notes: You thought this story would never update again, didn't you? Oh ye of little faith! I absolutely refuse to give up on this story. I will update until it's over, that's a guarantee. I'd offer an (admittedly lame and long-winded) excuse as to why I haven't updated recently, but I'll just sum it up by saying school is very time consuming, even when it shouldn't be.

and: Thank you for your reviews and patience!

It took Bruce all of ten minutes to have Enid stable again. He had stopped trying to stitch up the wound on Enid's chest, for obvious reasons, and once the man was hooked up to a fresh IV bag he stepped back.

Steve stood by the foot of the bed anxiously. He kept glancing at Tony, which only made Tony feel a lot more nervous than he initially was. "Stop looking at me like that," he snapped at Steve.

Steve shrugged but didn't look very apologetic. "Sorry," he said heavily, "I'm just trying to figure things out."

"Figure things out in Clint's direction," Tony grumbled without much conviction. Unsurprisingly, Steve gave him a sour look. "Okay, I didn't mean that. Actually, I sort of did, but you know what I mean." He furrowed his brow and let his gaze fall on Enid, "I'm just a little stressed about things, is all."

"No kidding," Clint snorted. Bruce shot him a withering look that he casually ignored. "You're acting even more fucked up than usual."

Tony was mildly afraid of how he would answer that. He opted to stay silent, though he did give Clint a reproachful side-eye.

"What are we going to do until he wakes up?" Steve asked, diffusing the tension.

As hard as he tried, Tony could only keep the anger in a voice thinly veiled, "I can have Jarvis trace the girl from the news this morning. It was Fabula," he said with finality, "in disguise. In fact, disguising herself wouldn't even be hard for her. She's playing some kind of mind game with me, most likely." His voice took a cold edge to it, "Taunting me."

Steve and Bruce nodded; regardless of whether or not they agreed with him, they were at least going to try and accept his ideas. "Someone needs to sew up Enid, though. Since I, uh, can't do it," Bruce said sheepishly.

"I can!" Clint received three pairs of doubtful stares. "What? Nat and I have to sew each other up on the daily basis. I've gotten pretty good, if I do say so myself." Bruce still looked a little dubious, but he made to take out the supplies for Clint to use.

Steve rubbed the back of his neck, a guilty expression on his face. "Are you okay with calling Natasha in? We don't have to tell SHIELD anything, if you don't want to," he added hastily.

Tony felt a little resentment boiling up. He wasn't a glass doll; he didn't have to be treated so delicately. So, yeah, he let a few things slip—but no matter how hard they tried, they weren't going to change his mind about feeling worthless. It was a fact he'd come to terms with long before the Iron Man identity had even been created. Doing the superhero thing gave him purpose, yeah, but not worth. The Avengers could live on without Tony Stark, and they'd probably enjoy life a lot more too.

It took a while for Tony to realize he'd spoken the last bit of his musings aloud. Something told him it was the spell—maybe it was getting stronger. Nonetheless, Steve was giving him the Bambi look again, and Bruce and Clint were frozen and staring at him with wide eyes.

Tony stared at each of them in turn. Now he felt like throwing up; all it took was a little spell and he was puking up word-vomit left and right.

"Uh, yeah, you can call SHIELD if it's necessary," he told Steve, fighting the urge to slink away from them all. "And Natasha too, we'll definitely need her."

Slowly, Clint and Bruce started moving again, but they didn't take their eyes off him. "I worry about you," Bruce said earnestly, and Clint solemnly agreed.

"You're not worthless!" Steve blurted out. He seemed a little embarrassed by his outburst, but didn't let it faze him. "And we do need you!"

Tony turned his head away. He felt like actual vomit was going to make an appearance any minute. "I…I'll be in my lab. Yeah." He stumbled on his way to the elevator and practically dashed inside it when the doors pulled open.

The option of smashing his head against the wall until he passed out seemed inviting, but Tony knew it wouldn't fix anything. Being alone was good for him, at the moment. If he heard the others try to assure him again he would probably punch them in the face.

"Jarvis, tell Pepper not to come by at lunch. She's not going to get anything out of me today."

Of course, sir. Jarvis didn't say anything else, and Tony reveled in the silence for a bit.

Out of all his screw-ups with the spell, this had to be the worst. Or at least fighting for top spot with 'telling-a-room-full-of-people-about-Afghanistan.' It wasn't some kind of childish nightmare; he had actually just spoken his thoughts out loud, involuntarily. The spell was definitely getting stronger—that much was obvious. Being a master of not saying what he actually thought, Tony knew when he wanted to say things and when he didn't.

And, unless it was in jest, Tony had a very small, very real phobia of telling people exactly what was on his mind.

Without thinking, his fist jerked out and slammed into the elevator wall. And it both hurt like a bitch and made him feel like an even bigger idiot, all at once.

The pain his hand did pull him back into reality though. Natasha was being called in—and she was an even bigger rat for SHIELD than Clint. If he wanted to prove to Fury that he wasn't a liability, he was going to need to put a lid on the word-vomiting.

"Jarvis, have you started on that trace yet?"

Yes. It appears that the girl on the news has not been seen again, however, my readings detect a large concentrated mass of the substance found in both Doctor Banner's and Enid's systems.

"I can work with that," Tony mumbled under his breath. He massaged his knuckles with the opposite hand, taking brisk steps once the doors opened. "Where's it at?"

Off of Jefferson Street.

"That's…disturbingly close." Tony frowned. He relaxed into a computer chair, pulling up the address of a security camera closest to the address Jarvis had given. "Yeah, way too close. You can see my house from there," he said as a joke, chuckling lightly.

A moment passed, and then…

"What—shit, you can see my house from there!" Tony nearly fell out of his chair. He couldn't, for the time being, be a recluse. There were very important people a few floors above him that needed the message—and needed it now. "Jarvis, alert everyone, Natasha too. I've got about a dozen numbers she uses as aliases; one of them should work. Just try them all." He stumbled off the chair, in a sort of crazed dash to his suit. "It might be a good idea to let the others know they should just meet me there. Yeah, less confrontation that way."

Sir, that is highly unadvised.

"I'd rather not be looked at like a walking sob story," Tony snorted as metal arms whirred around him. The armor was piecing together from the bottom up.

I am almost certain that that assumption is incorrect.

Tony kept a straight face. "I don't pay you to be almost certain. Well, I don't pay you period, but it's the princib—ow, pinching." A metal arm buzzed in apology and removed a plate that had the skin on his shoulder pinched between it and an upper arm plate. "Anyway, it's a little too late, don't you think?"

At risk of sounding cliché, it is never too late. Perhaps you could make a call to them yourself?

"Yeah, no." The face plate was put into place, and the screen instantly lit up before Tony's eyes. "I mean, I think that's a good idea—if I weren't me."

Sir?

Tony rolled his eyes, even if it didn't exactly clarify anything. "We can talk about this later, or something. Jesus, it's like everyone in this house decided to play therapist." The suit came to life and Tony was airborne moments later.

It hadn't actually been that long since Tony had suited up, but it felt like years. He had become somewhat attached to the feeling flying gave him; it was two-parts exhilarating and one-part fucking amazing, because he was Tony Stark and Iron Man and no one else was.

The rainbows and sunshine died down fairly quickly. Technically, it was shot down—along with Tony, who hadn't seen a blast of blue something that turned his suit into a deadweight and was spiraling because of it.

"Aksdjfjs," Tony huffed in reaction to the sudden free fall and the fact that his face was semi-smushed into the face plate.

Sir, you are impossible to understand.

"Jarvis—" Tony groused, "just kickstart the repulsors, damnit."

Tony was forced to wait another point-two seconds before the suit came online again. Once it did, he shot up into the air again, circling around with palms at the ready, because whatever just did that to him was going to die.

It took all of three seconds to locate the attacker. He wasn't even all that surprised to see the cold, hard yellow eyes of Fabula—who was definitely flying, how the hell—

"Man of Iron," she sang, and even though she had to be at least fifty feet away from him, Tony could hear the utter delight in her voice, "just the man I wanted to kill!"

Without any warning, an enormous weight dropped on him from above—is that the Decoy Enid, what the bleeding hell—and Tony felt himself drop too far and too fast for his liking. He rolled in a manner akin to an alligator until the unwanted passenger was dropped.

And he watched, with his own two eyes, as Decoy Enid poofed into nothing, only to appear seconds later by Fabula's side.

"This is tedious," she called to him, twirling her wand in her fingers idly. Decoy Enid grinned sloppily at him; he hardly resembled Enid at all now. The eyes were dark and lifeless, and he drooled like some kind of well trained dog. Green, bumpy skin bunched around his shoulders and elbows, barely covered by the shredded rag that was flung haplessly over his shoulders. Tony wasn't entirely sure, but he guessed that Fabula was creating wind to blow her dress around to make her look less like a child and more like a supervillain. "Shall we take our battle to the ground?"

"The sky is so much more private. We can get busy a lot faster up here," Tony responded lightly. The sexual implications of his statement were more or less intentional—if he was going to break Fabula, he was going to have fun with it.

"I prefer to take my men on something solid beneath my feet." Fabula blew a kiss at him.

"Jarvis, please tell me the others are on their way."

They are, sir. If you could keep Fabula airborne and occupied for a few minutes more…

Tony groaned but nodded. He decided that, above all, he had to make sure Fabula knew he was in charge of the situation. "I didn't know magicians could fly," he said to her, though most of his sarcasm was lost in the suits metallic voice.

"That is just one of the many things that sets me apart from the rest." Fabula was floating toward him now; Tony flew in the opposite direction, trying to even out the distance between them. "Now, save us a lot of time and energy. I can kill you, quick and simple."

"My response to that," Tony said, feeling a bit of anger bubble in his chest, "goes as follows."

The unibeam took Fabula by surprise. Tony managed to singe off a large amount of hair on the left side of her head, as well as part of Decoy Enid's clothing. He had half a mind to flip up the face plate just to smirk at her, but he opted for flipping her the bird and rocketing higher into the air.

Even though he would be the one to take Fabula down, Tony was going to need help with her lackey. He'd keep her attention until the others arrived. But when the Avengers assembled, he would stop running.

And Fabula would sure as hell pick up where he left off.