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cap_ironman2013-12-29 11:54 pm
cap_ironman_fe) wrote in cap_ironman2013-12-29 11:54 pm
Entry tags:
Secret Santa: Show Me The Way
Happy Holidays: cellia
Title: Show Me The Way
Warnings: Tony's alcoholism
Rating: PG13
Universe: 616 and other canon AUs.
From: Housestarktech
“I’m just saying, I think you guys should get on that,” Peter Parker griped, the jingle bells on his sweater agreeing as he huffed.
Tony Stark paused, a cookie half-raised to his mouth. “How, Parker? You’re a smart kid, you figure that one. Which way does it fall in zero-G?”
Peter sighed, smacking his felt antlers against the sleek metal walls of the ship. “I’m not sure why no one considered this crucial component before we all agreed to spend Christmas Eve up here, is all. There better be snow tomorrow, is all.”
“No chance,” grinned Carol Danvers as she passed, bumping Tony with her hip conspiratorially. “You’d have to have been on the nice list this year for that, Petey.”
“Shit,” grinned Tony around his cookie. “No snow for me either, then. Lemme go see if I can make a change to my list.”
Christmas in orbit had been Reed Richards’ idea, and aside from Spidey’s obvious disapproval at the impossibility of snow, it wasn’t a bad idea so far. Tony liked the holidays. He hadn’t always, but a few years of sobriety and self-discovery were good for him, even if he now turned to Christmas cookies and egg nog where he’d turned to cocktails in years past. Oh well. Everyone spent New Year’s at the gym, right? He took a cookie for the walk down the hall, dodging Carol’s attempts to stick a red foil bow to his chest. “You’d better be wearing something festive when the newsfeed starts,” she chirped threateningly.
“I’m wearing white! White Christmas!” “That’s just a dress shirt, Tony, it doesn’t count.”
“Jess has that pretty red lipstick on, maybe she can help me?” He hopped through the doorway as it slid shut behind him, laughing at the sound of thrown Christmas ornaments battering the door.
The clattering neatly silenced the hallway’s other door sliding open, silenced the footfalls of the large soldier who grabbed Tony’s arm, turned him into the nearby room and backed him against a wall with boyish exuberance.
“Hey now, who are you kissing?” Steve Rogers’ smile was all snowflakes and silver bells, something in Tony’s head malfunctioned pleasantly and he responded as such.
“Eh-huh.” Smooth. This thing between them, whatever it was, was still very new and weird in a very exciting way. Tony had a long history of being slick and in charge around women, as long as he could remember. When other guys talked about girls making them nervous, Tony just laughed. He’d danced or drank his way through any lack of confidence for decades. And now it was Christmas, he was sober, and knee deep in this very strange thing that had been going on with Captain America.
“Asked you a question,” Steve insisted. His expression was somewhere between someone’s hot dad and a golden retriever, eager to please and eager to play.
“Mm-hmm!” Tony answered, his cookie-sweet mouth all too hot and dry. “I’m not kissing anyone,” he finally answered, earnestly. “Not anyone.”
Steve’s restrained little grin broke into a full laugh. “Is that a hard line you’re taking, then? No kissing anyone tonight?”
“No one’s offered.” Tony tossed his hair in a parody of his typical cool as laughter broke over them both. Steve’s big, sweater-warm arms went around Tony’s waist, tucking his chin over his shoulder and squeezing him for a moment. Tony hugged back, their nervousness abating somewhat as they stood there a moment, because they could, until the bubbles went out of Tony’s chest and he remembered himself again. He slid out of Steve’s embrace just enough to look him in the eyes.
Steve’s cheeks were apple-red. “Know of a place with any mistletoe?”
“Nope,” Tony murmured, pulling him into a kiss anyway. He slid his fingers through short blonde hair and pulled a little, drawing from Steve a massive sigh, a sudden and hot shakedown of their bodies as Tony felt his back hit the wall again. Extremis whirred in his brain, offering images and temperature scans and dimensions, and it was background noise, just the sort of thing Tony needed to turn his real brain off and feel.
“Faaaaall on your kneeeees,” a voice sang helpfully from the hallway. Tony pulled away from Steve’s lips audibly. Extremis reacted within him, jumping into the ship’s systems to slam the ship’s automatic door shut. Breathless and red-cheeked, Tony gaped wide-eyed at the shut door, listening for evidence.
“This damn door! I swear, I need to get this fixed.” Steve caught Tony’s gaze. Reed, he mouthed, and Tony made a guilty face. Sorry, he mouthed back. Bad reaction. They separated as Tony slid the door open.
“Hey, Reed! What’s up? That door slam shut on you?” Tony leaned on the doorjamb, smoothing his shirt a moment before extending a hand to the other man.
Reed Richards sat on his ass in the hall, his long limbs gathering a large stack of scattered gift boxes. “Seems so. Sue’s always saying I ignore these little things and someone’s going to get hurt. Guess it was me this time?”
Steve made a non-committal noise, handing Reed the remaining few gifts. “Were they going in this room here?”
Reed took the gifts, his brow furrowed earnestly. “Oh, thanks Steve. They sure were. I’m not interrupting anything with you guys, am I?”
“Noooope!” “Course not, Reed.”
“Okay.” He set the gifts on a somewhat distant table and slid his arms easily around the broad shoulders of both men, guiding them back toward the main room. “Merry Christmas, gentlemen. It’s really great to see you two like this again. As you’re meant to be.” His smile reached his eyes, turning the moment sentimental before giving a friendly pat and breezing off. “Twenty till the broadcast, guys!”
Tony watched him walk down the hall, gave the open-and-shut of the doors a friendly Extremis boost.
“Not very nice to be in his systems like that, Tony.”
“I can’t help it!” Tony smirked. “Besides. I didn’t want him to see us like that.”
“Like what?” Steve cocked his head amusedly. “How we’re ah. How’d Reed say it? Meant to be?”
Tony punched Steve’s chest lightly. “Don’t think that’s what he meant, big guy.” But he grabbed his hand and laid a kiss to the top of it anyway, eyes sparkling. “Let’s head back in to that party.”
Steve’s smile was tight, but happy.
##
“So where do I go?” Tony asked from inside his armor, shuffling himself between Captain America and Spider-woman. He slid his arm around one, then the other. “This work?”
Spider-woman chuckled a little. “Smooth, Tony.” “What? I can’t get a Christmas hug?” He stared forward into the monitors as Reed fiddled with something and Valeria helped.
Her smile was photo-bright as she stared toward the camera. “Save mine for Steve,”
“Save mine for Carol.” He swore as a tiny venom blast jolted him through his armor.
Captain America made room for Luke Cage and Danny, for Jessica and little Dani, for Peter, for Sam, for the Fantastic Four and their family. He smiled. “Reed, explain how this works again?”
Reed’s head wobbled up from behind the massive television monitor, his hands working busily behind. “It’s a basic and really minor quantum synergy field, it’ll enable us to be live for our Christmas wish worldwide at midnight.”
Steve furrowed his brow. “Can’t you just broadcast that?”
Reed shook his head. “Well then it wouldn’t be live for everyone. It wouldn’t be Christmas when everyone received it, due to time zones and whatnot. That’s why we’re up here for the party. It’s very exciting. Admittedly the technology has better applications, but what better way to debut it to the world!” His neck retracted back behind the TV, humming in a jolly fashion.
Tony felt static wash over the room as the monitor picture went fuzzy.
“Hm?” Reed craned his head around as the face of a panicked young blonde woman appeared on the screen. Her smooth forehead was creased with worry, a black M carved over one eye.
“-op!” She implored, swatting at something in the background.
“Layla?” Reed puzzled at the monitor, his hands working frantically at the nearby keyboard.
Tony raised an eyebrow. “You know her?”
“She’s my babysitter,” he murmured. “Layla? Something the matter?”
Another face joined Layla’s on the screen, longish dark hair framing a rugged, tanned face. “-get him to stop. This connec---bullsh--”
“Ric! Get th--”
“--rying, Layla. Write it do--”
Tony felt Extremis dive for the connection like a wild dog, catching it and throttling it into compliance. A split second passed where Tony reached to stabilize the connection and fix the broadcast, and yet Layla and Rictor were screaming in his head. “Doomlocks!” she was shouting, rambling. “Doom’s screwed with Reed’s setup, without them this is going to be bad!”
Tony was talking to her out loud, shouting. The gathered turned from the monitor to look at him, trying to grasp more than just his end of the story. “What? Doomlocks? Layla, calm down, Reed and I have been running to detect things all night--”
“Then you’d better hold on, Tony Stark,” Rictor snapped. “’Cause you haven’t caught this.”
Reed Richards looked up. “Doomlocks? Chronal variance inhibitors? Shouldn’t be necessary, you’ve all been pre-emptively protected from the chronal variance of the broadcast, that’s not possible.”
Layla’s voice was intense, but entirely without panic. “Doom’s trying to make a fool of him, Tony! For the whole world to see. Pass it on.”
Tony cast a sidelong glance at Mr. Fantastic, his long limbs frantically making adjustments. The superheroes in the room began muttering, gathering. “Doom’s stealing Christmas? We doing this?” asked Luke, handing the baby to Jessica and cracking his knuckles.
Tony felt sweat prickle on his brow. “Reed. I’m not reading any chronal variance inhibitors in my system.”
“You may not, Tony, they’re largely biological and behave on the nanite level.”
“Reed, I’d still read that, do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”
“Well they’re meant to be entirely organic, Tony, they’re unreadable for security reasons-”
“Kzzkhhhh--” he responded cleverly. Tony gasped, outside of his own power, feeling something like an invisible hook latch right behind his belly button and the very strange feel of a sneeze played in reverse. Steve’s big hands grabbed his biceps as his whole body went board-stiff, Extremis’ readouts turning to lens flares in his brain.
“Hold on, soldier,” Steve was saying, going to one knee and catching Tony across it. “Just hang in there!”
Tony was staring through Steve, eyes wide, as Layla’s words went loud in his head. “Find us, Tony! We’re coming for you, just hang on!” He tried to ask her about herself, curious as to why Reed and Sue’s mutant babysitter had anything to do with Doom in the first place.
“Hnnnnnnsrrrrrrrrshhhhffffggg,” was what came out.
“Because I’m Layla Miller!” she shouted reassuringly from what sounded like the inside of a wind tunnel. “I know stuff!”
##
Tony came to as he had many times in his life, his forehead pressed against a cool, bleach-scented toilet seat. Though he’d been here before, he was in better straights now, and knew it. He had his sobriety, his wits about him. Wherever he was - whenever he was - it didn’t agree with him.
Absurdly he glanced into the bowl, between something out of curiosity and a search for evidence, and vomited again.
There were steps to this, an old pattern he hadn’t forgotten, where he’d spit, roll over and away, drag his mouth across his sleeve. His mouth was sour, the deep parts of his throat and sinuses burning with the toxic cocktail he’d just upchucked. He needed to get on his feet.
Getting on his feet proved more difficult than he’d like, lending credence to his theory of a concussion. The nausea, the sluggishness, the tilt-a-whirl ambience all said ‘concussion’ to him. He braced his hands on the toilet seat and replaced them with his elbows, first one, and then the other, sticking his hands into his hair. The press and scratch of checking himself for lumps and bumps didn’t reveal anything, but it did feel nice. “Mmph,” he grumped defeatedly, face falling into the crook of his elbow.
He nuzzled sleepily into the soft black fabric of his shirt for a moment, humming a few bars of ‘O Holy Night,’ which was stuck in his head for some absurd reason.
Reed. The holiday party. Steve and him at the holiday party. Oh god no. He knew no one would have drinks at the party, they were all too kind to tempt him, but Reed had an entire spaceship and Tony had a superhuman computer virus in his brain - the digital lock on Sue Storm’s chardonnay fridge wouldn’t have stood a chance. Or if Reed kept a few beers in his lab, or a liquor cabinet for whatever guests you entertained on a spaceship. He was drunk. And in someone’s else’s shirt.
He was so certainly throwing up drunk and so angry he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d opened his mouth again and a gout of flame had come out. He’d had this nightmare a thousand times, the anxiety of falling off the wagon, being so afraid to be tempted he’d replaced his mouthwash with some kids’ bubble gum flavored garbage because it didn’t have alcohol in it and avoided Logan entirely. And now, what. This? Merry Fucking Christmas, he thought, slamming his fist into the porcelain seat as he felt hot tears spring the corners of his eyes. And something miraculous happened.
Tony looked at his hand, and it wasn’t his own.
It was a man’s fist, sure, but coarser, older, with more wrinkles and scars than he was used to. He made a drunken noise, intrigued and pleased. Come to think of it now, he felt wiry all over, lean and compact, like any extra winter fat and a few pounds of muscle had been trimmed from him, and he was sore in spots where his joints felt sort of dry. And on the fourth finger, there was a simple titanium band - a wedding ring. No way was it him.
Logic dictates, Captain, something inside his brain prompted him, and he answered out loud. “Logic dictates, Captainnn-uh. Tha’s not me. M’not drunk. Someone else’s drunk.” Sure did sound like him, though.
He leapt to his feet, staggering a bit and bracing himself with a heavy lean on the sink’s ledge, the sort that was going to leave a bruise. Possible concussion, he reminded himself, deciding to look in the mirror anyway to make sure that whoever’s body this was, he’d be able to return it in one piece.
For a heart-stoppingly insane moment, Tony Stark thought he’d turned into his father. The face in the mirror bore the same lines as Howard’s had, the deep vertical crease between the eyebrows and deep frowning creases set into the corners of his mouth. His hair was marked with bursts of white at the temples, scattering through the rest for a slight salt and pepper effect. Even his goatee was streaked in white, though his body felt tired, more than aged.
And it was certainly his body. It was him, a Tony Stark if not the Tony Stark he was used to, or perhaps just later in life. Though when he looked critically at himself in that mirror, he couldn’t have been that much older, but this life had aged him very differently.
And this Tony drank. Which at first felt like a thrilling way to cheat and then quickly felt like an awful temptation that had to be dealt with as soon as possible. He turned the faucet on and stuck his mouth under it, gulping the metallic water in slurping mouthfuls.
“Sir?” The woman’s voice was familiar, heartbreakingly so, but lacking its typical disappointment. And it never called him ‘sir.’
“Peehh-snrrk,” he tried, turning to look and inhaling a gulp of faucet water through his nose. He coughed, which made the room spin, and rested his forehead on his arms a moment to regroup.
She crossed the bathroom in a few steps, reaching over neatly to press the button on top of the toilet and flush away his liquor-vomit. A moment later, a tiny disc sped into the room, busying itself over the mess on the floor. Tony snorted hard, rubbing his eyes. “Pepper. Y’look great. Not old...like me.” He swallowed and cleared his throat in an attempt to not sound drunk. From what he remembered of his drinking days, it helped to act sober. “Y’don’t look old and you got the little. The little Roomba to come. Hey little guy. Hey.” He nudged the little robot with his foot. It ignored him.
She did look great, movie-premiere and press-conference great, which for Pepper Potts, was pretty mind-blowing. Her skin was flawless-smooth, her lips the perpetually glossy peach of makeup commercials, her shirt unbuttoned to right below the diamond pendant she wore, dangling just-so. Her silver glasses perched on the bridge of her freckle-dusted nose, hair up with a pencil, her skirt giving just the right amount of wiggle to her walk. And as the reflection behind her eyes caught Tony’s gaze and Extremis responded in kind, he knew she was a robot.
“So I’m not-woah-” He stumbled a bit and she caught him, tucking her arm into his as they walked from the bathroom, back into his window-walled office. “M’not married to you.”
“No, sir.”
“Shouldn’t call me sir.” She was silent. “I didn’make you call me sir, though.” She sat him in his chair and turned a nearby shelf, pouring him a glass of water from a pitcher. He leaned forward suddenly. “Did I?”
She set the glass of water in front of him. “Drink, sir.”
This was weird. This was weird and it didn’t look like Pepper, not really, because it wasn’t frowning slightly and it was showing an awful lot of cleavage. He stared at the water a moment, watching ripples in the glass. She pulled a straw from a nearby cylinder and dropped it in the water. He raised his eyebrows, impressed. Must have been a JARVIS re-skin, it even displayed the same fuzzy logic that got JARVIS to understand that Tony would drink more water with a straw in the glass. He sucked it down. “Can you answer my question?”
“Yes sir.”
But why so stubborn? In what world would he program his helper-bot to be such an obstinate ass? A world, the thought swam up through his whiskey-pickled skull, where Tony gets drunk and needs to be babied. And has no one around to baby him.
For the first time, the silence of his office stood out to him. His desk and shelves lacked the shiny chrome frames packed with photos of friends from years past. Blueprints and formal plans for Avengers ideas typically stayed in the lab, but he always kept notepads nearby, his own office whiteboard was never clean like this one, without any mention of upgrades to Misty’s arm or Peter’s suits. The windows overlooking the city seemed wrong somehow, even from here. Tony grasped the water pitcher, attempting to refill his glass and making a mess until Pepper
(P.E.P.P.E.R? he thought absurdly) took it from him. She poured the water with exacting care and stood back, dead-eyed and beautiful. “Thanks,” Tony muttered, sipping the water down. He thought better of standing and pushed back in his chair, the wheels carrying him across the room until he bumped lightly into the plate glass window and choked on his water.
The city outside was a living nightmare, the red haze he’d drunkenly attributed to the sun’s rising or setting the result of brick dust and earth in the sky. Half-broken buildings made crenellations of the horizon, stone teeth jutting this way and that. Steel girders were bent with force and warped by heat, looking no stronger than bobby pins from this high up. The buses and cars looked like children’s toys, tossed about with a similar level of care and order. He shoved his water glass between his knees and press his hands against the glass, mouth agape.
“Who burned my city?” He turned to Pepper, the alcohol bringing tears and anger, the feelings turning his face into a tragedy mask.
“Not all of it is burned, sir. Some is merely fallen.”
He turned away from the cold absence in her words, stinging like he’d touched a NO2 canister. “Who did this, Pepper?”
Even as he asked, he saw the blue light move like a helicopter searchlight over the ground, hunting. As the massive armor came into view, Tony shook his head three, four times, squinting and trying to lean through the glass. Each boot of the stories-tall Iron Man suit spanned the body of a small sedan, the gold and red finish burned and bent away in large patches. It moved the way dinosaurs always moved on TV, the bipedal stalking of something intent on finding something much smaller, a hunter’s ready gait programmed into its massive legs. Tony’s hands flew to his face, he rubbed his goatee and the lines at the corners of his mouth, rubbing away the trembling in his lips. More lights shone at the back of the first armor as two more of the enormous suits came into view. They moved in the city like dogs in a pack, clearly in the role of defenders. They were almost like mecha from some Japanese cartoon. If it hadn’t been so completely horrifying, he might have sent the idea out to the Media department for immediate production as a Saturday morning cartoon.
Tony had the distinct idea that the children in this city, if there were any, didn’t watch many cartoons. He felt very, very far from home.
“Sir?” Pepper’s voice was measured and careful. “If you’d like to watch your Sentinels in action, there are much better readouts in the laboratory.”
She didn’t blink as the water glass hit the wall and shattered, and even turned up some nice jazz music to cover the sound of his sobs.
##
The shaking would not stop, and it was making any attempt at work quite impossible. Sobriety had come to him, finally, and he applauded his own cleverness at getting the AI to make him some hash browns and a smoothie before sleeping the rest of it off. He wouldn’t call that AI Pepper. It wasn’t Pepper. More to the point, it distressed him to think about where the real Pepper might have been. Belatedly, he realized this Tony probably didn’t get hangovers anymore. He remembered that well.
What he had was a terrible case of the shakes and a completely foul mood, and knew in that way only a miserable addict could that a drink would fix both.
The thought of bringing a drink to his lips nauseated him. He’d found that out for sure in a moment of weakness where he’d poured two fingers of scotch into one of the crystal glasses that seemed ever-present in this building. Leave it an alcoholic to make a ritual out of his addiction, to set up little altars everywhere to his own personal communion so he’d never be more than a room away from a drink.
He’d never realized how much scotch smelled like someone had put a cigarette out in it until that moment, and even so, the pull in him was strong enough to nearly drink it until that word ghosted through his thoughts again - Sentinels.
Specifically his Sentinels. It would have been enough to put him off of anything, much less the scotch.
So he stood in his lab and shook, the headache that was brewing from the tension in his jaw threatening to make him violent. Make you violent, Tony? He thought bitterly. Have you looked outside today?
Something about being a guest star from another dimension made his inner monologue a bit dramatic.
He’d spent the morning playing around in the lab, confirming his suspicions and frustrating himself entirely. The Sentinels were exactly what they sounded like - mutant-hunting Sentinel technology given shiny Starktech body work. As for the why of it, that was somewhere in the mess he’d made. Extremis, he’d discovered, didn’t much respond to this tech. Trying to jailbreak any of the devices had felt something like trying to understand nuanced Portuguese poetry with a basic conversational phrasebook. Once or twice he’d felt a little closer and backed out hurriedly when the tech responded too eagerly, swarming his mind. For now he was stuck with doing it the old fashioned way, running password after password check, dismantling and rerouting programs and pathways with all the precision of a sledgehammer. He’d found an analog keyboard in an old storage closet and plugged it in to a USB port, cracking his knuckles. Typing felt strange, because it had been some time since he’d done it, and because his fingers were sore in the cold office. If the Tony who had been here ever got back, he was going to have one hell of a mess to clean up. Tony glanced out the window. One more thing to add to his list.
The man who had been here was far from sentimental, but he was certainly paranoid. Either way, there was a wealth of data, thousands of photos and dozens of articles on anyone he’d ever been curious about. Steve, his mind sang out, but he quashed it, out of some kind of shame or duty, and looked up Pepper instead.
VIRGINIA POTTS, deceased.
Virginia “Pepper” Potts was a victim of the
Her date of birth, next of kin, and other basic information followed. The kind of minutiae that Tony could never remember when it was important, but would never forget, now.
He touched a shaky hand to his lips and typed in another name.
JAMES RHODES, deceased.
Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes was a victim of the initial
HAPPY HOGAN, deceased.
“Happy” Hogan was a victim of the initial incident responsible for
“I’m sorry,” he murmured against his fingers. These were his friends, his family, not heroes. Rhodey and Pepper could pilot a suit and Happy had a mean roundhouse, but they weren’t superheroes at heart. Rhodey was a soldier. Pepper was a leader. Happy was the perfect lieutenant. But they weren’t superheroes, and he always had been. He’d apologized for it so many times, even if he hadn’t been Tony, even if he’d been someone great like Steve, it wasn’t easy to be close to an Avenger. Even Steve missed birthday parties when he was off-world or trapped in a Hydra laboratory.
Stomach turning, he set his hands back to the keyboard, searching the names of those he knew would be alive.
MARIA HILL, deceased
NICHOLAS FURY, presumed decea-
CLINT BARTON, deceas-
BRUCE BANNER, dec-
This didn’t make sense. Sometimes heroes died. One or two at a time, they passed into the great beyond and always returned. Even Steve, whose death had almost destroyed super heroism as a whole, had come back. But never this many. Never all at once. He looked up at the ceiling, afraid even as he typed in another name.
STEVE ROGERS, de-
No. Not again. He sucked in a breath, ready to protest to the universe, to explain that this was wrong and Steve needed to be alive, he was sick and tired of this mistake. Instead he swore, slamming his balled fists against the keyboard and rattling the metal of the desk.
REDIRECTING QUERY.
DETHLOK, at large
Dethlok unit designation “Steve Rogers”
Tony raked his fingers through his white temples. At large? In what world were his friends and Avengers all dead, was Captain America no more, and Tony Stark alone in an ivory tower with a cold husk of an AI? He had been so intent on learning who was alive and who was dead he hadn’t stopped to find out why. He needed to search someone whose whereabouts wouldn’t scare him and process this whole mess like the leader he was.
TONY STARK, director of A.R.C. - Allied Resistance Corps
Next of Kin: Steve Rogers
The ring on Tony’s finger felt heavy as he fumbled his typing. That was ridiculous. And impossible. Tony’s next of kin would have had to have been the person he was married to - unless they were dead. His fingers flew over the keys rapidly, looking up Pepper’s file once more. Pepper would have all the answers. She always did.
VIRGINIA POTTS, deceased.
Virginia “Pepper” Potts was a victim of the initial incident responsible for the formation of the A.R.C. The near-extinction level event, perpetrated by reality-manipulating mutant Wanda Maximoff, remains the single most destructive event in human history.[4]
Tony clicked the footnote and watched as a video began to play.
He knew this. He’d seen this before, heard everyone’s tale of how it happened. His pulse beat loudly in his ears as he recognized it all in horror, but it made no sense. This had happened in his own world, too, the Scarlet Witch’s tears shining against her cheeks as she pleaded with Magneto, and Tony cringed as her lips opened.
“Daddy?”
Her voice was like a teakettle whistle, fluty and high-pitched yet teeming with the power beneath it.
“No more humans.”
##
Coffee hadn’t helped the shaking, but it kept him awake enough to admit defeat. Tony sat in his quiet office, watching the amber liquor swirl in the glass. He took it like cough medicine, cringing through each mouthful and following it with the rapidly cooling coffee in the mug beside. He knew what could happen if he went cold-turkey from the booze, and the last thing he needed was to be stuck here in this hellhole due to a seizure.
The alcohol made him feel tired and a little nauseous. How had he ever done this every day? The words before him swam as he tried to make sense of things. He stared at the heavy metal briefcase on the desk. Inside would be his armor, and though the desire to put it on and see what it could do was there, admittedly, it made Tony afraid. Afraid of how it would interact with Extremis, if it contained Sentinel technology. Afraid to confirm what he knew - he could put it on and fly for days, but he’d never get out of this reality that way. Afraid it would make him a target and he’d die here, alone and drunk.
Wanda’s actions had killed most of the human race. Mutants, he discovered with some searching, were largely fine, more than fine, in their own secure locations. He, Steve, Reed and his family, and a few others had been off-world or orbiting at the time of Wanda’s proclamation and found themselves quite alive and alone when they returned.
Oddly, tracing everything back to Wanda made sense of it somehow, in the way that he could stop trying to fix it. Wanda’s realities were nebulous, resistant places. Her stubbornness and power soaked through every aspect and left caution and care somewhere in the past. There was no point in trying to undo what Wanda had done. But he had to get out of here.
He’d also remembered the babysitter. Blonde hair, that M tattoo over one eye that matched her boyfriend’s - that girl was Layla Miller, and she was every bit as unexplainable and terrifying as the Scarlet Witch, as far as Tony was concerned. In the world Tony remembered, she’d been a part of X-Factor Investigations, a ragtag band of noir fanboys and Summers-hating depressives, some of whom had been personally victimized by Wanda Maximoff.
Layla knew stuff, so she said, and it made Tony simultaneously thrilled and sick to his stomach to think that she’d known where he’d end up so well that she’d insisted he come find her. So what, she knew the past, present, future, but couldn’t do a damn thing about it other than warn a guy? Mutants, he thought, more frustrated for them than at them, and went back to his work.
Oddly, with more alcohol in his system and a little more time, he’d been able to make acquaintances of his Extremis and whatever A.R.C.’s systems were used to responding to. He’d been able to draw up some info on X Factor and found some of them out. Interestingly, Layla Miller, the Multiple Man and Layla’s boyfriend Jamie Madrox, and their coworker, the earth-shaking manic-depressive Julio Richter, were listed at large. Many of the mutants Tony had known - X-Men and their allies - were listed as enemies or authorities, safe behind enemy walls.
It gave Tony more than a little peace of mind to know that his Resistance Corps was just that. He wasn’t a Sentinel-mastering hunter of the last vestiges of mutant kind, and this wasn’t the remnants of some Registration-borne war. Rather, he was, through no fault of his own, defending the last vestiges of humankind. His Sentinels protected him and those of his city. He was a refugee in a gilded cage, a last prince of a dying kingdom locked high in an ivory tower. You bastard, Tony toasted his future self. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It took the most basic of commands to set his Sentinels to tracking them, after all - what else would one send Sentinels to do?
His orders in place, his stories-tall armors prowling around the city, he found himself at a loss for things to do. So he poured a drink and searched through files, confirming what he’d suspected and wasn’t sure if he’d hoped or feared.
Steve Rogers and Tony Stark had exchanged wedding rings privately just before Wanda’s cataclysm. The end of things had seemed far away to them, miles above the earth’s surface, but war was the instant, immediate, necessary response. Tony could imagine Steve, ever the soldier, insisting they make it honest before they go into another battle, and the thought made him chuckle into his bourbon. He cleared his throat, unbuttoning his collar against the warmth of the liquor in his blood. It was a strange puzzle to put together, how two people fell in love.
He’d known what brought them together in his own world, a lot of heated arguments and careful apologies had led to a few angry tears and a few cautious embraces, and Tony’s absurd thought of why don’t guys kiss each other more often, anyway had led to something like an attack, his thumbs pressed into the tired hollows beneath Steve’s eyes and his mouth bruising Steve’s as the whole room went very hot.
Back home, they weren’t married, they weren’t anything. They were middle-school stupid, kissing when no one could see and pacing before they called each other for anything aside from business. Steve liked museums and baseball games, Tony liked movies, and hockey from the privacy of a box seat, and they both liked each other in that giddy way that seemed weird to talk about. So they didn’t. They went on not-dates and made out on couches and kept things polite and above-the-clothes, the way Tony imagined Captain America probably wanted it anyway.
Well, mostly, Tony grinned, spinning in his chair and staring at the ceiling a moment.
Truthfully, he was terrified to see Steve in this reality. Dethlok, he’d known a bit about in his own world, a monstrous cyborg fusion of advance technology and eldritch magics. It was that second part that frightened him, the potential for Steve to be under the control of Wanda, of Stephen Strange, of someone else who was so completely out of his own realm that he was unable to save him.
Tony didn’t know magic. But he’d take it apart just like he took apart anything else if it meant saving Steve.
##
“Sir.” P.E.P.P.E.R. entered the office, a vibranium coil wrapped in one of her vice-like hands. Collared on the metal leash were the three mutants he’d requested - Jamie Madrox, Layla Miller, and Julio Richter - and another, a redheaded fellow who could have passed for an action movie star but for the black star tattooed over one eye. Tony knew his name from the files - Shatterstar, and cocked his head curiously. Shatterstar wasn’t a mutant, but he wasn’t human, either. Jamie and Layla, for the most part, looked like he’d always known them to look - attractive, dressed like college students, and prone to a clever smugness that sort of begged for a solid smack across the face. Rictor, however, looked very different, cloaked in a heavy, rough spun garment that hooded his features and shadowed the dozens of strange tattoos curling over his skin. Beside him, Shatterstar caught eyes with Tony and flexed, bucked a little the way younger guys did when Tony talked to their girlfriends.
“Thanks for coming, guys,” Tony slurred, tossing his feet up on the table to peer at his catch.
“Fuck you, cabron,” rumbled Rictor in a voice that seemed to make the vents creak.
Layla sighed, blowing her bangs from her eyes. “Ric. I’m serious. We wouldn’t be here if I didn’t mean it was the right thing.” “None of us would be here if we were doing the right thing,” growled Shatterstar, fingers twitching.
Jamie winced, rolled his eyes. “Sto-op. Please? Can we just get it all out of our systems now? We don’t like Tony Stark, we don’t like being in chains unless someone buys us dinner, and we don’t like when Layla half-explains her plans. Good? We done?”
Tony took their silence as assent and clapped his hands. “Can I get anyone a drink?”
“Tony, I’m sorry you’re here,” blurted Layla, twisting her wrists in their cuffs. “I know you’re not the same Tony that’s supposed to be here and I told you to find me for a reason, and that reason is you want to go home.”
Tony furrowed his brow, staring into his glass a moment. He’d been worried sick about sounding crazy, wondered how to explain that to her, but she was Layla. She knew stuff. “Okay.” He cleared his throat. “How do you know all that?” “Because the Tony that is supposed to be here wanted a way out too, and he found one.” Her eyes were glossy and apologetic.
Tony set the bourbon glass down, his head swimming slightly. “How did he do that?”
Jamie raised his cuffed hands. smirking. “Hi. I’m sorry about that. He did this, actually. An out-of-phase version of myself showed up here. One from...well. Far as I can tell, the same world you’re from. So the Tony that’s supposed to be here talked to the me from the world you’re from and now you’re from the world that that Madrox was from and I’m the Madrox of this world, talking to that Tony.” He laughed.
Rictor grimaced. “What a mess.”
Tony sat down and stared at his glass a moment. While he’d been doing his best to take his drinks medicinally, for the sake of this body if not for the soul within it, this called for a drink. He took a long pull of his bourbon and exhaled warmly. “Okay. So how did that Madrox get home?”
Layla bared her teeth in an awkward smile. “So, I think he got home?”
“You don’t know?” Tony roared, hands colliding with the desktop in front of him.
“I know like I know everything else!” she pleaded. “I know like I know you were gonna be here. I knew you’d end up here and I don’t know why, but I think-” She glanced sidelong at Rictor and Shatterstar, and back to Tony. “I think it’s because of your connection to the Captain America of that world, and in this world you’ve got a similar connection, and he needs your help.”
“Because we were married,” Tony said flatly, biting at his fingernails.
Jamie Madrox let out a breath that he just barely kept from becoming a laugh. “What?”
Tony furrowed his brow at Layla. “I knew that,” she explained. “It was easy enough for me to pick up. But it isn’t public knowledge, though, you two.”
Tony bit his lips, looking everywhere in the room but at his four prisoners. “Okay. Cat’s out of the bag.”
Shatterstar grinned brightly. “Is that a common phrase for when two brave warriors consummate both their lusts for battle and each other’s touch?”
“No,” came four voices.
Shatterstar sniffed. “Very well.”
“Look.” Tony waved his hands as though he could physically clear the air. “I want to go home. If Steve needs me, I want to help him, too. How do I make that happen?”
Jamie raised his hands again. “Well,” he volunteered, “I had to die.”
The shadow came over them just before the window shattered, bathing the gathered in glittering shards of glass. The monster that landed beside Tony’s desk looked as much like Steve Rogers as the knockoff Captain America action figures that showed up overseas from time to time. Red and blue armor covered scarred tissue and exposed muscle, tubes winding from one input port to another and pumping fluid to his limbs like a spider’s. Any flesh on his face that would have made it appear full or human was long gone, thin scars giving him skeletal, bloodless lips and the half-sunken nose of a corpse. A metal helmet overlaid half his skull, the eye on that side replaced with an eerie red lens that cast a menacing glow. The voice that emerged from Steve Rogers, Dethlok unit was thick with distortion. “I’d be happy to oblige you, gentlemen.”
Tony tackled the briefcase and rolled under his desk as the cannon in Dethlok’s arm came to life, filling the room with heat and light. He heard Layla’s voice calling his name over the chaos, begging him to unlock their collars and cuffs. He sent Extremis toward it, feeling that magnetic pull again, that strange over-eager push into his mind from this world’s tech. Setting his jaw, he pulled away slightly, just long enough to hear Madrox’s strangled cry. Here goes nothing, and Extremis jumped, opening the floodgates between him and the tech of this world, for better or worse, salvation or corruption.
He heard the vibranium restraints click open and the high pitched powering charge that had to be Dethlok’s cannon. “Get out of here,” Tony heard Steve growl, loud enough to be heard over the sound of the briefcase responding to Extremis, flying open. “The four of you are non-human and therefore not targeted but will be accepted as collateral damage, do you understand? It’s more than you deserve.”
The lights flickered as steel girders creaked menacingly. “Go on,” Tony heard Rictor say. “Let’s bring the whole building down.”
The Iron Man suit, freed from its case, nearly tackled Tony in its eagerness to suit him up. Planting his boots on the ground, he felt strong for the first time since waking up in this place covered in his own vomit. He rose, planting his back against the underside of the desk and firing his repulsors to heave it in Dethlok’s general direction. It splintered in the heat of his cannon blast, shards raining on them both and clanging against Steve’s shield. “You’ve dragged me home when I got embarrassing at parties enough, Steve,” Tony quipped through the distortion of his facemask. “Time to return the favor.”
“Is this a party?” Steve’s grin was manic. The helmet crackled, sending purple forks of energy into his skull, the red glow of his missing eye glowing like an ember. “Hope I’m not interrupting.”
Tony laughed nervously. Steve didn’t usually banter back, and not with that wicked smile carved into his hollow features. “Not at all. You’re the guest of honor.” Steve easily deflected the repulsor blast that punctuated Tony’s comment with one of the shields soldered to his arms. It turned part of the ceiling to shrapnel and gave Steve an obstacle between them. Tony’s repulsors fired, landing in front of the X-Factor crew, putting himself between them and Steve.
“Listen, the four of you-” he turned momentarily, seeing the four he planned to address and seven other Madroces. “Okay, whatever, you guys need to get out of here.”
Layla and Rictor raised eyebrows at him as they chanted quietly, the faint violet sphere surrounding them becoming brighter and brighter. One of the Madroces snorted and hocked a loogie on Tony’s office floor before speaking in what sounded like a Boston accent. “Rictor and Layla have learned a few things from the Scarlet Witch,” he explained. “If they’re fuckin’ here it means they fuckin’ need to be.”
“Language,” another Madrox admonished quietly, apparently fascinated by Rictor and Layla’s witchcraft.
Tony locked eyes with Shatterstar from behind the mask. “And you’re staying too, I gather?”
Shatterstar’s laugh was completely insane and kind of inspiring. “Run from a battle? Leave Julio and my friends? And run from a battle?”
“Gotcha.” Tony launched a few repulsor jets from his palms, watching Dethlok bob and weave. Steve moved in that same velociraptor stride as the Sentinels, ducking across the floor to Tony. If the tech was his, there were a few things he could do, but he wasn’t about to try and find out while Dethlok was trying to blow holes in the walls and Rictor was threatening to bring the building down around them for his own amusement. What he needed was a way to immobilize Steve.
Dethlok charged the space between Shatterstar and Tony. Star’s blades crossed and shoved, not cutting into Dethlok’s armor but shoving him back. Tony followed with several repulsor blasts, sending the cyborg into the wall and dazing him for half a moment as the tech and the magic within him caught up. If only he’d just stay down.
Really, that’s what gave him the idea.
“Madrox!” Tony hollered. “Get your dupes on him. As many as you can!”
“Many as I can?” Jamie raised an eyebrow and stamped his foot a handful of times, a dozen identical Madroces popping into existence. “Not a problem.”
Dethlok was prepared to handle magic, martial arts, and technological prowess, he’d likely been loaded with probabilities and formulas, but there was a specific mathematical question that Tony was banking on Steve not expecting now. It had nothing to do with velocity or likelihood of operations, nothing to do with probability at all. It was a question he’d asked Bruce one time, over a cup of Bruce’s Kava tea that made his head spin – realistically, how many first graders do you think you could fight at once?
Thankfully, it seemed Madrox was trained in the art of first-grader-fu. Not one dupe was armed or equipped with anything more than a trenchcoat and a few dozen twins, but damn, did they know how to use it. Tony hovered beside Shatterstar, watching in amazement. Sure, Dethlok could lift a ton, but what was that, twenty-five Madrox duplicates? Easy. They could hold him down by smothering him alone, much to the screaming frustration of the Dethlok unit.
The duped rearranged themselves, each one planting a foot or a fist on Dethlok’s limbs and head, one or two planting their asses on his chest and legs. Iron Man hovered just above Steve’s mangled face. “Hey, Gulliver. The Lilliputians and I are here to help, okay?”
The violet light that seeped from Steve’s helmet moved over his face, warping his features like heat waves over pavement. His expressions changed like stills from a film, subtly different in each frame. He was enraged, then humiliated, then frightened – an expression Tony couldn’t recall ever seeing on Steve’s face. For a moment there was tenderness, his one good eye meeting Tony’s gaze through the mask, and then trust. That elusive, evasive thing between them, saying everything in silence Tony needed to hear – do what you have to do, Soldier. It was gone again just was quickly, hate masking his expression.
Iron Man knelt down and began dismantling Dethlok’s armor. “Tell Wanda I hit you,” Tony smirked, dodging the spit Steve aimed at his face.
##
The armor was unmistakably Starktech, getting it off of Steve had revealed that much. It had revealed a few other things, as well, though not as pleasant as Tony had hoped.
This Steve was gaunt. His muscles, which should have been chewed away by his starving body and superior metabolism, appeared artificially enhanced, but nothing was coming up on Tony’s readouts. No steroids, serums, or anything other than the healing factor Erskine’s serum gave him. But the energy required to not only maintain Steve’s muscle frame, but also to allow him to heal, was a pretty massive amount.
Without whatever it was the armor was pumping into him, he was somewhat stilled, at least enough to be strapped to an exam table with a couple vibranium cables and two dozen Madrox duplicates on watch.
Rictor was more helpful than had been expected, passing his hands over Tony’s samples and discarded armor bits, humming with low rumbles and confirming the source of the eldritch power to be the Scarlet Witch.
“So, you learned from her?” Tony asked, a spare bit of wire clenched between his back teeth.
“Yes.” Rictor’s voice always sounded like it came from the back of a cavern, like if you followed it around a corner it would either show you secrets or kill you.
Tony’s face wrinkled in disapproval. “You weren’t always tight with her, not where I’m from.”
“She’s an unpredictable monster, I’m not stupid.” He eyed Tony from under his hood, his eyes seeming to glow faintly.
“Well I notice you and your coterie aren’t with her now? Even though you seem to be all down with her sickness, or whatever.”
Rictor snorted, annoyed. “What?”
“Were you born like…this? Not just a mutant but-“
“But what?” Rictor spat. “Angry? Hispanic? Queer as a football bat? What, asshole?”
God damn if it wasn’t easy to piss this guy off. Tony rolled his eyes. “A wizard, Harry.”
Ric shrugged, folding his arms and perching on a bench. “Oh, that. Nah. Wanda’s able to teach some people. Layla learned her magic from Doom, before all this went down. After it did, I felt kind of lost…I got close to the Scarlet Witch for a time. Things were weird between me and ‘Star and I didn’t know what I was feeling.”
“Let me guess,” Tony muttered, pulling the wire from his teeth and using it to connect a circuit. “You didn’t think you were into ladies anymore, but your insatiable lust for power changed your mind?”
Despite himself, Rictor laughed a little. “Something like that. I don’t like ladies. I do like this,” he grinned, the metal screws and plates in the room vibrating slightly, rising half a foot from where they lay.
“Makes sense,” Tony exhaled, spinning on his toes to input a few commands. “Earth control, polar control, Maximoffs. So you didn’t dig being the Sorceress’ Apprentice?”
“I did not,” Rictor said flatly. The silence hung in the air a moment. “But we try and stay away from her and the other X-Fuhrers. Layla thinks it’s the right thing to do, and she’s the only compass we got. Some of us think we can talk her out of it. Wanda, not Layla.”
“Fuckin’ Wanda,” Tony sighed. He’d had better days with the Scarlet Witch, she was an Avenger, for god’s sake. And really, she wasn’t evil. She was lonely, and sensitive, and possessed of the coping skills of a hand grenade. ‘Talking her out of it’ wasn’t a bad idea when it came to saving the world.
“Okay, Ric. Here’s the plan. I think I can put this armor back on him and override the commands so that they’ll respond to Extremis instead of…the magic, Wanda stuff.” Tony waggled his fingers mystically.
Rictor nodded. “Layla and I think we got it. Between the two of us, we think we can pull him out of her control. It seems like it’s not an active link she’s got up, it’s just a passive response. Piece of cake, eh?”
Layla padded into the room in bare feet, jeans and her jacket, rubbing her eyes. “You guys ready for me yet?”
“Perfect timing,” muttered Tony amazedly. She definitely knew stuff.
Tony called the Iron Man armor to him, less eagerly this time. Still, it was like being greeted by an eager puppy as it claimed him, repulsors already warm enough to lift him off his feet. “Okay baby, I know. I’m nicer than your other daddy here. Madrox? You and the kids can let Mr. Lok out now.”
Rictor and Layla set about their work, laying handfuls of grey stones at compass points in the room, pulling out a few pouches and amulets that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a Renaissance Faire. Then again, it sort of matched Ric’s new getup.
Tony planted his feet against the office floor, reaching out like he was all set to receive a football pass. As expected, Dethlok sprinted down the hall, fueled by rage and tackled him perfectly, his skull fitting into Tony’s solar plexus. They rolled to the ground in a controlled spin, Tony calling the re-wired Starktech to grasp Steve at the scarred holes in his flesh where the armor was meant to attach. Confused but pleased, Dethlok used the turn to his advantage, batting Iron Man away with his now-defunct arm cannon.
Tony panted in his armor, calming his vitals. This wasn’t just serum-enhanced Captain America, the pinnacle of human perfection - this was something more. The purple that crackled over him was garbled from his readouts, but amidst the gobbledygook he was able to see more of what Rictor had claimed. This was certainly not any known physical energy source, it was magic.
Dethlok was on him like a panther from a tree, his armored frame crossing the room in one leap and landing on Tony’s chest with a pain that shook every last one of Tony’s nerves. Saliva shone at the corners of Steve’s mouth as he gasped furiously, victoriously. “It’s magic, Tony,” Steve panted as his metal fists closed around Iron Man’s throat and the metal began to give. “Something you could never give me. But I guess that’s not very romantic of me to say.” A laugh escaped the scarred slit of his mouth.
“Starktech, though,” Tony wheezed, clapping his gauntlets around the mismatched metal and flesh of Dethlok’s skulls, feeling Extremis pour into the hack job that was Steve’s armor. “That’s something I can handle.”
Dethlok sat up as his armor was breached, throwing Iron Man by his throat and rearing back like a lion stung by a bee.
It occurred to him, foggily, that this Starktech may never have seen Extremis. That was interesting, but not entirely relevant at the moment, not with Steve’s memories flooding his mind via the readouts.
Not Steve, who fought Wanda Maximoff as hard as any man alone could have before succumbing to her. Not Steve, whose blue, blue eyes had bulged and turned red as Wanda’s violet tendrils curled around his throat and he’d mouthed at Tony, run.
Steve’s readout on Extremis was impossibly strange, there was a layer, an overlay. At first it seemed like Wanda’s doing, perhaps, and then again - blurring and focusing – from violet static to two clear pictures. It was almost like 3D glasses, blue and red, and Tony refocused to see them both.
Both.
There were two of him in there.
Steve, and this was the part that made Tony’s breath catch in his throat, who was from the same world as Tony, who was still in there, fighting somewhere. For all that Tony had suffered in this world, he’d at least had his free will.
Tony repulsed and threw himself at Dethlok, arms around his waist, tackling, rolling. Dethlok spasmed, far from predicting this, violet slime coloring the froth that poured from between his lips. “Hey buddy,” said Tony, his face mask sliding back into his helmet as he repeated himself. “Hey buddy. It’s okay. I got you. She can’t beat this, what we got.”
Steve’s one blue eye caught his, and Tony saw the panic there, the hyperventilating and twitching all concealed in that one blue eye. “Tony-” His voice was clipped and frustrated, and frustrating. Boiling, burning, and pleading all in one.
“RICTOR, NOW!” Layla screamed, pointing where Dethlok lay twitching in Iron Man’s lap, his metallic limbs swarmed with Extremis’ power and the eldritch magic poisoning his brain. Rictor screamed, filling the room with a sickly purple glow, and the room went silent.
##
Tony felt like a child again. His room was dark; he’d been put to bed in his clothes, and in the other room, soft voices and music told him a party was still going on. He was fussy and sweaty, and his feet felt hot in his shoes. He stirred, stretching his arms around and feeling amazingly not-drunk. His fist collided with something solid, clothed in something soft.
“Nnrrrf,” the body beside his admonished, large and blonde and alive.
“Hey.” Tony whirled, bracing his arms on either side of Steve’s body, staring at his sleeping face, his closed eyes. “Hey. Hey! Super Soldier, c’mon. Earth to Captain America.”
Steve opened his eyes, reaching a hand up to brush Tony’s cheek. He seemed to stare at his hand, for just a moment. “I’m awake. You okay?”
“Was that just one hell of a bad dream?” asked Tony, seeking the warmth of Steve’s chest as his own sweat cooled on his skin.
“Hmm,” murmured Steve. “We’re still in space, you smell like bourbon, and I smell like diesel fuel, so I’m going to say no. That happened. We were all very worried for you.”
“Hmm,” Tony echoed, his brow furrowing even as his cheek pressed against the warm blue fabric of Captain America’s costume. “Do they know we’re back? The rest of them?”
“Probably not yet. But I think they know something happened and Reed’s trying to find us. When your Extremis shorted out the Doomlock, it seemed to blow Doom’s plans. He’s furious, so we’ve got work to do.”
“Boy, aren’t you informed,” Tony drawled.
“You went out before I did.”
“Did you come after me?” Tony felt really stupid, like a girl in really bad movie, asking questions like that with his head on Steve’s chest. Steve didn’t help much, his hand coming up to brush Tony’s dark hair. He felt, rather than saw, Steve’s smile.
“I did.”
“Why? I mean, how, is what I mean.” He cleared his throat.
It was in this moment they could have spilled everything, gushed tears and proclamations, made sloppy love in a back room on Reed Richard’s spaceship and they didn’t; instead, Steve just kissed the top of Tony’s head. Between them, the air was warm and sticky and quiet. “Well.” Steve’s throat sounded tight. “I guess I didn’t like the idea of you spending Christmas alone.”
It was enough.
“HELL YES,” shouted Peter Parker, unmistakably loud through the ship’s metal doors. “REED LANDED US IN THE GOBI DESERT AND IT’S SNOWING!”
Okay, so maybe it was perfect.
Title: Show Me The Way
Warnings: Tony's alcoholism
Rating: PG13
Universe: 616 and other canon AUs.
From: Housestarktech
“I’m just saying, I think you guys should get on that,” Peter Parker griped, the jingle bells on his sweater agreeing as he huffed.
Tony Stark paused, a cookie half-raised to his mouth. “How, Parker? You’re a smart kid, you figure that one. Which way does it fall in zero-G?”
Peter sighed, smacking his felt antlers against the sleek metal walls of the ship. “I’m not sure why no one considered this crucial component before we all agreed to spend Christmas Eve up here, is all. There better be snow tomorrow, is all.”
“No chance,” grinned Carol Danvers as she passed, bumping Tony with her hip conspiratorially. “You’d have to have been on the nice list this year for that, Petey.”
“Shit,” grinned Tony around his cookie. “No snow for me either, then. Lemme go see if I can make a change to my list.”
Christmas in orbit had been Reed Richards’ idea, and aside from Spidey’s obvious disapproval at the impossibility of snow, it wasn’t a bad idea so far. Tony liked the holidays. He hadn’t always, but a few years of sobriety and self-discovery were good for him, even if he now turned to Christmas cookies and egg nog where he’d turned to cocktails in years past. Oh well. Everyone spent New Year’s at the gym, right? He took a cookie for the walk down the hall, dodging Carol’s attempts to stick a red foil bow to his chest. “You’d better be wearing something festive when the newsfeed starts,” she chirped threateningly.
“I’m wearing white! White Christmas!” “That’s just a dress shirt, Tony, it doesn’t count.”
“Jess has that pretty red lipstick on, maybe she can help me?” He hopped through the doorway as it slid shut behind him, laughing at the sound of thrown Christmas ornaments battering the door.
The clattering neatly silenced the hallway’s other door sliding open, silenced the footfalls of the large soldier who grabbed Tony’s arm, turned him into the nearby room and backed him against a wall with boyish exuberance.
“Hey now, who are you kissing?” Steve Rogers’ smile was all snowflakes and silver bells, something in Tony’s head malfunctioned pleasantly and he responded as such.
“Eh-huh.” Smooth. This thing between them, whatever it was, was still very new and weird in a very exciting way. Tony had a long history of being slick and in charge around women, as long as he could remember. When other guys talked about girls making them nervous, Tony just laughed. He’d danced or drank his way through any lack of confidence for decades. And now it was Christmas, he was sober, and knee deep in this very strange thing that had been going on with Captain America.
“Asked you a question,” Steve insisted. His expression was somewhere between someone’s hot dad and a golden retriever, eager to please and eager to play.
“Mm-hmm!” Tony answered, his cookie-sweet mouth all too hot and dry. “I’m not kissing anyone,” he finally answered, earnestly. “Not anyone.”
Steve’s restrained little grin broke into a full laugh. “Is that a hard line you’re taking, then? No kissing anyone tonight?”
“No one’s offered.” Tony tossed his hair in a parody of his typical cool as laughter broke over them both. Steve’s big, sweater-warm arms went around Tony’s waist, tucking his chin over his shoulder and squeezing him for a moment. Tony hugged back, their nervousness abating somewhat as they stood there a moment, because they could, until the bubbles went out of Tony’s chest and he remembered himself again. He slid out of Steve’s embrace just enough to look him in the eyes.
Steve’s cheeks were apple-red. “Know of a place with any mistletoe?”
“Nope,” Tony murmured, pulling him into a kiss anyway. He slid his fingers through short blonde hair and pulled a little, drawing from Steve a massive sigh, a sudden and hot shakedown of their bodies as Tony felt his back hit the wall again. Extremis whirred in his brain, offering images and temperature scans and dimensions, and it was background noise, just the sort of thing Tony needed to turn his real brain off and feel.
“Faaaaall on your kneeeees,” a voice sang helpfully from the hallway. Tony pulled away from Steve’s lips audibly. Extremis reacted within him, jumping into the ship’s systems to slam the ship’s automatic door shut. Breathless and red-cheeked, Tony gaped wide-eyed at the shut door, listening for evidence.
“This damn door! I swear, I need to get this fixed.” Steve caught Tony’s gaze. Reed, he mouthed, and Tony made a guilty face. Sorry, he mouthed back. Bad reaction. They separated as Tony slid the door open.
“Hey, Reed! What’s up? That door slam shut on you?” Tony leaned on the doorjamb, smoothing his shirt a moment before extending a hand to the other man.
Reed Richards sat on his ass in the hall, his long limbs gathering a large stack of scattered gift boxes. “Seems so. Sue’s always saying I ignore these little things and someone’s going to get hurt. Guess it was me this time?”
Steve made a non-committal noise, handing Reed the remaining few gifts. “Were they going in this room here?”
Reed took the gifts, his brow furrowed earnestly. “Oh, thanks Steve. They sure were. I’m not interrupting anything with you guys, am I?”
“Noooope!” “Course not, Reed.”
“Okay.” He set the gifts on a somewhat distant table and slid his arms easily around the broad shoulders of both men, guiding them back toward the main room. “Merry Christmas, gentlemen. It’s really great to see you two like this again. As you’re meant to be.” His smile reached his eyes, turning the moment sentimental before giving a friendly pat and breezing off. “Twenty till the broadcast, guys!”
Tony watched him walk down the hall, gave the open-and-shut of the doors a friendly Extremis boost.
“Not very nice to be in his systems like that, Tony.”
“I can’t help it!” Tony smirked. “Besides. I didn’t want him to see us like that.”
“Like what?” Steve cocked his head amusedly. “How we’re ah. How’d Reed say it? Meant to be?”
Tony punched Steve’s chest lightly. “Don’t think that’s what he meant, big guy.” But he grabbed his hand and laid a kiss to the top of it anyway, eyes sparkling. “Let’s head back in to that party.”
Steve’s smile was tight, but happy.
##
“So where do I go?” Tony asked from inside his armor, shuffling himself between Captain America and Spider-woman. He slid his arm around one, then the other. “This work?”
Spider-woman chuckled a little. “Smooth, Tony.” “What? I can’t get a Christmas hug?” He stared forward into the monitors as Reed fiddled with something and Valeria helped.
Her smile was photo-bright as she stared toward the camera. “Save mine for Steve,”
“Save mine for Carol.” He swore as a tiny venom blast jolted him through his armor.
Captain America made room for Luke Cage and Danny, for Jessica and little Dani, for Peter, for Sam, for the Fantastic Four and their family. He smiled. “Reed, explain how this works again?”
Reed’s head wobbled up from behind the massive television monitor, his hands working busily behind. “It’s a basic and really minor quantum synergy field, it’ll enable us to be live for our Christmas wish worldwide at midnight.”
Steve furrowed his brow. “Can’t you just broadcast that?”
Reed shook his head. “Well then it wouldn’t be live for everyone. It wouldn’t be Christmas when everyone received it, due to time zones and whatnot. That’s why we’re up here for the party. It’s very exciting. Admittedly the technology has better applications, but what better way to debut it to the world!” His neck retracted back behind the TV, humming in a jolly fashion.
Tony felt static wash over the room as the monitor picture went fuzzy.
“Hm?” Reed craned his head around as the face of a panicked young blonde woman appeared on the screen. Her smooth forehead was creased with worry, a black M carved over one eye.
“-op!” She implored, swatting at something in the background.
“Layla?” Reed puzzled at the monitor, his hands working frantically at the nearby keyboard.
Tony raised an eyebrow. “You know her?”
“She’s my babysitter,” he murmured. “Layla? Something the matter?”
Another face joined Layla’s on the screen, longish dark hair framing a rugged, tanned face. “-get him to stop. This connec---bullsh--”
“Ric! Get th--”
“--rying, Layla. Write it do--”
Tony felt Extremis dive for the connection like a wild dog, catching it and throttling it into compliance. A split second passed where Tony reached to stabilize the connection and fix the broadcast, and yet Layla and Rictor were screaming in his head. “Doomlocks!” she was shouting, rambling. “Doom’s screwed with Reed’s setup, without them this is going to be bad!”
Tony was talking to her out loud, shouting. The gathered turned from the monitor to look at him, trying to grasp more than just his end of the story. “What? Doomlocks? Layla, calm down, Reed and I have been running to detect things all night--”
“Then you’d better hold on, Tony Stark,” Rictor snapped. “’Cause you haven’t caught this.”
Reed Richards looked up. “Doomlocks? Chronal variance inhibitors? Shouldn’t be necessary, you’ve all been pre-emptively protected from the chronal variance of the broadcast, that’s not possible.”
Layla’s voice was intense, but entirely without panic. “Doom’s trying to make a fool of him, Tony! For the whole world to see. Pass it on.”
Tony cast a sidelong glance at Mr. Fantastic, his long limbs frantically making adjustments. The superheroes in the room began muttering, gathering. “Doom’s stealing Christmas? We doing this?” asked Luke, handing the baby to Jessica and cracking his knuckles.
Tony felt sweat prickle on his brow. “Reed. I’m not reading any chronal variance inhibitors in my system.”
“You may not, Tony, they’re largely biological and behave on the nanite level.”
“Reed, I’d still read that, do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”
“Well they’re meant to be entirely organic, Tony, they’re unreadable for security reasons-”
“Kzzkhhhh--” he responded cleverly. Tony gasped, outside of his own power, feeling something like an invisible hook latch right behind his belly button and the very strange feel of a sneeze played in reverse. Steve’s big hands grabbed his biceps as his whole body went board-stiff, Extremis’ readouts turning to lens flares in his brain.
“Hold on, soldier,” Steve was saying, going to one knee and catching Tony across it. “Just hang in there!”
Tony was staring through Steve, eyes wide, as Layla’s words went loud in his head. “Find us, Tony! We’re coming for you, just hang on!” He tried to ask her about herself, curious as to why Reed and Sue’s mutant babysitter had anything to do with Doom in the first place.
“Hnnnnnnsrrrrrrrrshhhhffffggg,” was what came out.
“Because I’m Layla Miller!” she shouted reassuringly from what sounded like the inside of a wind tunnel. “I know stuff!”
##
Tony came to as he had many times in his life, his forehead pressed against a cool, bleach-scented toilet seat. Though he’d been here before, he was in better straights now, and knew it. He had his sobriety, his wits about him. Wherever he was - whenever he was - it didn’t agree with him.
Absurdly he glanced into the bowl, between something out of curiosity and a search for evidence, and vomited again.
There were steps to this, an old pattern he hadn’t forgotten, where he’d spit, roll over and away, drag his mouth across his sleeve. His mouth was sour, the deep parts of his throat and sinuses burning with the toxic cocktail he’d just upchucked. He needed to get on his feet.
Getting on his feet proved more difficult than he’d like, lending credence to his theory of a concussion. The nausea, the sluggishness, the tilt-a-whirl ambience all said ‘concussion’ to him. He braced his hands on the toilet seat and replaced them with his elbows, first one, and then the other, sticking his hands into his hair. The press and scratch of checking himself for lumps and bumps didn’t reveal anything, but it did feel nice. “Mmph,” he grumped defeatedly, face falling into the crook of his elbow.
He nuzzled sleepily into the soft black fabric of his shirt for a moment, humming a few bars of ‘O Holy Night,’ which was stuck in his head for some absurd reason.
Reed. The holiday party. Steve and him at the holiday party. Oh god no. He knew no one would have drinks at the party, they were all too kind to tempt him, but Reed had an entire spaceship and Tony had a superhuman computer virus in his brain - the digital lock on Sue Storm’s chardonnay fridge wouldn’t have stood a chance. Or if Reed kept a few beers in his lab, or a liquor cabinet for whatever guests you entertained on a spaceship. He was drunk. And in someone’s else’s shirt.
He was so certainly throwing up drunk and so angry he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d opened his mouth again and a gout of flame had come out. He’d had this nightmare a thousand times, the anxiety of falling off the wagon, being so afraid to be tempted he’d replaced his mouthwash with some kids’ bubble gum flavored garbage because it didn’t have alcohol in it and avoided Logan entirely. And now, what. This? Merry Fucking Christmas, he thought, slamming his fist into the porcelain seat as he felt hot tears spring the corners of his eyes. And something miraculous happened.
Tony looked at his hand, and it wasn’t his own.
It was a man’s fist, sure, but coarser, older, with more wrinkles and scars than he was used to. He made a drunken noise, intrigued and pleased. Come to think of it now, he felt wiry all over, lean and compact, like any extra winter fat and a few pounds of muscle had been trimmed from him, and he was sore in spots where his joints felt sort of dry. And on the fourth finger, there was a simple titanium band - a wedding ring. No way was it him.
Logic dictates, Captain, something inside his brain prompted him, and he answered out loud. “Logic dictates, Captainnn-uh. Tha’s not me. M’not drunk. Someone else’s drunk.” Sure did sound like him, though.
He leapt to his feet, staggering a bit and bracing himself with a heavy lean on the sink’s ledge, the sort that was going to leave a bruise. Possible concussion, he reminded himself, deciding to look in the mirror anyway to make sure that whoever’s body this was, he’d be able to return it in one piece.
For a heart-stoppingly insane moment, Tony Stark thought he’d turned into his father. The face in the mirror bore the same lines as Howard’s had, the deep vertical crease between the eyebrows and deep frowning creases set into the corners of his mouth. His hair was marked with bursts of white at the temples, scattering through the rest for a slight salt and pepper effect. Even his goatee was streaked in white, though his body felt tired, more than aged.
And it was certainly his body. It was him, a Tony Stark if not the Tony Stark he was used to, or perhaps just later in life. Though when he looked critically at himself in that mirror, he couldn’t have been that much older, but this life had aged him very differently.
And this Tony drank. Which at first felt like a thrilling way to cheat and then quickly felt like an awful temptation that had to be dealt with as soon as possible. He turned the faucet on and stuck his mouth under it, gulping the metallic water in slurping mouthfuls.
“Sir?” The woman’s voice was familiar, heartbreakingly so, but lacking its typical disappointment. And it never called him ‘sir.’
“Peehh-snrrk,” he tried, turning to look and inhaling a gulp of faucet water through his nose. He coughed, which made the room spin, and rested his forehead on his arms a moment to regroup.
She crossed the bathroom in a few steps, reaching over neatly to press the button on top of the toilet and flush away his liquor-vomit. A moment later, a tiny disc sped into the room, busying itself over the mess on the floor. Tony snorted hard, rubbing his eyes. “Pepper. Y’look great. Not old...like me.” He swallowed and cleared his throat in an attempt to not sound drunk. From what he remembered of his drinking days, it helped to act sober. “Y’don’t look old and you got the little. The little Roomba to come. Hey little guy. Hey.” He nudged the little robot with his foot. It ignored him.
She did look great, movie-premiere and press-conference great, which for Pepper Potts, was pretty mind-blowing. Her skin was flawless-smooth, her lips the perpetually glossy peach of makeup commercials, her shirt unbuttoned to right below the diamond pendant she wore, dangling just-so. Her silver glasses perched on the bridge of her freckle-dusted nose, hair up with a pencil, her skirt giving just the right amount of wiggle to her walk. And as the reflection behind her eyes caught Tony’s gaze and Extremis responded in kind, he knew she was a robot.
“So I’m not-woah-” He stumbled a bit and she caught him, tucking her arm into his as they walked from the bathroom, back into his window-walled office. “M’not married to you.”
“No, sir.”
“Shouldn’t call me sir.” She was silent. “I didn’make you call me sir, though.” She sat him in his chair and turned a nearby shelf, pouring him a glass of water from a pitcher. He leaned forward suddenly. “Did I?”
She set the glass of water in front of him. “Drink, sir.”
This was weird. This was weird and it didn’t look like Pepper, not really, because it wasn’t frowning slightly and it was showing an awful lot of cleavage. He stared at the water a moment, watching ripples in the glass. She pulled a straw from a nearby cylinder and dropped it in the water. He raised his eyebrows, impressed. Must have been a JARVIS re-skin, it even displayed the same fuzzy logic that got JARVIS to understand that Tony would drink more water with a straw in the glass. He sucked it down. “Can you answer my question?”
“Yes sir.”
But why so stubborn? In what world would he program his helper-bot to be such an obstinate ass? A world, the thought swam up through his whiskey-pickled skull, where Tony gets drunk and needs to be babied. And has no one around to baby him.
For the first time, the silence of his office stood out to him. His desk and shelves lacked the shiny chrome frames packed with photos of friends from years past. Blueprints and formal plans for Avengers ideas typically stayed in the lab, but he always kept notepads nearby, his own office whiteboard was never clean like this one, without any mention of upgrades to Misty’s arm or Peter’s suits. The windows overlooking the city seemed wrong somehow, even from here. Tony grasped the water pitcher, attempting to refill his glass and making a mess until Pepper
(P.E.P.P.E.R? he thought absurdly) took it from him. She poured the water with exacting care and stood back, dead-eyed and beautiful. “Thanks,” Tony muttered, sipping the water down. He thought better of standing and pushed back in his chair, the wheels carrying him across the room until he bumped lightly into the plate glass window and choked on his water.
The city outside was a living nightmare, the red haze he’d drunkenly attributed to the sun’s rising or setting the result of brick dust and earth in the sky. Half-broken buildings made crenellations of the horizon, stone teeth jutting this way and that. Steel girders were bent with force and warped by heat, looking no stronger than bobby pins from this high up. The buses and cars looked like children’s toys, tossed about with a similar level of care and order. He shoved his water glass between his knees and press his hands against the glass, mouth agape.
“Who burned my city?” He turned to Pepper, the alcohol bringing tears and anger, the feelings turning his face into a tragedy mask.
“Not all of it is burned, sir. Some is merely fallen.”
He turned away from the cold absence in her words, stinging like he’d touched a NO2 canister. “Who did this, Pepper?”
Even as he asked, he saw the blue light move like a helicopter searchlight over the ground, hunting. As the massive armor came into view, Tony shook his head three, four times, squinting and trying to lean through the glass. Each boot of the stories-tall Iron Man suit spanned the body of a small sedan, the gold and red finish burned and bent away in large patches. It moved the way dinosaurs always moved on TV, the bipedal stalking of something intent on finding something much smaller, a hunter’s ready gait programmed into its massive legs. Tony’s hands flew to his face, he rubbed his goatee and the lines at the corners of his mouth, rubbing away the trembling in his lips. More lights shone at the back of the first armor as two more of the enormous suits came into view. They moved in the city like dogs in a pack, clearly in the role of defenders. They were almost like mecha from some Japanese cartoon. If it hadn’t been so completely horrifying, he might have sent the idea out to the Media department for immediate production as a Saturday morning cartoon.
Tony had the distinct idea that the children in this city, if there were any, didn’t watch many cartoons. He felt very, very far from home.
“Sir?” Pepper’s voice was measured and careful. “If you’d like to watch your Sentinels in action, there are much better readouts in the laboratory.”
She didn’t blink as the water glass hit the wall and shattered, and even turned up some nice jazz music to cover the sound of his sobs.
##
The shaking would not stop, and it was making any attempt at work quite impossible. Sobriety had come to him, finally, and he applauded his own cleverness at getting the AI to make him some hash browns and a smoothie before sleeping the rest of it off. He wouldn’t call that AI Pepper. It wasn’t Pepper. More to the point, it distressed him to think about where the real Pepper might have been. Belatedly, he realized this Tony probably didn’t get hangovers anymore. He remembered that well.
What he had was a terrible case of the shakes and a completely foul mood, and knew in that way only a miserable addict could that a drink would fix both.
The thought of bringing a drink to his lips nauseated him. He’d found that out for sure in a moment of weakness where he’d poured two fingers of scotch into one of the crystal glasses that seemed ever-present in this building. Leave it an alcoholic to make a ritual out of his addiction, to set up little altars everywhere to his own personal communion so he’d never be more than a room away from a drink.
He’d never realized how much scotch smelled like someone had put a cigarette out in it until that moment, and even so, the pull in him was strong enough to nearly drink it until that word ghosted through his thoughts again - Sentinels.
Specifically his Sentinels. It would have been enough to put him off of anything, much less the scotch.
So he stood in his lab and shook, the headache that was brewing from the tension in his jaw threatening to make him violent. Make you violent, Tony? He thought bitterly. Have you looked outside today?
Something about being a guest star from another dimension made his inner monologue a bit dramatic.
He’d spent the morning playing around in the lab, confirming his suspicions and frustrating himself entirely. The Sentinels were exactly what they sounded like - mutant-hunting Sentinel technology given shiny Starktech body work. As for the why of it, that was somewhere in the mess he’d made. Extremis, he’d discovered, didn’t much respond to this tech. Trying to jailbreak any of the devices had felt something like trying to understand nuanced Portuguese poetry with a basic conversational phrasebook. Once or twice he’d felt a little closer and backed out hurriedly when the tech responded too eagerly, swarming his mind. For now he was stuck with doing it the old fashioned way, running password after password check, dismantling and rerouting programs and pathways with all the precision of a sledgehammer. He’d found an analog keyboard in an old storage closet and plugged it in to a USB port, cracking his knuckles. Typing felt strange, because it had been some time since he’d done it, and because his fingers were sore in the cold office. If the Tony who had been here ever got back, he was going to have one hell of a mess to clean up. Tony glanced out the window. One more thing to add to his list.
The man who had been here was far from sentimental, but he was certainly paranoid. Either way, there was a wealth of data, thousands of photos and dozens of articles on anyone he’d ever been curious about. Steve, his mind sang out, but he quashed it, out of some kind of shame or duty, and looked up Pepper instead.
VIRGINIA POTTS, deceased.
Virginia “Pepper” Potts was a victim of the
Her date of birth, next of kin, and other basic information followed. The kind of minutiae that Tony could never remember when it was important, but would never forget, now.
He touched a shaky hand to his lips and typed in another name.
JAMES RHODES, deceased.
Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes was a victim of the initial
HAPPY HOGAN, deceased.
“Happy” Hogan was a victim of the initial incident responsible for
“I’m sorry,” he murmured against his fingers. These were his friends, his family, not heroes. Rhodey and Pepper could pilot a suit and Happy had a mean roundhouse, but they weren’t superheroes at heart. Rhodey was a soldier. Pepper was a leader. Happy was the perfect lieutenant. But they weren’t superheroes, and he always had been. He’d apologized for it so many times, even if he hadn’t been Tony, even if he’d been someone great like Steve, it wasn’t easy to be close to an Avenger. Even Steve missed birthday parties when he was off-world or trapped in a Hydra laboratory.
Stomach turning, he set his hands back to the keyboard, searching the names of those he knew would be alive.
MARIA HILL, deceased
NICHOLAS FURY, presumed decea-
CLINT BARTON, deceas-
BRUCE BANNER, dec-
This didn’t make sense. Sometimes heroes died. One or two at a time, they passed into the great beyond and always returned. Even Steve, whose death had almost destroyed super heroism as a whole, had come back. But never this many. Never all at once. He looked up at the ceiling, afraid even as he typed in another name.
STEVE ROGERS, de-
No. Not again. He sucked in a breath, ready to protest to the universe, to explain that this was wrong and Steve needed to be alive, he was sick and tired of this mistake. Instead he swore, slamming his balled fists against the keyboard and rattling the metal of the desk.
REDIRECTING QUERY.
DETHLOK, at large
Dethlok unit designation “Steve Rogers”
Tony raked his fingers through his white temples. At large? In what world were his friends and Avengers all dead, was Captain America no more, and Tony Stark alone in an ivory tower with a cold husk of an AI? He had been so intent on learning who was alive and who was dead he hadn’t stopped to find out why. He needed to search someone whose whereabouts wouldn’t scare him and process this whole mess like the leader he was.
TONY STARK, director of A.R.C. - Allied Resistance Corps
Next of Kin: Steve Rogers
The ring on Tony’s finger felt heavy as he fumbled his typing. That was ridiculous. And impossible. Tony’s next of kin would have had to have been the person he was married to - unless they were dead. His fingers flew over the keys rapidly, looking up Pepper’s file once more. Pepper would have all the answers. She always did.
VIRGINIA POTTS, deceased.
Virginia “Pepper” Potts was a victim of the initial incident responsible for the formation of the A.R.C. The near-extinction level event, perpetrated by reality-manipulating mutant Wanda Maximoff, remains the single most destructive event in human history.[4]
Tony clicked the footnote and watched as a video began to play.
He knew this. He’d seen this before, heard everyone’s tale of how it happened. His pulse beat loudly in his ears as he recognized it all in horror, but it made no sense. This had happened in his own world, too, the Scarlet Witch’s tears shining against her cheeks as she pleaded with Magneto, and Tony cringed as her lips opened.
“Daddy?”
Her voice was like a teakettle whistle, fluty and high-pitched yet teeming with the power beneath it.
“No more humans.”
##
Coffee hadn’t helped the shaking, but it kept him awake enough to admit defeat. Tony sat in his quiet office, watching the amber liquor swirl in the glass. He took it like cough medicine, cringing through each mouthful and following it with the rapidly cooling coffee in the mug beside. He knew what could happen if he went cold-turkey from the booze, and the last thing he needed was to be stuck here in this hellhole due to a seizure.
The alcohol made him feel tired and a little nauseous. How had he ever done this every day? The words before him swam as he tried to make sense of things. He stared at the heavy metal briefcase on the desk. Inside would be his armor, and though the desire to put it on and see what it could do was there, admittedly, it made Tony afraid. Afraid of how it would interact with Extremis, if it contained Sentinel technology. Afraid to confirm what he knew - he could put it on and fly for days, but he’d never get out of this reality that way. Afraid it would make him a target and he’d die here, alone and drunk.
Wanda’s actions had killed most of the human race. Mutants, he discovered with some searching, were largely fine, more than fine, in their own secure locations. He, Steve, Reed and his family, and a few others had been off-world or orbiting at the time of Wanda’s proclamation and found themselves quite alive and alone when they returned.
Oddly, tracing everything back to Wanda made sense of it somehow, in the way that he could stop trying to fix it. Wanda’s realities were nebulous, resistant places. Her stubbornness and power soaked through every aspect and left caution and care somewhere in the past. There was no point in trying to undo what Wanda had done. But he had to get out of here.
He’d also remembered the babysitter. Blonde hair, that M tattoo over one eye that matched her boyfriend’s - that girl was Layla Miller, and she was every bit as unexplainable and terrifying as the Scarlet Witch, as far as Tony was concerned. In the world Tony remembered, she’d been a part of X-Factor Investigations, a ragtag band of noir fanboys and Summers-hating depressives, some of whom had been personally victimized by Wanda Maximoff.
Layla knew stuff, so she said, and it made Tony simultaneously thrilled and sick to his stomach to think that she’d known where he’d end up so well that she’d insisted he come find her. So what, she knew the past, present, future, but couldn’t do a damn thing about it other than warn a guy? Mutants, he thought, more frustrated for them than at them, and went back to his work.
Oddly, with more alcohol in his system and a little more time, he’d been able to make acquaintances of his Extremis and whatever A.R.C.’s systems were used to responding to. He’d been able to draw up some info on X Factor and found some of them out. Interestingly, Layla Miller, the Multiple Man and Layla’s boyfriend Jamie Madrox, and their coworker, the earth-shaking manic-depressive Julio Richter, were listed at large. Many of the mutants Tony had known - X-Men and their allies - were listed as enemies or authorities, safe behind enemy walls.
It gave Tony more than a little peace of mind to know that his Resistance Corps was just that. He wasn’t a Sentinel-mastering hunter of the last vestiges of mutant kind, and this wasn’t the remnants of some Registration-borne war. Rather, he was, through no fault of his own, defending the last vestiges of humankind. His Sentinels protected him and those of his city. He was a refugee in a gilded cage, a last prince of a dying kingdom locked high in an ivory tower. You bastard, Tony toasted his future self. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It took the most basic of commands to set his Sentinels to tracking them, after all - what else would one send Sentinels to do?
His orders in place, his stories-tall armors prowling around the city, he found himself at a loss for things to do. So he poured a drink and searched through files, confirming what he’d suspected and wasn’t sure if he’d hoped or feared.
Steve Rogers and Tony Stark had exchanged wedding rings privately just before Wanda’s cataclysm. The end of things had seemed far away to them, miles above the earth’s surface, but war was the instant, immediate, necessary response. Tony could imagine Steve, ever the soldier, insisting they make it honest before they go into another battle, and the thought made him chuckle into his bourbon. He cleared his throat, unbuttoning his collar against the warmth of the liquor in his blood. It was a strange puzzle to put together, how two people fell in love.
He’d known what brought them together in his own world, a lot of heated arguments and careful apologies had led to a few angry tears and a few cautious embraces, and Tony’s absurd thought of why don’t guys kiss each other more often, anyway had led to something like an attack, his thumbs pressed into the tired hollows beneath Steve’s eyes and his mouth bruising Steve’s as the whole room went very hot.
Back home, they weren’t married, they weren’t anything. They were middle-school stupid, kissing when no one could see and pacing before they called each other for anything aside from business. Steve liked museums and baseball games, Tony liked movies, and hockey from the privacy of a box seat, and they both liked each other in that giddy way that seemed weird to talk about. So they didn’t. They went on not-dates and made out on couches and kept things polite and above-the-clothes, the way Tony imagined Captain America probably wanted it anyway.
Well, mostly, Tony grinned, spinning in his chair and staring at the ceiling a moment.
Truthfully, he was terrified to see Steve in this reality. Dethlok, he’d known a bit about in his own world, a monstrous cyborg fusion of advance technology and eldritch magics. It was that second part that frightened him, the potential for Steve to be under the control of Wanda, of Stephen Strange, of someone else who was so completely out of his own realm that he was unable to save him.
Tony didn’t know magic. But he’d take it apart just like he took apart anything else if it meant saving Steve.
##
“Sir.” P.E.P.P.E.R. entered the office, a vibranium coil wrapped in one of her vice-like hands. Collared on the metal leash were the three mutants he’d requested - Jamie Madrox, Layla Miller, and Julio Richter - and another, a redheaded fellow who could have passed for an action movie star but for the black star tattooed over one eye. Tony knew his name from the files - Shatterstar, and cocked his head curiously. Shatterstar wasn’t a mutant, but he wasn’t human, either. Jamie and Layla, for the most part, looked like he’d always known them to look - attractive, dressed like college students, and prone to a clever smugness that sort of begged for a solid smack across the face. Rictor, however, looked very different, cloaked in a heavy, rough spun garment that hooded his features and shadowed the dozens of strange tattoos curling over his skin. Beside him, Shatterstar caught eyes with Tony and flexed, bucked a little the way younger guys did when Tony talked to their girlfriends.
“Thanks for coming, guys,” Tony slurred, tossing his feet up on the table to peer at his catch.
“Fuck you, cabron,” rumbled Rictor in a voice that seemed to make the vents creak.
Layla sighed, blowing her bangs from her eyes. “Ric. I’m serious. We wouldn’t be here if I didn’t mean it was the right thing.” “None of us would be here if we were doing the right thing,” growled Shatterstar, fingers twitching.
Jamie winced, rolled his eyes. “Sto-op. Please? Can we just get it all out of our systems now? We don’t like Tony Stark, we don’t like being in chains unless someone buys us dinner, and we don’t like when Layla half-explains her plans. Good? We done?”
Tony took their silence as assent and clapped his hands. “Can I get anyone a drink?”
“Tony, I’m sorry you’re here,” blurted Layla, twisting her wrists in their cuffs. “I know you’re not the same Tony that’s supposed to be here and I told you to find me for a reason, and that reason is you want to go home.”
Tony furrowed his brow, staring into his glass a moment. He’d been worried sick about sounding crazy, wondered how to explain that to her, but she was Layla. She knew stuff. “Okay.” He cleared his throat. “How do you know all that?” “Because the Tony that is supposed to be here wanted a way out too, and he found one.” Her eyes were glossy and apologetic.
Tony set the bourbon glass down, his head swimming slightly. “How did he do that?”
Jamie raised his cuffed hands. smirking. “Hi. I’m sorry about that. He did this, actually. An out-of-phase version of myself showed up here. One from...well. Far as I can tell, the same world you’re from. So the Tony that’s supposed to be here talked to the me from the world you’re from and now you’re from the world that that Madrox was from and I’m the Madrox of this world, talking to that Tony.” He laughed.
Rictor grimaced. “What a mess.”
Tony sat down and stared at his glass a moment. While he’d been doing his best to take his drinks medicinally, for the sake of this body if not for the soul within it, this called for a drink. He took a long pull of his bourbon and exhaled warmly. “Okay. So how did that Madrox get home?”
Layla bared her teeth in an awkward smile. “So, I think he got home?”
“You don’t know?” Tony roared, hands colliding with the desktop in front of him.
“I know like I know everything else!” she pleaded. “I know like I know you were gonna be here. I knew you’d end up here and I don’t know why, but I think-” She glanced sidelong at Rictor and Shatterstar, and back to Tony. “I think it’s because of your connection to the Captain America of that world, and in this world you’ve got a similar connection, and he needs your help.”
“Because we were married,” Tony said flatly, biting at his fingernails.
Jamie Madrox let out a breath that he just barely kept from becoming a laugh. “What?”
Tony furrowed his brow at Layla. “I knew that,” she explained. “It was easy enough for me to pick up. But it isn’t public knowledge, though, you two.”
Tony bit his lips, looking everywhere in the room but at his four prisoners. “Okay. Cat’s out of the bag.”
Shatterstar grinned brightly. “Is that a common phrase for when two brave warriors consummate both their lusts for battle and each other’s touch?”
“No,” came four voices.
Shatterstar sniffed. “Very well.”
“Look.” Tony waved his hands as though he could physically clear the air. “I want to go home. If Steve needs me, I want to help him, too. How do I make that happen?”
Jamie raised his hands again. “Well,” he volunteered, “I had to die.”
The shadow came over them just before the window shattered, bathing the gathered in glittering shards of glass. The monster that landed beside Tony’s desk looked as much like Steve Rogers as the knockoff Captain America action figures that showed up overseas from time to time. Red and blue armor covered scarred tissue and exposed muscle, tubes winding from one input port to another and pumping fluid to his limbs like a spider’s. Any flesh on his face that would have made it appear full or human was long gone, thin scars giving him skeletal, bloodless lips and the half-sunken nose of a corpse. A metal helmet overlaid half his skull, the eye on that side replaced with an eerie red lens that cast a menacing glow. The voice that emerged from Steve Rogers, Dethlok unit was thick with distortion. “I’d be happy to oblige you, gentlemen.”
Tony tackled the briefcase and rolled under his desk as the cannon in Dethlok’s arm came to life, filling the room with heat and light. He heard Layla’s voice calling his name over the chaos, begging him to unlock their collars and cuffs. He sent Extremis toward it, feeling that magnetic pull again, that strange over-eager push into his mind from this world’s tech. Setting his jaw, he pulled away slightly, just long enough to hear Madrox’s strangled cry. Here goes nothing, and Extremis jumped, opening the floodgates between him and the tech of this world, for better or worse, salvation or corruption.
He heard the vibranium restraints click open and the high pitched powering charge that had to be Dethlok’s cannon. “Get out of here,” Tony heard Steve growl, loud enough to be heard over the sound of the briefcase responding to Extremis, flying open. “The four of you are non-human and therefore not targeted but will be accepted as collateral damage, do you understand? It’s more than you deserve.”
The lights flickered as steel girders creaked menacingly. “Go on,” Tony heard Rictor say. “Let’s bring the whole building down.”
The Iron Man suit, freed from its case, nearly tackled Tony in its eagerness to suit him up. Planting his boots on the ground, he felt strong for the first time since waking up in this place covered in his own vomit. He rose, planting his back against the underside of the desk and firing his repulsors to heave it in Dethlok’s general direction. It splintered in the heat of his cannon blast, shards raining on them both and clanging against Steve’s shield. “You’ve dragged me home when I got embarrassing at parties enough, Steve,” Tony quipped through the distortion of his facemask. “Time to return the favor.”
“Is this a party?” Steve’s grin was manic. The helmet crackled, sending purple forks of energy into his skull, the red glow of his missing eye glowing like an ember. “Hope I’m not interrupting.”
Tony laughed nervously. Steve didn’t usually banter back, and not with that wicked smile carved into his hollow features. “Not at all. You’re the guest of honor.” Steve easily deflected the repulsor blast that punctuated Tony’s comment with one of the shields soldered to his arms. It turned part of the ceiling to shrapnel and gave Steve an obstacle between them. Tony’s repulsors fired, landing in front of the X-Factor crew, putting himself between them and Steve.
“Listen, the four of you-” he turned momentarily, seeing the four he planned to address and seven other Madroces. “Okay, whatever, you guys need to get out of here.”
Layla and Rictor raised eyebrows at him as they chanted quietly, the faint violet sphere surrounding them becoming brighter and brighter. One of the Madroces snorted and hocked a loogie on Tony’s office floor before speaking in what sounded like a Boston accent. “Rictor and Layla have learned a few things from the Scarlet Witch,” he explained. “If they’re fuckin’ here it means they fuckin’ need to be.”
“Language,” another Madrox admonished quietly, apparently fascinated by Rictor and Layla’s witchcraft.
Tony locked eyes with Shatterstar from behind the mask. “And you’re staying too, I gather?”
Shatterstar’s laugh was completely insane and kind of inspiring. “Run from a battle? Leave Julio and my friends? And run from a battle?”
“Gotcha.” Tony launched a few repulsor jets from his palms, watching Dethlok bob and weave. Steve moved in that same velociraptor stride as the Sentinels, ducking across the floor to Tony. If the tech was his, there were a few things he could do, but he wasn’t about to try and find out while Dethlok was trying to blow holes in the walls and Rictor was threatening to bring the building down around them for his own amusement. What he needed was a way to immobilize Steve.
Dethlok charged the space between Shatterstar and Tony. Star’s blades crossed and shoved, not cutting into Dethlok’s armor but shoving him back. Tony followed with several repulsor blasts, sending the cyborg into the wall and dazing him for half a moment as the tech and the magic within him caught up. If only he’d just stay down.
Really, that’s what gave him the idea.
“Madrox!” Tony hollered. “Get your dupes on him. As many as you can!”
“Many as I can?” Jamie raised an eyebrow and stamped his foot a handful of times, a dozen identical Madroces popping into existence. “Not a problem.”
Dethlok was prepared to handle magic, martial arts, and technological prowess, he’d likely been loaded with probabilities and formulas, but there was a specific mathematical question that Tony was banking on Steve not expecting now. It had nothing to do with velocity or likelihood of operations, nothing to do with probability at all. It was a question he’d asked Bruce one time, over a cup of Bruce’s Kava tea that made his head spin – realistically, how many first graders do you think you could fight at once?
Thankfully, it seemed Madrox was trained in the art of first-grader-fu. Not one dupe was armed or equipped with anything more than a trenchcoat and a few dozen twins, but damn, did they know how to use it. Tony hovered beside Shatterstar, watching in amazement. Sure, Dethlok could lift a ton, but what was that, twenty-five Madrox duplicates? Easy. They could hold him down by smothering him alone, much to the screaming frustration of the Dethlok unit.
The duped rearranged themselves, each one planting a foot or a fist on Dethlok’s limbs and head, one or two planting their asses on his chest and legs. Iron Man hovered just above Steve’s mangled face. “Hey, Gulliver. The Lilliputians and I are here to help, okay?”
The violet light that seeped from Steve’s helmet moved over his face, warping his features like heat waves over pavement. His expressions changed like stills from a film, subtly different in each frame. He was enraged, then humiliated, then frightened – an expression Tony couldn’t recall ever seeing on Steve’s face. For a moment there was tenderness, his one good eye meeting Tony’s gaze through the mask, and then trust. That elusive, evasive thing between them, saying everything in silence Tony needed to hear – do what you have to do, Soldier. It was gone again just was quickly, hate masking his expression.
Iron Man knelt down and began dismantling Dethlok’s armor. “Tell Wanda I hit you,” Tony smirked, dodging the spit Steve aimed at his face.
##
The armor was unmistakably Starktech, getting it off of Steve had revealed that much. It had revealed a few other things, as well, though not as pleasant as Tony had hoped.
This Steve was gaunt. His muscles, which should have been chewed away by his starving body and superior metabolism, appeared artificially enhanced, but nothing was coming up on Tony’s readouts. No steroids, serums, or anything other than the healing factor Erskine’s serum gave him. But the energy required to not only maintain Steve’s muscle frame, but also to allow him to heal, was a pretty massive amount.
Without whatever it was the armor was pumping into him, he was somewhat stilled, at least enough to be strapped to an exam table with a couple vibranium cables and two dozen Madrox duplicates on watch.
Rictor was more helpful than had been expected, passing his hands over Tony’s samples and discarded armor bits, humming with low rumbles and confirming the source of the eldritch power to be the Scarlet Witch.
“So, you learned from her?” Tony asked, a spare bit of wire clenched between his back teeth.
“Yes.” Rictor’s voice always sounded like it came from the back of a cavern, like if you followed it around a corner it would either show you secrets or kill you.
Tony’s face wrinkled in disapproval. “You weren’t always tight with her, not where I’m from.”
“She’s an unpredictable monster, I’m not stupid.” He eyed Tony from under his hood, his eyes seeming to glow faintly.
“Well I notice you and your coterie aren’t with her now? Even though you seem to be all down with her sickness, or whatever.”
Rictor snorted, annoyed. “What?”
“Were you born like…this? Not just a mutant but-“
“But what?” Rictor spat. “Angry? Hispanic? Queer as a football bat? What, asshole?”
God damn if it wasn’t easy to piss this guy off. Tony rolled his eyes. “A wizard, Harry.”
Ric shrugged, folding his arms and perching on a bench. “Oh, that. Nah. Wanda’s able to teach some people. Layla learned her magic from Doom, before all this went down. After it did, I felt kind of lost…I got close to the Scarlet Witch for a time. Things were weird between me and ‘Star and I didn’t know what I was feeling.”
“Let me guess,” Tony muttered, pulling the wire from his teeth and using it to connect a circuit. “You didn’t think you were into ladies anymore, but your insatiable lust for power changed your mind?”
Despite himself, Rictor laughed a little. “Something like that. I don’t like ladies. I do like this,” he grinned, the metal screws and plates in the room vibrating slightly, rising half a foot from where they lay.
“Makes sense,” Tony exhaled, spinning on his toes to input a few commands. “Earth control, polar control, Maximoffs. So you didn’t dig being the Sorceress’ Apprentice?”
“I did not,” Rictor said flatly. The silence hung in the air a moment. “But we try and stay away from her and the other X-Fuhrers. Layla thinks it’s the right thing to do, and she’s the only compass we got. Some of us think we can talk her out of it. Wanda, not Layla.”
“Fuckin’ Wanda,” Tony sighed. He’d had better days with the Scarlet Witch, she was an Avenger, for god’s sake. And really, she wasn’t evil. She was lonely, and sensitive, and possessed of the coping skills of a hand grenade. ‘Talking her out of it’ wasn’t a bad idea when it came to saving the world.
“Okay, Ric. Here’s the plan. I think I can put this armor back on him and override the commands so that they’ll respond to Extremis instead of…the magic, Wanda stuff.” Tony waggled his fingers mystically.
Rictor nodded. “Layla and I think we got it. Between the two of us, we think we can pull him out of her control. It seems like it’s not an active link she’s got up, it’s just a passive response. Piece of cake, eh?”
Layla padded into the room in bare feet, jeans and her jacket, rubbing her eyes. “You guys ready for me yet?”
“Perfect timing,” muttered Tony amazedly. She definitely knew stuff.
Tony called the Iron Man armor to him, less eagerly this time. Still, it was like being greeted by an eager puppy as it claimed him, repulsors already warm enough to lift him off his feet. “Okay baby, I know. I’m nicer than your other daddy here. Madrox? You and the kids can let Mr. Lok out now.”
Rictor and Layla set about their work, laying handfuls of grey stones at compass points in the room, pulling out a few pouches and amulets that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a Renaissance Faire. Then again, it sort of matched Ric’s new getup.
Tony planted his feet against the office floor, reaching out like he was all set to receive a football pass. As expected, Dethlok sprinted down the hall, fueled by rage and tackled him perfectly, his skull fitting into Tony’s solar plexus. They rolled to the ground in a controlled spin, Tony calling the re-wired Starktech to grasp Steve at the scarred holes in his flesh where the armor was meant to attach. Confused but pleased, Dethlok used the turn to his advantage, batting Iron Man away with his now-defunct arm cannon.
Tony panted in his armor, calming his vitals. This wasn’t just serum-enhanced Captain America, the pinnacle of human perfection - this was something more. The purple that crackled over him was garbled from his readouts, but amidst the gobbledygook he was able to see more of what Rictor had claimed. This was certainly not any known physical energy source, it was magic.
Dethlok was on him like a panther from a tree, his armored frame crossing the room in one leap and landing on Tony’s chest with a pain that shook every last one of Tony’s nerves. Saliva shone at the corners of Steve’s mouth as he gasped furiously, victoriously. “It’s magic, Tony,” Steve panted as his metal fists closed around Iron Man’s throat and the metal began to give. “Something you could never give me. But I guess that’s not very romantic of me to say.” A laugh escaped the scarred slit of his mouth.
“Starktech, though,” Tony wheezed, clapping his gauntlets around the mismatched metal and flesh of Dethlok’s skulls, feeling Extremis pour into the hack job that was Steve’s armor. “That’s something I can handle.”
Dethlok sat up as his armor was breached, throwing Iron Man by his throat and rearing back like a lion stung by a bee.
It occurred to him, foggily, that this Starktech may never have seen Extremis. That was interesting, but not entirely relevant at the moment, not with Steve’s memories flooding his mind via the readouts.
Not Steve, who fought Wanda Maximoff as hard as any man alone could have before succumbing to her. Not Steve, whose blue, blue eyes had bulged and turned red as Wanda’s violet tendrils curled around his throat and he’d mouthed at Tony, run.
Steve’s readout on Extremis was impossibly strange, there was a layer, an overlay. At first it seemed like Wanda’s doing, perhaps, and then again - blurring and focusing – from violet static to two clear pictures. It was almost like 3D glasses, blue and red, and Tony refocused to see them both.
Both.
There were two of him in there.
Steve, and this was the part that made Tony’s breath catch in his throat, who was from the same world as Tony, who was still in there, fighting somewhere. For all that Tony had suffered in this world, he’d at least had his free will.
Tony repulsed and threw himself at Dethlok, arms around his waist, tackling, rolling. Dethlok spasmed, far from predicting this, violet slime coloring the froth that poured from between his lips. “Hey buddy,” said Tony, his face mask sliding back into his helmet as he repeated himself. “Hey buddy. It’s okay. I got you. She can’t beat this, what we got.”
Steve’s one blue eye caught his, and Tony saw the panic there, the hyperventilating and twitching all concealed in that one blue eye. “Tony-” His voice was clipped and frustrated, and frustrating. Boiling, burning, and pleading all in one.
“RICTOR, NOW!” Layla screamed, pointing where Dethlok lay twitching in Iron Man’s lap, his metallic limbs swarmed with Extremis’ power and the eldritch magic poisoning his brain. Rictor screamed, filling the room with a sickly purple glow, and the room went silent.
##
Tony felt like a child again. His room was dark; he’d been put to bed in his clothes, and in the other room, soft voices and music told him a party was still going on. He was fussy and sweaty, and his feet felt hot in his shoes. He stirred, stretching his arms around and feeling amazingly not-drunk. His fist collided with something solid, clothed in something soft.
“Nnrrrf,” the body beside his admonished, large and blonde and alive.
“Hey.” Tony whirled, bracing his arms on either side of Steve’s body, staring at his sleeping face, his closed eyes. “Hey. Hey! Super Soldier, c’mon. Earth to Captain America.”
Steve opened his eyes, reaching a hand up to brush Tony’s cheek. He seemed to stare at his hand, for just a moment. “I’m awake. You okay?”
“Was that just one hell of a bad dream?” asked Tony, seeking the warmth of Steve’s chest as his own sweat cooled on his skin.
“Hmm,” murmured Steve. “We’re still in space, you smell like bourbon, and I smell like diesel fuel, so I’m going to say no. That happened. We were all very worried for you.”
“Hmm,” Tony echoed, his brow furrowing even as his cheek pressed against the warm blue fabric of Captain America’s costume. “Do they know we’re back? The rest of them?”
“Probably not yet. But I think they know something happened and Reed’s trying to find us. When your Extremis shorted out the Doomlock, it seemed to blow Doom’s plans. He’s furious, so we’ve got work to do.”
“Boy, aren’t you informed,” Tony drawled.
“You went out before I did.”
“Did you come after me?” Tony felt really stupid, like a girl in really bad movie, asking questions like that with his head on Steve’s chest. Steve didn’t help much, his hand coming up to brush Tony’s dark hair. He felt, rather than saw, Steve’s smile.
“I did.”
“Why? I mean, how, is what I mean.” He cleared his throat.
It was in this moment they could have spilled everything, gushed tears and proclamations, made sloppy love in a back room on Reed Richard’s spaceship and they didn’t; instead, Steve just kissed the top of Tony’s head. Between them, the air was warm and sticky and quiet. “Well.” Steve’s throat sounded tight. “I guess I didn’t like the idea of you spending Christmas alone.”
It was enough.
“HELL YES,” shouted Peter Parker, unmistakably loud through the ship’s metal doors. “REED LANDED US IN THE GOBI DESERT AND IT’S SNOWING!”
Okay, so maybe it was perfect.
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ok ok this is beautiful. I LOVE this. A++ not just on a really great, well-written, well-characterized story, but on hitting so many little things that specifically make me very happy. yay!!
So it starts out IN SPACE with a SUPERHERO PARTY. yessssss. Peter, Carol, and Reed! I adore Reed, so putting him in a story with his totally insanely, adorably unnecessary use of tech like a quantum synergy field (basic and really minor!) so that their Christmas broadcast will be live for everyone... heeeeeee! :DDD
And then the mood goes from fluffy and Steve's big, sweater-warm arms, and Reed dropping a pile of Christmas presents, and Tony and Jessica being mutual jerks, and cookies to... a horrible post-apoc reality from that X-Factor story where robo!Pepper turns on jazz music when he drunkenly cries. Bodyswap + alternate universe!! I love how Tony figures it all out pretty quickly and starts to get to work on things (admittedly, alternate universes are pretty old-hat to most superheroes by now). Competent Tony warms my heart and I like the idea for a fixit for the Deathlok-Steve there (who was married to Tony, aw).... and 616-Steve came *after* 616-Tony! :DD The angst and superhero-ing makes the spaceship fluffiness more meaningful and precious, and also give us a taste of Steve and Tony in a different context than just domestic fluff. Which I love, but it deepens things a little we get them as brothers-in-superhero-arms as well.
Also: 1st-grader-fu!
I loved how this story showed the dynamic between 616 Steve and Tony. These guys aren't taciturn, but here they're more about actions and superhero-ing than overt declarations and relationship discussions. A big part of how they relate to each other is as superheroes/fighters/soldiers/comrades-in-arms/friends. The love/trust/history in Steve's "hold on, soldier", "do what you have to do, Soldier" and Tony's “Hey buddy. It’s okay. I got you. She can’t beat this, what we got.” How they just kinda fell into things with Tony's "why don’t guys kiss each other more often, anyway" thoughts (aaa that scene!! how just a few sentences be so lovely). Even the final scene where they *could* have gone one way with declarations and sloppy love making, but instead you drew it back. In the context of all their history and superhero-ing, Steve's head kiss and tight-throated “I guess I didn’t like the idea of you spending Christmas alone” made my heart feel like it was bursting. I love so many iterations of Steve and Tony, but omg did I feel like this story hewed beautifully close to 616-canon and it's (best moments of) characterization... but also with a happy Tony and Steve who were together!! And, though I often have the "no wait, let's have more talk about mushy stuff and emotions. NOW KISS" urge, I think the restraint here (but not so restrained that it verged into coldness) was really well-balanced, and gave the emotions and relationship moments a ton of power.
It might seem odd, but I also really appreciated how well-drawn the other characters besides Steve and Tony were, and that they were present! My knowledge of x-things Marvel isn't the best, but my vague memories + really good characterization carried these characters through. Layla, Madrox, Rictor, and Shatterstar all definitely had their own agendas and personalities and seeing them interact with Tony and each other was a joy. One of my fav things about the 616 verse is that it is so full of people constantly interacting in various ways. And seeing that wider world was great in making that context and world that Steve and Tony's relationship exists in.
Loved that this story is super-steeped in canon love!
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Plus, full of so many little details, canon and otherwise, that make the world seem very rich and real—the same crease that Howard had that he sees in the mirror, robo!Pepper's too-perfect appearance with a skirt that gives her just enough room for wiggle, the lack of photos and empty whiteboard (can I also say I had a little "yes!" moment at the mention of Misty's arm!! One of my fav Tony-tech details is that he built her arm!! And, aw, remember the happy days when Tony was making Peter suits?). And, it's not just the details, but since the pov is Tony-limited, it's also characterization that these are details *Tony* notices. Wah. And Tony's thoughts are often hilarious. That X-Factor Investigations is "a ragtag band of noir fanboys and Summers-hating depressives" is just... idk I had to take a moment to chuckle. And that when Deathlok-Steve bursts through, hi 1st instinct is to tell them to run, and that he thinks of them as *kids.* Oh man, that moment when Shatterstar flexes! heee! Tony's thoughts on Wanda, (which really could apply him as well, to some extent), on his friends, on his relationship to alcohol...
There were so many lovely, lovely gems of sentences here! It's hard to select favorites, since it's almost all of them, but a small selection of favs:
His expression was somewhere between someone’s hot dad and a golden retriever, eager to please and eager to play. (Though really I could c&p that whole kissing scene)
Logic dictates, Captain, something inside his brain prompted him (a Spock ref?)
Her voice was like a teakettle whistle, fluty and high-pitched yet teeming with the power beneath it.
Tony’s absurd thought of why don’t guys kiss each other more often, anyway had led to something like an attack, his thumbs pressed into the tired hollows beneath Steve’s eyes and his mouth bruising Steve’s as the whole room went very hot.
Back home, they weren’t married, they weren’t anything. They were middle-school stupid, kissing when no one could see and pacing before they called each other for anything aside from business
she was an Avenger, for god’s sake. And really, she wasn’t evil. She was lonely, and sensitive, and possessed of the coping skills of a hand grenade. ‘Talking her out of it’ wasn’t a bad idea when it came to saving the world.
“Why? I mean, how, is what I mean.” He cleared his throat.
Steve just kissed the top of Tony’s head. Between them, the air was warm and sticky and quiet. “Well.” Steve’s throat sounded tight. “I guess I didn’t like the idea of you spending Christmas alone.”
Finally, (whups I wrote a lot... the danger of this posted on a Sunday and me having a bunch of free time) I loved the relationship between Tony and Steve! The middle-school stupid they were about each other and Tony's usual cool suave-ness deserting him and Steve who will follow him (and yes man-handle him a bit THANK YOU dear author) and chest-lying on and head-kisses and <33
\o/
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Thank you so much for writing/posting/sharing! <3
Gobi Desert! <3 <3
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Anyhow, very well done, that.