One punch, two punch, three punch, four punch, shift in stance, repeat. Coiling of muscles, reflecting of memories, releasing of frustration. They shared face and blood, features and habits. They drank, they laughed, they spoke the same, but one was different from the other. Tony was friend, comrade, confidant. Howard had been almost-father, almost-mentor. Friend wasn't what he would have called the older Stark, but it was damned close. Tony was open, Howard had not been. Howard had treated him as more than a test rat, Tony treated him as a friend. They both had clapped him on the shoulder. Tony hadn't shared in his life's horrors beyond the near-invasion of Loki, but Howard had. Was one better than the other? Did the collective experiences and relative life and death between them make him value one more than the other?
He shattered the second punching bag and stood in the middle of the gym, eyes of unfocused as the sand pooled at his feet and coated his skin. The answer was no. Regardless of what one or the other had done, neither was more important than the other. One had been "Merchant of Death" and the other had been a war monger. Both had brought death and destruction, but also created something of equal value and measure. Tony was Howard's redemption, in a way, just as Iron Man was Tony's. Tony would surpass his father in all things, he was sure even if he didn't understand the how, and he was alive.
Memories and gravestones were all he had left of his previous life, but his comrades were all he had in the present and the future. He hooked up another punching bag and repeated the sequence.
He had just finished destroying the third punching bag when he noticed Tony leaning against the door frame with arms crossed over the arc reactor. Pausing in hooking up the fourth, he studied the younger man. Deep lines were already starting to cut a path across his handsome face and a thin, white scar traced its way down the column of his throat, a recent addition to the others spider-webbing across his body.
"Pepper said I should stop avoiding you," he said, none of the usual humor lightning his eyes.
Steve finished hooking the bag up and swept the sand from the previous one away. "Oh? What'd she do? Threaten you with no sex for a week?"
There was a spark in his eyes and the twitching of his lip into a half smile. "A month, actually. Something about me playing the victim," he answered with a shrug.
"Tony, I-" Steve began.
"No, don't," Tony sighed. "I don't want to argue over this. You obviously think he was a great man while I don't. I've fought too many opinions on this topic and I don't want to start bringing the past into the team when it should stay the past and I don't want to explain everything that happened, anyways. So, let it stay where we left it."
Steve rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, considering the inventor. Three hours and three punching bags had brought him to a singular conclusion. "I was just going to apologize. My opinion hasn't changed, but I knew Howard back during the war and seventy years is a long time and not change in some way," he said, turning a little pink.
"Right, Capsicle, because you're obviously one for the ages for not changing...or even aging after your little beauty nap," Tony chuckled. He relaxed a little and straightened his posture to walk into the gym. They spent most of an hour and the fourth punching bag with Tony making the odd comment on Steve's form and reciting different math equations for corrections to said form while Steve remarked on his own experiences in combat training.
It was an odd hour they spent together, but it was a good one that healed most of the damage that had been done. All the while, JARVIS recorded everything and added it to a growing database of moments.
Irony would make him reflect bitterly on the way in which this particular event unfolded. He and Tony had mostly forgotten the incident by the time the next mission had come along. They had even begun to fall into their old routine of light bickering before a mission, but when Loki attacked New York with another odd snow storm it had been a little too much to hope for that nothing would go wrong this time.
Hulk was attempting to smash Thor's little brother again and Loki was attempting to electrocute their Giant Green. Thor was yelling at his brother and Tony was standing frozen in the middle of the field. Clint was shooting off the ice monsters that bled through the snow storm and Natasha was finishing off the ones his arrows didn't quite kill.
They were winning, if only just, against this newest threat when Thor fired lightning with his hammer, Loki was grabbed by Hulk, a spell went awry and joined with the lightning. It reflected itself off Tony's armor and struck him in the chest. Between one breath and the next, one blink and another, he saw the battlefield and then...nothing.
Bright white and nothing crowded into his senses and threatened suffocation. Then, he was face down on a hard wood floor with a clatter and silence pressing in on him. His hand went slack on his shield and he fell into the grip of darkness as the sound of something shattering filled his ears.
A million thoughts filtered into his mind as he woke next. There was so much to do. Starting with the paperwork covering the recent mission and ending with another set of punching bags. Between those two things there was a meeting with Fury to assess the damage that had been done to the city this time with Loki and the snow...Loki...and his...spell...and Thor and his...lightning.
Standing in one place and then another between one second and the next. Sickening moment of nothing, of glaring white and then welcoming darkness. He sat up with a gasp, eyes flying open, and sheets sliding from his body. He looked around, both confused and not so confused. Anything that was electronic in the room was stamped with an ornate S in a way that spoke of only Tony.
Everything was the same and not, the same as when he had first woken from the ice. The room was bare of pictures, but there was a TV that almost looked like it could have been from his life before. There was a night stand and two doors that he was sure led to the bathroom and a long hallway. Hell, there was even an old radio sitting on a dresser across the room, but it was off.
Maybe Tony was playing a joke on him? But, no, that didn't seem like him. Tony was sharp words and humor and misdirection. Brilliance wasn't what conveyed itself in his surroundings.
Calm, he told himself and immediately turned his attention inward. He slowed his frantic heart and relaxed his muscles one moment at a time. If they had wanted to hurt him, they would have done so already. When he was breathing normally again, he turned his attention to the matter at hand.
Loki had been their enemy that day. That usually meant that magic was in some way involved. The Hulk had seized the sorcerer in the midst of a spell and Thor had fired lightning. Usually, when things weren't going well Loki would teleport away to enact the next phase of his convoluted plans. What that meant was that Loki had probably been working on was a teleportation spell that went wrong when he had been grabbed. Combine that with Thor's thunder and Stark's suit reflecting the blast and that was how he had wound up in this situation.
As he was in the final stages of processing what had happened, the door handle rattled and the door opened to reveal a familiar face that left his mouth dry and made speech impossible.
Memories were moments that the mind captured with sight and sound and scent and touch and taste and stored away for later remembrance. They weren't supposed to so vivid.
Howard was older by at least ten years and there were lines in his face that hadn't been there before. So, this wasn't a memory. At least, not entirely. With Loki and his spells it was sometimes hard to tell if they were perceiving things correctly, like with his clones and that one time...but that wasn't the point and he was rambling and Howard was staring at him. Now, his heart was hammering and his breathing was speeding up again and he wasn't sure what he had been thinking about and his thoughts were beginning to spiral around the last moment before the ice with Peggy and the terror and the white and the...
"Rogers," Howard said and his voice was hoarse, raw like he'd been screaming or crying. "Stop freaking out."
Steve blinked. If it was an illusion, it was a damn good one, but he was almost sure that it wasn't, not with the white one moment and pressure and...Stop, he told himself, holding onto Howard's words. Howard, who was present and still staring at him like he'd never seen anything so wonderful or horrifying.
"What year is it?"
A bitter smile touched Howard's lips as he lifted the glass he was holding to his lips and swallowed the amber liquid down. Light caught on a plain gold band on Howard's ring finger and Steve stared at it. The scientist hadn't been married when last he had seen him. That was...not unexpected with what he knew.
"May 15th, 1967. It's been near twenty-two years since we lost you over the North Atlantic and ten since I gave up. How'd you drop in on me like that?" Howard asked.
He was processing too much, too fast again. 1967 meant a year before Tony's birth and another forty-four before he was found and thawed. The idea made him a little green that there was another version of himself out there somewhere in that ocean just waiting to be found and he was...Stop, he told himself again.
"It's...a long story," Steve croaked at last and something unwound in him. He looked at Howard, really looked. The man was older, he could see that in the lines of his face, the graying of his hair, and the fatigue in eyes that had once been warm brown, but there was something missing, something vital.
Briefly, he thought of Tony and saw again the glimmer of humor, of a nature not quite ripped apart by war and he realized what was gone, what had faded. Howard was no longer really living. There was no gleam of life that had drawn people to him. The man he had known really was dead and it wasn't so hard to believe anymore what he had been told of Tony's childhood. A man, no matter how brilliant, teetering on the edge of giving up wasn't meant to be a father, not the kind Tony would have needed. Then, Howard was turning away, lifting his free hand over his shoulder and motioning towards the outside of the room.
"Come on, Captain, I've all the time in the world now," the older Stark was saying. "You may as well have a drink while you tell me what happened."
Drawn as he had first been to Howard, it was almost like being pulled forward the way he moved off the bed and followed. The past, the past, the past was now his present, and memories weren't just all he had left of his life from before. Twenty-two years wasn't so far from the end of the war, wasn't so far from the moment he had lost it all. He could have it all again, have Peggy...
Howard was looking over a bottle of the same sort of amber liquid that he had consumed previously. His hair was gray and he hadn't been much older than Peggy. He was married now and due to have a son in a year or so. Twenty-two years was long enough to live an entire life and he had lost his chance when he had crashed that plane over the Atlantic. Howard met his gaze and smiled again, a little less bitter and a little wistful.
"You don't look a day older than when I last saw you," he commented. "That was a good year, you know. A good month, actually. If we hadn't lost you in early April, you'd have had an actual chance at Hitler before he killed himself in-"
"-late April," Steve finished and Howard blinked.
It wasn't the bleary look of a drunk trying to fix something in his mind, but rather the look of a man slowly comprehending something. Shaking his head, he said, "Don't tell me too much of what happened to you if you're not here to stay."
Steve looked at the floor, away from the sharp gaze that was so familiar and yet not. There were clothes and machine parts strewn about the living room like he was living alone. There were magazines spread across a coffee table and another room just down the hall he suspected was the kitchen and also a mess. He didn't think about the similarities this house seemed to bear to one of Tony's other homes, didn't look at the way the wood flooring was grained and the familiar patterns it formed beneath his feet. Instead, he looked at the other man again and asked, "What do you want to know?"
"Start at the beginning," Howard said, then glanced at him sidelong. "Never mind. Let's start with what year you were found."
This was easier, letting the other man take the reigns on the conversation. He didn't have to do more than filter through what information might be too dangerous and what might be irrelevant. Howard was the genius and he would know exactly what he needed to ask to understand the situation without jeopardizing the future, but...what if he could change just one thing?
"2011," he said. "I was frozen in the ice for sixty-six years before they were able to...ah...thaw me out."
Howard chuckled, set the bottle down, and tossed some of the items off the couch before he sat down. "So, I probably didn't live to see that," he said dryly. Steve opened his mouth and then closed it at the sharp look Howard gave him. "I don't want to know how I die. It takes the mystery out of guessing." He looked down at his glass again and Steve swallowed what he wanted to say. "The military doesn't know you're here and I'm not gonna tell them you stopped in. Contracts are great for the money, but they don't deserve to even know after they just gave up."
"Isn't that what you did?"
The question was out before he thought about it, more curiosity than malice, and just as ill-spoken as his comment to Tony. He could have punched himself for the bleak, tired expression that crossed Howard's face. "Twelve years is a long time to give while life moves on around you," Howard mused and the look vanished. "Of course, you wouldn't have known that, being a Capsicle and all."
He could tell the words were meant to bait and distract him, but he only chuckled. "Tony calls me that a lot," he said and Howard turned his face away again.
Stretching one arm over the back of the couch, Howard never looked back at him as he said, "That was supposed to be my boy's middle name. Gregory Anthony Stark. Greg or Tony for a nickname, just to give him a choice." He swirled his glass and looked thoughtful, distant even. "Maria had him at thirty weeks, a little early, but the doctors said he would probably live and be healthy. He didn't. Strangled by his own umbilical cord, in fact." Steve didn't know what to say, couldn't even begin to fathom what might be an appropriate response. Howard spared him that by continuing, "That was five weeks ago and Maria hasn't been able to look at me since. So, if I have another son or another wife, don't tell me about them. I'm still trying to salvage this marriage...for all the good its done." Silence stretched between them for a moment that threatened to break everything. Then, Howard said, "You kept the shield and the costume. Can't say I'm surprised, but that also means you were in the middle of a fight when something went wrong. I think that's probably a safe enough topic to chat on."
Steve filtered through the fights he had been through with Loki, filing away Howard's comments for later revision. When he spoke, he told the other man a little about the attempted take-over and how the insane Norse God had nearly succeeded but for Tony. From there, he digressed into a few of the other battles he had led the Avengers against Loki and explained what he knew of the science-magic that Asgardians seemed so fond of. The entire time, Howard never looked at him and he just listened even as the tension of his body showed in the straining muscles of his neck. It was almost like he was waiting for something.
He started detailing his most recent encounter with the sorcerer and how Tony had been caught by the ferocity of the snow storm and how the circuits in his suit had been frozen. Howard leaned forward and put his head in his hands, dropping the glass to do so. "Stop, I get it," he said, voice straining and broken. "This Loki started a spell, got caught off guard, and accidentally transported you into the past with the help of this Thor. What it sounds like he was doing was crafting a spell to teleport him away, probably back to his home or someone who knew to expect him, and the lightning changed an element and may have taken a biological component from...from this...this-"
"Tony. Iron Man," Steve supplied and watched as the name broke the last shred of resistance Howard had been holding to.
The scientist drew a long breath, trembling slightly, and said, "Alright, yes, Tony, Iron Man...my son...and brought you here because blood leads to blood and this is a place you conceptualize as home and the two just happened to lead to now because you're the man out of time and life just wants to fuck me again and again."
Steve wasn't sure what to do now that he had finally gotten to this point. "I...don't..." he began. Don't what? Know what to say, do, think, feel now that he had achieved his goal of prodding a raw, oozing wound and getting a reaction? "I'm...sorry. I shouldn't have done that."
"Captain," Howard said and his tone was flat, though his body was still shaking. "Just tell me about this son I have at a future date. You've come this far. You might as well finish it." It was a half plea, half command that was reaching for something Steve couldn't fathom. "Please."
"To start, he's like you with his brilliance and his engineering, but he's got more advanced electronics to work with..." and he told Howard everything right down to Obadiah, Afghanistan, and how much he had been told of Tony's childhood. His memory wasn't perfect and he missed a few details, but he managed to give Tony's father a very clear picture of the future that he hadn't wanted to know about. All the while, Howard never looked at him. "And that's why you're going to do better this time," Steve finished earnestly. "You're not a horrible person and you're not so far gone. He's not even born yet. None of it has to happen."
He was smiling in a soft manner when Howard glanced up at him. At some point, Steve had taken the seat next to him and leaned most of his weight onto his elbows. Howard's eyes were still dark and lacking in the light they had once held, but he no longer looked quite so bleak. "A year and some odd months before he's born, then?" he asked and Steve nodded.
There was hope, but only a little now and it did nothing to lighten the lines in the other man's face. Steve drew a breath to say more, but between one moment and the next, one eye blink and another there was blinding white and suffocating pressure.
Howard watched as Captain America faded from his life again one part at a time, starting at the elbow and finishing with the smiling, hopeful face. It was like a bad hallucination and he grabbed the neck of the bottle before he had thought about it. The bottle was to his lips and the liquid pouring down his throat and spilling over his cheeks while the burn in his throat and the salty drops of water that faded into his hair went unnoticed.
A hand closed over his and pulled the alcohol away before he drowned himself with it. "Sir, attempting suicide by alcohol is hardly original. I would have thought better of you than that," his butler, Jarvis, chided, wrinkled old face splitting into a frown that threatened to engulf his features.
He stared, processing and then started to laugh as his vision blurred. "You'll never guess who just decided to drop in for a visit," he said. "It was-"
"Captain America," Jarvis supplied. There was a pause. "I was here for a good part of your conversation."
"Oh, good, then we shared the hallucination and it wasn't just me," Howard said, voice cracking with strained laughter.
Jarvis merely sighed, maneuvering Howard to his feet and turning him towards the room that had so recently been occupied. Howard wasn't sure, but he may have fallen face first into the bed and passed out for about twelve hours. Later, when he woke up staring at the ceiling and Jarvis was sitting in the chair at the side of the bed flipping through a book. There was also a distinct lack of clutter when he glanced out the bedroom door.
He looked at Jarvis and Jarvis looked at him. "Maria sent me to collect you and bring you back to the other mansion. She seemed convinced you wouldn't be able to look after yourself after all this time alone," the old butler said.
"I'm crazy," he whispered and almost cringed when it sounded too loud in how own ears. A dull throbbing spread itself between his temples and found a home there. "Or I poisoned myself with alcohol and had a hallucination."
"I'm afraid its neither, sir. You're no less sane than the last time I saw you and as I have no doubt of my own sanity, or the security footage, I am also quite certain it was not a hallucination," Jarvis said, setting aside the book when Howard sat bolt upright. "I've already pulled the tapes and have set them aside for your viewing when we arrive at the other mansion. Until then, I've your hangover cure waiting in the car with your bags, sir."
