Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tony loves the thrill.

At first the only thing Tony used Lady, as he referred to his alter-ego as, so he could party without ending up in the papers (and getting a call from Maria to tell him how disappointed Howard is in Tony) and Tony still got to party it up at MIT (also he could make himself look 21 to go with the fake ID). He'd even ended up doing a modeling shoot after meeting a designer at a party. Tony enjoyed MIT, if only because wandering around as a woman and doing whatever he felt like was liberating and there was no worrying about how the weekend conversation with Maria, never Howard, was going to go.

Eventually it becomes a little more when he overhears some kid (which Tony really shouldn't call him that because Tony is three years younger than him) and the boy is complaining about being unable to pass his LSATs or something. Tony sees the opportunity to do something fun by sneaking in to take a test for someone else. It's like the partying. It's a chance to do something that Howard would wholly disapprove of and the bastard would never have to know.

So Lady (Number 2, the blonde bombshell with tits big enough to attract any drunk college party goer) saunters up to the kid pressing herself close enough to know his breath speeds up at the feel. His friend his looking vaguely jealous that a random woman would just come up to his friend and start hitting on him.

Pressing her lips to his ear Lady practically purrs, "I think I could be of some... assistance, honey."

Tony loves the way the kid heats up blushing, "Um... I... uh."

Lady rounds the boy and leans up against the bar crossing one leg over the other to let the short, skin tight dress ride up another inch. She smirks as she steals a drink from the boy's beer leaving behind the print of bright red. Tony still finds it utterly adorable when these boys get all tongue tied around him. It just makes him all tingly inside.

"I have a friend who could help you with your little problem," Lady adds when the boy clearly isn't going to get his tongue untied any time soon, "for a price of course."

Lady grins and turns away when she spots an uber-hottie that just came into the club, before she flits off she slides a business card under his beer, "For when you get tired of frying your brains with books."

And Lady is off to seduce.

[Lady...]

The kid calls and Tony expected nothing less. He haggles the kid, who turns out to be a trust fund baby, for $2,000 because Howard was only paying for tuition and a bit extra for food but nothing else after the last drunken mishap that had ended up in the papers. Tony can't always afford the things he wants and while he can use his skills as a metamorph to wear whatever pretty clothes he sees in the magazine he occasionally has to skimp on food in favor of making sure his half of the rent is paid for.

He gets the score the kid wants (despite it meaning he has to miss a question or two which irks Tony on the inside and he feels like he should charge an extra $100 for each purposefully missed question), and the kid forks over the money to Lady.

Two weeks later he gets a call to do another test, and Tony does it because it kills time and the thrill of sneaking in (he never goes as the person he's taking the test for) does a better job than the ecstasy does most days. Problem is; it gets boring eventually. Tony has an eidetic memory, not that he'll tell anyone, and it isn't like he has to study for the tests. It reaches a point when Tony is seventeen that the only reason he keeps taking the test is because shopping sprees are fun and he goes through most of his money each time he goes on another one. Howard started giving him an allowance for more than food but as Tony develops a taste for expensive Chanel, Dolce Gabbana, Dior, and Armani the allowance isn't enough. Half the fun of being a woman is tha they actually had choices when it came to fashion. Men had what; pants, shirts, and suits.

Then someone calls him and asks, "Does your friend do more than tests?"

"Like what?" Lady raises a brow though he can't see it and Lady is curious enough.

"Like I have someone who needs to be... taken care of," Lady gets the expression immediately.

Lady agrees to talk to him in person and pass on the information, but Tony isn't sure that he'll actually do it until the guy offers him 20k up front and another 50k later and Howard cuts him off again because of some silly story in the papers that is a complete and utter lie because Tony hasn't slept with anyone in months.

So he does it. He dresses Lady (Number one, brown curls and bright blue eyes and the only difference between Tony and her is their gender) up in a pretty, white dress and gets the guy's brother to his hotel room.

Turns out that Tony loves the thrill.

Chapter Text

Tony had a system with how getting orders for a job. He couldn't have people telling others to send them to Tony Stark and Lady had no other address than Tony's so he had to come up with some kind of system. It would really be an issue if Tony bought a condo just for Lady.

It had started with his favorite donut guy when he was attending his last year at MIT and the man who had owned the store had told him about the loan shark. The loan shark who was squeezing Randy, the donut guy, for more money even though he’d already paid off the debt and more. No broken kneecaps or sleezy loan sharks were going to keep Tony from the best damn donuts he had ever had.

So after overhearing an unfortunate case of bones being broken he told Randy about Lady. He even did the job free of charge because donuts after two straight days of engineering was more important than coffee. In exchange, the two of them spread the rumors that if you wanted Lady’s services you just called the shop and told him the job.

Lady got the message.

[Lady…]

Tony remembers the firsts worth remembering. He does not remember his first time with a woman, but he remembers his first man. He doesn’t remember his first drink because neither did Howard, and if Howard couldn’t remember their conversation then Tony wasn’t going to go through the trouble either. He remembers his first real friend; Rhodey. Sometimes he jokes about forgetting his birthday or that Pepper was the one that bought his present but truth was every time he sees something that reminds him of his favorite Lieutenant he buys it. There’s a whole safe at his bank where he keeps all of the things he has bought for Rhodey over the years.

Most of all, Tony remembers his first kill.

He remembers the blood that covered that white dress he’d bought just for the occasion. It was a simple dress and unusually modest for what Lady was into (especially Lady number 1 because she liked what Tony liked and Tony liked shorter dresses and deeper plunges) but the guy was into pretty virgins. So Tony chose a look that made him look seventeen and ready to graduate from high school and not MIT. White just makes him look younger. Giggling she shows the man an idea to prove she’s of age because the man who’s going to die (not that he knows it) won’t sleep with a girl who’s underage.

In the room short and stubby fingers of this blonde little rich boy who deserves to inherit a company less than Tony does rub along Lady’s thighs. Shivering in disgust the guy is so drunk he thinks that it is because Lady is horny and wants nothing more than her first to be this rich, little prick. He thinks this girl is shivering from nervousness and from the thrill of her first.

Part of the assumption is right. There is a thrill in this being his first. It just isn’t the first that he thinks it is.

Originally, Tony brings along the knife because he doesn’t want something noisy like a gun and he doesn’t want to try and choke the bastard if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. He can adjust during later kills if stabbing someone doesn’t work out as well as he hoped.

What he doesn’t expect is the sheer level of exhilaration that runs through him. The fear in the man’s eyes. Slight pressure as he had to push to get the knife through. Most of all Tony loved the way the blood felt on him. It was warm and it smelled like copper.

Tony didn’t realize he was grinning like a maniac until he looked up (the honeymoon suite? Really!) and saw himself coated in blood and grinning like he’d just won a Nobel prize for sheer awesomeness. Which he should by the way. He was about to graduate with two Ph.D.’s after only four years at MIT including moonlighting as a test-taker and now assassin. He deserved to be the guy who got a Nobel Prize for his sheer ability to be amazing.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the knife was his M.O. Though Howard did give him an odd look when he’d walked in on Tony cleaning his growing collection of knives after he’d returned back to the mansion that summer. Tony still wasn’t sure if it had to do with the row of knives itself or the look of utter focus that had normally been focused on engineering and physics until recently.

Tony had a system of donuts and knives and he couldn’t have been happier.

Chapter Text

There was no stopping because he was Iron Man or that he was living with the Avengers in the tower. Tony Stark may be Iron Man but Lady was just as much part of the man as the superhero persona. The only luck he had after Afghanistan was that as a metamorph he could cover up the arc reactor. There had been a few unsure months after his return when he wasn’t sure if he could continue his work as Lady or not.

Even after he come back there was still a bit of hesitation, if only for a few minutes, as far as going back to being an assassin for hire. There was a lot of guilt there from his weapons killing innocent people. Yet, maybe it was the thrill Tony got from being an assassin but it didn’t take long for Tony to realize that he chose to be an assassin not to sell his weapons under the table. It was Obie’s dealings and not his that had killed those people, but he was the one who had built the weapons to be the best on the market. He’d build them to do as much destruction as possible and they did. It just took Tony time to realize that he felt guiltier for letting Obie pull the wool over his eyes and sell his weapons to terrorists because he was too busy being immature to watch over his own company.

The same day he had gone to Gulmira he finally took care of the order that had come in two days before. He’ll never regret the kills that he chooses to commit with his own hands as he dresses in expensive white outfits because he made that choice to do them. Tony never got the choice with the other, not with Obie double dealing under the table.

Not even the Avengers stop him because they never have any reason to suspect him. Articles appear in the newspaper on occasion because over 20 years as a killer has made Lady famous when the police can connect the murders to her. Sometimes they talk about it over breakfast. Tony defends Lady against Rogers and Bruce and while Natasha and Clint don’t believe in what she does they don’t exactly have a lot of room to argue. The difference between Lady and Natasha and other SHIELD agents is that Natasha kills because that is her mission and her missions lead to important intelligence. Lady kills because it is fun and the job (and money) is always a secondary thought.

“I just don’t think what she does is right,” Rogers says after reading through the latest article.

It is the son of some company and the 10 million for the job requested had been paid for by the kid’s own father. The father was dying and the son was a sociopath and a huge sleaze ball. To this man, who cherished his company more than family, decided that it was worth it to kill his only son if it meant that the company would continue to stand after his death. Plus, it was only a matter of time before the kid got killed for doing something stupid.

“But what Natasha and Clint do is okay?” Tony retorts.

Sometimes Tony wonders how no one had ever noticed that he knows details that were never put in the paper. He wonders if the team ever notices that he doesn’t read the paper let alone the articles about Lady, but he still knows intimate details about the case.

Rogers grimaces, “They are doing it with a purpose. All this woman does it for is the money. I don’t approve of killing in any form but murder without purpose is worse.”

Tony rolls his eyes, like he needed the money, “Maybe she is doing a service for her country. The guy she killed is a total sleaze and has gotten off on two counts of murder because of his high priced lawyers and because they were just prostitutes. All that kid cared about was making money and he doesn’t care who gets hurt as long as he gets his payday. The ten million it cost to have him killed was probably worth it to whoever called out the hit.”

Bruce looks up from his steaming cup of tea, “How do you know the price of a hit?”

“Of course I know the price, everyone knows the rules from ordering from Lady,” Tony smirks, “it’s almost pathetic that the police haven’t cause her yet.”
Tony turned his focus back onto Rogers, “I just don’t think you should judge someone you don’t know. We all know how that worked out for you before. Yeah, murder isn’t something that I’m condoning but it is going to happen and we should be happy it is someone like Lady who won’t off just anyone. The only people Lady kills are her hits, which is more than some killers can admit to.”

Tony sighed as he moved to pour himself a fresh cup of coffee, “I’m just saying that she has blood on her hand, but that is something we all understand.”

Before leaving he made sure to catch all of their thoughtful expressions before going down to his lab.

[Lady…]

Two days later he got a box of donuts, a key for a safe deposit box, and a note with a name. Aaron Cross. Part of him isn’t surprised, Fury had expressed interest in Lady especially if there was more to her skill set than that of an excellent hitman. The part that does come to surprise Tony is when JARVIS pops up with Clint’s mug on the screen after a long, arduous search through the SHIELD databases.

A year ago Tony wouldn’t have hesitated to return the money and decide against going through with the whole thing. It wasn’t like the whole thing was for a real assassination anyways. Fury wouldn’t exactly be happy to find out that Lady was Tony Stark either. But who was he to turn down a request from SHIELD if they wanted to meet him.

So that afternoon he goes to pick up the money in the safe deposit box. He even does it as Tony winking at the cameras that he knows someone at SHIELD is probably already watching. Picking up the money is Lady’s way of accepting the job, but showing up as Tony and winking it is his way of telling them, “It’s on.”

[Lady…]

When he shows up at the hotel for the meeting with Barton, ehem Aaron Cross, Tony doesn’t go straight for Barton instead he goes for the front desk. He’s already spotted a blonde Natasha and Coulson as a bellhop and had he not known them he probably wouldn’t have caught either.

All three of them are undercover so even though they are surprised to see Tony, who looks devilishly handsome in white, the lot of them pretend not and that is fine by him. Tony is a business man and doing some work at a high-end hotel isn’t beneath him no matter how much he bemoans work when Pepper is within earshot. It is exactly what he wanted them to do anyways.

They already knew what Lady looked like on jobs, tall, sharply dressed brunette with curls and a smile that was red like blood. As he always said, Lady One (exclusive for his assassinations) was just a female Tony. It fit that if Tony was going to go as someone other than a woman he would go as himself. Today was about discussing the job not that there was a job to take.

Up at the front desk he smiles and asks for the room number for Aaron Cross telling her was there for business.

“And could you inform Mr. Cross to go to his room for our meeting in ten minutes?” The woman gives him a positive answer before Tony is off for the elevators.

Since the situation called for it he’d switched out his usual knife (not that he would normally bring it for negotiations) in exchange for a taser-like pair of gloves. The only thing he refused to budge on was wearing white. It was a three piece suit instead of a $10,000 dress instead, a white jacket, slacks, and tie with an off-white vest and shirt tailored just for this occasion.

Tony settles down in a chair by the bed to wait for Clint. The wait isn’t long which is perfect because it would be a lie for him to say he wasn’t nervous at all.

“Stark! What are you – “ Clint pauses before the light bulb switches on (for all of the wrong reasons Tony would bet), “You’re a metamorph aren’t you?”

“Clint smirks like he has the biggest cookie from the cookie jar, but his next question tells Tony that he is the one with the cookie jar, “So who are you really? You must have figured out that I’m one of the Avengers if you chose Tony Stark as your disguise.”

Tony makes a humming noise before grinning, “Maybe I really am Tony Stark. Wouldn’t that be an article for the Times. Merchant of Death, Tony Stark, takes the business into his own hands.”

Clint glares because he is loyal like that and the idea of someone threatening everything Tony has worked for since Afghanistan doesn’t sit right with the archer, “That’s a really bad joke.”

Tony’s smirk only becomes larger threatening to engulf his face, “You’re right. It is a bad joke.”

“Have a seat,” Tony gestures towards the other seat as he readjusts himself for the coming conversations, “Now Mr. Cross, what does SHIELD want with a little ol’ gal like me?”

“It depends,” Clint’s reply is as curt and dull as his expression.

Depends on how useful he is Tony surmises, and more importantly how much SHIELD thinks he and his skills are worth.

Tony stands and is glad when Clint does not follow suit. Holding out his hand for a shake Tony grins, “Pleasure doing business with you, but we’ll have to continue this another day.”

Clint takes the offered hand, “I was –“

The shock is enough to knock Clint out before he can finish. Tony feels the rush of satisfaction at finally getting the one-up on the archer who tends to take a certain amount of glee in trouncing Tony during training. Steve and Natasha did to but Tony knew that Clint took a bit more joy out of showing Tony just how weak he could be without the Iron Man armor.

Without further ado, Tony exits the room morphing to look like one of the staff. There was no taking chances when Clint’s backup is Natasha and Coulson only made worse by not knowing how much they heard through the comm system that Clint likely had on his person. A few minutes later Tony knows that the two agents have likely found Clint when he doesn’t spot either of them on his way through the lobby of the hotel.

[Lady…]

Next morning at the breakfast table Tony take the open seat nearest to Clint. He can see the agent inspecting him trying to pick out differences between the Tony he sees now and the Tony from the Tony in the hotel room. The problem is that he won’t find the mannerisms or some minute detail in the creases of his brow or a gesture of his hand that will set the two of them apart.

As soon as he finishes his omelet he smirks at Clint, “Something on my face?”

Clint takes an interest in his juice, “No, I…it’s nothing.”

Nodding Tony makes to leave but pauses. He can’t help put tease the man and so he places a hand on his shoulder bending down close enough that only Clint will hear what Tony has to say, “Pleasure doing business with you, but we’ll have to continues this another day.”

The disgusted look on Natasha’s face being focused at Clint when he does a spit take while Tony retreats. Worth it.