Safety Coffin

PenPatronus

Chapter 4 of 4

Obliviate

It hurt to laugh, but Natasha let it ride anyway. The world was ending and she was flat on her back in the mud, next to a rubber tire, staring up at a twisted metal ladder that reminded her of the monkey bars. Maybe Steve's obstacle course wasn't so misguided after all…

Someone took her hand. Warm fingers interlaced with hers, and squeezed. "Bruce."

Banner was little more than a corpse. Saving Tony had drained every calorie of energy that existed in the Hulk. The husk in its wake crawled to Natasha's side and held her. "You bumped your head," Bruce whispered. "Hold on."

Natasha felt the blood in her hair. A pair of black arrows soared past them and she watched them fly into Ultron's neck. "Forty seconds," she whispered.

"It's up to Tony, now." Bruce's Adam's apple traveled his throat. "I was going to send you a postcard from Fiji," he whispered.

She smiled at him. "I'd rather have a kiss."

He grinned, said "Me, too," and lowered his lips to hers.

Steve shoved Tony to the ground and used his shield to block the repulsor blast. The force of it tripped him up, and Cap steamrolled over Wanda's prone body. Clint shouted, and Steve lifted the shield just in time to block another shot. He angled this laser blast back at Ultron, which distracted the AI long enough for Falcon, War Machine, and the Vision to get above and behind him. As one they tackled the armor into the dirt.

"Twenty seconds!" Tony called to them. "Get the helmet!"

Barton and Rogers stampeded forward and joined the dogpile. The combined weight of all five of them kept Ultron on the ground, but couldn't keep him still. "You're too late!" the robot mocked. "There's no stopping it now."

Tony summoned his energy – only enough to rise onto one knee. "Cap!"

"You're too late!" Ultron hissed.

Below them all, the ground started to shake. The remaining visible inches of the 'A' sunk into the giant grave.

Steve reared up, held the shield with both hands and, with a yell, slammed the blunt side down on the armor's neck, decapitating it. Clint dove forward and snatched up the helmet like it was a fumbled football. "Stark, catch!"

Barton launched the helmet into the air. Tony caught it with both hands and in a single smooth motion, yanked it down over his face. The countdown on the HUD read '10 seconds.' "F.R.I.D.A.Y.! Stark Industries destruct sequence alpha-one!"

"Iris scan and voice print acknowledged," the computer confirmed. "Enable self-destruct?"

'5 seconds.'

"OBLIVIATE!" Tony shouted.

4…

3…

2…

1…

"Confirmed," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said in a chipper voice a quarter of a second before the HUD went dark.

Tony ripped off the helmet and looked at Cap.

A final rumble trembled the ground between them, and then the earth stopped shaking.

The decapitated armor froze.

Their earwigs went silent.

With a "Whoa…What?" Rhodes fell onto his back like a dead tree and the War Machine armor came apart at the seams. Rhodey sat up in the wreckage and glared, dumbfounded, Stark. "What the hell did you do?" he asked.

Tony stared at the dead Iron Man mask in his hands. "I, uh, I just erased Stark Industries," he explained. "Every piece of Stark tech on the planet just shut down – including the arc reactor beneath us."

Rhodey poked the dead metal that used to be War Machine's elbow. "Everything?"

"Everything's gone. The company no longer exists. No suits. No planes. No cars… No jobs, satellites, real estate, stock… No Tony Stark."

Rhodey blinked. "No money?"

Stark shrugged. "I stuffed a few twenties in my…" Tony looked down and around at the dust and ashes that remained of the Tower, and chuckled. "In my mattress…" He sighed and lay down on his right side as the pain in his left threatened to overwhelm him. "Cap, I don't suppose you could lend me a few bucks?"

THREE DAYS LATER

"Would you cut it out already?" Steve groaned. He uncrossed his ankles, sat up in the chair and pushed away from the hospital bed. "It's not THAT entertaining."

"Shhh, shhh, this is my favorite one," Tony Stark shushed. He hit the speaker command on his cell phone and held it up for Cap to hear. "So mad that you can't see straight? What does that even mean?"

"Right now I'm that mad, but that doesn't mean I can't punch you!" Steve snarled.

"You thought I was dead, you called me over and over, and you left me increasingly angry messages," Stark said. "You won't punch me. You love me too much. This," he said, pointing at the recording repeating from the phone, "is the sound of somebody who loves me!"

"I wish you were never born," Steve said angrily, but with a smile that showed off every tooth.

Knocks on the door. Bruce and Clint filed in. "She's fine," both men said simultaneously when the other two opened their mouths to ask about Natasha. They looked at each other, each sizing the other man up, and then chuckled. "Wanda woke up, too," Clint reported. He patted Tony's arm and sat on the side of the bed. "And when are you going to stop lounging around here and help us rebuild Manhattan?"

"A building fell on me!" Stark protested. When Barton rolled his eyes, Tony shifted his attention to Banner. "You double-checked everywhere, right? Ultron's gone for good, right?"

Bruce nodded. "I wrote a new Safety Coffin program. Just in case. And just on the S.H.I.E.L.D. servers since my Stark Industries password didn't work because the company intranet no longer EXISTS."

"Yeah, I thought you were exaggerating about deleting Stark tech but none of my SMART arrows work anymore," said Hawkeye.

"And I need a new phone," said Steve. "So that I can leave you more angry messages."

"So sorry that saving the world inconvenienced you," Stark quipped. "And it's not all bad. Haven't any of you checked your personal bank accounts in the past 72 hours? Barton, you might as well have some more kids because you'll be able to send yours to college ten times over. Bruce, you can buy an island where the Hulk can go cranky to his little green heart's content. And you, Rogers, can now easily afford a home in Brooklyn. You could buy all of Brooklyn, actually."

Steve folded his fist underneath his chin. "You're not sleeping on my couch."

"I'm homeless!" Tony rolled his eyes. "And I need a job."

"You want to join S.H.I.E.L.D.? Officially? Work under Nat and I?"

Tony looked at his teammates. "If Barton and Banner are back in, then, yes."

"I'm so sick of that tractor…" Barton muttered.

Steve tried and failed to hide a smile. "If you're going to be on my new team," he said, "first you have to go through one hell of an obstacle course."

The End

Author's Notes: What Avengers story should I write next? I'm not making any promises that I'll use your idea, but I'm open to suggestions. (Note: I'm into bromance, not slash.) Send them with your review! -PenPatronus