Chapter Text
Epilogue:
Maybe he should have done this by email. Or in person. Somehow, in the few seconds while the phone rang on the other end, telephone seemed the worst of all possible ways to do this—he couldn’t get everything he wanted to say out without interruption; nor could he see the reaction he was getting in real time.
But before Tony could change his mind, the line was picked up on the other end. “Sentinel-Guide Resource Center, this is Tara. How can I help you?”
“Hi, Tara,” Tony said, turning on the charm. “I’d like to speak to Dr. Sandburg, please.”
“Blair!” It sounded like she was calling across a room; Tony revised his mental estimate of her age downward. She returned to the phone and said, in what was now revealed as a barely passable imitation of professional phone manners, “I’ll see if he’s available. Whom can I tell him is calling?”
“Tony Stark.”
There was a thunk on the other end, strongly suggestive of the receiver being dropped. Possibly the Sentinel-Guide Resource Center could use a donation of some hands-free headsets? Once the phone was picked up, Tara said, “Hold, please.” Another, more controlled thunk, suggested that Tara had elected to put the receiver face-down on her desk rather than attempt actually putting him on hold. Tony could hear voices in the background but, alas, couldn’t make out any words.
After a series of rustlings and thumps, another voice came on the line. “Sandburg here. What can I do for you?”
“One of my new colleagues at SHIELD passed me a copy of your book,” was the opener Tony had decided on. “I found it very useful, particularly in the aftermath of our first field mission.”
“Thank you,” Sandburg said, a little stiffly. “It’s supposed to be. That would be your first mission with…Sentinel Edwards?”
“Yep,” Tony answered. “Not counting the scavenger hunt in Central Park, of course.” He assumed Sandburg had heard about that—even if he didn’t follow the gossip rags, he probably had news alerts set up for anything having to do with Sentinels or Guides. Tony would, in his place. “It got me thinking—person-to-person distribution isn’t particularly efficient.” His newfound humility didn’t stretch quite as far as asking Sandburg for help without first establishing that he could bring something to the table.
“We weren’t going for efficiency,” Sandburg said dryly. “Discretion happens to be a little more important.”
“I know a little bit about that, too,” Tony pointed out. “Information security is a primary concern in my former line of work.”
“I bet,” Sandburg said.
“Not just the fascist baby-killing. You’d be surprised how cutthroat the world of non-military technology is.” He paused a beat. “You ended up being right about the other thing, you know. Too much stuff with my name on it falling into the wrong hands.” He figured eating a little crow would score some points, to mix a metaphor.
Sandburg cleared his throat. “Just for the record, I don’t believe there are right hands for the kind of stuff you used to make. But that’s not what you called to talk about.”
“No. Getting back to business, I was thinking we might be able to use data-mining and StarkTunes to get the Guide to the baby Guides before G-TAC gets its hands on them.”
“How would that work?”
What he had in mind, in fact, was to have JARVIS track social media for key words relating to Guide testing, then slip the book into their StarkTunes accounts without comment. Tony left JARVIS out of his explanation to Sandburg, though.
“I like the idea,” Sandburg admitted. “But it won’t take long before G-TAC has the bright idea to set up a dummy Facebook account to get their own copy.”
“We have algorithms for sorting out dummy accounts from real ones,” Tony answered. That was true, though JARVIS didn’t precisely use them.
“I’ll have to think about it,” Sandburg said. “What’s in it for you?”
“For me?”
“Yes, you. You may be out of the Merchant of Death business, but you’re still a profiteer.”
“And philanthropist,” Tony pointed out. “What was in it for me when I dug all those wells in Africa?” Just to name one example.
“Good PR,” Sandburg shot back. “Which you won’t get from distributing the Guide—unless you leak it to the press.”
“I was given to understand that Guides help each other,” Tony said stiffly. There was a lot about that in the book, too, along with speculation about Guides having prosocial instincts to complement Sentinels’ aggressive ones.
“We do,” Sandburg said. You, not so much, was the unspoken implication. “I didn’t have the impression you were particularly interested in being a Guide.”
“I don’t do anything by halves,” Tony answered. “They can make me be a Guide; they can’t make me be a lousy one.”
“I see,” Sandburg said, something like respect creeping into his voice.
“Beyond that,” Tony added, “it occurs to me that the two of us might have a lot to talk about. Being triple career Guides and all.” He decided at this point not to say anything about how Engineer, Guide, Superhero beat Anthropologist, Guide, Activist by a mile.
There was a long, unreadable silence on the other end of the phone, before Sandburg said, “We just might. Out of curiosity—how are you feeling about G-TAC these days?”
“Nuke ‘em from orbit,” Tony answered immediately.
The next silence was shorter, and less inscrutable. “Guide Stark,” Sandburg said, “this just might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
END