Plan A
"Clint said you needed me?" Sam Wilson stood in the doorway of Tony's lab, cross-armed and impassive.
Tony waved him in. "I need to fit your new wings." He gestures at the prototype on the far table and they both head over.
Wilson strapped into the harness and Tony left him to adjust the fit. "Wilson, wings out full. FRIDAY, scan the wingspan."
"They feel lighter." Wilson commented.
"T'Challa contributed some vibranium to mix into the alloy." Tony informed him briskly. "Close in on the back."
Wilson followed the instruction and Tony did a circuit to check the wingtips cleared the floor.
"Sweep round to the front." Tony nodded as they made a clean movement. "FRIDAY?"
"Wings require no further adjustment and are matching specification, Boss."
"Wilson?" asked Tony.
Wilson did a few more physical movements. "So far so good. I'll know better when I get them in the air."
"Go ahead then. Just make sure you have a spotter." Tony returned to his desk and started noting the pass rate on the tests. "FRIDAY, I think we can still adjust the power to flight altitude ratio. Tweak this…" he tapped one of the components in the flight power module, "…to this." He slid his hand along.
"Won't that lose speed in more complicated movements?"
Tony's heartbeat rocketed and he spun around trying to hide his startled flinch at Wilson's presence. "Weren't you going out to play?"
"You know I like knowing the mechanics of the wings." Wilson said mildly.
Tony frowned. Wilson had always hung around when there had been maintenance or updates on the wings and he had asked a lot of questions. "Huh. I thought you just didn't trust me."
Wilson grimaced. "I realise…" he sighed and his dark eyes met Tony's determinedly, "I owe you an apology."
"Forget it." Tony said shortly. "Let's just…forget it." He tapped the holographic folder. "Send that to the shared server, FRIDAY, and give Wilson access."
"See, no." Wilson said. "That whole brush it under the rug routine isn't going to work for me."
"And it's all about you, right?" Tony commented, turning around to face him again. He leaned back against the desk and waved at him. "Look, Rhodey already told me you two hugged it out so…"
"This isn't about the Colonel." Wilson said. "It's about Steve."
And Wilson had a stubborn look which Tony figured he'd actually copied it from Captain America himself.
"Go ahead then; say your piece."
Wilson's lips twisted and Tony figured he was swallowing down what he really wanted to retort. "Do you know how many friends Steve had when I met him?"
Tony raised his eyebrows. "You did meet him in the middle of his finding out SHIELD had a small HYDRA problem so I'm not sure that's a fair question."
"None." Wilson replied. "He had no real friends. All you Avengers went your own way after New York. Natasha was friendly and I think she wanted to be Steve's friend back then but truthfully? She was his babysitter until the whole SHIELD shebang fell apart. Fury was his boss, and everyone else? His neighbour turned out to be SHIELD and all the people he worked with knowingly at SHIELD, they were OK for a drink after work, but he hadn't become friends with anyone he could confide in."
"Your point?" Tony said.
"I figured Steve needed someone completely in his corner." Wilson sighed. "Which meant I followed his lead a little too much on some things, you being one of them."
Tony stared at him not entirely certain what Wilson meant.
Wilson's lips twisted. "It was obvious when he introduced us that he wasn't completely comfortable with you. I figured initially maybe it was because you reminded him of your Dad."
Tony had thought the same, and he remembered trying not to be upset by that; to work through it with Rogers so they had their own friendship.
"But then when I stayed at the tower, I realised that he was happy to socialise with you when it was a group thing, not so much if it looked like it was just the two of you." Wilson continued. "So I thought maybe he just saw you as team-mates. He trusted you well enough in the field." He shrugged and the wings whirred. "I thought he just maybe didn't trust you on a personal level to be friends with you in the same way he'd make time for some of the others."
Tony gave a short laugh. "You saw more than me. I thought we were friends." He said bluntly. Maybe not close friends but friends.
Sam sighed. "I assumed he had a good reason for not letting you in which I incorrectly supposed was something about you. He had plenty of complaints to bitch about every time we caught up and I had a hundred and one reasons why he might have decided you weren't friend material."
"Well, this has been a barrel of laughs." Tony snapped out sharply. "Are we done? I think we're done."
"I didn't realise he was keeping you at a distance because he knew about your parents and didn't want, and didn't know how to tell you." Wilson said.
Tony froze.
"He told me everything when he got us out the RAFT." Wilson said. "I am sorry you had to go through that."
"Not going to yell at me for attacking Barnes when I found out?" asked Tony brusquely.
Wilson shook his head. "You were traumatised by the video and emotionally compromised. You had no time to process your anger or your grief at the revelation about their deaths and Steve's knowledge of it all." He sighed heavily. "Since Steve has always been too invested in protecting Barnes, and God knows Barnes himself is a mess, it's no surprise to me it devolved into a fight."
Tony nodded jerkily.
"Anyway," Wilson said, "I should have gotten to know you rather than judging you on Steve's interaction with you, media rumours and gossip, and what happened with Ultron, which I've also come to realise I made a shit ton of assumptions about after talking with Thor and Vis." He sighed. "I was wrong about you. Maybe if I hadn't been so focused on being so much in Steve's corner…but I can't say I would change that. Steve still doesn't have too many friends."
"Thank you for the explanation, I guess." Tony said. He wasn't sure how to feel since Wilson's apology had been lost somewhere in his admission he wouldn't change anything really.
They looked at each other awkwardly.
Tony gestured at the wings. "You should really go and try those out."
Wilson nodded and moved out.
"Stark?"
Tony turned and looked over at Wilson who had paused in the open doorway.
"Steve would be lucky to have you as a friend."
He disappeared leaving Tony alone in the lab wondering just how much the secret about his parents had influenced Steve and his actions; how much that in turn had influenced everything that had followed after SHIELD fell and everyone else. Maybe he'd never know for certain whether if Steve had told him, it would have changed everything.
Plan Z
As May ticks over into June without the fall of SHIELD, Tony begins to worry that his changes to the timeline have had a major impact after all.
He knows the lack of reveal is bad. He cannot allow HYDRA to continue operating within SHIELD. It's taken all he has to wait for the moment in the timeline when he knew it would happen. A lot of the simulations he'd run back at the beginning had been taking HYDRA and SHIELD down early. But without SHIELD in the mix, too many other things had been predicted to fail or not happen or just go badly wrong in a way which would have only benefitted Thanos – and he couldn't take the risk.
Not then.
But as the first weekend in June passes still without any sign of the reveal happening, Tony gets up early Monday morning to begin plotting out how he can get it to happen since it looks like the timeline changes have somehow conspired to keep HYDRA hidden longer.
He's a moment away from kicking Clint out of his workshop and locking it to start planning in earnest when JARVIS announces Coulson is video calling him from Lola – the only car which his Dad managed to get to fly.
Tony drops into his chair and orders JARVIS to put Coulson on the main monitor. Clint takes up a position just behind him to his left. "Agent. You don't write, you don't call…"
"This is an emergency." Coulson cuts in. "I need your help." His eyes flicker to Clint. "And yours, Barton."
Tony and Clint exchange a quick look of concern.
Tony turns back to the monitor, leans forward and nods. "Go ahead."
Coulson looks momentarily lost as though he doesn't know where to start. "I'm going to tell you something but I need you to be patient and listen."
Tony nods again. Clint remains silent and still.
"Stane was killed by an agent called John Garrett." Coulson says bluntly. "He'd covered it up well but when we dug we found the deleted footage. He passed the belt to Stane with the words 'Hail Hydra.'"
Tony's eyes widen and he feels the blow against his soul as though Coulson punched him in the gut. "Stane was HYDRA?"
"We don't know for certain." Coulson says. "He might have just been their weapons supplier beyond what they could get out of the SHIELD armouries. We didn't find any evidence other than payments."
It makes Tony nauseous to think that Stane was selling his weapons to HYDRA.
"And Garrett?" asks Clint harshly.
Coulson looks regretful. "He's definitely HYDRA. The Director and I immediately began a top secret investigation into how HYDRA had implanted a double agent in our midst and…" he sighs, "we found we had a cancer at the heart of SHIELD."
Tony frowns, tuning out Clint swearing under his breath. "How bad? Are we talking a small tumour or…"
"Practically our whole organisation is infected in some way." Coulson cuts in. "We traced the origin to the foundation of SHIELD itself. It's not a secret that America swept up a number of German scientists in the wake of the war."
"Operation Paperclip." Tony supplies.
"Right," Coulson confirms, "their war crimes were either pardoned in return for service or in some cases whitewashed away."
"And some of those scientists ended up in SHIELD." Tony states tersely.
"Closely monitored at the beginning, but as they settled in and produced good work…" Coulson sighs, "the level of scrutiny on their work, on their lives, diminished. They were able to recruit and multiply." He pauses. "Fury and I believe just over a third of SHIELD operational staff are compromised, forty percent of our agents, and just under fifty per cent of our scientists. We know the World Security Council has been compromised; Pierce is HYDRA."
"Fuck." Clint murmurs.
Tony turns to glance at him, Clint is pale with eyes glazed with shock. He nudges him onto a stool before turning back to Coulson.
"You say you and Fury have been investigating since Stane died, why are you telling us this now?" asks Tony brusquely.
"We've been monitoring the situation," Coulson says briskly, "and gathering proof. We needed more than conjecture and a few coincidences that could be easily brushed away." He sighs again and for a moment his weariness shines through. "And we've needed to do it without alarming HYDRA into acting against us."
"Your mobile team." Clint states. "Part of the plan?"
Coulson nods. "Fury wanted a team on the periphery. A plan B."
"That's not all though, is it?" asks Clint before Tony can. Tony wonders if he's seen the same hesitation in Coulson's eyes.
"One of my team is HYDRA." Coulson says bluntly.
Clint nods as though that makes perfect sense to him. "You were hoping to flip him."
"Yes," Coulson says, "but Fury underestimated his loyalty to Garrett."
"Is this relevant?" asks Tony abruptly. "I notice you still haven't answered my question."
"You know about the new fleet of helicarriers?" Coulson checks.
Tony nods. He'd given the go ahead to use his repulsor technology for the flight capability, while designing fail-safes that ensured they couldn't be weaponised, just as he had in the first timeline.
"The WSC also proposed some additions to their design. The helicarriers are built with long range precision guns, synched up with satellites which can be used to target hostiles using a computer algorithm which would seek out and identify the threats." Coulson explains. "Project Insight."
"Sounds like it skirts a little close to black bag operations on a large scale." Tony mutters, tapping his fingers unhappily against his arc reactor.
"A month ago, the Director realised that the project had been compromised by HYDRA. They intend to use it to cleanse the world of anyone who would stand against them." Coulson tells them. "Fury had suspicions that a HYDRA cell was operating out of a SHIELD ship named The Lumerian Star. There was a plan to retrieve the data in the ship's computers but the ship blew up before the data could be retrieved."
Clint leans forward. "Steve and Nat were supposed to be on that mission, right? She called to say they wouldn't make it for dinner because of a rescue mission to free one of SHIELD's ships from pirates but then turned up when the mission fell through."
Coulson doesn't look happy at the realisation Nat still tells Clint about her missions, but he nods. "The Director managed to delay the helicarriers through some creative sabotage while we regrouped." He pauses before his eyes look directly at Tony's. "The day before yesterday, the salvage operation for The Lumerian Star recovered the main onboard computer server. It was intact."
Tony feels a chill skitter down his spine.
"Fury had Captain America and Black Widow fly out to take custody of it. Yesterday afternoon, Fury's car was attacked on his way to a meeting at the Pentagon by an assassin we know as The Winter Soldier, and he's missing." Coulson pauses. "Cap and Widow are also missing; they didn't come back from the mission as scheduled last night."
Clint is almost vibrating with tension beside him and Tony can't blame him.
"An hour ago, Pierce declared himself as interim Director and sent a memo stating they are all wanted for questioning; he's issued arrest warrants."
"You think HYDRA are making their play." Tony states. "Will Fury reach out to you?"
Coulson shakes his head. "Unlikely. He knows about Ward."
"I'll check some things." Clint offers grimly. "Nat may have contacted me."
Tony lets him go and turns back to Coulson. "What do you need me to do?"
"Their end game has to be Insight. It's due to launch tomorrow. Can you stop the helicarriers or the targeting system?" Coulson asks.
Tony nods. "I'm assuming you don't want this brought to the attention of the authorities?"
"Your DOD oversight panel is clean as far as we know but we're less certain about the Congressional committees." Coulson says. "Fury said Doctor Gunther was clean but he couldn't vouch for her staff."
"Then I'll inform Rhodey and Gunther directly that I'm dealing with a highly confidential and time sensitive intelligence of a threat which requires me to do some white hat hacking into SHIELD." Tony shrugs. "I'll ask Gunther to keep it officially off the books until I can verify the threat."
"Good." Coulson holds his gaze. "I don't know if I'll be able to make contact again but good luck, Stark."
"You too." Tony says.
It's just after lunch.
Clint has heard nothing from Nat but he's left coded messages of his own for her. JARVIS has confirmed that Camp Lehigh is already scorched earth and Tony can only hope Steve and Nat survived it like they did before. He has JARVIS watching for any sign on traffic cameras or the news of Steve, Nat, Sam and the Winter Soldier.
In the meantime, Tony has had the go ahead from the UN and his own panel; he and JARVIS are buried deep in the satellite code when the news report comes in.
"Breaking news in the capitol this lunch time," the CNN reporter states briskly as the picture flips to shaky real-time helicopter footage of Captain America fighting with the Winter Soldier.
Tony tunes out the news anchor and watches breathlessly as the two super-soldiers trade blow for blow. He sees the instant Steve snatches the mask away from his opponent and knows who he is fighting. Only a moment later, SHIELD's STRIKE team arrives and the news watches as Captain America, Black Widow and an unidentified man who looks a lot like Sam Wilson get taken into custody.
"Why haven't they reached out?" Clint asks bewildered.
Tony shakes his head. He'd figured last time it had been because ultimately neither Natasha or Steve had trusted him enough to just pick up the phone; they hadn't been close after New York. Since he'd learned about Barnes and his parents, Tony had figured that had played into Steve's thinking. This time though, he knows Steve and Natasha better and they've had plenty of time to reach out even before learning the Winter Soldier's identity. He has no answer for Clint.
Tony hacks SHIELD and finds out they've lost their captives somewhere in transit. Clint shakes his head at tracking down their safe house; between Fury and Natasha there are too many options.
What they decide is to bring Bruce and Thor up to speed and they make arrangements to head out to DC the next day, poised at least to be on scene to support whenever their team-mates resurface.
But as the sun comes up on the Eastern seaboard, the helicarriers are launched, Fury and Natasha make their play to drag HYDRA into the light and Steve gets his reunion with Bucky which goes as well as it did before with Steve ending up in the hospital.
Tony's reminded of how Strange warned him that time would force a path forward even if temporarily diverted.
When they land, they can only support the physical clean-up.
Digitally, thanks to the hacking Tony has already done, JARVIS had been perfectly positioned when Natasha started downloading information to the web to contain things. His AI worked diligently on filtering out anything which would compromise undercover situations or agents' lives. JARVIS also swept up anything which may be dangerous in the public domain; schematics for weapons, plans for infiltration into government computers, and locations of known criminals SHIELD has locked away.
The physical clean-up is as bad but not as bad as it could have been. Tony had only been able to keep two of the helicarriers grounded. The last one though…it's completely destroyed and littering the Potomac. It had also taken out half of the Triskelion which is in ruins. Thousands of people are suddenly out of work and not all of them are HYDRA; those which are will slip back into the woodwork and fall on their feet, Tony's certain of that.
Tony makes it to Steve's hospital room late at night. He carries the shield which he'd fished out of the river and places it against the wall quietly.
Sam jerks awake and is almost into a defensive position before he blinks and stills. "Sorry. I'm a little jumpy."
Tony nods. "Understandable given the day you've had."
Sam snorts his agreement and sits back in his uncomfortable chair.
Tony gestures at Steve. "He OK?"
"Physically, he's already mending. Doctors say he's going to be fine." Sam says.
"And what about the non-physical?" asks Tony pointedly.
Sam sighs heavily and rubs a thumb over his forehead, close to the dressing which is taped over one eye. "Your bet is as good as mine, Stark." He sighs heavily and shakes his head. "I've done a lot of work with veterans but this? This is way out of my wheelhouse." His gaze sharpens and he catches Tony's eyes with his own. "Steve said you all but drove him to the VA centre and shoved him through the door."
Tony shrugs. "He needed help."
"And you weren't it?" asks Sam with a note of accusation he doesn't hide.
"I'm not a soldier." Tony says bluntly. "And who exactly is qualified to deal with a man who comes back from a war seventy years too late? I figured at least the VA understood the difficulty veterans have in acclimatising back to civilian life and that was somewhat analogous to what Steve was going through."
Sam nods and grimaces apologetically. "I can see why you thought that." He sighs again and looks towards Steve, avoiding Tony's gaze. "This is…he wants to serve; thought SHIELD was the answer to that. Finding out he's been working alongside his worst enemy all this time? It's going to shake him."
"Why did Steve get beaten up so badly?" Tony asks pointedly. "He should have been able to take that guy down."
"Not my place to say." Sam replies and Tony can tell by the stubborn look on his face, Wilson's said as much as he's going to say. Sam underlines that by changing the subject and asking after Natasha.
"Doctors gave her the all clear. She's with Clint." Tony says. He'd sent the two of them ahead to his DC residence along with Bruce. He checks his watch. "Well, I have to go and see if I can get on top of the media coverage. I'll stop by again tomorrow."
"I'll tell Steve you came by." Sam offers.
Tony nods at the police officer stationed outside the room and makes his way down the corridor to the elevator. He's not entirely surprised when it opens up with Fury in it, dressed down in what Tony thinks is Fury's old man disguise of baggy pants, turtleneck and flap cap. He steps inside.
"I've made Coulson Director of SHIELD." Fury says. "He'll take point on the rebuilding."
"And you?" asks Tony.
"I'm going to hunt down these HYDRA bastards." Fury says. "Thanks for containing the web dump."
"What possessed you to release everything to the web?" Tony still doesn't know why they thought it was a good idea.
"Rogers wanted everything in the light. Seemed like the thing to do at the time." Fury admits.
"And if it killed as many SHIELD agents as HYDRA ones that was A-OK?" Tony shakes his head. "I know you guys accept collateral damage, but I can't believe you agreed to that."
"It was the wrong call." Fury concedes.
The elevator slides to a stop.
"Good luck, Stark." Fury shakes his hand.
Tony watches as Fury slinks out and heads through the throng of waiting reporters with no-one the wiser on who he is.
"Yeah, I'm going to need that luck," Tony murmurs under his breath as he strides out and immediately gets barraged by an array of bright lights and loud voices.