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cap_ironman2012-12-22 02:20 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2012-12-22 02:20 am
Entry tags:
Reassembled, Chapter 10, part 1
Title: Reassembled, Chapter 10, part 1
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Universe: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.
Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
Authors' note: The world really has ended! You can tell, because we're posting a new chapter. (We promised last chapter that it wouldn't be another eight months before posting this one. And it wasn't. This time it was, ah, five months. Sorry?)
Reassembled
Chapter Ten
Steve skidded to a halt at the base of the Metropolitan Museum's front steps, where a cordon of police officers had blocked off access. Three of them were standing in a huddle around Tony, while the rest of the Avengers stood impatiently a few feet away.
"Does anyone here have a smartphone?" Tony asked, as Clint caught up with Steve, breathing hard through his nose but not winded. "You." Tony indicated the youngest of the police officers, a woman whose tightly curled natural hair was pulled back from her face by a glittery pink headband. "You have one of my phones. Give it to me." There was a moment's hesitation, as she eyed him skeptically, then he added, "Please. I can hook it into the building's security cameras."
She handed over the phone, a sleek, black rectangle, and watched intently as Tony simply held it; he couldn't use the phone's touch screen with his gauntlets on, but with the Extremis, he didn't need to.
"Here you go." Tony handed it back. "That's the closest functional camera to the crime scene. Hit the star key, and you can switch to the next camera over. If someone calls, let it ring, because as soon as you either close the phone or answer a phone call, the program will terminate and erase itself from your phone."
"That's a useful trick." She didn't say thank you, probably because Steve, in her shoes, would be worried that his phone was going to either be damaged by Tony's hacking, or simply self-destruct when he tried to turn it off. He'd seen the promotional material for the StarkPhone; it wasn't cheap, especially the super-thin little black models like that one.
"Are we going in?" he asked, "Or is the NYPD taking this one?"
"One of them just walked past the camera carrying an automatic weapon," the police officer said.
"Call SHIELD," Steve said, then remembered to moderate his voice into something that was less obviously an order as one of the two male police officers — white, with thinning hair and a police sergeant's insignia — glared at him. "The weapon used to stab the security guard belongs to a woman on SHIELD's terrorist watch list."
"Fuck," the man muttered. "They're going to claim jurisdiction. I hate dealing with SHIELD."
"Give whoever answers the code word 'Paladin,' and ask to speak to Agents Carter or Barnes. Tell them Synthia Schmidt is active again." Steve avoided using Sin's much more recognizable nickname; pedestrians were already gathering on the other side of the police tape, and there was no point in panicking people. "Tell them the Avengers have gone in after her."
There was a loud thud behind him, then the unmistakable sound of Thor's massive, booted feet hitting the pavement. "Why do we wait?" he demanded. "Your message said it was most urgent." Then, to Tony, "This device does not function on the subway. Methinks you should remedy that."
Steve unslung his shield from his back. "Let's go. Ms. Marvel, you take point." Of them all, Carol was the most bullet-proof, her partial invulnerability giving her better protection from conventional weapons than even Thor possessed.
"Do not break anything." Jan's voice was sharp over his communicator, slightly shrill the way it often was when she was in Wasp form. "Iron Man, Thor, you guys stay out here. We need you covering the exits in case they try to run."
Steve tightened his grip on his shield, and followed Carol inside. She was levitating slightly, making her footsteps utterly silent despite her two-inch heels.
The museum's high-ceilinged entrance hall was painfully exposed; the back of Steve's neck crawled as he walked through it, staying close to the wall. Just because Tony hadn't detected anyone hiding on the second floor balcony with a gun didn't mean no one was there. Security cameras could be tampered with.
Behind him, Clint had an arrow nocked and ready, hopefully one with a blunted tip. He was making an effort to walk quietly on the stone floors, but his boots still made audible clicking noises. Sam was having more luck, moving nearly silently beside Steve.
A museum security guard lay crumpled by the foot of the stairs, unconscious. He'd been luckier than the man Tony had seen in the video footage, but not by much; he breathed with the shallow rasp of someone with a damaged trachea. He needed medical attention, and he wasn't going to get it until they cleared Sin's men out of the building or at least disarmed them.
They made it all the way across the hall and into the Greek and Roman gallery without seeing anyone conscious. Carol hesitated at the entrance, her eyes flicking over the dozens of statues that lined the massive hall. Any one of them provided enough cover for a man or woman to hide behind, and the stone columns that supported the roof only made the potential for an ambush worse.
Steve had only Jan's shouted cry of warning when the first of Sin's serpent squad leapt up from behind the stone plinth that supported a statue of Dionysus and threw himself at Carol. Maybe the man assumed that being both female and completely empty-handed would make her the easiest to take down.
Carol grabbed him by the wrist and thigh and spun him around into an armlock. The knife he'd been holding clattered to the floor, and she kicked it away. She slammed her forehead into his and dropped him, letting him crumple to the ground, then picked up the assault rifle he'd had strapped across his back and bent it into an arc; that was one gun they weren't going to have to worry about, at least.
The entire thing had taken less than ten-seconds, but it hadn't been quiet; Sin and her men would know they were there now.
Steve glanced back over his shoulder at Wanda and Clint, to find them moving to guard the team's flanks without needing to be told. He didn't need to check where Sam was; he'd been in enough tight situations with him to know which way he would move.
They made it another fifteen feet down the hall, Sam on his left and Carol and Jan in the lead, before six men came charging out of the special exhibit space, brandishing a mismatched collection of rifles and handguns.
Steve brought his shield up, and realized just as he felt the first bullet hit it that he had no idea where the ricochets would go. "Scarlet Witch-" he shouted.
His shield seemed to hum in his hands as Wanda spoke, pink light crackling over it. "I can't control where their bullets hit, but I can make certain that the ricochets strike nothing important."
Steve managed not to drop his shield, despite his instinctive flinch at what looked like lightening crawling over his fingers. Another bullet clanged off it, slamming into the floor by his feet.
Trusting that Wanda's magic would work as she'd said — having brought her along, he could do no less — he ran toward the nearest black-clad man, slamming his shield into the man's arm to encourage him to drop his gun.
The man complied, then tried to gut Steve with the serpent-headed dagger he wore strapped to his thigh.
Steve spun sideways, grabbing the man's wrist and using his own momentum to pull him forward, flipping him over Steve's knee and face-first into the ground.
He started to roll back to his feet, and Steve kicked his legs out from under him. "The police have this entire building surrounded," he said. "You're not getting out of here. Why don't you drop your weapons and come along like a good wannabee Nazi thug?"
The man snarled silently at him and lunged upwards, his knife slashing at Steve's legs, only to skid harmlessly across his shield.
There was a bright flash in the corner of Steve's vision as Jan used her stingers on someone, followed by another ear-splitting rattle of gunfire. Steve kicked the knife out of the man's hand and looked up to see Sam flick one of his hard-light wings out in front of Clint, bullets ricocheting off it in a cascade of red sparks.
Wanda raised a hand, her fingers limned in red light, and made a throwing gesture.
The final gunman's weapon jammed with a loud click, and Carol grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides.
There was a moment of silence, the ringing in Steve's ears loud enough that all other noise was deadened into nothing, and then Sin stepped out of the special exhibit room, the John Dee manuscript tucked into the crook of one arm. In her other hand was a Luger pistol that Steve had last seen Red Skull carrying.
"Rogers." Her lips twisted into a smirk that held no trace of her usual cheerful, little girl grin. Steve had had always imagined that Sin would be less disturbing without that eerily bubbly façade, but this wasn't much better. "I might have known Fury would call in America's attack dog," she sneered, the words dripping contempt. "How is your little sidekick doing these days?"
She was a head shorter than him, weighed barely a hundred and thirty pounds, and had been tortured into insanity by Crossbones and her deranged monster of a father. Smashing his shield into her face and beating the Nazi brainwashing out of her until she never tried to hurt Bucky again would be wrong.
"He's fine," Steve said, his throat hurting from the effort to keep his voice calm.
Her face went from sneering disdain to childish glee like a switch flipping. "Good," she said brightly. "I have plans for him. He killed my Brock. I'm going to make him beg me for death. Poison would be too easy." She hefted the Luger, her eyes traveling slowly over the Avengers, then narrowing. "That one." She waved the muzzle of the gun at Sam. "He was there when you and your little friend killed Daddy. I think I'll shoot him first."
Steve half turned toward Sam, bringing his shield up to throw, though he knew his chances of actually being able to stop a gunshot with it this way were next to zero. Sam was already poised to duck — there was a bronze statue only a few feet to his right, and one dive and roll would put him behind it.
Then there was a bright flare of light in front of Sin's face, and she shrieked in rage, firing her gun wildly into the air, where Jan had been a moment ago.
The moment her eyes — and weapon — left Sam, Clint released the arrow he'd had drawn and ready. It tore through the air in a graceful arc and slammed into Sin's shoulder.
Both book and arrow fell to the floor, and Sam, already poised to move, launched himself at the book as if it were a fly ball.
Steve threw himself forward, reaching for Sin, very aware of the gun she still held, and the fact that she almost certainly had another of those repurposed SS daggers on her somewhere as well.
He was a fraction of a second away from contact when a bright flare of light whited out his vision; it snapped through his body like an electric shock, the hair on his arms standing on end, and then he slammed hard into a female body too tall and solid to be Sin's.
Both of them lurched sideways, his arm hitting the side of one of the room's stone statue bases with numbing force. There was an ominous rattling noise from above them, and Steve pushed himself away from the statue before it could fall on him, trying to blink the spots out of his vision.
The statue stopped wobbling abruptly, and Steve's vision cleared enough for him to see Wanda standing with one hand outstretched, a look of concentration on her face. A few feet away from him, Carol was shoving her hair back out of her face, looking deeply embarrassed.
"Are you all right, Cap?" she asked. "I was trying to grab her, and then she just — where the hell did she go?"
*What the hell is going on in there?* Tony's voice sounded in Steve's ear, coming through the communicator clear and undistorted the way it did when he used the Extremis rather than the communication link in his helmet. *A massive energy discharge just shorted out all the cameras in the Greek and Roman gallery.*
"Sin just disappeared," Steve said, grimly. "Some kind of spell, or teleportation device, I don't know." Whatever it was, it was nothing he'd ever seen her or the Red Skull use before, which meant she'd had outside help.
*It was tech, not magic. The energy signal looked familiar; was SHIELD working on any teleportation equipment at those R&D sites she raided?*
"You would know that better than I would."
"Hey, we saved the book," Clint said, crouching down to examine the limp form of the man Steve had disarmed and knocked down. "And Sin's the only one who got — damn it, this guy's dead."
Dead? "I didn't hit him that hard," Steve protested. "He was still conscious when I left him."
"This one's dead, too." Wanda was kneeling by the man Carol had dropped when she'd lunged for Sin, one gloved hand against his throat. "I think they may all be dead."
Steve glanced from the leather-bound book in Sam's hand to the half-dozen bodies littering the floor, and swore. They must have been under orders to kill themselves rather than risk capture. Six lives — seven, counting the security guard — for one manuscript.
Nothing in the museum's collection was worth that much.
"Tell the police that the building's clear, and there's a man in the front hall who needs immediate medical attention," he told Tony.
Sam was staring down at the book in his hands, frowning. "What does Sin think is in this book that's worth losing this many of her followers? Since when are ancient chaos demons and Renaissance alchemists her kind of tactics?"
"They're not," Steve said, meeting Sam's eyes and seeing by the look in them that his next words weren't necessary. He said them anyway. "She's not working alone."
* * *
The Avengers' Tower felt empty these days, not desolately so as Valhalla had when he had first rebuilt it, when far too few Asgardians had yet returned, but quietly so. The Falcon and Hawkeye had removed themselves to the nearly completed Avengers Mansion, and Jarvis had followed them, leaving only Hank Pym and the Wasp behind in the tower.
Thor himself remained as well, during those times when his presence was not required in Valhalla. To return to the Mansion and dwell under its roof again would be to return to an earlier time when his fellow Avengers were all his trusted comrades in arms; to return would be to forgive Tony, if only symbolically.
Whereas in the tower, near empty as it was, it was a simple matter to avoid having to speak with Hank more than once or twice a day. Less than that, now that Jarvis was serving dinner at the Mansion; avoiding breaking bread with Hank or Tony had been out of the question before, when it would have constituted a breach of Jarvis's hospitality, but now, Thor was free to dine when and where he chose.
The thick carpet muffled his footfalls as he strode toward the kitchen, down hallways even emptier of decoration than they had once been; what little ornament the place had contained had been moved to the mansion now.
Fortunately Jarvis had left the refrigerator stocked with an amount of food befitting a warrior, even if Thor must forgo the pleasures of conversing with him while he prepared it.
Jarvis had an appreciation for storytelling, and for a mortal whose years numbered far fewer than Thor's, gave surprisingly wise advice.
But if he could not speak with Jarvis, he could at least make himself a luncheon.
Last night's confrontation with Sin and her followers had been unsatisfying, ending as it had in a stalemate — they had recovered the grimoire, but she had fled. Now, they waited while Tony attempted to determine the maker of the device she had used to escape, and the grimoire sat in one of the museum's temperature controlled vaults under lock and key while they arranged to have it transported to the Avengers Mansion, where any further attempts by Sin to obtain possession of it could be more easily thwarted and would not put the museum's people or property at risk.
The museum wished to have it examined by Dr. Strange, in hopes that he would be able to dispel the dark aura that clung to it, which had already caused not just the attack yesterday, but the suicides of two guards and an unhappy sequence of accidents. Until then, they wished the Avengers to take custody of it, preferably as quickly as was possible without risking damage to the book.
It was unwise, but then, many things they had done recently had been unwise.
The kitchen door was open slightly, spilling a line of light out into the hallway, and as he approached, Thor could hear voices from beyond it.
"I'm on the verge of a breakthrough with the DNA analysis." Hank's voice rang with a particularly irksome variety of enthusiasm, one that indicated that he would likely pay no heed to what others said. "I can tell. If I just run one more test-"
"You can run it after you eat," the Wasp interrupted. "Tony has many admirable traits, but that thing where he locks himself in his lab or a machine shop for days on end without eating or sleeping isn't one of them."
Admirable traits. Yes, he did indeed possess several admirable qualities. Unfortunate, that honor had turned out not to be among them.
"That's because Tony does it to hide from things," Hank protested.
Hank was in the kitchen. His luncheon could wait, Thor decided, and turned to go, not wishing to play the role of eavesdropper.
Their voices followed him down the hall.
"And you're not?" The Wasp asked, sounding out of patience, yet not unaffectionate.
"No! This could revolutionize the entire way we conceptualize superpowers. This is Nobel Prize material, Jan."
"And the fact that working on it makes it easier for you to hide from Thor has nothing to do with it?"
Thor halted, despite the better instincts that told him that if eavesdropping was dishonorable, eavesdropping on a conversation that concerned oneself was even more so.
"I'm not hiding," Hank said sullenly. "I'm avoiding him because he hates me."
The Wasp sighed, the sound audible even at this distance. "No one hates you, Hank."
"Actually, I really think he does. If I hadn't lost control of the clone, Bill would still be alive; he probably thinks I dishonored him by turning a version of him into a murderer."
At least, Thor mused, one could not say that Hank was unperceptive. He found, however, that his desire to hear what the other two would say had diminished, and so began to move away once more. Hearing Hank speak of the abomination he had created would only rouse his anger.
"Have either you or Tony bothered to explain what actually happened yet?" The Wasp's voice was faint now, but the words were still clear to Asgardian ears. Don Blake would not have heard them, but Thor did. "Because if not, I'm going to do it. It's bad for the team, and it's making you miserable."
Better, Thor thought, that he had left more swiftly. For he had imagined that he knew everything there was to tell about Hank and Tony's betrayal, about the soulless copy of his body they had made, and used as a weapon against those who had been his shieldbrothers. The idea that there was yet more treachery to learn of made him grind his teeth in anger, the air about him growing thick and charged with energy as it did before a storm.
Hank's voice sounded pleading as he spoke, even embarrassed. "Please don't. He's not going to care why we did it. HUSAC didn't force me to rush the experiment, or order me not to add additional behavioral safeguards. Whether or not we wanted to do it, we still had a responsibility to do it right."
To do it right. His jaw ached with the effort to suppress his fury, to avoid simply charging into the kitchen and confronting Hank face to face, as a warrior ought. Mortal society was not Valhalla, and disputes among comrades were not settled with violence.
Given the deeds they had been willing to admit to, given that he already knew they possessed no honor, how much worse must these unknown things be for Hank and Tony to be ashamed to speak of them?
Thor walked away, taking care to make his footfalls soft, lest Hank and the Wasp hear them and come forth to try and speak to him. He would not hear the truth from Hank, not without forcing it out of him — the man had just admitted as much.
The Wasp would be willing to tell him, but the prospect of asking her was unsatisfying. He wanted to hear the admission of deceit from Tony's own lips. He was the one whose betrayal had struck the deepest; Hank had been ill, in the past, in ways that interfered with his judgment. Tony, whom he and Don Blake had both accounted a close friend, had no such excuse.
He had considered Tony Stark a brother, one nearly as close to him as Baldur, or Volstagg, or Beta Ray Bill. Or Captain America, whom Thor had searched for amongst the valorous dead and, when he had failed to find him, mourned for. His father's handmaidens had been the choosers of the slain, and a fallen warrior who had believed in him — and friendship could be accounted belief, if one was creative — always had a place in Valhalla.
Tony was often absent from his office, even during the hours when he was expected to be at work there, but it was, Thor decided, the best place to begin searching for him. If he were there, he would be alone, and there would be no need to fight with him, even with words, in front of Captain America. He would feel honor-bound to defend his lover, were he present, and Thor had no quarrel with him.
The office, when he left the elevator and the two awe-stricken men in business suits who had shared it with him, proved to be a cold, barren space. Massive windows let in sunlight, but the furniture was spare and angular, and everything gleamed black and silver, like rock limned with ice.
He had expected Tony's assistant to try to bar him entrance, and was taken off guard when Pepper Potts-Hogan smiled grimly at him and waved him inside. "Good, it's one of you guys. Go right in. Maybe you can talk some sense into him."
She nodded toward the closed door at the far end of the reception area, her bright hair the only spot of color in the room. "He's in there. Tell him I've cancelled all his meetings for the rest of the day, and he can pay me back by actually showing up for the ones I've rescheduled."
Thor opened the door and found himself at the threshold of a darkened room, all lights extinguished and the sunlight reduced to a dim shadow of itself by tinted glass. Tony was seated behind his desk, his back to the darkened windows, head buried in his hands.
Thor closed the door behind him and reached for the light switch. The click of the door shutting and the burst of illumination as the lights came on once more occurred simultaneously, and Tony straightened, head snapping up, then curled forward again and tried to shade his eyes with one hand.
"I thought I said no lights," he snapped. "If it's an emergency, make it someone else's problem, and if it's not an emergency, why are you-" his eyes finally focused on Thor, and he broke off abruptly. "Oh. It's you. What do you want?"
He looked terrible, his face pale and his eyes slitted against the light. There were smears of blood beneath his nose and on his lips, his goatee failing to hide them.
Were it not for the blood, Thor might almost have suspected that he merely suffered the aftereffects of a night spent drinking, but there had not been enough time since the battle at the museum last evening for a man with Tony's capacity for alcohol to drink himself into insensibility and then recover at least the appearance of sobriety.
"What is wrong with you?" he asked, not bothering to mince words. It was not the question he had meant to ask, but he could feel Don's wary, unwilling concern in the back of his mind. The idea of confronting a man when he was weakened and visibly unwell sat ill with him.
"Nothing." Tony lowered his face into his hands again, rubbing gently at his temples. His voice was flat, giving away no emotion. "The Extremis does this when I overuse it. Turn off the lights on your way out."
It was most certainly not nothing; Tony was hunched forward, curling in on himself as if in pain, and Thor could hear a slight wheeze in his breathing. He did not need Don Blake's medical knowledge to know that this boded ill.
He did not need it, yet still, he possessed it, and none of the various explanations for Tony's condition that it suggested to him were pleasant.
"Nay," Thor said. "I shall not leave." He strode further into the room to demonstrate this until he stood over Tony's desk, looking down at the top of his bowed head. "There are questions I would have you answer." More questions, indeed, than he had thought. To Tony's lack of honesty over the clone was added the matter of Tony's health; if he were ill, and concealing it, Captain America would be greatly upset, and though he did not approve of Steve's choice of lover, he did not wish his friend to be unhappy.
Tony lifted his head again, but did not meet Thor's eyes. "The SHRA is gone, and so is your clone. I don't think there's anything left for us to say to one another about them." He rubbed the back of his hand under his nose, removing some of the blood, then looked down at his blood-smeared hand and frowned, visibly irritated at the sight.
Thor regarded him levelly. "When you first spoke to me after my return, you concealed from me certain things you had done during my absence."
"You already knew what had happened." It was not a denial, nor did it even sound indignant or defensive. Merely tired, as if Thor and his right to know the full details of what had been done with his blood and bone were not worth the energy it took to summon any particular emotion.
"I believed that I did," Thor corrected. "I have learned that there is more that I do not know."
He had the satisfaction of seeing Tony wince. It was less satisfying than he had hoped it would be; he was not certain whether it was due to guilt, or physical pain.
"Give me your hand," he ordered.
Tony extended his left hand, and said, smirking up at him, "You don't need to break my fingers to get the truth out of me."
It was a direct insult — implying that Thor would stoop to torture over such things — and doubtless an intentional one. Tony was trying to get him to leave.
The god of thunder did not meekly depart simply because he was bidden to.
Tony's hand, when he took it in his, was cool to the touch. Poor circulation, Don commented in the back of his head, sighing in dismayed confirmation at the sight of the faintly bluish tinge to Tony's fingernails. His lips were likewise bloodless, and while not bluish-tinted now, they could very well have been so when Thor had first entered. The blood from the nosebleed would have concealed it.
The pulse in his wrist beat quickly, perhaps more-so than it should have.
"You have concealed things from my shieldbrother as well." Thor released his hand and stepped back, folding his arms across his chest. "You are gravely ill."
Tony stared flatly at him, his face empty of expression. "I told you what Hank and Reed and I had done, and I apologized for it." He held his hands out, palms up, the gesture too studied to truly be casual. "The details are public record; I didn't think you would want to hear me repeat them."
Thor had not read the transcripts from the Senate and Congressional hearings; even had he had the inclination to do so, rebuilding Valhalla had consumed all his time, and much of Don's as well.
"Nay," he said, "I would hear them from your lips."
Tony's eyes, already squinted against the light, narrowed further. "Do you think I wanted to turn one of my oldest friends into a living weapon? Do you think Hank wanted to? They didn't give us a choice." There was a sort of weary anger in his voice, too rough around the edges to be faked.
He had not come here to hear excuses. "There is always a choice," Thor told him coldly. "You could have refused them."
"No," Tony snapped, "we couldn't have. If we hadn't given them a superpowered test subject, there they would have gone out and found one. I wasn't going to give them Spiderman or Jessica Drew to dissect, or give them the Extremis and let them kill ninety percent of their test subjects with it, anymore than Hank was going to make them a new supersoldier virus to test on human guinea pigs, on kids who had no more idea of what they were getting into than Steve or Isaiah Bradley did. Cloning you was a compromise." He glared up at Thor, meeting his eyes for the first time in... perhaps for the first time since his return. "If I'd said no, and let them take me to experiment on instead, a lot more people would have died."
For all his willingness to serve as the government's tool, Tony would not have turned on Thor to save himself. To save others, though... That, Thor could believe, and Don with him.
It did not make his actions acceptable, or forgivable, but it did, perhaps, render them comprehensible. He said as much, and Tony dropped his face into his hands again, his shoulders sagging.
This was the dark secret Hank and Tony had concealed from him, that their actions had actually been motivated by more than lust for scientific knowledge and base treachery? That made no sense. Why conceal that which could serve to justify their actions?
Then again, one might also ask why Tony would choose to conceal his obvious illness. His health had ever been fragile, and his apparent decision not to seek aid for whatever ailed him could have grave consequences. His disregard for them offended Don nearly as much as Tony's secrecy and refusal to explain his actions had Thor.
Thor considered this for a moment, then said, "Captain America, Ms. Marvel, and the Falcon have all told me that my refusal to speak to thee endangers the Avengers as a team. I fear they are correct." It was somewhat embarrassing to admit, for it had not been his intent. "I fear also that this illness of thine, if untreated, will likewise endanger thy fellow Avengers."
"I have it under control," Tony said, the words muffled by his fingers. "I told you, it's a side effect of the Extremis. I damaged it fighting the Mandarin."
Thor frowned. He hesitated a moment, then gave voice to the concern he did not — quite — resent feeling. "It is more than that."
"No." Tony shook his head, the movement minimal. "I can't get sick anymore. The Extremis prevents it."
"We agreed long ago that the Avengers would not intrude upon one another's private lives, but I would suggest that you see a doctor." And until he did, Don would keep a watchful eye on him. His other self saw it as a matter of honor.
"I'll think about it." Tony looked up again, a thin, strained smile on his face. "Thank you," he said. "For understanding."
Thor turned the lights off on his way out.
* * *
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonUniverse: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:
dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
Authors' note: The world really has ended! You can tell, because we're posting a new chapter. (We promised last chapter that it wouldn't be another eight months before posting this one. And it wasn't. This time it was, ah, five months. Sorry?)
Steve skidded to a halt at the base of the Metropolitan Museum's front steps, where a cordon of police officers had blocked off access. Three of them were standing in a huddle around Tony, while the rest of the Avengers stood impatiently a few feet away.
"Does anyone here have a smartphone?" Tony asked, as Clint caught up with Steve, breathing hard through his nose but not winded. "You." Tony indicated the youngest of the police officers, a woman whose tightly curled natural hair was pulled back from her face by a glittery pink headband. "You have one of my phones. Give it to me." There was a moment's hesitation, as she eyed him skeptically, then he added, "Please. I can hook it into the building's security cameras."
She handed over the phone, a sleek, black rectangle, and watched intently as Tony simply held it; he couldn't use the phone's touch screen with his gauntlets on, but with the Extremis, he didn't need to.
"Here you go." Tony handed it back. "That's the closest functional camera to the crime scene. Hit the star key, and you can switch to the next camera over. If someone calls, let it ring, because as soon as you either close the phone or answer a phone call, the program will terminate and erase itself from your phone."
"That's a useful trick." She didn't say thank you, probably because Steve, in her shoes, would be worried that his phone was going to either be damaged by Tony's hacking, or simply self-destruct when he tried to turn it off. He'd seen the promotional material for the StarkPhone; it wasn't cheap, especially the super-thin little black models like that one.
"Are we going in?" he asked, "Or is the NYPD taking this one?"
"One of them just walked past the camera carrying an automatic weapon," the police officer said.
"Call SHIELD," Steve said, then remembered to moderate his voice into something that was less obviously an order as one of the two male police officers — white, with thinning hair and a police sergeant's insignia — glared at him. "The weapon used to stab the security guard belongs to a woman on SHIELD's terrorist watch list."
"Fuck," the man muttered. "They're going to claim jurisdiction. I hate dealing with SHIELD."
"Give whoever answers the code word 'Paladin,' and ask to speak to Agents Carter or Barnes. Tell them Synthia Schmidt is active again." Steve avoided using Sin's much more recognizable nickname; pedestrians were already gathering on the other side of the police tape, and there was no point in panicking people. "Tell them the Avengers have gone in after her."
There was a loud thud behind him, then the unmistakable sound of Thor's massive, booted feet hitting the pavement. "Why do we wait?" he demanded. "Your message said it was most urgent." Then, to Tony, "This device does not function on the subway. Methinks you should remedy that."
Steve unslung his shield from his back. "Let's go. Ms. Marvel, you take point." Of them all, Carol was the most bullet-proof, her partial invulnerability giving her better protection from conventional weapons than even Thor possessed.
"Do not break anything." Jan's voice was sharp over his communicator, slightly shrill the way it often was when she was in Wasp form. "Iron Man, Thor, you guys stay out here. We need you covering the exits in case they try to run."
Steve tightened his grip on his shield, and followed Carol inside. She was levitating slightly, making her footsteps utterly silent despite her two-inch heels.
The museum's high-ceilinged entrance hall was painfully exposed; the back of Steve's neck crawled as he walked through it, staying close to the wall. Just because Tony hadn't detected anyone hiding on the second floor balcony with a gun didn't mean no one was there. Security cameras could be tampered with.
Behind him, Clint had an arrow nocked and ready, hopefully one with a blunted tip. He was making an effort to walk quietly on the stone floors, but his boots still made audible clicking noises. Sam was having more luck, moving nearly silently beside Steve.
A museum security guard lay crumpled by the foot of the stairs, unconscious. He'd been luckier than the man Tony had seen in the video footage, but not by much; he breathed with the shallow rasp of someone with a damaged trachea. He needed medical attention, and he wasn't going to get it until they cleared Sin's men out of the building or at least disarmed them.
They made it all the way across the hall and into the Greek and Roman gallery without seeing anyone conscious. Carol hesitated at the entrance, her eyes flicking over the dozens of statues that lined the massive hall. Any one of them provided enough cover for a man or woman to hide behind, and the stone columns that supported the roof only made the potential for an ambush worse.
Steve had only Jan's shouted cry of warning when the first of Sin's serpent squad leapt up from behind the stone plinth that supported a statue of Dionysus and threw himself at Carol. Maybe the man assumed that being both female and completely empty-handed would make her the easiest to take down.
Carol grabbed him by the wrist and thigh and spun him around into an armlock. The knife he'd been holding clattered to the floor, and she kicked it away. She slammed her forehead into his and dropped him, letting him crumple to the ground, then picked up the assault rifle he'd had strapped across his back and bent it into an arc; that was one gun they weren't going to have to worry about, at least.
The entire thing had taken less than ten-seconds, but it hadn't been quiet; Sin and her men would know they were there now.
Steve glanced back over his shoulder at Wanda and Clint, to find them moving to guard the team's flanks without needing to be told. He didn't need to check where Sam was; he'd been in enough tight situations with him to know which way he would move.
They made it another fifteen feet down the hall, Sam on his left and Carol and Jan in the lead, before six men came charging out of the special exhibit space, brandishing a mismatched collection of rifles and handguns.
Steve brought his shield up, and realized just as he felt the first bullet hit it that he had no idea where the ricochets would go. "Scarlet Witch-" he shouted.
His shield seemed to hum in his hands as Wanda spoke, pink light crackling over it. "I can't control where their bullets hit, but I can make certain that the ricochets strike nothing important."
Steve managed not to drop his shield, despite his instinctive flinch at what looked like lightening crawling over his fingers. Another bullet clanged off it, slamming into the floor by his feet.
Trusting that Wanda's magic would work as she'd said — having brought her along, he could do no less — he ran toward the nearest black-clad man, slamming his shield into the man's arm to encourage him to drop his gun.
The man complied, then tried to gut Steve with the serpent-headed dagger he wore strapped to his thigh.
Steve spun sideways, grabbing the man's wrist and using his own momentum to pull him forward, flipping him over Steve's knee and face-first into the ground.
He started to roll back to his feet, and Steve kicked his legs out from under him. "The police have this entire building surrounded," he said. "You're not getting out of here. Why don't you drop your weapons and come along like a good wannabee Nazi thug?"
The man snarled silently at him and lunged upwards, his knife slashing at Steve's legs, only to skid harmlessly across his shield.
There was a bright flash in the corner of Steve's vision as Jan used her stingers on someone, followed by another ear-splitting rattle of gunfire. Steve kicked the knife out of the man's hand and looked up to see Sam flick one of his hard-light wings out in front of Clint, bullets ricocheting off it in a cascade of red sparks.
Wanda raised a hand, her fingers limned in red light, and made a throwing gesture.
The final gunman's weapon jammed with a loud click, and Carol grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides.
There was a moment of silence, the ringing in Steve's ears loud enough that all other noise was deadened into nothing, and then Sin stepped out of the special exhibit room, the John Dee manuscript tucked into the crook of one arm. In her other hand was a Luger pistol that Steve had last seen Red Skull carrying.
"Rogers." Her lips twisted into a smirk that held no trace of her usual cheerful, little girl grin. Steve had had always imagined that Sin would be less disturbing without that eerily bubbly façade, but this wasn't much better. "I might have known Fury would call in America's attack dog," she sneered, the words dripping contempt. "How is your little sidekick doing these days?"
She was a head shorter than him, weighed barely a hundred and thirty pounds, and had been tortured into insanity by Crossbones and her deranged monster of a father. Smashing his shield into her face and beating the Nazi brainwashing out of her until she never tried to hurt Bucky again would be wrong.
"He's fine," Steve said, his throat hurting from the effort to keep his voice calm.
Her face went from sneering disdain to childish glee like a switch flipping. "Good," she said brightly. "I have plans for him. He killed my Brock. I'm going to make him beg me for death. Poison would be too easy." She hefted the Luger, her eyes traveling slowly over the Avengers, then narrowing. "That one." She waved the muzzle of the gun at Sam. "He was there when you and your little friend killed Daddy. I think I'll shoot him first."
Steve half turned toward Sam, bringing his shield up to throw, though he knew his chances of actually being able to stop a gunshot with it this way were next to zero. Sam was already poised to duck — there was a bronze statue only a few feet to his right, and one dive and roll would put him behind it.
Then there was a bright flare of light in front of Sin's face, and she shrieked in rage, firing her gun wildly into the air, where Jan had been a moment ago.
The moment her eyes — and weapon — left Sam, Clint released the arrow he'd had drawn and ready. It tore through the air in a graceful arc and slammed into Sin's shoulder.
Both book and arrow fell to the floor, and Sam, already poised to move, launched himself at the book as if it were a fly ball.
Steve threw himself forward, reaching for Sin, very aware of the gun she still held, and the fact that she almost certainly had another of those repurposed SS daggers on her somewhere as well.
He was a fraction of a second away from contact when a bright flare of light whited out his vision; it snapped through his body like an electric shock, the hair on his arms standing on end, and then he slammed hard into a female body too tall and solid to be Sin's.
Both of them lurched sideways, his arm hitting the side of one of the room's stone statue bases with numbing force. There was an ominous rattling noise from above them, and Steve pushed himself away from the statue before it could fall on him, trying to blink the spots out of his vision.
The statue stopped wobbling abruptly, and Steve's vision cleared enough for him to see Wanda standing with one hand outstretched, a look of concentration on her face. A few feet away from him, Carol was shoving her hair back out of her face, looking deeply embarrassed.
"Are you all right, Cap?" she asked. "I was trying to grab her, and then she just — where the hell did she go?"
*What the hell is going on in there?* Tony's voice sounded in Steve's ear, coming through the communicator clear and undistorted the way it did when he used the Extremis rather than the communication link in his helmet. *A massive energy discharge just shorted out all the cameras in the Greek and Roman gallery.*
"Sin just disappeared," Steve said, grimly. "Some kind of spell, or teleportation device, I don't know." Whatever it was, it was nothing he'd ever seen her or the Red Skull use before, which meant she'd had outside help.
*It was tech, not magic. The energy signal looked familiar; was SHIELD working on any teleportation equipment at those R&D sites she raided?*
"You would know that better than I would."
"Hey, we saved the book," Clint said, crouching down to examine the limp form of the man Steve had disarmed and knocked down. "And Sin's the only one who got — damn it, this guy's dead."
Dead? "I didn't hit him that hard," Steve protested. "He was still conscious when I left him."
"This one's dead, too." Wanda was kneeling by the man Carol had dropped when she'd lunged for Sin, one gloved hand against his throat. "I think they may all be dead."
Steve glanced from the leather-bound book in Sam's hand to the half-dozen bodies littering the floor, and swore. They must have been under orders to kill themselves rather than risk capture. Six lives — seven, counting the security guard — for one manuscript.
Nothing in the museum's collection was worth that much.
"Tell the police that the building's clear, and there's a man in the front hall who needs immediate medical attention," he told Tony.
Sam was staring down at the book in his hands, frowning. "What does Sin think is in this book that's worth losing this many of her followers? Since when are ancient chaos demons and Renaissance alchemists her kind of tactics?"
"They're not," Steve said, meeting Sam's eyes and seeing by the look in them that his next words weren't necessary. He said them anyway. "She's not working alone."
The Avengers' Tower felt empty these days, not desolately so as Valhalla had when he had first rebuilt it, when far too few Asgardians had yet returned, but quietly so. The Falcon and Hawkeye had removed themselves to the nearly completed Avengers Mansion, and Jarvis had followed them, leaving only Hank Pym and the Wasp behind in the tower.
Thor himself remained as well, during those times when his presence was not required in Valhalla. To return to the Mansion and dwell under its roof again would be to return to an earlier time when his fellow Avengers were all his trusted comrades in arms; to return would be to forgive Tony, if only symbolically.
Whereas in the tower, near empty as it was, it was a simple matter to avoid having to speak with Hank more than once or twice a day. Less than that, now that Jarvis was serving dinner at the Mansion; avoiding breaking bread with Hank or Tony had been out of the question before, when it would have constituted a breach of Jarvis's hospitality, but now, Thor was free to dine when and where he chose.
The thick carpet muffled his footfalls as he strode toward the kitchen, down hallways even emptier of decoration than they had once been; what little ornament the place had contained had been moved to the mansion now.
Fortunately Jarvis had left the refrigerator stocked with an amount of food befitting a warrior, even if Thor must forgo the pleasures of conversing with him while he prepared it.
Jarvis had an appreciation for storytelling, and for a mortal whose years numbered far fewer than Thor's, gave surprisingly wise advice.
But if he could not speak with Jarvis, he could at least make himself a luncheon.
Last night's confrontation with Sin and her followers had been unsatisfying, ending as it had in a stalemate — they had recovered the grimoire, but she had fled. Now, they waited while Tony attempted to determine the maker of the device she had used to escape, and the grimoire sat in one of the museum's temperature controlled vaults under lock and key while they arranged to have it transported to the Avengers Mansion, where any further attempts by Sin to obtain possession of it could be more easily thwarted and would not put the museum's people or property at risk.
The museum wished to have it examined by Dr. Strange, in hopes that he would be able to dispel the dark aura that clung to it, which had already caused not just the attack yesterday, but the suicides of two guards and an unhappy sequence of accidents. Until then, they wished the Avengers to take custody of it, preferably as quickly as was possible without risking damage to the book.
It was unwise, but then, many things they had done recently had been unwise.
The kitchen door was open slightly, spilling a line of light out into the hallway, and as he approached, Thor could hear voices from beyond it.
"I'm on the verge of a breakthrough with the DNA analysis." Hank's voice rang with a particularly irksome variety of enthusiasm, one that indicated that he would likely pay no heed to what others said. "I can tell. If I just run one more test-"
"You can run it after you eat," the Wasp interrupted. "Tony has many admirable traits, but that thing where he locks himself in his lab or a machine shop for days on end without eating or sleeping isn't one of them."
Admirable traits. Yes, he did indeed possess several admirable qualities. Unfortunate, that honor had turned out not to be among them.
"That's because Tony does it to hide from things," Hank protested.
Hank was in the kitchen. His luncheon could wait, Thor decided, and turned to go, not wishing to play the role of eavesdropper.
Their voices followed him down the hall.
"And you're not?" The Wasp asked, sounding out of patience, yet not unaffectionate.
"No! This could revolutionize the entire way we conceptualize superpowers. This is Nobel Prize material, Jan."
"And the fact that working on it makes it easier for you to hide from Thor has nothing to do with it?"
Thor halted, despite the better instincts that told him that if eavesdropping was dishonorable, eavesdropping on a conversation that concerned oneself was even more so.
"I'm not hiding," Hank said sullenly. "I'm avoiding him because he hates me."
The Wasp sighed, the sound audible even at this distance. "No one hates you, Hank."
"Actually, I really think he does. If I hadn't lost control of the clone, Bill would still be alive; he probably thinks I dishonored him by turning a version of him into a murderer."
At least, Thor mused, one could not say that Hank was unperceptive. He found, however, that his desire to hear what the other two would say had diminished, and so began to move away once more. Hearing Hank speak of the abomination he had created would only rouse his anger.
"Have either you or Tony bothered to explain what actually happened yet?" The Wasp's voice was faint now, but the words were still clear to Asgardian ears. Don Blake would not have heard them, but Thor did. "Because if not, I'm going to do it. It's bad for the team, and it's making you miserable."
Better, Thor thought, that he had left more swiftly. For he had imagined that he knew everything there was to tell about Hank and Tony's betrayal, about the soulless copy of his body they had made, and used as a weapon against those who had been his shieldbrothers. The idea that there was yet more treachery to learn of made him grind his teeth in anger, the air about him growing thick and charged with energy as it did before a storm.
Hank's voice sounded pleading as he spoke, even embarrassed. "Please don't. He's not going to care why we did it. HUSAC didn't force me to rush the experiment, or order me not to add additional behavioral safeguards. Whether or not we wanted to do it, we still had a responsibility to do it right."
To do it right. His jaw ached with the effort to suppress his fury, to avoid simply charging into the kitchen and confronting Hank face to face, as a warrior ought. Mortal society was not Valhalla, and disputes among comrades were not settled with violence.
Given the deeds they had been willing to admit to, given that he already knew they possessed no honor, how much worse must these unknown things be for Hank and Tony to be ashamed to speak of them?
Thor walked away, taking care to make his footfalls soft, lest Hank and the Wasp hear them and come forth to try and speak to him. He would not hear the truth from Hank, not without forcing it out of him — the man had just admitted as much.
The Wasp would be willing to tell him, but the prospect of asking her was unsatisfying. He wanted to hear the admission of deceit from Tony's own lips. He was the one whose betrayal had struck the deepest; Hank had been ill, in the past, in ways that interfered with his judgment. Tony, whom he and Don Blake had both accounted a close friend, had no such excuse.
He had considered Tony Stark a brother, one nearly as close to him as Baldur, or Volstagg, or Beta Ray Bill. Or Captain America, whom Thor had searched for amongst the valorous dead and, when he had failed to find him, mourned for. His father's handmaidens had been the choosers of the slain, and a fallen warrior who had believed in him — and friendship could be accounted belief, if one was creative — always had a place in Valhalla.
Tony was often absent from his office, even during the hours when he was expected to be at work there, but it was, Thor decided, the best place to begin searching for him. If he were there, he would be alone, and there would be no need to fight with him, even with words, in front of Captain America. He would feel honor-bound to defend his lover, were he present, and Thor had no quarrel with him.
The office, when he left the elevator and the two awe-stricken men in business suits who had shared it with him, proved to be a cold, barren space. Massive windows let in sunlight, but the furniture was spare and angular, and everything gleamed black and silver, like rock limned with ice.
He had expected Tony's assistant to try to bar him entrance, and was taken off guard when Pepper Potts-Hogan smiled grimly at him and waved him inside. "Good, it's one of you guys. Go right in. Maybe you can talk some sense into him."
She nodded toward the closed door at the far end of the reception area, her bright hair the only spot of color in the room. "He's in there. Tell him I've cancelled all his meetings for the rest of the day, and he can pay me back by actually showing up for the ones I've rescheduled."
Thor opened the door and found himself at the threshold of a darkened room, all lights extinguished and the sunlight reduced to a dim shadow of itself by tinted glass. Tony was seated behind his desk, his back to the darkened windows, head buried in his hands.
Thor closed the door behind him and reached for the light switch. The click of the door shutting and the burst of illumination as the lights came on once more occurred simultaneously, and Tony straightened, head snapping up, then curled forward again and tried to shade his eyes with one hand.
"I thought I said no lights," he snapped. "If it's an emergency, make it someone else's problem, and if it's not an emergency, why are you-" his eyes finally focused on Thor, and he broke off abruptly. "Oh. It's you. What do you want?"
He looked terrible, his face pale and his eyes slitted against the light. There were smears of blood beneath his nose and on his lips, his goatee failing to hide them.
Were it not for the blood, Thor might almost have suspected that he merely suffered the aftereffects of a night spent drinking, but there had not been enough time since the battle at the museum last evening for a man with Tony's capacity for alcohol to drink himself into insensibility and then recover at least the appearance of sobriety.
"What is wrong with you?" he asked, not bothering to mince words. It was not the question he had meant to ask, but he could feel Don's wary, unwilling concern in the back of his mind. The idea of confronting a man when he was weakened and visibly unwell sat ill with him.
"Nothing." Tony lowered his face into his hands again, rubbing gently at his temples. His voice was flat, giving away no emotion. "The Extremis does this when I overuse it. Turn off the lights on your way out."
It was most certainly not nothing; Tony was hunched forward, curling in on himself as if in pain, and Thor could hear a slight wheeze in his breathing. He did not need Don Blake's medical knowledge to know that this boded ill.
He did not need it, yet still, he possessed it, and none of the various explanations for Tony's condition that it suggested to him were pleasant.
"Nay," Thor said. "I shall not leave." He strode further into the room to demonstrate this until he stood over Tony's desk, looking down at the top of his bowed head. "There are questions I would have you answer." More questions, indeed, than he had thought. To Tony's lack of honesty over the clone was added the matter of Tony's health; if he were ill, and concealing it, Captain America would be greatly upset, and though he did not approve of Steve's choice of lover, he did not wish his friend to be unhappy.
Tony lifted his head again, but did not meet Thor's eyes. "The SHRA is gone, and so is your clone. I don't think there's anything left for us to say to one another about them." He rubbed the back of his hand under his nose, removing some of the blood, then looked down at his blood-smeared hand and frowned, visibly irritated at the sight.
Thor regarded him levelly. "When you first spoke to me after my return, you concealed from me certain things you had done during my absence."
"You already knew what had happened." It was not a denial, nor did it even sound indignant or defensive. Merely tired, as if Thor and his right to know the full details of what had been done with his blood and bone were not worth the energy it took to summon any particular emotion.
"I believed that I did," Thor corrected. "I have learned that there is more that I do not know."
He had the satisfaction of seeing Tony wince. It was less satisfying than he had hoped it would be; he was not certain whether it was due to guilt, or physical pain.
"Give me your hand," he ordered.
Tony extended his left hand, and said, smirking up at him, "You don't need to break my fingers to get the truth out of me."
It was a direct insult — implying that Thor would stoop to torture over such things — and doubtless an intentional one. Tony was trying to get him to leave.
The god of thunder did not meekly depart simply because he was bidden to.
Tony's hand, when he took it in his, was cool to the touch. Poor circulation, Don commented in the back of his head, sighing in dismayed confirmation at the sight of the faintly bluish tinge to Tony's fingernails. His lips were likewise bloodless, and while not bluish-tinted now, they could very well have been so when Thor had first entered. The blood from the nosebleed would have concealed it.
The pulse in his wrist beat quickly, perhaps more-so than it should have.
"You have concealed things from my shieldbrother as well." Thor released his hand and stepped back, folding his arms across his chest. "You are gravely ill."
Tony stared flatly at him, his face empty of expression. "I told you what Hank and Reed and I had done, and I apologized for it." He held his hands out, palms up, the gesture too studied to truly be casual. "The details are public record; I didn't think you would want to hear me repeat them."
Thor had not read the transcripts from the Senate and Congressional hearings; even had he had the inclination to do so, rebuilding Valhalla had consumed all his time, and much of Don's as well.
"Nay," he said, "I would hear them from your lips."
Tony's eyes, already squinted against the light, narrowed further. "Do you think I wanted to turn one of my oldest friends into a living weapon? Do you think Hank wanted to? They didn't give us a choice." There was a sort of weary anger in his voice, too rough around the edges to be faked.
He had not come here to hear excuses. "There is always a choice," Thor told him coldly. "You could have refused them."
"No," Tony snapped, "we couldn't have. If we hadn't given them a superpowered test subject, there they would have gone out and found one. I wasn't going to give them Spiderman or Jessica Drew to dissect, or give them the Extremis and let them kill ninety percent of their test subjects with it, anymore than Hank was going to make them a new supersoldier virus to test on human guinea pigs, on kids who had no more idea of what they were getting into than Steve or Isaiah Bradley did. Cloning you was a compromise." He glared up at Thor, meeting his eyes for the first time in... perhaps for the first time since his return. "If I'd said no, and let them take me to experiment on instead, a lot more people would have died."
For all his willingness to serve as the government's tool, Tony would not have turned on Thor to save himself. To save others, though... That, Thor could believe, and Don with him.
It did not make his actions acceptable, or forgivable, but it did, perhaps, render them comprehensible. He said as much, and Tony dropped his face into his hands again, his shoulders sagging.
This was the dark secret Hank and Tony had concealed from him, that their actions had actually been motivated by more than lust for scientific knowledge and base treachery? That made no sense. Why conceal that which could serve to justify their actions?
Then again, one might also ask why Tony would choose to conceal his obvious illness. His health had ever been fragile, and his apparent decision not to seek aid for whatever ailed him could have grave consequences. His disregard for them offended Don nearly as much as Tony's secrecy and refusal to explain his actions had Thor.
Thor considered this for a moment, then said, "Captain America, Ms. Marvel, and the Falcon have all told me that my refusal to speak to thee endangers the Avengers as a team. I fear they are correct." It was somewhat embarrassing to admit, for it had not been his intent. "I fear also that this illness of thine, if untreated, will likewise endanger thy fellow Avengers."
"I have it under control," Tony said, the words muffled by his fingers. "I told you, it's a side effect of the Extremis. I damaged it fighting the Mandarin."
Thor frowned. He hesitated a moment, then gave voice to the concern he did not — quite — resent feeling. "It is more than that."
"No." Tony shook his head, the movement minimal. "I can't get sick anymore. The Extremis prevents it."
"We agreed long ago that the Avengers would not intrude upon one another's private lives, but I would suggest that you see a doctor." And until he did, Don would keep a watchful eye on him. His other self saw it as a matter of honor.
"I'll think about it." Tony looked up again, a thin, strained smile on his face. "Thank you," he said. "For understanding."
Thor turned the lights off on his way out.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven
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So much that's great here — I love how this series always feels very grounded in the 616-verse. And thank you for spending some time on Thor still being upset about the clone... but not crazy unreasonably, and knowing that he can't use violence here (and remembering poor Bill)!