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cap_ironman2011-11-20 03:07 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2011-11-20 03:07 am
Entry tags:
Reassembled, Chapter 8
Title: Reassembled, Chapter 8
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Universe: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.
Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
Reassembled
Chapter Eight
Clint ducked low under a laser blast and rolled, coming up to one knee and knocking an arrow in one smooth motion. Jan, beside him, was slightly slower to dodge, the laser catching her on the shoulder.
Hank winced, watching her rub at the spot, and lowered the lasers' energy levels. With the training room's safety protocols fully engaged they were already at close to minimum, but you couldn't be too careful the first time you live-tested any version of a danger room.
She was trying out a twelve-foot tall height similar to Hank's old Goliath form, so the lasers affected her less than they would have at Wasp size, but the unfamiliar size also made her less graceful than usual. Jan had been able to grow as well as shrink for over a year now, but she almost never used the ability, and it took significant amounts of practice to get used to fighting while giant-sized, or even simply moving around.
One of the room's metal floor plates dipped sideways, making the floor under Jan and Clint lurch. The two of them didn't even break stride, charging forward at the holographic figures at the other end of the room.
The system's reaction-time to hits with Clint's arrows was lagging; the simulation reacted to the impacts a fraction slower than it should have, and the data display that should have broken down the exact angle of impact and degree of force the arrow had hit at simply read "error." Was there something wrong with the motion sensors? The pressure sensors monitoring the impact? The coding? The interface between the sensors and the computer? Hank made a mental note to mention it to Tony. Let him be the one to go over all the code line by line; it was probably his error anyway.
In biology, unexpected results meant new avenues to explore, rather than "somewhere within these millions of lines of code is an error to be found and fixed."
Two metal tentacles emerged from slots in the wall and reached for Jan. This time, she dodged easily, twisting sideways to let one tentacle grope past her and grabbing the other in her hand. In her place, Hank would have grown about fifty percent and then tried to rip the tentacle out of the wall. Jan simply grabbed for the other tentacle and wrapped the two around one another, then abandoned them to make a dive for the holographic supervillain, who was trying to 'escape' from Clint.
Jan grabbed 'him' by the shoulders and lifted him off the floor, then held him there, feet kicking uselessly. "I could get used to this." Her voice was crisp and clear over the intercom system – that part of the set up was in perfect working order. "It's kind of fun being the biggest person in the fight."
"It still hurts just as hard when people hit you." Clint yanked one of his arrows out of a laser port and squinted at the tip. "The longer reach is useful, though. You can pull a twelve or thirteen foot longbow at that height."
Hank had vivid memories of that longbow, and the thumb-thick arrows Clint had played around with before he'd decided that being Goliath was more trouble than it was worth and stopped taking Pym particles. He'd never gained the ability to produce them biologically the way Hank, Jan, Scott, and Bill had, anyway.
There had been a standard-sized crossbow, too, at one point, which Clint had waved around like a toy and drawn by hand. Being slow to adjust to Pym particles had probably been less of a factor in Clint's blithe dismissal of superpowers than the fact that being Goliath didn't involve playing with projectile weapons.
"Objective Achieved" the training program announced, in a pleasant female voice that was disquietingly reminiscent of Jocasta. "Program shutting down."
The supervillian vanished from Jan's grasp, and the tentacles unwound themselves from one another and retracted smoothly back into the wall.
"That looked good," Hank said. "Tony's going to need to do some fine-tuning on the motion sensors and the holo-dummy's response time, but everything seems like it's running smoothly." It had been a simple training sequence – Jan and Clint had barely broken a sweat – but serious exercise hadn't been the point. The training room had had to be tested before anyone could safely use it without supervison; thus far it had shown a reassuring lack of either sentience or a desire to kill them, but Hank had found that when it came to complex computer systems, a little paranoia never hurt.
"Great. If there are no major problems, then, now we can trade off." Jan locked her fingers together and stretched her arms above her head. The motion threw the curves of her body into momentary sharp relief, and Hank watched appreciatively. If he were in Clint's position at that moment, Jan's breasts would have been higher than his head, more than twice the size they usually were. The thought made him pettily glad that Clint hadn't chosen that moment to look up.
There was more than one reason why Hank missed the ability to shrink down.
"That's not necessary," he started to explain. "The system checks out, mostly, so it should be all right to run it without-"
"Yeah, it is," Clint interrupted. "Because you're coming down here now, and I'd like Tony's opinion on the computer systems before we let it run with nobody watching them."
"Why? Because you don't trust me with computer systems and AIs?" It wasn't until the question was out that it occurred to Hank that it might not be one he wanted to ask.
"No, because Tony's better with computers than you are."
That might be true, but Hank still knew significantly more about computers than Clint. He was trying to think of the most insulting way possible to point this out when Jan stepped forward and fluttered her eyelashes at the nearest camera.
"Boys, don't fight," she cooed, and then, in a significantly less flirtatious voice, "Turn off the computers and get down here, Hank. Exercise is good for you."
"We haven't run the second-level tests yet," Hank protested. Expecting him to work out in the training simulation room was unfair; the mansion had a perfectly good gym with weights and punching bags and brand new exercise equipment expensive and fancy enough to make luxury health spas weep with envy, and, most importantly, nothing in it to remind him of the powers he wasn't able to use.
The nearest monitor screen showed Clint rolling his eyes in high-definition close-up. "Forget the tests. Cap's not down here right now to kick your ass, so Jan and I are going to have to do it. She can run a basic level training simulation just as well as you can."
"Carefully," Jan said. "I have plans for Hank's ass that don't involve you damaging it.
"I don't think that's necessary. I'm-"
"Superpowered people depend too much on their powers in a fight," Clint said, and Hank didn't have to look at the monitor screen to know he was smirking, "and now that you can't use yours, you need to practice fighting the way us mere mortals do."
Why did Clint have to rub that in? Especially in front of Jan. "I'm not in the field anymore." Because I'm crazy and I have to take medication that won't work if I grow to Giant-Man or Goliath size and will kill me if I shrink, he thought. He didn't say it, because the whole topic was an uncomfortable one, for himself more than anyone else. It was humiliating to have to sit on the sidelines because he couldn't function like a normal person without medication, and hadn't figured out how to keep the levels of it in his bloodstream stable while shrinking.
It had to be possible. It was in theory, he knew, and he'd even verified it by having Reed check his math, embarrassing as that always was.
"Because it's not like anything ever attacks your lab," Clint said.
Jan smiled at him through the monitors, and even knowing that she'd probably orchestrated this whole thing to try and drag him out of his lab and make him 'do something fun,' Hank couldn't be annoyed with her. "He's got a point, honey. Come on. It'll be fun. I'm just going to go upstairs and watch the two of you get all sweaty."
Hank had already resigned himself to an hour or so of tedious and vaguely humiliating physical effort. The thought of Jan watching and enjoying the view made it a little more appealing, but not much.
"If I'm doing this without powers, I expect you to do it unarmed," he told Clint a short while later, eying Clint's garishly purple compound bow.
Clint shrugged one shoulder. "Deal with it. In a real fight the other guys are going to have powers or weapons. Anyway, I could still mop the floor with you bare-handed."
"I thought this was a teamwork simulation."
"The beauty of team simulations is that I don't have to be faster than the holographic bad guys. I just have to be faster than you."
Hank didn't bother to reply, listening instead for the background whirr of the room's systems coming back online. The holodummies had a split-second lag time, he reminded himself. It would make them clumsier, just enough to give him an edge.
It did, in fact, give him an edge, enough that he was able to keep pace with Clint as they fought their way through the obstacle course of tentacles, lasers, and shifting floor and wall plates toward that nest of robots at the far end of the room.
They were supposed to be copies of Ultron V, complete with fixed, glowing red grins, but Jan had tweaked the scenario, turning them into generic robotic figures. Hank appreciated the gesture, though it might have been nicely cathartic to pound the snot out of a series of slightly-malfunctioning Ultrons.
A metal tentacle looped around his ankle, and Hank went sprawling, managing to twist just enough to hit the ground with his shoulder instead of his face. Another tentacle wrapped around his waist, pinning his left arm to his side. Hank struggled, trying to pull free and fighting the instinct to shrink down. The metal coils were smooth, with nothing to give a 'victim' any purchase if one's hands weren't large enough to wrap completely around them.
He heard the whine of Clint's arrow and the clang of it hitting metal and had an instant to brace himself for the crackle of electricity. It didn't come; there was a sharp shock of static, and the tentacles released him abruptly.
Hank rolled away, shoving himself to his feet inches ahead of a low-power laser blast. Practice arrows, of course. The real, fully charged shock arrows would have knocked him out cold, the electric charge travelling the length of the metal tentacles and taking him out along with them.
"Nice creative problem solving," he gasped, as the first of the robots charged at them. "If this were real, you'd be on your own now."
"It's not," Clint grunted, blocking a metal fist with one arm and shoving his bow between the robot's legs, "and I'm not." The robot toppled, and Clint leapt over it with enviable ease.
Blows from holodummies didn't have the force of a real attack, but they still hurt. Hank was going to have bruises later – Jan had set the safety protocols at level two, not level one. It was actually kind of flattering, he reflected, as he tackled the robot trying to take Clint from behind, to know that she trusted him to take care of himself at least that far, powers or no.
By the time Hank had finished smashing the robot's head into the floor, exploding arrows had taken out three of the others, and Clint was wrestling with the final one, his bow lying on the floor several feet away. The robot had him pinned against the wall, and was slowly strangling him with a hand around his throat – or would have been, had this been real. Its hand was actually just wrapped loosely and completely harmlessly around his throat.
Hank tapped the robot on the shoulder and then, when it swung around slightly to face him, punched it directly in its metal faceplate. Or at least, that's what he had intended to do.
"Ow, what the hell?" Clint yelped, clapping one hand over his nose. The robot staggered backwards into Hank's next punch, an arrow jutting out from the vulnerable point where its legs joined its body. Hank ripped the arrow loose and jammed it into the robot's glowing white eye, and the holodummy vanished, Clint's arrow clattering to the floor.
"Great, guys. That's level two cleared, and the system didn't throw up any red flags." Jan's voice was loud over the intercom, drowning out the faint whirr of floor plates shifting back into their normal position.
Hank flexed his fingers, his knuckles still smarting from their impact with Clint's nose. "You know, I really prefer either being small enough that I'm nearly invisible or being bigger than anyone else in the fight." In both cases, you were less likely to get in your own teammates' way.
Clint swore, glaring at Hank from behind his hand. "You didn't pull that last punch."
"I didn't expect your face to suddenly be between me and the robot," Hank said defensively, feeling his face heat. "Sorry." Clint's nose was the angry red of something that was going to start swelling soon, but it didn't look like it was bleeding, and Hank hadn't felt it crunch, so at least he hadn't broken it.
Clint prodded at it gently, and winced. "Well, we don't have to work on your right hook."
"You could have ducked," Jan said, sounding more amused than sympathetic. "The two of you looked like the three stooges. And you have to be more careful about letting those tentacles grab you," she added. "You can't shrink down to get away from them, or increase size to break free."
"I know." It wasn't technically true; he could still increase his size if it were truly an emergency, he'd just pay for it later. Increasing size diluted chemicals in the bloodstream, so he was supposed to avoid it, but only shrinking would actually be dangerous. "I think I did pretty well for someone without powers or weapons." Especially considering that it had been far too long since he'd done this.
"You did," she agreed. "The way you tackled that robot was very manly."
"I took out about three times as many of them," Clint said, but he didn't sound as if he meant the objection. Hank had been on the receiving end of enough actual resentment from Don and Thor recently to know when he heard it. And when he didn't.
It was nice to have teammates around who hadn't had a front seat view of or a personal stake in the registration disaster.
"You were very manly, too. Almost as manly as Hank."
"Yeah, well, I'm kicking your manly ass tomorrow." Clint jabbed a finger at him. "Cap wants you and Wanda back in unarmed combat practice."
"We'll see about that." He should have been annoyed – the genetic research for Beast hadn't produced any results yet, but he hadn't started comparing the homo superior genome to baseline human genetic material yet, and that was sure to generate interesting data – but instead, he found himself smiling. Jan was right. It was good for him to get out of the lab once in a while.
* * *
"What part of 'keep a low profile' is too complex for you to understand?" Had a subordinate proved to be so disobedient, he would have lived only just long enough to regret it. The necessity of keeping Sin under the impression that she was an ally rather than a simple tool was growing tiresome. "Your vendetta against SHIELD contributes nothing towards our ultimate goal," Doom explained, with more than admirable patience. "When I have the spear and its powers, you will be amply rewarded. You can then deal with Captain America and his sidekick as you see fit. For now, you will do nothing. Do you understand?"
Sin sneered, the expression giving her the look of the sullen adolescent she all too frequently acted like. "I understand that doing nothing seems to be your entire plan lately. Are we going to sit around and wait until Strange or Murdock die of old age? You said we only had until March before the spear's power would be 'lost to you forever.'" She parroted his own words back at him with a mocking lilt.
Had he thought it would do any good, he could have explained that the levels of chaos energy in the city were slowly but inexorably rising, twisting the forces of chance and fate in their favor. The spear wanted to be found, the power in it hungered to be used, and given time, it would force a means of grasping it to surface. They simply had to bide their time.
Doom, however, explained himself to no one. "The equinox is still months away. I would council patience, but I imagine that is beyond you."
Sin's eyes narrowed to slits, the pouty adolescent façade cracking and falling away. "I want blood, Victor. I want the vengeance you promised me. I want my father and Brock back, and I want to watch my father's glorious Reich rise from the ashes of this filthy country." She took a deep breath, and her voice was reasonable again, even sweet. "But I'd settle for some kind of progress. Give me results, or you can find someone else to fetch the spear for you. I think Zola is still out there somewhere."
"You forget who you speak to," Doom said, in tones of freezing menace. "You would accomplish nothing on your own, and amusing as it would be to see you fail and come crawling back, it would waste time." It was a calculated risk, all but daring her to leave, but the reminder of her own pathetic helplessness might work in his favor.
Zola, slimy little Nazi scientist who sold his skills to the highest bidder that he was, would be an inadequate assistant. If he were forced to hire someone to fetch the spear for him, he would have to completely counteract the sorcerer supreme's protection spells, at which point Doom might as well just walk in and take the spear himself. Sin, with her painfully obvious belief that she was the one who was using him, wanted the spear in Doom's hands to further her own agenda, not his. The portions of Strange's spell aimed directly at thwarting Doom would overlook her presence, leaving Doom only the task of finding a spell that would allow a person with no magical abilities to remove the spear from its hiding place and carry it out to him. Then, he could use its power to demolish Strange for his interference.
"My father was conquering the world before you were even born, you jumped up piece of trash," Sin spat. "You need me more than I need you. Don't forget that." She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room, boots loud against the warehouse's stone floor.
Doom watched her go with gritted teeth and reminded himself again of all the reasons why he couldn't kill her yet.
* * *
One of the benefits of having a significant other who gave more money to the Metropolitan Museum of Art than many people earned in a year was that the dinners, special exhibition previews, and private showings that museum sponsors were invited to generally included a 'plus one.' That was, for significant others who were free to broadcast their relationship to all and sundry without ending up on the front page of every newspaper in the country, and probably a few international ones as well.
Luckily, this particular exhibition preview was open to all museum donors at the $500 a year level and up, so Steve was able to be there without openly attending as Tony's date. Tony's official 'plus one' for the evening was Wanda.
Steve tugged at his tie, knowing he was pulling the knot out of shape but not particularly caring. The last time he'd worn this suit had been at the Senate and Congressional hearings over the SHRA; the day they'd arrived in DC, Tony had sent him shopping with Jan along as a guarantee of good taste, and he'd come back with clothing more expensive than any he'd ever owned, short of his costume.
He felt stiff and strange in it, not uncomfortable, but oddly on display in a way he wasn't while in costume.
"Stop fidgeting," Jan said. "You look perfect."
Steve let go of his tie, embarrassed at being caught yanking at it like a kid who'd been forced into his Sunday best, only to realize that Jan hadn't been speaking to him.
"That's because you dressed me like a doll," Hank was saying, as she straightened the collar of his shirt. "I still don't see what was wrong with the blue tie."
"It didn't match your suit." Jan smoothed his lapel, then gave it a little pat before letting her hand drop. "Navy blue doesn't go with black. And you make a very attractive doll."
Steve looked away, giving them a moment of privacy; Tony was on the other side of the room, smiling stiffly at a vaguely familiar-looking man whom Steve was fairly sure was involved in city politics somehow. He, unlike Hank, didn't have a single fold of fabric out of place, for all that his hair was artfully disheveled in a way that probably looked intentional, but was actually Steve's fault. Tony usually wore suits and dress shirts, unless he was planning to spend some quality time tearing machinery apart, and he always looked good in them, but when he made a real effort to dress nicely, as he had tonight, the impulse to muss up and pull apart that perfectly constructed armor of suit and tie was irresistible.
One good tug, and the half-windsor knot in his tie would fall right out.
Tempting as the thought was, they had too large an audience right now for Steve to indulge himself. Tony, being Tony, would probably make no effort to stop him if he tried.
"Isn't that the city councilman who wants to ban feeding pigeons?" Sam's voice was dry. "You think we should go rescue Tony?"
Steve shrugged. "He can fend for himself." Tony might not actually enjoy politics, but he was good at them.
"I'll miss the chance to ask Councilman Englehart some probing questions about his pigeon population control legislation." Sam glanced over at the man again, eyes narrowing slightly; under the joking tone was a thread of something more serious.
The name was familiar, and not from arguments about animal rights and public sanitation. Englehart was one of the supporters of a proposal to ban known superheroes from working for the city, citing potential conflicts of interest, as well as potential lawsuits. "I don't think that would be a good idea," Steve said. "This isn't an art show in DUMBO. A loud public argument about politics will get us kicked out."
"I'm not going to argue," Sam said mildly. "I'm just going to remind him that being a superhero is not currently against the law."
Judging by the tightening of Englehart's lips, and the way he was shaking his head, Tony was already doing that. It didn't appear to be working.
"I haven't seen the rest of the exhibit yet," Steve countered. The 'Art and Artifacts of Alchemy' exhibit was scheduled to open to the general public next Friday, and a banner announcing its presence already hung outside the museum. Medieval and Renaissance art had never been Steve's field, but he could appreciate the complex symbolism in the one painting and two seventeenth century engravings he'd seen thus far. Tony would like them; they were like puzzles in visual form, each of the pictures showing some part of a chemical process.
Tony hated magic, but alchemy had enough science in it that it might not count. And the chiaroscuro woodcut he could see hanging on the opposite wall, just behind a knot of men and women in evening wear, looked utterly breathtaking in its degree of detail.
"You know," Sam said, after he had given Steve several silent minutes to appreciate the woodcut's workmanship, "I keep renewing my membership, but I don't think I've been here in a year."
"It's been a very long year." The words sounded more serious than Steve had meant them to, largely because they were true.
Sam nodded. "Longer than you know. Things were getting bad before you came back. Englehart's superhero legislation's going to set a real bad precedent if it passes, but it's a drop in the bucket compared with what was going on before."
"I know." Tony hadn't said much about the inner workings of the Initiative, other than what he'd admitted to on the witness stand, but the few things he had let slip had told Steve that there were things that hadn't come out even in the congressional hearings. 'I didn't order any assassinations when I was Director of SHIELD', he'd said carefully, and the deliberate phrasing had been a red flag that while Tony might not have been ordering assassinations, someone else might have been.
Not that SHIELD didn't solve problems by making people quietly disappear even now, but Steve had far more faith in Nick Fury's ability to make that judgment call than he had in the people who had been pulling HUSAC's strings. Not everyone involved with Registration or with the Initiative could have been as innocent of the true identity of Representative Dickstein's silent sponsor as they'd claimed. Whether they'd believed him to be Aleksander Lukin or known that he was the Red Skull, some of them had still had to know that he wasn't who he claimed to be. Known, and not cared, just as they hadn't cared about the innocent people shut away in extra-dimensional prisons, or the black ops program that had wanted to start a new super soldier project, with methods reminiscent of the Weapon X program. Or of the original Project Rebirth – unwilling or deliberately under-informed human test subjects had been part of that, too.
Next year was an election year. Steve hoped devoutly that the remaining congressmen who had served on the Unregistered Superhuman Activities Committee – and not been booted out of office already for taking bribes from known terrorists – would not be re-elected.
Sam shook his head, pulling his shirt cuffs straight and brushing futilely at the punctures in the fabric of his right coat sleeve, the spacing of the tears looking suspiciously like something Redwing's talons might have made. "I don't want to talk about this. I'm tired of thinking about it. And about Chthon and whatever part of Lower Manhattan's going to blow up or fall down next. Have they re-opened the Islamic art gallery yet?"
"I know what you mean," Steve said, with feeling. "And no. They're still refurbishing it. Very slowly and carefully. They've been slowly and carefully refurbishing it since 2001."
Sam snorted. "I'm surprised at you," he said, voice dry with irony again, "suggesting that they'd shut an entire gallery down for bullshit political reasons. I'm sure it really needs years' worth of renovations."
"Maybe I should suggest that Tony earmark his next donation for that gallery. Can you do that?"
Sam shrugged. "When you're giving a museum enough money to have your name carved on a plaque in the front hallway, you can probably do whatever you want."
It was a tempting thought, but actually attempting to put pressure on the museum via donations would be unethical. And it wasn't Steve's money to spend, either, though Tony wasn't likely to object to using financial blackmail for a good cause. Not ethical, he reminded himself.
At least the Museum of Natural History had refused to bow to pressure to remove all discussions of Homo superior from their new "Hall of Human Origins" exhibit. You had to take victories where you could find them.
Tony had managed to escape from Englehart, and was now talking to the owner of a major Manhattan development company. Beyond him, Wanda was walking slowly down the length of the exhibit hall, stopping to study each piece. Hank was deep in conversation with one of the museum curators, and kept gesturing at a display case of 16th century laboratory instruments. Jan, beside him, was watching with a proprietary little smile that Steve hoped he hadn't been wearing when he'd been admiring the fit of Tony's suit jacket earlier.
Steve was examining another woodcut, this one from the mid-1500s and carefully displayed in a dimly lit alcove, when he felt another presence behind him. He wasn't sure what bit of information told his brain that was Tony – maybe the sound of his footsteps, maybe some scent, the sound of his breathing – but his subconscious had identified him before the other man spoke.
"Someday we need to come here on a real date."
Steve smiled, and kept looking at the woodcut; he didn't need to see Tony to imagine the rueful little smile on his face. "When there are fewer cameras around, maybe." In the woodcut, a man and a woman were locked in a passionate embrace, while a bird hovered over them, transfixed in a ray of light. In the background, a lion was eating the sun. The little plaque to the left of the image explained that the couple represented the sun and the moon, and the lion, the role of spiritual mercury as a universal solvent.
There was a faint hint of apology in Tony's voice as he said, "If it was just my reputation and SE's stock points, I'd say to hell with it and just kiss you somewhere extremely public and get it over with. The tabloids have been speculating about me for years anyway."
Steve shook his head. Turning around was automatic; after years of dealing with Tony as Iron Man, Steve could carry on a conversation with Tony without needing to see his face, but hearing Tony's voice coming from just over his shoulder made the skin on the back of his neck tingle distractingly. "If it was just our reputations at stake, I wouldn't hide anything." Steve met Tony's gaze, hoping the words sounded sincere, and not like empty rhetoric. He meant them – their relationship was not the media's business, and part of him cringed at the idea of having it dragged through the headlines and discussed on talk shows as if it were something tawdry and sordid, something to be ashamed of, but hiding it was like a silent agreement that there was something wrong with it, with both of them – but he had never been very good at these kinds of conversations. But if Peter could unmask in front of cameras, Steve could hardly do less.
Tony's eyes looked closer to grey than blue in the corner's carefully dim light, and some trick of lighting made dark shadows gather under them. Or maybe the dark smudges were real. "We don't have anything to hide," Steve went on. "It's not illegal anymore." He probably sounded as if he were giving a speech, he reflected, and from Tony's fractional headshake, it wasn't a very convincing one.
"We can't afford any distractions right now. Not until Chthon's been dealt with." Tony had the sound of a man trying to convince himself.
It was true, just as the fact that they'd needed to make first the SHRA and then the team their priority was true. Chthon could turn the entire world into a barren wasteland, and would, if he got free.
"When he is, I'll take you dancing," Steve promised, recklessly. He'd danced with Bernie and Connie, and even Sharon, though she preferred unarmed combat practice to swing dancing. And with Diamondback, who had always tried to lead. Tony would, too – it was a nearly impossible habit to break, as Steve had learned when Rachel had tried to make him follow her and do all the steps backwards. Having Tony's arms around him in public would be worth tripping backwards over his own feet and looking like an idiot.
Tony's smile was real this time, crinkling the corners of his eyes, though the shadows under them remained. "I'll hold you to that." His eyes flicked over Steve's suit, and the smile turned amused. "What have you been doing to your tie?"
Steve glanced down at his shirt front before he could stop him. "Nothing. It's fine."
"It's crooked." Tony took a half-step forward, closing the distance between them, and took hold of Steve's tie in both hands, tugging on the knot until it was tight once more. He smoothed it carefully over Steve's chest, fingers lingering for just a moment, then stepped back.
He gave Steve a second once-over, his eyes filling with heat. "You should let Jan pick out your clothing more often."
"I feel like a fish out of water in suits." At least, he did in suits as nice as this one. Though Tony was probably imagining him without the suit, judging by his expression.
Tony's lips curved into something between a smile and a smirk. "You don't look like one. Not in this suit," he said, a familiar husky sound to his voice, the one that always sent a shiver down Steve's spine and started a slow heat in the pit of stomach.
Not here, Steve reminded himself. Not yet.
"Besides," Tony added, "Happy was the one who always looked like a thug." He hesitated, looking away at the woodcut over Steve's shoulder. Steve was struck again by how tired he suddenly looked. "The more expensive the suit, the more he looked like hired mob muscle," Tony finished, voice subdued.
Then he looked back at Steve, and the smile on his face was strained. "He would have complained that he was just a big, dumb, ex-bruiser who didn't understand anything here, and asked me why I couldn't have brought someone else instead, and secretly looked at everything here while pretending not to, and loved the whole thing."
Steve let the topic of Happy drop. "I still think Carol and Clint would have enjoyed it if they'd come."
Tony didn't actually roll his eyes, but some quirk of facial expression implied the motion anyway. "Steve, not everyone enjoys art museums just because you think they should. Do you really think Hank would be here if it weren't an exhibit on debunked, pseudo-magical proto-chemistry?"
"Yes," Steve said. "Jan is here." He glanced automatically around the room once again, taking in the scattered knots of museum donors. Hank and Jan had split up, Jan chatting with a tall Asian woman in impressively stacked heels while Hank examined a display of woodcuts depicting the process of distillation.
Sam was talking to one of the museum curators; by the hand gestures he was making, either fishing or baseball was involved. Or he was waving a hand in frustration as he tried to convey exactly how irritating it was that the Islamic Art gallery was shut down, but Steve didn't think so. The conversation looked friendly.
It took him a moment to find Wanda – he still looked automatically for bold colors, and the steel-grey dress she and Jan had found at the last minute was the sort of thing the eye skimmed over without really seeing. Neutral, cool.
She was standing still, near the center of the gallery, staring at the room around her as if searching for something.
Steve thought for a moment that she might be looking for them, but as he stepped out of the shadows, she stiffened, her gaze locked on something on the far side of the room.
He went over to her, not needing to ask Tony to follow him. Sam met them halfway there, his eyes going from Steve to Wanda in a silent question.
Steve shook his head; there was no danger here that he could see. The stiff line of Wanda's back and the frozen lack of expression on her face had set off alarm bells, though. Something was wrong here, even if he himself had noticed nothing.
She was standing by a glass display case when they reached her, staring down at an old, leather bound book that had been carefully propped open to show an elaborate print of the symbols of the zodiac. The red leather of the cover and binding had faded to a rusty brown, and the pages were faded and worn.
"I can feel him whispering," Wanda said, softly, her voice eerily calm. "But only when I stand here."
A chill crawling up his spine, Steve took her by the arm, trying to be gentle, and pulled her a few steps away from the display case. The plaque beside it proclaimed that the book was a 16th century study of alchemy and astronomy by John Dee, collecting excerpts from numerous Renaissance writings on alchemy. From the central location of the display and the size of the plaque, it was one of the showpieces of the exhibit.
Sam cast an uneasy glance at the book, his eyebrows drawing together. "You mean Chthon? What do you mean you can hear him? I thought he could only enter this dimension from the cathedral."
Sam hadn't been there for the last time they had fought Chthon, or the time before that. Steve had done his best to brief him on what had happened each time, but he wasn't sure how well he understood the link between Wanda and Chthon himself.
Tony, if anything, looked even more uneasy. "Strange didn't say that, exactly. He said he could only break through the dimensional barriers there, because a fragment of his essence is trapped inside the building. He didn't say he couldn't reach through and influence things in other places."
Wanda was shaking her head, eyes still on the book. "Not hear," she corrected Sam, the words quiet. "Feel. Everything else in here is just art, or old scientific instruments. This book has real magic in it." She shivered visibly and rubbed at her arms, and for a moment, Steve thought he saw glints of reddish light play over the tattoos on her hands and the back of her neck. "Chaos magic. Dark magic. Chaos can be a joyful and creative force, but whatever's in this book is destructive, malevolent. Like he is. It's..." she looked back at the book again, hesitating, then looked away, "it wants to be used. I can feel it waiting."
"How about we move a little further away from it?" Sam suggested.
"I think that would be good." Wanda backed slowly away from the display case, nearly bumping into an older white man who was trying to look at the case of lab instruments.
Tony touched one finger to the little white plaque. "John Dee," he read. "He was fascinated by angels and demons. He spent years trying to contact angelic powers; he wanted to ask them questions about theology and natural philosophy."
It could have been a coincidence. Steve wanted to believe it was. But Chthon was a chaos entity, a being who could reshape and manipulate probability as easily as he could human minds; there were no coincidences when you dealt with him.
"I think," Steve said, "that we should talk to one of the curators."
* * *
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonUniverse: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:
dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
Clint ducked low under a laser blast and rolled, coming up to one knee and knocking an arrow in one smooth motion. Jan, beside him, was slightly slower to dodge, the laser catching her on the shoulder.
Hank winced, watching her rub at the spot, and lowered the lasers' energy levels. With the training room's safety protocols fully engaged they were already at close to minimum, but you couldn't be too careful the first time you live-tested any version of a danger room.
She was trying out a twelve-foot tall height similar to Hank's old Goliath form, so the lasers affected her less than they would have at Wasp size, but the unfamiliar size also made her less graceful than usual. Jan had been able to grow as well as shrink for over a year now, but she almost never used the ability, and it took significant amounts of practice to get used to fighting while giant-sized, or even simply moving around.
One of the room's metal floor plates dipped sideways, making the floor under Jan and Clint lurch. The two of them didn't even break stride, charging forward at the holographic figures at the other end of the room.
The system's reaction-time to hits with Clint's arrows was lagging; the simulation reacted to the impacts a fraction slower than it should have, and the data display that should have broken down the exact angle of impact and degree of force the arrow had hit at simply read "error." Was there something wrong with the motion sensors? The pressure sensors monitoring the impact? The coding? The interface between the sensors and the computer? Hank made a mental note to mention it to Tony. Let him be the one to go over all the code line by line; it was probably his error anyway.
In biology, unexpected results meant new avenues to explore, rather than "somewhere within these millions of lines of code is an error to be found and fixed."
Two metal tentacles emerged from slots in the wall and reached for Jan. This time, she dodged easily, twisting sideways to let one tentacle grope past her and grabbing the other in her hand. In her place, Hank would have grown about fifty percent and then tried to rip the tentacle out of the wall. Jan simply grabbed for the other tentacle and wrapped the two around one another, then abandoned them to make a dive for the holographic supervillain, who was trying to 'escape' from Clint.
Jan grabbed 'him' by the shoulders and lifted him off the floor, then held him there, feet kicking uselessly. "I could get used to this." Her voice was crisp and clear over the intercom system – that part of the set up was in perfect working order. "It's kind of fun being the biggest person in the fight."
"It still hurts just as hard when people hit you." Clint yanked one of his arrows out of a laser port and squinted at the tip. "The longer reach is useful, though. You can pull a twelve or thirteen foot longbow at that height."
Hank had vivid memories of that longbow, and the thumb-thick arrows Clint had played around with before he'd decided that being Goliath was more trouble than it was worth and stopped taking Pym particles. He'd never gained the ability to produce them biologically the way Hank, Jan, Scott, and Bill had, anyway.
There had been a standard-sized crossbow, too, at one point, which Clint had waved around like a toy and drawn by hand. Being slow to adjust to Pym particles had probably been less of a factor in Clint's blithe dismissal of superpowers than the fact that being Goliath didn't involve playing with projectile weapons.
"Objective Achieved" the training program announced, in a pleasant female voice that was disquietingly reminiscent of Jocasta. "Program shutting down."
The supervillian vanished from Jan's grasp, and the tentacles unwound themselves from one another and retracted smoothly back into the wall.
"That looked good," Hank said. "Tony's going to need to do some fine-tuning on the motion sensors and the holo-dummy's response time, but everything seems like it's running smoothly." It had been a simple training sequence – Jan and Clint had barely broken a sweat – but serious exercise hadn't been the point. The training room had had to be tested before anyone could safely use it without supervison; thus far it had shown a reassuring lack of either sentience or a desire to kill them, but Hank had found that when it came to complex computer systems, a little paranoia never hurt.
"Great. If there are no major problems, then, now we can trade off." Jan locked her fingers together and stretched her arms above her head. The motion threw the curves of her body into momentary sharp relief, and Hank watched appreciatively. If he were in Clint's position at that moment, Jan's breasts would have been higher than his head, more than twice the size they usually were. The thought made him pettily glad that Clint hadn't chosen that moment to look up.
There was more than one reason why Hank missed the ability to shrink down.
"That's not necessary," he started to explain. "The system checks out, mostly, so it should be all right to run it without-"
"Yeah, it is," Clint interrupted. "Because you're coming down here now, and I'd like Tony's opinion on the computer systems before we let it run with nobody watching them."
"Why? Because you don't trust me with computer systems and AIs?" It wasn't until the question was out that it occurred to Hank that it might not be one he wanted to ask.
"No, because Tony's better with computers than you are."
That might be true, but Hank still knew significantly more about computers than Clint. He was trying to think of the most insulting way possible to point this out when Jan stepped forward and fluttered her eyelashes at the nearest camera.
"Boys, don't fight," she cooed, and then, in a significantly less flirtatious voice, "Turn off the computers and get down here, Hank. Exercise is good for you."
"We haven't run the second-level tests yet," Hank protested. Expecting him to work out in the training simulation room was unfair; the mansion had a perfectly good gym with weights and punching bags and brand new exercise equipment expensive and fancy enough to make luxury health spas weep with envy, and, most importantly, nothing in it to remind him of the powers he wasn't able to use.
The nearest monitor screen showed Clint rolling his eyes in high-definition close-up. "Forget the tests. Cap's not down here right now to kick your ass, so Jan and I are going to have to do it. She can run a basic level training simulation just as well as you can."
"Carefully," Jan said. "I have plans for Hank's ass that don't involve you damaging it.
"I don't think that's necessary. I'm-"
"Superpowered people depend too much on their powers in a fight," Clint said, and Hank didn't have to look at the monitor screen to know he was smirking, "and now that you can't use yours, you need to practice fighting the way us mere mortals do."
Why did Clint have to rub that in? Especially in front of Jan. "I'm not in the field anymore." Because I'm crazy and I have to take medication that won't work if I grow to Giant-Man or Goliath size and will kill me if I shrink, he thought. He didn't say it, because the whole topic was an uncomfortable one, for himself more than anyone else. It was humiliating to have to sit on the sidelines because he couldn't function like a normal person without medication, and hadn't figured out how to keep the levels of it in his bloodstream stable while shrinking.
It had to be possible. It was in theory, he knew, and he'd even verified it by having Reed check his math, embarrassing as that always was.
"Because it's not like anything ever attacks your lab," Clint said.
Jan smiled at him through the monitors, and even knowing that she'd probably orchestrated this whole thing to try and drag him out of his lab and make him 'do something fun,' Hank couldn't be annoyed with her. "He's got a point, honey. Come on. It'll be fun. I'm just going to go upstairs and watch the two of you get all sweaty."
Hank had already resigned himself to an hour or so of tedious and vaguely humiliating physical effort. The thought of Jan watching and enjoying the view made it a little more appealing, but not much.
"If I'm doing this without powers, I expect you to do it unarmed," he told Clint a short while later, eying Clint's garishly purple compound bow.
Clint shrugged one shoulder. "Deal with it. In a real fight the other guys are going to have powers or weapons. Anyway, I could still mop the floor with you bare-handed."
"I thought this was a teamwork simulation."
"The beauty of team simulations is that I don't have to be faster than the holographic bad guys. I just have to be faster than you."
Hank didn't bother to reply, listening instead for the background whirr of the room's systems coming back online. The holodummies had a split-second lag time, he reminded himself. It would make them clumsier, just enough to give him an edge.
It did, in fact, give him an edge, enough that he was able to keep pace with Clint as they fought their way through the obstacle course of tentacles, lasers, and shifting floor and wall plates toward that nest of robots at the far end of the room.
They were supposed to be copies of Ultron V, complete with fixed, glowing red grins, but Jan had tweaked the scenario, turning them into generic robotic figures. Hank appreciated the gesture, though it might have been nicely cathartic to pound the snot out of a series of slightly-malfunctioning Ultrons.
A metal tentacle looped around his ankle, and Hank went sprawling, managing to twist just enough to hit the ground with his shoulder instead of his face. Another tentacle wrapped around his waist, pinning his left arm to his side. Hank struggled, trying to pull free and fighting the instinct to shrink down. The metal coils were smooth, with nothing to give a 'victim' any purchase if one's hands weren't large enough to wrap completely around them.
He heard the whine of Clint's arrow and the clang of it hitting metal and had an instant to brace himself for the crackle of electricity. It didn't come; there was a sharp shock of static, and the tentacles released him abruptly.
Hank rolled away, shoving himself to his feet inches ahead of a low-power laser blast. Practice arrows, of course. The real, fully charged shock arrows would have knocked him out cold, the electric charge travelling the length of the metal tentacles and taking him out along with them.
"Nice creative problem solving," he gasped, as the first of the robots charged at them. "If this were real, you'd be on your own now."
"It's not," Clint grunted, blocking a metal fist with one arm and shoving his bow between the robot's legs, "and I'm not." The robot toppled, and Clint leapt over it with enviable ease.
Blows from holodummies didn't have the force of a real attack, but they still hurt. Hank was going to have bruises later – Jan had set the safety protocols at level two, not level one. It was actually kind of flattering, he reflected, as he tackled the robot trying to take Clint from behind, to know that she trusted him to take care of himself at least that far, powers or no.
By the time Hank had finished smashing the robot's head into the floor, exploding arrows had taken out three of the others, and Clint was wrestling with the final one, his bow lying on the floor several feet away. The robot had him pinned against the wall, and was slowly strangling him with a hand around his throat – or would have been, had this been real. Its hand was actually just wrapped loosely and completely harmlessly around his throat.
Hank tapped the robot on the shoulder and then, when it swung around slightly to face him, punched it directly in its metal faceplate. Or at least, that's what he had intended to do.
"Ow, what the hell?" Clint yelped, clapping one hand over his nose. The robot staggered backwards into Hank's next punch, an arrow jutting out from the vulnerable point where its legs joined its body. Hank ripped the arrow loose and jammed it into the robot's glowing white eye, and the holodummy vanished, Clint's arrow clattering to the floor.
"Great, guys. That's level two cleared, and the system didn't throw up any red flags." Jan's voice was loud over the intercom, drowning out the faint whirr of floor plates shifting back into their normal position.
Hank flexed his fingers, his knuckles still smarting from their impact with Clint's nose. "You know, I really prefer either being small enough that I'm nearly invisible or being bigger than anyone else in the fight." In both cases, you were less likely to get in your own teammates' way.
Clint swore, glaring at Hank from behind his hand. "You didn't pull that last punch."
"I didn't expect your face to suddenly be between me and the robot," Hank said defensively, feeling his face heat. "Sorry." Clint's nose was the angry red of something that was going to start swelling soon, but it didn't look like it was bleeding, and Hank hadn't felt it crunch, so at least he hadn't broken it.
Clint prodded at it gently, and winced. "Well, we don't have to work on your right hook."
"You could have ducked," Jan said, sounding more amused than sympathetic. "The two of you looked like the three stooges. And you have to be more careful about letting those tentacles grab you," she added. "You can't shrink down to get away from them, or increase size to break free."
"I know." It wasn't technically true; he could still increase his size if it were truly an emergency, he'd just pay for it later. Increasing size diluted chemicals in the bloodstream, so he was supposed to avoid it, but only shrinking would actually be dangerous. "I think I did pretty well for someone without powers or weapons." Especially considering that it had been far too long since he'd done this.
"You did," she agreed. "The way you tackled that robot was very manly."
"I took out about three times as many of them," Clint said, but he didn't sound as if he meant the objection. Hank had been on the receiving end of enough actual resentment from Don and Thor recently to know when he heard it. And when he didn't.
It was nice to have teammates around who hadn't had a front seat view of or a personal stake in the registration disaster.
"You were very manly, too. Almost as manly as Hank."
"Yeah, well, I'm kicking your manly ass tomorrow." Clint jabbed a finger at him. "Cap wants you and Wanda back in unarmed combat practice."
"We'll see about that." He should have been annoyed – the genetic research for Beast hadn't produced any results yet, but he hadn't started comparing the homo superior genome to baseline human genetic material yet, and that was sure to generate interesting data – but instead, he found himself smiling. Jan was right. It was good for him to get out of the lab once in a while.
"What part of 'keep a low profile' is too complex for you to understand?" Had a subordinate proved to be so disobedient, he would have lived only just long enough to regret it. The necessity of keeping Sin under the impression that she was an ally rather than a simple tool was growing tiresome. "Your vendetta against SHIELD contributes nothing towards our ultimate goal," Doom explained, with more than admirable patience. "When I have the spear and its powers, you will be amply rewarded. You can then deal with Captain America and his sidekick as you see fit. For now, you will do nothing. Do you understand?"
Sin sneered, the expression giving her the look of the sullen adolescent she all too frequently acted like. "I understand that doing nothing seems to be your entire plan lately. Are we going to sit around and wait until Strange or Murdock die of old age? You said we only had until March before the spear's power would be 'lost to you forever.'" She parroted his own words back at him with a mocking lilt.
Had he thought it would do any good, he could have explained that the levels of chaos energy in the city were slowly but inexorably rising, twisting the forces of chance and fate in their favor. The spear wanted to be found, the power in it hungered to be used, and given time, it would force a means of grasping it to surface. They simply had to bide their time.
Doom, however, explained himself to no one. "The equinox is still months away. I would council patience, but I imagine that is beyond you."
Sin's eyes narrowed to slits, the pouty adolescent façade cracking and falling away. "I want blood, Victor. I want the vengeance you promised me. I want my father and Brock back, and I want to watch my father's glorious Reich rise from the ashes of this filthy country." She took a deep breath, and her voice was reasonable again, even sweet. "But I'd settle for some kind of progress. Give me results, or you can find someone else to fetch the spear for you. I think Zola is still out there somewhere."
"You forget who you speak to," Doom said, in tones of freezing menace. "You would accomplish nothing on your own, and amusing as it would be to see you fail and come crawling back, it would waste time." It was a calculated risk, all but daring her to leave, but the reminder of her own pathetic helplessness might work in his favor.
Zola, slimy little Nazi scientist who sold his skills to the highest bidder that he was, would be an inadequate assistant. If he were forced to hire someone to fetch the spear for him, he would have to completely counteract the sorcerer supreme's protection spells, at which point Doom might as well just walk in and take the spear himself. Sin, with her painfully obvious belief that she was the one who was using him, wanted the spear in Doom's hands to further her own agenda, not his. The portions of Strange's spell aimed directly at thwarting Doom would overlook her presence, leaving Doom only the task of finding a spell that would allow a person with no magical abilities to remove the spear from its hiding place and carry it out to him. Then, he could use its power to demolish Strange for his interference.
"My father was conquering the world before you were even born, you jumped up piece of trash," Sin spat. "You need me more than I need you. Don't forget that." She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room, boots loud against the warehouse's stone floor.
Doom watched her go with gritted teeth and reminded himself again of all the reasons why he couldn't kill her yet.
One of the benefits of having a significant other who gave more money to the Metropolitan Museum of Art than many people earned in a year was that the dinners, special exhibition previews, and private showings that museum sponsors were invited to generally included a 'plus one.' That was, for significant others who were free to broadcast their relationship to all and sundry without ending up on the front page of every newspaper in the country, and probably a few international ones as well.
Luckily, this particular exhibition preview was open to all museum donors at the $500 a year level and up, so Steve was able to be there without openly attending as Tony's date. Tony's official 'plus one' for the evening was Wanda.
Steve tugged at his tie, knowing he was pulling the knot out of shape but not particularly caring. The last time he'd worn this suit had been at the Senate and Congressional hearings over the SHRA; the day they'd arrived in DC, Tony had sent him shopping with Jan along as a guarantee of good taste, and he'd come back with clothing more expensive than any he'd ever owned, short of his costume.
He felt stiff and strange in it, not uncomfortable, but oddly on display in a way he wasn't while in costume.
"Stop fidgeting," Jan said. "You look perfect."
Steve let go of his tie, embarrassed at being caught yanking at it like a kid who'd been forced into his Sunday best, only to realize that Jan hadn't been speaking to him.
"That's because you dressed me like a doll," Hank was saying, as she straightened the collar of his shirt. "I still don't see what was wrong with the blue tie."
"It didn't match your suit." Jan smoothed his lapel, then gave it a little pat before letting her hand drop. "Navy blue doesn't go with black. And you make a very attractive doll."
Steve looked away, giving them a moment of privacy; Tony was on the other side of the room, smiling stiffly at a vaguely familiar-looking man whom Steve was fairly sure was involved in city politics somehow. He, unlike Hank, didn't have a single fold of fabric out of place, for all that his hair was artfully disheveled in a way that probably looked intentional, but was actually Steve's fault. Tony usually wore suits and dress shirts, unless he was planning to spend some quality time tearing machinery apart, and he always looked good in them, but when he made a real effort to dress nicely, as he had tonight, the impulse to muss up and pull apart that perfectly constructed armor of suit and tie was irresistible.
One good tug, and the half-windsor knot in his tie would fall right out.
Tempting as the thought was, they had too large an audience right now for Steve to indulge himself. Tony, being Tony, would probably make no effort to stop him if he tried.
"Isn't that the city councilman who wants to ban feeding pigeons?" Sam's voice was dry. "You think we should go rescue Tony?"
Steve shrugged. "He can fend for himself." Tony might not actually enjoy politics, but he was good at them.
"I'll miss the chance to ask Councilman Englehart some probing questions about his pigeon population control legislation." Sam glanced over at the man again, eyes narrowing slightly; under the joking tone was a thread of something more serious.
The name was familiar, and not from arguments about animal rights and public sanitation. Englehart was one of the supporters of a proposal to ban known superheroes from working for the city, citing potential conflicts of interest, as well as potential lawsuits. "I don't think that would be a good idea," Steve said. "This isn't an art show in DUMBO. A loud public argument about politics will get us kicked out."
"I'm not going to argue," Sam said mildly. "I'm just going to remind him that being a superhero is not currently against the law."
Judging by the tightening of Englehart's lips, and the way he was shaking his head, Tony was already doing that. It didn't appear to be working.
"I haven't seen the rest of the exhibit yet," Steve countered. The 'Art and Artifacts of Alchemy' exhibit was scheduled to open to the general public next Friday, and a banner announcing its presence already hung outside the museum. Medieval and Renaissance art had never been Steve's field, but he could appreciate the complex symbolism in the one painting and two seventeenth century engravings he'd seen thus far. Tony would like them; they were like puzzles in visual form, each of the pictures showing some part of a chemical process.
Tony hated magic, but alchemy had enough science in it that it might not count. And the chiaroscuro woodcut he could see hanging on the opposite wall, just behind a knot of men and women in evening wear, looked utterly breathtaking in its degree of detail.
"You know," Sam said, after he had given Steve several silent minutes to appreciate the woodcut's workmanship, "I keep renewing my membership, but I don't think I've been here in a year."
"It's been a very long year." The words sounded more serious than Steve had meant them to, largely because they were true.
Sam nodded. "Longer than you know. Things were getting bad before you came back. Englehart's superhero legislation's going to set a real bad precedent if it passes, but it's a drop in the bucket compared with what was going on before."
"I know." Tony hadn't said much about the inner workings of the Initiative, other than what he'd admitted to on the witness stand, but the few things he had let slip had told Steve that there were things that hadn't come out even in the congressional hearings. 'I didn't order any assassinations when I was Director of SHIELD', he'd said carefully, and the deliberate phrasing had been a red flag that while Tony might not have been ordering assassinations, someone else might have been.
Not that SHIELD didn't solve problems by making people quietly disappear even now, but Steve had far more faith in Nick Fury's ability to make that judgment call than he had in the people who had been pulling HUSAC's strings. Not everyone involved with Registration or with the Initiative could have been as innocent of the true identity of Representative Dickstein's silent sponsor as they'd claimed. Whether they'd believed him to be Aleksander Lukin or known that he was the Red Skull, some of them had still had to know that he wasn't who he claimed to be. Known, and not cared, just as they hadn't cared about the innocent people shut away in extra-dimensional prisons, or the black ops program that had wanted to start a new super soldier project, with methods reminiscent of the Weapon X program. Or of the original Project Rebirth – unwilling or deliberately under-informed human test subjects had been part of that, too.
Next year was an election year. Steve hoped devoutly that the remaining congressmen who had served on the Unregistered Superhuman Activities Committee – and not been booted out of office already for taking bribes from known terrorists – would not be re-elected.
Sam shook his head, pulling his shirt cuffs straight and brushing futilely at the punctures in the fabric of his right coat sleeve, the spacing of the tears looking suspiciously like something Redwing's talons might have made. "I don't want to talk about this. I'm tired of thinking about it. And about Chthon and whatever part of Lower Manhattan's going to blow up or fall down next. Have they re-opened the Islamic art gallery yet?"
"I know what you mean," Steve said, with feeling. "And no. They're still refurbishing it. Very slowly and carefully. They've been slowly and carefully refurbishing it since 2001."
Sam snorted. "I'm surprised at you," he said, voice dry with irony again, "suggesting that they'd shut an entire gallery down for bullshit political reasons. I'm sure it really needs years' worth of renovations."
"Maybe I should suggest that Tony earmark his next donation for that gallery. Can you do that?"
Sam shrugged. "When you're giving a museum enough money to have your name carved on a plaque in the front hallway, you can probably do whatever you want."
It was a tempting thought, but actually attempting to put pressure on the museum via donations would be unethical. And it wasn't Steve's money to spend, either, though Tony wasn't likely to object to using financial blackmail for a good cause. Not ethical, he reminded himself.
At least the Museum of Natural History had refused to bow to pressure to remove all discussions of Homo superior from their new "Hall of Human Origins" exhibit. You had to take victories where you could find them.
Tony had managed to escape from Englehart, and was now talking to the owner of a major Manhattan development company. Beyond him, Wanda was walking slowly down the length of the exhibit hall, stopping to study each piece. Hank was deep in conversation with one of the museum curators, and kept gesturing at a display case of 16th century laboratory instruments. Jan, beside him, was watching with a proprietary little smile that Steve hoped he hadn't been wearing when he'd been admiring the fit of Tony's suit jacket earlier.
Steve was examining another woodcut, this one from the mid-1500s and carefully displayed in a dimly lit alcove, when he felt another presence behind him. He wasn't sure what bit of information told his brain that was Tony – maybe the sound of his footsteps, maybe some scent, the sound of his breathing – but his subconscious had identified him before the other man spoke.
"Someday we need to come here on a real date."
Steve smiled, and kept looking at the woodcut; he didn't need to see Tony to imagine the rueful little smile on his face. "When there are fewer cameras around, maybe." In the woodcut, a man and a woman were locked in a passionate embrace, while a bird hovered over them, transfixed in a ray of light. In the background, a lion was eating the sun. The little plaque to the left of the image explained that the couple represented the sun and the moon, and the lion, the role of spiritual mercury as a universal solvent.
There was a faint hint of apology in Tony's voice as he said, "If it was just my reputation and SE's stock points, I'd say to hell with it and just kiss you somewhere extremely public and get it over with. The tabloids have been speculating about me for years anyway."
Steve shook his head. Turning around was automatic; after years of dealing with Tony as Iron Man, Steve could carry on a conversation with Tony without needing to see his face, but hearing Tony's voice coming from just over his shoulder made the skin on the back of his neck tingle distractingly. "If it was just our reputations at stake, I wouldn't hide anything." Steve met Tony's gaze, hoping the words sounded sincere, and not like empty rhetoric. He meant them – their relationship was not the media's business, and part of him cringed at the idea of having it dragged through the headlines and discussed on talk shows as if it were something tawdry and sordid, something to be ashamed of, but hiding it was like a silent agreement that there was something wrong with it, with both of them – but he had never been very good at these kinds of conversations. But if Peter could unmask in front of cameras, Steve could hardly do less.
Tony's eyes looked closer to grey than blue in the corner's carefully dim light, and some trick of lighting made dark shadows gather under them. Or maybe the dark smudges were real. "We don't have anything to hide," Steve went on. "It's not illegal anymore." He probably sounded as if he were giving a speech, he reflected, and from Tony's fractional headshake, it wasn't a very convincing one.
"We can't afford any distractions right now. Not until Chthon's been dealt with." Tony had the sound of a man trying to convince himself.
It was true, just as the fact that they'd needed to make first the SHRA and then the team their priority was true. Chthon could turn the entire world into a barren wasteland, and would, if he got free.
"When he is, I'll take you dancing," Steve promised, recklessly. He'd danced with Bernie and Connie, and even Sharon, though she preferred unarmed combat practice to swing dancing. And with Diamondback, who had always tried to lead. Tony would, too – it was a nearly impossible habit to break, as Steve had learned when Rachel had tried to make him follow her and do all the steps backwards. Having Tony's arms around him in public would be worth tripping backwards over his own feet and looking like an idiot.
Tony's smile was real this time, crinkling the corners of his eyes, though the shadows under them remained. "I'll hold you to that." His eyes flicked over Steve's suit, and the smile turned amused. "What have you been doing to your tie?"
Steve glanced down at his shirt front before he could stop him. "Nothing. It's fine."
"It's crooked." Tony took a half-step forward, closing the distance between them, and took hold of Steve's tie in both hands, tugging on the knot until it was tight once more. He smoothed it carefully over Steve's chest, fingers lingering for just a moment, then stepped back.
He gave Steve a second once-over, his eyes filling with heat. "You should let Jan pick out your clothing more often."
"I feel like a fish out of water in suits." At least, he did in suits as nice as this one. Though Tony was probably imagining him without the suit, judging by his expression.
Tony's lips curved into something between a smile and a smirk. "You don't look like one. Not in this suit," he said, a familiar husky sound to his voice, the one that always sent a shiver down Steve's spine and started a slow heat in the pit of stomach.
Not here, Steve reminded himself. Not yet.
"Besides," Tony added, "Happy was the one who always looked like a thug." He hesitated, looking away at the woodcut over Steve's shoulder. Steve was struck again by how tired he suddenly looked. "The more expensive the suit, the more he looked like hired mob muscle," Tony finished, voice subdued.
Then he looked back at Steve, and the smile on his face was strained. "He would have complained that he was just a big, dumb, ex-bruiser who didn't understand anything here, and asked me why I couldn't have brought someone else instead, and secretly looked at everything here while pretending not to, and loved the whole thing."
Steve let the topic of Happy drop. "I still think Carol and Clint would have enjoyed it if they'd come."
Tony didn't actually roll his eyes, but some quirk of facial expression implied the motion anyway. "Steve, not everyone enjoys art museums just because you think they should. Do you really think Hank would be here if it weren't an exhibit on debunked, pseudo-magical proto-chemistry?"
"Yes," Steve said. "Jan is here." He glanced automatically around the room once again, taking in the scattered knots of museum donors. Hank and Jan had split up, Jan chatting with a tall Asian woman in impressively stacked heels while Hank examined a display of woodcuts depicting the process of distillation.
Sam was talking to one of the museum curators; by the hand gestures he was making, either fishing or baseball was involved. Or he was waving a hand in frustration as he tried to convey exactly how irritating it was that the Islamic Art gallery was shut down, but Steve didn't think so. The conversation looked friendly.
It took him a moment to find Wanda – he still looked automatically for bold colors, and the steel-grey dress she and Jan had found at the last minute was the sort of thing the eye skimmed over without really seeing. Neutral, cool.
She was standing still, near the center of the gallery, staring at the room around her as if searching for something.
Steve thought for a moment that she might be looking for them, but as he stepped out of the shadows, she stiffened, her gaze locked on something on the far side of the room.
He went over to her, not needing to ask Tony to follow him. Sam met them halfway there, his eyes going from Steve to Wanda in a silent question.
Steve shook his head; there was no danger here that he could see. The stiff line of Wanda's back and the frozen lack of expression on her face had set off alarm bells, though. Something was wrong here, even if he himself had noticed nothing.
She was standing by a glass display case when they reached her, staring down at an old, leather bound book that had been carefully propped open to show an elaborate print of the symbols of the zodiac. The red leather of the cover and binding had faded to a rusty brown, and the pages were faded and worn.
"I can feel him whispering," Wanda said, softly, her voice eerily calm. "But only when I stand here."
A chill crawling up his spine, Steve took her by the arm, trying to be gentle, and pulled her a few steps away from the display case. The plaque beside it proclaimed that the book was a 16th century study of alchemy and astronomy by John Dee, collecting excerpts from numerous Renaissance writings on alchemy. From the central location of the display and the size of the plaque, it was one of the showpieces of the exhibit.
Sam cast an uneasy glance at the book, his eyebrows drawing together. "You mean Chthon? What do you mean you can hear him? I thought he could only enter this dimension from the cathedral."
Sam hadn't been there for the last time they had fought Chthon, or the time before that. Steve had done his best to brief him on what had happened each time, but he wasn't sure how well he understood the link between Wanda and Chthon himself.
Tony, if anything, looked even more uneasy. "Strange didn't say that, exactly. He said he could only break through the dimensional barriers there, because a fragment of his essence is trapped inside the building. He didn't say he couldn't reach through and influence things in other places."
Wanda was shaking her head, eyes still on the book. "Not hear," she corrected Sam, the words quiet. "Feel. Everything else in here is just art, or old scientific instruments. This book has real magic in it." She shivered visibly and rubbed at her arms, and for a moment, Steve thought he saw glints of reddish light play over the tattoos on her hands and the back of her neck. "Chaos magic. Dark magic. Chaos can be a joyful and creative force, but whatever's in this book is destructive, malevolent. Like he is. It's..." she looked back at the book again, hesitating, then looked away, "it wants to be used. I can feel it waiting."
"How about we move a little further away from it?" Sam suggested.
"I think that would be good." Wanda backed slowly away from the display case, nearly bumping into an older white man who was trying to look at the case of lab instruments.
Tony touched one finger to the little white plaque. "John Dee," he read. "He was fascinated by angels and demons. He spent years trying to contact angelic powers; he wanted to ask them questions about theology and natural philosophy."
It could have been a coincidence. Steve wanted to believe it was. But Chthon was a chaos entity, a being who could reshape and manipulate probability as easily as he could human minds; there were no coincidences when you dealt with him.
"I think," Steve said, "that we should talk to one of the curators."
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven
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