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"Sir, Mr. Justin Hammer is here to see you." Jarvis's smooth voice cut through the eighties' power ballad shaking the walls of the workshop.Tony didn't look up from the holograms in front of him. He frowned and spun one drawing before chucking it wholesale into the recycling bin. "What's that bastard doing in my tower? And at this time of night? Can't he wait until business hours to annoy me?""It is 5:38 in the morning, sir," Jarvis's voice was dry. "Shall I invite him up?"Tony gave a theatrical sigh and shut down his projections. "Why don't you. I'll talk to him upstairs."Hammer was already pacing nervously in front of the bar by the time Tony made it up there. He went straight for the bar, pouring himself a coke with lime and plastering on a plastic smile. "What do you want, Hammer?"The other man looked positively nervous. "I...Stark, I'd like to start by apologizing for all of...that. From before."Tony helped himself to a swizzle stick and chewed on the end for a moment, taken aback by the apology. He slowly walked around the end of the bar and leaned against it, holding the thin straw between two fingers and taking a deep drink of his coke. He studied Hammer. The man looked positively disheveled. His hair was in disarray, his shirt was missing two buttons, his vest was stained, and his jacket and tie were missing. There was a distinct pinched, strained look to his eyes that Tony recognized from his own days of barely holding himself together.He sighed and set the glass down heavily on the bar, discarding the straw. "Why are you here, Hammer?""I need your help."Tony couldn't stifle his snort at that. "Right. You team up with the bad guys, you destroy my Expo, and you want my help."Hammer gritted his teeth. "Yes.""Alright, I'll bite." Tony leaned back with his elbow on the bar. "What's going on?"He was almost wringing his hands, Tony marveled. "There was an accident last night. In one of the R&D labs." Tony's eyes snapped from Hammer's hands to his face. R&D accident... "There was a small explosion, electrical current went wild. There wasn't much staff there, but they were all in a Faraday cage, so I was the only one affected."Tony slowly pulled his elbow down. "What happened, Hammer?""This." Hammer threw his hand out to the side. Tony flinched, but the expected thud of Hammer's hand hitting the wood of the bar never came. Instead, his arm ended abruptly at the wrist, his hand completely encased in the bar.Tony stared for a moment, trying to process what his eyes were seeing. His gaze flitted across the seam between arm and wood, mental calculations spinning. He whistled. "I think you need a drink." He started around to the other side of the bar. "I'm assuming you haven't slept since. Though if there was ever an excuse to day drink... If you can even hold a drink, I mean. Is it all the time or can you shut it off? Well, I suppose you have to be able to shut it off, at least subconsciously, or you wouldn't be standing on the 53rd floor right now. Or did it not get all of you? Or--""Stark." Hammer's voice was tired. "Scotch sounds marvelous right now."Tony's mouth shut with a click. "Right." He poured Hammer a generous glass and slid it down the bar in front of him, then topped up his own coke. "Cheers.""Thanks." Hammer picked up the glass with the same hand that had been embedded six inches deep in cherry just moments before. He took a larger sip than was strictly polite, considering the age of the liquor in his glass.Hammer kept his eyes down, watching the pre-dawn light filter through the glass. Tony watched Hammer. "Why are you here?" he asked quietly.Hammer glanced up at Tony. "I don't want to team up with the bad guys this time," he admitted."So don't," Tony said easily, sipping at his own glass. "Keep closer tabs on your contractors. Or don't use your powers at all; ignore them and hope they go away. Or" - his gaze flitted away and then back - "team up with us this time.""The Avengers?" Hammer seemed stunned by the idea."Yeah," Tony replied casually. "My own personal boy-band. Not that you'd hear Cap admitting that, though.""I just," Hammer hesitated. "I don't know how this works."Tony frowned. "What, your electrical atomic energy field thing? Because I thought you had a pretty decent handle on it with--""No, the whole...y'know, helping people, superhero thing. I'm not a good person, Tony," he confessed quietly to his scotch.Tony sipped his coke and studied him, waiting for Hammer to glance up. When he did, his eyes were desperate. Tony met his gaze evenly. "Yeah, you are, Justin. You just don't realize it yet."Hammer laughed shakily. "Yeah? What makes you think that?""Because you're here, aren't you?" When Hammer only shook his head at that, Tony continued. "What? You think any of us are perfect?" He gestured expansively. "We've got enough issues between us to fill a library. There are about eight different kinds of PTSD among the six of us, and we're trying to wipe out so much red in our ledgers that we'll be on the side of the angels 'til Judgement Day.""But you've all done so much good," Hammer protested, meeting Tony's eyes. "The Avengers saved New York.""And the rest of the world," Tony interjected cheerily."Exactly! I just..." Hammer sighed. "I just get people hurt." He threw back the rest of his scotch and set the empty glass on the bar with a thud. "I don't know how to be a hero, Tony," he told his glass.With a soft click, Tony set his half-glass of soda down on the bar next to its fellow. He softened his tone. "Justin. The Hulk took out half of Harlem. Thor's brother tried to take over the world with an alien army. Hawkeye and the Widow were assassins before they were SHIELD agents. I'm the Merchant of Death - half the terrorists in the world have weapons I designed. Cap--" He frowned. "--well, actually I don't think Cap's got the same kind of karmic debt as the rest of us, but everyone he knew is dead, so he must have done something terrible in a previous life." He earned himself a faint huff of laughter at that. "Point is," he looked Hammer square in the eyes, "the only thing that makes us heroes is that we want to be."Hammer looked like he desperately wanted that to be true and started to say something. But then he paused and considered Tony with narrowed eyes. "Why are you giving me the hard sell, Stark?"Tony scooped his coke back up off the bar and took another drink. "What, I can't just be looking out for a fellow businessman?""No," Hammer replied flatly.Tony shrugged. "We're not that different, you and I. I'm what you could be if your designs weren't crap.""There's nothing wrong with my designs," Hammer snapped hotly. "Not all of us had the benefit of starting with a well-established weapons company, Stark. Some of us had to start from scratch.""And that's why," Tony said, gestured toward Hammer with his glass."What?" Hammer said, confused, as if Tony had gotten him so wound up, he had forgotten the original point of the conversation. Quite a feat, if Tony had to say so himself."That's why I'm giving you the hard sell. You're scrappy."That earned him a scowl."Plus," Tony continued lightly, "I've read a lot of comic books. If I let you go, this will become part of your supervillain origin story, and I am not having an arch-nemesis named Sparky."Hammer looked floored. He blinked at Tony a few times, then managed, "My supervillain name would not be Sparky.""No?" Tony asked curiously, sipping his coke again. "How about Electro Boy?""I'm holding out for Doctor Electron, at least.""You don't have a doctorate," Tony pointed out."I'd get one just for the title," Hammer responded. "Master Electron doesn't have quite the same ring to it.""So you'll team up with the good guys this time?" Tony asked, holding his breath while trying not to look like he was waiting for the answer.Hammer hesitated. "I've got a couple issues of my own and some red in my ledger," he warned."You'll fit right in," Tony promised."Yes," Hammer said. Then he smirked. "If nothing else, I'll know how you guys operate when I roll out Doctor Electron."Tony threw back his head and laughed.As if on cue, that's when the first true sunbeams filtered through the Manhattan skyline to light up the top of Avengers Tower.