Title: An Ever Fixed Mark

Author: seanchai and elspethdixon

Rating: PG-13

Pairings/Characters: Steve/Tony, Jan, Hank, Wanda, assorted other Avengers

Labels: gender-swap

Warnings: This fic deals with pregnancy, abortion, and miscarriage.


Part Three:

"Let's focus, people," Tony said, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. "This isn't a total disaster. It's not a disaster at all unless we let it be one."

"Not a disaster?" Layton's eyes widened, bulging out even further than they normally did and increasing his unfortunate resemblance to a frog. "How would you describe losing a two hundred million dollar contract, then, Mr. Stark? Or should that be Ms. Stark?"

'Disaster' actually summed it up pretty well, but you didn't use words like that when talking to banks or stockholders or potential buyers. Tony had been counting on the terrain exploring robots for the Tieri Mining contract forming one of the cornerstones of his attempt to rebuild SI's capital and prestige. SI's designs -- his designs -- had a much lower rate of failure and were cheaper to produce. The contract should have been theirs on the basis of quality alone.

And they'd submitted the lowest bid, without sacrificing quality or functionality to do so. Tony had worked fourteen-hour days with the engineers on the project for two weeks straight, to ensure that their prototype was ready under budget and before the deadline, despite the fact that they had begun work on the project months -- and in one case, over a year -- after their competitors had.

"We have contingency plans," he said, trying not to let his bitterness show and probably failing. "The Tieri contract was not a guarantee." Except it had been, or should have been. Layton and the others were right to be angry.

"It would have been," Layton said tightly, clearly struggling for composure, "had they not had doubts about our stability and ability to complete the project."

"We're just going to have to prove to people that Stark Industries is as stable as ever."

"Stark Industries hasn't been perceived as stable in over five years," Shooter said. "Not since-"

"My father was alive," Tony interrupted. "I know." Shooter had been on the board for nearly two decades, and had disliked Tony ever since his father had first brought him in to a board meeting, intent on shaming his board members by proving that a six year old had a better grasp of the basic principles of engineering than they did. Howard Stark had never expressed anything like pride in his son, not verbally, anyway, but the fact that he'd been convinced that his six year old son really was more intelligent than an entire boardroom full of adults had to count for something. "We've been producing better designs, better technology, since then, though," Tony said, doing his level best to sound positive, confident. "Everyone acknowledges that. Innovation is what this company is known for. You can't innovate and be 'safe.' Safety in this field is a death sentence."

"A perception of unreliability is a death sentence, especially in the current economy." Layton again, harping on his favorite topic. He'd been an accountant before rising to executive level responsibilities, and profit and loss and balance sheets were near and dear to his heart. Tony might have empathized more if he wasn't always such an irritatingly pompous doomsayer about everything. "There isn't a bank in New York that would loan to us if we needed it," he went on, "or extend any significant amount of credit, not when there's no guarantee who will be in charge of SI in six months."

Tony dropped his eyes to the polished wooden surface of the conference table for a moment, breathing in through his nose and doing his best not to react visibly to the comment. It was true; SI was seen as unreliable, because he was seen as unreliable, and half the men in this room had done their best to block him from resuming control of the company after Stane's death. And without the cashflow from the Tieri contract, credit and liquidity were going to be an issue. The fact that they weren't already was, though it galled Tony to admit it, not actually due to him. You could say a lot of bad things about Stane, starting with the fact that he had been a psychopathic killer, but at least he hadn't run Tony's company into debt.

"That's not the issue at hand," Tony said, looking Layton straight in the eyes. "The issue at hand is how we're going to pursue other avenues of funding, and other sources of income. The ebook reader has generated a lot of media buzz, but it's not going to be a major source of revenue the way the Starkphone is."

Ms. Grant, the only woman on the board and disappointingly impervious to Tony's charm, stared coolly at him. "If your bodyguard hadn't gone out of his way to alienate Colonel Fury, we would still have our role as major technology supplier to SHIELD to fall back on."

Tony forced down the impulse to snap that he didn't want Fury's business anyway. Not now that he knew how little he could trust the man. Fury knew, better than most people, why Tony didn't want his armor in anyone else's hands, how dangerous it was. "Iron Man is aware of that," he said. "That particular bodyguard has been fired and replaced. Wishing that our problems didn't exist doesn't help anyone. We have to move forward, not dwell on previous mistakes. SHIELD is still involved in several patent lawsuits with SI, which would make a business relationship extremely," Tony paused, searching for a word that would not raise eyebrows in polite company, "awkward. If the judge rules in our favor, SHIELD will have to compensate us for their unauthorized use of Stark designs."

"SHIELD took possession of salvaged technology from your bodyguard's armor, which you've always refused to sell. Perhaps if we made it legally available-"

Grant interrupted Layton, cutting him off mid-sentence. "If we did, the US Government would swoop in and take over the program. Or do you really think Senator Byrd's given up on that?"

Byrd. At least there was someone out there whose pursuit of Tony's armor was open, above-board, and well-intentioned. Tony and the senior senator for Virginia had a mutual respect for one another that made clashes with him, if not pleasant, at least endurable. At least, Byrd had respected Tony. God knew what he thought of him now.

It was ridiculous to feel as if he'd let the older man down when they barely knew one another, but Tony still felt an uncomfortable sense of shame when he thought about Byrd's probable opinion of his descent into drunken uselessness. Byrd had been one of the few people in either business or in Washington who had taken Tony seriously from the beginning. "He'll still be trying to get Iron Man to work for the government when they force him to retire thirty years from now. Iron Man's armor has never been for sale, gentlemen. That's not negotiable."

Grant adjusted her glasses and consulted the sheaf of papers on the table before her, the gesture almost certainly for show. "The reports from the scientific division on the green energy project are promising. If we allocate more resources to the project and foreground it, the media buzz should be positive, as should the investor reactions. Alternatives to fossil fuels aren't as much of a concern right now as they were this time last year, but there's still a lot of interest."

"And several nice government incentives for pursuing them," Tony said, nodding. He could see where Grant was going with this; playing a major role in the development of alternative fuel sources would be a nice in with the new administration, provided the president lived up to his campaign promises about supporting scientific progress. And anything that let them do part of their research on the government's dime was good for the companies finances in both the short and long term, provided they could produce results.

Layton, of course, was still frowning. Tony had never seen him do anything but frown. "The project is still in development, though. It could be a year before we see any salable results."

"And in the meantime," Tony said, smiling for all he was worth and resisting the urge to gaze at Layton through his eyelashes just in case that might help, "we get the tax breaks just for researching it."

ooOOoo

Steve swayed backwards, easily evading Tony's right hook, then followed up with a swing at Tony's jaw that Tony just barely managed to block with his left forearm.

Tony had been landing fewer blows than usual, though his defense hadn't suffered as much from lack of practice as Steve had expected. Before his transformation, Tony had been barely two inches shorter than Steve, his reach nearly identical. Now, he was half a foot shorter than he had been, and he still hadn't learned to compensate properly for the loss in both reach and mass.

In the armor, as he'd demonstrated more than once since returning to New York, that didn't matter, but he couldn't always rely on the armor.

"You need to get in closer," Steve told him. "It will keep me from using the fact that I have a longer reach against you."

Tony's eyes narrowed, and he backed up a step, fists at the ready. "If I close with you, you'll just use the hundred pounds of mass you have on me to pin me to the floor. Getting close enough for you to grab me would make this a very short fight."

Steve had always been able to beat Tony in unarmed combat, but previously, Steve's only real advantage had been skill and training. It hadn't exactly been a fair fight, but it had been close to one. He hadn't truly thought about the difference Tony's new smaller size would make, or rather, he had thought about it, but only in terms of how it would affect Tony's fighting abilities, not how much easier it would make it for Steve to seriously hurt him.

He was going to have to be careful, Steve realized. Hold back just a little, the way he did when he trained with Wanda.

Steve threw a jab at Tony's shoulder, being careful not to put his full weight behind it. Tony spun sideways, just managing to dodge the blow, and landed a punch against Steve's ribs.

Grabbing him by the wrist, yanking him forward, and throwing him over Steve's hip and onto the mat was as easy as breathing. And also, Steve thought with a wince, as Tony climbed to his feet again, not exactly pulling his punches.

There was a hint of jerkiness in Tony's movements as he resumed his feet, a tenseness through his shoulders; despite Steve's hopes, he didn't look any more relaxed than he had when he'd returned from SI's offices. Steve hadn't asked, but he assumed today's board meeting had gone badly.

Offering to spar with Tony had been a spur of the moment decision, motivated as much by a selfish desire to regain one more piece of normalcy as the hope that it would help Tony blow off steam and relax the way it always did for Steve. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be working. Tony visibly seethed every time he forgot to compensate for his altered center of gravity or smaller size, clearly angry with himself for the failure.

Over the next few minutes, Tony over-balanced several times and failed to land at least two blows that he should have easily pulled off, growing more irritated each time. He might be learning to deal with his transformation in day to day life -- mostly by ignoring it and acting as if everything were exactly as it had been, silently challenging everyone around him to do the same -- but in a fight, he clearly fell back on old habits and familiar moves. That could be dangerous.

"You need to relearn the way your body moves," Steve said, blocking a kick from Tony and jabbing an elbow into his ribs, slightly less forcefully than he normally would have. "You can't just go on memory. Pay attention to how every move feels; if it's awkward to do, it's not going to work as well as it did before."

"I'd like to see you relearn how to do everything," Tony challenged, blocking Steve's right cross and throwing several quick jabs at him with his left hand. Tony's left-handedness was one of the things that always made fighting him a useful challenge in addition to fun, and that hadn't changed.

"I did," Steve said, swaying backwards to let Tony's next punch sail harmlessly past his face. "After they gave me the super-soldier serum, I spent a month tripping over my own feet and breaking things."

Tony smirked. "Steve, you still do that."

"Not in combat."

Tony's smirk got broader, and Steve went on the attack, sweeping his feet out from under him with one well-placed kick. This time, Tony was ready for it, and hit the mat on his shoulder, rolling and coming up to one knee, then planting his hands against the mat and shoving himself back to his feet again.

His hair was damp, strands of it sticking to his neck and face, and a sheen of sweat glistened on his skin. The sports bra and undershirt he was wearing left his arms bare, so Steve had ample opportunity to notice that while Tony might have lost some mass, he had lost nothing in terms of muscle definition.

For a moment, he could see the gently curving lines of Tony's naked back again, pale and smooth against the dark fabric of that stupid dress, remembered how Ton's body had felt against his. How he had tasted.

Tony's eyebrows drew together, his smirk gone now. "You're going easy on me, aren't you?"

Steve blinked, and his attempt to slip sideways and let Tony's left-handed jab slide past him yet again did not quite succeed. "No?" he said, absorbing the blow and squaring off to deliver a few more of his own.

"Stop it," Tony said flatly. "Would you pull your punches with Diamondback?"

"Rachel's a professional enforcer," Steve objected. "She does this for a living."

Tony's stance was a perfect mirror image of Steve's, leading with his right foot instead of his left, in classic southpaw fashion. "So it's because I'm an amateur," he snapped, "not because I'm a girl. Interesting how you never went easy on me before."

Okay, so perhaps Tony had a point, but... "You're a lot smaller than you used to be."

Tony dropped his guard, lowering his fists, and actually rolled his eyes. "Yes," he said. "Now you have a hundred pounds of muscle mass on me, instead of just fifty pounds. Come on, you've always been stronger, faster, and better than me at this, and you always will be. It's not like the ability to kill me with your bare hands is something you've only just now acquired."

"Well, yes, but-" Steve spluttered. When Tony put it that way, it made him sound like some kind of killing machine.

Tony's foot shot up and caught him right on the chin, hard.

Steve staggered back a step, stunned not just by the force of the impact, but the fact that Tony had done it at all; he'd never been able to kick his foot directly upright as high as his head before. Steve had tried to teach him that move before, without any real success.

Tony hit him in a classic football tackle, his entire bodyweight colliding with Steve's ribs, and the two of them went crashing to the mat, Steve too off-balance to prevent it.

"I've always wanted to be able to do that," Tony said, sitting across Steve's hips and smirking down at him. "You're right; it is fun." Then his eyes narrowed. "Did you let me do that on purpose?" he demanded, leaning forward menacingly and setting one arm across Steve's throat.

Tony weighed barely anything; Steve could have thrown him off easily. He didn't, though he knew he ought to. Tony's weight was resting directly on top of Steve's groin, probably not by accident, and the position had the possibility to become very interesting, very quickly.

"Did you?" Tony repeated, leaning forward and letting a little more of his weight press against Steve's throat. It made his hips shift in interesting ways.

"No," Steve said, thrusting his hips upward and to the side to throw Tony off of him, and rolling to pin him to the ground in a knee-on-stomach hold. "I didn't. You surprised me."

Tony made no move to escape, not that he could have from this position given how much of a weight advantage Steve had. He was panting slightly; with his knee planted on Tony's chest, Steve could feel the motion of his ribs with every breath.

On second thought, Tony pinned underneath him, panting, his lips parted and his skin streaked with sweat was not actually any better than Tony straddling him. It didn't help that Tony was acting more like his old self than Steve had seen in over a year; not just the way he had before the transformation, but the way he had before the serious drinking had started, before the bizarre lashing out of the armor wars. It was as if Steve had suddenly been given his best friend back.

Except that when he planted one hand on Tony's chest to pin his shoulder blades more firmly to the ground, he could feel the soft swell of Tony's right breast under his palm. That was... not like before. The sports bra must not be made of very thick fabric, because Steve could actually feel Tony's nipple hardening through it.

Pulling his hand back and shifting his weight off of Tony's chest wasn't something Steve consciously planned on doing; it just sort of happened. Then Tony was lunging up at him, and Steve had a split second to wonder what on earth kind of wrestling move this was before Tony was kissing him, fingers digging into his shoulders.

The kiss the other night had been gentle, tentative. This was nothing like that.

It was openmouthed, all teeth and tongue and desperation, Tony's hands gripping his shoulders so tightly that it hurt. He'd always wondered what kissing Tony would be like, mostly in terms of wondering what the moustache and goatee would feel like against his face. It turned out that kissing Tony was a lot like sparring with him -- both of them gave it their all and Steve forgot, once again, to hold back.

Tony pulled back, and with the kiss broken, Steve could once again think about what a bad idea this was. Tony was vulnerable right now, not himself, potentially unstable... and currently pulling Steve's shirt up over his head and running his hands over Steve's naked back and stomach.

Steve shivered under the touch, and found himself leaning forward and reaching for Tony before reason intervened. "We shouldn't do this," he said. "I said I didn't want to take advantage of you and I meant it."

"I'm not really sure it's possible for me to come on to you more obviously than this, Steve, short of climbing into bed with you in the middle of the night, completely naked." Tony stripped the undershirt off and threw it to one side, leaving him in nothing but shorts and a black sports bra that didn't completely hide his scars. It was impossible, like this, to ignore the fact that his body was inarguably female, just as it had been the other night when he'd walked into the living room in that dress.

It should have been strange, off-putting, to have him be at once so obviously Tony and so clearly not male. It definitely shouldn't have been sexy.

Tony wrapped himself around Steve in a modified version of a submission hold -- had his left arm been a few inches higher, he would have had Steve in a choke hold -- and pressed open-mouthed kisses against the junction of his neck and shoulder, sucking just hard enough to make Steve writhe, but not hard enough that it would leave a mark.

Steve closed his eyes and drew a deep breath in through his nose. "Tony, I-- I don't want to just be one more round of casual sex for you, while you regain control over... something..."

Tony let go of Steve and pulled back, looking him directly in the eye. His eyes, at least, hadn't changed. They were still the same shade of grayish blue they had always been. "Steve," he said, voice low and husky, "nothing with you could be casual."

He reached up to cup the side of Steve's face, leaning in until their lips were only inches apart and staring at Steve with the single-minded focus Steve had previously seen him give to complex mechanical problems and fanatical quests to get his stolen armor back. "Doing this with you almost makes being a woman worth it," he breathed, and leaned forward those last few inches to kiss Steve again.

"You're my friend, Tony," Steve said, turning his face to the side to dodge the kiss. He could smell Tony's sweat, not unpleasant, but different than before. He smelled like a woman. But then, what else would he smell like? "I don't want to lose that, not after just barely salvaging our relationship from... everything."

"You won't," Tony said. His pupils were huge and dark, making his eyes look grey. This close, Steve could almost count his lashes. "Please, Steve." His voice went low on Steve's name, breathy and needy in a way that made Steve's groin throb.

"I don't do casual sex with women -- with people." Steve ran one hand up Tony's back, hooking his fingers under the elastic of the sports bra and pulling it upward. Tony raised his arms, letting Steve pulled the bra up and over his head, revealing two small, round breasts. They were pale, with hard, dark nipples, the skin between them a spider web of scar tissue -- the same familiar ragged mess of scars Steve had seen before when sparring with Tony, and that one, memorable time when a supervillain had made his armor disintegrate. Proof, if he needed any more, that this was really Tony, was the same person who'd been his friend for years. The same person he'd wanted for years. "It didn't work with Rachel," he went on, knowing he was babbling, a she traced the line of one scar with a fingertip, following it outward from Tony's heart over the curve of his breast to where it ended, just above the nipple. It was slightly different in texture from the soft skin surrounding it, and paler, the end of the scar partially bisecting the dark aureole. "I'm not good at it. Sex means something, Tony. We can't just-"

"Of course it does," Tony interrupted. "You're you. Always so chivalrous; it's one of the things I like about you."

"I want to do this," Steve told him. "I do, but-"

Tony reached for the side of his face again, turning Steve's head slightly to force Steve to meet his eyes. "I don't want sex, Steve. Okay, I do, but-" he broke off, glancing away, then said, fiercely. "I want you. Specifically. Right here and right now, but not just here and now."

"Oh," Steve said, very quietly. "I've never done this with a guy before," he confessed.

Tony crawled forward, moving with an easy grace he hadn't displayed while sparring, until he was straddling Steve's thighs once more. He picked up Steve's hand and settled it back over his breast, breath catching as Steve automatically rubbed a thumb over his nipple. "Does this feel male to you?" he asked.

"No," Steve said, and bent to see if his mouth on Tony's breast would get a similar reaction.

ooOOoo

It had been a long time, Steve reflected, since he'd allowed himself a day off from being a superhero, to just go and do something normal. It had been even longer since he'd been able to do that with Tony.

The last time they had met in a casual setting, out of costume and not on Avengers business, had been in a dinner in California, where Steve had tried unsuccessfully to convince Tony to abandon his obsessive and self-destructive attempt to reclaim his stolen technology. Since then, they hadn't interacted unless the team required it.

Well, until the day before yesterday, in the gym. That had definitely been interaction, and it hadn't been Avengers-related. Neither had his conversation with Tony after the party, or the sparring, really. Teaching Tony hand-to-hand combat had always been something between Steve and Tony Stark, not between Captain America and Iron Man.

They were just beginning to rebuild their friendship. Steve really hoped sex wouldn't get in the way of that; as good as the sex had been -- and it had been very good -- he wouldn't trade Tony's friendship for it.

Cornering Tony in his lab last night to talk about things had ended up turning into yet another round of passionate sex, and while post-coital snuggling on the floor of Tony's lab had been nice, Steve wasn't sure it counted as talking about their relationship. So he'd asked Tony to come with him to a photography exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, where nothing untoward could happen.

Hopefully, he could work up the nerve to actually broach the subject before they left the museum.

MoMA had the same high ceilings, white walls, and pale floors that every modern museum seemed to have. Tony, back in the same masculine business attire he always wore and looking as if slinky black dresses, heels, and make-up were something that had never crossed his mind, was staring around the lobby with a bemused expression. "You know," he said, "I think this is the first time in five years that I've been here during normal visiting hours. I usually come here for fund raisers."

"Well, I hope it's still interesting even without the hors d'oeuvres and women in fancy dresses." Steve had been dragged to more than one of those fund raisers, before Tony had started drinking. Tony had always claimed that he needed someone with him who could talk about art, so that he wouldn't look like a clueless engineer who didn't know anything about culture, or that Captain America's presence at a particular benefit dinner would ensure a better turn out. There were always hors d'oeuvres, the tinier the better, and women dressed as if they were ready to attend the opera.

Tony made a face. "Trust me, fancy dresses have lost their appeal."

"I thought you looked very pretty," Steve said sweetly, smirking down at Tony. Now that Tony was no longer actually wearing a little black dress, and no longer visibly exhausted and depressed, making fun of him didn't feel cruel.

Tony raised his eyebrows. "I'd like to see you wear heels."

Steve grinned. "I have, actually. I went undercover as a women a couple of times during the war."

Tony stared at him, the amusingly flabbergasted expression on his face more than worth surrendering a few blackmail-worthy details about Steve's past. "A six foot, three inch tall woman. And people actually fell for that?"

Steve shrugged. "Some women are very tall."

Tony failed to look convinced. "It's not just the height. It's the build, and the bone structure, and... trust me, I'm very familiar with the differences between men and women at this point. You would make an extremely unconvincing drag queen."

Steve resisted the impulse to protest that he would make a very convincing drag queen, realizing just in time how silly that would sound. "Bucky and I were never caught," he said, instead. "Okay, we were frequently caught, but not because people saw through our disguises."

"They were probably just too polite to say anything," Tony told him, smirking. He put one hand on the small of Steve's back, steering him toward the banner that proclaimed "Into the Sunset: Photography's Images of the American West," in brightly colored letters. "Come on; Ansel Adams awaits."

"Ansel Adams is not the only famous landscape photographer to take pictures of the American West," Steve said primly.

"He's just the only one people have ever heard of." Tony grinned at him, so close that Steve could feel his body heat. The close physical proximity wasn't anything new, but now it felt different, intimate in a way it hadn't been before. Or maybe it had been, and he'd just never noticed.

"Is that the Marlboro Man?" Tony pointed at the first picture, a color-saturated portrait of a cowboy. "Is that supposed to be sincere, or a post-modernist commentary?"

"I'm not sure," Steve admitted. "I think this is supposed to be an examination of how photography shaped American conceptions of the West, so it could be either."

"Oh," Tony said. "One of those exhibits."

"I could be dragging you through the abstract art hall. Don't complain."

Tony grumbled something under his breath, but it was clearly a token protest. In the end, Steve was pretty sure Tony enjoyed the photography exhibit, too. He had something to say about all of the pictures, even if it was only to make fun of them, one hand on either Steve's back or his arm the whole time, and kept smiling up at him. When had Tony smiling -- a real smile, not a fake one for cameras -- become unusual?

"Anything else you want to see as long as we're here?" Steve asked, as they left the exhibit, sliding an arm around Tony's waist, quietly reveling in the way Tony leaned into him. He'd missed this, too; Rachel was an incredibly passionate woman, but she wasn't much for simple displays of affection.

Several feet away, a woman with two children in tow was looking at them. Steve met her eyes, and realized as he did so that he was standing there, in public, with his arm around Tony in a way that left no doubt as to the nature of their relationship.

Steve froze. Putting an arm around Tony had felt so natural; he hadn't stopped to think about what he was doing, what he was revealing.

The woman gave him a harried smile, and turned to pull one of her children away from a piece of sculpture. "No, sweetie. Don't touch that."

Steve relaxed, feeling silly. There wasn't any reason for worry or caution; as far as anyone else in the museum knew, Tony was a woman. If Steve wanted to put an arm around him in public, or even kiss him in the museum lobby, in front of god and everyone, no one would raise an eyebrow.

"The Jackson Pollock paintings," Tony announced. "I think MoMA outbid me for one of them a few years ago."

Steve raised his eyebrows. "I thought you didn't like non-representational art."

"Jackson Pollock's paintings aren't supposed to mean anything or be some kind of incomprehensible political statement. That's the whole point. Plus, he did interesting things with fluid dynamics."

Steve couldn't help smiling at that. Of course there was an engineering-related reason Tony liked them. "Art can be a powerful political tool," he pointed out, steering Tony around a group of tourists who were standing in an amorphous huddle in the middle of the hallway. By the slant of the light coming in through the windows, it was already past noon, and early afternoon on a Saturday seemed to be most people's favorite time to visit museums; the building wasn't exactly crowded, but there was a steady stream of people milling around. Steve had been in here before, on weekdays, and seen nobody but a few security guards, and a scattering of art students from Cooper Union.

Tony snorted. "Not when it's people gluing baby dolls to trashcans and claiming it represents something deep and meaningful."

"That's not real art. Not unless they made the doll themselves or painted something on the trashcan. Art should create something." It was old fashioned, Steve knew, but art should be about more than just shock value or being confusing for the sake of being confusing. It was supposed to communicate something to people, or, failing that, be aesthetically pleasing.

"I'm allowed to not get avant garde art," Tony said, gesturing expansively at the museum around them with the arm that wasn't wrapped around Steve's waist. "I'm just an engineer. You're supposed to be sensitive and artistic."

"Good art should be accessible to the average person. If it's a form of social protest, people should be able to understand what you're using it to say without needing you to explain it to them." He sounded really pompous, didn't he, Steve thought, wincing a little.

Tony's lips curved in a familiar little half-smirk. "When you were a teenager, you wanted to grow up to paint WPA murals, didn't you?"

"Yes," Steve said. "After you get done staring enviously at the painting you almost bought," he added, "where do you want to go eat?"

"I'm taking you to the Modern," Tony told him, as if it had already been discussed and decided upon.

Steve winced. The museum's two-star gourmet restaurant was undoubtedly very nice, but it didn't match the low-key afternoon together that he'd had planned. "It's ridiculously over-priced," he pointed out.

Tony shrugged, grinning up at him disarmingly. "So? I'm paying. I always pay for my dates."

"Date?" Steve repeated.

"Just because I look like a girl doesn't mean I'm going to let you treat me like one," Tony went on. "Come on, let me keep at least a little masculine pride."

Date? Tony considered this a date? Steve hadn't thought about it in so many words, but... maybe it was. It wasn't anything the two of them hadn't done together before, but they hadn't been sleeping together before, either, and that bit on context changed everything.

If Tony had assumed that Steve's request that he come with him to the photography exhibit had been Steve asking him out on a date, then the fact that he had come meant that he did want the two of them to have a real relationship. That, in fact, he assumed they'd already started one.

"So, as far as dates go, how has this one been so far?" he asked, trying for a casual, joking tone.

"No one has tried to kill either of us yet," Tony said, with that infuriatingly sexy little smirk; Steve wasn't fooling anyone, apparently. "Or attacked the museum. So I think we can consider it a success."

ooOOoo

It had been so long since a business meeting had gone well that Tony had almost forgotten what the combination of relief and smug satisfaction it always engendered felt like. He hadn't even realized how much stress he'd been under until the meeting was successfully over with, and he'd actually felt sick from the overwhelming relief.

Stark Industries' green energy research was now going to be carried out in partnership with the Department of Energy, with half the project's funding being provided by the American tax payer. The government officials he'd been meeting with had been men he'd never seen before -- not surprising, since for the first time, he hadn't been dealing with the DoD -- and so they had been able to get directly to the business of the meeting, without having to spend a good fifteen minutes on the ever-popular topic of "oh my God, you really have been turned into a girl!" first. One of the Department of Energy scientists, whom Tony suspected hadn't been exposed to any media other than technical journals in years, had even called him "Ms. Stark."

It had been a hard sell -- federal budget concerns being what they were, the government wasn't going to fund SI's work unless they were satisfied that they might actually get useful results out of it -- but once Tony had realized that the senior official was flirting with him, he'd known how to pitch the project. Lean forward a little, lower his voice to create a sense of intimacy and make it seem as if he were talking directly to the man, smile. Nothing that would make it obvious to everyone else in the room -- under normal circumstances, flirting with a male prospective investor was just as likely to alienate half the rest of the room as work in his favor -- but enough that the other man's interest in what Tony was saying increased perceptibly.

He'd always tried to use charm to turn business negotiations to his advantage, even in the very early days when he'd still been figuring out how to do it successfully -- eye contact was key, but it had taken a while before he stopped having to remind himself of that -- but somehow, it had felt slightly uncomfortable this time, in a way it never had before.

SI would have been desperate without this deal, though, so Tony had shoved his unease to the back of his mind, smiled across the table at his audience, and done his level best to make explaining the data on various powerpoint graphs and spreadsheets sound vaguely dirty. He'd discovered long ago that anything could sound suggestive if you said it with the right intonation.

"Do you want tips on the best way to flutter your eyelashes?" Pepper asked him now, voice completely deadpan. "You know, for next time."

"That would be completely unprofessional, Ms. Hogan," Tony told her.

Pepper raised an eyebrow. "So we're going to be professional now? I suppose I should give you the message Captain America left for you later, then."

"Steve left me a message?" The disproportionate swell of pleasure he felt at the idea was silly, he knew, but even having Steve's friendship back was still enough to make him want to grin uncontrollably, and now... Tony had thought their friendship had been destroyed for good, had never expected Steve to so much as exchange the time of day with him again, let alone forgive him or understand why he had done the things he had, and while he was pretty sure that Steve still didn't understand, he was going to assume that the sex meant that he was forgiven.

Thinking about Steve and sex in the same sentence was never going to get old, especially not now that he had first hand experience in the matter. It turned out that a female body had a few advantages to it after all, especially when your partner had super-soldier-serum-enhanced endurance and a recovery period that would have had Tony seething with envy if he weren't currently benefiting from it.

Pepper pointedly looked away from him, examining her wafer-thin black PDA as if whatever was written on it was vastly more interesting than Tony's love life. "Given that it has nothing to do with company business, giving it to you now wouldn't be very professional, would it, Mr. Stark?"

"It's from Steve. How unprofessional could it be?" Especially compared to some of the messages previous dates had occasionally left for him. While anything could sound suggestive if read in the right voice, Pepper had developed a finely honed skill for making the most lurid and salacious of messages sound utterly devoid of interest or appeal, generally by reading them in a tone of extreme boredom. Tony had asked her, once, how she did it with a straight face, and she had smiled and said, dryly, "Constant practice."

He gave Pepper his best puppy dog eyes, and she relented. "He says that dinner is at seven, and he'll meet you at the restaurant."

"Seven? I don't leave work until seven fifteen."

"I think this may be a subtle message that normal people work from nine to five, not eight to seven, and you should consider leaving earlier today." Pepper was examining the PDA again, but Tony could hear a faint hint of satisfaction in her voice, and wondered who's idea the early reservations had actually been.

"So, when are you and Happy's dinner reservations?" he asked.

"Six-forty-five." Pepper shut the PDA off and tossed it onto her desk, which was spotlessly neat in comparison with Tony's own mess of forms, papers, blueprints, and empty coffee mugs. There was brightly colored paperweight shaped like a flamingo that Tony knew had been a gift from Happy sitting alone on the desk's far corner, in its own little quarantine of tastelessness, at odd with the somber black of her blotter, keyboard, and computer monitor.

Tony checked his watch. It was a quarter to six, which meant that if he wanted to be out of the building in time to meet Steve in Manhattan at seven, he would have to leave pretty much immediately. And so would Pepper. "How long were you going to make me wait before you told me that I was about to be late?" he asked.

"It's written in your computer's appointment book, if you check," she said. "And I sent you an email."

Which, translated, meant, 'Had you not specifically asked me what Steve said, I would, indeed, have deliberately let you be late just to teach you a lesson about checking your messages.'

"Most of the emails I get are spam," he protested. "I can't believe the lawyers want me to keep them all. The girl in records management said that ninety-five percent of email is worthless and I didn't have to keep all of it."

"Yes, but the lawyers are afraid of what terrible legal or public relations disaster you might commit next."

SI's legal department, Tony reflected, were a lot like the company's board of executives in that way. He wasn't, however, going to let the board spoil his good mood over today's victory. The company wasn't going to go bankrupt, and he was about to leave early for dinner with Steve.

He dumped the stack of forms the DoE guys had left for him to look over in his inbox -- the lawyers could look at them tomorrow -- and stood. Sound went distant for a moment, and the edges of his vision blurred.

Tony planted his hands on his desk and braced himself until the moment of dizziness passed. When he looked up again, Pepper was frowning at him with slightly annoyed-looking concern.

"Did you eat lunch today, Tony? Or breakfast?"

"I had..." He'd eaten something that morning, hadn't he? "A muffin. With my coffee."

"I know. I left it on your desk. Did you eat anything else?"

"Maybe?" Tony guessed. "I was busy."

Pepper shook her head, clearly dismissing him as hopeless. "Go have dinner with your boyfriend."

Tony ought to have objected to the term boyfriend, given that it made it sound as if he actually were a woman, but all he could do was grin.

He made it to the restaurant with two minutes to spare, mostly by doing things to his Aston Martin that Happy wasn't going to be pleased with -- such as leaving it parked on the street. It wasn't as if anyone could successfully steal it, not with the number of tracking chips planted it in, or the electrified door locks that would shock anyone who tried to force them.

Wiring things to zap would-be thieves had worked with Tony's possessions at boarding school, and it worked with cars now.

Steve was already there, of course. He'd probably taken the subway, which at this time of day was often faster than trying to drive.

The restaurant wasn't quite as expensive as Tony would have chosen, but it was nice enough that Steve was wearing a suit, something he didn't do very often. It was a very expensive suit -- Tony recognized it as one of Jan's designs, which meant it had been a gift and Steve had no clue how much it cost -- but Steve still looked a little bit like mob muscle. The width of his shoulders and his general air of "I wish I were wearing a uniform instead of something with cufflinks" ensured that.

"I see Pepper managed to get you out the door in time," Steve said, grinning at him. "I'm impressed." He stood, and pulled out a chair for Tony.

Tony raised his eyebrows, but sat in the chair without comment. Chivalry seemed to be engraved in Steve's genetic code, and protesting that he wasn't actually a woman only worked for a few minutes until Steve forgot himself again and did something like hold a door open for him. "So, the two of you are working together now? Should I be sacred?"

"Not yet. You should start being afraid when we let Jarvis in on our conspiracy." Steve resumed his seat and handed Tony a menu. The wine menu, Tony saw, had already been removed from their table -- he could see it sitting on one of the neighboring tables, a dark blot of red leather against the white tablecloth. "How did the meeting go?"

"Well..." he hesitated for dramatic emphasis. "SI's not going to go bankrupt in the next year," he finished, unable to suppress a smile.

"So it went well? Did they agree to the partnership arrangement?"

"You are looking at the spearhead of the federal government's new search for alternatives to fossil fuels. They were especially interested in the nuclear fusion project, though we're also going to push the refinements in solar technology we've made, because the public tends to get really twitchy when you use the words 'nuclear power' and 'green' in the same sentence."

"Congratulations." Steve toasted Tony with his water glass.

"Thanks. I think this is the first time things at work have gone right since Loki zapped me; you have no idea how much of a relief it is. Nobody said anything, but I think some of the board members were quietly floating the idea of replacing me." Tony had been more worried by the thought than he'd admitted to himself; without this deal, SI would have been out of options, no matter how hard he'd tried to put a good face on things for the board, and Tony would have lost his company once more. When he'd left the conference room, secure in the knowledge that he wasn't going to lose everything he'd fought so hard to regain after all, relief had hit him so hard that he'd actually had to run for the executive washroom to throw up.

Female bodies apparently reacted to stress differently; Tony had never been sick from nerves before. He was rarely sick at all, unless concussion or alcohol was involved.

At least he'd been at the office, where he didn't have to use the woman's bathroom. He still couldn't conquer the expectation that someone would scream and tell him to get out that he felt every time he entered one.

Steve frowned, looking mildly appalled, and Tony hastened to change the subject. "Still, it's a shame the helium project didn't get the green light, too. Extracting helium-3 from moon rocks is, unfortunately, not cost effective enough, plus the Immortals have a monopoly on them."

"Couldn't you trade for them, or just buy the rocks from them?"

Tony shook his head. "We tried that. Blackbolt said that we're a bunch on un-evolved primitives who have nothing that his people could possibly want. Or anyway, he gave me a contemptuous look that very clearly implied that and shook his head." The ruler of the Immortals never spoke, since his voice was a powerful sonic weapon, but after a while, you learned to read his expressions. "Trust Pietro to find a bunch of inlaws even more arrogant than he is."

Steve did not point out that that wasn't a very nice thing to say, but Tony had also learned long since to read his expressions, so he didn't need to.

"I don't think I've been to this restaurant before," Tony added. He would have remembered the Art Nouveau murals on the walls, particularly since one of them featured a nude woman whose modesty was preserved only by a few peacock feathers and some wisps of white cloth. The peacock motif was echoed in the architecture, and Tony suspected that the murals were as old as the building, though beautifully restored. He wondered if it restaurant was a family business, if Steve had ever been here back when it had been new. From the look of the place, the hotel the restaurant was attached to was Edwardian, and easily predated Steve, but its old glory days would have extended well into the twenties. "What do they have that's good?" he asked.

Steve shrugged. "I'm not sure, actually. I came here with Sharon once, but it was summer then, and all the specials were different."

Tony glanced over the menu; standard French restaurant fair, which meant Steve was going to get French onion soup and beef wellington. It was what he got every time they went to a French restaurant, to the point that Tony had once teased him for having such unadventurous tastes and taken him to a sushi restaurant the next time they met up to discuss Avengers business. He'd ordered the most bizarre and vaguely terrifying-looking sea creatures on the menu, just to see Steve's face when their food arrived, only to discover that Steve's tendency to order the exact same thing every time they went to a given restaurant concealed a hidden ability to eat absolutely anything.

He wondered, on that first date to the museum, why it didn't feel strange to be 'on a date' with Steve, when they had been friends for years, and had belatedly realized that it was because they had been friends for years that it felt so natural. They had essentially been dating since they'd met.

It had never been that easy with any of the women he had dated, or the occasional man. Even with Jan and Pepper, who had been his friends before he'd ever thought of them in a romantic context, it hadn't felt this natural, this right. Probably because Pepper had already started to fall in love with Happy by the time Tony had gotten around to noticing that his assistant a) wasn't named Kitty and b) was extremely attractive, and because he and Jan had both known from the start that a relationship between the two of them couldn't last.

This, now, with Steve wasn't going to last either, he knew. As much as he found himself wishing that it could, Tony wasn't going to lie to himself; eventually, he was going to revert back to his own gender, and then Steve would understandably lose interest in the physical part of their relationship. And even if that didn't happen, if Tony turned out to be stuck this way, Steve would eventually find someone who deserved him more than Tony did, who could make him happier than Tony could. Someone like Sharon Carter, whom he'd had a crush on for ages and would probably go back to in a heartbeat if she were willing to have him; Steve had broken up with her several times before, and they always seemed to end up back together in the end. Or someone like Bernie, the woman Steve had almost married a few years ago, someone who could offer Steve a chance at a normal life. Even as a woman, that was one thing Tony couldn't give him.

The fact that a relationship wasn't going to be permanent had never bothered Tony before. He generally preferred things that way, with no expectations and no strings attached. If everything with Indres had been real... but it hadn't, and that ought to have been enough to remind him, if he hadn't already known, that long-term commitment wasn't something people expected from him, or even wanted from him.

"If you want dessert," Steve said, nodding at the separate dessert menu which sat in the center of the table in the spot normally occupied by a wine list, "you need to decide on that now, too. Their specialty is a freshly baked apple tart with extra-thin slices of apple, and it takes at least a half hour to cook."

Steve hadn't been here in months, but he remembered how to order dessert in the way that would be least inconvenient for the staff. Of course he did.

"I was thinking," Tony said, staring across the table at Steve through his eyelashes and lowering his voice slightly -- exactly like this afternoon with the DoE representative, except that this time, it didn't make him feel dirty, "that we could have dessert later. Back at the mansion."

"We could do that," Steve said. "Yes. Let's do that."

Tony was still smirking with satisfaction when the waiter came to take their orders. He might not have Steve forever, but as long as he did, he was going to enjoy him. At least they seemed to have put the disaster with his stolen armor behind them, so when things eventually fell apart, they could still be friends.

ooOOoo

The NYPD was not always appreciative of superheroes -- they seemed to have an odd affection for Daredevil, but for the most part, they saw superheroes as interlopers who repeatedly attempted to do their jobs for them. When said job involved the Wrecking Crew, however, they couldn't call the Avengers quickly enough.

"Remember," Tony said, as he set the quinjet down in the courtyard in front of the Metropolitan museum -- any other form of transport would have taken too long -- "if they break anything, we're going to have to pay for it, so try to get them outside the museum before we engage them."

"That would be now," Sam announced, his eyes flashing golden. "Redwing just saw them coming out of the front entrance."

The quinjet shuddered violently as something smashed into the side of it with a deafening crunch of metal.

"Everybody out," Steve said, unslinging his shield. "That's our cue."

All for members of the Wrecking Crew were standing on the museum's front steps, Thunderball slowly reeling his massive wrecking ball back in. The Wrecker, their nominal leader, had a leather and metal-bound book tucked under one arm, presumably stolen from inside the museum.

The last time Jan had seen them, the police had been carting them away after their joint attack on the Avengers Mansion with the Master's of Evil. They had come close to killing Hercules, the four of them teaming up on him and beating him unconscious -- even a demigod was vulnerable to the effect of the Wrecker's enchanted crowbar and Piledriver's fists.

"What do they want with a book?" Tony asked. "I'm pretty sure Thunderball's the only one of them who can read."

"They've been hired by someone." Jan shrank down, taking flight, and eyed the group, trying to decide which of them her stingers would to the most good on. Thunderball or Piledriver, she decided. The Wrecker's purple ski mask protected his face, and Bulldozer preferred charging blindly at people anyway; he didn't need to see the fight.

Where was Thor when they needed him? Or She-Hulk, or anyone else with superstrength and at least partial invulnerability.

"You take the Wrecker, Iron Man," Steve ordered. "Your armor has the best chance of standing up to his crowbar. I'll take Piledriver. Falcon?"

"You go left," Sam told him. "I'll go right."

Wanda was staring fixedly at the Wrecker, pinkish-red spheres of chaos energy already gathering around her hands. "I've seen that book before," she said. "Where have I seen it?"

"If your pet tries to eat me again," Jan called to Sam, as Bulldozer started to run toward them, head down and shoulders squared for impact, "I'm blasting him the same as I would one of them."

Wanda made a throwing gesture with one hand, and Bulldozer tripped over his own feet and fell flat on his face. Then the fight began in earnest.

A quarter of a hour later, the Avengers, most of them visibly the worse for wear -- especially Tony, whose was armor was dented in several places -- watched with satisfaction as Bulldozer, Piledriver, and an unconscious Thunderball whom Wanda had managed to knock unconscious with his own wrecking ball were loaded into a police van. The Wrecker had, unfortunately, gotten away, along with the medieval manuscript he had been carrying.

At least nothing valuable had been broken, unless a ten-foot radius of pavement counted, and a single manuscript was insignificant compared to the kind of damage the likes of the Wrecking Crew could have wreaked inside the museum.

"Are you all right?" Steve was staring straight ahead, arms folded, every inch the stern and stalwart Captain America as he watched the Wrecking Crew being carted away -- there were several news cameras focused on them all -- but his eyes kept drifting sideways to Tony. "He swung that thing at you like he was trying to knock you out of the park. I thought you were going to go sailing right on through the nearest building."

"Fine. The autopilot kicked before that happened. That's what it's there for." Tony paused, then added, "This is going to take forever to fix. I don't even want to look at the quinjet."

"It doesn't look too bad," Wanda offered. "I've seen Clint's car look worse, and you were always able to fix that." Jan wasn't sure if she was trying to be helpful, or making a joke at both Clint and Tony's expense.

Beside her, Sam was unsuccessfully trying to fend off Redwing's efforts to groom his hair, which were accompanied by fussing sounds that seemed an awful lot like scolding. "We're going to need a flatbed to get it back to the mansion," he observed. "Stop it. My hair is not-- I'm fine, Redwing. Quit it."

"They don't make spare parts for quinjets." Somehow, the mournful note in Tony's voice carried through despite the voice modifier in his helmet. "Everything is going to have to be rebuilt or recast by hand."

"You know you'll enjoy it," Steve said. He was smiling, beneath his mask, and sounded both fond and faintly amused. He and Tony had clearly resolved their differences, or at least put them aside long enough to be friends again.

For a moment, Jan found herself missing Hank so much that it hurt -- not the controlling, unstable jerk he'd turned into, but the Hank she'd fallen in love with. She had smiled at him like that, once upon a time. They had been teammates and partners before they'd been married, and she missed that almost as much as she missed the feel of his arms around her.

She couldn't even talk to anyone about it; either they wouldn't know enough about what had happened, or they would be appalled at her for missing the way things had been. She ought to have had no feelings left for him but contempt, or maybe pity, but the more time passed, the more she found herself remembering the parts of their relationship that had been good. The parts that had made them both happy.

It was all right to miss those while still being glad the rest of it was over, wasn't it?

"The museum is not going to be pleased that we couldn't recover the book," Jan said, forcing her mind back to business. "Their insurance ought to pay for it, I suppose, but it's not the kind of thing you can replace."

Steve shook his head. "All the priceless historical artifacts in there, and they walk out with a book. Why break into a museum just to steal a book?"

Wanda winced visibly. "Because it's not just any book. If I recognized the design on the cover right, it was a 13th century copy of the Darkhold scrolls. To the right collector, that would be worth more than any treasure in the museum."

"Why don't I like the sound of that?" Jan asked.

"Because it's magic," Tony said, with faint sarcasm, just as Sam asked,

"What kind of collectors are we talking about?"

"You know," Steve said, "not all of us find magic personally distasteful. Sometimes it has benefits."

"Keep this up, and you won't get to experience them."

Jan raised an eyebrow at Tony, which he blithely ignored. That had been a more obvious bit of flirtation than he normally indulged in with Steve. Flirting was generally the way Tony showed you that he liked you, but he made at least a half-hearted attempt to turn it down when he was interacting with other men.

Then again, he was female now. Maybe that changed things. He might not feel the need to hide that he was attracted to men anymore, now that he was in a body that made that socially acceptable.

"The kind of collector," Wanda said, "who likes to summon demons in their spare time. Or transform himself into a vampire, or gain ultimate power."

There was a moment of silence, while everyone struggled to keep their smiles in place for the news crews. "Like Doom," Tony said.

"I think Doom already has a copy," Wanda said, waving politely to a cameraman. "I'm going to have to tell Strange about this. If anyone can come up with a list of possible buyers for it, it would be him."

The crowd of reporters and general interested bystanders was surging forward now, as the police van left and took the immediate threat with it. They would have to talk to the press, of course. Not only did the Avengers generally need all the good publicity they could get, a supervillain attack on a major tourist site like the Met was bound to have people worrying about terrorism. "I think," Jan said carefully, "that we should avoid mentioning the book full of evil spells to the news crews."

ooOOoo

Tony checked his watch again. It was exactly one minute and thirty-five seconds later than the last time he'd done so. "You'd think the sorcerer supreme could be on time."

He and Wanda had been waiting for Strange for fifteen minutes at this point. Tony had given up any pretense of patience three minutes ago and gotten up to pace back and forth across the lab. Hank's lab. He still thought of it that way even though Hank hadn't used it in nearly a year.

It felt empty, these days. Tony had never thought he would actually miss the terrariums full of assorted creepy crawly things, but the lab seemed much more sterile with none of Hank or Scott Lang's pets in residence.

"You would think that," Wanda said, "but you would be wrong." She frowned slightly, fiddling with the seams on one red glove. "I think it's the doctor in him. When have you ever gone to a doctor's appointment and not ended up sitting around waiting for ages?"

"I don't usually have doctor's appointments. And when I do, they're generally on time." Most of Tony's hospital experiences had involved the emergency room, and if there had been any waiting, he'd been too unconscious to notice. He'd tried to avoid doctors entirely during his first year as Iron Man, when he had still needed the breastplate to keep his damaged heart beating properly, and even after his heart condition had become public knowledge, the habit had stuck.

"That happens when you pay for an entire hospital wing." Wanda's voice was absent; she was still staring at her glove. "I must have torn this when we fought the Wrecking Crew yesterday. I hate it when I do that. Do you know how hard it is to get elbow-length silk gloves in red?"

"They fixed my heart. Of course I funded their renovation." He was starting to worry, though, that maybe they hadn't fixed it completely, or that his transformation had somehow undone part of the surgical repairs. Or it might be nothing so exotic as that -- he had inflicted a hell of a lot of abuse on his body over the past year. "If I can get Brooks Brothers and Armani tailored to fit me, you ought to be able to get someone to make you gloves," he added. "Do they have to be silk?"

He'd initially thought that moment of dizziness he'd experienced after the meeting with the Department of Energy had been low blood sugar, or maybe an after effect of being sick, but it had happened again, several times over the past week. And then, yesterday, during the fight, he had turned sharply at high speed and momentarily greyed out from the G forces. Only the armor's built-in fail safes had kept him from crashing, and the Wrecker had been able to take advantage of his disorientation to bat him out of the sky with his enchanted crowbar. There wasn't any pain, not the way there had been before, when every failure of his chestplate had meant agony, but his entire body felt wrong, off somehow, in a way that couldn't be explained just by being a woman; he'd gotten used to that at this point.

Hank's lab was approximately twenty feet by thirty-five feet -- pacing from one side to the other took ten steps in each direction. Tony turned, keeping Wanda in sight, and started another circuit.

The crowbar had left dents in his armor that were going to take most of this evening to hammer back out; the armor was much more difficult to repair than the average costume. Tony found himself actually looking forward to it. It would be a soothing way to let out his frustration after Wanda and Strange inevitably failed once again to change him back. There was something deeply satisfying about old-fashioned hands-on metal working, especially when it involved hitting things repeatedly.

"Silk insulates magical energy better than leather does," Wanda was saying.

"Really?" Tony asked, temporarily diverted from his brooding. If silk's low conductivity applied to magical energy as well as electricity, then it ought to follow that high conductivity would transfer over as well. "What about gold and copper? Does glass insulate magic, too?"

"Why do you think so many magical artifacts are made of gold? I've never thought about glass, though. The crystalline structure in most gemstones amplifies and focuses magical energy, but glass isn't really a crystal."

That actually almost made sense. It was disconcerting when magic made sense; the fact that it sometimes followed logical patterns and sometimes didn't was even worse than if it were entirely random, because what logic it did follow couldn't be relied upon.

Tony glanced down at his watch again. It was exactly two minutes later than the last time he'd checked it. "Do think Strange really is on to something this time? He's been meditating on it for a month."

"Actually, two weeks out of the past month he was in another dimension with Clea. Some kind of demonic entity was trying to breach the barriers between the dimensions and consume all life on earth." Wanda had pulled her torn gloves off by this point and draped them over the arm of her chair. The pink and red of her tights and cape were the brightest colors in the room, standing out vividly against the white walls and white tile floor; wearing her Scarlet Witch costume apparently made it easier for her to concentrate on magic.

"I guess that would take priority over me," Tony admitted. It was, he had learned over the years, better not to ask too many questions about the kinds of things Strange did or fought. It only made his head hurt.

"Modesty from Tony Stark. Perhaps being a woman has been good for you."

Tony spun on his heel to find Strange standing -- posing -- in the lab's doorway, his cloak billowing around him in a non-existent breeze.

"In that case," Wanda muttered, "I know some other people who could try it."

Tony reminded himself that Strange was here to help him and very carefully didn't snicker. "So, you think you can change me back this time, doctor?" he asked.

"In theory," Strange said, entering the room and closing the door behind him. "You were not Loki's original target. The spell used on you was designed to affect a god, and there are layers to it that even I have not yet proven able to decipher. I suspect that Loki sought assistance in its creation from a magical adept. However, though it has become increasingly obvious that the spell cannot simply be broken by the application of superior magical force, it may be possible to gradually remove it."

Tony shifted uneasily on his feet. "Gradually? That sounds unpleasant."

"It shouldn't be. Your transformation back to your own gender wouldn't be gradual. The Scarlet Witch and I would be unraveling the spell one layer at a time, slowly weakening it until it could be broken, at which point you would revert back to your natural form."

"How long is this going to take?"

"As long as it takes." Strange frowned. "The spell's coils are actually visible around you, to the right eyes. I don't think you realize how intricate and extensive they are. Though," his frown deepened, "they've altered since the last time I examined them."

"What do you mean, changed? It's not as if I could be any more of a woman."

"Your aura has altered." Strange was staring intently at him now, the piercing blue gaze unnerving, as if Tony were a particularly interest specimen on a lab table. "Here." One gloved hand traced a circle in the air just over Tony's heart, and Tony felt his stomach lurch.

His heart. Of course. No wonder he had been having dizzy spells, had felt wrong, exhausted, ill. Tony drew in a deep breath, forcing himself not to react visibly, and tried to think how he would break the news to Steve.

"And here." Strange's hand moved lower, hovering in front of Tony's stomach, and then his eyes widened, and he pulled his hand back abruptly. "Light of Oshtur! That's- that's not possible. Dr. Pym's data was very specific."

"What data?" One of the worst parts of having a female body, Tony thought, for a half-hysterical second, was the way his voice went shrill when he was upset.

"Dr. Pym ran numerous blood tests on you after you were first transformed. Your female body was completely sterile." Strange was frowning fiercely now, one hand raised toward Tony again.

There was, Tony though, no good way any explanation that included the phrase 'completely sterile' could end.

"This is extremely bad news." Strange shook his head, glaring at Tony's abdomen as if it had personally offended him. "Apparently your body is becoming more fully female as time passes. It is a complication I had not predicted. And of course changing you back now is out of the question without medical intervention. Otherwise the process would most likely kill you."

"What?" Wanda was on her feet now, appalled shock naked on her face. "What do you mean, most likely kill him?"

The important thing, Tony told himself, was to be calm. He could fall apart later, after he'd broken the news to Steve -- at least, that half-hysterical part of his mind whispered, he'd get to stay with Steve, if he was stuck this way. For what time he had left anyway. "So I'm sterile," he said, managing to keep his voice steady with surprisingly little effort, "and I'm somehow turning even female than I already am, and I'm going to have a heart attack if you change me back?" On second thought, he should probably break things off with Steve now, before his heart got any worse.

"What? Oh no." Strange shook his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Quite the opposite, actually. You were sterile. You are most assuredly not sterile anymore."

"And that's bad?" Wanda asked. "It makes a certain kind of sense, I suppose. There would be magical resonances involving the potential to create life."

"I'm afraid we're not dealing with potential at the moment." Strange raised an eyebrow at Tony. "You truly don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

"Congratulations," Strange said, his voice heavy with irony. "You're going to be a mother."

ooOOoo