NOTES: I assume that everyone knows the events of Iron Man and the Avengers movies. If you don't, please go rent and watch it – you'll thank me later – then come back and read this. I'm planning on adjusting the "bad-guy" in the Next Avengers since Ultron was defeated in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Since we're a few years away from Avengers – Infinity War, I'm going to pretend that Tony's biggest fear did occur. But the timeline was after they'd all settled down and had families. Some of the families don't make any sense after Age of Ultron – Banner / Romanov for example. I am switching out Torrun (Thor's Daughter) for Skaar (Hulk's son).
James Rogers doesn't make sense as the son of Captain America and Black Widow – since she's sterile. So, he's the son of Captain America and Agent 13 now. I had to make a FEW changes to fit the storyline and to have it make sense.
As for the time travel timeline, I'm re-setting the story before Civil War and after Age of Ultron in the MCU. For the Next Avengers, I'm just rewriting it. The children will be young – and Pym will have been a baby at the time. (The older kids still in grade school.) I'm also keeping Jarvis! I like Friday, but Jarvis is my guy.
Fear was not an emotion that Tony Stark liked to entertain. Throughout his life, his ability to command scenarios and situations with an arch of an eyebrow and tone of voice filled him with confidence in both the battlefield and meeting rooms. He was used to being able to throw off his opponents, using his wit to either distract or unarm those who attacked him.
There were only a few moments in his life where fear left him paralyzed. The attacks he'd suffered by his business partner / father-figure Obadiah Stane had left him irrevocably damaged. Being captured, tortured, and threatened by the very weapons he'd designed in Afghanistan created the Knight, had created Iron Man. That day, he turned his fear into a weapon – a way to escape the Ten Rings who held him. From that point on, Stark had made it his mission to protect the world from terrorists; unknowing that Obadiah was just waiting until he was stripped of everything he'd worked to build before ripping his heart out and leaving him to die.
Gasping for breath, he crawled to find the gift Pepper had saved as an inside joke between them. The 'Proof that Tony Stark has a Heart' arc reactor literally saved his life – not once, but twice. As he thrust it into the hole in his chest, he could hear his dear friend's last words once more. "Don't waste your life," Ho Yinsen gasped before taking his last breath.
Defeating Stane had become another milestone in Tony's life. He no longer trusted that anyone had his best interests in mind – and took control over his role as Iron Man. He revealed to the world his intentions and dared those who would stop his mission to challenge him.
From that point on, it was Iron Man who put fear in evil-doers, fighting with everything in his disposal to stop men like Stane. It went well; his stocks and business skyrocketing as he inspired the world with his good deed. If only things had stayed the same, if only the world hadn't been attacked by aliens…
The New York City Invasion, as the world had coined it, had not only introduced humanity to extraterrestrial life, it had created the Avengers. Stark remembered he had thrown the jab at Loki that his team was 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' before getting thrown off his building through a sheet of glass.
Knowing that the World Council had been ready to decimate his City with a nuclear device in efforts to defeat the Chitauri army had put more fear into him than slowly dying of palladium poisoning. He only needed to imagine all of his associates, coworkers, researchers, Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, and the members of his team being burnt to a crisp before being blown apart by shockwaves into dust to launch into action – hitting a two-in-one. He rode the nuke through the wormhole, destroyed the Chitauri Mothership and saved millions of lives in one-fell-swoop.
The only thing it cost him was a few years' worth of sleep and a healthy mindset. PTSD from that that day haunted him – filling him with fear that one day, the Chitauri would return with more than one mothership and no wormhole to close.
It was that fear that lead to the creation of Ultron. Yeah, thinking back on it, Stark had to admit that it wasn't his best idea to come to fruition. He'd fought for it, knowing in his heart that the intergalactic battle he foresaw would only be a matter of time. They would be back – they would bring more firepower. Power that humanity could not yet even imagine, if Thor's warnings were to be believed. Tony had seen only a glimpse of Asgardian technology and it was breathtakingly advanced. He'd arrogantly thought he could harness Loki's Scepter into Ultron and save the world.
Unfortunately, Ultron became the very danger Stark had tried to prevent. The team fought against him – tried to stop him and discredit his concerns. It was hard to come back as a team after that.
Yes, the Avengers came together when called but, it was getting harder to relate. Captain America, Steve Rogers, thought Tony needed 'help' - that Tony was letting his paranoia about a future attack effect every aspect of his life. Tony wanted to argue that it wasn't the case, but even his girlfriend had agreed with Rogers. His non-stop preparations for the upcoming attack were what drove Pepper away. He'd begged her to stay with him – pleading his case that he was doing everything in his power to protect her. It only took a few more attacks to completely destroy their relationship; she'd been unable to be a superhero's girlfriend, as she put it. She couldn't live with him knowing every day could be his last – either through the explosions in the lab or a bad guy wanting to take on the Iron Man.
Dr. Bruce Banner had run away, terrified of Hulk's unyielding destruction under the influence of Maximoff's mind-trick, and taken his million-dollar untraceable aircraft with him. It had hurt him that another friend had abandoned him. The way they had connected – he'd only felt once before in his life in college with Rhodes. He'd looked for his friend and found him in the middle of nowhere, a savage jungle where a few hill-tribes still lived. Tony tried to invite him back, only to have the Hulk nearly rip his head off. From that point on, Tony kept an eye on Banner from afar and communicated only through monthly anonymous chat messages.
Thor had to return to Asgard, the asshole hadn't even helped clean up the mess that he and his insane brother created every time they visited the 'Realm of Midgard'. Apparently, the All-Father had ordered him to return home and barred him from seeing his fair Lady Jane again, decreeing that his eldest son was to marry and produce an Asgardian heir to the throne sooner rather than later. How very lucky that his good friend Lady Sif was there to save him from an arranged marriage – instead using friendship as the backbone of what would be a respectful and agreeable unity.
Vision, Clint, Natasha, and Steve lived their lives… doing their best to try and help humanity in their own way through what remained of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Years passed and the Avengers moved on with their lives. Cap married his girl (well, his original girl's niece – Sharon Carter), the agent who'd spied on him after he thawed out. Tony didn't show up to their wedding; Steve showed up after his honeymoon with Sharon to air out his disappointment of rejecting their invitation. Of course, the man didn't leave it there – threatening to pull him from the team unless he stopped obsessively creating weapons for what Cap called an 'imaginary threat'. The argument they had was one for the record books – neither of them speaking to the other outside of Avengers business.
Tony quickly realized that the rest of the team had followed suit. Clint stopped 'dropping by for a beer' biweekly, claiming his family had taken up all his free time. His wife was pregnant again; Clint joked that he and Laura were planning a bakers-dozen, before getting kneed in the groin by said-pregnant wife. Natasha didn't bother with an excuse – merely disappearing into thin air and reappearing when the team called her.
It had been lonely – only Happy and Rhodey stuck by him, checking up on him and dragging him out of his lab for air. Stark Industries ran like clockwork under new CEO Pepper Potts, and he had become a ghost – showing up when he finished a new invention that would benefit mankind. The media called him a recluse: bringing up his PTSD, time in Afghanistan, and him saving New York from a nuke constantly, which inevitably triggered an anxiety attack. His bots did his best to protect him from those stories, changing the television stations before they captured his attention.
The day he'd realized that he was truly alone was the day he was invited to a Christening. Apparently, Steve and Sharon Rogers had been pregnant. No one told him until almost a month after the baby was born. Steve had invited all of the Avengers to his new son's Christening and it would've been a media nightmare if Tony had been left out. Instead of celebrating the birth of James Rogers, the reporters would have focused on why Stark had not come to his teammate's joyous occasion and that was something both Rogers wanted to avoid like the plague.
The team was excited for the happy couple – all of them closely knit and moving together like family. It was obvious that he was being treated like the boss that everyone hated but felt obligated to invite. He'd spent a token couple of hours watching the team. Baby James was shown-off by his proud parents most of the night while Auntie Nat bounced Clint's newborn baby, Francis in her arms - fighting with a young woman named Hope over who would hold the babies next. Hope was apparently one of two new members of the Avengers; ones that he hadn't yet been introduced to. He put on his game face as he was introduced to Ant-Man/Giant-Man and the Wasp, acting like he had read their profiles and was happy they had agreed to join the team. Clint and Laura's kids ran around jumping from one uncle to another – enjoying every moment of attention they were given, even as the new babies overshadowed them. James was passed from one person to another, each loving him in their own way. Tony wasn't given an opportunity to hold the child, as Clint patted him on the back laughing that 'he knew better than to hand him the baby.'
The jokes didn't stop there. One after the other, comments related to his 'mental health' and 'imaginary alien armies' were injected into the conversations. They were treating him like a pariah – as if he were insane and feared being around him would spread the disease. Even Natasha remarked that enough time had passed that perhaps the aliens realized they were too far and too powerful of a species to be a threat. She cut him to the bone when she scolded him that he was wasting his life. Those words spoken aloud in a voice and tone different than Yinsen nearly broke him. He excused himself and fought to keep his emotions in check in the darkness of an empty room. It took him twenty minutes to return to the party with his usual nonchalant façade firmly in place.
When the large group had suddenly decided to change venue, and didn't invite him to join them, Tony bowed out gracefully to return to his workshop. He wished that he could've handled it better, but the event had shaken him. If his team ridiculed him for what he felt he needed to do, there was no use to trying to convince them or the rest of the world. They were happy to be naive and blind. Who was Stark to ruin their fantasies with what they believed was insanity?
He stopped the faux vanity that he'd perfected for the cameras. There seemed to be no reason for him to maintain the van dyke he'd always sported, allowing himself to grow a beard. The more time passed, the faster he created. Years of work helped him create a cache of weapons, a near-autonomous robot army, aircrafts, space-crafts, and his piece-de-la-crème, a hidden refuge. He'd practically built a city underground that was self-maintaining, fortified, shielded, and completely untraceable near the arctic circle if the worst should happen and the Earth should fail. It was large enough to house, feed, clothe, and support at least a hundred-thousand people for at least a generation. It had been built to be the most technologically advanced fortress the world had seen; practically the USS Enterprise complete with a medical bay, command center, recreation areas, training facilities, private bungalows, holodecks, and replicators. It would give them a fighting chance to win back the Earth. The arsenal was stuffed to the rim with the top of the line weaponry that Stark could create, using the Chitauri wreckage as the inspiration and blueprints for his newest designs.
It was the weapons he'd created that weighed heavily on his soul. He'd sworn that he'd never create another weapon – but knew of no other way to fight the coming enemy. Tony would rather hate himself for building weapons then letting his entire world burn in failing to prepare.
It was just a shame that no one else had felt that way. The Avengers had given him the boot – apparently, he'd been replaced by another billionaire from Wakanda. Once King T'Challa had offered to cover the costs of being Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers had quickly signed up the Black Panther to fill his spot on the team. Cap had been almost apologetic as he delivered the 'pink slip'. Before Rogers left, he'd promised that if Tony decided to rejoin the real-world, that he'd support him with the transition.
Tony'd offhandedly told Cap to "keep-in-touch" as he walked out the door, and much to his surprise, Rogers did. It wasn't often, but occasionally, he'd receive a letter sharing the team's accomplishments and good news.
News of weddings and baby showers soon came. Apparently, Francis and James had sparked baby-fever in the group. King T'Challa married Ororo Monroe, Storm of the X-Men, and soon introduced their son Azari as the prince of Wakanda. He'd received news that the Ant-Man and Wasp had married. Apparently, their relationship was rocky as he spent lots of time with his ex-wife in raising their daughter, Cassie. The Avengers had other priorities now – ones that were more important than Tony Stark and his crazy obsession. No one had time to listen about the preparations being made.
With each letter, Stark's fear grew. He could feel it in his gut – time was running out for the world.