A/N: Here we are at chapter three, and it only covers half the material I wanted it too... as the chapter is already up to normal length and a little more, however, I decided to break it up and stop it being any longer until I posted! Unfortunately, it means this one has come out a little filler-y. Even so, please enjoy! And if anyone wants to guess what it is Howard wants help with, please be my guest... :P
Chapter Three
In the study of his North Salem home, Charles Xavier was having a nightmare. Nightmare, though, was not quite the right word. His sleep was disturbed, restless, but there were no coherent images or feelings to it. Scenes, thoughts, were passing by too quickly for him to process them. He realised this, but could do nothing to slow them down, to keep hold of them. Perhaps that was where the sickening fear was coming from; he was scared this confusion was going to last forever.
"Charles?"
He started upright in his chair. Raven was standing in the doorway.
"Were you asleep?" His sister asked, seeming amused. "Are you alright?"
"No, no, I'm fine. Just thinking." He lied, not very convincingly, resisting the urge to look into her thoughts and see whether or not she believed him. He ran a hand over his face, reinforcing his self-control. The summer break couldn't be over soon enough. He needed to get back to England, to Oxford, back to the disciplines of his studies. An idle mind had too much time to wander.
"Of course." Clearly she did not believe him. Wonderful. He really had to work on his lying. "Well, come downstairs. Dinner's ready, everyone's waiting."
"Coming." He followed her out of the study, shutting the door behind him. He still felt strangely uneasy, though his dream had given him nothing specific to focus on. It just felt as if the world had tipped slightly off balance. As he mechanically ate the food his ever-loving parents put in front of him (which, unfortunately, did not compare altogether favourably with the catering at his University) he finally hit on it- perhaps there was simply someone new in town. A new train of thought whispering at the edge of his dreams, that had slipped through the chinks in his sleeping defences, confusing his dreams.
Well, he would soon sort that out. Learning control had been a necessity in the early days of his powers, when the competing thoughts and voices in his head had threatened to drive him mad. It was all old hat now, as his peers at the University would say. He would do a quick meditative sweep after dinner to make sure all was well, and then shut these new voices out of his mind too.
He excused himself without taking dessert and retired to his own bedroom, locking the door and shutting the curtains. The ritual was a little embarrassing, but there was about to be enough pouring into his mind without any additional stimulation. Ruining his brain without even completing an undergraduate degree would have been the worst kind of ignominy.
Preparations made, Charles sat on the edge of his bed and opened his mind slowly, one voice at a time. He knew them all, every person in this small town, even if he'd never met them. He knew who still suffered from the war, he knew those whose thoughts were tormented, he knew their every secret. At first, he just came across the normal trials and tribulations in the life of a suburban population. Even Mrs Stark- the Captain, as he still called her- who frequently fantasied elaborate action sequences in secret was thinking relatively mundane thoughts, planning strategies for bringing her young guest out of her shell and hoping her husband would see to the children if they were noisy while she was out.
That gave him the direction he needed. Ever since Mr and Mrs Stark had moved to their town he had kept an eye on them- made easier by his parents bringing them over for dinner from time to time. They probably wouldn't have if they knew that Mr Stark was not just the commuting business man he appeared, but the head of a secret security organisation who held some very shady secrets. It was worth keeping an eye on him, just in case intervention was required. As for Mrs Stark… well, after a while, Charles just felt pity for her. Her pain lessened as time went on, but when he was at home, Charles tried to check in on her now and then. Not because he could do anything, but in the hope that he would find some improvement. Raven, he knew, would have just said they should tell people who she was and Charles would have agreed, but it wasn't their decision.
Still, he should have known this new disturbance would have the incognito Captain America at its heart. The new arrivals were her house guests, at the invitation of her husband who, unfortunately, was too occupied in longing for a cigarette to provide any useful information. The Captain had resolved to take the younger guest on a walk past her new school in the hope it would make her less nervous.
Charles found the mind of this guest and discovered that nervous was not the word. The girl was just one step short of total panic, confused and anxious about being discovered, worried about her father. Having thus located her, he probed deeper into the girl's mind, trying to find the root of all her near-overwhelming emotion.
A few moments later, his bedroom door stood unlocked and open as he fumbled around looking for his shoes.
"Raven!" He called, urgently. "Raven! Where are you?"
His foster-sister's head appeared from around an identical door further down the hall. "What is it?"
"We need to walk down to your school. Right now. Hurry up."
"What? My school? Why?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I tried." Charles said, pulling on his successfully located footwear. "Just come on, hurry. I'll try and explain on the way."
Raven hurried. Sometimes when Charles' face was frantic and pale in the way it was now, it was best not to ask too many questions.
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This had to be a punishment for missing the wedding. He had to be in some sort of purgatory for jilters. Otherwise, Tony wouldn't be about to come face to face with his father.
There wasn't time to panic. A moment after he heard Howard's voice, the man was upstairs and looking round the door to the spare room, loosening his tie as he came.
"Hammond." He said, smiling, reaching out to shake Tony's hand.
He looked so young. The man Tony remembered had been sixty, seventy. The man in front of him could only be in his early thirties. Tony was older than his dad. And he finally understood why Stevie always said they looked alike- There was a slight difference in build, his eyes were a different colour, his hair and moustache were styled differently, but all in all, there would be no mistaking that they were related, at the very least.
And if that was the case, how long would it be before someone here realised?
"Nice to meet you, Mr Stark." Penny blurted, jerking forward to shake the hand Tony had left hanging in the air. He just couldn't seem to move until Howard's gaze shifted to Penelope.
"Oh, we met when you were just a tiny little thing, Penelope." He said, with reasonable warmth. "I knew your folks from way back. But who knew you'd grow up so pretty, huh? Look at you, you're all grown up."
It was just ordinary chatter, but it made Tony's stomach churn. How dare you, he wanted to say, how dare you pretend to be interested in your grandkids when you were never even interested in me? He fought the urge to hustle Penny out of Howard's sight for good, but in any case there would be nowhere to go. He had to be content with moving the conversation away.
"Stark." He said, as casually as he could. "Good to see you." Lies. "Thanks for having us."
"I'll appreciate the help," Howard replied, which was news to Tony. "However much you decide to give."
Tony did not like the sound of that one bit. Then again, when he found out what Howard wanted he might be a step closer to explaining why they were here. Or rather, he'd be a step nearer explaining why 'Hammond' and his daughter were here; he and Penny were just here because of the whole drunkenly messing with alien tech thing. It hadn't been his best plan ever, he had to admit.
Memories of the previous night were hazy. He had the idea that he had been hoping to time travel, to go back and make it to the wedding. He was damn stupid when he was drunk.
"Annie's putting the dinner out," Howard said. "You guys head down, I'll be there in a minute. We'll talk properly after." He disappeared out into the hall, where Tony heard him greeting and then berating his young son who had, it seemed, splashed water down himself. Poor kid. At least Tony had been looked after by staff. He'd barely had to deal with his Dad at all.
Of course, unlike little Teddy, he did now have to suffer through a sit down dinner with his dad and fiancée/step mother, neither of whom knew who he was. So there was that to contend with.
"Dad, are you okay?" Penny asked quietly, as down the hall the taps ran again; Howard freshening up after work. "Do you want to leave?"
"And go where?" He asked. "If we're ever going to get back, we're going to need the best tech available in this stupid troglodyte time. That means we need him."
"He said he wanted your help." Penny sounded troubled. "What does he need you for?"
"Technically he wants Hammond. And I don't know."
"But you are Hammond. Or, or, we've taken their bodies, but they look exactly the same as us. I don't understand." She looked at him a little desperately. "Dad, what's going on?"
"I don't know."
"But-"
"Pen, save us both some time and whatever you're about to ask just assume I don't know." He couldn't deal with her questions coming at him from all sides. This was hard enough to process as it was. Penny shut her mouth again. "Right. Now we have to go and have dinner with my dad, yippee."
"Is he that bad?"
"Let's find out." Tony answered, and led the way out. It was too suffocating in that little room. He was having trouble breathing again.
OoOoOoOoOoOoO
Dinner was strained to say the least. Penelope, on the outside looking in, wasn't sure what she could do to make it any better. She knew her dad had issues with his own father, and now he was sitting across the table from him, watching him be all lovey-dovey with his fiancée. He had found it hard enough, this last year, to deal with the fact Stevie and Howard had been married in the past; she wasn't sure how he would cope with it right in front of his eyes. He was pale, and talking too fast, laughing too loudly. Penny wasn't sure he was coping at all. The last twenty-four hours had been hard on him.
She felt as if she ought to be more angry with him for missing the wedding. She had been, at first. It had been awful, waiting there with Stevie, not knowing where he was. They'd assumed something had happened, some Iron Man thing, a villain to be dealt with. They hadn't waited long, Stevie was too much the hero for that. When he apparently couldn't take any of their calls, they'd split up to search.
And then Rhodes had found him, in the Iron Man suit, yes, but not facing any threat, without any disaster coming to screw them all over again. Just testing another suit, callously not mentioning the wedding at all.
When she'd heard that, Penny had felt like the bottom of her world was falling out all over again. Her father wasn't perfect, and could often be selfish or inconsiderate, but he loved Stevie. He loved her, and to do this to her- Penny had been so angry. Even worse when, after leaving them alone for a suitable period of time, she'd gone home to find that he'd refused to speak to Stevie at all. She'd felt, then, that all her belief in him had been entirely misplaced.
Even that, in some ways, was preferable to the sickening pity she felt for him now. When she'd found out he'd just forgotten, she had just felt so sorry, so awful for them both; the kind of awful where there is nothing you can do to change it or to make it better, the kind of awful that would just churn and churn in your stomach without any outlet.
It wasn't her dad's fault. It was almost worse, not having anyone to blame, but anyone could see that he wasn't well. Stevie had occasionally alluded to the idea that she was a little worried about Tony's health, but away at school, Penny hadn't had any idea of the extent it seemed to have reached. Stevie should have told her; if Stevie understood herself. Really, Penny couldn't help thinking it was at least partly her fault. She was the one who had been living with her dad, so she was the one who would have noticed the warning signs- a little too much time in the lab, a little more drink than usual, even less sleep, any of hundreds of little changes that would surely have alerted her if she had just been there for more than a week at a time. She should never have gone to the school, never have left him alone, not so soon after his near-death experience with the wormhole in New York. Of course he wasn't going to come out of that unscathed. His view of the world, of himself, of his place in the world, had been totally undermined. They'd been so close to losing. For all his bravado, even her dad couldn't just brush that aside.
He had genuinely scared Penny, the night of the missed wedding. She hadn't seen him since Christmas, where even then she'd noticed something strangely tense in his manners. On the wedding day, when she came home, he'd seemed totally wired, buzzing, adrenaline fuelled as though he was in battle- but he hadn't even spoken to Stevie. And although he'd never been particularly careful of his health, he lived his life in the media spotlight and in accordance with his ego- even when he was so engrossed in work he'd neglect eating and sleeping he didn't usually leave off personal grooming. But his hair had been a little too long and mussed, his face shaved patchily in the wrong places. He'd had dark circles under his eyes and the weight loss that suggested his eating had been a little hit and miss. And then there was the lab.
When she had first moved in, it had taken Penny a while to adjust to Tony's unique lifestyle choices; specifically, how he carefully cultivated and maintained the reputation of being disorganised and irresponsible when behind it all, he always knew exactly where and when everything was. He was a genius, after all- if he didn't know where his shirts or his keys were, or if he missed a board meeting or two because he was working on a project, it was only because he didn't care to remember; if he left the dishes piling up in a kind of game of washing up chicken to see how long it would take Penny to break and do them for him, it was only because he didn't want to do them. When it came to the things that interested him, or the things he valued, Tony was meticulous. Everything in the lab had its own place and would be returned there before he came back upstairs. Everything was catalogued, filed, stored systematically, colour-coded. He might leave a few odds and ends around to make it look like he was an untidy rebel who didn't follow the rules, but everything else in there had to be just so. In the years she had lived with him, this had become so apparent that Penny had hardly dared venture in there, as if the mere act of trespass would somehow unbalance the order of the place. When she went in this time, she barely recognised it.
It hadn't exactly been out of order when she'd got back, but it had been very full. Suit after suit in various stages of assembly had been rammed into every corner, components and tools laid out on every available surface. There was barely room to walk on the floor, besides a circle of clear space around the half-dismantled equipment Loki and Selvig had set up on the roof. That had almost worried Penny more. It was like her dad didn't want to go near it.
She was worried that he was cracking up. And their current circumstances were hardly going to help.
The only small, paper-thin silver lining to all this was that this version of Stevie wasn't that much like their own. She looked the same, had the same mannerisms of speech and movement, but seemed to be almost entirely domesticated, teasing Howard about how business talk wasn't allowed at dinner and telling 'Ted' to keep his elbows off the table. She was eating small, lady like portions again, like she had when she'd first come out of the ice and had been worried about what they'd think of her. Penny wondered if she was hungry, if she was happy. She was, at least, a far better cook. Their Stevie was very proud of her repertoire of dishes, which extended to meatloaf, hot dogs, boiled rice and suet pudding. Everything else tended to come out tasting either mediocre or very strange indeed. In honour of their guests' arrival, however, today this Stevie had followed their roast chicken and potatoes with a beautiful home-made peach pie. Penny doubted their Stevie knew how to make pastry, let alone how to make it so it melted in the mouth. Tony had wolfed his down- Penny wondered how long it had been since he had eaten- and eagerly accepted other-Stevie's offer of another slice.
"You're a great cook." He said, and Penny winced internally at the mania in his voice. "Thank you, St- um, An- Stephan-?"
"Mrs Stark?" Howard suggested with a significant look.
"Mrs Stark." Tony repeated slowly, with a strange emphasis. Penny frantically sought to move the conversation on.
"It really is great." She blurted awkwardly. "Thank you."
"You should have seen her the first time she tried to make one." Howard chuckled. "I got home and there was just this charred black lump and she was crying and crying-"
"That," Other Stevie interrupted, "Was not why I was crying."
Howard grunted and turned his attention to his pie. Penny shot her dad a warning look. She could tell he wanted to ask and she absolutely did not want him to ask.
"Why were you crying, Mama?" Ted asked, innocently.
"Oh, something silly." She smiled reassuringly.
"'cause normally you only cry if someone dies or if it's Mr Barnes' birthday and remembering makes you sad."
"Edward, be quiet." Howard's low words whipped across the table. The words, the standard admonishment of children everywhere, sounded like the man was handing down a death sentence to his son. All of a sudden Penny felt she had a much greater understanding of why her dad had disliked her grandfather so much. She smiled as kindly as she could at the little boy across the table.
"The chicken cutlets were on offer, Howard, so I got some more for next week." Other Stevie- Annie, Mrs Stark; Penny had to find a name for her- said, probably to break the silence more than anything. "They're in the freezer." She smiled across at Penelope, as if, as her fellow woman, this topic would be of particular interest to her. "We've always had one. I have so much more free time when I don't have to shop every day."
"Free time to do what?" Howard snorted.
"Oh, I don't know. Cooking. Sewing. Cleaning."
Penny decided to concentrate very hard on her pie, hoping Howard wouldn't notice Tony's triumphant smile. He could at least try not to look so delighted about tensions in his father and fiancée's married life.
"The wonders of modern technology, hey?" He said, approvingly.
"Yes." Annie replied, still rather pointed. "You should see some of the guns Howard is making."
"Mostly non-lethal." Howard interjected, annoyed now. "Espionage equipment ready for the war with the Russos, that kind of thing."
"You really think there's going to be an all out war with Russia?" Tony sounded smugly incredulous. It wasn't really fair, Penny thought. Her dad had the benefit of decades of hindsight.
"Maybe not, but you can bet I'm going to convince the generals there will be." Howard smirked. "Best to be prepared."
Annie tutted.
"Mama," Ted asked, curious again. "If there's another war, and Papa has to go fight, do we still get to stay here?"
"There won't be another war, Teddy. Not like before, at least."
"Anyway," Tony added. "They wouldn't make your dad fight. He'd just make the weapons like last time."
"I know, but he still went everywhere!" The little boy's voice swelled with pride. "He went to Germany and France and Italy and all over the USA and then after the war he and Mama went to Japan and-"
"Enough!" If Howard's last parental intervention had sounded like a death sentence, this one was eternal damnation. "I thought I told you to be quiet and eat your dinner!"
Penny heard her dad draw in a sympathetic breath, and prayed he wouldn't say anything. She knew he was going to take all this personally. Then again, from the way his brow had furrowed at the mention of Japan, that was new information to him. Perhaps it would be enough to distract him from the little boy shamefacedly eating the last of his pie, looking utterly miserable.
Penny was having a hard time not saying anything to Howard herself. She looked to Annie. She wasn't their Stevie, but surely she couldn't be so different that she would let this bullying go?
There was another pained silence.
"I might need you to try on your school skirt after dinner, Penelope." Annie said, obviously sensing someone needed to say something. "I think you must have grown some since you sent your measurements. It's alright, there's plenty of hem in it we can let down."
"School skirt?"
"Yes. For September."
"Oh." Penny said. "Thanks."
She did not feel thankful. She did not feel in any way grateful at all. She had time travelled, dimension hopped, and apparently she still had to go to school. And not just a normal school, a school fancy enough to have a uniform. And, more than that, it was a new school. She felt sick at the thought.
Just over a year ago, she would never have thought that school was somewhere she could be happy, because she hadn't been. It wasn't as if she had been bullied, not quite; the occasional spiteful comment or episode of spiteful laughter couldn't really be counted. But she hadn't had any friends, there had been no-one to sit with at lunch or partner with in class. Sometimes she had gone entire days not saying anything except answering her name at roll call and saying thank you to the lunch lady who served her food. It was miserable, especially if she got home and her dad didn't come out of the lab. She had missed her Aunt and Uncle more terribly than she could say. They had more or less been her only friends, and the fact of how pathetic that was didn't escape her notice.
Once, a few months after going to live with her dad, she had played hooky. She had simply not gone to school in the morning and instead had stayed in her room all day, half watching her Doctor Who box sets, heart pounding as she waited to get caught, scolded, thrown out of school; but her dad didn't notice. She suffered a sleepless night, sure she would be pulled up to the Principal's office the next day, but no. Nobody said anything. Not even the teachers. She was totally invisible.
She'd thought starting at the Xavier Institute would be the same- worse, even, because at least by then she had her dad and Stevie to talk to when she got home. She'd been sure at boarding school she would just slowly wither away and die and it would only be when the holidays came that anyone would notice; that they'd be too busy with their superpowers to notice one of their number was missing.
As it turned out, she was totally wrong. The Xavier Institute was a small school and tightly knit, full of people who didn't have anyone or anywhere else to go. Penny knew she was the outsider as she was one of only a few with an accepting family, not to mention the fact she wasn't exactly a mutant. There had been one or two comments, but all quickly squashed not just by her friends or the faculty but seemingly by the majority of the student body. And she had friends, and got invited to join in with social events, and the teasing was kind rather than malicious. For the first time in her life, she had been in conversations where she had talked for so long her mouth had gone dry. The lessons were interesting, so were the training sessions. She was getting used to her powers, but privately still marvelled sometimes at what she could do. She disliked being away from her family, of course, but was otherwise honestly having the best time of her life.
And now it was all being taken away. She had to start all over again at yet another school, one where she would be worse that foreign, where she would be from the future of another world; her knowledge would be so different to theirs, there would be things being taught as fact she had seen debunked, plenty of things she had never heard of, teaching styles and curriculums she had never come across- and that was before you got onto slang, music, the latest shows, trends, social conventions. She would be slaughtered.
"Why don't we go and take a look at the place?" Annie offered, obviously having seen the concern on Penny's face. "It's not too dark yet, and the place is well lit. I'll just get Teddy to bed and we can go."
Teddy looked like he wanted to argue, but a quick glance towards his father silenced any protest he might have made. As Annie took her son upstairs to supervise his teeth brushing, Penny debated about whether or not to ask her dad to come with them. Was it better to force him to spend time with a version of his fiancée who didn't even recognise him, or to leave him alone with his dad? Either way, she wasn't sure he would cope.
Unfortunately, the decision was made for her as Howard invited Tony to join him out in the back garden for a cigarette. Penny just had to hope he wouldn't join in the smoking. Unsure what else to do, she stacked the bowls and took them into the small kitchen, ready to wash up.
A few moments later, Annie appeared and, with a reassuring smile, led the way out towards Penny's new school.
OoOoOoOoOoOoO
It had been a long, long time since Tony had smoked, mostly because he wasn't an idiot. Still, the tobacco was savoury and strong; he wasn't sure if they even had filters on. Howard laughed every time Tony was forced to cough. Really, it was amazing cancer hadn't wiped out his entire generation.
"You always were a dreadful smoker, Hammond." Howard remarked, exhaling a plume of pale grey smoke in a boastful sort of way. "Put it out if you don't want it."
"This is my first one in years." Tony took a last drag, spluttered, and regretfully stubbed it out on the low wall that divided the patio from the lawn beyond. "They're bad for your health, you know."
"So I keep telling my doctor, but he says in my case the benefits outweigh the risks."
"Benefits?" This, Tony wanted to hear; the old styley 'genuine medical science' paid for by the cigarette companies. Had his dad actually believed it? Unfortunately, Howard didn't answer, puffing in silence.
Tony looked at the sky instead. The stars seemed much brighter here- less light pollution, he supposed. In a way it was comforting. They seemed closer, less vast. He knew other worlds, other planets, other dimensions were out there- hell, he was standing in one- but here the sky seemed draped over them like a comforting blanket. He didn't feel like he was going to fall headlong into the void.
"It's not too late to back out." Howard said, suddenly.
There was no point even considering it. Tony wanted to know who this Hammond was, why they were here- and there was only one way to do that. "No," he said. "I'm in."
"What I'm about to show you," Howard said, his tone conversational but the way he was very deliberately stubbing out his cigarette the total opposite, "Is the highest level of confidential. Once I show you, there's no getting out. Hammond, if you see this and try to back out, no matter what I do it won't stop them killing you."
Well, that was just great. Then again, death threats from his dad weren't really anything new. Tony's love of melodrama had to come from somewhere.
"Fine." He said.
Howard looked over his shoulder, craning to see through the empty kitchen and into the dining room. "Women are gone." He remarked. "Let's get started."
Tony followed him inside, wondering what on earth he was about to be shown.
