NOW

Steve looked unimpressed and vaguely suspicious at the sight of the completed prototype – the other one of which (and there was only one other) was lying nearly-finished off to the side. He'd been getting increasingly suspicious over the last couple of days, but Tony couldn't say anything when Loki was here, and he usually was. His attempt at reminding Steve of Loki's shapeshifting powers had gone... poorly.

"Yeah, you say that now," Tony muttered at his nonplussed expression, pulling the AR from his chest – though not disengaging the cord, thanks. The invisibility cloak generator fit snugly into its underside, linking into the power without needing additional cords; the controls were wireless, and would need to be added into the suit. For now, he declared, "So'wI'yIchu!" and enjoyed Steve's look of bafflement – and then pleased surprise as ULTRON activated the ICG.

Tony wasn't entirely sure why the cloak working was surprising. He was pretty sure Steve had been monitoring him through the process – and so much of this was guesswork, there was no way he wasn't testing each feature extensively. It was modelled on the larger cloak, and the larger cloak worked – as far as he could tell, at least – but it was like taking code he didn't understand and shoving it into a new, much more compressed program. Three days – four – he felt, was pretty bitching. The original AR had been built in about that time, but he'd actually understood what the fuck he was doing, then.

Fucking magic. Fucking Norns.

"That looks exactly like an empty chair," Steve said. Now he sounded impressed – well, okay, that was gratifying, at least – as he walked around the desk, occasionally ducking down so he could view it from all angles. He even sounded slightly uncertain as he asked, "Stark? You are still there, right?"

"Yup," Tony said gleefully. He tapped a couple more controls, and the field expanded from the default boundary conditions of his body (or rather, a centimetre beyond; no point in having a cloak that hid him from sitting in the chair if the chair still looked disturbed) to include the chair as well (density, conductance; materials analyzed, catalogued, new boundary nodes created).

"I admit, Tone, I'm impressed," Rhodey agreed. He even sounded impressed, before his voice dropped as he added, "You sure you want to hand this over to ULTRON? Self-defence or not, he killed the last you. I'm worried."

"You're a worry-wart, honey-bear," Tony told him, squinting down at his own hands. Perhaps if he could perfect the Asgardian portion of the design – three-dimensional runes calling upon their extra-dimensional properties, wherever the fuck those were stored, and please let them not suddenly be turned off; the ground cloak, the Tower cloak, was still superior in this regard, as it mimicked whatever it could with plain old human tech, providing a backup – perhaps if the Asgardian part of the design were perfect, he wouldn't get the weird aliasing; everything seemed blue-shifted, and there were occasional lines where he wasn't sure there ought to be any. He'd need to have JARVIS shift the HUD readouts to compensate, but otherwise –

"Is there a time limit on it?" Steve had reached out and was waving his hand through part of the cloaked space. Tony ducked, and snickered as he whacked his hand on the back of the chair, over-hard. "Damn, that's weird."

"Time limit depends on the power source and frequency spread," Tony shrugged, and hit the key that would return the ICG to baseline: alien-spying-prevention only. Steve, suddenly realizing how close he was standing, jumped back as if he'd been scalded. "Basic scry-disrupting, it could run off anything, for ages. But with full, broad-band visible-, IR-, UV-spectrum invisibility... a couple of hours.

"How about with the suit's reactor?" Steve was slightly harder to read when he was not half-naked, but even in a t-shirt his shoulders still tensed when he grew impatient.

"That was with the suit's reactor," Tony said wryly. "Eight hours, twelve minutes, eleven seconds takes a Mk XI AR from fully charged to zip."

Shoulders tensed further – this time, with dislike of unwelcome news. But his jaw was unclenching – good thing, too, Tony thought; since his resurrection he'd been grinding his teeth quite a lot in Tony's presence. If he weren't a super-soldier, he'd need a good dentist – he took on a calmer, commanding look. Working out the tactical side in his head, no doubt. "You sure? Those reactors will run the suit for weeks of heavy combat."

"What can I say? They chew through power faster than a Samsung with LTE."

Steve picked up two pieces of the unassembled second prototype and turned them over, peering at them. "Where does it go?" He sounded wondering, and still a bit doubtful.

Eye-roll. "Do you suddenly have a degree in quantum computing that I missed?" And experience and expertise in wormhole physics, advanced n-dimensional mathematics, non-linear systems... oh, and fucking magic.

"Hacking SHIELD taught me a lot," Steve said shortly. But he put the pieces down – gently, even before Tony started up from his chair to warn him.

Hacking SHIELD... okay, fairly impressive. "ULTRON probably taught him," Rhodey pointed out. "Man, this is a terrible idea. I know you had to go along with them," and fuck him, anyway, for sounding so forgiving – "but you gotta get out while you still can, Tony. They're going to kill you."

"Shut up, I know what I'm doing," Tony muttered, pressing his hands to his eyes, hard enough to make starbursts, pressure on the retina – "I know what I'm doing."

Steve was staring at him suspiciously, frowning, his brow all crinkled up, when Tony looked at him again. But he didn't say anything to contradict Rhodey – of course, he wouldn't. Steve could be arrogant like that, sometimes. Instead, he asked, "How soon will the other one be ready to go?"

"Half an hour?"

Steve nodded, slowly. There was something about his posture, about the set of his shoulders, that made Tony's hackles rise, even before – "I think you should stay behind."

"I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so," Rhodey said, voice low, misery clear through the attempt at a joke.

"Fuck that," Tony said cheerfully. "You want an invisibility cloak, I'm coming with."

"Then you follow my lead, my plan. You don't go off course. Got it?" Steve crossed his arms over his chest, looming.

Tony had plenty of experience being loomed at. He tilted the chair back lazily – best way to destroy the height disadvantage conferred by being seated when an opponent chose to stand – and smiled. Steve had given in way too quickly – this assurance had been what he was going for. But Steve had another think coming if he thought Tony was going to forget everything else. "Sure thing, mon Capitan."

Agreeing to play along, however, did mean that he had to be appearing to play along, at least for the beginning. Almost five hours later – a whole four hours, thirty-one minutes after he'd finished assembling the second ICG – he was heartily regretting the necessity of doing so. They'd already run through the plan, such as it was (limited by a severe lack of intel: they had a vague notion of where SHIELD's base was, based on the uncommonly high power losses from St. Louis' grid and confirmed by the way bugs went offline if they wandered in certain patterns, but where exactly it was located within the rabbit-warren of abandoned buildings was unknown. Nothing at all was known about the interior layout), half a dozen times, bringing on the threat of a headache. Even more aggravating was the way Loki kept looking in, making Tony jump each time he did so. At least JARVIS had fully locked down the ICG designs now that they were finished and installed in a pair of suits.

Steve finished, looking halfway satisfied – apparently Tony had managed to nod in all the right places. But only halfway satisfied. Even as he opened his mouth again, Tony could tell he was about to launch into a seventh repetition, and he leaned forward fully in his chair, across the satellite view of the neighbourhood, to try to forestall it. "Cap. We know this. You know it. I know it. I can repeat every single thing you just said. I am, in fact, a genius, I can remember things."

"You've called ULTRON 'JARVIS' twice in the last hour."

"Not fair, that's a name," Tony said quickly.

"And so's a lot of the markers on here." Uh-oh, bad, bad, he sounded frustrated, that way would lead to not just a seventh repetition but an eighth, a twelfth, shit –

"ULTRON will have a map. We'll be in communication the entire time. Look, we need to fly down there to start, you can do another brief on the way there," he couldn't quite keep himself from wincing at it, but no doubt Steve would have done that anyway, "but we're burning time. You said it yourself, you don't know where they are – well, they're four days ahead of us. We can do this."

Steve's gaze went slightly far away – ULTRON was saying something to him over his earpiece. Tony tapped out a query, discreetly, to no reply – but whatever it was that had been said, apparently it was something good, because the reluctance cleared from Steve's expression – somewhat slowly, at first, and then amazingly quickly. It was sort of fascinating to watch how quickly he could adapt to new situations.

"Great!" Tony shot up out of his chair and was over by the suit, his suit, before Steve could say anything further. "Lock and load!"

The fly came with him. Tony complained to JARVIS when he noted the buzzing again, crowded in close, but only half-heartedly; it wasn't like he could take the helmet off while doing Mach 2, and anyway, the thing was beginning to grow on him. Slightly. Possibly literally. Oh, god, it had laid fly eggs in his ear, he was going to have maggots crawling through his brain, holy shit, holy fucking shit

"Stark, did you hear me?"

"What?" He managed to avoid making it a shriek, at least.

Steve didn't sigh over the radio, but his voice held that type of tired disapproval that indicated it was a near thing. "From the top again..."

On the other hand, if he had to hear this plan again, he wouldn't have to worry about brain-maggots because his brain would already have decomposed into mush.

"Yeah, like it didn't do that ages ago," Rhodey snarked over the radio.

"Oh, come on, honey-bear, you've complained often enough about hurry up and wait – "

"We plan things for a reason, Stark," Steve cut in.

"You over plan things because you're pedantic."

"I over plan things because I have a fractious teammate that I can't depend on."

Ow. Okay. That... hurt.

"He's gonna abandon you to die at the first chance, you know that, right?"Rhodey said – must have been on a private comm. - before the hiss of static as the channel suddenly failed, nothing sending or receiving except noise.

Well, fuck. "Nice to know I can depend on you, too," Tony muttered after him. It was Steve. He was fine. He was – pissed, actually, but it was... fine. Captain America might yell at people, but he would never, ever leave anybody behind. Rhodey had friend's-new-friend syndrome or something. It was okay, there was enough of him to go around...

The complete lack of friendliness in Steve's voice still hurt.

You abandoned him to die. He's been hanging around Loki for god-knows-how-long. No, surely Steve wouldn't fall prey to Loki's mind-traps, and there wasn't any evidence that he'd been magically influenced... shit. Running a biometric scan should have been the first thing he did after discovering Loki's wolf-in-sheep's-clothing scam here, and he hadn't. Where the fuck was his brain?

Shit. Rhodey had fucked off, Steve might be compromised, he was heading into a SHIELD agency and maybe, possibly, up against Bruce when he was angry – no. He had new tech, he had JARVIS at his back – he could do this. He just needed to keep a close eye on Steve. He could do this.

"...clear?"

"Perfectly, Cap," his mouth kicked in automatically while his brain replayed the last few seconds. Right, the plan.

"Recite it back, then."

By the time that they touched down in St. Louis, Tony was growing slightly hoarse from talking. No drinking straws in this suit – apparently not designed for long flights. They'd gone invisible after dipping lower in altitude over Fort Madison – not Springfield, and Tony's muttered, "Doh!"about that had given rise to another of Steve's suspicious silences – low enough that anyone watching would have thought they'd landed and found shielding somewhere; though, sadly, that meant they'd had to drop the speed, giving Steve an entire extra twenty minutes to make Tony recite the plan a second time. And it wasn't even that great a plan – couldn't be, not with all that they didn't know.

They bled more speed as they coasted into the outer limits of the residential neighbourhood that was their target. Against the eyes high in the sky, SHIELD had elected to abandon the warehouses typical of spy thrillers, and move into abandoned, low apartment buildings. Abandoned for a good reason – "How have they not noticed that their urinals now glow-in-the-dark?" he asked as they pulled up to hover. They'd not been discovered so far, or at least if they had, SHIELD hadn't visibly reacted. JARVIS was having a field day with the suits' sensors, now in closer proximity than anything prior. And, damn – concrete was great, their ideas of filling the outer rooms with it was genius, but they had some serious gaps. If it couldn't still keep the suits' sensors out at this range, it was doing shit-all about the ridiculously high level of background radiation here.

He made a mental note to avoid losing iso in the suit. Not that it would probably affect him much, after hanging about in the broken Mark VII while a world lost its atmosphere, but – still, bad idea to test it.

"Any sign of Banner?" Steve asked over comms.

"Unless he really doesn't give a shit – " which wasn't like Bruce, but in this fucked-up, irradiated world, maybe it was exactly like Banner, " – no."

"There has been no new information on his whereabouts since you left," ULTRON said, sounding unhappy about this. "Background radiation is still interfering with my usual methods of tracking him."

"We're cutting this close," Steve muttered, and then, louder, "Quick in, quick out. Don't get fancy, Stark."

"Who, me?" Tony eased down the power and landed with barely a 'thump'. "Keep your pants on, Captain, this isn't my first rodeo."

SHIELD's surface setup was in the apartment complexes, making full use of the underground parking complexes and the odd way that a number of basements attached to those of neighbouring buildings. No doubt they'd also dug more space out – hopefully with more attention to building protocols than they'd paid attention to radiation protocols, because if they got into a mix-up in here, Tony didn't exactly fancy getting buried alive.

"Scans complete," JARVIS reported, and the ground opened up beneath the suit: 3D images, projected overtop of the viewscreen so as to appear like he'd gotten x-ray vision. Metal concentrations, biometric readings – Steve was already trudging along the street (his form highlighted on the HUD thanks to their hookup; otherwise, he'd have been, well, invisible), headed for a point ninety-one-point-two metres west-ish of their current position: a fault in the concrete over a corridor currently far away from the nearest life-sign.

"They're gonna notice as soon as we break this open," Steve said when they got there; Tony peered down at it and prepped stress scans on the fly, muttering the instructions to ULTRON. "We hit the lasers, we start the clock. Are you listening, Stark?"

" – frequency sweep – oh, fine. Lasers, clocks, are we good to go?" he asked impatiently.

"On three." They both pointed their gauntlets downward – of course, it was ULTRON running the suits, so when the wrist lasers unfolded – the same type as on the Mark VII, no more advanced than that – they did so in perfect unity, and they fired and aimed perfectly, too.

"Letting a mad robot have control of your arm with a laser that can cut through a tank," Rhodey snarked – somewhere far above, somewhere up in atmo – "Smart, Tone." Tony rolled his eyes, gritted his teeth against the instinctual jerk away – JARVIS would interpret it and he'd break it off, and Steve was right, the clock was now ticking – and this would go slower if they weren't coordinating in unison –

Sweat rolled down his face; the drop felt strange as it made its way to his chin and slid over, down his neck, rather than getting caught in his beard, the beard he still should have had. Or maybe it was blood. The effort of not flinching made his head ache; the suit seemed too tight, claustrophobic – it hadn't been sized for him.

The sides of the hole were drilled out; Tony boosted himself into the air, ignored Steve's curse, and threw his hands above his head to give himself a downward push with the palm repulsors, so that when he landed in the middle of the circle drawn, it was hard. Two metres of concrete and metal collapsed – HUD ambient noise sensors registered the spike – and he followed them down, landing atop the rubble and crouching so that he could sort of skate down it and into the tunnel below.

"Damn it, Stark, you follow my lead!"

"Uh-huh, clock's ticking, Cap," Tony shot back, trying to resist the urge to shake himself all over – it wouldn't work out too well in the armour, he knew that – to try to get rid of that closed-off feeling. It was a borrowed suit, but it was fine; he had JARVIS, it was fine. Steve rolled in beside him, and together they clomped down the hallway at a brisk, painfully loud jog. Flooring – not concrete; perhaps tile, although why SHIELD would have bothered Tony couldn't guess – crunched beneath their boots at every step.

"Scanning," JARVIS reported again, and, "On the right, then first left." Once again, the HUD lit up, letting him see through walls; they were just outside a lab, and right behind this wall were cables, connected in streaming red lines to various computers, which shone in various shades of red, orange, white – heat producers, all of them. Other thermal shapes moved in the room beyond, living ones – moved especially when Tony punched his hand through the wall and pulled it back with a pile of disconnected cords in his fist.

The suit opened up: any connector you could want was in here. Steve had the wrist lasers out again and was cutting a hole in ceiling above – two and a half meters, not bad, not great, but the plan had been paranoid about exits. The HUD showed why: all around them were moving figures, and Tony had not the faintest clue which one was Banner, if any of them.

He wore the suit well, though, Tony thought – perhaps, since Steve's at least wasn't borrowed, even better than he was wearing his. Maybe when they got back home he could get him to take Steve the Younger aside, explain to him the advantages of flight, lasers, and bulletproof metal over tri-weave Kevlar and cloth (no matter how advanced a textile it was) armour.

"Yeah, I will," Steve said, sounding less like a tight-ass for once, which was exactly like him. "I have to admit," his voice became rougher: harsher, with years behind it – dropping – "I'm deeply enjoying the suit. I'm going to rip your head off and crush it like a melon."

Obie, every part of his person screamed – gibbered – but no, no, oh, god, this was Steve, this was – Steve.

Loki.

Steve was compromised.

Shit. He should have fucking listened to Rhodey.

Repulsors activated; the cables snapped – download and uploads incomplete, but that would just have to damn well wait; he couldn't take Steve on in an enclosed area like this – not with how well Steve already knew the suit – the open metal sheath that normally protected the connector cables and ports protested, broke as he scraped the wall –

"Mr Stark, what are you doing?" JARVIS demanded, but there was no time to explain to him.

"Gotta get out, get him away," he gasped, " – the arc reactor." Wait, no, that wasn't right – it was the cloak, the ICG, he needed to get that, which meant he'd need to rip out the arc reactor... close enough. And shitshitshit – "Corner!"

JARVIS hadn't taken over flying; Tony banked wildly, slammed through a good foot of the corner – not entirely made of concrete; that was a bunch of plaster dust flying – and into the far wall, which was also not made of concrete – or not entirely. Something dented – steel rebar, the HUD rather thought – and he went tumbling.

"Shut down his suit, shut it down he's compromised – " Oh, god, there was something soft underneath him, squishing beneath the weight of the armour; he rolled away and his boot hit something else that gave, oh, god, someone was making some sort of high-pitched, squeaky sound, like a scream that couldn't take form – "Lifesigns, HUD, something," he gasped. Stane was coming – he'd have no care for civilians –

The HUD cleared, re-imaged, thermal overlaid; heat-signs, running about; he found a clear space and rolled into it, and into a crouch, back on his feet. He'd hit two women – oh, god – one's neck was lolling unnaturally to the side, and her leg had been what his boot had hit – part of her thigh was crushed. Oh, god. Oh fucking god.

The other was the woman still making noises – but her chest wasn't moving right; one side of it would move up while the other side went down. "Shit, shit, shit – flail chest," and spinal injury, immobilize, pillow, EMS – who the fuck was he kidding, there was no EMS

Vaguely, he was aware of other heat signs running, moving away; lights flickered and went out as power was killed. It didn't matter; he could see just fine, he had to help her – the light of the AR illuminated her just fine: brown hair, petite – Foster. They'd had Foster here, and she was – he had to find a pillow, a backboard, there is no EMS

Two heat signs tore through different hallways toward him, but he paid no attention, tearing the seat off a chair, and the bottom off of the cushion, pressing it against the woman's side and putting her arms around it – but blood was already bubbling around her lips. Punctured lung – oh, god –

"Mr. Stark, I am taking over control of the suit." Heat sign one hit heat sign two, grew, expanded, impossible. Tony's limbs locked up. The suit wasn't a perfect fit for him, but it was close enough, especially in the hands; he couldn't twitch a finger. It was difficult to breathe – no, that was because he was sobbing – powerless to do anything as the repulsors fired again, burning Foster's legs – she barely whimpered now – and launching him back through the hole he'd made, straight into a green creature that might have, in this world, been called the Hulk; but Tony had seen footage, and the small part of his brain that was paying attention was pretty sure that it was closer to the Abomination.

"Nononononono – "

Ohgod what had he done –

He might have been screaming.

The suit hit the Abomination hard enough to throw the creature off of Steve and several metres down the first hallway; then one massive hand seized around his middle – metal plates groaned, compressed – and tossed down him the rest of the hall, even as missiles launched from the shoulder pauldrons, blinding the creature and eliciting a roar. It flailed about, while the suit righted itself and launched away, landing neatly beneath their entry point, and then up

A massive hand caught him holy shit that was quick a fumbling grasp but large and strong enough to be lethal he can't see he can't see – sound, sound shit and slammed him against the sides of the whole; the Abomination jumped free, into the middle of the now-ruined residential street, and slammed him down into the concrete again, denting it. More missiles fired; when the Abomination flailed, this time, repulsors engaged at the top of the arc, and the suit ripped free – ripped being the right word; a large chunk of the armour on the right thigh stayed behind. He was vaguely aware that he had regained some control over the motion of that leg, and also that it hurt like a son of a bitch.

Oh god what have I done

The Abomination leaped – but not at him. It landed at the second entry point – the one Steve had been drilling – just in time to catch the second suit rocketing free too damn loud catch it by the legs, a firmer grip than it had gotten on Tony, and slam it head-first into the ground a half-dozen times. The helmet took the punishment; the more mobile joints did not, and through the dust, the HUD imaging clearly showed the way the helmet was at a right angle from the body, apparently stuck, and most of the shoulder plating was missing. The flesh beneath it hadn't fared much better. The HUD reeled off details – cervical vertebrae C6, C5 dislocated, C4-C2 fractured –

"STEVE!"

Without Tony's input, his hand lasers fired at the Abomination's arms, aimed to sever them – wrong move. Green fists clenched convulsively; the lasers did not so much as scratch its hide. Plate metal was driven through vulnerable, super-soldier flesh, sending a spurt of red arterial blood across the grey-green skin – quickly followed by another, and then another. Each was weaker than the last. The Abomination growled, tossed Steve's suit away – blood ran out into the street – and lunged for Tony.

The boot repulsors were firing, carrying him up, but he wasn't going to be fast enough – that thing was so damned fastit had him –

"Powers – apart – away!"

He was free, and falling – and then something else, far larger than the Abomination's fist, had him.


NOW

The air in the courtyard was warm, lit by an alien sun, but not oppressively so. As soon as they stepped over, the door closed behind them with a resonant boom – and vanished, thinning out much like the doors within the Embassy had congealed in. The Magistrate who had approached them had not followed them – perhaps it was still on duty.

It seemed clear enough where they were to go, however; the courtyard was walled on all four sides, and the only building present was the pagoda they had seen through the doors. The air was sweet, smelling of something vaguely like cherry blossoms, or like the mountains – like wilderness. This was an isolated place, then... unless alien cities didn't have any of pollution problems that cropped up with humans. But the machine-like aura of the Magistrates made Steve think that they were something more like robots. The architecture here wasn't at all reminiscent of machines, or anything modern, really. It felt like some ancient Chinese palace, lifted from a tale – almost exactly so, Steve thought as they grew closer, except for the size. The pagoda was so enormous that he didn't think it likely somebody would build such a thing in real life... no one on Earth, at least. And everything else was scaled to size with it: from a distance – he'd not realized how far – he'd eyeballed the walls as being maybe four feet high, but that earlier guess was easily ten times too short.

By the time they neared the top of the steps, which were short and wide, but nonetheless numerous, he could see that the walls – covered in brilliant red and gold designs – were not painted. Instead, they were thick silk screens, the cloth so finely woven that Steve could barely tell that it was cloth. As they approached, the doors slid silently to the side, presenting a dark interior. They made it to the top of the steps before Steve's eyes could pick out what lay inside, and then he stopped in his tracks.

The enormous coiled body of the serpent beyond – its hide black as midnight, but its horns seemingly made from pure gold – was a familiar form. He'd seen one just like it but a few days ago, rising up out of the ruined remains of the Mandarin's fortress.

He grabbed at Anthony's sleeve to stop him, and hissed, as quietly as he could, "That's a makluan."

Anthony paused and tilted his head. "Huh," he said after a moment. "So she is." And then he continued up the steps.

Mentally swearing, Steve hurried after him, and the silk-screen door slid shut behind them both.

Inside, out of the blinding light of the sun, his eyes adjusted quickly. The interior was cast in reds, due to the filtering of the light through the silk screen, and by it he could see that the dragon was not a completely pure black, but rather a blue-purple as dark as to be almost the same. It – she – was coiled in front of a low table – so tiny as to seem ridiculous compared to her – before which cushions were set. There was no other furniture inside the enormous room other than ornate lamps hanging, unlit, from the high ceiling.

Anthony stopped about fifteen feet from the table and bowed, deeply, from the waist. Very mindful of the damage he'd seen Fin Fang Foom cause in the Valley of Spirits, Steve copied him, although he couldn't manage to bow his head enough to take his eyes off of the dragon. Perhaps it was the proximity, or perhaps something else, but there was something gloriously awful about her, a quality beyond any Fin Fang Foom had possessed.

"Welcome," said the dragon. Her voice sounded like an entire chorus of singers accompanied by a bell choir – but unlike the extremis-infected super-zombie who had spoken in multiple voices, this sounded rich, natural, and Steve was reminded of Thor's explanation to Bruce about the Makluan language. "Please, sit and partake of refreshment."

They folded themselves onto the cushions before the table, Anthony with the grace of somebody who sat cross-legged every day, and Steve with some slight difficulty – without the serum enhancing his flexibility, the muscles actually got in the way. It was strange. By the time he'd managed to ensure he wasn't about to embarrass himself, the table had somehow produced a steaming teapot and teacups for both Anthony and himself. Steve let Anthony pour, which he did in a fashion that seemed at once both perfunctory and ritualized, but minded his earlier warning and didn't sip from his cup – although Anthony did. Well, maybe that was a pretense.

"For what purpose have we been called here, O honoured one?" Anthony asked after a moment more. Tony would have made it sarcastic; from Anthony, it was entirely sincere.

"Direct, as mortals may be," the Chief Magistrate noted. The shadows of the room grew and ebbed as she shifted her bulk in a fashion that managed – although Steve couldn't figure out how – to give the impression of a shrug. Her giant head turned but slightly, until she was staring directly at Steve, instead of Anthony. Given the size of the incisors curling out over her lips, this was not reassuring. "I know which world has caused you such trouble. It is the same to which your friend was brought."

Something in his chest both eased and tightened at the words. Eased, because at last he might have the faintest idea where to look for Tony, and tightened – because surely, the information wouldn't be given for free, and he had nothing he could trade. "What do you want in return?"

Her answer was a breath – a long exhale, not a sigh, but a breath of life; rainbow motes of light danced within it. Heat washed over Steve's face, and for a brief moment the dragonfire curled into something that looked like a map, then swirled again into symbols like those that dotted the architecture of the Embassy. It was meaningless to Steve, but Anthony leaned forward and studied it intently, his lips moving occasionally. Steve barely dared breath for fear of making him lose his concentration, or for fear of disturbing the magical writing.

At last, Anthony sat back and nodded.

"On behalf of my people, I grant you this knowledge a gift, to demonstrate our good intentions," murmured the Magistrate with a hundred voices.

"Not that we're not grateful," Anthony said after a pause, "but a demonstration of good intentions is usually done for a purpose."

"Yes," she agreed. "And we have great need for this demonstration. A force is coming, Lord Stark, which even the gods are not equipped to overcome. It will be looking for that which you carry, Captain."

The gem felt like lead in his pocket, weighing him down. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Her chuckle was like a clamour of church-bells all ringing at once. "Of course."

"We will pass on your warning when we return it," Anthony said, guarded.

"That is not what I wish to persuade you to do," said the Magistrate. One enormous lip curled up slightly further; Steve tensed before he realized that it was meant to be a sort of smile. "And thus my display of good intentions. This enemy comes from outside of the universe; it threatens not only these Realms, but all Realms with doors to the Embassy. This gem, even with its companions, will be insufficient to oppose it. Yet in the wrong hands, united with those copies of it from across other Realms, it could prove nearly as disastrous as its total loss, for within the universe there are those who would use such power for selfish ends – and they would do so wrongly." She paused, although it was a moment longer before the ringing echoes of her voice died away. "Maklu is a peaceful world. No true child of this realm has taken a life in more than an age. But that does not mean we cannot oppose the enemies our enemies, more steadfastly than any save the Living Tribunal itself or that which the Tribunal serves. I ask of you to leave this gem in our safekeeping, that we may hide it where no enemy, neither within nor without, shall ever find it."

Do not let it go. Do not trade it away. Do not give it to Stark.

"It's not mine," Steve said, struggling to keep his voice from being wretched. "It was just loaned to me."

"The gem belongs to no one," the Chief Magistrate said gently. "Ownership of it can neither be given, not taken; but it is the responsibility of any who know of it to see to its safe disposal. The demon Mephisto has already bargained away the knowledge that you carry it. If you make it back to the Earth from which it heralds, you will find yourself under siege."

The emphasis on the if made Steve tense. Perhaps Maklu was supposed to be a peaceful world, but he'd seen a makluan down a fighter jet – and who knew what alien technology Fin Fang Foom might have given Borgijin?

"Damn it," Anthony muttered. "I knew he wasn't feeling you up just for kicks." He ran a hand through his hair. "We could leave directly, now that I know where to go," he suggested, but there was an air of doubt to it.

"This copy cannot be taken outside of its reality," the Magistrate said firmly. "If you want the Living Tribunal's attention that would certainly be a good way to get it. But I do not think you would enjoy it once you had it, and that is only if other Watchers did not stop you first." The way she emphasized the word 'Watchers' with deeper notes, laid over the word like the largest pipes of a great organ, made it sound like some sort of title – some very significant title.

"It's still not mine to give away," Steve repeated – no matter how he regretted it. Or, perhaps, didn't; if the choice wasn't his, then he didn't have to figure out how much damage it could do in the wrong hands and weigh it against the alternative. Stephen had only talked about its ability to reveal souls... but it could show the truth about Gods, and every moment more he carried it, Steve was surer that he'd only seen the surface of its power.

"If we go to give it back to Stephen we'll be walking into a trap," Anthony said patiently – a bit too patiently. Steve restrained himself from bristling. "We can't take it with us. There aren't many options here."

You're just going to trust her word, just like that? Steve wanted to ask him – but not right in front of her, not when her teeth were as long as he was.

"I told you earlier that magic has taught me not to believe in coincidences," Anthony continued when Steve didn't say anything. "Stephen gave you that gem for a reason. What was it?"

"To find – no," Steve cut himself off, trying to think back. Before this place, before what he'd used the gem to see... "He said... to aid me. To give me some... power... of my own."

"And has it aided you, so far?" Anthony's eyes were knowing. It had gotten him into the Embassy, but... Steve shook his head, mutely. "Then think again. What else did Stephen say?"

"That it... his mind kept returning to it," Steve said reluctantly. He could see where Anthony was going with this. "That's guesswork."

"This is an item of more power than you know, Steve," Anthony said, voice low. His eyes seemed to have darkened, from cerulean to midnight blue, and there were stars shining in the depths of them. What was he? Something more than a wizard. What was a Sorcerer Supreme?

Anthony shook his head and turned away, breaking the spell – if spell it had been. Somehow, Steve doubted that. It felt like something more.

"How will you protect it?" Anthony asked the Chief Magistrate.

"Ask me a second time, and I shall tell you," she replied, "but consider carefully before you do. Ignorance is a potent defense."

"Will you swear to your good intentions?"

The floor rumbled; it took Steve a moment to realize that it was due to some deep, sub-sonic hum originating from the Magistrate. "Long has it been since I was asked to swear that which should be known as a matter of course, mortal. In ancient times that would be a deadly insult. In these enlightened times, it would still be enough to bar you from our world."

"A couple days ago I saw a makluan for the first time, and he was killing people."

They both turned to look at Steve. The deep shaking stopped, which was a relief.

"This is true," the Magistrate said after another moment. "You have not cause to know the honour that a true child of Maklu tends to all their lives, nor the burdens we carry because of that honour. But you do have the means to learn, should you so wish; all souls are revealed beneath the cold light of truth that gem casts. Look upon me and judge my intentions, Captain, and know that I swear we shall keep the Soul Gem safe, that we shall oppose the Enemy until the last breath leaves our bodies."

Steve looked at her, but couldn't meet her great, cat-like eyes; he looked at Anthony, instead, who shrugged. "You already know I'm in favour of this plan, Cap."

How could he trust her so easily? Had it just been that he'd never met a makluan before – or at least, not one that did as much damage as Fin Fang Foom? That seemed hard to credence, given how much more experienced in Anthony seemed, with – well – pretty much everything, from aliens to gods to alternate realities. He'd implied that Dormammu was lowering himself to ally with Amora, then claimed himself capable of coming up with a strategy to defeat Dormammu – when the sight of Amora's soul was enough to nearly drive Steve out of his own head. But Anthony's soul had been mortal – with all the limitations thereof – so what was it? Sheer arrogance?

Was the explanation for how Anthony could consider a deal with Mephisto: deadly pride? Perhaps – but he'd seen some of what Anthony could do. He'd repelled Mephisto's spell earlier, and Amora's enchantments – they were greater in being, but there was no denying the Sorcerer Supreme's power.

Tony had had power, too. Would still have power, if they ever found him – although it would be much diminished. Different power – the power of influence and Earthly politics, wealth and genius... but it was enough power to nearly set off WWIII.

Was it all just a matter of degree?

Steve pulled the gem from his pocket and turned it over in his hand. He didn't have any such power. He was human, plain and simple: not a genius, not even a super-soldier at the moment. He might have a God who watched out for him – One of many, the gem seemed to whisper, or maybe that was Anthony's presence, or maybe that was the Chief Magistrate's. Whatever it was, it was right: if faith required him to believe in Jehovah, the peer of Odin Alfodr, Zeus Olympios, Amun-Ra, all the ancient, quarrelsome deities of old religions – he did not think he could look to such a one for eternal salvation. Not anymore.

"An honourable wielder looking for honourable purposes upon an honourable soul will come to no harm," the Magistrate told him after a moment. It had the ringing sense of a promise. She inclined her head, just so, and –

He was, very oddly, reminded of Natasha.

She'd nodded, short and to the point, just like that. He'd not known her much at all, then – she'd been an agent of SHIELD; she'd been one of a very few to treat him like a real person, and the first person in decades to tease him, gently and... friendly. And he'd trusted her, because she was honest, and because... even if Fury lied, even if SHIELD lied, and even if Natasha backed them to the hilt, he'd trusted her to do what was right.

Once upon a time you trusted yourself, a quiet voice in the back of Steve's head spoke up. It sounded a lot like Bucky, although that was ridiculous. Bucky would have tossed in more curses.

He'd trusted his judgement about Natasha.

He'd also trusted his judgement about Tony.

Be honest, though – what have you really got to lose, Rogers? If she was lying, he'd lose his mind; if she was lying, then the directions were suspect, and he would literally not make much more than a snack for her.

"Okay," he said, and closed his eyes, concentrating upon the gem in his hand. It met his fumbling attempts at reaching it quickly, smoothly – even eagerly, and his surroundings fell away.

It wasn't like before, viewing the grandness of a deity's soul, of awe-inspiring presence. Amora had been something of the next degree up from Hercules – but this was different. The Chief Magistrate – Governor, Speaker, Trust-Holder, Secret Keeper, Mediator, Grand Councillor –was entirely about him: but whereas Amora's presence had been crushing, the Magistrate's was like the wooden floor; the silk screens, the air around them; her existence made these things possible, but her touch – her interference – was as light as a feather, power constrained by TruthPromisesFaith

Faith, he thought wonderingly, and immediately the gem looked deeper and he saw – something he could not understand – but then it changed, simplified; he could feel the beneficence of her soul in her cooperation, as she formed herself into familiar shapes: one of the elderly nuns at the orphanage, his favourite one for her kindness –a rarer virtue to be found in the nuns than an outsider might have thought – who often shook her head over his skinned knees and elbows, blackened eyes, and brought bowls of boiling water for him to breathe over when he wheezed from the asthma and the cold, dry nights; she would cross herself, and then murmur a prayer, one hand on his forehead, smoothing his hair back.

The Magistrate was akin to a God – the Gods he had seen – and yet... she had faith, too, in peace, honour, and life; he could feel her faith in the cause she served, the protection of the universe – her honest request for the gem.

"But they answer prayers, as Gods – and yet they're so..." he said, and perhaps he said it to the memory of Sister Maria; sure, it was nearly as hard to get the words out as it had been back when he was having an asthma attack.

"And so what if they do? Will you then keep all good and decent actions to yourself, to deprive them of power? Good things done in their names are still Good, and may serve a cause above and beyond them; and by doing Good, we so create that cause: it is a part of us, and beyond us, and continues no matter the limitations of any one single part."

Good things done in their names are still Good.

Some greater force...

He opened his eyes. The sense of being something very small, surrounded by something very vast, faded, but her words did not.

"Thank you," he said quietly, his voice rasping, and he set the gem down on the table; and the action felt right, in a way that nothing had since Anthony had brought him to the Embassy.

"I thank you for your faith," the Magistrate rumbled in a voice like the echoes of thunder, laid over with wind chimes. "And may faith stay with you. We shall keep this safe."

She lowered her head and breathed out over the table, over their teacups, over them where they sat. Her breath was as the fog hanging low in the mountain valleys, and for a moment he felt lightheaded; when it cleared, he found himself unexpectedly on his feet, and stumbled. The air smelled like spring, like flowers blossoming in the sun, and he nearly closed his eyes and let himself bask in it for a moment.

"Still in Maklu," Anthony announced, breaking the spell – if it was a spell. Breaking Steve's distraction, at any rate. The sorcerer looked around himself. "But... at a waypoint. This will make travelling easier."

"And get us out of her hair faster," Steve said, but, absurdly, he found himself faintly smiling. Some sense of returned balance made the world seem more in tune, like they were standing perfectly poised a hair's breadth away from success.

"Scales, not hair, but – yes," Anthony agreed, sounding distracted. He raised his arms wide in a grand gesture. "Over water, under heaven; 'twixt earth and sky: the air. Winds eight, rivers seven; roads six, gates five: take us there."

And there they were: in the ruins of Times Square.

Steve only barely recognized it: some integral part of being a New Yorker born and bred, perhaps. Rubble – glass, metal, concrete – was strewn large; they'd landed atop of one large sheet that now wobbled dangerously underfoot.

"Damn," Anthony muttered, and – flew up, to hover in the air; Steve felt a slight tug at his limbs, and then he, too, was flying. Because of course Anthony had a spell for flight. Really, the only mystery was that Steve hadn't seen him use it before now.

The rubble had all been blasted in the same direction – outward, as if from a bomb. They flew higher, and the centre point immediately became higher, as soon as they got above a couple hundred feet. Of course. He should have known: Stark Tower – or what had been Stark Tower; now it was just so much more rubble. If it had been Stark Tower, Steve amended mentally; perhaps it wasn't, in this world. Maybe this wasn't New York. Maybe it was some other city.

It hurt.

They'd both been glowing gold as soon as they'd arrived: Anthony's warding spells. "That's a lot of rads," he murmured now as they soared higher, surveying the city.

"The nuke didn't get diverted, in this world," Steve said dully. What had happened to this world's Tony? Or maybe they didn't have one – no, if this world was the origin of the switches, or at least on the loop where his Tony had ended up, then there must have been a Tony here. Of course, the circumstances could have been wildly different – the other Steve's world had been –

"More than one nuke, I think." Anthony was staring off into the distance as though he could see over the edge of the horizon – which he probably could. "A lot more."

"We need to find him fast."

"I'm trying." It seemed true – the gem in his half-faceplate was glowing brightly. "There's... nothing." He sounded baffled. "There should be something. Even if he were dead – "

"He's not dead." Steve had let himself hope – dream – he was not dead. He wasn't. Tony had ended up someplace else when he'd gotten switched, he must've.

"I don't think he is," Anthony said distractedly. "I'd still be able to find him if I was. No – something is blocking my scrying spells."

Scrying spells. Farsight. "He was working on shields," Steve realized. "They were all over the Tower – he was trying to hide from Asgard – "

"I daresay anything that could block the Eye of Agamotto could hide even from Lord Heimdall's Sight," Anthony agreed. "Well, that speaks well of where he ended up – but how to find it?" He tapped one finger against the side of his chin; it made a soft clink where it hit the faceplate. Did he have metal in his gloves?

"Then look for whoever did this," Steve said, sweeping out an arm not to encompass the ruin of New York, but the entire world and the worlds beyond it. "The Magistrate said they're here."

Anthony hummed, low in his throat – a sound that Steve at first took for agreement, but when he changed pitch and continued humming, Steve realized that he was actually just humming – or maybe not. There was a power behind it, a sort of resonance – a spell? If spells could be cast by words, why not humming? A minute later, Anthony's eye opened, flashing triumphantly – "I have them. Shades of the Seraphim – "

Teleporting while flying, Steve decided, was even weirder than teleporting while standing on the ground.

But he didn't have much time to consider it, or to shove aside nausea. They emerged into open air over the ruin of a neighbourhood, as silent as New York. The trees might have seemed dead because it was winter, or because they were in a nuclear waste – the golden glow of the wards hadn't diminished – but there were certainly no people living in the houses anymore, not even any abandoned pets – unless those that there were had fled the fight going on below.

There was an Iron Man suit – or maybe a War Machine suit; it was grey rather than red and gold – lying on the ground beside one of several massive holes in the street. It was badly twisted around, and lying in a pool of blood so large that Steve would have been surprised to find its occupant was still living.

He could hear repulsors firing, below and to the side of where he and Anthony hovered, but his eyes played tricks with him; he couldn't see anyone. But the terrible green creature – not the Hulk; that was definitely not the Hulk; for all that the Hulk was a monster he at least retained some humanity – this was like something dead, resurrected from the grave, spine out and bent in a wholly unnatural way. Whatever it was, it bounded across the street like lightning and seized – something, something that made a dent in the concrete when the abomination smacked it into the ground, like if Loki had turned invisible –

"Powers of the Unseen, let them be apart!" Anthony cried – it sounded like a very off-the-cuff spell, but even so, it seemed to work; the green creature was sent flying backward, and a moment later, golden light washed over the street, leaving behind a man-sized outline of glowing yellow – apparently, what the thing had been beating on. Anthony made a beckoning motion with his fingers, drawing the invisible shape upward –none too soon, because the beast was already launching itself back toward it, and only a swift wall of golden light bursting into existence kept it from reaching its prey by using the creature's own speed against it, deflecting it instead of opposing it, and sending it hurtling into an empty house on the other side of the street.

"AWAY!" Anthony cried, and it was like he'd managed to fit all the words of his usual teleportation spell into this one – but at a price. The world compressed sickeningly; the world rolled over, colours stretched impossibly –

Steve nearly lost his breakfast after they reappeared – but was distracted by trying to dive out of the way of a repulsor beam. The invisible person apparently wasn't grateful for the rescue. Not that his dodge was necessary (or even possible: they were still flying), since the blue-white shield that Steve had seen Anthony use before sprung up, intercepting the beam – although it made the shield's entire surface ripple.

"Something is very wrong," Anthony said; a high flush had spread across his cheek, but the rest of his visible face was pale. "The pilot of that – debt, I call you; your life, you owe; reveal yourself, by the Powers Below!"

A flash – not yellow, or gold, or blue-white, but dark, blood red; so dark it wasn't really a flash of light, so much as it was an ink stain blotting out part of the sky. It revealed another Iron Man suit, red and gold and black mixed in; hovering there, hands raised to fire.

"Tony, don't! We're friends!" If it was Tony – if he wasn't dead – again...

Anthony swept his hands in a circle, and now held them palm up, ring and middle fingers curled in, index fingers out, ring fingers touch, and cried, "In the name of the Eternal Vishanti – cease!"

The armour dropped away toward the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

"What did you do?" Steve shouted at him, but Anthony help up a hand to forestall him.

"A cease-fire – a disarmament and a sleeping spell, that's all. But something is very wrong." They floated downward – the armour floated with them – to land on the ground below: they were in an empty field, much like the one they'd wound up in the very first time Steve had gotten pulled through worlds. Steve just hoped they hadn't actually jumped through worlds again. What if it wasn't Tony in there? No, it had to be Tony. "And he needs protection against radiation, although at least this isn't lethal here – " more golden spell-light spread over the still form, and then Anthony pressed something at the base of the helmet – how had he known about the release there? Did he have his own armour? Why would he need his own armour? – and the helmet fell away.

Steve felt his hope dashed. It was a Tony inside the armour, alright – face slack in unconsciousness – but it wasn't his Tony. This one was clean-shaven, which looked... really, really weird. Weirder than Anthony's mustache and half-faceplate (and pyjamas).

But Anthony looked between him and Steve with a smile, his eye-gem glowing brightly, and declared, "It's him. He's from your world."

From his world? Steve felt some deep worry – so deep he'd forgotten he was carrying it around – evaporate, leaving him feeling faintly light-headed. But at the same time...

"What's wrong? You said something was wrong with him." His brain wanted to point to Tony's lack of beard as the source of wrongness – okay, so that was wrong, but surely it wasn't what Anthony meant.

"He's cursed." Anthony tilted his head to the side, his smile at identifying the right Tony vanishing. "Cursed twice over – but I'm not entirely sure how." He reached up with one hand and tapped Tony on the forehead, twice.

Instantly, brown eyes opened – brown eyes, so distinct from Anthony's blue – and Tony tried futilely to sit up, paling drastically in the attempt. "Steve," he gasped, glancing between them both, his eyes widening with anger and fear – despair – "Nononono – you fucking bastard, you son of a bitch, I'm going to gut you, you hear me?"

He was shouting at the sky more than he was screaming at any of them, ignoring Steve's fumbling attempts at explanation – "Tony, it's me, Steve, things are complicated but we're safe – "

"LOKI, YOU SICK FUCK, I'M GOING TO RIP OUT YOUR SPINE AND STRANGLE YOU WITH IT!" Tony screamed, ignoring him, squeezing his eyes shut to avoid even looking at him, and it was with a sick feeling in his stomach that Steve saw that Tony was crying, despite his closed eyes.

Loki.

Of course it was Loki.

"Dorme," Anthony murmured with a twitch of the fingers on his left hand – but Tony didn't fall instantly asleep. He struggled against the spell, instead, half-swearing, half-crying, until he returned to wholly disturbing stillness.

"I was mistaken," Anthony said quietly, looking down at him. "He's been cursed once. The other... that is a shadow on his very soul."

The sick feeling grew worse. "The gem – "

" – perhaps could have removed it, or perhaps could have crushed his soul entirely," Anthony cut him off sharply before he could get the rest of the sentence out. "Do not think it ill-used. Besides," and this with a flash of a smile, "I am not entirely without practice in this area." He pulled off his gloves, tugging on the fingertips with his teeth – which seemed somehow strange, sinister, considering how before he'd shown himself capable of conjuring or dismissing clothes at will. Maybe those had been illusion, and this was reality? That thought didn't make the action seem of any less importance.

Carefully, gently, Anthony placed his hands against the sides of Tony's head, and closed his eyes. He remained there, hunched over, motionless, for some time, while Steve bit his lip lest he ask questions that might disturb the sorcerer's concentration. If Anthony was fixing something wrong with Tony's soul, what would happen if he got distracted?

Steve was no longer sure that all souls would make their way to the Lord someday – certainly, according to Anthony, they didn't all go to the Lord that the nuns had always talked about – but at the same time, he had seen, beyond any shadow of a doubt – leaving no room for faith at all; what he had was pure and total knowledge – that souls existed... and they were undoubtedly important.

"Not something he has done," Anthony murmured, breaking the stillness. "Nor something done to him... although undoubtedly he carries a second, independent curse, one wrought by a most malevolent and potent power. But this is deeper... something fundamental... something seen?"

"What's it doing to him?" Tony had just been in combat – combat in which he'd had an ally killed. Upon waking he'd been confused – a flashback – but not something... soul-shattering. Or so Steve prayed.

Anthony grimaced, and held out a hand toward Steve's face. "Easier to show you," he suggested, and at Steve's hesitant nod, brushed the tips of his fingers over Steve's forehead –

Diediediediedie

"He's gonna kill you," Bucky whispered in Steve's ear, "he's a traitor, Steve, gonna rip your guts out – and I'll help him."

"You've been so blind," Peggy told him, and Steve knew she was right, he was about to die, she was dead because of him –

He blinked; the brush of fingers was gone; and he had to clap a hand over his mouth to avoid throwing up as sheer relief cascaded through his body, replacing the absolute certainty that everyone he loved was dying, about to die, dead, and it was all his fault.

"Oh," Steve said when he could speak again.

"Quite," said Anthony dryly. "But not beyond fixing – not for the Sorcerer Supreme, at least." He closed his eyes, his focus once more obviously wholly on Tony, and began to chant, "Seven winds of memory, life, and song; eleven rivers pour forth water from the well; an unseen eye watches from within the dark; the light casts blindness, shadows are unseen."

The spell didn't rhyme, for once – which only added to the strange, jarring sense of the spell that Steve could feel emanating from the pair of them, backlash that grew as Anthony continued. "A noisome din drowns out all cries for help; in silence all scents are as nothing, faded and gone, beyond recall. The taste of rot withers itself; all touch vanishes, nothing more reaches out. Ea grants you mercy, and washes away memory."

For a moment, caught in the wash of the spell, Steve thought he'd gone blind, deaf, without sense. He couldn't say that everything went dark – it didn't. It just... wasn't there, as though he'd forgotten what dark was, or light, or sound, the whisper of the wind, the feeling of it against his face. There was nothing except the final words of the spell – but they were not sound, nor the memory of sound; they were, like the memory of the Chief Magistrate's soul, knowledge.

Sense came back to him immediately, and Steve grabbed at Anthony's arm. "What did you mean, wash away memory?" he demanded, suddenly feeling like he'd made a very grave mistake – meddled with forces he didn't understand.

Given them his blessing and told them to do something to his friend's mind – no. Anthony was something, but he wasn't inhuman –

"I took the memory causing this from him, and cast it into the Outer Darkness," Anthony said calmly, picking his gloves up from the ground and pulling them; he didn't bother trying to break Steve's grip. "Something a mortal wasn't meant to see – something beyond a mortal's ability to confront without fracturing. But this second curse..." he frowned, "No, with that in place his soul would not have fractured; it would have consumed itself, until he was completely insane. I dared not look at the memory of that sight myself. But without it, he'll be alright. "

This was – not good. "But you – we should have asked," Steve said wretchedly. 'Cast into the outer darkness' – that didn't sound like there was any possible way of getting it back. Anthony had just gone in and tugged out a part of Tony's mind, and Steve had told him to... he was an idiot. An idiot for thinking that just because he'd started to find his feet again, just because the Chief Magistrate had pointed him in the right direction, he knew anything about anything else.

Anthony looked doubtful. "Steve, when he was awake I could see what he saw – and he wasn't seeing us. He wouldn't have believed anything we'd have said, because that memory would distort his every rational thought. You saw it – do you think he was better off with it?"

The memory of that despair, that fear, made Steve bow his head. But still – "We should have asked. It's his mind. His memories."

"It's his life and sanity – now saved."