Tony and Pepper had come over to our house to celebrate the celebrate the signing of the American Energy Adaptation Act. Tony and I were the two most powerful energy magnates in the new clean energy future and it had seemed like a fitting occasion to get together and give another go at trying to move him towards sharing.

"To the clean energy future we've created," I said, raising a glass. The rest of the table knocked glasses.

"I mean, it was mostly me, but-" Tony said, before Pepper loudly cleared her throat. "And Pepper, of course, couldn't have done it without Pepper. You would not believe the amount of paperwork I had to sign that she did." Pepper groaned and rolled her eyes.

You know, it was a good thing Tony liked Andromeda because otherwise these things would be utterly insufferable. I just sighed and took a drink. "I was impressed that they bought up sixty Arc Reactor. But isn't it sort of excessive? That's enough for our entire energy demand."

"Mm," Tony said, holding up a finger for a pause while he finished taking a drink. "Second generation Arc Reactors. These ones produce eight gigajoules per second, so it's really enough for two and half times our energy demand."

I blinked. Goddamnit. Always outdoing himself. "That's impressive, Tony," I said honestly. I just hoped there were power plants pumping the energy over the border to Canada or something. Maybe the new Arc Reactors were zero-g and that was why they had bought it out. Or maybe the hope was just that energy surplus could be stored. "We've gotten a lot of battery contracts recently, so hopefully we'll be able to move off these fossil fuel relics." Indeed, Trent Industries was almost more battery than power sales at this point. The announcement of the arc reactors had cratered domestic demand for the solar energy from our satellites, which I couldn't begrudge them. The European Union was now our biggest customer on that front as it tried to ride out the roiling cycle of political upheaval in Russia.

"Always out maneuvering the market, huh?"

"It's called business Tony. Don't think I didn't notice that you rolled out the second generation when Ivan Vanko started producing in Belarus." I had been hoping something like that would happen for four years and Vanko had finally done it, moving Europe a little close to its own clean energy environment. I guess he had been waiting for Russia to be distracted in order to get clear of somewhere to build. I'd told Hydra to stay hands off.

"Yeah, I looked at those. Dreadfully out of date, not even a match for my first generation reactors. You know I called him, thought we could compare notes, maybe I could give him a few pointers. He hung up on me. Literally, let the call through, said, 'is this Tony Stark' and then hung up on me. What did I do to deserve that, I ask you?"

"He doesn't like your dad very much," I said, not bothering to go any further. Tony's Daddy issues would somehow make this dinner less pleasant.

"Well, maybe his dad shouldn't have been a thief if he wanted to stay in our country."

"Tony," I said, "That's got nothing to do with this."

"I'm just telling the truth," Tony said defensively, even as I could feel both Pepper and Andromeda tighten up. "There wouldn't be any conflict between us if he hadn't done that. Anyway, I'm not my dad, he's not his dad, who cares?"

I put down my fork and knife and pointed at Tony, "You do." Tony scowled and took a bite of food to get a moment to think. I glanced between Pepper and Andromeda and tried to think of a less adversarial topic. "Senator Heartwood invited me to her office, wanted to hire me to work for SWORD." Politics, great choice Mike, I cursed myself.

"Oooh, did she give you the Senator Brandt speech? God she loves that speech. She was like my aunt, you know, very sweet, very supportive. She'll knife you good though if you stop being useful to her."

'You mean if I cost ten thousand factory jobs in her state?' I wanted to say, but went with the more diplomatic, "I'll keep that in mind,"

"So, what are your three wishes going to be? Can't be too expensive though, if it's more than like a hundred billion dollars a year they won't do them. They have this little sheet, estimate people like us are a Manhattan project a year. Bet she didn't tell you that."

She hadn't. I ticked through the projects they recognized as 'mine' - The Super-Soldier Serum, the Spaceship, and the Pym Particles. Realistically, it would be more accurate to count upload instead of the Super-Soldier serum which I sort of stole, but the count was the same. Huh, yeah, that made one major discovery a year. I wondered what, exactly, Tony and Howard had extracted besides their defense contracts. Probably the whacko patent laws America had in this timeline. SHIELD influence. Who knew what else. "Well," I said after thinking. "A hundred billion dollars is a lot."

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"Yeah, but after the first ten billion or so you really can't tell the difference." Tony said, taking another bite.

"Obviously, I'm still a huge advocate for expanding human capacity through biological means, so I hope they'll crack those laws into a more efficient form. But I'm also thinking," I said after a moment, "That I want them to spend more on developmental aid. Some of that on energy and such, but also funding SWORD Academies in a bunch of low-income countries - There's plenty of places where a SWORD salary would be the upper crust. Why not snap up that talent, put it into humanity's service?" Also recruit a bunch of Hydra agents that way, almost certainly. But it would be good for Hydra to be less Euro-centric. I'm an equal opportunity synarchist.

"Wow, you really want the Democrats to lose the next election don't you?"

"I think people can see the importance now of funding international development, especially as we face a threat of an unknown scale from space."

"Oh, people are already forgetting your mind controlled escapades," Tony said dismissively. "Do you think they're going to remember the attack in two years?"

"God, Tony, do you have to be such an asshole?" I asked, finally losing my temper. He didn't need to be bringing up Loki again.

"I don't know, never tried anything else. Do you have to be such a duplicitous opportunist?"

"At long last, you've found your words." I said, throwing my hands into the air, "This is all about that damn energy debate isn't it?" Pepper and Andromeda looked upset with us, but I was done with the subtle approach.

"The energy debate," Tony said, "Was just a proof concept, compared to what you've done since. You said you weren't going to engage in human experimentation with your Pym Particles, yes I know Pym invented them first, you do too, and then you had a working shrink suit just waiting in the wings that fit your girlfriend perfectly. You broke I don't even know how many laws to get into space and you used to boost your own profile and line your friends up with all kinds of power while saying no to everybody else. You were sitting on the goddamn Super-Soldier Serum before giving it to a secret government agency on the drop of a hat. Your native tongue is lies, your secrets have secrets, and everyone who knows you, and I mean everyone, thinks you have it in you to cut a baby if it makes things easier for you."

I don't know, I guess it kind of depends on where on the baby and how much easier. Probably not the right thing to say in this instance. "Let me try to not be a duplicitous opportunist, then. I was trying to make the world a better place. I took some chances, I made some deals, and I'll admit it, I told some lies on the way there. I'm not proud of those things. But at least I'm not so suspicious of my own shadow that I can't let anybody else use the technology I'm making to actually help people. At least I'm not so selfish that I keep the future and safety of this planet in a box and only let my friends use it. And when the time came I put myself on the line, and yeah I paid the price, but you hid behind a computer screen and played backseat quarter back to your best friend."

Tony reared back and got up, "Well. Thank you for being honest, for once. Pepper, we're leaving," he said, motioning to her. She shared a commiserating look with Andromeda and got up. Tony paused before he left the room and said, "Thanks for the dinner, it was good, always is," which I took as some sort of olive branch.

I looked at Andromeda after they'd left and said, "Not my top performance," I admitted. He'd been testing me like that for awhile.

"Those things he said weren't fair," Andromeda said, getting up and giving me a back rub.

The back rub was nice, but it wasn't nice enough to erase the fact that everything Tony said was true AND fair.