Tony had approved the guest list himself.
He knew everyone in this room, not personally, but enough to recognise their face, name and position. Senators, investors, Nobel prize-winning scientists, and all sorts of influential individuals.
So, it ticked him off when he saw a kid who couldn't be past his early twenties gathering a small crowd at a corner table.
It hadn't taken him long to notice the guy after the dinner started. To begin with, the kid was probably one of the youngest people in the room aside from some prodigal scientists, though he didn't exactly seem to be that type.
The next thing was the crowd around the kid. Within minutes of the dinner starting, over a dozen of his own guests had distributed themselves around this person in a pattern that Tony recognised immediately because he produced it himself on a regular basis.
He observed for a few minutes, running various possibilities before eventually coming to a conclusion.
Hellfire Club.
The people around him all shared a singular quality: generational wealth.
Tony was aware of the Hellfire Club mostly through his father's files, though he'd never had direct dealings with the club as a whole. For the most part, stuck-up old money grubbers like them always had issues dealing with someone as awesome as him.
Anyway, for prideful old-money folk like them to be sucking up to a guy half their age was something new to him.
Tony walked over with his glass in hand.
The small crowd parted as he approached, something he didn't care to acknowledge.
Without hesitation, he popped his first question.
"Okay, I'll bite. Who are you? Because I approved this guest list personally and I don't remember approving someone who apparently knows half the room better than I do."
"Varis,"
"Just Varis?"
"Just Varis."
"Right."
So, apparently, he wanted to act mysterious.
"Okay then. Well, you're not a scientist, an investor, or a politician that I recognise. So, who exactly are you?"
The kid in front of him, Varis, looked over the small crowd for a moment before making a 'shoo' motion with two fingers.
Without hesitation, everyone around them moved away.
"Wow, big shot, huh?" Tony complimented sardonically.
"I guess so." He responded in a relaxed manner.
"Right, so, you're supposed to be some ultra-rich kid, I'm guessing?"
"Not really, no. You should think of me as a colleague."
"Colleagues?" Tony repeated the word with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah, you consult for S.H.I.E.L.D., right?"
That response made him straighten his back slightly.
He assumed he was dealing with some ultra-rich heir or something of the sort, but the words he had just spoken changed the situation.
His consultancy arrangement with S.H.I.E.L.D. was far from public knowledge.
"So, you work for Fury, huh?"
The man in front of him chuckled lightly upon hearing that.
"For him? No. But it's fair to say I work with him."
Tony stared for a moment.
"So, you work with Fury, and you're Hellfire Club. That's an interesting combination."
Tony raised his opinion of Fury by a few inches. Even for S.H.I.E.L.D., getting contacts in a high position in an organisation like Hellfire would be no easy task.
"I guess it is, feeling curious yet?"
"Well, I'm man enough to admit that you're pretty interesting for someone your age."
Tony took a sip of his glass before continuing.
"Right then, guessing you didn't just come here for the energy expo, did you?"
"No? What if I did? It was some pretty interesting stuff, you know? I'm sure Yinsen would be proud of your work."
Tony remained frozen in thought, unsure of what he had just heard. It took him a moment to repeat the last part of the sentence in his mind.
Ho Yinsen was the only name that could shake him like this.
The only people he had told the full story about what happened in Afghanistan were Pepper and Rhodey, and he trusted them enough to know they wouldn't leak that information.
Tony remained silent, reassessing the person in front of him.
"Where did you hear that name?"
His tone was neither aggressive nor loud.
Varis remained silent, smiling slightly in a way that only caused Tony to become more irritated.
Tony continued.
"That's not a name you should know."
Internally, he ran through several possibilities on how the person in front of him could have possibly heard of that name.
Pepper and Rhodey certainly wouldn't have leaked it. That wasn't even worth considering.
It could have been S.H.I.E.L.D., but Tony had seen the incident report regarding his kidnapping himself; hell, he had made some corrections to the information himself. So he knew damn well that the name of his saviour appeared nowhere in those documents.
The Ten Rings, the terrorist assholes who had kidnapped him, were the only other people who'd been in that cave. To say the least, it seemed unlikely that whatever remained of that organisation could send a representative to a clean energy summit in Manhattan.
Which left him with nothing. He had no logical conclusions to draw from the information he knew.
He focused on the man across from him.
Varis was calm, watching him with the expression of someone pleased by the turmoil he had just caused.
"That's not a name you should know," Tony repeated once again, this time with more aggression.
"Is it wrong for me to know that name?" Varis responded with a shrug of his shoulders.
Tony Stark wasn't the type of man who liked being played around with; no, that was what he did to others.
He reached into his pocket, pulling out a pair of glasses.
"Listen, Varis, if that's even your name, you've got five seconds to start explaining yourself."