Been There, Blown That Up
Summary: After Loki's defeat and his fall from the portal, Tony starts preaching about a murderous purple titan out to get them in the depths of space.
Wait. What?
On the other side of the universe, Nebula loses her cool approximately two seconds after laying eyes on Thanos and finds herself on a wild chase through the galaxy. Now, where exactly was that pathetic piece of rock Terra again?
Chapter 12
By the time Steve and the others arrived at the spaceship's crash site it was already too late. The vessel was abandoned, the invaders had fled and the military was swarming all over everything they had left behind.
The team was left in a state of puzzlement. How had the military managed to arrive earlier than them? Why hadn't they heard about the crash sooner? Nobody wanted a repeat of the New York invasion, but they wouldn't be able to stop anything if they failed even the simple step of showing up in time to confront their enemies.
Once all of them had filed back into the jet, the atmosphere among the team was accordingly tense.
They couldn't even start an impromptu team meeting on their way back to the tower, seeing as there was a blatantly empty spot in their midst.
"Where is he?" Clint shook his head in exasperation. "With everything he's been talking about, you'd think Tony would have been the first at the scene."
"JARVIS admitted that there was a flaw in his programming." Bruce's voice was too quiet for Steve to read anything out of it. "It's why he didn't notify us as soon as sensors picked up on the spaceship."
Steve's brows knit into a frown. He knew far from everything about Tony's AI, but as far as he knew, JARVIS didn't make mistakes. Ever. Had someone managed to get their fingers on him and messed with his coding?
"You're saying he might not even know," Steve said, just to make sure.
Bruce shrugged. "Maybe. If JARVIS didn't managed to smooth out the issue yet. And if he hasn't looked at a news station for a few hours."
Tony losing a few hours in his lab (or a few dozen) was hardly anything new. JARVIS developing a glitch, however, was.
"It's worth a try," Steve decided regardless. No matter what had caused Tony to miss their assembly call, Steve felt far more comfortable discussing their next move with all of them present.
As soon as the jet set down on the landing pad of Avengers tower, their team split up. Bruce headed down to the lab, Thor volunteered to check the common area and Clint and Natasha stayed behind to keep an eye on the situation and to try to reach Pepper or Rhodey.
Steve, meanwhile, climbed the stairs towards Tony's bedroom. Seeing as Tony rarely had a reason to use it at this time of the day, it was more out of the need to exhaust all options rather than actual expectancy to find him.
Time was running out. They couldn't stay idle when they needed to make plans against the unknown number of potentially – most likely – hostile alien invaders that might have already successfully infiltrated Earth.
Steve rounded a corner to find Tony smuggling one of the most likely hostile alien invaders into his bedroom.
Steve blinked and tried to come up with a different explanation for what he was seeing. Unfortunately there wasn't a lot of room for interpretation when Tony was pushing a blue-skinned woman through the doorway with the words "– gotta hurry. They're probably already on their way back."
Sparking pieces of machinery poked out of her broken leg. One of her eyes looked artificial. Mildly hysterical, Steve wondered if Tony had chosen the worst possible time to finish building an alien looking but not-actually-from-outer-space android.
The woman's neck snapped around to look straight at Steve. Steve flinched and stared right back.
Tony remained oblivious and kept pushing at the woman's back, unable to move her a single inch. "What are you waiting for? Come on, they might be here any minute."
"They already are," the woman said in a monotone voice. It didn't do anything to disprove Steve's android theory.
"What do you mean, they already– Oh."
Tony and Steve's eyes met. For lack of anything better to do, Steve felt himself give an awkward wave. "Hey, Tony."
Tony didn't react. Neither of them moved in an uncomfortably drawn-out moment of mute staring.
"I swear, this isn't what it looks like," Tony said in a tone of voice that suggested he hadn't quite figured out who he was trying to convince.
Next to him, the android-alien lady raised what looked like a lethal, futuristic weapon. "No witnesses."
"Oh, put that down." Tony rolled his eyes, pushing down the blaster in a sign of incredibly lacking self-preservation.
"That's one of the aliens who crash landed in the city half an hour ago," Steve said. He gave up on trying to turn the sentence into a question about halfway through.
"Okay, so maybe it's exactly what it looks like," Tony said. "But I've got a great explanation for it. You'll be blown away by just how amazing of an explanation it's going to be."
Tony fell silent. Steve waited. When no explanation followed – amazing or otherwise – Steve prompted, "Yes?"
"Right. Yes. Explanation, um. Nebula?" Tony quite unsubtly nudged the alien lady – whose name seemed to be Nebula – with his elbow. He grunted at the punch he received in return.
Still, Nebula obeyed, although she did so with a moody, mildly murderous looking scowl. "Stark and I communicated through... radio."
Steve blinked. "Radio?"
"Yeah," Tony said, latching onto that excuse with a wince. "We're alien pen pals."
Steve let that statement stand in the air until it made Tony squirm.
"... So. Erm." Tony opened his mouth – presumably to attempt to salvage the situation – when a raccoon that was walking on two legs poked its head out of the doorway and spoke.
"Are you morons coming or what? We're gonna fall asleep in there if you're gonna take much longer." Just like that, it was gone again.
Steve wished he'd traded Thor for the blessedly empty, alien-free common area.
At the very least, Steve was fairly certain that he was not dealing with some sort of odd, elaborate hostage situation. Not only did Tony look far too calm to be in any sort of mortal peril, he also hadn't used any of the facial cues or hand-signs they'd practiced for emergencies.
"I'm going to go downstairs," Steve said, gesturing behind himself and feeling no shame whatsoever for excusing himself from the situation. Sometimes, one simply needed to be aware of one's personal limits.
"... Right," Tony said, finally managing to usher Nebula into his bedroom and out of sight. Somehow, it didn't make Steve feel better. "I'm gonna be right there. In a bit. After I've dealt with... this."
Following the stairs towards the common area, Steve hoped genuinely that Tony would soon finish "this" and follow, seeing as he had no clue whatsoever what to tell the other Avengers if he didn't.
Nebula resolutely refused to stay behind with the Guardians as Tony went to deal with the Avengers. He was aware of her inability to trust anyone, but this was going a bit far. It made him feel like she didn't trust him to take care of himself – although, seeing as she'd been forced to witness him slowly wasting away after mere days without food and water in the depths of space, he supposed she might have developed a somewhat worrying perception of his limitations as a human.
They argued the entire way down to the common area, Tony trying to convince Nebula that he was fine on his own, thank-you-very-much, and Nebula insisting that Tony wouldn't be able to defend himself from so much as a wild Praaz.
Tony managed to feel insulted despite the fact that he had no clue what a Praaz was supposed to be.
By the time they had half a dozen pairs of eyes in various states of wariness and hostility pinned on them (or rather, on Nebula), Tony realized that they had spent so much time bickering, they had completely forgotten to settle on a somewhat more believable excuse as to why they even knew each other.
"... So," he started, wondering not for the first time where his impeccable improvisation skills had evaporated to. "This is Nebula."
Nobody had anything to say to that.
"She crashed the spaceship in Central Park."
"It was not me to blame," Nebula grumbled, crossing her arms in a petulant way.
"Why is she here now?" Bruce asked, a mild frown marring his otherwise neutral expression. "You clearly know her. How?"
Tony had hoped for a sudden burst of inspiration to hit him before this point. What he found himself saying instead was, "Would you believe me if I told you she crashed on Earth E.T. style when I was six?"
Seeing as Nebula stared at him just as incredulous as everybody else, Tony estimated his chances rather low. He racked his brain for something else, something the Avengers would buy, something they'd be able to believe... and came to a decision.
He sighed. "Okay, look, guys. There's something I need to tell you."
When the truth was more outrageous than any lie he came up with could ever be, why should he even try?
"It's time I told you the truth."
It took Tony several hours and more personal details shed about his team than any of them liked until he had convinced the Avengers that he had, in fact, come back from the future.
It took longer for them to stop staring at him like he was an entirely different person – which, in some way, he supposed he was.
It took no time at all to persuade them to leave all further explanations for the public to him. Nebula was not the type of person to be convinced of staying in hiding, and footage of her leaving and entering the tower like it belonged to her soon started to circulate.
In other words, Tony needed to do some damage control.
"What could you possibly say to the public?" Bruce asked quietly. He had not yet stopped avoiding Tony's glance, and it made discomfort squirm in Tony's gut. "They'll never believe the truth. You can't convince them the way you have us."
"I'm not planning to," Tony admitted. "In fact, I'm not planning to tell them anything even remotely close to it."
The fact was, regular people wouldn't be able to handle the truth, even if Tony found some way of making them believe him in the first place. Neither would he be able to invent some sort of excuse that everybody – or even the majority – would buy.
Tony sent Bruce a playful grin. "I'm gonna make sure that nobody will ever be able to figure out what actually happened."
"– said to have been harboring fugitives from outer space after the controversial camera footage taken in Central Park. Sources from law enforcement have now released Stark's statement. The sincerity of such statement has been up for debate, seeing as he claims to have 'met during [his] first test run of [his] interstellar Iron Man armor.'"
Rhodey flicked his wrist to make the article disappear. A YouTube video took its place, shaky footage that looked like it was taken with a phone inside of Stark tower.
It showed Tony smiling at the camera while Nebula stood beside him, sporting an unnerving stare. They seemed to be standing in front of a coffee machine.
"Is she actually from space?" a voice blurted out from behind the camera, high sounding as though from a teenager.
A glance at the video description told Rhodey that it was taken by one of Stark Industries' interns.
"Sure is." On the screen, Tony tried to lay his hand on Nebula's shoulder and missed as she took a purposeful step back. "Her name's Nebula. We met through our mutual passion of collecting rocks."
The camera shook as though its owner had almost dropped it. "... Collecting rocks," the intern repeated, sounding vaguely as though she thought she was being made fun of.
"... Oh." Nebula's expression morphed from confusion to realization as Tony's words sank in. She sent Tony a glare that suggested she was tempted to pummel him into the nearest wall.
Rhodey batted the video away. A forum entry was next.
radio-lopis: guys
radio-lopis: have u seen the newest video yet?
comicsansa: the one with cnn
comicsansa: where he says one of his teleportation experiments went wrong and he transported to an alien planet
comicsansa: ?
mag3: old news man.
one-in-a-melon: don't know bout you, but my favorite was the one where he says he met her in the cave where he built his first Iron Man armoe
one-in-a-melon: armor*
radio-lopis: think again! there's a new one
radio-lopis: [link]
mag3: omfg
one-in-a-melon: forget what I said
one-in-a-melon: this one
one-in-a-melon: this one's my favorite
Rhodey opened the video.
"She doesn't belong here!" Two security guards seemed to be restraining a young man whose face was contorted in a hateful glare. Tony and Nebula stood beside them, Tony's hand raised as though he contemplated physically dragging Nebula away from the situation.
Nebula's scowl suggested that she would not allow such a thing.
"She's just the beginning! She was probably sent to make way for the next invasion forces! Why isn't she locked up in a cell?!"
Tony opened his mouth to answer. Nebula, looking as though her patience had finally snapped, was quicker.
"I have participated in and lead war crusades since I can remember. Worlds have fallen under my command one after the other, lost in fire and the screams of innocents dying. In another reality, your pathetic planet would have been one of them."
She took a step forward, and the camera wobbled as though its owner was barely holding onto it.
"You can count yourself lucky that I hate my father more than I hate anything. I will spare this useless piece of rock if it means that I will one day rip apart its would-be conqueror limb by limb, drawing out his suffering so he will understand even an inkling of the pain he has caused me every single day of my life."
All the blood had drained from the protester's face and his eyes were stuck on Nebula in a terrified, frozen stare.
Once Tony had finished staring himself, he gave a cheerful – but forced – laugh. "Good one, Nebula. Haven't heard that one before." Turning to the protester, he added, "Will that be all?"
The guy was smart enough to flee while his limbs were still intact.
Fueled by morbid curiosity, Rhodey kept going. He shifted through yet another gossip site, filled with disbelief at the proof that Tony had actually succeeded. Entertaining though as it was, it wasn't quite enough to distract himself from the revelation Tony had made – the real one.
His best friend was a time traveler? Well, alright then. Weirder things had happened. (Except they really, genuinely hadn't.)
He found a forum with yet another conspiracy theory he hadn't read before and snorted.
At the other end of the sofa, Steve was stubbornly switching the TV channel. He waited a few seconds, grumbled in discontent and did it again. And again.
Eventually, after neither Rhodey nor Tony had the decency to react to his obvious state of distress, he threw his hands in the air and let himself drop backwards. "I give up."
"Oh?" Rhodey skimmed the rest of the blog post he'd been reading. Deciding to pretend as though he didn't know what Steve meant, he asked, "What's wrong?"
"There's nothing. Absolutely nothing." Steve shook his head in disbelief. "Not a single news station is reporting anything new on Nebula. Or the Guardians. Or... anything."
"I told you I'd do it." Tony popped a handful chips into his mouth and grimaced in instant regret. Seeing as Rhodey had no clue where DUM-E had even found the bag, he wasn't surprised. He was fairly sure that particular brand no longer existed.
"I know you did. I just," Steve threw up his hands in exasperation, "I didn't expect it to work this well!"
"What can I say," Tony said, squinting at the bag of chips in his hands. He shrugged, and took another handful. "I know how the media works. Trust me, tabloids and online forums are having a blast right now. Respectable news stations can't say a word. They'd risk losing their credibility."
Steve shook his head. His disbelief was growing weaker, giving way to reluctant acceptance. "There should be something. This is ridiculous."
"Oh, I'm sure you'll be able to find a few speculations on whether this is all some publicity stunt or something. Anything that'll make them sound rational and not like they're buying the ramblings of a madman."
"You're unbelievable," Steve muttered, although there wasn't a trace of irritation in his voice. He, like most of the team, was still trying to fit the new revelation about Tony into the image they'd had of him up until now.
"This won't solve everything," Rhodey felt the need to point out. Someone had to be the rational one and remind Tony that a trip to the past wasn't a joy ride. "You might have gotten the public and the media off your back, but this won't do anything to fend off SHIELD. Or even the government."
If someone had been moronic enough to try and take away Tony's armor in the attempt to gain a strategic advantage, someone would certainly attempt to profit off of his alien friends, as well.
"Oh, I know," Tony said. He paused, a potato chip in his hand and his lips pulled into a grin. "Let them come and give it their best shot."
Steve sighed, sinking back into the couch and lacking any will of resistance.
Rhodey rubbed his temples and suppressed a smirk, trying for all it was worth to put on an exasperated expression. He had an image to uphold.
In reality, he couldn't wait to witness the poor people who would dare to get the better of Tony Stark. Tony, who'd gone through hell and come out with the intent to beat the strongest creature in the universe.
A/N: Beta'd by the wonderful To Mockingbird, PyrothTenka and Igornerd!
Please be a dear and let me know what you thought! :)
~Gwen
