THEN
"Tony, will you please just listen to me," Pepper pleaded. Her tone had hit that particular quality that spelled end-of-the-rope, the one that had been ever-present right before they'd broken up. 'Tony, you haven't been out of the lab in seventy-two hours. JARVIS wouldn't accept my overrides. R&D needs your signature. If you're going to be CTO – never have time anymore – always exhausted –'
"You can't just hand over tech like this without proper agreements in place," she scolded him now. "You're gallivanting off and doing the lone ranger thing, but we're not just talking about financial obligations, here, this is going to get people killed."
Oh, Pep, he wanted to reply. I gave you my heart – or I would've, if you hadn't stolen it first – but I can't give you these secrets. He could picture exactly what Loki would do to her if he did. It was best she was gone, and not just because even in the scant hours he'd been able to spend with her, away from his projects and plans, it had been far too easy to begin to slip, to tell her of what lay beyond...
Natasha was doing push-ups in the corner – of course she was. It didn't stop her from noticing him noticing her noticing him scrubbing at his face. He had a headache.
The caffeine wouldn't help the headache, and he didn't need it to stay awake, but he took a swig of cold coffee anyway. At the very least, it would provide a smokescreen for Natasha, no matter how flimsy. "None of this data makes sense," he announced. It was a lie. The data was flat-out wrong. He knew. He'd tried a similar approach early on. It didn't produce results like this.
"Are you looking for me to help?" Natasha said, slightly breathless. She didn't pause in her exercise. The sarcasm came through clear enough despite it.
"I am looking for you," he pulled down the headphones, although he hadn't been listening to music anyway; music too often disintegrated into vague, cryptic warnings, "to get me the actual data. Like we agreed upon."
She pushed off with her hands and was standing in one fluid motion. Tony admired her – mostly because he couldn't quite bring himself to turn away, to expose his back. "That data came straight from Dr. Banner." She sounded worried, if only ever-so-slightly. Worried – what? That Banner was lying to SHIELD? That Tony had figured out SHIELD was lying to him?
"Perhaps," Loki suggested idly, his voice like silk over steel, whispering into Tony's ear, "you are simply falling short of the mark. Consider your inadequacies, mortal. You rely upon drugs to stimulate your mind," Tony found his eyes flicking toward the coffee mug, "drugs to soothe your mind," he'd slipped the pills down the drain again today, "guess-work and prayer. You seek to oppose a God – do you think I cannot see all your ends?"
Hallucination, Tony chanted to himself. Hallucination. It had to be. Loki was not here, didn't care – he had not come back to curse him again, he was too busy hanging out in Asgard, conquering new territory –
"God of Lies," Loki reminded him, a smile in his voice. "Do you truly believe I cannot hear each one you so desperately tell yourself?"
"Tony?"
He glanced up, caught Natasha's gaze, snapped. "Tell him to send it again, then, I'm obviously not capable of understanding it." Looked back down. He'd picked up the coffee mug at some point – when had that happened? The outline of his reflection stared back at him from the dark black liquid.
"Maybe you're just tired."
"This is not exactly the first time I've pulled shitty hours, Romanoff."
"I know. And I appreciate everything you're doing – we all do. But you need to hurry up and finish so that I can kill you."
"What?" He looked over at her, nearly giving himself whiplash from turning his head so fast. Was she - ? The only reason she'd be admitting it would be if it didn't matter anymore. His heart raced – he wanted a gun, he should have taken a gun, but shit, she was ten feet away, he wanted the armour –
She frowned at him, her eyes suspicious. "What is it?"
"You said – "
"That you need to get more sleep," she repeated, gentler. "You're a genius, Tony, but even geniuses make mistakes when sleep deprived."
Fuck. What had she actually said?
"I," he faltered. What did he do? He couldn't trust her. She was going to kill him.
"Are you having symptoms?" she asked him calmly. Unusually calmly. She only got this gentle, this calm, when she was working – so what was this? "If your medication isn't good enough..."
Medication. Right.
How had he forgotten? Even more a moment? Shit, shit, shit. Natasha was not trying to kill him. Natasha was not trying to kill him. "It's working fine," he lied automatically.
"You're more erratic than usual," she said. Her tone was so non-judgemental it was hard to tell there was tone. "If your symptoms are returning, then SHIELD can help."
"What, you're a super-secret agency on the run from your evil robotic overlord, half your heroes dead, but you've still got psychiatrists on staff?" Tony scoffed, and forced himself to turn back to the computer. The fake data – it had to be faked, he was not making mistakes – was still sitting there on his screen, taunting him. Maybe she wasn't planning on killing him, but she certainly wasn't trustworthy.
"Even in the field, there are things we can do to help."
He laughed at that, because she'd just handed him the perfect way to distract her. "Who is 'we'? You? Romanoff, you couldn't even tell that Barton was mind-controlled."
Stillness, from behind him. The apartment heating kicked on suddenly, humming as it did so, and Tony jumped in his chair, turned. He half-expected to find her right behind him, looming over at him like some sort of grim reaper, and he had to suppress another twinge of surprise when he saw she hadn't moved. She looked like a statue. Untouchable. Well, as far as imposters went, she was good, he had to give her that –
No. He shook his head. She wasn't an imposter, she wasn't trying to pretend to be the same Natasha.
"The Scepter?" he asked her, affecting carelessness. It didn't matter if she saw through it or not. "Blue glowing stick? It takes over people's minds. Floods serotonin and dopamine, lights the nucleus accumbens up like fireworks are going off, deadens the amygdalae. Boom, instant minion – brain intact, but completely loyal to their new raison d'être. I got a full range of scans when Selvig – yeah, he was mind-controlled, too – set up the Tesseract on top of Stark Tower to open the portal, but I guess you wouldn't know, NYC being nuked and all that. Although I'd've thought you'd notice the magically glowing blue eyes of doom," he finished derisively.
"Barton was wearing sunglasses," she said quietly. "Excuse me." She went into the bathroom and half-closed the door. He waited, but there was just more silence; she didn't turn on a tap or make any other sounds. Well, what was he expecting? For her to break down in tears? She'd be a pretty shitty assassin if she could fall to pieces so easily.
He just had to hope he'd distracted her sufficiently for enough time. A few more days and he'd be finished coding the Trifecta Virus. A few more days...
"You're going to have to decide who to trust sometime," Steve said quietly. "You can't distrust everybody."
"Watch me," Tony mumbled, and turned back to his coding.
NOW
"Do you mind if I speak to Steve for a moment, Reed?" Stephen appeared in the doorway, his cloak managing to billow out behind him imperiously. Steve wondered how he did it. Somehow, the strange mode of dress looked less weird on him than it did on Anthony – rather like how Thor managed to look normal wearing armour and a bright red cape.
"Please," Steve mumbled under his breath. Undergoing all the diagnostics that Reed had insisted on had been exhausting – not the tests themselves, which were over and done in about five minutes, but trying to get useful answers out of Reed. Without Sue around to translate, Reed's science-babble became so difficult to penetrate that Steve was starting to regret ever getting irritated at Bruce and Tony for lapsing into 'English'. They were nowhere near this bad. Steve had been attempting to pry answers out of Reed for two hours, now, and he still had no idea what Reed and Anthony had done to the serum, or when it might be back to normal.
"Oh, sure," Reed said, still typing at his computer keyboard.
"Alone," Stephen specified patiently.
Reed stopped typing and actually looked up at them – well, sort of. It seemed like he never actually looked anybody in the eye. "Hmm? Oh, very well..."
"Trust me, my friend," Stephen said, utterly serious, and Reed actually threw him a sharp look as he left – feet and body first, and hands and head following after a few seconds when he finally finished typing.
"What is it?" Steve asked Stephen, after the door shut.
Stephen smiled. "I thought you might like this back." He made one of those gestures that Anthony had been using earlier, and out of thin air appeared the piece of U that Steve had been carrying around. Steve caught it as it began to fall.
"Thanks," Steve said. It was a bit surprising – so Stephen had been willing to help somewhat after all, at least enough to deliver this. Had he also been the one to decontaminate it? The weight of it in his hand wasn't reassuring – it was another reminded of everything that was still wrong, even if they did manage to find Tony alive and well – but he was glad to have it back. U deserved that much care, at least.
But it also probably wasn't why Stephen had come here – not if he wanted to talk alone. "Is there something else?"
The sorcerer didn't answer directly. Instead, he took a long look at Steve, and then the jewel on his amulet – the same jewel that Anthony had embedded into his faceplate – floated upward. Crystal blinked like an eyelid, and Steve flinched back – but when he looked again, the gem was just a gem, albeit one that seemed to gleam oddly in the bright lights of the room.
"Tony did good work, warding you," Stephen said as the gem returned to the amulet. "A full suite – protection from radiation, unstable gravity, airborne poisons and deficiencies... enchantments, compulsions, transmutations and transformations – his spell-work, at least, is faultless."
"That's... good to know," Steve ventured – even if Stephen didn't sound very approving. Anthony had gone hyper-focused when he'd started casting spells at Steve, and surrounded by the glow of magic, Steve hadn't wanted to interrupt him to ask what he'd been doing. But by the time Anthony was finished – a full ten hours later – he'd clearly been exhausted, and the one question that Steve had ventured hadn't gotten much of a response before Anthony had tottered to his feet and over to a cot to sleep it off.
"The Infinite Embassy is a meeting place for anyone who is unearthly-yet-of-earth," Stephen said abruptly. "Tony might be able to get you in as a guest, but assuming you are set on this – "
"Yes."
" – then you would do well to have some power of your own." Stephen flicked his fingers again and clenched his fist around another conjured object – a jewel? "Of all the precious artefacts within my keeping, this was the one my mind kept returning to when I sought some way to aid you. I must confess I have some serious misgivings about placing it in your hands."
"What is it?"
Stephen eyed him. "You wouldn't have the faintest idea, I suppose." He held it out reluctantly. A jewel, and what a jewel – it was something like an emerald, but egg-shaped, and its curved surface was so smooth that it couldn't have been made naturally. Light shimmered over its surface – light from within it, not unlike the gem on Stephen's amulet. But whereas the amulet's gem was unsettling, this was just a glowing jewel. Steve held out his hand for it, and Stephen dropped it into his palm, and –
TruthConcernGuiltDefendDefendDefend –
The sudden shock of knowledge made his fingers go lax, and the stone slipped between them; reflexes, dulled by the lack of the serum but still present, kicked in, and he grabbed the stone – and then ended up half-juggling both it and the piece of U between his hands. Between one catch and the next, the extra sense disappeared, leaving him blind again. For a moment it had been like having the serum working fully – except better; not just able to notice things about somebody else, but able to put it all together, to know what they really meant –
"Its simplest power," Stephen said, "is to read souls. Useful, where you're going - but that is the least of its abilities. Beware, however; it is not a truth-detection spell, and although the gem itself is infallible within its limits, you would be wrong to think that the same applies to its wielder."
"What... is it?" Steve asked again, staring down at the gem and marvelling. He wasn't quite sure what had triggered the information – but he felt like he could bring it back, again, if he wanted.
"A very good question, and not one that I can answer with any certainty," Stephen said, strolling over to the screens that Reed had been typing at, and pulling off one glove so he could navigate the touch interface. "The most popular legend is that it's a fragment of a once all-powerful god, who committed suicide out of despair."
"Not... God."
"Perhaps. Perhaps not." Stephen shrugged. "I'm not the man to ask about that question, Cap."
It felt strange to be addressed so familiarly by somebody that he'd only met the day before, and stranger still to be addressed so by someone wearing that getup; Steve felt like the man should have been as peculiarly formal as Thor.
"The serum's starting to have an effect on your cells again," Stephen noted, flicking through medical readouts. "And not at the disquieting rate that Reed measured before. That's good."
"I really didn't understand any of it when he explained it to me," Steve confessed.
Stephen laughed. "A not uncommon reaction, with Reed. You were dying. They attempted to give the serum a kick-start, but overdid it – have you been ill, recently? Exposed to some magical malady in the past few weeks, perhaps?"
"Extremis."
Stephen's eyebrows shot up. "That would do it," he agreed. "Essentially, the serum was already kick-started, due to beating out that foe – not enough to save you from the radiation, but enough to tip the balance that when they exposed you to further Vita-14.5, the side-effects started veering off toward Hulk levels."
"Oh."
"Yes, quite. So they hit you with a massive dose of gamma-blockers before it was too late to do anything about it. Of course, that completely compromised your immune system, although fortunately the serum had already taken care of the radiation poisoning. Under normal circumstances – such as they are –you'd be living the rest of your life in a bubble. But as there's another you running around, with the serum in his veins already... well, a few transfusions, and here you are, with at least a regular immune system. From these readings, I suspect the transfused serum will be fully integrated within the week, if you manage to avoid doing anything too stupid in that time."
"Yes, Doctor," Steve said, spreading the irony on thickly.
"I'm not sure if giving you that," he pointed at the gem in Steve's hand, still glowing, "will aid you in that endeavour – but it well might. Do not let it go. Do not trade it away. No doubt Stark will think that there are some beings who could be trusted with it – but you will have to decide that for yourself. Do not give it to Stark."
"If a – demon – comes after it, I might not be able to stop it," Steve said, still somewhat tripping over the idea of being about to visit a place where literal, physical demons would be waiting to bargain with.
He was not holding a piece of God. He was not. Though somehow, the thought that he was holding part of a dead alien's corpse didn't make him feel much better. That might have been because, gem or no, he was still holding something from a corpse – the piece of U, in his other hand.
"No one will try to take it from you within the Embassy – not by force. They'll probably try to seduce it away from you, though, if they know you have it," Stephen said. "The first rule of the Embassy is to come in peace. The only ones who break that rule are those who wouldn't mind being wiped from existence."
"Who enforces it?"
"The Living Tribunal. No," Stephen said, perhaps reading the look on Steve's face, "also not God. He's just – how did Mephisto put it? 'The biggest kid on the playground. If he knows the principal, he's not telling.'"
Mephisto? Hearing that a devil believed in God was unsettling.
"The wards upon that gem would frustrate the most experienced magicians on Earth," Stephen continued. "Even Gods aren't likely to notice its power. Keep it out of sight and you should be fine. If you let someone see it, though... well, you won't have trouble within the Embassy. But you might find yourself in hot water once you leave."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"It can find souls, read souls, attack souls, and trap them. And Cap – it likes doing that last one. If you're not careful with it, it'll trap you. Stick to the finding and reading – incidentally, the two powers that are least likely to get it noticed."
"I'll – do that," Steve said, closing his fingers about it more tightly. Souls. Sure, he'd always believed in souls – but he'd never thought of them to be something almost tangible, something like – like mere flesh and bones. One's immortal soul was one's own, to damned or brightened by that individual's deeds, not something somebody else could take – not outside of myths and nightmares. Only now, apparently, it was.
Nobody but God should have this power. Certainly not Steve. He was just a kid from Brooklyn – he had no business with it. Stephen should be the one to go – why wasn't Stephen going with Anthony? He was, at least, another sorcerer – Steve was just a guy, one who didn't even have the serum to fall back on at the moment.
"Good luck, Captain," said Stephen, abandoning the computer and pulling his glove back on. He came over to clap Steve on the shoulder, briefly. "For all our sakes."
Steve turned the gem over in his hand as Stephen left, and wondered.
THEN
"It won't be instantaneous," Tony announced. Natasha was doing exercises in the corner again – crunches? Leg-lifts? Every time he glanced over, it was like a brand new work-out video. All that was missing was the peppy music. Instead there was an annoying hum, like a fly, although he was pretty sure that wasn't actually there – unless she was trying to mess with him. But after she'd questioned him two days ago, he hadn't dared mention it. Not when she was already suspicious.
"What is?"
"The virus. Its first priority has to be to spread – we're talking about taking down a world-wide system, of course its first priority has to be to spread. If you can upload it to key nodes, it'll be able to do that a lot faster. I can't identify those without a connection – "
"We connect, we're detected, we're dead." Oooh. That sounded like something out of a spy movie. Did she watch spy movies? Real Natasha didn't, at least not so far as Tony knew; they hadn't exactly been having movie nights. Unless they were, back home – well, they wouldn't be now, they'd be in full-on crisis mode.
It all came back to the portal tech, and how it worked – or didn't. It could bypass his cloak to at least some extent...
Who knew, maybe this Natasha didn't watch anything – it was Clint who always had the television on whenever he happened to be around one (which, Stark Tower, so all the time); he was a TV junkie.
"We're already connected," he pointed out, swivelling his chair back and forth. "There're cameras in every hall. Connection."
"You think you can actually poke around in its systems without getting its attention?"
"Yes." Probably. Yeah, most likely. She hadn't asked if he would.
She studied him. "It's too dangerous. Dr. Banner's tried it before. The only reason he got away was because... well."
"I'm sorry, who is the expert in AIs here?" he asked, exasperated. He liked Bruce, even if his presence fucked with the Tower's cloak. Hell, he liked him well enough that he hadn't kicked him out of the Tower despite that. But Tony was at least a bit of a realist, and while Bruce was damn good, he was not up to matching JARVIS in a game of catch-me-if-you-can, hacker-style.
"That's why we can't risk you," Natasha retorted calmly. "Are you finished, then?"
"It's about as complete as the data you gave me about the portals," he smiled. "Which is to say – completely workable, but not actually present on this computer. What are you trying to hide about the portals, anyway?" The fly buzzed right in his fucking ear and he whipped his head around to glare at it – there were no papers of any sort in sight, and he was pretty sure his shitty computer equipment would break if he tried to use any part of it as a fly swatter – but it had already buzzed off and hid somewhere else, anyway. Damn it.
Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. "SHIELD verified that it was the correct data when I asked."
"So you're asking me to believe that SHIELD is lying to you, instead of you lying to me?" he asked skeptically.
"Maybe they thought you'd try to make a portal back to your world. SHIELD does not necessarily have the greatest... faith... these days, in my abilities." Even, neutral – she should have been a businesswoman; she'd have made a fortune. "But everyone better is dead."
"What, they actually think you wouldn't be able to keep an eye on me?" That was almost as far-fetched as the idea that there had actually been somebody better than her employed by SHIELD.
"Our version of you created the AI that is now dictator over Earth," she retorted. "You have an arc reactor. Some things stay the same."
JARVIS wouldn't have. He wasn't even sure JARVIS could have. But he did have an arc reactor, she was right about that much.
It didn't change facts.
"She's lying," Steve said quietly.
"I know," Tony replied.
"As soon as your virus can distract ULTRON, at the very least, we'll send you home. I promise you that." She smiled, a small, unfriendly thing. "SHIELD is far too afraid of keeping you to try it, and far too afraid of your world's Dr. Banner to try anything else. No one will keep you here any longer than the barest minimum, nor harm you when you go."
"That portal data was the price. You agreed to it."
"I'll take it up with Hill again – strongly. But Tony... we need that virus."
Lying. Liar. Lies.
"By morning," Tony promised her with a sigh. By morning. He could figure out what to do from there.
The next morning, he actually managed to catch their mysterious supplier. For fourteen days – had it been fourteen days? He had slept eight times, typed 78,514 lines of finished code, and run 1241 simulations, on the 'portal data' and his own work – but he wasn't certain it had been fourteen days. Damn it, he needed to wear a heart monitor like Bruce did, something beeping all the time – something to keep time with. Except he still wouldn't know how much time had passed between each heartbeat... maybe he should just get a watch. Actually, he was pretty sure he had a watch. Somewhere. Had he been wearing it when SHIELD had grabbed him?
He was in the bathroom, pondering the straight razor. Half his face, the left half, was covered in lather. The other half was bare, of both lather and beard; too late now to regret it. He'd look even more an idiot with half a Van Dyke than he would without any of one.
"It's not much of a disguise," Yinsen murmured. Always guiding, always gently correcting – sometimes Tony wondered how he could even be real, how anyone could pass through enough fire to burn away all their impurities like that.
"It's not for that."
"No? Just to buy time, then." Tony stared back at himself in the mirror and nodded. He didn't have Natasha's kit, or her skill to use it – facial recognition software would give him away every time. The point was to avoid lending anyone the processing power of the casual human observer, who might see a guy, 5'9" (in shoes, damn it), brown hair, 40s, Van Dyke – surely an unpopular style of facial hair in this place – and think, Hey...
The apartment door opened. Tony froze.
The bathroom door was mostly-closed. He leaned from side to side, but there was no way to view the other door through the gap in this one using the mirror – abandon subtlety, then. "You do have a certain flare for it," Yinsen said fondly, and Tony took that as enough of a blessing to yank the door open and lean out, shaving cream and all. At least he was wearing a shirt. And pants. Pants were good. The shirt was better, even if it had a cord sticking out from under it.
The SHIELD agent – she had to be a SHIELD agent; otherwise Natasha would have dropkicked her and duct-taped her to the headboard to have some wicked fun times already. Now, that was a thought, one fun and disturbing and – off track. He was off track. The agent was... non-descript was a good descriptor, and probably the one she had been aiming for; hell, pull the hood up on that shapeless parka, and she could pass for a guy, too, easily. Very drab. Much like the apartment.
"Hi!" Tony said brightly.
Both Natasha and the new agent glanced at him – it felt more like they were rolling their eyes at him – and looked away again, like... fencers. Or something else. Natasha was holding an envelope, and since she wasn't handing it over, it had to have come from the contact.
Who said, "Good luck," and slipped out the door. Natasha flipped the deadbolt.
"We're moving?" Tony asked, interested. Natasha tossed him a sharp glance, but – really. It wasn't that hard to figure out that somebody had been stocking the freezer on those occasions that he'd been in the shower, and that envelope was a lot skinnier than any of the micro-waved meals Natasha had been forcing down his throat.
Ah, shitting. How he had not missed it.
He gave her a Please, I'm Tony Stark look, and she shook her head – denial and amusement combined, well look at that. "You might want to finish shaving first."
He'd been shaving?
Automatically, he put one hand up to his face, and got a handful of shaving cream for his trouble. "Crap," he mumbled. Shit. Shit, shit – why was he shaving?
"Anonymity," Steve said. If a voice could have arms folded across its chest, then Steve's would. Steve himself probably did. "Though I'd've called it paranoia."
"Apparently, Dr. Banner is impressed with your work," Natasha said, putting the envelope down onto the table. Tony stared at it. What? When had Bruce even had time to look at his work? He'd only finished a few hours ago. And he hadn't told Natasha. Had he?
"You told me," Steve said gently.
"Blabbing all my fucking secrets!" Tony threw up his hands in frustration. A blob of shaving cream flew off and hit the roof.
Natasha looked unimpressed. "I'm not cleaning that off."
It didn't matter, even if she knew – unless Bruce was extremely close... but he could be, couldn't he? Surely there wasn't anything that ULTRON could do about him, if Bruce didn't want anything to be done. Unless he tried exterminating populations until Bruce handed himself over, but apparently whatever caused SHIELD's cold fear of him also kept him from caring about that, unless unless unless –
Fuck, he couldn't trust anyone.
"Tony..."
"I'm going to – shave," he huffed, and stalked back into the bathroom. It wasn't as nearly satisfying when his attempt to slam the door only resulted in it bouncing off of the cord and the handle thwacking into his back. Jesus. Whose shitty idea was it to build a bathroom so small that you had to close the door in order to have room to stand at the sink?
If he stared in the mirror as he shaved, he could concentrate on the task, even with the envelope outside calling to him. The thing that too many liars didn't realize – lies were so often just as revealing as the truth. It was probably a science thing, as in, they didn't do enough of it, so they didn't realize that wrong answers were still answers. One path of thought led to another. Bruce was a scientist, though, and a liar – Tony wondered what he'd come up with now.
Having no beard at all made him look – strange. There was the faint shadow of his Van Dyke, but the rest of his skin was so hairless it was almost embarrassing. Good thing it didn't matter so much what Natasha thought of him anymore. All that mattered was what Bruce thought, whether Bruce would buy Tony's lies. It was something of a gamble. After all, Tony hadn't bought Bruce's.
But then, Bruce probably didn't realize he was trying to trick an expert in his own field. One of his many, many fields. Or that, in Tony's case, this world's time-lead wasn't quite so great as it seemed – and that, correspondingly, Tony wasn't quite so far behind.
He grinned. In the mirror, it looked boyish, and he made a face. That, too, looked boyish. Jesus, this was why he'd grown the beard; forty-something and he still couldn't get any damn respect. No, that was a lie. He'd grown the beard because it was awesome, and he was awesome, and awesome things were always more awesome together. See: fire and alcohol.
Portals and engineers.
He saluted Steve, just out of sight – always just out of sight, but he didn't have to be visible for his sigh to be heard clearly. Although the never-in-sight thing was getting irritating. There were too many things clogging up his ears already.
Natasha shoved the door open, and the handle into the small of his back. He yelped and stumbled against the washstand; the razor, still in his hand – oops – clattered into the sink; he plunged his hand into the soapy water and retrieved it, although not without slicing a finger open in the process. Pinkish drops dripped from his hand to the floor.
"We're leaving. Now."
"What, now?" he yelped. He was sockless. Not pantless, or shirtless – points for that – but, still, what? "Where?"
"Doesn't matter. Out, now." She actually had a grip on his arm and was dragging him out, dragging him over to – oh, hell, no, he batted away her hands and made the change over to the battery cord himself instead. "Coat. Shoes," she ordered, as she fetched her own – and oh, hey, he hadn't realized she'd had a gun there, although he probably should have suspected. Well, that was something to consider -
She tossed shoes at him; he shoved his feet inside. So what had set her off? Some sort of warning? She'd said they weren't leaving. They couldn't have uploaded the virus already. Bruce might have had time to check it, if he were being extremely cursory about it – if they were in a particular hurry, for some reason – but unless they'd uploaded it to a central node it wouldn't have unpacked fast enough to call for this sort of response.
Of course, they had Banner, who apparently was capable of walking right up to a central node... sloppy, sloppy, all 'round. Not the sort of thing that would work with his design – at least, the first layer of the design. So why would they have deliberately sabotaged it?
Answer: they hadn't. This was something else.
He was of no more use.
"After it is completed, he will set you free."
"No, he won't."
"No. She won't," Yinsen agreed quietly.
Fuck.
Batteries were still in his coat pocket; the razor joined them. He could slice up his hands some more; that didn't matter. Natasha tossed him sunglasses and put on a pair, herself; they were the actual dark kind, making seeing indoors a chore, and he stumbled as she hustled him out the door. He should have grabbed a gun – he should have grabbed a gun from the car two weeks ago and just shot her, as she'd stepped back out from the pharmacy; she'd made a perfect target and he'd missed it. God damn her, she was always lying and he always fucking fell for it –
The garage was still cold, but although he vaguely registered it, he didn't really feel it. She keyed the car to life and the garage door opened, slowly, like it was protesting the movement. "Anthony Edward Stark," it said, and he startled, badly, nearly sliced his finger open on the razor. "Today you are going to die."
At least, he thought morbidly, it reminded him that doing up his seatbelt was not actually a good idea with what he was about to try. He unzipped the duffle further and exposed the battery instead, grabbing the scissors he'd pilfered from the first aid kit instead, along with the flashlight. He had to suppress a grin at the logo on it this time. Oh, Justin.
Scissors made excellent screwdrivers, when applied properly. Natasha looked over at him as they drove along, with a speed surprisingly slow for all of her earlier haste. "What are you doing?"
"Do you have any idea how long these things last?" he grunted, and then considered the car. "Is this invisible?" The Helicarrier's panels were shit at close range, but...
The hum of the engine sounded like diediediediedie.
"Effectively," she said shortly. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to give it something better than such a limited lifetime," he snapped, before sticking the flashlight in his mouth, and ohgod why had he done that – he spat it out again and tried to avoid gagging.
"Tony, this is a bad idea."
"All my bad ideas are great ideas."
"You're going to hurt Natasha. You're going to hurt yourself, too – "
"So long as you know it won't kill you."
"I am extremely concerned with my lifespan, okay?" Tony snapped – he wasn't sure at which of them.
It didn't matter. He was done dismantling the battery, and the flashlight – and oh, Justin. So appallingly bad at making things explode when they were supposed to explode.
So fiendishly good at making things explosive that weren't supposed to be.
He slapped the strip from the flashlight into a key crevice on the battery, and turned to playing with the interior again, doing nothing, obviously fidgeting. Fidgeting was not suspicious behaviour, for him – sitting still was suspicious behaviour, for him. They car began to slow – they were coming to another intersection.
Tony estimated their time, and tightened a particular screw just so as to apply pressure to the right spot –
They weren't stopping at the intersection. There were no lights, anyway. They'd made it out of the downtown core of Refugeesville, Bumfuck, but there were still people around, a few of whom looked at the car as it went past. None near the intersection, thankfully enough, none to get caught up too close. Hopefully they wouldn't be able to grab him. He had to make it somewhere far enough away, had to hide – had to get some of his own goddamn tech. He needed JARVIS on his side again. The suit didn't fly half so well without him.
Steve was still protesting in his ear; as the car slowed, he even managed to slightly drown out the sound of the engine.
Diediediediedie
She wasn't stopping, just turning. Tony reached for the cord and began to unscrew it, praying.
Natasha – bless her, Natasha – kept driving, even as she turned to him again in astonishment. Turned the wheel. He had the cord free. Door opened, and he threw himself forcibly from the car; she grabbed at him but didn't have the angle to get leverage to hold him back, and okay ow tumbling from a car, even one that was moving slowly, onto cement hurt. He scrambled to his knees and from there to his feet. The car screeched to a halt and Natasha was already out the other side – shit. If she was already out of the car then the small explosion produced by the battery wouldn't kill her, wouldn't even touch her – the only thing he had was a slight head start. He ran, hearing the pop behind him as the battery blew – and then a giant hand – ha, like he hadn't been groped by one of those before – swatted him forward and to the ground.
The sky rang like a choir of angels with trumpets had descended.
Tony stared up at the clouds, dazed.
"Get up," Steve said. "Tony, you have to get up."
Up? He was down?
Something was burning – something foul – ah. The car. Well, what remained of the car. Right. There had been gas tanks in the back. Oops.
He rolled over. Getting to his feet seemed to be a bit beyond him. He did make a good go of it – really, he did – but the world was sort of... spinning. Hazy? No, just spinning. People were standing and pointing at him, he realized. There was a niggling sense of alarm in the back of his head. Something he should be concerned about.
One at a time. He focused on the closest man – admittedly, a hundred meters or so away – first. His voice seemed to carry clearly across the distance; he could have been standing right next to Tony, speaking into his ear. "That is the man we must kill. Once he has died, the end of the universe may begin."
Shit. Tony tried to stand again – panicked, overbalanced, fell over again, shit – third time was the charm, and he staggered to his feet. His ears were ringing. That didn't stop him from hearing what they were saying, oh, god, he needed to get out of sight. They were going to kill him. They were going to kill Pepper, and Rhodey, and JARVIS and everyone else. Oh, god. He really had failed Steve, in the end.
"No, Tony, you didn't," Steve said, but fuck of course he said that, fuck fuck fuck –
Something with red hair was lying in the middle of the road; it caught his eye as he glanced around wildly. Romanoff. The imposter. Of course. Fuck, she'd driven him out here and left him to these things – her arm moved, slowly.
"We will find you, hunt you to the ground, and cut your false heart out," the man watching him said. He was coming toward them, now, along with the others, at a jog – fifty metres –
Tony ran. Stumbled, really, more than a run. He wasn't sure where he was going; everything was still so dizzy. There was somewhere away, away from the people – an alley, a space between two buildings... except it wasn't. Eyes loomed up out of the darkness, whispers. "He has passed here. Run. Run. Run. Catch him. Die." Feet, legs outstretched, against the pavement, ready to trick him – he couldn't see. He tore the sunglasses from his face and light greeted him, far too bright, but he had to see, had to find a way out –
"Please, listen to me!" Steve begged him, but there was no time. A door, he needed an open door – there, that one would do. Fuck, if he had his gauntlets he could just blow holes through the walls. If he had his suit, he could just wipe them all off the face of the Earth, prevent them from carrying it through.
"These other things you're hearing, they're hallucinations," Steve said, as Tony shoved the door closed and tried to find another one. More doors. He needed more doors between him and them – maybe then he could hold them off long enough to engineer a way out of this.
"A lot of people want to kill me, Steve," he panted. Stairwell – good choice. He tried it.
"Nobody wants to kill you," Steve said, sounding like he was trying to be reassuring – but then he ruined it by adding, "It's in your head. You haven't been taking your medication – "
" – because they can track me with it," he panted, and stopped dead on the stairs. Track. Tracker. Shit. He scrabbled at his shirt, pulling it up, and cutting open yet another finger as he grabbed the razor – shit, he needed a mirror for this, but he didn't have one. Touch memory would have to do. There, at very back of the reactor housing – he switched hands and dug the razor beneath it, hoping it would hold. He didn't really need any more sharp metal shards floating around near his heart.
"You'd better hope you don't have any floating around there," Steve worried. "If you hallucinated those clean x-rays..."
"I'm not – they are trying to kill me!" Tony shouted, and the foreign object popped out with more force than needed, bounced off of one step and fell to another. He nearly dropped the razor in relief, and did lower it too much; the feel of its edge scraping along the inside of the housing made him shudder all over. He pocketed the razor again and picked up the thing that SHIELD had attached to him. It was small, integrated – biomedical-grade, likely. Not easily destroyed. Pitch it, then – but the thought of getting near to a window made his hands shake, and he dropped it again. Shit. He had to get out of this building. But if he did, they would find him.
He was so dead.
"Maybe you can't trust SHIELD," Steve said quietly, after a moment, as Tony stood there and tried to think. God, it was so hard to think. "But the regular people outside don't have anything to do with this."
They were going to kill him. Something boomed outside, close, too close, and Tony flinched against the interior wall of the stairwell, dropping the tracker. Shit. That was a sonic boom – a quinjet? If so, not one bothering with stealth capability. Almost blindly, he took the last few stairs to the next landing and tried the door. It was locked – something electronic. He pried at the control panel until it came off, grabbing at wires and rearranging them – but futilely. Of course. No power – no, he had power. He fished out the flashlight batteries and tucked them into the circuit – there. Not much, but enough to get the door lock to disengage. He shoved it open and manually flipped the deadlock on the other side.
There was silence, in here. Stillness. He looked around. It was, so far as he could see, typical for an office building – a too-narrow hall, bad carpeting... he wouldn't have let a hallway like this within a mile of the plans for Stark Tower. Pepper wouldn't have let it within a mile of Stark Tower.
His hands were shaking as he tried the first door. It was unlocked – but the room it led to was bare, stripped. There wasn't any furniture – there wasn't even any lightbulbs. And there were windows – he shut it behind him, and turned just in time to see Steve kick down the stairwell door.
"Stark?" Steve stared. "Damn. You don't have an arc reactor." He was stepping forward, putting one gentle hand on Tony's arm. "We need to get him an arc reactor - "
Steve was here.
Steve was okay.
Steve was alive.
"You're alive," Tony said. His voice sounded very strange to his own ears. Maybe his hearing was still confused from the explosion, or from people shouting threats at him all day. He let himself be guided back into the stairwell – Steve was here, Steve would have a plan, and Tony suddenly felt tired like he hadn't been in months, worn out and exhausted from sheer, giddy relief.
"SHIELD lies, Stark, you should know that." Steve's face was set in the same sort of expression that it'd had when he'd tossed the Phase II prototype down in front of Fury. Despite all the months since then, his tone was the same, too – brusque, untrusting, cold – and Tony felt obscurely hurt... unless he actually had hallucinated the clear x-rays, and that was just the shrapnel. Steve turned his head slightly to the side and said, "We need a spare. Bring the suit here."
"I don't have the suit here," Tony said, the sharp edge of terror beginning to reform at the reminder. Good. It would keep his brain sharp, keep him thinking – thinking about relevant matters, and not on Steve's strange behaviour.
"Maybe you should sit down – the more you rest, the less strain you're going to put on the shrapnel," Steve said, crossing over to him, and Tony let himself slump back against the wall, and down to the floor.
"They weren't hallucinations," he muttered.
"This is a bad time to test that." Steve's voice grew suddenly, bitterly cold as he followed this up with, "You're hallucinating?"
What? That wasn't fair – "You're the one who's been saying I'm hallucinating! I'm not!"
"You are. Great, another problem." Fuck, why was Steve constantly changing his mind about this? Did he have a concussion? He was going from worried one moment to frigid the next –
Boots clomped on the stairs and paused, while Tony's fight-or-flight reflex kicked into high gear – he stayed only because of Steve's firm grip on his arm. But it was just the suit. Or, well, a suit; this one didn't have much of a paint job. Neither did Steve, actually; Tony looked between the two, comparing. Steve was wearing all black, plain clothes – not built for winter, but built to be generic nonetheless... a far cry from his usual spangles. It contrasted sharply with his bright blond hair, but, well. There were aesthetics, and then there were aesthetics.
Steve got up, crossed over to the suit, and fiddled with it. Panels moved, allowing him access to – to the arc reactor. Right. Portable power source – always had a use for those. The easy way that Steve was fiddling with the complex components of the suit was actually rather sexy – not that Steve-back-home, young-Steve, not-quite-so-lost-anymore-Steve, was inept with technology despite how much catching up he'd had to do, but this was a step beyond. Back home, Steve wouldn't let Tony build him a suit – not that Tony had offered, but if he had, Steve wouldn't have – yet here he was with one made for somebody of his height, and he was at least familiar enough with it to disassemble it for parts. Tony found himself watching with something like fascination.
Perhaps Steve caught onto that. "I'm going to shut up now," he said, sounding concerned, "because I think I'm making things worse. But you are hallucinating. I think you can trust this Steve." But then he grew sharp again. "Do you need anything else to connect this?"
Hallucinations. Fuck. What had SHIELD done to him? Fuck the imposter anyway, Steve was alive. "No, just hand it over," he said, stretching out a hand. The weight of it dropping into his palm felt more real than anything had in months. This, at least, then, was probably not a hallucination. Or maybe it was – anything so real had to be suspect. He slotted the cord in and felt his heart stutter.
Oh, yeah. Power like metal and coconut! Way better than a car battery, than a fucking Duracell, power enough to figure out what the hell SHIELD had done, to bring him and Steve home. "Great," Tony gasped.
"I flew the armour here, but obviously that's not going to work to get us back," Steve said, closing the chest plate of the suit manually and coming back to lean against the wall opposite to Tony. "ULTRON's going to divert another two to get us and it out of here. It's a good thing we got your message when we did." His eyes slid sideways, to the light peeking out from Tony's shirt. "Good Lord. You cut it close, Stark."
"They were going to kill me," Tony said quietly, unable to stop himself from reaching up with one hand and covering the arc reactor. The sound of his last name, in that tone of voice, even from such a familiar voice – maybe especially from such a familiar voice... it played havoc with his judgement, his instincts. He struggled to push it aside. There was something... wait. So SHIELD had risked the secrecy of his virus to give it an initial kick?
"SHIELD does that."
But why? If they got it to the right server, true, it could do catastrophic damage to certain segments of ULTRON's code, but it wouldn't eliminate the world-wide issue. It would cause a temporary problem, no more. Fuck.
"How long until the suits get here?" Tony asked, trying – and, annoyingly, failing – to make his voice casual.
Steve tilted his head. Tony frowned at him, and then finally caught sight of the earpiece. Of course. "Ten minutes."
"The bug's outside," Tony muttered. "In the stairwell. SHIELD will track it – I don't know how to destroy it – "
"I stepped on it on the way in."
"That doesn't matter – once they find you, they can see you anywhere," Tony shook his head. "I need a way to hide..." he climbed to his feet, held out his hand to Steve, and snapped his fingers; demanded, "Earpiece."
Steve raised one eye-brow at him. "I don't have a spare."
"Then lend me yours, I don't care," he said, peevishly – and then shuddered at the thought, because, okay, Steve had better than the world's best anti-bacterial soap flowing through his veins, but still – ew. Fine. Fair enough. "JARVIS," he barked, craning his head to peer around the corner of the hallway. "I need to talk to him."
"JARVIS?"
"ULTRON, whatever the fuck," Tony snapped, trying to cover the embarrassment, and perhaps the faintest touch of fear. You're hallucinating, Steve had accused him. How else might his brain be affected? It was a miracle that the virus had worked – on two levels, at least; the third remained to be seen. "I need – fabrication," the words got caught up in his throat. "Shit. I can't say this aloud, he'll hear - I need a lab. Office. Somewhere – "
"Who might hear?" Steve was blocking the way out.
"If I tell you then he'll definitely hear," Tony snapped, trying to side-stepping him – trying, and failing. He'd forgotten how much like a brick wall the man could be. "Jesus, I have gone over this a thousand times with you."
"Maybe with the Steve from your own universe, but I'm not him," Steve said firmly.
Tony let his lips quirk up; he turned away. It was true and false, both. "I can't tell him. The more people who know... SHIELD's security already has so many gaps. Fuck, he'll be taking advantage of them even more, now." He'd been gone for too long. Too much longer... maybe all he'd have to return to would be another icy, frozen world, flooded over before the stars finished going out. But he'd found Steve, alive. Of absolutely no use in solving the most important physics problem this side of the millennium – but gloriously, gloriously, alive.
"Okay," the word was drawn out with a hint of uncertainty, "can you describe him?"
"Tall, alien, wears a lot of green and leather, fetish for horned animals – or other four-legged hoofed things," Tony made a face, because Svaldifari, really? He was never, ever going to understand that.
Steve hesitated. "He's dead in this world."
"Eh." Not that it mattered, of course; their sight went beyond a mere three dimensions. It didn't even matter if Loki himself were not bothering to pay attention; none of the other Asgardians would be trusted, either. If Heimdallr was watching and figured it out, if Odin figured it out, if Thor figured it out – Thor had loved his brother, back in the centre-of-the-universes, the other centre-of-the-universes, the other aspen forest – before they'd all turned to dust, ash, and then nothing at all. If Loki was still around in this set, then surely, at the centre of this universal complex, he was loved as well; Tony couldn't imagine somebody not killing him, otherwise, because fuck if every Loki ever wasn't even more annoying than Hammer – which took skill, as well as deliberate malice.
Okay, maybe he wasn't quite as annoying as Hammer.
"But I make up for it in competence," Loki murmured, voice shark-like sharp.
"No, you were pretty incompetent," Tony told him, though it took effort to keep his voice even.
"Excuse me?" Steve asked.
"I mean, he was pretty incompetent – how'd he die? Don't say his name, for the love of God – "
"Too late," Loki laughed. Probably a hallucination? Possibly a hallucination? "As if a mortal could kill me. We are strewn across the universe and wound into its bones. Have a taste of immortality and despair, Stark."
Fuck, he should have taken Hel up on her offer. Fuck. She had been so right.
"Th – his... brother, killed him," Steve explained. "After we located the Cube." He was quiet. "It was right before SHIELD nuked New York."
SHIELD.
"Right, and they have a dead bug over there, so they'll be swarming this place in force."
"Maybe if we're lucky," Steve grinned. It was an ugly look on his face, and Tony stared at it, taken aback. "They've been hiding in their rabbit-holes for weeks. I never thought I'd say this, but Stark, you've been a God-send."
Stark, Stark – that twinge in his chest, fortunately or unfortunately, was definitely not the shrapnel; not with an AR hooked up.
But it wasn't like he didn't deserve it, six months and – two weeks? – since he'd left Steve for dead.
"I don't have a suit," Tony pointed out. If Steve thought he could fend off the concentrated might of SHIELD... well, diminished as it was, he probably could. But that was forgetting about Bruce, and the Hulk, and the strangely deferential way that Natasha had toward him even when he wasn't there – and the fake data. Steve's presence – ULTRON's presence – meant that Bruce had to be in on the faked data; SHIELD wouldn't have been able to get the virus uploaded at a pivotal node without Bruce (or the Hulk, too) – and if he was going to join SHIELD in lying to Tony about the virus, then Tony could hardly put faking the data past him.
Sonic booms outside – did SHIELD have more tricks up its sleeve than Tony had figured out? Of course it did, but Steve had relaxed, so apparently this was not one of them. A minute later there was the heavy thump of footsteps on the stairs again, and two more suits of armour presented themselves. Steve, Tony noted belatedly, was holding onto his arm again, hard enough that it would leave bruises later.
He could still bruise; could still bleed; experimentation had proved that much. "Pretty shitty immortality," he muttered to Loki, but the god didn't reply – had gone off to cause chaos elsewhere. Fucking good riddance, if only he'd stay gone...
"Tony Stark," said one of the armours – the nearer one, the one in gleaming red and gold – in a near approximation of JARVIS' voice: a quarter of an octave lower, but there was still that sharp, amused formality in it, or there could have been. At the moment it was covered up by wariness, and Tony found himself covering the arc reactor with his hand again. Don't be stupid. It won't ask for it back. It wouldn't matter if it did – "I am pleased, and astonished, to make your acquaintance."
"Everyone's pleased to meet me," Tony shrugged, and raised an eyebrow as the armours simultaneously unfolded. The gun-metal grey one – it should have been Rhodey's, he thought, as Steve stepped over to it – was obviously designed (at least, to anyone who knew the armours as well as he did; which was to say him, and perhaps ULTRON) for somebody taller. That... stung, a bit. It should have been Rhodey's. Fuck, it probably had been Rhodey's retrofitted – wait – fuck, his thoughts were too damn slow. "Rhodey – is Rhodey alive?" SHIELD lies, SHIELD lies...
Steve turned back, his expression unreadable even before he stepped into his own armour and it closed around him – and that was a weird sight. "I am sorry, Mr. Stark," ULTRON said, and some of the wariness had vanished, although no amusement had returned. "He was killed while attempting to direct nuclear missiles away from a civilian population."
The eyes of the retrofitted War Machine blinked back to life; its arc reactor glowed, deep in the chest housing. "It was my fault. I should have been able to stop SHIELD before launch,"Steve admitted baldly, regret clear even through the deliberate audio distortion on his voice.
Tony, for a tiny moment, hated him again. He made no move to step toward the other armour, although it stood ready to be reassembled – open, inviting... a trap, maybe.
"Incorrect, Captain," ULTRON corrected him, that same regret in his voice. Regret. So much like that imposter of Natasha – fuck it, could he trust either of these more than her? But it was Steve – Steve. And they had not been planning on killing him, but, no – they had the armours, they could accomplish that easily... "Forgive us, Mr. Stark. It is an old argument between us. I was overconfident in my control, and failed to secure a number of hidden missile silos before putting my ultimatum to the World Security Council... and it was I whom they sent the missiles after, heedless how many of my known servers were in heavily populated areas. Those deaths are on my conscience."
"Pretty sure I have you all beat," Tony said into the uncomfortable silence. From the way the War Machine's head had turned, he gathered the faint impression that Steve was arguing with ULTRON on an internal comm. He wished they'd kept the argument up outside of that – he needed more information. SHIELD lies. He needed a database. He needed a library, a base, a place to put his back to the wall – he stepped up and let the suit fold itself around him. It was sluggish, not mapped to his neural network; the displays came up and they were on the opposite sides of how he had them; they didn't respond to his eye movements as fast as they should; the ever-present hum of the mobile suit contained an additional pitch that grated at the upper edge of his hearing in an extremely annoying fashion.
"My apologies, Mr. Stark," ULTRON said in his ear. "Calibrating."
They ran through a quick list, almost identical to the one he'd cooked up for his own suits, and when at least the test movements were less clunky – even if that stupid whining noise hadn't gone away – Tony asked casually, "So how many of these things do you have?"
"After this morning's exercise with Dr. Banner, somewhat less than three dozen," ULTRON informed him. The radio silence from Steve was condemning.
IR showed nobody in the alley outside, beyond the stairwell – why? There was too much concrete and metal for him to look around elsewhere; he couldn't see where they'd gone. But, at the least, there was nobody there now: he made a fist and broke through the wall, shattering it as easily as plaster, and revelled in it. He was not pinned down, not surrounded in rock – this broke, quick and easy.
"There's a door at the bottom, you know," Steve said over the radio, stern and disapproving.
"But it's all the way down there." He cleared a hole and stepped off. This suit wasn't up to the Mark VIII, or even the Mark VII – Mark IV, at the best; hands out to stabilize, and he soared up toward the blue. Free. The whine cut out, and his head felt clearer than it had in ages – days, months? – perhaps than it had been since Loki had pinned him in rock.
Blue. Rayleigh scattering. Photon absorption; exiton decay – no, he could fix that. The massive cloaking devices on Stark Tower, on the GRC, were bulky, unwieldy. Roberts' ideas were shit – all physics and no engineering, useless for implementation – Lu's work, though, the re-sequencer he'd cooked up to produce artificial negative indices, using the slow-light time difference to steal enough time to make it work – that was good; this wasn't a short-range problem. No, Lu's fault was in thinking too linearly – now, out here, surrounded by sky, Tony could see the jump that had eluded him for the past month.
"Mr. Stark, if you would turn northwards... Ms. Potts is very anxious to see you," ULTRON said mildly, shattering Tony's concentration.