"Drunk on ego,
Truly thought I could make it right,
If I kissed you one more time to,
Help you face the nightmare,
But you're far too poisoned for me.
Such a fool to think that I can wake you from your slumber,
That I could actually heal you.
Sleeping Beauty,
Poisoned and hopeless,
You're far beyond a visible sign of your awakening,
Failing miserably to find a way to comfort you."
-Sleeping Beauty by A Perfect Circle
-o-o-o-
"Oh my God! Oh fuck! Damn it... Oh my God."
Like a mantra, Tony kept repeating those words, as if saying them would take back time, would undo the last few minutes, would let him be fast enough. But no matter how many times he swore or blasphemed, time remained resolute. The gaping hole in his roof stayed, and with it, so did the guilt. What kind of hero was he, letting someone fall to their death before his very eyes? He was right there, and he did nothing.
Except he knew he had tried, and that fact might have been worse than the alternative. When he realized it was a person falling to their death, an actual living person—though they certainly weren't alive anymore, and Tony ripped off his faceplate as the thought churned his stomach—he would have done anything to save them. There just wasn't anything he could do. All of his science, his work on making the suit perfect so he could actually help people, had been useless. He had been useless.
It took Tony a few minutes to gather the nerves necessary to lower himself down through the new hole in his ceiling. Part of him, still high on adrenaline and poisonous hope, urged him to move immediately, but he resisted; there wasn't a need for haste, not anymore. Whoever that was, they were dead before they even broke through the ceiling. His only consolation was that they had died quickly.
However, Tony had to face his failure eventually. It was his house they slammed into. He couldn't just leave and act like it had never happened. That might work for other things, but not this. It was his fault, whether the blame was logical or not, and he would do what he could to make things right. He had to find out who it was, apologize to their family, and offer them anything he could to ease the repercussions of his mistake.
A part of him wondered why the hell someone had been free falling above Malibu in the first place, but that came later. Right now, there was a body sitting in his garage, and he couldn't ignore it any longer. He didn't want to leave it for Pepper or Rhodes to stumble upon. It was his responsibility, whether he liked it or not.
Slowly, haltingly, he directed himself over the gaping maw that was his roof (noting, with a bit of gallows humor, that it was right next to where he had fallen through on his first flight as Iron Man) and lowered himself into the darkness. Without his helmet, there was nothing filtering out the thick, metallic reek of blood or the stench of gasoline. It hung heavy in his lungs, clogging his nose and reminding him of another day filled with death and fire. Gagging on the smell and hanging on the verge of memory, Tony almost lost his nerve. He moved to turn back on his thrusters—he just couldn't do this right now. Not alone. He needed someone there with him who could selfishly tell him that it wasn't his fault. Someone to tell him that the blood painting his garage was not also painting the ledger already soaked through with his mistakes—when a loud, choking rasp caught his attention.
Was that...? Eyes widening in realization, Tony barked for Jarvis to turn on the lights while killing the repulsors. With the room now bathed in light, he landed a few feet away from where the impact occurred—confused, bewildered, and hopeful. "Oh my God..."
There, lying on the crushed hood of his Saleen S7 and showered with blood and glass, was a man that, against all reason, happened to be alive. Unconscious and looking like he just escaped from Hell, but alive.
Brain going lightning fast, Tony tried to sort through the scene before him. He took in the appearance of the man: he was clothed in tattered leathers that hung off of his emaciated figure. Long, matted black hair clung to his pale, blood drenched face. His skin—Tony didn't even know skin could be that shade of white except for in cheap vampire films—clung tightly to bone, a morbid display of a lack of fat or muscle. It was like a Holocaust survivor photo, ruined only by the smashed sports car, renaissance fair get-up, and the glass. No photo Tony saw had the people impaled with foot-long shards of glass.
How the hell was he still alive?
When a loud, chest rattling cough broke the rhythm of desperate inhalations, Tony finally jumped into action. He lunged forwards, quickly and methodically grabbing hold of the all the glass shards he could find and pulling them out of paper-like flesh. He could only hope that none of the shrapnel had pierced anything important; his own chest twinged in remembrance beneath the arc reactor. It didn't look like any had, but Tony only had the knowledge of his own experience to guide him. The bloody pieces collected in a pile on the floor, joined shortly by serrated sheets of drenched metal.
"Sir, I would advise that you stop. At this rate, he is going to bleed out."
Tony paused, his hand wrapped around a soaked shard; he was nearly finished disentangling the man from the wrecked orange car. "...What?"
"The glass was preventing blood flow. All sources indicate that you should apply pressure to the wounds immediately."
Cursing himself, Tony moved to do just that when he saw it. At first, he thought it was a trick of the light, but when a closer looked revealed the same thing, he paused. The skin that moments ago sported a vicious gash was nearly flawless, only a slight scar and sea of red divulging the wound that had just been there. Curiosity peaked, Tony removed one of the remaining fragments and watched in fascination as the blood clotted within seconds. In less than a minute, a new layer of skin had formed.
"Jarvis, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
"Yes, sir. It appears he is healing at extremely accelerated rates. Were I to make a deduction, I'd say such an ability would most likely account for him surviving the fall through the roof."
"So do you think he's an enhanced soldier, or maybe a mutant? I'm going to go for the obvious here and say he isn't a normal human." The scientific parts of Tony's mind started churning, thinking of anywhere he's heard of healing powers that matched this caliber. One of the X-Men possessed similar abilities, if he wasn't mistaken, but that seemed to be it. Even Captain America was unable to heal that quickly or cleanly. It would have taken him days to scar over. But just as Tony was about to write off the healing as a mutant power, he remembered something he had read about in the SHIELD database a few years ago. It was irrelevant at the time, but now the information pulled itself to the forefront of his mind.
A few aliens had shown up in a small New Mexico town. They too were clad in leather and equipped with super healing. It was unknown how many of them there were or where exactly Asgard, their homeland, was, but the ones who did show up came from the sky. That would account for why the man fell from nowhere.
"Jarvis, see what information SHIELD has on 'Asgard'. Check other superhuman research as well, but I think leather-clad aliens is the best bet for what we have here."
"I have already started, sir. Should I contact Director Fury as well?"
Tony was about to retort 'no' simply on the principle that he didn't like SHIELD getting into his business, but then he reconsidered. While the man's flesh wounds had disappeared, he was still freakishly thin and that hideous wheeze he made with every breath wasn't going away. SHIELD would be better fit to deal with the well-being of an abnormal entity, and if there was a chance he came from a race of warrior gods, they'd not dare experiment on him for fear of intergalactic retaliation. But... Tony had told himself he'd take responsibility for what happened, and while he made that promise thinking he'd be dealing with a grieving family and not sheltering an alien, he made it nonetheless.
He had made a mistake, but he could fix it. He had to make things right or he'd never forgive himself. "No...no, don't contact him. I'll take care of it. Just... I'll need some medical supplies or something. Figure out what I need and get it shipped to the house as soon as possible. If they say they don't do express shipping, tell them I don't care and I'll pay extra for it."
Decision made, Tony checked to make sure nothing else was stabbing into his new charge before lifting him into his arms, mindful of where his armor had dented. Even so, bony limbs smacked painfully against the suit, and Tony couldn't help but be disgusted by the sharp contours of the man's body. He looked like a skeleton that someone didn't get the memo to bury and instead thought it would be amusing to dress up like a comic book character. Tony hoped the man recovered his muscle mass with the same healing efficiency he revealed earlier, because while he wasn't an expert in physical therapy, he knew it took ages to come back from complete degradation. Fat, too. Screw obesity; the man needed to eat like Tony drank.
Infinitely glad that Pepper wasn't around (normally she showed up after missions to check on him, but there was a problem with Stark Industries), Tony made his way through the lab and up the winding steps. Had she been there to see him cradling Jack Skellington while covered in blood, she would have freaked. Not that her concern wasn't nice sometimes (emphasis on the sometimes), but it had been a long day. The sooner he got the man situated in one of the guest bedrooms and got himself a beer, the better.
It wasn't until Tony dumped the man on the bed (those sheets were definitely getting thrown away tomorrow. He was never going to get the blood off) that he fully realized he had no clue what he was doing. Sure, put the alien in a room and try to give him amateur medical care, but then what? The guy was wasted. For all Tony knew, he wouldn't recover swiftly. Did he really want to be the caretaker of a stranger? Would said stranger even accept Tony's help after he woke up? And there was no way the guy didn't have some sort of mental problem after going through... whatever it was that made him look like that. It wasn't like Tony could just hand him off later if things weren't going as well as he liked. Well, he could, but he was trying not to be a self-centered dick.
There was also the fact that the man was a complete unknown. For all Tony knew, he was a homicidal maniac. True, he probably wouldn't be much of a threat at the moment, but did Tony really want someone he didn't know loose in the house? With Pepper around? And Pepper, he couldn't hide his newest stint from her forever. What would she think?
But looking at the man's face, scrunched in pain as he struggled to breathe, he remembered when he must have looked like that too.
"What the hell did you do to me?"
"What I did was save your life."
Yinsen had saved him, both in that moment and when he had sacrificed his life for Tony to get away. He had been to one who helped Tony when he was lost—"So you are a man who has everything, but nothing."—and forced him to finally open his eyes—"Is this what you want? Is this what you wish the legacy of the great Tony Stark to be?" Being the Merchant of Death was never what he wanted. Back then, he had been selfish, conceited, and shallow. He offered help to no one, cared about no one. He hadn't even appreciated his closest friends because he'd thought that he was better than them. Tony had been nothing more than a naïve child with a genius's mind.
Afghanistan changed all of that; Yinsen changed all of that. "He sees the darkness in the world, and in his own heart, and is forever changed." Yinsen had saved him because he thought Tony would become something more. He only had one request, and Tony intended to honor it.
"Don't waste it... Don't waste your life, Stark."
So regardless of the 'what ifs', helping this bloody and wrecked man was the right thing to do. Tony knew Pepper would understand when he eventually told her. If there were problems, he'd handle them as they came. No point in giving up before he even started.
With that, Tony set about cleaning the man off. It took him a good twenty minutes to figure out how to undo all of the leather buckles and straps, and then began the awkward part of removing the simple linens underneath. He had intended to leave the guy with his undergarments, but after seeing how baggy they were on bony hips, he chose to ignore how weird it was and just changed all of his clothes with something cleaner. If the guy had been a healthy weight, Tony's wardrobe would have been too small, but they fit alright. He put his guest into the fresh clothes after giving him a quick wipe down with a wet towel... and then another few wipe downs, because damn the guy was filthy.
Eventually the guy was as clean as he was going to be without bringing in a pair of shears and some industrial grade soap, so Tony left him under the covers while he went in search of some booze. Taking advantage of the slight reprieve, he lounged in one of the chairs by the bar, gulping down generous amounts of scotch.
It wasn't until twenty minutes later, after Tony's adrenaline rush had finally faded, that he noticed he still had not taken off the armor. Loathe to move but wanting even less to remain in the battered suit, he retreated back down to the lab. Dum-E greeted him from across the room, where he was scrubbing up one of many spots of blood, and Tony made a note to clean the mess off the stairs before Pepper stopped by.
"Alright Jarvis, get me out of this thing. And do be gentle this time. I'm not really in the mood for having it rough."
Robotic arms reached out from the ceiling to release Tony as Jarvis replied, "Certainly, sir. I also would like to report that the supplies you have ordered are on their way. They should arrive in less than half an hour."
"Great. Oh it feels good to be out of that thing." Tony rubbed his sore chest and, with a quick goodbye to Dum-E, shambled back up to where some liquid magic was waiting for him. "What did you find out from SHIELD? Do you think our guest is from Asgard?"
"The similarities in clothing and ability certainly suggest that. No other group matched quite as well."
"Pull the files up. I want to see." Tony tapped the coffee table and the glass surface sprang to life with photos of tall warriors decked in needlessly complex armor, as well as written reports compiled from everything SHIELD could get their hands on. It wasn't much, but after just a few photos, Tony was sure that the man lying a room over was from Asgard. Unless gaudy armor that people actually risked their lives while wearing was a new trend, he was looking in the right place.
In with the images of the warriors were pictures of the suit that SHIELD had thought belonged to Tony, and he remembered why he read this random report in the first place. He'd been worried someone stole his tech, but when it turned out that the Destroyer was actually an ancient alien construct, he stopped being concerned about it, though he did feel a bit cheated that there had been an 'iron man' long before he designed his own.
Tony continued the read the sparse notes, most of which were conjecture, until the door bell rang. He had wanted to learn as much as he could about Asgard, but the only two names mentioned were 'Thor' and 'Loki'. Anything more specific than that was based heavily on inference. He abandoned his futile pursuit and forced himself to get off the couch despite how every muscle protested.
"About time they got here." He wasn't too concerned about his guest dying in the next few hours, since he proved to be quite durable, but if Tony listened closely, he could hear the man rasping from the adjoining room. That couldn't be healthy, alien or not.
Limping imperceptibly, Tony made his way to the front door. The delivery man was fidgeting on the other side of the glass wall, and Tony was mildly amused at the incredulous looks he was giving the house. It reminded Tony of the times he had ordered cheap take-out just to see the delivery man panic as he thought he had the wrong address (and Tony also enjoyed eating the cheap take-out).
But amusing as it was to toy with people, Tony was a hurry this evening, so he opened the door and wasted no time asking, "I already paid, right? Just unload everything and I can bring it in myself."
The man look startled, his brow furrowed and eyes wide. "Um, sir, you did pay but... I think you may want to double check the amount." He offered up the clip board that he had been holding to his chest, eyes darting once more to the sum at the bottom of the receipt. Tony bet... Frank, according to his name tag, had never seen a sum that large.
Tony backed away from the offered item, instead replying, "Does it have less than six digits?" A hesitant nod was given in return. "Then it's good. Now come on, start unpacking. You weren't paid to stand around."
"Technically sir, I wasn't paid to deliver either. I work as a receptionist at the hospital. I got roped into this job since no one else wanted to do it."
But Frank still went to the truck at the end of the drive and began to pull out large boxes. There was seven in total, making Tony wonder what exactly his AI had seen fit to buy. Chances are the engineer wouldn't be able to name even half the stuff, let alone use it. Oh well, there was always time to learn.
After giving Frank a generous tip and the order to be sure to show it to all of his receptionist friends (who couldn't be bothered to make the trip themselves), Tony dragged the boxes into his living room. "Jesus, Jarv, what did you buy? An entire ICU room?" Not wanting to waste anymore time, Tony started tearing off the tape and pulling out the boxes' foreign contents.
"Of course not, sir. I bought an IV system, oxygen mask, nasogastric feeding tube, catheter, and a variety of physical therapy equipment."
"That's nice, but I don't actually know what I'm supposed to do with any of that." So Tony spent the next hour getting coached in basic nursing by his computer—or at least the videos that his computer pulled up—and eventually got his cadaverous guest hooked up to an oxygen tank, IV line, and feeding tube. Though the urinary catheter got a big veto, because no matter what the lady on the screen tried to tell him, there was no way Tony was going to violate an alien. His guest could wait to take a piss when he woke up.
Luckily, the man did have close enough anatomy to a human for the feeding tube to work, though it did take two tries on the intravenous line because the first needle broke before Tony could get it under the alien's skin. Whatever the differences between humans and Asgardians were, they clearly originated in their biological structure. Hell, the alien even weighed more than Tony despite how feeble he looked, and the superhero had amassed no small amount of muscle from fighting megalomaniac nutcases all the time.
It was nearing nine o'clock by the time Tony managed to get everything set up and worked out, and he dragged himself to his bedroom instead of back down to the lab. He'd probably go down in a few hours anyway after sleep eluded him, but for now, he needed to take a breather and let his muscles relax. He would probably look like hell in the morning when his body started to feel its impromptu trip through a couple of walls. He just hoped the next few days weren't quite as hectic, because he couldn't take much more mayhem.
To Tony's relief, the following three days did go by relatively normal. Taking care of his guest was easy now that everything was set up, and Jarvis alerted him to any changes. Despite being interested in the man's well-being, there wasn't much Tony could do for him while he slept, not to mention he had his own work to do. He instead spent his time flipping through the scans Jarvis had taken on the last prototype of AYBABTU, trying to figure out what went wrong.
The goal was to make a small attachment that could emit a frequency able to disengage the self-destruct protocol on Doombots. This would allow them to capture one and dissect its programming. But despite Victor von Doom's inability to refer to himself in first person, his robots were nearly flawless in their design. Very few EMP fields were able to shut them down, and those that did couldn't undo the detonation sequence. By compiling the frequencies and fluctuations of the types of fields that did work, Tony pinpointed what should be the wavelength the self destruct worked on. Which was fine in theory, but as he discovered in his previous four models, the machines kept shorting themselves out.
In turn, Tony couldn't find a design that could both be attached to a Doombot and keep from getting damaged by its own effect. That's where his fifth and sixth prototype came in. One would be designed to emit a small electromagnetic pulse in the shape that was simplest, and the other would be designed to get the EMP close enough to a Doombot to work. If everything worked right, he could then set to adjusting both designs to work with one another and not ruin their purpose.
He had been in the middle of welding wires onto a tiny circuit board when Jarvis spoke up. "Sir, your guest is in the garage."
Guest? Mind still absorbed in his work, Tony's mind jumped to the most obvious conclusion: Rhodey. Though he hadn't expected Rhodes to come over anytime soon. Last he checked, his best friend was overseeing a weapons utilization convention in DC. Maybe something came up? Whatever it was, Tony wasn't going to stop working.
"Tell him I'm in the middle of something. He can wait for me in the kitchen. Or better yet, come back a different day."
"Sir, I believe you misunderstood. I was referring to the guest that fell through your roof three days ago." It took a moment for Tony to sort out what was wrong with that statement.
Turning off the welding torch and setting it down, Tony tentatively clarified, "So Marvin, not Rhodey or anyone else, is in the garage? Like, the garage with the cars garage? That one over there?" He pointed towards the door that connected his lab to his underground parking lot. "Because I didn't see anyone walk through here." Not that his guest was in any condition to walk anywhere, either.
"Of course not, sir. It appears he teleported from his room."
Right, he teleported. Obviously. ...The fuck?
Tony shoved off from his work table and sprinted towards the garage. "Jarvis, you better be kidding me!" But sure enough, there was pale, lanky body lying on the ground where Tony's orange sports car used to be. The scene was too similar to Monday for Tony, and he picked up his pace for the last stretch, skidding to a halt just before the limp body. Kneeling quickly, he grabbed the man's knobby shoulders—Tony didn't think he'd ever get used to just how wrong the man's starved body felt—and flipped him over onto his back. Wide, glassy eyes stared up at him—no, not at him. The dull green eyes were unfocused, failing to react even as a hand slowly waved before them.
"Hey, um, anyone home in there? Hello? You're kind of creeping me out. I'd appreciate if you stopped staring through me; you're making me feel like I turned invisible or something. Helloooo?" Still nothing. Tony reached over and roughly shook the man's shoulder. Nope. A brisk slap to the face. Not even a blink.
Disturbed, Tony released his fingers that were digging into the catatonic's arm and leaned back. He had heard of people entering stupors as a result of severe depression and post-traumatic stress, but he'd never actually seen it before. The guy was like a doll, and that brought Tony back to the ever present question of what had happened to make such a powerful being weak and, apparently, insensible. He could all too vividly recall his own stint in Afghanistan, and he looked nothing like this when he rose from that miserable cave.
However, back then he had Yinsen, who was the rock that kept Tony tethered in those three months. Did this guy ever have someone to keep him sane? Someone to look at for reassurance that he wasn't alone in Hell?
Then Tony surprised himself when a little voice in his mind spoke up, strong and resolute. 'That doesn't matter anymore because he has me now. I'll keep the demons at bay.'
Tony would be Yinsen this time.
After one last failed attempt to reach the man, Tony gave up and lifted him off the floor, grunting under the weight. "You know, it'd be easier if you just teleported yourself to the kitchen now. Just saying. You are really heavy. And Jarvis, I need to see that footage."
Pictures and frame-by-frame videos popped onto the walls as Tony dumped the dead weight on the nearest chair. He flicked through the offered clips until he got to the one with the exact moment he wanted. It showed the man lying in his bed, looking no different than when Tony had left him earlier in the afternoon. Then green eyes shot open; the man jolted, limbs twitching and pulling even though they lacked the strength to support anything. His face twisted into a grimace, pain clear in every bit of his expression. Under the oxygen mask, he gasped and wheezed.
Tony watched, both horrified and fascinated, as bright light shone from the man's pale skin, starting at trembling fingertips and washing over the entire body. Then he vanished, leaving behind nothing but an empty bed and swaying IV rack. A quick flick closed to video and brought up the surveillance of the garage. Everything was normal until a green shimmer appeared in the empty car slot. The man dropped out of the air, standing on his feet for only a moment before shaking muscles sent him toppling to the floor. Tony could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest and desperate scrambling; he switched cameras to get a better look at the man's face. The image was distorted by the angle, but the expression of fear was clear.
Tony could see the moment when all expression collapsed, leaving nothing behind but the blank stare he had come across a minute later. The fact that the sickly man suffered from catatonia wasn't unexpected, but it was a shock to see eerie calm consume everything. It also made the situation a lot more complicated, as Tony had been expecting to work with his guest towards recovery. Now he may be stuck nursing a traumatized alien back to health as well as playing shrink.
But even though the man—slumped over in his chair and slowly listing to the side—was empty at the moment, Tony had seen that spark of life. Not knowing where he was and too weak to move, the man had still tried to get away. He still retained the desire to fight, and that spark was what Tony wanted to turn into an inferno. A gust of wind was all it took to make an ash a forest fire, as his captors had learned the hard way.
"I guess you aren't going to be interested in eating something, are you?" Tony shut off the screens and turned his attention to the fridge, throwing a quick look over his shoulder to confirm that there was no response. "Damn, and here I thought I'd be able to stop shoving a tube down your nose."
Tony ended up making two smoothies anyway, setting one up in front of his despondent charge. Then he tilted his head as he watched the other man start to slide in the chair. Just before the poor guy fell over completely, Tony intervened and set him upright, putting the smoothie in between pallid hands just for kicks.
That day began one of many similar days, with Tony's guest mindlessly teleporting himself places (normally the garage, though he did go to the kitchen a few times and once went straight to the lab) and Tony fetching him back from wherever he went. The oxygen mask was taken off duty when the man stopped sounding like he was on the verge of coughing out his lungs with every breath. Eventually, the IV was also gotten rid of; every time he warped, the needle came out and it was getting harder and harder to get one back in without breaking it. The feeding tubes remained in use, but they were making an obvious improvement in a short amount of time. When Tony started physical therapy to prompt muscles to recover, that followed the same exponential trend as regaining weight. His charge also got a proper bath; Tony spent thirty minutes wrestling with the man's ridiculously long hair.
Not that Tony spent all of his time with his new commitment. He went out partying multiple times to take the edge off and make him feel a bit less like some goody-two-shoe nun. And he may or may not have dressed his guest up in one of Pepper's dresses whilst super drunk after one of said parties. Bringing home girls however proved to be somewhat of a problem, which Tony didn't even realize until he had slipped away from his sleeping partner only to find the gaunt alien curled up outside of his door. Tony had to keep a close eye on his not-blonde guest for the rest of the morning until Jarvis had assured him that the girl had left and wasn't as risk for coming across Tony's personal dungeon wraith.
The most interesting day, however, had been the one where Tony had entered the kitchen only to find a horse relaxing in the middle of the room. He had backed out of the doorway, wearily dragged a hand across his face, and cautiously walked back in. Mammal still present, he tried to think of where he may have drunkenly obtained a horse until he realized that not only was the equine's fur was a familiar shade, but it was abnormally thin. Jarvis took pity on the confused engineer—he was a man of science, damnit! He didn't understand any of this magic crap!—and informed him that his guest had transformed himself almost two hours ago.
Which was nice to know and all, but it didn't really give Tony any idea about what he was suppose to do with the mare—and if that didn't make the situation any weirder, the horse was indeed female—or when his guest intended to change himself back to his humanoid form. Because even with his suit, Tony didn't think he could safely carry a full grown horse through his house, nor did he know how to tube feed one.
"Come on, Animorphs. Transform back now. Or at the very least, stop making my kitchen smell like a barn." He stretched his arm out and nudged the mare's broad shoulder insistently. "Seriously, this isn't cool. What if Pepper showed up?" The horse remained completely ignorant to Tony's whining, his (her?) eyes staring blankly ahead. That part at least didn't change. "Alright then, we'll do this the hard way. I am not letting you sit here and get fleas all over where I eat."
He had read when looking up mental illnesses that, depending on the cause, you could get people in stupors to follow your lead. Through his time taking care of his guest, Tony had seen some slight response from muscle memory when he shifted the man, and now that he actually had muscle, he would try to catch himself before falling. Hopefully that would in turn translate to him walking automatically when forced to get up. If not... no, not an option. The horse was getting out of the kitchen.
It had taken a good ten minutes, during which Tony probably pulled at least three muscles, before he was able to get the mare on wobbly black legs. He stood by the horse's shoulder, one arm under her heaving chest and the other on the back of her elbow. They went slow, Tony having to encourage each step and atrophied muscles struggling to comply, but somehow the two reached the guest room and managed to squeeze inside. Then the mare's legs finally gave out and she slumped heavily to the ground, limbs twitching with overuse.
That surreal event had taught Tony three things: his guest could change his gender and species, he really wanted to study how magic worked, and that, with enough effort, he could get the man to walk and exercise under his own power. The later proved very helpful in trying to get the man to regain muscle strength, and Tony began regularly encouraging him to move across small distances.
Then Tony got a visit from this thing everyone liked to call 'reality' in the form of a certain red-head business woman. He had been in the middle of organizing a new shipment of supplies for his guest when she wandered into the kitchen, talking on the phone while looking at some paperwork. She had been prepared to ignore Tony until she had finished her call—which he would have been glad of, since he hadn't been expecting her and tried to hide what he was doing the moment she came in the room—but after realizing what it was Tony was fiddling with, her eyes narrowed and she politely interrupted the person she was talking to, telling them that she had to deal with something real fast. She pointedly pulled the phone away from her ear and gave Tony 'the look', which roughly translated into 'you did something stupid and didn't tell me'.
Tony braced himself and was about to explain that it wasn't his fault, really, he was just trying to fulfill his duties as a responsible human being, when Pepper hissed, "Anthony Edward Stark, if you are dying again and refrained from telling me, so help me God I will walk out of here right now and you will never see me again."
...Oh. Well, that was not quite what he had been expecting, though it was probably not better. "It's um... not what it looks like."
"Not what? So you were going to tell me? Or are you just going to make excuses like last time?" He cringed a bit at that, and damn was Pep scary when she was angry... and worried.
"What I mean is that this isn't for me," Tony cut in, and Pepper put a hand on her hip while the other gestured for him to continue. "I um... may have taken in an alien who fell through my ceiling the other day? Oh, but don't worry; he looks human when he isn't turning into a horse. No antennae or blue skin or anything."
He looked at Pepper imploringly, but her expression remained stony. Sad was the fact that mentions of him harboring aliens didn't even get a raised eyebrow anymore. "Go on."
A hand sheepishly wandered into greasy brown hair. "And he may be suffering from severe starvation and is about as responsive as a rock most of the time. So I thought I'd do the mature thing and help him out."
The 'like Yinsen did for me' remained unsaid, because even now Tony couldn't bring himself to open up about what happened in Afghanistan. But from the way Pepper's gaze softened, he knew she understood. She more than anyone saw the differences those three months had made in him. Helping strangers was one of those differences.
"Tony, you can't do things like that. What if he's dangerous?" She set her clipboard down on the nearby counter and put a manicured hand on his shoulder. "Look, Tony, I know you want to help people who've been through what you have, but you can't keep someone you don't know in your house."
"Pep, he couldn't be dangerous if he tried. Come on, I'll show you. Jarv, where is our spontaneous friend at the moment?"
British voice informing him that his guest was in the garage, Tony grabbed the hand resting on his arm and pulled Pepper forward. The pair traveled down the stairs, but then Tony halted Pep before they came into view of the garage. He turned towards her, serious.
"I know he looks bad, but trust me when I say he looks ten times better than he did when he first came here."
With that they turned the corner, and it only took a moment for Pepper's eyes to find her target. She gasped, hand flying to cover her mouth. "Oh my God..."
Then she ran forwards, heels clacking loudly in the otherwise quiet space. Tony followed at a more sedated pace, already too familiar with the sight that had been waiting for them. He hadn't been lying when he said that the man looked a lot better. He didn't look like a skeleton with some skin tacked on anymore, though he still seemed like he was going to keel over any second (and he probably was. The man could stay on his feet for a little bit, but he always reached his limit far too quickly).
When Tony came up alongside her, Pepper had both of her hands on the catatonic man's face, fingers brushing against hollow cheeks while she looked into unresponsive green eyes. "I can't imagine what he must have been through," she murmured. Neither could Tony, and that's what made it even worse.
He stood next to Pep while she observed his guest, only intervening when he noticed that the man's legs were quivering in a way that meant he was going to drop soon. In a move that conveyed how often he's done it, Tony grabbed under the man's shoulders while nudging the back of the weakening knee with his toe. Obligingly, the man sank to the floor with Tony's support, slouching wearily on his knees. Pepper watched quietly, stepping back slightly to allow them some space. Only when Tony straightened did she speak.
"Tony, while you seem to be doing a surprisingly good job with him," she started calmly, "I think you're in over your head. He needs help, real help. You're not cut out for this. You're an engineer, not a nurse or a psychiatrist." Said engineer made to mention that he was also a genius, but Pepper cut him off. "No, Tony. I know what you're going to say, but this just isn't a good match. What are you going to do when you get bored like you always do? What then? He's a person, not a machine. You can't just lock him away somewhere when you decided you'd rather go out and party."
He understood that, he really did, but this was different. This was personal. "But I can help him, Pep. I know what it's like to feel like your mind isn't your own anymore. I can provide him with something to focus on, so the whole world doesn't feel like it's slipping away. And if you did send him off to some crazy house, how are you going to explain it to them when he starts teleporting away, or when they come in to check up on him and find a horse instead? Jarvis can keep an eye on him, and I'm more prepared to handle unexpected bouts of magic than some doctor."
Tony knew it sounded like he was begging, and maybe he was, but he had to make her understand. He could do this. He had to do this. This, what he was doing here, was what Yinsen had wanted; what he died for.
(Tony had steadfastly been ignoring the traitorous part of him that said, "But does it count being 'Yinsen' when the man is nothing more than a puppet?")
"Pepper, you're always telling me to think about others, and I am. I thought he was dead when he fell through my roof. For those few minutes, I suffered believing I had failed to save someone who was right in front of me, needing my help. Well turns out he wasn't dead, but he still needs help—help that I can give. I can do this."
They stared at each other, one trying to express his sincerity and the other starting to realize the gravity of the decision that had been made in this very room two weeks before. Finally Pepper conceded. "Tony, sometimes I wish I didn't understand what goes on inside that head of yours. Fine, but if this starts getting out of your control, at least tell me so I can help. I'll stop by when I can."
The next three weeks passed by quickly. They were filled with partying, a perfected prototype of All Your Base Are Belong to Us, and visits from Pep. She had just left from one of said visits—"Tony, he's still catatonic and it's been over a month. Don't you think it's time to try something different?"—when something happened to rekindle Tony's waning hope.
He had been working in the lab on Mark Thirty-five when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone walking in the garage. Thinking it was Pepper, he had turned back to his work, but then a flash of green caught his attention. He looked up, realized who it was, and set off running with hope budding in his chest.
However, when Tony caught up to the listless man, he was disappointed to note that the blank stare remained. Still, his good mood wasn't crushed completely. This was progress, proof that his efforts were paying off. Tony steered the man away from the exit of the garage—he'd have to make sure that Jarvis kept the exits closed. No reason saving the poor guy just to let him wander into the street and get run over—and was filled with relief that things were finally getting better.
It turned out that the whole walking thing wasn't as nice as Tony thought, since a mobile alien was a lot harder to keep tracking of than a bedridden one. The man stumbled a lot, often collapsing in the halls and unable to move again until Tony came around to collect him. Worried that he would get into something dangerous, Tony situated the man in the lab and assigned Dum-E to babysitting duty (which pleased the robot immensely). Fortunately, the increase in walking led to a decrease in teleporting or transforming, and Dum-E didn't have too much trouble herding his new task away from unsafe items.
Tony thought the new situation worked fine—no one got hurt, Dum-E was staying away from the fire extinguisher, and he got plenty of work done—but Pepper disagreed. She took one look at Dum-E tugging on the man's arm to keep him from walking into a welding torch and protested: "What are you doing? You can't just treat him like a dog and give him to Dum-E."
Tony didn't see what the problem was. Dum-E had more focus to spare than he did. He'd also never made Dum-E watch over a dog before (at least he didn't think he had. That could have been one of those drunken 'I want a pet' moments he cannot remember). "No one's treating him like a dog. More like a magical doll that happens to like walking into things. He's fine."
And he really was. Tony could see improvement everyday, and while the man had yet to speak, he started reacting to the world around him. He would gravitate towards Tony while he worked in the lab and only teleported when left somewhere dark or quiet. Tony knew his busy lifestyle suited the man far more than a mental ward or SHIELD's containment cells. And while Pepper wasn't convinced, she let him continue to do things his way. Not that it really mattered to Tony: he knew he was getting somewhere, regardless of how simple his methods were. He just had to be patient.
Then that evening, while Tony was putting the finishing touches on his latest suit, a loud crash sounded from the other side of the lab. Following the sound, so quiet Tony almost didn't notice, was an agitated whine. It was the first noise the alien had made, and as Tony hurried towards it, he would have laughed with delight were it not for the fact that his now-aware guest looked terrified. The man was on his knees, arms wrapped tightly around his chest while he curled protectively into himself. A crate of metal parts was upside-down on the floor next to him, and Dum-E whirred anxiously, craning his arm over the man's back to check on him.
"Hey, it's okay. Calm down, it's-" Tony started to reassure as his got down to his knees when green eyes—bright and vivid and wet with tears, but alive—darted up to look right at him. Tony felt his breath catch in his throat. God, there had been times when he thought the other man would never regain awareness. Even when flickering eyes moved away, trying and failing to catalog everything at once, Tony felt the weight of that momentary gaze.
He smiled softly and whispered earnestly, "It's good to see you back, Sleeping Beauty."
Said Disney princess wasn't in the clear, however, and the man was wheezing heavily. Tony began talking to him again, using his calm to try and keep the other from panicking like Yinsen had done for him. Then Tony made a mistake; he reached a hand out to gently brush against his guest's arm.
The man freaked, flinging himself backwards and colliding with Dum-E. He gasped and trembled like a cornered animal—gripped, Tony knew, in the throes of senseless fear—while his hands clawed furrows into the ground. But then the struggling suddenly cut out, and Tony felt his stomach dropped when he realized what that meant.
"Hey, no, listen! Don't fade out again!" He tilted the man's head and stared into reactive green that, before his very eyes, dulled once more. "Damn it!" Tony punched the ground in frustration. They had been so close!
He regarded the slumped body before him, watching as Dum-E nudged it with no reaction. Emptiness had gripped the man's mind once again, but now Tony knew for sure that someone survived beyond the haze. Somewhere in there was a person, and he was going help him escape.
Tony kept his guest close while he worked, talking to him and asking him questions even though there was no reply. Occasionally, he could see green eyes track movement, and the man experienced more panic attacks as his consciousness came closer to the surface. When such events occurred, Tony made sure to keep sudden movement and sound to a minimum. He was now confident that the man, with his sun deficient skin and surprise at any stimulus, had been sensory deprived. But it was also clear that, overwhelming or not, the man sought noise and light, so Tony never turned off the lights and made sure that there was always music streaming over the speakers.
Slowly but surely, the moments of clarity grew longer, until one day—a bit over two months from when the alien had fallen into his life—Tony was helping the other through another panic attack when, instead of falling away, the man fixed his attention on him. Tony watched, breathless, as pale lips moved, mouthing words but unable to find the air to speak them.
'Come on,' he thought fervently, resisting the impulse to reach out in support. 'You can do this. You're almost there.'
Then, finally, beautifully, a word managed to pass through those quivering lips: "What...?"