A month drifted by with the kind of deceptive stillness that usually precedes a storm. For Leander, it was a period of calculated rest. Between absorbing massive quantities of Vibranium in the silent vacuum of space and playing the role of a normal teenager in Queens, he was finding a rhythm he hadn't known since his arrival in this world.
The peace was broken by a vibration in his pocket. He pulled out his phone to see Pepper's name flashing on the screen.
"Leander," Pepper's voice was composed, but there was a tremor of relief beneath the surface. "Tony is finally doing it. He's in the hospital right now, prepping for the surgery to clear the shrapnel and close the gap in his chest. I thought you should know."
Leander sat upright, nearly dropping his controller. "What? He's actually going through with it? He didn't say a word to me about the date."
"He didn't want you to see him looking 'fragile,' as he put it," Pepper sighed. "He's already under sedation, but I couldn't just let him go into that room without his family knowing. If you want to be here when he wakes up, you should hurry."
"I'm on my way," Leander said, a grin spreading across his face. "I wouldn't miss the sight of a vulnerable Tony Stark for all the gold in Asgard."
He tossed aside the high-tech VR headset he'd been wearing—a custom piece he'd modified for Peter and Ned. Peter was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him, staring at the screen with wide, curious eyes.
"Hey, Peter," Leander said, reaching out to ruffle the kid's hair. "I've got some business to handle in the city. You and Ned stay here and keep the world safe from pixelated aliens, alright? Don't make Aunt Jenny come in here and yell about the volume."
"Sure thing, Big Brother Leander," Peter chirped, though his gaze followed Leander toward the door with an intensity that was far too sharp for a twelve-year-old.
As soon as Leander stepped out of the room, Peter turned to his best friend. "Ned, did you see his face? He's totally hiding something. He's been acting weird for weeks, disappearing for hours and coming back smelling like... I don't even know, ozone and cold air."
Ned, who was currently treating a family-sized bag of potato chips like a religious relic, looked up. "Maybe he's got a secret girlfriend in the city?"
"In a hospital?" Peter shook his head. "No way. I think it's a covert mission. We should tail him. You know, like the guys in Alien 3—stealthy, invisible."
Ned's eyes lit up. He scrambled to his feet, nearly choking on a chip. "A surveillance mission? Oh, I am so in! I've been practicing my tactical crawl."
They waited exactly five seconds before creeping toward the front door. They burst outside, scanning the wide, sun-drenched road of their quiet Queens neighborhood.
The street was empty. No cars, no pedestrians, and certainly no Leander.
"How did he move that fast?" Ned asked, breathless. "He's like a ninja. Or a ghost."
"Or he's just really fast," Peter muttered, looking disappointed. They eventually trudged back inside to finish their movie, unaware that their target was already three thousand feet in the air, obscured by a spatial shroud.
Leander touched down on the hospital rooftop and slipped inside through a service entrance, his presence unnoticed by the staff. He reached the private surgical wing where Pepper was waiting. Colonel Rhodes was there too, pacing a five-foot strip of linoleum until he looked ready to wear a hole in the floor.
"Who's the lead?" Leander asked, leaning against the wall next to Pepper.
"Dr. Wu," Pepper replied, nodding toward the glass-walled operating theater. "He's a world-renowned cardiologist. Tony was adamant. He said he remembered a recommendation from a friend years ago—someone named Yinsen. He insisted that if anyone was going to touch his heart, it had to be Wu."
Leander watched the monitors. He remembered the stories. Back in 1999, in a crowded ballroom in Switzerland, Yinsen had tried to introduce Tony to Dr. Wu. Tony, in his peak "playboy" era, hadn't given the man a second look. Now, after everything—the cave, the arc reactor, the near-death experiences—Tony was closing the circle. He was going back to the beginning to fix the man he used to be.
"This is probably the first time he's been still in five years," Leander whispered.
Through the glass, he saw the rhythmic rise and fall of Tony's chest under the ventilator. The surgery was delicate. Removing the shrapnel was one thing, but removing the magnetic housing for the arc reactor required a level of precision that even Leander's powers couldn't mimic safely. He could manipulate the metal, but he couldn't heal the tissue at the same time.
They waited in a heavy, shared silence. Hours passed before the red "In Progress" light finally flickered off.
While Tony was recovering, life moved on for everyone else.
In a small town in Tennessee, young Harley Keener hopped off the school bus. He looked defeated. It had been over a month since the "Mechanic" had left him in the snow with a promise and a half-finished potato gun. Harley had checked the news, seen that Stark was alive, and slowly resigned himself to the fact that he was just a footnote in a billionaire's mid-life crisis.
He kicked a stone as he walked toward his garage, the one place he felt like himself. He pushed the door open, expecting the usual dim, cluttered mess of rusted tools and his mother's old car.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
The garage was unrecognizable. The walls had been insulated and painted. A professional-grade workbench stretched across one side, stocked with tools that looked like they belonged in a NASA lab. A high-end workstation sat in the center, its screen glowing with a welcome message from JARVIS.
There was a beverage fridge, a new sofa, and even an ABB industrial robot arm tucked in the corner. The old car had been restored and painted in a sleek Stark-red and silver finish.
On the table sat a brand-new, metallic device. Beside it was a card.
'Mark II Potato Gun. Don't blow your eyebrows off. — Your friend, the Mechanic.'
Harley's face broke into a grin that felt like it might split his head in two. He wasn't a footnote. He was part of the team.
Ten days after the surgery, Tony was back on his feet, though his chest still felt tight and foreign without the hum of the reactor. He drove out to the ruins of his Malibu home. The debris had been cleared, leaving only the jagged foundations clinging to the cliffside.
Tony looked at the small, circular device in his hand—the 3.5 generation arc reactor that had lived in his chest for so long. It was just a piece of technology now, no longer a life-support system. He stood at the edge of the cliff and hurled it into the Pacific.
As he turned to leave, something caught his eye in the tall grass near the driveway. He reached down and pulled out a small, bent screwdriver—the one he'd used during the frantic repairs of the Mark 42. He tucked it into his pocket, a nostalgic smile tugging at his lips.
He climbed into his sports car. Hitched to the back was a trailer carrying the scorched, mangled remains of 'Dum-E,' the clumsy robot that had saved his life more times than he cared to admit. Tony Stark was leaving Malibu behind, but he wasn't leaving his history.
Leander, meanwhile, was splitting his time between three worlds.
He spent eight hours a day in the Oort Cloud, sitting on the surface of the Red Whale's "gift." He was slowly absorbing the Vibranium, letting the advanced metal integrate with his own cells. His control level was creeping up, and he could feel his connection to the physical world becoming more refined.
Occasionally, he'd drop by the Black Prison. Maya Hansen's research was progressing. The "Extremis 2.0" was showing signs of stabilizing. They had successfully regrown limbs on animal subjects without any thermal spikes. Zost was practically vibrating with anticipation, ready to get Lando back on his feet.
Finally, Leander found himself back at Avengers Tower.
He slipped into the penthouse lab, moving silently. He saw Dr. Banner slumped in a leather armchair, his head resting on his hand, eyes closed in a deep, exhausted sleep.
Tony was sitting nearby on a lounge, his eyes closed as well, but his mouth was moving. He was mid-monologue, clearly treating the sleeping Banner like a therapist.
"So, if I had to wrap it all up," Tony said, his voice quiet and reflective, "I'd say the suit was never really the point. It was a cocoon. A shell I built to survive until I was ready to actually be someone."
He took a deep breath, his hand resting over the spot where the reactor used to be. "I've changed, Bruce. You can take the house, you can take the gold, you can take the tech... but you can't take the truth. I am Iron Man."
Tony sighed, leaning his head back. "Thanks for listening, buddy. Honestly, getting this off my chest—literally and figuratively—it feels like I've finally stopped circling the drain. I haven't told Leander about this part yet. I don't want him to think I'm losing my edge. He's a kid, you know? A very powerful, scary kid, but still a kid. I want him to have someone to look up to who isn't falling apart."
Tony turned his head toward Banner. "Bruce? You still with me?"
Banner didn't move. He let out a soft snore. Tony rolled his eyes, the motivation for his grand speech instantly evaporating. "Great. I give the performance of a lifetime and my audience is in REM sleep."
Suddenly, Leander stepped out from behind Banner's chair, a mischievous smirk on his face.
"Bingo," Leander whispered. "And for the record, I think you're plenty 'edgy' even without the glow-in-the-dark chest piece. Here I am, Tony."