harley start in on each other again.
Toni’s never going to be able to hear that song again without having some kind of Pavlovian style dread flashback.
Everyone else thinks it’s hilarious.
Honestly Toni’s given deep consideration to trading all of them in for another lizard.
It would be easier to handle and Mother*, the only one not set on giving her a stroke, might like the company.
~~~
“I don’t know what happened,” Toni whines to Pepper mid-afternoon on day six even as she ducks out onto the balcony. It’s the only way she’ll get any kind of quiet for this phone call without leaving the Tower. “They’re normally mouthy little shits, sure. And that’s fine, I’m good with that, proud even. But they’ve never been such overtly murderous little gremlins before.”
“It can’t be that bad Toni,” Pepper tells her unsympathetically.
“Penny webbed Harley to the ceiling yesterday afternoon,” Toni tells her dryly. “She also gagged him so he was up there for an hour before anyone found him. But, on the bright side, we found what has to be the only blind spot in J’s camera range in the entire Tower.”
“I’m sure it was harmless,” Pepper offers placatingly.
“This morning Harley chased Penny around the Tower with a can of Raid.” Toni informs her, deadpan and emotionless. “He kept saying that if I wasn’t careful with the pests we’d be infested soon. I’m pretty sure it was premeditated and that he bought the Raid from home, to be honest. Otherwise I don’t know why we’d have it in the Tower. My Tower doesn't have bugs of the non-human variety.”
“That’s … unfortunate,” Pepper replies.
Toni isn’t fooled for a second. She can clearly hear the laughter Pepper’s trying to hide.
“Pepper,” Toni whines just a bit more. “I don’t know what’s wrong with either of them. It might’ve been Rhodey’s idea to get the both to the Tower together but I thought it’d be a good idea too once he mentioned it. I didn’t think they’d hate each other.”
“Did you ever stop and think that maybe it’s not about them hating each other at all?” Pepper asks her.
“No?” Toni’s aware that her answer sounds more like a question. “What else would it be about?”
“Well I’m just going out on a limb here, really,” the sarcasm is surprisingly strong in Pepper’s voice then, “but maybe it’s about you.”
“They’re trying to kill each other … because of me?” Toni isn’t sure how she feels about that idea.
“Sounds about right in my opinion if what you and JARVIS both have told me is true,” Pepper tells her calmly.
“I knew the two of you scheme together behind my back,” Toni announces with no small amount of triumph.
“Only because we both love you,” Pepper says sunnily. “But enough getting sidetracked Toni. You need to talk to those kids, both of them. Because I’m pretty sure that, in the end, this all comes back to you.”
“Still not sure how that works to be honest with you,” Toni admits. She’s a genius in a lot of fields but teenagers isn’t one of them no matter how much she cares about Harley and Penny both.
It probably doesn’t help that, much like she herself had been, neither of them are exactly what most people would call normal teenagers either.
Not that that matters much anyways because normal is a relative term and it is also a baseline that pretty much no one in Toni’s life actually adheres to.
“I’m going to spell it out for you real quick Toni but then I’ve got to go because I’ve got a meeting in about three seconds,” Pepper sounds equal parts exasperated and fond which is, like always, fair. “Those two kids. Are. Jealous. Of. Each. Other. They’re threatened by each other's presence in your life. Now, do with that what you will.”
Pepper hangs up a second later and Toni’s left blinking at the skyline as her mind tries and fails to comprehend what she’s just been told.
Jealous.
Huh.
~~~
“Pepper says they’re jealous of each other,” Toni tells Natasha later on that afternoon. They’re settled in the kitchen together watching from a safe distance as Penny destroys Harley at Mario Kart. “Something about being threatened?”
“Ah,” Natasha makes an agreeing noise, hands occupied with her knitting needles as she makes what could either be the beginnings of very long armed sweater or a very large hat. Either way Toni’s pretty sure it’s gonna be a gift for Hulk. “Makes sense. They’re battling for dominance. You should let them spar in the gym.”
“Yeah,” Toni winces at the very idea, “that’s never going to happen, Itsy Bitsy. Penny’s got Hulk like strength and Harley’s working on a doctorate in provocation. I don’t want to have to explain to Harley’s mom why I sent her kid back to her in traction. And that's not even mentioning May.”
“Harley is devious and vicious,” Natasha waves her concern away only to curse, sharp and low, as she drops yet another stitch. But then, given the gaps in the sweater hat maybe it’s actually going to be some kind of net? Maybe a new weapon Natasha’s set on making? Toni honestly wouldn’t put it beyond her to knit weapons like a spider spinning a web. “Those are good traits. He would hold his own even against the malen'kiy pauk*. Besides, a little bloodshed might help them bond.”
“You’re terrifying and also probably right.” Toni tells her idly. “If the way things have been going are any indication they’d either kill each other outright or end up best friends somehow. I’m honestly not sure which would be worse at the moment. Also, what’re you making this time?”
“Socks,” Natasha says calmly, “for Clint.”
“Ah,” Toni hums as she eyes the misshapen tube hanging from Natasha’s needles. “Socks. Of course, don’t know how I missed that.”
~~~
“You should just let them kick each other’s asses,” Bucky tells her as he looms up out of the shadows to stand beside her.
“You and Charlotte are both horrible people,” Toni tells him calmly even as she bites back a wince when Penny nails Harley in the back of the head with the shoe U had handed her. Harley retaliates by dumping his entire glass of apple juice over her head.
“They might calm down if there’s a clear hierarchy,” Bucky points out.
“They’re kids, not wolves,” Toni scoffs as she does her best to ignore the way he shifts into her space in that way he always seems to do. “There doesn’t have to be an alpha kid. For Tesla's sake,” Toni huffs, “this is why I don’t have actual fleshy kids of my own, I’d be a terrible mother with anything I couldn’t program first.”
The look Bucky shoots her is deeply skeptical but Toni does her best to ignore it unsure of what part of her statement he’s taking offense to this time. Bucky, like Steve, can get ... squirrely about the strangest things where Toni is concerned.
“Kids are pretty much wolves,” Bucky informs her dryly after a split second pause. “Bigger and louder than you expected, territorial, and vicious if provoked.”
“So I’m learning,” Toni admits. “Still not going to let them kill each other.”
“Doubt they’d kill each other all the way,” Bucky shrugs. “Light maiming? Maybe. It’d just be a arm or a leg. No big deal.”
Toni turns slowly and looks up into Bucky’s face. She lets her eyes trail down purposefully to look at his metal arm and then trail back up until she can hold his gaze, brow arched in challenge.
“What?” Bucky shrugs again, a smooth rolling gesture that somehow shows off the arm at a better angle. “Not like it’s not true. We all know you’d just build them a replacement too.”
His shockingly well adjusted viewpoint on dismemberment aside, Toni has to admit that he’s got a point even if he’s missing the one she’s trying to make.
~~~
It’s only when Toni catches Penny hanging from the ceiling with a lasso of web in one hand and Harley sporting the cobbled together remains of what is obviously one of her old gauntlets that she calls a halt to the entire thing.
“That is enough,” Toni’s voice is stern as she reaches over and puts one hand on Harley’s head and points the other demandingly in Penny’s direction. “Get down here Spiderling. Me, you, and Sprocket over here are gonna have a little chat.”
The way both of them wilt is both entertaining and kind of … frightening if Toni’s being honest.
Because she’ll never really be used to how much her opinion seems to matter to the both of them.
“Now,” Toni herds them towards the couch and once they’re sitting down she stands in front of them, feet planted and hands on her hip like she’s seen Pepper do a million times. It feels all kinds of strange to be on this side of the scolding. “You two are going to tell me exactly why you’ve both spent the past week trying to kill each other.”
Penny, short brown hair in wild disarray around her face, glares and hisses at Harley who practically snarls back at her. Then, because Toni’s life has somehow become a 1980s sitcom, they both fold their arms and resolutely look away in opposite directions.
Toni’s pretty sure she can feel the beginnings of a migraine forming just behind her eyes.
“Either you two talk or this,” Toni waves a hand in the air beside her, “doesn’t happen again. I’ll send you home and there’ll be no more Tower trips for a long, long time.”
“That’s not fair,” Harley grits out, eyes narrowed and face flushed.
“Seems pretty fair when I can’t turn my back without you two trying to murder each other.” Toni counters dryly. “So get to talking or get to packing, it’s your choice.” Toni catches Penny’s slightly hopeful look and is quick to squash it before it can blossom. “Both of you.”
There’s a loud and telling sort of silence between the both of them.
“Pepper had a pretty crazy idea,” Toni says into the quiet. “Something about you two being jealous. I told her she was crazy but I’m starting to wonder if crazy might not be the answer here cause I’ve got nothing else to go on.” Toni shrugs, deliberately and carefully weary. “I figured you two would click, maybe even be friends. I guess I was wrong. So maybe this all really was a bad idea and we should end it early. You’re going home, both of you, tonight.”
“Mechanic/Toni, no.” Harley and Penny both protest together only to stop and glare at each other again.
“Tell me why I should let you two stay?” Toni presses. She’s more concerned with fixing whatever this is than eager to see them gone, but what they don’t know won’t help them evade her questions.
“We’ll behave,” Penny practically pouts, voice just a shade off of what Toni can only call wheedling.
“Not sure I believe you,” Toni counters. “Not without knowing what caused all of this to begin with.”
“It’s not fair,” Harley mumbles again, shoulders hunched and face half buried in the collar of his hoodie. Toni’s pretty sure he’s chewing on the strings again and mentally adds another twenty grand to his dentistry expenses. That should cover ... whatever. If not she’ll just have JARVIS add more later on. The kid's orthodontist has been sending her flowers since about six months after Toni met Harley and she paid for him to have those top of the line invisible braces he needed.
“What’s not fair, kid?” Toni asks.
She’s in no way prepared for his answer.
“I knew you first,” Harley practically whispers, anger and irritation practically melting away and something like sadness replacing it.
“What?” It’s all Toni can think to say.
“I knew you first,” Harley huffs again. “We’ve got a connection. You said so yourself. But she,” he unfolds enough to jab a finger in Penny’s direction, “gets to see you all the time. Gets to be here. Gets to train and make stuff with you while I’m stuck at home listening to you talk about Penny over the video chat. It’s not fair.”
Toni, speechless and more than a bit shaken, can only stare at him as her hands shift to hang loosely at her sides.
“You talk about him a lot too,” Penny mumbles without prompting a few seconds later. She is, Toni notices, picking at her cuticles nervously despite the way her healing doesn't let them stay ragged for too long. “About how smart he is, about how he helped you. Bout the stuff you two build together. And just … I’m here and I get to train with you and I’m Spider-man but you … you still talk about him.”
Toni feels as if her entire world has been knocked clean off of its axis.
Because, holy fuck, Pepper was right.
They’re jealous.
Over Toni.
This is … a lot to process.
“I,” Toni opens her mouth only to stall out, taken uncharacteristically aback by this entire situation. “Well, shit.”
“See, Miss,” JARVIS whispers in her ear then, voice fond and almost amused. “I told you there were things you needed to learn from this experience.”
Toni scowls lightly for a second at his smugness before she sighs and shakes her head.
“Alright, scoot over you two,” Toni takes a step forward and motions Penny and Harley both to the side so she can sit down on the love-seat between the two of them. There’s not a lot of space despite the three of them being on the smaller side with Harley already ringing in as the tallest.
It’s nice though, being pressed in on both sides by their warmth, having her space invaded in ways she could never take as threatening. Not from these two, not ever.
Toni likes it.
“I’m not … the best with this kind of thing,” Toni admits after a long moment. It’s more than a bit of an understatement she knows. People have never been her area of expertise, not really, not on a genuine interpersonal level. Not outside of Rhodey and their little family.
But then, Harley and Penny are hers now too, are a part of her family, so she’s going to do her best or die trying.
Because that’s who and what she is and it’s what they deserve from her.
“You two …” Toni trails off as she searches for the right words, the right way to handle all of this. “You’re both special. In general and to me, specifically. You know that right?”
Toni waits for them to both nod at her, eyes staring at their knees but attention obviously focused in her direction. They both look even younger and so very vulnerable like that, nothing like the two hellspawn that’ve been wreaking havoc through the Tower for the past week. Nothing like the half grown teenagers she knows they are.
It makes Toni simultaneously want to smile and hide them away from anything that could ever hurt them.
“Harley," Toni calls his name and waits until she has his full attention before she continues. "You’re my Sprocket, the best assistant an engineer could ask for. Outside of JARVIS of course,” Toni catches the small smile on his face at the compliment. She takes the opportunity to reach over and wrap an arm carefully around Harley’s shoulders so that she can draw him closer to her side. “Besides you’re right, we do have a connection. I’m your Mechanic, remember? Nothing’s going to change that Harl. Not my relationship with Penny, not anything. Not as long as you want me around.”
“But she’s a girl,” Harley whispers hoarsely and Toni very carefully doesn’t tense. “Doesn’t that mean you like her more? Cause you’re both girls and smart and heroes? You and Mom won't let me in a suit so I ... I'm just me.”
Toni blinks because that’s not the direction she thought he’d go with that.
“Ah hell kid,” Toni pulls him closer and reaches up to run her fingers through his hair like Rhodey always does to her when she’s upset and vulnerable. “We've talked about the armor so I'm not even gonna go there right now. But Penny being a girl doesn’t have anything to do with why I like her. I like Penny because she’s Penny. Just like I like you cause you’re Harley. That’s it. That simple. Got it?”
“Got it.” Harley turns his face a little further into her shoulder and they all pretend like they don’t hear the way his sniffles just a bit.
“And I haven’t forgotten about you, Pen,” Toni turns her attention towards Penny who’s looking even more forlorn than she was minutes before.
It’s a bit easier this time to reach out and wrap an arm around Penny’s shoulders and draw her in close like she had with Harley.
“You’re my favorite Spiderling,” Toni tells her softly. “With or without your super sticky spider powers I’d still think you were a great kid. Even if Spider-man wasn’t a thing and you were just Penny Parker I’d still want you around, just like Harley. Cause we’ve got a bond too you know? Not as old as what me and Harley have but that doesn’t mean it’s not still important to me. Doesn't mean it's not still strong.”
“Really?” There’s a fragile sort of hope in Penny’s voice, so at odds with her normal sarcasm and rapid fire speech, that Toni feels her heart squeeze.
“Really, really,” Toni soothes. “You two are special, just the way you are. There's nothing to change or fix with either one of you. And the only reason I talk about you two to each other so much is because I thought you’d like each other. Would maybe end up friends. Penny I know you’ve got Ned and MJ on your side, and Harley you’ve got your Mom and your sister, but it’s always good to … expand if you can. Have more people you can trust, who care. I learned that the hard way and I don’t want that for you, either of you.”
“I guess she’s not so bad,” Harley leans away a bit and swipes at his face quickly with the sleeve of his hoodie, “since she’s not gonna replace me or anything.”
“He’s pretty cool,” Penny agrees, “kind of prickly, like MJ. Might be nice, having someone else to talk to about all of this.” Penny flaps a hand in the air in front of her.
“Good,” Toni nods as she gives them both another squeeze before she lets them go, pushes up onto her feet, and spins around to face them. “Now that we've got that cleared up I want to say that I'm very disappointed with both of you." Toni holds up a hand before they can protest. "I'll let it slide for now but just know that you two have missed a very important fact while you were busy waging war on each other.”
“What?” They both ask together.
“Well,” Toni drawls, a toothy, mischief filled smile spreading across her face. “Why waste your time torturing each other when you’ve got an entire tower full of super heroes at your mercy and me and JARVIS willing and able to back you up? Isn’t that right J?”
“Of course, Miss,” JARVIS answers promptly, seemingly ready and willing to abandon his stint as Switzerland. “It would not do to allow you to go unaided in your endeavors to keep the others on their toes.”
“So,” Toni clucks her tongue, “gather round minions and let’s talk about the best way to take down Captain America and the Winter Soldier. Or as we’re going to call them for the foreseeable future, Target One and Target Two.”
The matching sinister smiles that blossom across their faces makes Toni’s heart swell with gleeful pride.
~~~
Hours and two thoroughly traumatized and glitter covered super soldiers later, finds Toni sprawled across her bed.
She's got on sweatpants and one of Rhodey’s stolen sweatshirts and she can’t bite down the smile that spreads across her face.
Doesn't even try to.
Penny’s snoring on her left side, face buried in her stomach and feet in Harley’s face while Harley himself drools just a bit on Toni’s ankle.
It’s kind of gross and almost too warm with Penny radiating heat like a furnace, but Toni wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Because this, these kids, her little brats, they're the future Toni's been fighting to save for so long now.
They're both a large part of the legacy that she wants to leave behind.
~~~
“So,” Rhodey slides up to her side two days later in the lull that follows seeing both of the kids off. Penny’s headed back to Queens and Harley onto the jet that’ll take him back to Tennessee. Toni kind of misses both of them already. “That put you off on having both your minions in the Tower together or what?”
“It was a breeze,” Toni waves Rhodey’s concern away carelessly. “Can’t wait to do it again.”
Rhodey’s laughter is both disbelieving and fond which, all things considered, is more than a bit fair.
Still Toni means what she said.
She’s actually looking forward to having both of the kids back in the Tower together in the future.
They help to round out this little ragged and broken family she’s cobbled together. They’d brought even more laughter and joy and entertainment to Toni, and the Tower in general, without even trying.
It was … good.
“Summer vacation’s not too far off,” Toni muses aloud. “Two months or so shouldn’t be too much to handle. All I got to do is get permission for them to stay again.”
Rhodey’s laughter cuts off abruptly.
But that’s okay.
Toni’s takes his place.