"I was thinking that if I was going to mind meld with your tech, as you put it, this is what I'd do," Lea said, keeping her voice deceptively pleasant. "And since you decided to accuse me of that, well, might as well actually make myself guilty as charged.

"That's what this is about?" Tony asked. "Jesus, Lea, you were eyebrow-deep in my databases, what else would you call it?"

"I was in your databases with your permission looking up more information on Extremis," Lea snapped. "I was trying to help Bruce find anything that might be of use to him." Although at the moment, she wasn't having a problem. Apparently stealing his suit was something her programming thoroughly approved of.

"You were overloading the servers, which shouldn't have been possible, mind you, but you were, and you weren't listening when I told you to get the fuck out of them again," Tony pointed out."

"I couldn't hear you," Lea said honestly. "There was too much information to sort through, I was having a difficult time focusing on other things."

"Which is exactly the problem," Tony groused. "You're supposed to be better at that."

"Tony..." Lea sighed. "Imagine you have this need to go play around with tech. Not your normal need, but a need that if you don't fulfill it, your blood turns to sand and starts eroding away at you slowly from the inside out. So you have this need, and then you're in this wonderful place that's filled with tech better than anyone else's tech, but you can't play around in it, so you're constantly being rubbed raw and you're constantly in pain and you can't do a thing about it because you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. And then you get permission to play around a bit, and it finally stops hurting, and you can finally relax, only you have no practice at controlling yourself, and then there's too much too fast, and before you have a chance to learn and adjust, you get yanked out again and kicked out of Candyland."

"And I told you I was working on it!" Tony snapped back. "Antidotes don't just synthesize themselves!"

"I know that!" Lea said, her temper sparking into existence again. "In case you've missed it for the fifth or so time now, I was trying to help! I was trying to get into their database so I could get you the original damn code!"

"I wrote most of the original code!" Tony retorted. "The first version! And I've been through their databases a hundred times, there's nothing left!"

Lea growled and gave up. Arguing with him was pointless, he wasn't listening to her. So instead she turned and flew off in another direction, towards the hunting lodge. She needed some time off to calm down.

Tony followed her, grumbling under his breath. She was infuriating.

Lea landed outside and pushed the release button, stepping out of the suit as it let her out. "There, there's your suit, now go away again."

Tony landed as well, opening the faceplate of the Mark 8.

"Really?" he said. "Do you have any idea how much dead weight that is? That would be hard on the repulsors and on the reactor, it's just not feasible." He looked at her. "You need to fly it back."

"Nope, I'm handing control back over to Jarvis, he can fly it back." Lea tapped the suit again and it slid closed again, ready to go. "See, Jarvis will take it back, now follow it home like a good puppy."

Tony rolled his eyes.

"Get in the damn suit and fly it home," he said, gesturing from her to the suit.

"Why? You don't need me to fly it home, and you said I can use this place whenever I want." Lea crossed her arms over her chest, clearly about to be stubborn about this.

"Because I'm not going to just leave you here," Tony retorted, hitting the release on his own suit and stepping out of it. If she was going to be stubborn about it, so was he.

"I have a phone, I can call someone when I need to get back," Lea said, her eyes narrowing at him. "Get back in your suit and go home. Shoo."

"Nope, I'm not leaving until you come with me," Tony said. "So if you're going to stay here..."

"You are completely infuriating." Lea turned and headed inside, briefly tempted to lock him out before she gave up on that. Instead she headed back to the bedroom she'd claimed as hers so she could take a shower. And maybe he'd take the hint and go away.

Tony just flopped over on the couch, taking out his phone and fiddling with it for a while. He could be patient, when he needed to be.

Lea shut and locked her door, and went to go take a shower and unwind some. And when he was still there, she spent a while just stretching out in her room, trying to out-wait him. Really, he wasn't patient, he should give up soon.

Tony had been known to be able to keep himself occupied a lot longer with a whole lot less than a custom StarkPhone, and he was still stretched out on the couch working remotely on some programming.

After a few hours, when he still hadn't left, Lea growled and headed into the kitchen instead to get something to snack on. She determinedly did not look at Tony as she passed.