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cap_ironman2010-02-19 07:28 pm
otherhazards.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2010-02-19 07:28 pm
Entry tags:
Knights of the Breakfast Table (Chapter 7)
Title: Knights of the Breakfast Table, Chapter 7 (sequel to ‘Juke Box Hero’)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
otherhazards
Beta:prettyarbitrary
Disclaimer: Neither the Marvel characters in this nor the titles, lyrics, artists, nor authors used are mine, but they sure are fun to borrow.
Rating: R
Universe: AU set in early 1970’s New York. Differs from 616 canon in that Tony inherited Stark Industries at age 18 rather than 21, and lost the company to Sunset Bain and his cousin Morgan Stark by the time he was 22. All other differences are butterfly-effect collateral from this.
Warnings: Graphic superhero violence.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony, (Co-starring Peter Parker, War Machine, Harry Osborne, the Green Goblin, Thor, Wanda, Pietro, and Warbird.)
Summary: Be careful what you teach.
===========================================================
Steve’s loft, 12:40 AM.
There was a muffled -thonk- on the window.
Steve looked up from pouring a glass of milk, and saw Peter clinging miserably to the nearest window frame. He was shivering, and his whole costume seemed a shade lighter than it was supposed to be. There was actually a rime of ice across the lower front of his mask from the condensation of his breathing.
“Peter-?”
Steve let him in, quickly.
Tony subconsciously heard the sound of the window opening, and went from dead asleep in Steve’s US Army sleeping bag to standing pressed up against the cold brick wall between two of the large windows in about a second and a half.
No gunfire. No grenade being thrown into the room. Nobody yelling at him in Vietnamese.
Okay, that was good.
Tony heard Peter’s voice and felt the chill of the room simultaneously. He hissed sharply through his teeth, and snatched the blue bathrobe off the floor.
“Steve, how did he know where-” Tony began, knotting the belt as he turned. He caught sight of Peter, and stared. “-Are you being followed?” Tony demanded, quickly.
Peter dropped to the floor inside with less grace than usual, but kept his footing. Steve put both hands on his shoulders, steadying him. The fabric of his costume felt damp, and it was frozen in places.
“-Uh-uh-h...” Peter replied, with a jerky shake of his head.
“Shower,” Tony ordered without raising his voice, “-Now.”
“-W-where?” Peter asked, looking up.
“Come on,” said Steve, steering him.
They got Peter into the bathtub and turned barely lukewarm water onto him, half-frozen costume and all. Peter bent his head under the spray of the shower and hugged his knees, thawing slowly. After a while he peeled off his mask, took a deep breath, and rubbed his face in his hands. Tony turned the water temperature up a few degrees and waited, watching him attentively. There was a fleck of frostbite on the end of the young man’s nose, and two small dots high on his right cheek, but nothing serious.
“So,” Tony began briskly, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and folding his arms, “-what the hell happened?”
“Fol-followed War Machine... Midnight Racer... Ea-East River,” Peter summarized.
“You fell in the East River?” Tony repeated.
Peter nodded.
“Well, let me know if you develop any new super-powers,” Tony said, only half kidding.
“That’s s-SO not funny...” Peter muttered
-
Steve came back in with cups of hot chocolate, and handed them each one. He remained standing in the doorway afterwards, pretty well blocking it.
“-Why don’t you start at the beginning, Peter,” Steve suggested calmly.
Peter sat dripping, in costume minus his mask, in a bathtub full of warm water.
In Captain America’s bathroom.
Drinking hot chocolate.
With his boss.
“This is not the strangest debriefing I’ve ever had...” Peter reminded himself, firmly. “-Okay, ahh... I was out- generally seeking evil on the hoof, and uh... I saw War Machine kind of hunkered down on the one of the World Trade Center towers. I mean, I heard him when he landed there, and then he began with the hiding.”
“Go on,” Steve frowned.
“I uh- -I figured he was looking for the Green Goblin and all, but then he took off after something without calling it in, so I... followed him. Turns out he stalks the Midnight Racer.”
“-Was there a battle?” Steve asked, quickly.
“No, you see, I don’t think the Racer knew War Machine was there, and War Machine didn’t know -I- was there, so it was like this chain- stalking- thing... ...Which makes me wonder if there was someone else behind me- -anyway, War Machine went up into the steelwork of the Williamsburg Bridge to watch the Racer, who was flying around East River Park and under the base of the bridge, And I was watching both of them, also on the bridge.”
“Why didn’t you call this in on our secure channel?” Tony asked, nonplussed.
“Well, I... wasn’t sure if War Machine would be able to pick that up,” Peter admitted.
“Peter, the frequency we communicate on isn’t even technically a radio wave anymore, -and- it would take an advanced degree in applied mathematics-“
“-It’s still an energy source, boss,” Peter argued.
“So get behind something, wait until a vehicle with a CB radio drives across, and use it for ECM cover,” Tony argued back, starting to get annoyed.
“That is a- fine idea, and it did occur to me,” Peter assured him, “-eventually. But the problem was there was -ice- under the bridge. And it fell off. And I webbed, but the angle was too low.”
Tony sighed, and took a drink from the cup in his hand absently, forgetting that it wasn’t coffee.
“Mmph-! ...Mm,” he glanced down at the cup dubiously, and dabbed his mustache with the edge of his bathrobe sleeve. “-Ahem. So, you fell in the river...”
“Yeah, but like I said I webbed, so I just climbed back up. And then I was freezing and my Spider-comm. was shorted out anyway, so I came here.”
“...Okay,” Tony nodded once thoughtfully, and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder.
“Why don’t you stay in here and finish getting scrubbed up,” Steve suggested kindly, in that way that wasn’t open for discussion.
“I’ll do that,” Peter agreed, “do you have a, um, towel or something?”
Steve got him one. It was olive green, with oddly simple stitching on both ends that made Peter mortally certain there were museum directors who would kill him for it with a clear conscience. But it was clean, so he asked no questions.
-
Tony leaned his hands against the brick windowsill, and waited out the uncomfortable silence until they heard the shower turn back on.
Steve sat back against the windowsill beside Tony, and re-folded his arms.
“This can’t go on,” he stated, flatly.
“I know. -This is my fault,” Tony sighed.
“Peter’s definitely picked up on the fact that you don’t trust War Machine, but I should have handled this problem when it first came up...”
“I don’t trust War Machine for several reasons, Steve,” Tony pointed out, “-and the fact that he didn’t call in seeing the Racer tonight is just one more on that list.”
“Well, I can’t exactly ask War Machine to fess up now, can I? Not without implying that I had him followed. ...Avengers have to trust each other, Tony.”
Then why the hell did you make HIM an Avenger?! Tony thought, frowning out at the dark bar of Central Park without really seeing it. Steve should have been halfway to the Williamsburg Bridge by now...
“What are you going to do about this?” Tony asked, aloud.
“I can’t have your team and my Avengers putting each other in the hospital,” Steve began grimly. “...So I’m going to ask you to work with War Machine until I can be sure that won’t happen.”
Tony’s silence was complete, shocked, and deadly.
Then slowly, he nodded.
Steve was -asking- him, not just slinging orders, and there was a great deal to be said for keeping your friends close and your enemies closer...
...As long as you sorted out which was which -first-.
-
Outside the Stark Industries complex, Long Island, NY. 2:11 PM (same day).
‘Black night it's not right,
I don't feel so bright,
I don't care to sit tight.
Maybe I'll find on the way down the line
that I'm free, free to be me.
Black night is a long way from home.
I don't need a dark tree,
I don't want a rough sea-’
“IRON MAN, THIS IS THE POLICE! PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HELMET, AND STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!”
“Oh brother...” Tony muttered, reaching up to shut off his helmet radio.
‘I can't feel, I can't see.
Maybe I'll find on the way down the-’
He turned around, hands on his helmet.
Wow.
Four black and whites, two unmarked, and a swat van that had all been shrewd enough to assemble quietly in the parking lot behind him sometime in the past two minutes, in complete radio silence. Curiouser and curiouser. Lots of small arms, two shotguns, a- -grenade launcher?!
“Screw this!” Tony fired his bootjets and shot straight upwards until the cars in the parking lot below looked like an assortment of small glass beads.
A firing order and hasty cross-chatter about resisting arrest and probable escape trajectories assaulted his ears. Something exploded down and to the left of him... and in two more heartbeats, he was well out of range.
“Ckcc- -Hey! This is Iron Man!” Tony yelled, speaking directly onto the police-band radio frequency. “Who’s in charge down there?”
“Lt. Graham Grady of the NYPD. You’re under arrest, Iron Man!”
“On what charges?” Tony asked.
“Violating a restraining order, and you just added resisting arrest! Don’t make that list longer-!”
“Okay, first, I was three hundred and FOUR yards from the fence, and second somebody’s trying to get your guys killed, and it ain’t me.”
“Kkrc--What’s -that- supposed to mean?” Lt. Grady demanded. “-Are you making a threat?”
“NO. I don’t shoot cops, Grady. You know it and I know it, but if I hadn’t taken off when I did, somebody probably would have caught a ricochet. Now who sent you out here to make the evening news, huh?”
“Don’t sugar-coat it son, you -ran-,” Lt. Grady snapped.
“Hang on a second-”
Tony left his right-hand radio on the police band, and re-tuned his left one.
“Kcc- -Iron Man to War Machine. Do you know your boss just called the cops on me out here?” Tony demanded, angrily.
“-Excuse me?” War Machine replied, after a pause.
“I’m ten thousand feet straight up from the spot where you last saw me, and there are some very confused cops on the ground. Can you come tell them its take-your-nemesis-to-work day?” Tony requested.
“Has anyone been hurt?” War Machine asked, quickly.
“Of course not, I took off.”
“I’ll be right th- -Sir, he-” War Machine’s protest was cut off in midsentense, and his transmission vanished.
“-War Machine?” Tony blinked, “kckk- -War Machine, come in!”
Nothing.
“Terrific. Okay, umm...” he re-tuned his right radio, and tried again, “kck- -Iron Man to Cap.”
Nothing.
“-Iron Man to Captain America, do you read me?” Tony repeated, with increasing unease.
“Cap here,” Steve replied, sounding worried.
“I’m outside the SI compound. Somebody called the cops on me, and I just lost contact with War Machine. He’s inside.”
“Casualties?” Steve asked.
“None out here, but I don’t know if WaAAH!- CHRIST!” Tony broke off with a yell, firing his jetboots at full power and zigzagging upwards in an evasive maneuver.
He could smell the oily chemical tang of the insulation foam of his armor overheating, and the points where metal touched his skin felt like they’d been left out for an afternoon under the Saharan sun.
“Iron Man?!”
“Sonofa- -I- -I’m okay,” Tony breathed, as the speed of his flight flash-cooled his armor plates, “-microwave beam, I’m above it now. Think it was fired from the roof of the SI compound. According to the script, I’m supposed to attack the building now...”
“Get out of there,” Steve ordered, “-we’re on our way.”
“Roger -that-,” Tony assured him, flying up and behind a massed cloudbank to the east.
“Iron Man, can you read me?” War Machine asked, as if he’d been repeating the question for some time.
“Where the hell have you been?” Tony demanded. “-Did you get attacked too?”
“I did not. I was passing through a shielded part of the facility. What’s your current status?” War Machine replied.
“You better call Cap, -now-. You and your bosses have a lot of explaining to do, starting with why ONE of you just tried to MICROWAVE me!” Tony snarled.
“...Acknowledged.”
The steel Avenger’s distorted voice seemed to pause strangely on the word, though whether it was from shock or simply choked with anger Tony couldn’t tell.
-
Steve’s loft, 9:37 PM (same day).
“-Substandard equipment heat malfunction, huh?” Tony fumed.
He took out the last retaining screw on one of his arm-guards, and slid the complex workings of the inner sleeve clear of the contoured, red-painted outer cylinder with a hard clank, “-bet he knows all about ‘substandard equipment malfunction’...” he set the outer armor sleeve down in it’s place on the plastic-sheeted floor beside him.
The clear plastic sheets were practically made-to-order for this. Technically they’d been covering an order of furniture to his right when he’d walked in the door, but they made great drop cloths, and the one taped around the table Tony had simply left on. Now an intricate and regular pattern of disassembled parts had spread onto three such drop cloths surrounding the base of the table, and the best part was, he could just pick up all the plastic corners and -run- if he had to.
The furniture was good too. Tony detected Jan’s hand in that.
He spotted another patch of partially coalesced wiring insulation up near the wrist cuff, and swore, fluently.
“-That goddamn hack...” Tony sighed, jotting down the wiring information on the back of a flyer that had come with the furniture. “-Why couldn’t he just leave well enough alone... ...tried to fucking kill me... ...microwave the wax out of his pointy little mustache... ...lazy turd...”
He set the inner armor sleeve down on the drop cloth to his left, and lifted the chestplate up onto the table with a muffled clang.
“Morgan... -oh who am I kidding, this has the Queen of the Goths written all over it... Hm. Wonder if Sunset’s made a play for War Machine by now?”
Flush-mounting hex bolts on the outside edge, and a handful of internal-wrenching camlocks underneath.
“Bet he’s got more taste...”
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen...
“Cog-chasing slut...”
The inner layer of the chestplate came apart in eight different puzzle-like sections that had always reminded him of a tortoise shell. He pulled the two canon plugs for the inner LTF panel out of their protective recesses, and unscrewed them.
“Dodged the bullet on that one...” Tony snorted, “-no empire is worth her...”
Electrical connector plugs disconnected, he hit the mesh framework of the LTF panel with the heel of his hand, just above the edge of the insulation foam.
“Can’t even remember to tell the chauffer to take her kid straight home from school when there’s a SWAT team all over the company lawn...” Tony scowled.
Knocked loose, the panel slid free easily enough with a brief screech of steel.
“Poor kid... Even her own lackey thought that move was déclassé...”
Tony set the LTF panel down on the table some distance away, and began disconnecting the CTF panel right next to hole from the first one.
“Hot chauffer, though...” he mused, “-wonder how Morgan got -that- hire past her holiness...”
More tools would be nice. He could have asked War Machine. No, no way in hell, it would be an insult if that question succeeded. Hell, the tools would probably be bugged. He would have to microwave them to be sure. Probably kill the microwave, and oh yeah, Steve didn’t plan on getting one. What if microwaving didn’t do the trick? What kind of metal circuitry would survive being - Crystal. Crystal grown or glass poured around breadboard-style conductive pathway striping... like a clear breadboard. ...A circuit that was designed to melt while in use. God, what would the conductivity of molten metal be? Perfect unbroken contact. Have to shield it. Gel. Gel from one of those heat/cold packs? Those were -designed- to be heated, and the outer interface wires would produce the necessary-
The door opened, but it had opened for someone who had a key, and that light, almost casual booted tread was unmistakably Steve’s. Tony kept sketching out the details of his invention- -inventions, now- on the open space left on the back of the flyer.
“Saving the world?” Steve asked, leaning a hand against the table.
He was wearing his tan trench coat unbuttoned over his costume, and he looked tired in a way that would have been difficult for a stranger to see.
“Melting microchips,” Tony replied, without looking up.
“-Right,” Steve placed a small kiss against the side of Tony’s neck just because he could, then walked past him towards the kitchen.
-
Steve’s loft, 2:51 AM (next day).
Steve mumbled something in his sleep, and twitched uneasily.
Tony finished fitting the end of a wire into the connector plug he was rebuilding, and put it down. Steve had pulled the mattress out of the furniture huddle earlier, and fallen asleep on it without putting the bed frame together. His dreams seemed to have darkened since then, however...
The trouble was, Steve Rogers was almost as much of a ‘living weapon’ as Danny Rand. Tony’s usual method of waking Steve up from a nightmare involved throwing a pillow at him from a distance, but... Huh. They did need a lot of basic things for this place. He’d have to look into that later.
Tony took his thermal shirt off, and flicked it at Steve’s knee. More twitching, muttered words Tony couldn’t catch. He tried it again.
“Aaah!” Steve did a quick and improbable twist of his body, grabbed empty air where the shirt had been a moment earlier- and woke up.
He looked over at Tony and the dangling shirt, then shut his eyes and sighed. Tony came closer and sat down on the side of the mattress.
“...You okay?” He asked, after a long moment.
Steve took a steadying breath.
“The- Red Skull was attacking my basic training barracks. Gas attack. Only- -there was a different Platoon there than the one I trained with, and Bucky and Peter’s friend Harry were in it. There was yellow smoke everywhere, and- Tony, they hadn’t been issued gas masks yet. They wouldn’t have known what to -do- with them, except for Bucky, and he didn’t...”
Tony put a hand on the middle of Steve’s back, and left it there. He didn’t talk.
“I had a gas mask though,” Steve continued, his voice tight, “-I thought if I fought the Skull- gave Bucky a chance to get the others clear... but the Red Skull had chained the doors from the outside, and I-I didn’t know- and it got quiet. I thought they must have made it out, but then I stepped back and tripped over a body- his eyes were still open- and then I saw more...”
“Hey-” Tony shook him gently, “...didn’t happen, right?”
“-You’re right,” Steve said after a moment, collecting himself.
Tony frowned uncomfortably. That hadn’t been what he was trying to say at all.
“I...” Tony broke off, and swore. “...D-6,” he added, quietly.
Steve’s half-asleep mind took a moment to translate that, but he’d memorized the jukebox’s playlist codes months ago, and D-6 was ‘The Ghost Song’, by The Doors.
Steve turned, gathered Tony up in a hug, and spoke softly but clearly.
“Awake.
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity
First thing you see...”
Tony waited for a few moments.
“-I love how you stop there...” He smirked, finally.
“You were waiting for the part about couples racing naked on the beach?” Steve asked.
“Well- -yes. But I think you got my point,” Tony admitted.
“Loud and clear, Captain.” Steve said, and put his chin down on Tony’s shoulder.
-
Steve’s loft, 6:48 AM (same day).
Peter came in with an irregularly crumpled brown paper grocery bag in his arms. There was a fibrous sheen across one mangled corner that suggested it had been discreetly repaired with web.
“You got them?” Tony asked, getting up quickly. He was unshaven, and wearing the same green fatigue pants and oatmeal-colored thermal shirt he’d had on the day before.
“Right, here, boss.”
“Bless you. Gimmie,” Tony reached for the bag.
“There is a matter of payment where payment is due...” Peter reminded him.
Tony muttered under his breath, and dug a five and a ten out of his wallet, handing them over. The bag changed hands. Tony reached in, retrieved a smaller paper bag sealed with masking tape, and ripped the top off of it without ceremony. He began matching the new electrical connector plugs inside to a series of unmarked wire bundles laid out as if for some occult ritual on the plastic drop cloth to his left.
“T-8687... T-85....”
“You look busy,” Peter decided, “-I’m going to help myself to breakfast. Do you mind?”
“No, go ahead,” Tony replied, “-T-109... T-45... T-45B...”
Some time later, he heard a sizzle as butter met pan. Tony looked up, his face perfectly blank.
“-What?” Peter asked, “-I’m making eggs.”
“Nothing,” Tony blinked, “-continue.” -He returned to his wiring.
A short time later, he caught a scent.
“-Is that cheese?” Tony asked.
“Yes, why?”
“No, no, no, you put the cheese in -later-...” Tony objected.
“Well, it’s working,” Peter countered.
“Fine. Whatever,” Tony plugged in the soldering iron, and threaded the wiring in another connector while it came up to temperature.
He heard the slight grind of a can opener, looked up to see Peter opening a can of stewed tomatoes, and gave up.
Whatever it was, Peter ate quickly and left.
When he got up three hours later to refresh his cup of coffee, Tony glanced into the pan out of morbid curiosity. There was some left...
Eggs and tomatoes, how very British. Jarvis would have approved.
Weird.
Tony glanced out the windows consciously, then picked up a piece of the concoction in his fingers, and tried it.
Oh yeah. Peter had definitely mistaken the melting cheese for runny egg and let things cook too long, but... overall... could have turned out a lot worse. Tony finished the leftovers with four quick sweeps of his fingers, and returned to the table, coffee cup in hand.
-
Indoor shopping mall, Soho, NYC. 1:29 PM (same day).
Chuck Easton had been on shift for four and a half hours when he got the call. He’d seen a lot in his tenure as a security guard there, and he was prepared for thieves, punks, tweakers, lost children, vagrants, irate customers, and the occasional gang-member...
It was to his credit therefore, that he stood his ground, feet apart and gun held firmly in both hands with barely a tremble... with the Green Goblin bearing down on him.
The Goblin flew through the mall like some untimely Halloween specter, swooping between the height of the upper and lower floors through the open air of the mezzanine as shoppers on both levels screamed around him. He sliced through a hanging ‘thanksgiving day sale’ banner, angling the glider so that one of the razor-sharp front fairings parted the cable from which it hung with a sharp twang. The ends of the cable snapped apart with the violence of thin steel whips, lashing against the sides of the upper mezzanine as the banner fell, and the Green Goblin’s pace hadn’t even slowed.
The Goblin laughed insanely, laughed somehow over the entire mall’s PA system, and reached eagerly into the orange bag held open in his left fist.
Easton’s world narrowed to just that hard, demonically leering visage as the Green Goblin’s purple-gloved hand drew back with a pumpkin bomb held high, and he fired.
Five times his gun kicked in his hands, the sound of each shot clear and louder than anything else in his ears. As his finger was tightening around the trigger a sixth time, Easton was hit with a flying tackle from the side and his shot went wide, passing through the coat-sleeve of a fleeing shopper and plowing into the wall beyond.
An explosion rocked the mall from where Easton had been standing a moment earlier, and threw him and his rescuer skidding across the smooth-polished floor.
“Are you crazy?!” Richards, one of the other mall cops yelled in Easton’s face. Richards’s skin was red with the exertion of running for the tackle, and his sad comb-over was sticking up at a forty-five degree angle. “Quit trying to be a hero and RUN you idiot!”
“-Did I get him?” Easton asked, blearily.
“No, you didn’t do diddly! Now come ON!”
Together they staggered up, and ran for the exit through a pale haze of shattered marble like everyone else. Loud over the sound of the blaring building alarms, the Green Goblin was still laughing.
-
Steve’s loft, 1:34 PM (same day).
“Cap to Iron Man!-krrc-”
Tony grabbed his recently-reassembled helmet off the floor, and keyed the mic.
“Ckkk-Iron Man here.”
“The Green Goblin’s attacking the indoor mall in Soho,” Steve told him shortly, “-what’s your ETA?”
“I- -give me fifteen minutes,” Tony replied quickly.
“Roger that. Cap out.”
Tony let go of the radio button, and seized his screwdriver.
-
Outside the mall, 1:35 PM (same day).
War Machine angled in for a touch-down beside the entrance to the mall, and noticed something strange on his radar. Lots of blips converging in on his position, that was to be expected... but also two moving away terribly, terribly fast. And with Iron Man down for maintenance and Warbird within sight and coming in -towards- him, there were only two players left in this game that could -move- that fast.
War Machine took off in a new direction, pushing his bootjets to the very outer edge of their range.
If his targets just kept jinking around like that...
-
Peter saw War Machine brake and streak off, and -almost- followed him without thinking about it.
War Machine was a good guy. Supposedly. But he bird-dogged the Midnight Racer, and if what Luke had learned about the fire at the Goblin’s hideout had been correct, the Racer was the- -oh, the heck with it...
Peter flung out a web-line and followed the heavily armed Avenger anyway.
“Spider-Man to Cap, War Machine’s bugging out!” Peter reported urgently, over the secure channel, “-did you tell him to do that?”
“Krcc- -around the back. GO. -Say again, Spider?”
“War Machine. He took one look at the mall parking lot, and -bolted-. I’m on ‘im, but he’s faster than me...” Peter explained.
There was a long moment of dead air, and when Steve’s voice returned, it sounded a shade harder.
“No, and he’s not answering his radio. Break contact and get to the highest vantage point you can. Try and see what War Machine’s chasing, or what point he’s making for,” Steve ordered.
“-On it.”
Peter threw a new line, yanked back on it, and let go as soon as he had enough forward momentum. He webbed a second line around a flagpole on a hotel, and rode the stretching, clear thread upwards before letting go near the top of the arc, gaining twelve stories.
-
Inside the mall, 1:38 PM (same day).
The halls were choked with dust from the explosions, and a fire had started somewhere, adding the futuristic tang of burnt plastic to the scent of war Steve knew all too well.
The Avengers were moving through the reek in pairs, searching. Wanda and Pietro spoke in his ear, unseen. Warbird was a shadow against the skylights above, on her own outside.
At Steve’s side, Thor moved with an air of quiet competence, as befitted a slayer of giants. In the stories often he’d told, there had been other fumes, other mists...
Unlike the frost giants however, the Green Goblin had a reputation for taking hostages... temporarily.
-
Steve’s loft, 1:39 PM (same day).
“Ckcc- -Iron Man to Spider man.”
“Um. Yes?” Peter replied, surprised.
“Talk to me. Tell me what you see,” Tony instructed.
“Krrk- -Okay... I’m fifty five stories up, and I’m watching a battle way uptown. Three fliers. One of them is War Machine, and the other two -both- move like the Green Goblin, but I’m pretty sure one of them is the Midnight Racer. Because they can’t both be the Goblin, especially since the Avengers have been playing tag with the Green Goblin in the mall. So there could be three, actually...” Peter trailed off.
“Has anyone gotten a hold of War Machine yet?” Tony asked, finishing a line of screws on the back of his chestplate and flipping it over.
“No.”
“Hrm,” Tony frowned thoughtfully. He was working with his helmet on, faceplate pushed up. “-Who’s fighting who, in the aerial battle?”
“That is a very good question. I’m not sure. I mean, it looked like War Machine and one of the others against the third in the beginning, and then it was the two glider-guys against War Machine, and then one of the probably-glider-guys clipped the other, and then War Machine magic-missiled him-”
“Ckcc- -Spider-” Tony began, warningly.
“-Unibeamed-, I mean. Anyway- ...whoa, um... Boss? They’re headed back this way...?”
“Where are they now?” Tony asked, threading the magnetic coupling of his wrist-seal together with a quick, practiced spin.
“Over the North end of Central Park, I think...” Peter replied, as if he was leaning off the side of the building and squinting.
“You’ve got your other channel on the Avengers frequency, right? What’s been going on inside the mall?” Tony prompted, briskly.
“Quicksilver is knocked out, but they think he’ll be okay. Wanda hexed the Goblin’s glider out of action, and they’ve got him pinned down in the food court, but he has two hostages,” Peter related.
“Okay, where are the fliers now?” Tony asked.
“South end of the Park. Wait- -they’re going west- -hang, on-” Peter’s channel went silent for sixteen agonizing seconds. “-Yeah,” he began when he came back on, “-they turned off into- -looks like Hell’s Kitchen. Oh, ouch! I hope the top story of that building was empty...”
“Keep talking,” Tony instructed, reaching for the last panel.
-
Inside the mall/Steve’s loft, 1:45 PM (same day).
“Krkk- -Iron Man to Cap.”
“-Go ahead,” Steve said, touching the base of his left wing.
“What’s your status?” Tony asked.
“We’ve got one of the hostages back, but I can’t talk long.”
“Can you use me?”
“No. Find War Machine,” Steve ordered.
“...And do what?” Tony asked, carefully.
“Crcck- -Tell me who he’s fighting, and back him up if you can do so in good conscience,” Steve replied.
“...ETA forty five seconds,” Tony promised, as the magnetic seals of his armor locked around him with a rippling clank.
He slapped his faceplate down, and launched out the window.
-
Hell’s Kitchen, 1:45 PM (same day).
For the first time, the Midnight Racer’s black leathers held a splash of color.
It was a long red slash, running from a hands’ breadth to the right of the center of his chest, to the outer edge of his right shoulder. Blood didn’t show up well against black leather. It absorbed, spread, and slid off with the wind shear of his movements.
The line showed when the Racer moved though, cut leather flexing open and he leaned into the air in from of him, and braked, body twisting with near-unbelievable speed as he turned, braked, leaned sideways, cut right angles against the walls of buildings, pushed over the top, anything to stay one step ahead.
War Machine was having a hell of a time not catching the Midnight Racer in his line of fire. The Green Goblin was worse, though. Targeting solution after targeting solution failed with a nugatory red blink as the villain flew, evaded, -played- him.
Hunting and being hunted, pursuing and controlling the chase with contemptuous ease, the Goblin kept -just- out of range, intent on taking the Midnight Racer apart, slice by slice...
An friend for an eye, a block for a building... but blood for blood was a theme that just couldn’t be improved upon...
-
Tony had seen enough.
He fired an electromagnet on a high-tensile tow cable from a launcher hidden in the plating on his right forearm. The magnet stuck, nearly making the Goblin’s glider crash into the side of a brick chimneystack. The Goblin whipped something that flashed silver out of his billowing purple sleeve, and sliced the steel cable, freeing himself. Without pausing, the villain backhanded the bat-like shriuken in the Midnight Racer’s direction. It cut low, spinning with a force that had to be more than the simple force of the throw, and sliced a shallow line across the back of the Racer’s left calf, sending him temporarily off course.
Behind his faceplate, Tony’s mouth tightened.
Two armored targets attacking, one soft target running, and this Goblin had -still- attacked the one target he could blood easily.
“Crk- -Iron Man to Cap,” Tony said, deadly calm as he tracked the Goblin through a hairpin turn.
“-Cap here,” Steve replied in his earpiece.
“I’ve got the real Green Goblin in front of me. -Hell’s Kitchen.”
“That explains Paulie,” Steve replied shortly, “-I’m sending Warbird ahead. We’ll be there soon.”
“-Rodge.”
1:46 PM.
The Green Goblin wasn’t liking the way the odds were shifting. He WANTED the Midnight Racer. He wanted him dead in so many ways. That sneaking, thieving, indecisive, no talent amateur had cost him more than just his warehouse hideout. He’d cost him...
He’d fucking MISSED!
True, Spider-man was probably behind this -somehow-... but the Racer had tricked him, had made him take revenge on the wrong people -first-, like a fool...
And now he had the Iron dogs of war on his tail, and the Racer was right in front of him-
But oh-
Oh, he could use this...
The tools following him didn’t know who the Midnight Racer was, but if they thought like the Avengers usually did, that wouldn’t even -matter-.
He would leave such a mark here... such a stain on the pavement of their minds that would never wash clean.
He cornered the Racer against the side of a building, taking a brief chance, but War Machine missed, his reversed hand repulsors tearing out the re-bar in the wall behind the Goblin, narrowly missing-
The Midnight Racer arced straight up along the wall, one step ahead of the Green Goblin, and finally mis-judged the physics. Wishing alone wouldn’t stop gravity, and it was such a fine detail, so easy to forget with graphic, grisly death a fraction of a second behind him...
The Racer fell.
Straight down off his rocketing hover-board, and straight into the arms of the Green Goblin.
1:46 ½ PM.
Tony saw the Midnight Racer fall, and it was nothing like slow motion. It was cancelled inertia, a moment when time stood still, then engaged again with all the subtlety and grace of an igniting afterburner. The Green Goblin grabbed sky, and Tony went after him, and the Goblin whipped out another of his bat like blades, ripped the face-shield off of the Midnight Racer’s black motorcycle helmet, and-
-stopped, stunned, and let go.
Tony hit the Green Goblin and knocked him off his glider, slamming the villain upwards thirty feet above the skyline and catching him by the back of his tattered purple tunic...
The blow shouldn’t have finished him, yet somehow it had.
The Green Goblin hung insensible in the grip of Tony’s gauntlet, and after a long moment, Tony realized that the man wasn’t faking.
War Machine rose in front of him silently, the Midnight Racer cradled in his arms like a broken toy.
Iron Man and War Machine regarded each other for a long, tense moment.
Tony glanced down first, and through the hole where the Racer’s tinted visor had been, he recognized the face of Peter’s friend Harry Osborne.
He couldn’t process that just yet.
“I believe this is yours sir,” War Machine told him, “-may I propose a trade?”
Tony looked down at the Green Goblin. He still half expected the villain to wake up and began fighting again...
But... the Goblin was truly gone, even if the man was breathing.
Tony reached behind the Green Goblin’s point-eared metal mask, and felt the scratch of a catch. He pressed it, and removed the mask, letting the monstrosity fall to the cracked pavement far below.
“Oh, Jesus...” Tony swore, looking into the slack face of Norman Osborne.
War Machine waited, silent.
Tony’s radar beeped as it picked up a new blip from the southeast, probably Warbird.
“You were following the Racer to get to Norman, weren’t you,” Tony stated.
“Yes,” War Machine replied.
“-Why?” Tony asked, flatly.
“Because SHIELD takes care of its own, one way or another,” War Machine told him.
Tony was silent for a long moment, looking first at War Machine’s dark eye-slits, and then at the unconscious confusion on Harry’s face. He was almost awake now...
“-Deal,” Tony said shortly, and offered War Machine the Green Goblin at arm’s length.
-
St. Vincent’s Hospital, NYC, 2:23 PM (same day).
Peter came into the room with his ‘Fantastic Four’ t-shirt on inside out.
Tony looked up, the shadows beneath his eyes from the night before somehow having deepened.
Harry lay in the trimly made bed between them, looking pale and unconscious.
“How is he?” Peter asked, without prelude.
“He’s-” Tony paused, swallowed. “-He’s probably going to be okay, but they’re not sure what the Goblin did to him. There’s something in his system that-” Tony broke off, and looked Peter in the eyes, “-do you have any idea what that might be?”
“No. I swear,” Peter promised. “-Is it that thing you found at the burned-“
“-Yeah,” Tony cut him off, “...probably.”
“...Has anybody called his dad yet?” Peter asked, worried.
“Yeah. But uh... SHIELD hasn’t gotten back to them yet,” Tony replied, too-carefully.
A silence fell, and Peter came around to Tony’s side of the bed.
Peter took Harry’s left hand in both of his, and though he didn’t waken, Harry’s fingers closed slightly.
The steady beat of the heart monitor was the only sound in the room.
---
Author:
otherhazards Beta:
prettyarbitrary Disclaimer: Neither the Marvel characters in this nor the titles, lyrics, artists, nor authors used are mine, but they sure are fun to borrow.
Rating: R
Universe: AU set in early 1970’s New York. Differs from 616 canon in that Tony inherited Stark Industries at age 18 rather than 21, and lost the company to Sunset Bain and his cousin Morgan Stark by the time he was 22. All other differences are butterfly-effect collateral from this.
Warnings: Graphic superhero violence.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony, (Co-starring Peter Parker, War Machine, Harry Osborne, the Green Goblin, Thor, Wanda, Pietro, and Warbird.)
Summary: Be careful what you teach.
===========================================================
Steve’s loft, 12:40 AM.
There was a muffled -thonk- on the window.
Steve looked up from pouring a glass of milk, and saw Peter clinging miserably to the nearest window frame. He was shivering, and his whole costume seemed a shade lighter than it was supposed to be. There was actually a rime of ice across the lower front of his mask from the condensation of his breathing.
“Peter-?”
Steve let him in, quickly.
Tony subconsciously heard the sound of the window opening, and went from dead asleep in Steve’s US Army sleeping bag to standing pressed up against the cold brick wall between two of the large windows in about a second and a half.
No gunfire. No grenade being thrown into the room. Nobody yelling at him in Vietnamese.
Okay, that was good.
Tony heard Peter’s voice and felt the chill of the room simultaneously. He hissed sharply through his teeth, and snatched the blue bathrobe off the floor.
“Steve, how did he know where-” Tony began, knotting the belt as he turned. He caught sight of Peter, and stared. “-Are you being followed?” Tony demanded, quickly.
Peter dropped to the floor inside with less grace than usual, but kept his footing. Steve put both hands on his shoulders, steadying him. The fabric of his costume felt damp, and it was frozen in places.
“-Uh-uh-h...” Peter replied, with a jerky shake of his head.
“Shower,” Tony ordered without raising his voice, “-Now.”
“-W-where?” Peter asked, looking up.
“Come on,” said Steve, steering him.
They got Peter into the bathtub and turned barely lukewarm water onto him, half-frozen costume and all. Peter bent his head under the spray of the shower and hugged his knees, thawing slowly. After a while he peeled off his mask, took a deep breath, and rubbed his face in his hands. Tony turned the water temperature up a few degrees and waited, watching him attentively. There was a fleck of frostbite on the end of the young man’s nose, and two small dots high on his right cheek, but nothing serious.
“So,” Tony began briskly, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and folding his arms, “-what the hell happened?”
“Fol-followed War Machine... Midnight Racer... Ea-East River,” Peter summarized.
“You fell in the East River?” Tony repeated.
Peter nodded.
“Well, let me know if you develop any new super-powers,” Tony said, only half kidding.
“That’s s-SO not funny...” Peter muttered
-
Steve came back in with cups of hot chocolate, and handed them each one. He remained standing in the doorway afterwards, pretty well blocking it.
“-Why don’t you start at the beginning, Peter,” Steve suggested calmly.
Peter sat dripping, in costume minus his mask, in a bathtub full of warm water.
In Captain America’s bathroom.
Drinking hot chocolate.
With his boss.
“This is not the strangest debriefing I’ve ever had...” Peter reminded himself, firmly. “-Okay, ahh... I was out- generally seeking evil on the hoof, and uh... I saw War Machine kind of hunkered down on the one of the World Trade Center towers. I mean, I heard him when he landed there, and then he began with the hiding.”
“Go on,” Steve frowned.
“I uh- -I figured he was looking for the Green Goblin and all, but then he took off after something without calling it in, so I... followed him. Turns out he stalks the Midnight Racer.”
“-Was there a battle?” Steve asked, quickly.
“No, you see, I don’t think the Racer knew War Machine was there, and War Machine didn’t know -I- was there, so it was like this chain- stalking- thing... ...Which makes me wonder if there was someone else behind me- -anyway, War Machine went up into the steelwork of the Williamsburg Bridge to watch the Racer, who was flying around East River Park and under the base of the bridge, And I was watching both of them, also on the bridge.”
“Why didn’t you call this in on our secure channel?” Tony asked, nonplussed.
“Well, I... wasn’t sure if War Machine would be able to pick that up,” Peter admitted.
“Peter, the frequency we communicate on isn’t even technically a radio wave anymore, -and- it would take an advanced degree in applied mathematics-“
“-It’s still an energy source, boss,” Peter argued.
“So get behind something, wait until a vehicle with a CB radio drives across, and use it for ECM cover,” Tony argued back, starting to get annoyed.
“That is a- fine idea, and it did occur to me,” Peter assured him, “-eventually. But the problem was there was -ice- under the bridge. And it fell off. And I webbed, but the angle was too low.”
Tony sighed, and took a drink from the cup in his hand absently, forgetting that it wasn’t coffee.
“Mmph-! ...Mm,” he glanced down at the cup dubiously, and dabbed his mustache with the edge of his bathrobe sleeve. “-Ahem. So, you fell in the river...”
“Yeah, but like I said I webbed, so I just climbed back up. And then I was freezing and my Spider-comm. was shorted out anyway, so I came here.”
“...Okay,” Tony nodded once thoughtfully, and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder.
“Why don’t you stay in here and finish getting scrubbed up,” Steve suggested kindly, in that way that wasn’t open for discussion.
“I’ll do that,” Peter agreed, “do you have a, um, towel or something?”
Steve got him one. It was olive green, with oddly simple stitching on both ends that made Peter mortally certain there were museum directors who would kill him for it with a clear conscience. But it was clean, so he asked no questions.
-
Tony leaned his hands against the brick windowsill, and waited out the uncomfortable silence until they heard the shower turn back on.
Steve sat back against the windowsill beside Tony, and re-folded his arms.
“This can’t go on,” he stated, flatly.
“I know. -This is my fault,” Tony sighed.
“Peter’s definitely picked up on the fact that you don’t trust War Machine, but I should have handled this problem when it first came up...”
“I don’t trust War Machine for several reasons, Steve,” Tony pointed out, “-and the fact that he didn’t call in seeing the Racer tonight is just one more on that list.”
“Well, I can’t exactly ask War Machine to fess up now, can I? Not without implying that I had him followed. ...Avengers have to trust each other, Tony.”
Then why the hell did you make HIM an Avenger?! Tony thought, frowning out at the dark bar of Central Park without really seeing it. Steve should have been halfway to the Williamsburg Bridge by now...
“What are you going to do about this?” Tony asked, aloud.
“I can’t have your team and my Avengers putting each other in the hospital,” Steve began grimly. “...So I’m going to ask you to work with War Machine until I can be sure that won’t happen.”
Tony’s silence was complete, shocked, and deadly.
Then slowly, he nodded.
Steve was -asking- him, not just slinging orders, and there was a great deal to be said for keeping your friends close and your enemies closer...
...As long as you sorted out which was which -first-.
-
Outside the Stark Industries complex, Long Island, NY. 2:11 PM (same day).
‘Black night it's not right,
I don't feel so bright,
I don't care to sit tight.
Maybe I'll find on the way down the line
that I'm free, free to be me.
Black night is a long way from home.
I don't need a dark tree,
I don't want a rough sea-’
“IRON MAN, THIS IS THE POLICE! PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HELMET, AND STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!”
“Oh brother...” Tony muttered, reaching up to shut off his helmet radio.
‘I can't feel, I can't see.
Maybe I'll find on the way down the-’
He turned around, hands on his helmet.
Wow.
Four black and whites, two unmarked, and a swat van that had all been shrewd enough to assemble quietly in the parking lot behind him sometime in the past two minutes, in complete radio silence. Curiouser and curiouser. Lots of small arms, two shotguns, a- -grenade launcher?!
“Screw this!” Tony fired his bootjets and shot straight upwards until the cars in the parking lot below looked like an assortment of small glass beads.
A firing order and hasty cross-chatter about resisting arrest and probable escape trajectories assaulted his ears. Something exploded down and to the left of him... and in two more heartbeats, he was well out of range.
“Ckcc- -Hey! This is Iron Man!” Tony yelled, speaking directly onto the police-band radio frequency. “Who’s in charge down there?”
“Lt. Graham Grady of the NYPD. You’re under arrest, Iron Man!”
“On what charges?” Tony asked.
“Violating a restraining order, and you just added resisting arrest! Don’t make that list longer-!”
“Okay, first, I was three hundred and FOUR yards from the fence, and second somebody’s trying to get your guys killed, and it ain’t me.”
“Kkrc--What’s -that- supposed to mean?” Lt. Grady demanded. “-Are you making a threat?”
“NO. I don’t shoot cops, Grady. You know it and I know it, but if I hadn’t taken off when I did, somebody probably would have caught a ricochet. Now who sent you out here to make the evening news, huh?”
“Don’t sugar-coat it son, you -ran-,” Lt. Grady snapped.
“Hang on a second-”
Tony left his right-hand radio on the police band, and re-tuned his left one.
“Kcc- -Iron Man to War Machine. Do you know your boss just called the cops on me out here?” Tony demanded, angrily.
“-Excuse me?” War Machine replied, after a pause.
“I’m ten thousand feet straight up from the spot where you last saw me, and there are some very confused cops on the ground. Can you come tell them its take-your-nemesis-to-work day?” Tony requested.
“Has anyone been hurt?” War Machine asked, quickly.
“Of course not, I took off.”
“I’ll be right th- -Sir, he-” War Machine’s protest was cut off in midsentense, and his transmission vanished.
“-War Machine?” Tony blinked, “kckk- -War Machine, come in!”
Nothing.
“Terrific. Okay, umm...” he re-tuned his right radio, and tried again, “kck- -Iron Man to Cap.”
Nothing.
“-Iron Man to Captain America, do you read me?” Tony repeated, with increasing unease.
“Cap here,” Steve replied, sounding worried.
“I’m outside the SI compound. Somebody called the cops on me, and I just lost contact with War Machine. He’s inside.”
“Casualties?” Steve asked.
“None out here, but I don’t know if WaAAH!- CHRIST!” Tony broke off with a yell, firing his jetboots at full power and zigzagging upwards in an evasive maneuver.
He could smell the oily chemical tang of the insulation foam of his armor overheating, and the points where metal touched his skin felt like they’d been left out for an afternoon under the Saharan sun.
“Iron Man?!”
“Sonofa- -I- -I’m okay,” Tony breathed, as the speed of his flight flash-cooled his armor plates, “-microwave beam, I’m above it now. Think it was fired from the roof of the SI compound. According to the script, I’m supposed to attack the building now...”
“Get out of there,” Steve ordered, “-we’re on our way.”
“Roger -that-,” Tony assured him, flying up and behind a massed cloudbank to the east.
“Iron Man, can you read me?” War Machine asked, as if he’d been repeating the question for some time.
“Where the hell have you been?” Tony demanded. “-Did you get attacked too?”
“I did not. I was passing through a shielded part of the facility. What’s your current status?” War Machine replied.
“You better call Cap, -now-. You and your bosses have a lot of explaining to do, starting with why ONE of you just tried to MICROWAVE me!” Tony snarled.
“...Acknowledged.”
The steel Avenger’s distorted voice seemed to pause strangely on the word, though whether it was from shock or simply choked with anger Tony couldn’t tell.
-
Steve’s loft, 9:37 PM (same day).
“-Substandard equipment heat malfunction, huh?” Tony fumed.
He took out the last retaining screw on one of his arm-guards, and slid the complex workings of the inner sleeve clear of the contoured, red-painted outer cylinder with a hard clank, “-bet he knows all about ‘substandard equipment malfunction’...” he set the outer armor sleeve down in it’s place on the plastic-sheeted floor beside him.
The clear plastic sheets were practically made-to-order for this. Technically they’d been covering an order of furniture to his right when he’d walked in the door, but they made great drop cloths, and the one taped around the table Tony had simply left on. Now an intricate and regular pattern of disassembled parts had spread onto three such drop cloths surrounding the base of the table, and the best part was, he could just pick up all the plastic corners and -run- if he had to.
The furniture was good too. Tony detected Jan’s hand in that.
He spotted another patch of partially coalesced wiring insulation up near the wrist cuff, and swore, fluently.
“-That goddamn hack...” Tony sighed, jotting down the wiring information on the back of a flyer that had come with the furniture. “-Why couldn’t he just leave well enough alone... ...tried to fucking kill me... ...microwave the wax out of his pointy little mustache... ...lazy turd...”
He set the inner armor sleeve down on the drop cloth to his left, and lifted the chestplate up onto the table with a muffled clang.
“Morgan... -oh who am I kidding, this has the Queen of the Goths written all over it... Hm. Wonder if Sunset’s made a play for War Machine by now?”
Flush-mounting hex bolts on the outside edge, and a handful of internal-wrenching camlocks underneath.
“Bet he’s got more taste...”
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen...
“Cog-chasing slut...”
The inner layer of the chestplate came apart in eight different puzzle-like sections that had always reminded him of a tortoise shell. He pulled the two canon plugs for the inner LTF panel out of their protective recesses, and unscrewed them.
“Dodged the bullet on that one...” Tony snorted, “-no empire is worth her...”
Electrical connector plugs disconnected, he hit the mesh framework of the LTF panel with the heel of his hand, just above the edge of the insulation foam.
“Can’t even remember to tell the chauffer to take her kid straight home from school when there’s a SWAT team all over the company lawn...” Tony scowled.
Knocked loose, the panel slid free easily enough with a brief screech of steel.
“Poor kid... Even her own lackey thought that move was déclassé...”
Tony set the LTF panel down on the table some distance away, and began disconnecting the CTF panel right next to hole from the first one.
“Hot chauffer, though...” he mused, “-wonder how Morgan got -that- hire past her holiness...”
More tools would be nice. He could have asked War Machine. No, no way in hell, it would be an insult if that question succeeded. Hell, the tools would probably be bugged. He would have to microwave them to be sure. Probably kill the microwave, and oh yeah, Steve didn’t plan on getting one. What if microwaving didn’t do the trick? What kind of metal circuitry would survive being - Crystal. Crystal grown or glass poured around breadboard-style conductive pathway striping... like a clear breadboard. ...A circuit that was designed to melt while in use. God, what would the conductivity of molten metal be? Perfect unbroken contact. Have to shield it. Gel. Gel from one of those heat/cold packs? Those were -designed- to be heated, and the outer interface wires would produce the necessary-
The door opened, but it had opened for someone who had a key, and that light, almost casual booted tread was unmistakably Steve’s. Tony kept sketching out the details of his invention- -inventions, now- on the open space left on the back of the flyer.
“Saving the world?” Steve asked, leaning a hand against the table.
He was wearing his tan trench coat unbuttoned over his costume, and he looked tired in a way that would have been difficult for a stranger to see.
“Melting microchips,” Tony replied, without looking up.
“-Right,” Steve placed a small kiss against the side of Tony’s neck just because he could, then walked past him towards the kitchen.
-
Steve’s loft, 2:51 AM (next day).
Steve mumbled something in his sleep, and twitched uneasily.
Tony finished fitting the end of a wire into the connector plug he was rebuilding, and put it down. Steve had pulled the mattress out of the furniture huddle earlier, and fallen asleep on it without putting the bed frame together. His dreams seemed to have darkened since then, however...
The trouble was, Steve Rogers was almost as much of a ‘living weapon’ as Danny Rand. Tony’s usual method of waking Steve up from a nightmare involved throwing a pillow at him from a distance, but... Huh. They did need a lot of basic things for this place. He’d have to look into that later.
Tony took his thermal shirt off, and flicked it at Steve’s knee. More twitching, muttered words Tony couldn’t catch. He tried it again.
“Aaah!” Steve did a quick and improbable twist of his body, grabbed empty air where the shirt had been a moment earlier- and woke up.
He looked over at Tony and the dangling shirt, then shut his eyes and sighed. Tony came closer and sat down on the side of the mattress.
“...You okay?” He asked, after a long moment.
Steve took a steadying breath.
“The- Red Skull was attacking my basic training barracks. Gas attack. Only- -there was a different Platoon there than the one I trained with, and Bucky and Peter’s friend Harry were in it. There was yellow smoke everywhere, and- Tony, they hadn’t been issued gas masks yet. They wouldn’t have known what to -do- with them, except for Bucky, and he didn’t...”
Tony put a hand on the middle of Steve’s back, and left it there. He didn’t talk.
“I had a gas mask though,” Steve continued, his voice tight, “-I thought if I fought the Skull- gave Bucky a chance to get the others clear... but the Red Skull had chained the doors from the outside, and I-I didn’t know- and it got quiet. I thought they must have made it out, but then I stepped back and tripped over a body- his eyes were still open- and then I saw more...”
“Hey-” Tony shook him gently, “...didn’t happen, right?”
“-You’re right,” Steve said after a moment, collecting himself.
Tony frowned uncomfortably. That hadn’t been what he was trying to say at all.
“I...” Tony broke off, and swore. “...D-6,” he added, quietly.
Steve’s half-asleep mind took a moment to translate that, but he’d memorized the jukebox’s playlist codes months ago, and D-6 was ‘The Ghost Song’, by The Doors.
Steve turned, gathered Tony up in a hug, and spoke softly but clearly.
“Awake.
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity
First thing you see...”
Tony waited for a few moments.
“-I love how you stop there...” He smirked, finally.
“You were waiting for the part about couples racing naked on the beach?” Steve asked.
“Well- -yes. But I think you got my point,” Tony admitted.
“Loud and clear, Captain.” Steve said, and put his chin down on Tony’s shoulder.
-
Steve’s loft, 6:48 AM (same day).
Peter came in with an irregularly crumpled brown paper grocery bag in his arms. There was a fibrous sheen across one mangled corner that suggested it had been discreetly repaired with web.
“You got them?” Tony asked, getting up quickly. He was unshaven, and wearing the same green fatigue pants and oatmeal-colored thermal shirt he’d had on the day before.
“Right, here, boss.”
“Bless you. Gimmie,” Tony reached for the bag.
“There is a matter of payment where payment is due...” Peter reminded him.
Tony muttered under his breath, and dug a five and a ten out of his wallet, handing them over. The bag changed hands. Tony reached in, retrieved a smaller paper bag sealed with masking tape, and ripped the top off of it without ceremony. He began matching the new electrical connector plugs inside to a series of unmarked wire bundles laid out as if for some occult ritual on the plastic drop cloth to his left.
“T-8687... T-85....”
“You look busy,” Peter decided, “-I’m going to help myself to breakfast. Do you mind?”
“No, go ahead,” Tony replied, “-T-109... T-45... T-45B...”
Some time later, he heard a sizzle as butter met pan. Tony looked up, his face perfectly blank.
“-What?” Peter asked, “-I’m making eggs.”
“Nothing,” Tony blinked, “-continue.” -He returned to his wiring.
A short time later, he caught a scent.
“-Is that cheese?” Tony asked.
“Yes, why?”
“No, no, no, you put the cheese in -later-...” Tony objected.
“Well, it’s working,” Peter countered.
“Fine. Whatever,” Tony plugged in the soldering iron, and threaded the wiring in another connector while it came up to temperature.
He heard the slight grind of a can opener, looked up to see Peter opening a can of stewed tomatoes, and gave up.
Whatever it was, Peter ate quickly and left.
When he got up three hours later to refresh his cup of coffee, Tony glanced into the pan out of morbid curiosity. There was some left...
Eggs and tomatoes, how very British. Jarvis would have approved.
Weird.
Tony glanced out the windows consciously, then picked up a piece of the concoction in his fingers, and tried it.
Oh yeah. Peter had definitely mistaken the melting cheese for runny egg and let things cook too long, but... overall... could have turned out a lot worse. Tony finished the leftovers with four quick sweeps of his fingers, and returned to the table, coffee cup in hand.
-
Indoor shopping mall, Soho, NYC. 1:29 PM (same day).
Chuck Easton had been on shift for four and a half hours when he got the call. He’d seen a lot in his tenure as a security guard there, and he was prepared for thieves, punks, tweakers, lost children, vagrants, irate customers, and the occasional gang-member...
It was to his credit therefore, that he stood his ground, feet apart and gun held firmly in both hands with barely a tremble... with the Green Goblin bearing down on him.
The Goblin flew through the mall like some untimely Halloween specter, swooping between the height of the upper and lower floors through the open air of the mezzanine as shoppers on both levels screamed around him. He sliced through a hanging ‘thanksgiving day sale’ banner, angling the glider so that one of the razor-sharp front fairings parted the cable from which it hung with a sharp twang. The ends of the cable snapped apart with the violence of thin steel whips, lashing against the sides of the upper mezzanine as the banner fell, and the Green Goblin’s pace hadn’t even slowed.
The Goblin laughed insanely, laughed somehow over the entire mall’s PA system, and reached eagerly into the orange bag held open in his left fist.
Easton’s world narrowed to just that hard, demonically leering visage as the Green Goblin’s purple-gloved hand drew back with a pumpkin bomb held high, and he fired.
Five times his gun kicked in his hands, the sound of each shot clear and louder than anything else in his ears. As his finger was tightening around the trigger a sixth time, Easton was hit with a flying tackle from the side and his shot went wide, passing through the coat-sleeve of a fleeing shopper and plowing into the wall beyond.
An explosion rocked the mall from where Easton had been standing a moment earlier, and threw him and his rescuer skidding across the smooth-polished floor.
“Are you crazy?!” Richards, one of the other mall cops yelled in Easton’s face. Richards’s skin was red with the exertion of running for the tackle, and his sad comb-over was sticking up at a forty-five degree angle. “Quit trying to be a hero and RUN you idiot!”
“-Did I get him?” Easton asked, blearily.
“No, you didn’t do diddly! Now come ON!”
Together they staggered up, and ran for the exit through a pale haze of shattered marble like everyone else. Loud over the sound of the blaring building alarms, the Green Goblin was still laughing.
-
Steve’s loft, 1:34 PM (same day).
“Cap to Iron Man!-krrc-”
Tony grabbed his recently-reassembled helmet off the floor, and keyed the mic.
“Ckkk-Iron Man here.”
“The Green Goblin’s attacking the indoor mall in Soho,” Steve told him shortly, “-what’s your ETA?”
“I- -give me fifteen minutes,” Tony replied quickly.
“Roger that. Cap out.”
Tony let go of the radio button, and seized his screwdriver.
-
Outside the mall, 1:35 PM (same day).
War Machine angled in for a touch-down beside the entrance to the mall, and noticed something strange on his radar. Lots of blips converging in on his position, that was to be expected... but also two moving away terribly, terribly fast. And with Iron Man down for maintenance and Warbird within sight and coming in -towards- him, there were only two players left in this game that could -move- that fast.
War Machine took off in a new direction, pushing his bootjets to the very outer edge of their range.
If his targets just kept jinking around like that...
-
Peter saw War Machine brake and streak off, and -almost- followed him without thinking about it.
War Machine was a good guy. Supposedly. But he bird-dogged the Midnight Racer, and if what Luke had learned about the fire at the Goblin’s hideout had been correct, the Racer was the- -oh, the heck with it...
Peter flung out a web-line and followed the heavily armed Avenger anyway.
“Spider-Man to Cap, War Machine’s bugging out!” Peter reported urgently, over the secure channel, “-did you tell him to do that?”
“Krcc- -around the back. GO. -Say again, Spider?”
“War Machine. He took one look at the mall parking lot, and -bolted-. I’m on ‘im, but he’s faster than me...” Peter explained.
There was a long moment of dead air, and when Steve’s voice returned, it sounded a shade harder.
“No, and he’s not answering his radio. Break contact and get to the highest vantage point you can. Try and see what War Machine’s chasing, or what point he’s making for,” Steve ordered.
“-On it.”
Peter threw a new line, yanked back on it, and let go as soon as he had enough forward momentum. He webbed a second line around a flagpole on a hotel, and rode the stretching, clear thread upwards before letting go near the top of the arc, gaining twelve stories.
-
Inside the mall, 1:38 PM (same day).
The halls were choked with dust from the explosions, and a fire had started somewhere, adding the futuristic tang of burnt plastic to the scent of war Steve knew all too well.
The Avengers were moving through the reek in pairs, searching. Wanda and Pietro spoke in his ear, unseen. Warbird was a shadow against the skylights above, on her own outside.
At Steve’s side, Thor moved with an air of quiet competence, as befitted a slayer of giants. In the stories often he’d told, there had been other fumes, other mists...
Unlike the frost giants however, the Green Goblin had a reputation for taking hostages... temporarily.
-
Steve’s loft, 1:39 PM (same day).
“Ckcc- -Iron Man to Spider man.”
“Um. Yes?” Peter replied, surprised.
“Talk to me. Tell me what you see,” Tony instructed.
“Krrk- -Okay... I’m fifty five stories up, and I’m watching a battle way uptown. Three fliers. One of them is War Machine, and the other two -both- move like the Green Goblin, but I’m pretty sure one of them is the Midnight Racer. Because they can’t both be the Goblin, especially since the Avengers have been playing tag with the Green Goblin in the mall. So there could be three, actually...” Peter trailed off.
“Has anyone gotten a hold of War Machine yet?” Tony asked, finishing a line of screws on the back of his chestplate and flipping it over.
“No.”
“Hrm,” Tony frowned thoughtfully. He was working with his helmet on, faceplate pushed up. “-Who’s fighting who, in the aerial battle?”
“That is a very good question. I’m not sure. I mean, it looked like War Machine and one of the others against the third in the beginning, and then it was the two glider-guys against War Machine, and then one of the probably-glider-guys clipped the other, and then War Machine magic-missiled him-”
“Ckcc- -Spider-” Tony began, warningly.
“-Unibeamed-, I mean. Anyway- ...whoa, um... Boss? They’re headed back this way...?”
“Where are they now?” Tony asked, threading the magnetic coupling of his wrist-seal together with a quick, practiced spin.
“Over the North end of Central Park, I think...” Peter replied, as if he was leaning off the side of the building and squinting.
“You’ve got your other channel on the Avengers frequency, right? What’s been going on inside the mall?” Tony prompted, briskly.
“Quicksilver is knocked out, but they think he’ll be okay. Wanda hexed the Goblin’s glider out of action, and they’ve got him pinned down in the food court, but he has two hostages,” Peter related.
“Okay, where are the fliers now?” Tony asked.
“South end of the Park. Wait- -they’re going west- -hang, on-” Peter’s channel went silent for sixteen agonizing seconds. “-Yeah,” he began when he came back on, “-they turned off into- -looks like Hell’s Kitchen. Oh, ouch! I hope the top story of that building was empty...”
“Keep talking,” Tony instructed, reaching for the last panel.
-
Inside the mall/Steve’s loft, 1:45 PM (same day).
“Krkk- -Iron Man to Cap.”
“-Go ahead,” Steve said, touching the base of his left wing.
“What’s your status?” Tony asked.
“We’ve got one of the hostages back, but I can’t talk long.”
“Can you use me?”
“No. Find War Machine,” Steve ordered.
“...And do what?” Tony asked, carefully.
“Crcck- -Tell me who he’s fighting, and back him up if you can do so in good conscience,” Steve replied.
“...ETA forty five seconds,” Tony promised, as the magnetic seals of his armor locked around him with a rippling clank.
He slapped his faceplate down, and launched out the window.
-
Hell’s Kitchen, 1:45 PM (same day).
For the first time, the Midnight Racer’s black leathers held a splash of color.
It was a long red slash, running from a hands’ breadth to the right of the center of his chest, to the outer edge of his right shoulder. Blood didn’t show up well against black leather. It absorbed, spread, and slid off with the wind shear of his movements.
The line showed when the Racer moved though, cut leather flexing open and he leaned into the air in from of him, and braked, body twisting with near-unbelievable speed as he turned, braked, leaned sideways, cut right angles against the walls of buildings, pushed over the top, anything to stay one step ahead.
War Machine was having a hell of a time not catching the Midnight Racer in his line of fire. The Green Goblin was worse, though. Targeting solution after targeting solution failed with a nugatory red blink as the villain flew, evaded, -played- him.
Hunting and being hunted, pursuing and controlling the chase with contemptuous ease, the Goblin kept -just- out of range, intent on taking the Midnight Racer apart, slice by slice...
An friend for an eye, a block for a building... but blood for blood was a theme that just couldn’t be improved upon...
-
Tony had seen enough.
He fired an electromagnet on a high-tensile tow cable from a launcher hidden in the plating on his right forearm. The magnet stuck, nearly making the Goblin’s glider crash into the side of a brick chimneystack. The Goblin whipped something that flashed silver out of his billowing purple sleeve, and sliced the steel cable, freeing himself. Without pausing, the villain backhanded the bat-like shriuken in the Midnight Racer’s direction. It cut low, spinning with a force that had to be more than the simple force of the throw, and sliced a shallow line across the back of the Racer’s left calf, sending him temporarily off course.
Behind his faceplate, Tony’s mouth tightened.
Two armored targets attacking, one soft target running, and this Goblin had -still- attacked the one target he could blood easily.
“Crk- -Iron Man to Cap,” Tony said, deadly calm as he tracked the Goblin through a hairpin turn.
“-Cap here,” Steve replied in his earpiece.
“I’ve got the real Green Goblin in front of me. -Hell’s Kitchen.”
“That explains Paulie,” Steve replied shortly, “-I’m sending Warbird ahead. We’ll be there soon.”
“-Rodge.”
1:46 PM.
The Green Goblin wasn’t liking the way the odds were shifting. He WANTED the Midnight Racer. He wanted him dead in so many ways. That sneaking, thieving, indecisive, no talent amateur had cost him more than just his warehouse hideout. He’d cost him...
He’d fucking MISSED!
True, Spider-man was probably behind this -somehow-... but the Racer had tricked him, had made him take revenge on the wrong people -first-, like a fool...
And now he had the Iron dogs of war on his tail, and the Racer was right in front of him-
But oh-
Oh, he could use this...
The tools following him didn’t know who the Midnight Racer was, but if they thought like the Avengers usually did, that wouldn’t even -matter-.
He would leave such a mark here... such a stain on the pavement of their minds that would never wash clean.
He cornered the Racer against the side of a building, taking a brief chance, but War Machine missed, his reversed hand repulsors tearing out the re-bar in the wall behind the Goblin, narrowly missing-
The Midnight Racer arced straight up along the wall, one step ahead of the Green Goblin, and finally mis-judged the physics. Wishing alone wouldn’t stop gravity, and it was such a fine detail, so easy to forget with graphic, grisly death a fraction of a second behind him...
The Racer fell.
Straight down off his rocketing hover-board, and straight into the arms of the Green Goblin.
1:46 ½ PM.
Tony saw the Midnight Racer fall, and it was nothing like slow motion. It was cancelled inertia, a moment when time stood still, then engaged again with all the subtlety and grace of an igniting afterburner. The Green Goblin grabbed sky, and Tony went after him, and the Goblin whipped out another of his bat like blades, ripped the face-shield off of the Midnight Racer’s black motorcycle helmet, and-
-stopped, stunned, and let go.
Tony hit the Green Goblin and knocked him off his glider, slamming the villain upwards thirty feet above the skyline and catching him by the back of his tattered purple tunic...
The blow shouldn’t have finished him, yet somehow it had.
The Green Goblin hung insensible in the grip of Tony’s gauntlet, and after a long moment, Tony realized that the man wasn’t faking.
War Machine rose in front of him silently, the Midnight Racer cradled in his arms like a broken toy.
Iron Man and War Machine regarded each other for a long, tense moment.
Tony glanced down first, and through the hole where the Racer’s tinted visor had been, he recognized the face of Peter’s friend Harry Osborne.
He couldn’t process that just yet.
“I believe this is yours sir,” War Machine told him, “-may I propose a trade?”
Tony looked down at the Green Goblin. He still half expected the villain to wake up and began fighting again...
But... the Goblin was truly gone, even if the man was breathing.
Tony reached behind the Green Goblin’s point-eared metal mask, and felt the scratch of a catch. He pressed it, and removed the mask, letting the monstrosity fall to the cracked pavement far below.
“Oh, Jesus...” Tony swore, looking into the slack face of Norman Osborne.
War Machine waited, silent.
Tony’s radar beeped as it picked up a new blip from the southeast, probably Warbird.
“You were following the Racer to get to Norman, weren’t you,” Tony stated.
“Yes,” War Machine replied.
“-Why?” Tony asked, flatly.
“Because SHIELD takes care of its own, one way or another,” War Machine told him.
Tony was silent for a long moment, looking first at War Machine’s dark eye-slits, and then at the unconscious confusion on Harry’s face. He was almost awake now...
“-Deal,” Tony said shortly, and offered War Machine the Green Goblin at arm’s length.
-
St. Vincent’s Hospital, NYC, 2:23 PM (same day).
Peter came into the room with his ‘Fantastic Four’ t-shirt on inside out.
Tony looked up, the shadows beneath his eyes from the night before somehow having deepened.
Harry lay in the trimly made bed between them, looking pale and unconscious.
“How is he?” Peter asked, without prelude.
“He’s-” Tony paused, swallowed. “-He’s probably going to be okay, but they’re not sure what the Goblin did to him. There’s something in his system that-” Tony broke off, and looked Peter in the eyes, “-do you have any idea what that might be?”
“No. I swear,” Peter promised. “-Is it that thing you found at the burned-“
“-Yeah,” Tony cut him off, “...probably.”
“...Has anybody called his dad yet?” Peter asked, worried.
“Yeah. But uh... SHIELD hasn’t gotten back to them yet,” Tony replied, too-carefully.
A silence fell, and Peter came around to Tony’s side of the bed.
Peter took Harry’s left hand in both of his, and though he didn’t waken, Harry’s fingers closed slightly.
The steady beat of the heart monitor was the only sound in the room.
---
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GoblinPOV. I did that, and then noticed I did that when I looked it over in the morning.
Eh... yeah.
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I loved Tony's continuous stream of insults mixed with the repairs. It's was almost as if the pieces of the armor were angry.
I am riveted to this story.
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On the other hand, Harry won't have to sneak around now...
Heh.
"I needs must curse!" -Caliban, 'The Tempest'.
...Then again, the Queen of the Goths was from 'Titus Andronicus' (G).
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And I'm curious about your Rhodey. He seems kind of sketchy to me. I'm curious how he came to be working with Sunset and Morgan.
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War Machine... is a complex man, and all I can say is, you're going to kill me.