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.
Loki easily became an ally and, with him, so did Thor, after he realized he had his brother back thanks to Stark's interference. She sat them down and started explaining the most important details of her story that they should know, soon after making a deal with them to better protect the Infinity Stones now in their possession. She got then to sign the Accords, join the fledgling Avengers Initiative and go back to Asgard with the Tesseract. Needless to say, Loki was welcomed like the Prince he was and Hela even had Odin apologize to him while Frigga held on and cried all over Loki even as Thor took them in an enormous bear hug. Toni already felt thankful that she had no physical body for the blond Asgardian to squeeze the life out of.
'Not yet, anyway.' And not for a few more years she thought even as she made the final adjustments to keep the Mind Stone secure in the Tesseract's old place. Once she was satisfied, she returned to Kamar-Taj and waited for James to call.
Five weeks later, she was showing the supersoldiers around New York, excusing some of her more 'peculiar' behavior on not liking to be touched - she couldn't take the Arc Reactor out all the time and she controlled her suits through mental remote control with JARVIS as her ever faithful co-pilot - after Afghanistan. Barnes was suspicious - though he was not surprised by this behavior, as Toni had insisted on the same thing during their BARF sessions. He had mostly agreed because he always feared he might accidentally hurt her should the Winter Soldier rear its head at the most unexpected of times - but let it be and Rogers was just grateful someone had taken the time to actually try and teach him properly about the world he had woken up in. Fury didn't like Toni exposing herself like that but this wasn't the first time Toni moved about without a body while tricking everyone else around her into thinking otherwise. Besides, it was necessary. She wants the Avengers to be as strong as possible this time around. She's not sure what other changes Thanos might have made or how else the lack of her proper existence in this cycle had changed the universe. They had lucked out so far.
She eventually made Rhodey War Machine and crash-landed in Tennese so she can meet young Harley Keener, who will one day become Rescue. She brought Bruce home and had Fury assemble the team in 2014. A year later, she managed to get most of the other enhanced, superpowered, Inhuman or mutant individuals and teams brought under the Avengers Initiative and they were loved by the world. She also sent Romanov and Rogers to recruit Ant Man and the Wasp. Starks and SHIELD weren't welcome in Dr Hank Pym's house, even if she was bearing gifts of a possibility to return Dr Janet Van Dyne-Pym, the original Wasp, back from the Quantum Realm. Hopefully, Captain America might be, though there's as much of a chance Pym will turn him away because he sees him as something precious to Howard. Seriously, that's just bullshit but Toni knew there was nothing she could do about it.
Thor and Loki came back, reporting to Toni and Fury that the Reality Stone was now placed somewhere else after the mess it made of the Nine Realms and London. They brought with them Valkyrie, who also joined the Avengers Initiative and brought their numbers up by one more powerful warrior. Things appeared to be going smoothly enough. Between all of them, they could finally start hunting down what was left of HYDRA, which was unfortunately still a lot. Still, they were efficient and there was less and less left of HYDRA every week. The UN approved of this effectiveness and worked well with them. There were no indications that a Civil War will start any time soon. Toni thought it to be a good time to bring in more players. She found Peter Benjamin Parker and brought him in as a part time member and started with him, Harley and some of the younger mutants and Inhumans the Young Avengers for underage members. They can become full-fledged Avengers after they hit twenty one and will be called out into the field only when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, they help with search and rescue and the relief efforts.
She also had Fury contact Captain Marvel while she herself sent out a distress beacon she knew the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' will pick up and respond to. They arrived at pretty much the same time and got pretty much the same briefing from her and Fury before Danvers was taken to the side and they explained a little more in depth to her about Toni's situation. She had the same clearance as Thor and Loki, though after she eventually started dating Rhodey and showed where her loyalties lay, Toni let her know a bit more, making her closer to her new boyfriend's level.
Toni was eventually reached out to by King T'Chaka of Wakanda, requesting a meeting with her regarding the Accords and the Avengers Initiative. As Wakanda was still closed off from the rest of the world and Kamar-Taj was practically up in arms after Kaecilius defected and took several dozen students with him as his followers, Toni agreed to the meeting but only in hologram form because 'she was so busy' these days due to finalizing reports on the Young Avengers, the joining of the Guardians of the Galaxy to their ranks and the report on the final fall of HYDRA. The King was, thankfully, a reasonable man and they scheduled a holo-conference later that week. Toni was both surprised and not at all to find the entire royal family as well as the Dora Milaje to be in attendance on the Wakandan side of the meeting. She guessed it was okay. She, after all, always had JARVIS with her, though she could see that they were more intrigued by the fact that Dum-E, U and Butterfingers were playing some game behind her back as she leaned against the workbench for the meeting. She always made her bots. They were the lights in her cloudy life and muggy days. They were her family, her kids, and she wouldn't change them for the world.
By the end of that meeting, T'Challa and Shuri signed the Accords and joined as part time members of the Avengers and Young Avengers respectively and she and Shuri started up a scientific rapport that had even T'Challa dumbfounded most of the time. All in all, she had a new ally and new members even as she helped T'Chaka and T'Challa bring Wakanda back into the world after centuries of isolation. The mere fact that Toni Stark, paragon and main preacher and practitioner of transparency and accountability, was vouching for them eased the transaction considerably. Toni at times felt like a hypocrite, as she talked about no secret keeping but kept the fact that she wasn't even alive hidden.
But then Dr Helen Cho finally invented her Cradle and Toni immediately set out on a collaboration effort with her. It's not as though Toni and JARVIS can't make one on their own, but she preferred to have a confidant in such things. She scheduled a meeting with the woman with Rhodey, Happy and Pepper flanking her as they got the doctor to sign a NDA and then she showed her the truth. Helen, unsurprisingly, was more than willing to help her create a body of her own after Toni explained the threat she knew to be coming and that only she could fight. With the help of Dr Wu, who also learned the truth for the sake of the project, the three of them started the painstakingly slow process of building Toni a body that she should have had from the beginning, had it not been for Thanos. Thankfully, Toni had kept a bit of her infant tissue and was able to do the same trick again for her new artificial but real body in order to give herself her own DNA structure. It was a project so secret she actually kept it from Nick. All she told him was that she could finally work on a weapon that will end the fight once and for all.
They were reading a very interesting paper on the nervous system when the event finally happened, the accident that will change a man's life. Toni didn't dare look at the reports or the pictures. She prevented Helen from reaching out with the Cradle, knowing loss must drive the brilliant man in the direction he was meant to take. The universe will only push harder if this attempt was thwarted. Still, she did not go to Kamar-Taj right up to the moment when she felt some idiot approach her vault where the 'Heart of Iron' was kept. She wasn't even surprised by who she saw and whom she saved, but she still took him in like a drowning man did air.
He looked almost exactly as she remembered him from each and every cycle. The man changed little, be it appearances or attitude. He was still tall, broad shouldered, trim and fit, a finely styled goatee and perfect hair, hands scarred, high and prominent cheekbones and the most amazing eyes Toni had ever seen. His robes changed sometimes through the cycles, but he always looked really good in them. He still didn't have his most loyal companion nor the power she was mostly used from him, but that would come soon enough and he was still as brilliant as always. She wasn't surprised that some of the first words exchanged between them were 'asshole' and 'douchebag'. In many cycles, those were endearments that only they were allowed to call each other. It confused the fuck out of other people, but they never tried to explain it, to themselves or anyone else. It's just how they worked.
Much of their constant rapport stayed the same. The only difference was, now Toni knew magic, too, and currently better than Doctor Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, the best of all of the sorcerers, did. She was his mentor and taught him many things that she had learned over the cycles would be extremely useful to him and would usually take up too much of his time when he later trains for the title itself. They still talked about all sorts of things even as Toni helped the man study and practice. Their rough first meeting was forgotten in favor of how compatible they were and Toni tried to tell her 'heart' to take a break and stop pinning after a man who probably only saw her as his ghost mentor. She's well aware that could change, especially if this Strange looks into fourteen million six hundred and five futures like most of his iterations do, but she'd prefer it not to become so desperate a situation that he lives through that pain, ever. She knew battling Dormammu will leave enough of a mark on him as it is. No need to add more to it.
"What's on your mind?" She shook off her thoughts when her companion asked, a curious but worried frown on his astral face. "You seemed deep in thought. I've tried calling you a few times but you weren't responding."
Toni just gave Stephen a small smile that felt a bit too shaky for her liking and waved him off. "Oh, nothing. Just ... Thinking about the past. I guess I really drifted off, huh?"
The doctor seemed to hesitate, as though fearing he might overstep. "Before you came to Kamar-Taj?"
Toni nodded, eyes getting glazed again. In truth, this was the only time she'd spent more than a year with the Sorcerers of Earth. And by far. Now, she had practically been one of its founders and an 'administrator' for millennia. There really was a lot of past before Kamar-Taj that it might amount to something normal if it is put in proportion with the rest of her experiences. "Yeah. I lost a lot and had nothing for a long while before I came here." Whole universes and too much time, an eternity almost, really. She wondered briefly how she had remained sane all these cycles and knew it was because she had a mission in front of her. She wondered if she'd be able to stay sane after she finishes this mission.
She'd never had as much time to think things through as this time around. She finally knew the answer to this conflict between her and Thanos. The answer became obvious after she realized how the universe had bounced back from the bent Thanos had made by erasing her from physical existence. The end of one of them, whichever it may be, was not the answer. Toni would have never realized this had she not been removed from the picture and the universe retaliated in the only way it could, by giving her her Arc Reactor, her vessel, from the start. She finally had the right answer and relief had been a very prominent emotion throughout the millennia she watched the world form and then move on. She only just had to prepare everything for that solution to be possible and she had been mostly successful so far.
"You know what happened to my hands, what I lost," Stephen's reply snapped her once again back to the present, just the two of them meditating on the protection seals underneath Kamar-Taj, in its foundations. She payed close attention to her friend as he struggled to say what he wanted. "I thought I had no worth, no purpose and I ... I need that to move forward. I can now do these amazing things and I'll soon be able to help people again."
Toni tried not to be bitter about the implication of Stephen going back to his old life again. It had happened, in a few cycles, and she had only learned of it after Thanos came to Earth and far too easily ripped them apart because Karl Mordo could never measure up to Stephen Strange as the Sorcerer Supreme. Or those couple of times where Thanos never even got to them because Dormammu was released and devoured the Earth into his dimension with little to no resistance on their part because Stephen had quit and left as soon as shit started getting real in the New York Sanctum. There were also the ones wherein Strange fought off Dormammu but chose to channel magic into his hands in order to be a doctor once more and the then rouge Mordo would come for him and kill him, as well as every other sorcerer who had chosen to settle for their miracle instead of fight for their reality. Toni never blamed Stephen for his choice. Every sane person would run the other way when faced with the life of a hero. But that never stopped the disappointment when she found herself standing before Thanos without the most powerful Sorcerer Supreme of all. The Time Stone was defenseless without its Keeper.
"Sometimes," she said, only distantly hearing her own voice. "We figure out our purpose only when it hits us in the face like a brick wall. And it's not always what we thought it to be. Destiny and fate work in mysterious ways." She let him ponder that as she left their little session early, wondering whether this cycle will be one of disappointment and the wrench in her carefully laid plans.
00000
She almost believed it would be, when she and Stephen had that argument. She had not been planning on letting him know she was a ghost of her former self, not then and not ever. And to think that the conversation had even started off so well ...
She tried not to think about the "You aren't even human" comment Stephen had thrown in her face and the reality and truth behind those words. Because she wasn't. She probably hadn't been for longer than this cycle she tried not to think of his accusations and tried even harder not to connect them with those old word's of "You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play. To lay down on the wire and let the other guy crawl over you" and her reply of "I think I'd just cut the wire". There was no cutting the wire in that accursed choice. You can't have the best of both worlds, Toni knew that intimately. She hated that Stephen and her had gotten into such a fight over something as stupid and trivial as that.
Toni waited and hoped for a little over two days for Strange to come and find her, thinking he might apologize. She'd forgive him in a heartbeat but she suspected she won't be getting that apology in a long time, if ever, when the assault on Kamar-Taj - or rather the London Sanctum and then the other two - crumbled the ground underneath the strained friendship she was still holding out for. Toni knew her time at Kamar-Taj was up. If she stayed, she'd only be a distraction to Stephen in his training to become Sorcerer Supreme. Still, she waited for hours, not even reacting to the death of the Ancient One, hoping Stephen will be back to at least see him one more time before they are ripped from each other until Thanos comes. But he didn't come. Instead, the sorcerer guarding the level her vault was died in an attempt to fulfill her duty as two of Kaecilius followers attempted to raid the vault. Toni just busted open the doors and took care of them with ease belying the too many years of experience she carried.
Stark then walked over to the magical gateway that led to the New York Sanctum and casually left Kamar-Taj behind with a last glance before she flew off to her Tower, waiting for the shift when Stephen's powers grow exponentially after his battle with Dormammu. When it happened, Toni sighed sadly and started working on the clause for the Sorcerers of Kamar-Taj and their Sorcerer Supreme. She worked on them diligently and with great care. Depending on how good she could make these clauses, Kamar-Taj will either accept them or reject them and the latter was really not an option. They needed all the help they could get. Besides, it wasn't too hard, really. She'd learned the order inside and out several times by now, especially that one time she herself had been Sorcerer Supreme. This time around was an added bonus of her having been one of the founding forces behind the order and knowing and 'ruling' beside each Sorcerer Supreme from Agamotto to the Ancient One. The next Sorcerer Supreme was not yet trained. She expected him to come into his own soon enough.
And Stephen did. She felt the exact moment when all the magical energies on Earth shifted to accommodate and accept the newest protector of reality and the multiverse. Pepper watched in concern during a meeting between the two of them regarding some PR stuff as she shuddered through it, obviously wanting to help but not having the slightest clue as to how. Toni just waved her worries off as she tried to regain the breath that she didn't need as she wondered if the shift usually felt this intense or if she was just affected more than other practitioners of the Mystic Arts because of how she existed.
She sent Fury to Strange - in Hong Kong, mind you, where SHIELD knew something happened but they had no idea what, exactly, or how or why and Toni was not forthcoming with answers when Nick asked - to present him with the idea of joining the Avengers. Toni knew it will be an uphill battle to smooth all the ruffled feathers such a proposition will cause in the order but she also knew, ultimately, that the sorcerers will agree and fall in line with Stephen once they read the absolutely reasonable Accords clauses created for them.
She now knew Kamar-Taj inside and out and she had used that to its fullest.
"Is it done?" She asked when Nick called her a week later. She had a feeling she knew the answer but asking never hurt.
"It's done. Went down about exactly like you said it would. No additional requests. They accepted everything," Fury replied, sounding a bit horrified but she knew it's not from her predicting exactly how it will go. Fury may not know she was practically a secret part of the order since it was founded, but he knew enough of her past to not be surprised when she made such exact predictions.
"Then what has you so ... I'd say spooked but I don't think you'd appreciate the word choice."
The Director of SHIELD didn't even seem to notice. "It was a lot like meeting you all over again."
At that, Toni just laughed.
00000
"Is it done?" Yinsen, her long time friend by now, asked when he visited her one day in the workshop, turning up out of the blue, like he occasionally does. He, too, belonged to that tight circle that knew about the truth behind her existence. He was Yinsen. There was no way she was ever going to not tell him.
"Yeah, we got it in the bag," Toni answered without looking up from where she was checking and making modifications to the body she, Cho and Wu were making for her, though a fond smile tugged at her lips at his presence. "I'm almost done here, too. By the end of the month, I can inject it with Extremis and after that, it'll be all smooth sailing. Once it settles, I can connect with it and then we just need to input the Arc Reactor. And when that is done, I'll need a few weeks to get used to, you know, living again instead of just existing like this. Will you be available?" She looked up, hesitant and hopeful in one. It was only fitting. Yinsen had started her on this journey all those cycles ago, that much she remembered despite long since lost tract if her original gender was male or female. It was her turning point and Yinsen was her guide. Only Yinsen can put in the Arc Reactor into her new chest.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," was his answer with a smile and Stark returned it.
'Soon.'
00000
She was in a final physical therapy session with Helen and Wu when she felt it, that unmistakable presence that haunted her for so many cycles. Not yet there, but soon. A matter of hours.
"Toni?" Helen asked with concern when the brunette went stiff as a board.
"He's here."
00000
The city around was covered in huge chunks of debris.
Behind her, there lay a large variety of heroes, from aliens, to mutants to Inhumans to superpowered and enhanced individuals and to baseline but trained or specially equipped humans.
There was smoke and gore all around them, making the scene one worthy of unrivaled horror or apocalyptic movies.
The fear was still palpable in the air.
No one was moving.
"Toni?" That dearly missed, familiar, comforting voice reached her ears like it had over the billions upon trillions of cycles before and she felt a small part of her involuntarily relax. It was like a balm to her soul and she just took her first proper deep breath of air in this new vessel she has made for herself. She looked over her shoulder through messy, gently swaying in the wind chocolate brown hair and let a small smile stretch her lips, ignoring the gaping fallen Titan behind her or the stunned Rhodey, Carol, Peter and Harley - who all knew about her until recently lack of a physical form - or even the too shocked to properly react to anything the rest of the Avengers and their allies.
"Hey, Stephen."