Tony couldn't get the Chitauri Invasion out of his head. He couldn't stop thinking about flying through that portal with a nuclear missile. A nuclear missile. Clasped between his own two hands. How insane was that?
In the aftermath, he'd modified Stark Tower - Avengers Tower now, one of his modifications - but the only other Avenger who had moved in was Bruce Banner. Not that there was anything wrong with Banner, but he was still only one of five. Did they not like him or something?
Still, that wasn't the point. The point was, the tower was too big and empty, and he couldn't stop thinking about the wormhole in the sky the aliens had used against them.
Obviously, the solution was to build portals of his own so that they could not be weaponized against them again (hopefully), so that was what he was doing. Building a portal. Where to, he wasn't totally sure. He'd settle for it actually working first, and then figure that part out.
"Tony, what are you doing down here all the time?" Pepper asked. Because the tower was so big and lonely, he was at his beach house in Malibu. He felt bad for abandoning Banner like that, but here Tony was at least used to it being big and empty, with only Pepper and JARVIS for company. Speaking of Pepper, he should probably actually respond to her, shouldn't he?
"Trying to bypass the laws of time and space," he said, not looking up from his work. If Pepper was curious, she'd ask. If not, she'd leave him alone. That's how it always was.
"Tony, haven't you done enough of that?" Pepper sighed. "Come to bed, you haven't been sleeping."
"I'm fine, Pepper," Tony waved dismissively as he looked over the mess of parts that he was hoping would become a operational portal.
"You are not fine," Pepper scoffed. "You haven't been fine since New York, don't lie to me."
Tony finally turned around to actually look at Pepper, who was leaning against the doorframe with her eyebrows raised, looking highly skeptical and overall quite disbelieving.
"Okay, so I'm not fine," Tony sighed. Admitting that was almost physically painful, and if it had been anyone other than Pepper, he wouldn't have done it whether it was obvious to them or not. "But I am working on something that will make it so I can be fine."
"Is that so?" Pepper raised her eyebrows. "In that case, what have you been working on for the past month?"
"This," Tony gestured behind him at the half-finished lump of metal that was meant to become a portal soon enough.
"Tony, really? It's been a month! I don't care if you keep working on it later, but please take a break and come to bed! You need to sleep, all humans do!"
"Pepper, please? Just… Let me work for another hour or two? Please?" Tony sighed and did his best to look pathetic. He felt pathetic, so that wasn't really very difficult.
"One hour, Tony," Pepper glared. "If you aren't upstairs in exactly one hour, I will drag you upstairs myself. Understood?"
"Got it," Tony nodded and turned back to the half-finished portal. He heard Pepper ascend the stairs as he reached for his screwdriver. Whatever. She'd probably already be asleep in an hour, so he didn't really plan to make sure he was up there. She wouldn't notice if she was asleep.
An hour came and went, and, as Tony had suspected, Pepper did not come down. So Tony kept working. He finished his first model of the portal and began the start-up sequence.
JARVIS could be heard in the background narrating the start-up sequence, but Tony was focused only on the portal, which began to glow around the edges. It seemed to actually be working - for about half a second before flickering away, with nothing to show for it.
So Tony made a few adjustments to the device, and tried again. And again. And again. And again and again and again. After the seventh attempt, JARVIS interrupted, "Sir, you are receiving a video call from Dr. Banner."
"Alright, put him through," Tony sighed. What time was it? Not that it mattered, but he was slightly curious.
The video call sparked to life in front of him, and Bruce Banner appeared with a mildly worried expression. "Hey, Tony," he began, fiddling with something in his hands. "Hope you don't mind me calling at this hour, I just wanted to talk to somebody, and I figured you might be awake."
"Oh, no, yeah, it's fine," Tony briefly pinched the bridge of his nose. "I was working on a thing, but it isn't working for me, I could use a distraction."
"Oh?" Banner lit up, curious. "What are you working on?"
Tony weighed the options here. On the one hand, if Banner thought it was unwise to attempt to build a portal, he could tell SHIELD, or even worse, Pepper. However, if Banner would lend some assistance to the problem at hand, then perhaps Tony could finally make some actual headway. As in most cases when Tony was tasked with making a hefty choice, he defaulted to the wonderfully disasterous option of 'take all the risks'.
"I'm- I'm building a portal."
"Excuse me, what?" Banner blinked rapidly, as though doing so would change what Tony had said.
"I'm building a portal, so that they can't be weaponized against us again," Tony explained.
"Well, okay…" Banner shrugged. Apparently, Tony's hairbrained explanation made enough sense to him, even though it honestly only barely made sense to Tony, but whatever. "What aspect of it isn't working?"
"I can't get it to stay open for any length of time. It powers up, then shuts off almost immediately afterward."
"It sounds like it can't sustain power outside one circuit loop. Why aren't you using an arc reactor to power it?" Banner analyzed.
"I don't know if I'll be able to turn it off if I do that."
"Oh, fair point. Maybe you could try to extend the portion of the power circuit that is within the portal itself, see if that does anything?"
Tony felt like hitting himself. Maybe Pepper was right and he did need to sleep. How had he not thought of that himself? "That is a good idea, and I will do that."
Banner nodded, smiling. "Well, I'll leave you to it. I'm pretty hungry, so I'm actually going to go eat breakfast now. Bye, Tony," the call flickered off. Tony nodded at it even though Banner was long gone now.
Tony extended the circuit length and stepped back to run another test. The device powered up, like before, but then it actually ran - for just long enough to spit out two people, a man and a woman, both eerily familiar to Tony in a way he wasn't sure he wanted to examine. The man looked rather scared of his sudden change in surroundings, but the woman scanned the room with practiced ease, and when her eyes locked on him, she drew a gun on him.
"Who are who?" the woman demanded with a british accent, anger burning in her brown eyes. "How did you bring us here? What do want with us?"
Later, Tony would blame it on sleep deprivation, or something, but right then, with two strange people in his workshop, one of whom was pointing a gun at him, he couldn't help but scream.