Heart of Iron
Summary: Stephen is really proud of how fast he's learning after he makes his first portal but then comes the astral projection that changes his life forever as he comes face to face with a force from a universe not his own and an ancient relic that will change the fate of his world.
HYDRA fell as she had predicted, in the early spring of the next year and before winter came, so did Stane. Well, HYDRA was purged from SHIELD, but they were still active to some degree. Toni was working with JARVIS and Fury on uncovering their bases all around the world while she employed Pepper and Happy and accepted Rhodey as her liaison with the military. No more weapons, that was clear as day to everyone in the world. Unarmed jets, armored vehicles and body armor for the soldiers, that was free game. As she looked over the stocks and the profits at the end of each quartal, she's impressed how much more money defense earned than offense. The only division that beat the one dealing with the military was the clean energy department. Though StarkPhones and StarkPads were a close second.
She was preparing to go into the medical world with tools and prosthetics but she wanted to establish her place in the business world first and start up all of her old charity organizations, such as the Maria Stark Foundation, and, of course, the Stark Expo.
She met Jarvis, at long last. He was old and wrinkly and still made the best hot chocolate Toni had ever tasted. He just looked at her, took in every aspect of her as she stood in his doorway, before drawing her into a tight embrace she was only too glad to return. They had stood there for what felt like hours but was too short before the man drew her into the safe house Nick had found for him. They talked for hours, having only exchanged one set of messages before Toni came to his doorstep when his wife, Ana, died and Toni expressed her condolences. She had loved Ana almost as much as her butler, but Jarvis will always have a special place in her heart. Jarvis was one of her constants and she has no desire to ever let that change. She even introduced him to her other JARVIS and it was fun to watch the two interact and bond.
Toni tried not to think about how close the dreaded date when Jarvis dies in his sleep was.
JARVIS, as was established earlier, was one of her constants from cycle to cycle. Though, until this time, she had never had him stay with her. It was impossible, given literally only her soul transcended from cycle to cycle. Instead, each time, Toni taught a young JARVIS that she was not as old - or rather as young - as she seemed. She taught him from the beginning about magic and aliens and all the things she had learned over the long years in which she had existed. Usually, it took her a whole year to get everything out, as there was a lot to tell and JARVIS refused to listen after a certain amount of time passed that she didn't eat or sleep, but this time ... Well, JARVIS had stayed with her in her vessel. He had been the only one keeping her sane in the long billions of years before even bacteria existed, while it was just her and the forming universe and no living being to keep her company. As it was, she and JARVIS were slowly turning the world around. Soon enough, they'll enter that point in time which starts the battle for the universe. They're getting ready, making the appropriate changes while continuously fooling the world that she was a normal person just like everyone else. It was hard, it was trying and tiring but it was necessary. Toni Stark had to be a household name before her hero - read protector, defender - journey begins in order for the world to feel the impact and for a new era to begin.
The Ancient One pretty much ignored her when she did return to Kamar-Taj for rest. Toni didn't mind. It let her have JARVIS lead her onto the Internet for their further plans to be set in place. Ever since her first fifty cycles, Toni always administered Extremis. In some cycles, it had made her practically god-like. It allowed her to control electronics while also having the standard supersoldier enhancements. She'd been hesitant to use it in those first fifty cycles. Extremis had its ups and downs, its mistakes and negative effects. In one cycle, wherein she distinctly remembers calling herself Superior Iron Man and being practically Earth's dictator, having all sorts of other heroes and vigilantes trying to stop and kill her - him? Even now, after all this time, it was confusing. Kind of the reason why Toni stopped referring to herself by the gender of past lives and instead stuck by her current one. It was easier on her sanity that way - and fighting them while at the same time struggling to prepare the planet for the coming of her nemesis. She has some dark memories from those times. In a cycle where people called her the Invincible Iron Man, the fiftieth cycle to be exact, she managed to near perfect the Extremis serum. All the scientists of Earth, from Reed Richards to Bruce Banner to Hank the Beast to Hank Pym to Helen Cho to Dr Wu to Shuri of Wakanda and even to various aliens scientists and ... special doctors, couldn't figure out what she had done to herself that time around. It had allowed her to download her consciousness into an AI form and then later heal her body after Captain Marvel had a go against her in the Civil War II. Yeah, that was a turbulent cycle, what with training Iron Heart - oh, the irony of it all - and then later dealing with Loki and becoming the Earth's Sorcerer Supreme in the next cycle almost right off the bat. Back then, she still couldn't believe that was her ... existence and, to be honest, even today it all felt like a really weird, bad dream.
Still, all those experiences have taught her a lot. Like going onto the Internet and doing stuff, hunting down both enemies and allies. After all the different lives she's lived, she pretty much knows what to expect. While she was now playing the waiting game for the main event, there were still all sorts of things to do to make the world a better place and set the right groundwork for later projects of great importance. One of which was the rift between the mutant community and its two leading representatives. Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr were a couple of idiots she'd dealt with one too many times and their squabbles in ideals, morals and politics made it impossible for the Accords to work as they should because Magneto always admonished them as just another Mutant Registration Act instead of a set of laws that made the superpowered/enhanced/mutant/inhuman population accountable but also safe, gave them legal and human rights that have been denied them for so long and kept them out of the hands of the military or scientists and the Professor went and made things all that much worse by trying to play mediator and ending up starting a new mutant fight. This time around, though, Toni could interfere as much as she wants and she's been at it for years. Thankfully, mutants weren't the only ones who were showing signs of having powers by the time her journey will officially start in the eyes of the public. Still, JARVIS and her had much to prepare.
For now, she just kept those two idiots busy. The less they interacted, the lesser chance there was for them to complicate her job any more than it already was. After all, Richards, his family and Victor Von Doom will be going to space in just a couple of years and they will be coming back with powers the likes of which the world has never seen before outside of mutants and, of course, Captain America. They will have superpowers and how they react to that will set the scores of how the public will take it. By then, she, too, will be making a splash the size of a tsunami. She'll have a say in it all soon enough.
00000
New Year's Eve 1999 in Bern went about as well as she could have hoped for it to go, given she literally stayed long enough to give her speech, meet Dr Wu and Dr Ho Yinsen - oh god, Yinsen - and then left the building before either Maya Hansen or Aldrich Killian could get to talk to her. Killian, as much as he had been an outright bastard about 70% of the cycles she knew him in, still didn't deserve to just go and throw himself off of the building when the clock struck twelve. Toni could have stopped that, she knew. Had she stayed, had she talked to him, he would be alive. But he would also go one of three ways, one of which was so rare it happened only twenty times and that's an extremely low number given how many cycles she's lived through the AIM shit. He would either become a good guy if she helped him or he would try to undermine her, hack her tech and attempt to take over/topple her company. And that was if she helped him in his research. If she didn't, he'd just go on and start his own terrorist organization and one day try to execute the president. As it was, this was the best option. She had accidentally learned if it when, one cycle, she met a particular doctor and he successfully distracted her for the entire night from the moment he stole her away from Yinsen and Wu, not giving Killian an opening to speak with her. It was morbid, but it was the best option.
Maya, on the other hand, was caught barely a year later in a secret underground HYDRA lab trying to perfect the Extremis virus. SHIELD had busted them and the woman was tried for crimes against humanity, domestic terrorism and using humans for test subjects. She had apparently become enough of a HYDRA believed to crack the cyanide pill in her mouth the second her sentence was read. She died in the court room and Toni just erased all digital evidence of her work. Good thing Fury was director now and knew these labs are to be burned to the ground unless they want to risk other bad guys getting their hands on some seriously messed up stuff and making more problems for them.
Years passed and in 2008, the group called the Ten Rings struck in Afghanistan. Rhodey was going there for a weapons demonstration and Toni's presence was requested for a demonstration of her body armor for the soldiers. All of her friends and especially JARVIS made a fuss about her letting herself get kidnapped, apparently forgetting - or not particularly caring, in JARVIS' case - that she was immaterial and wouldn't get hurt. Toni didn't heed their pleas to reconsider and instead let it happen. Yinsen was in one of those caves and she was getting him out.
Of course, the Ancient One was not at all pleased with Toni asking for her stuff back, which she found hilarious. In the end, there was nothing the bald woman could do to stop her from taking her vessel and Toni used it to create an artificial, temporary body for herself and recreated what had for so long been one of her greatest nightmares. She stayed in Afghanistan for only three weeks this time around and actually managed to get Yinsen out of the cave - of course she did. She already had a perfect Arc Reactor and suit on her to get out - as well as destroying all of the weapons Stane had managed to sell to the fuckers before she put him behind bars. Nothing compared to the weapons she used to make for the government and this time around it had been because of a ransom rather than weaponry. Unfortunately, Yinsen was still injured and fir a long while, she had thought he wouldn't survive. Even with the help of her suit, it was a very close call by the time Rhodey found them. But Yinsen survived, recovered and she brought him back to a safe Gulmira after she made her first battle as Iron Maiden.
Though, instead of dealing with Stane and that knock off Iron Monger armor this time around, Toni fought the actual Mandarin, the real leader of the Ten Rings who was none too happy with Toni destroying a big chunk of his terrorist cell. She did not like that this version of him also had the Makulan Rings - she had faced him in about a thousand different cycles, once as a teenager who still hadn't graduated high school but was already an armored hero - but, thankfully, it was only one so she was able to defeat him fairly easily even without showing her hand too soon. Iron Maiden was, of course, a hero and Toni still made her iconic "I am Iron Maiden" press conference. It was necessary. It was the start of her journey.
And so the journey began.
00000
She began working on the Accords with Fury and the UN even as in another state, the Hulk was born. Fury glared at her when he found out about Bruce Banner's accident and the being all that Gamma radiation had created. Toni made no comment, only handed him the clauses meant to protect her many times teammate and science bro from General Thaddeus Ross and allow him a relatively normal life while he tries to figure out how to live with his new alter ego.
As she launched her Arc Reactor clean energy project and opened the Stark Expo in 2010, Ivan Vanko made his appearance. Only this time, Toni wasn't exactly a living being to suffer from palladium poisoning, though she did race in Monaco after she stopped him from ruining everyone's day. She had her own security guard his cell and even left an Iron Maiden armor to act as a sentinel so Justin Hammer can't get to him and cause untold property damage and risk thousands of lives. The Expo didn't go without a hitch - 'Whiplash' still made an appearance but was easily subdued given the armor Toni was using even without her actual Arc Reactor present - but it wasn't too big of a disaster. Hammer had no ground to stand on, the senators that requested a hearing with her regarding the armor and how she planned to use it were pleasantly courteous and not HYDRA and were extremely interested in the Accords she'd started drawing up. She couldn't imagine a better way to introduce them to the world, really.
It certainly lessened the tension between the Brotherhood and the X-Men, that was for sure, as well as seeming to calm the recently established Fantastic Four and even Doom. All in a day's work. Nice.
She also met a certain boy that will one day grow up to be a great hero she will be proud to call her protege and pseudo son. She only hoped he has better luck this time around, though she knew she shouldn't hold her breath. There were some constants in every cycle that must happen, even as they differently shaped the future.
Toni didn't interfere in the Asgardian Royal Family's business beyond informing Fury that his agents probably shouldn't approach the Destroyer Armor. She just watched the drama unfold as Loki found out he was adopted, Thor nearly died, Odin fell into the Odinsleep and Hela was left to defend Asgard. The brothers fought, Frigga wept, Hela raged at the two idiots and Thor broke the Bifrost. Loki fell and was lost and Toni grimaced in guilt as she watched him go to his torturer and soon to be enslaver, but she knew this was necessary. If nothing else, this should drive it into Odin's thick skull that he should listen to her more. She'd warned him about Loki's fall and he had disregarded it, confident in his biological childrens' abilities and loyalties to stop their youngest, adopted brother. Thor mourned but Hela raged. The need for Ragnarok nearly appeared again, so Toni interfered when Thor returned safely to his 'Lady', Dr Jane Foster, and she, Hela and Frigga rounded on Odin and talked his ears off until they bled. The old bastard just went back into the Odinsleep and left his grieving wife and seething daughter to deal with the chaos his stupidity caused. Odin had truly not counted on the bonds his children would forge and had expected blind loyalty and devotion.
Toni had to reassure the two royal ladies of Asgard that Odin's stupidity hadn't cost Loki his life but that, when he returns, he will not be the same and he will need their support.
About a year later, she came to Nick's apartment only to find it empty save for Goose, who kept her company for hours, almost the entire next day. She waited patiently until the Director of SHIELD made his way into the apartment, looking exhausted as fuck. Toni only took a peek at the calendar to know what was bothering him now.
"Ah," she breathed in understanding, giving him a near pitying look. Sometimes, this time was the most trying in several cycles. "You met Steven Grant Rogers, Captain America."
"Just had him brought out of the ice a week ago. Showed signs of waking since yesterday morning. Woke up today and nearly seriously injured one of our agents when she was trying to keep him calm while we explained everything."
Toni snorted. "Oh, Popeye." She ignored the glare she got for the nickname. "I told you not to try that shit and just be upfront with Capsicle. He would have appreciated it more than the deception."
"You could have told me he'd seen that game, you know," he accused and Toni's snort this time was dismissive. He sighed and sat down on the better couch he'd bought once they started working on the Accords and he started getting cramps in his back and neck. "So, the time is almost here? For the invasion in New York? What's our play for that?"
"Well, as long as you haven't started messing with the Tesseract, everything should be fine." She'd specifically given him instructions not to meddle with the Space Stone or try to use its energy as a weapon or something. The cube was currently locked away in a secret, safe bunker where she will wait for the right time to greet Loki once he returns to Earth with the Mind Stone. No mind control, no trauma, no 2012 New York invasion, no nukes heading fir New York and her eternal enemy will be none the wiser that his plan to erase her hadn't worked. "How's Cap taking to the changes?"
"Not well," Fury grimaced at his own admission and Toni nodded, knowing this fact already. "I don't think he's ready to face his 'miraculously alive' friend quite yet."
"I disagree. James would be a calming influence as he integrates into the new society." James Buchanan Barnes was found in one of HYDRA's bunkers when she and Fury started purging SHIELD of the Nazi organization. Toni had immediately created BARF and started ridding him of the Winter Soldier programming and giving him his life back. He, too, was adjusting but he seemed more fascinated than anything with the new world he was living in. Rogers will need his openness to all of that if they want a stable and accepting Captain America and not a man stuck in the past until it's too late, as has, unfortunately, happened a lot in the previous cycles. "They'll need each other, Nick. Don't drag this out."
In the end, Nick agreed. In his mind, Toni knew the best, after all.
She never told him that 5% of the time, the man that wakes up from the ice is Commander Hydra.
00000
On the expected date, Toni sits in front of the glowing Tesseract when a wormhole opens and out pops the god of mischief, eyes a bright blue instead of a cold green. He looks around, notices her and stops, obviously intrigued by what was essentially a free, wandering soul.
"Who are you?" Loki asks, frowning, stepping closer with the Scepter with the Mind Stone poised for attack should he sense danger. Toni still moved faster, striking like a king cobra, placing two fingers on the Frost Giant's forehead and channeling the Arc Reactor's energy that was too similar to an Infinity Stone's energy signature to not be ineffective against the mind control Loki was under. She watched him sag as if his strings were cut and just sit-floated above him as he tried to regain some senses.
"All you need to know is that I am the enemy of Thanos."