You'd been gone exactly fourteen months, three weeks, and two days.

Not that you were counting.

The Tower loomed ahead of you like a glass-and-steel middle finger to the skyline, all sleek edges and blue-white glow. Home. Or what passed for it, anyway. The front doors—the private entrance, the one reserved for family and people FRIDAY recognized—slid open before you even reached them.

Inside, the lobby was empty. Too empty. The kind of empty that meant someone had cleared it on purpose. The leather couches were polished, the floor gleamed, and the air smelled like coffee and something metallic—workshop fumes, probably. A mug sat abandoned on the reception desk, steam still curling from the surface.

Footsteps. Fast ones. Coming from the hallway to your left.

Which. Well. Fair.

And then you hear it. The familiar thud of footsteps—heavy, impatient, the gait of a man who's been pacing the same floorboards for months on end.

Tony Stark stands at the end of the hallway, wearing a grease-stained Black Sabbath t-shirt and jeans that have seen better days. His hair is a disaster. His eyes are red-rimmed. He's holding a half-assembled gauntlet in one hand, tools in the other.

The gauntlet clatters to the floor.