Show Yourself Into The Unknown

Summary: The one where Thanos is dead, Tony has weird dreams instead of nightmares, the Avengers watch dubious Disney movies and mystical creatures are more than real. Oh, and the Cloak totally ships it.

She was beautiful, absolutely breathtaking, no matter how small her size was compared to the noise she had just created, the power she already held or the responsibilities and destiny resting on her oh so young and deceptively fragile shoulders.

Despite being suspended in the air by nothing but a magical bubble seemingly made out of light or some form of glowing, pure energy, the only thing Tony Stark's honey brown eyes could focus on was the little dragon, no bigger than a chubby cat, and the almost otherworldly beauty of his new partner in life, the mate to his soul, the one person he was destined to know better than anyone else simply by either of them existing.

Elsa stared back, equally mesmerized, as though she, too, couldn't get enough of the sight in front of her own eyes. As though Tony could ever compare to her striking self.

She was truly amazing, absolutely stunning, really. There were no words to describe her appearance. Elsa looked to be somewhere between an avian and a reptilian type of dragon, having scales that were as long and as sot to the touch as feathers but that could turn as sharp as ice daggers and as rough as a crocodile's skin made out of diamonds. The initial color of them was of the glacier which hid Ahtohallan - making Tony briefly wonder if it is her who had manipulated her surroundings even before she had been fully aware of her own sentience - but depending on how the light hit each scale-like feather made of ice, the reflection it gave off could be anything from blue, to pink to a really pretty shade of purple.

Her eyes resembled the ghost of her mother's, only they were more crystal like than the color of ice and seemed somehow warmer for it. Her whole body was covered in the scales - Tony decided he'll be calling them scales despite them being softer than any feathers that had ever filled any of his pillows, just to go easier on himself - including her wings, which indeed resembled more a bird's wings than a bat's leathery ones. No one would ever mistake her for anything other than an angel. It seemed fitting, given her voice, especially when she sings. Her maw wasn't scary or nightmarish at all. It resembled the jaws of the dragons from Game of Thrones while they were still small, maybe from season three, which only made her all the cuter what with her big, sparkly, soulful eyes. She had some spikes around her face that felt soft to his touch but he didn't doubt that they could be as hard as the ice that had encased her protection for this long if she needed it to be so.

She had four limps and a tail, each paw having five actual fingers, something one doesn't usually see on lizards or depictions of dragons, as it's usually three or four. Then again, dragons obviously aren't the mindless beasts people had made them out to be and hey, thumbs! It's what allowed human kind to become what and who they are today, along with other physiological characteristics, so why shouldn't beings that were practically older than a good part of the created universe not had opposable thumbs to do with as they please and not be dependent on tiny humans to do things for them, right?

"Elsa," he greeted his dragon after he had drank in his fill of the sight of her and the dragon responded with a rumbling purr before she all but flung herself into his embrace, making a home for her head right over his excitedly beating heart.

"Tony, my Ib," she greeted back, her voice all but purring and her whole body nearly vibrating with it. Tony only hugged her, overjoyed in a way he had never imagined himself ever to be with just touching her like this, holding her. It felt like the first time Dum-E came online but perhaps a hundred times amplified or like when JARVIS had first greeted him with a polite and disapproving 'Sir' after he had come online to a drunk off his ass Tony and had to watch over him on his very first night of being alive and then lecturing him in the morning. Sure, that lecturing had been dispassionate and more out of the need to satisfy his own primary code which was in place so he would look out for his creator and had only later become true caring as JARVIS grew beyond his coding, but it had been the first step and hearing that long lost voice of his beloved butler had soothed something deep in Tony he had never even realized needed soothing.

This moment felt just like that but also somehow even stronger, more intense. He guessed it had a lot to do with his connection to Elsa and he enjoyed every second of it. "Welcome to the world, Elsa. It ain't a pretty place but it's the only one we've got."

"We'll make it better," the dragon reassured and they fell silent, just enjoying each other's presence for a while, enjoying the touch they shared after only having had hints of it through a world of dreams in Tony's mind. Stark rather enjoyed how much better it felt in the physical world than in his dreams. His dreams he could forget but when she was finally here, now, there was no way he will ever forget because she can always remind him. They no longer had to wait for him to be asleep to see each other. "Though, as much as I love us being like this, it is for the best if we return you to your comrades. I sense a great deal of power rising above the Well and whoever is doing it might cost themselves their life. Or at the very least their sanity. We'd all be much better off without a mad Sorcerer Supreme."

"Stephen!" Tony turned around, as if looking for a way back to the main chamber of the temple but his surroundings looked like they were nowhere near the glacier in Norway where he'd last been before he'd jumped into an essentially endless hole. His surroundings, for the lack of a better word, looked enchanted. The landscape was that of a mountain range covered in snow and ice, majestic and elegant in its cold beauty with an endless sky of countless stars and visible galaxies hanging overhead, not a trace of any sort of interference ever having touched this place. "Where the hell are we, anyway? And how do we get back? Stephen will go nuts if I put him through something like the Snap again. He might just wrap me up in bubble wrap and put me in one of his glass cases in that magical museum of his in retaliation."

"You are perfectly safe and more than perfectly fine, Tony," Elsa said with an amused snort, drawing away and out of his arms to fly around him, her little wings carrying her with ease despite not looking strong or big enough for it. By all rules of physics and nature about wingspans in comparison to the body they carried, she shouldn't have been able to stay in the air and yet she was. The scientist in Tony raged against it but he attributed the phenomenon to magic. It was simply easier that way, at least until they were back home and away from Nazi terrorist organizations and scheming wizards and there wasn't a Sorcerer Supreme about to snap. "We will go back in a moment, we're still technically within the Well of Ahtohallan, though the scenery before you is anything but."

"Then what is it? Where is it?"

"This," Elsa flew in a circle around the sphere of magic that was holding them up and above the mountains. "Is the ancestral plane of all dragons, my home, should it have existed still. Thousands of years before first multicellular lifeforms emerged in the multiverse, Ahtohallan started dying, for it was a dimension removed from the rest of reality, meant to watch over it for all of eternity. But dragons kept going out and back in, interacting with the world around ours, studying it and the potential it carried and protecting it from beings from other planes of existence who would feed on the energies of this new, undefended universe. Leaving Ahtohallan meant weakening its natural defenses and outside influences started seeping in. My ancestors knew their home world was dying, so they left and settled in this universe and many others. We have lived here long before any of your species have been born, Anthony Edward Stark, and by that I do not mean just humanity. We are the wardens of magic, of reality, of the energies that connect all the different universes within the multiverse. We are those who manage it. Without dragons-"

"The universe would fall to ruin and cease to exist," Tony finished for her even as he marveled at the world around him, Ahtohallan, the place where Elsa would have lived had her kind just left the multiverse to tear itself apart, killing life before it could even be life in its chaotic beginnings. Dragons hadn't been created to manage the multiverse, even though they were perfectly capable of it. They had taken that responsibility onto themselves all on their own, dooming their peaceful, perfect world for the sake of the ancestral beginning of creatures who will one day be their ruin, their doom. "Wait, if your kind existed so long ago, before anything else, how did the eggs hatch? How were there any dragons at all if a human is their Ib - their all, their soul - but humans hadn't existed back then?"

"Hm, not only humans are Ib, my Ib," the little dragon explained, humming to herself even as the orb of magic started slowly descending. Tony tried not to feel discomforted by the illogic of what was happening to him. "Before humanity, many other species had been fulfilling that role. Any sentient species can be a dragon's Ib. And before any such species existed, we were free of such connections and our lives were all the more empty for it. We could be immortals. We are magic and energy and existence more than anything else in this multiverse. We are limitless. But, once upon a time, a very long time ago, one of my ancestors met a man, they came to respect each other, to care for each other and soon, they were inseparable. I believe my ancestor was in love, a love dragons later on learned could be reserved only for Ib but was unknown to them before that point in time. When the man started aging and came closer to his 'expiring', my ancestor grew near mad with loss and grief. His fellow dragons did him a mercy, a favor, a gift that then transcended onto all dragons until the end of times. They bound his soul, his very essence to the man's and the man stopped dying, stopped aging. He was at full strength once more and the love they felt for each other was now on a loop being fed by them both, coursing through their beings and uniting them like nothing either of them had ever felt. Out of necessity, eons later, when war raged on that man's planet, his people came to him and his dragon for assistance. They explained to them the nature of their connection and my ancestor called for a handful of dragons to join them. Five more matches were made. As time passed and more bonds were made both out of pleasure and out of necessity, dragons came to realize finding their Ib was the best thing to have ever happened to our kind. At one point, all of the old dragons found their Ib and their children were the first ones to be birthed with their souls already reaching out across time and space and the boundaries of reality to another's. That is how the bonds came to be. Humanity itself is a very young candidate for the potential Ib."

"You sure do know a lot for a newborn," he said pointedly even as he pondered the small history lesson he just got from his companion. According to what Elsa had just said, dragons could have lived until the rest of time as invulnerable beings, untouchable to others and even to time itself. Yet they had chosen to make themselves vulnerable because other species brought excitement and ... well, he guessed some meaning to their lives. Something else other than a duty to a world that is too different from them to appreciate them. No wonder Elsa said only those willing to sacrifice and be kind can be their summoners.

There were approaching a faint mist the lower they came and Tony guessed that once they entered it, they'll soon find themselves back in the Temple or the Well. At least now he understood why the place was called of Ahtohallan. Who would have thought this would go from a Disney princess movie right into Alice in Wonderland, what with falling into a hole and ending up in a world that all but didn't make sense but was still so full of wonders.

"Dragons share a memory," Elsa replied to his observation, startling and horrifying him with the implications of that on such a young mind. "Not individual memories, but our general history. It protects young dragons in situations like mine. What would I do, all alone with no elder dragon around, when my Ib finds me and summons me from my egg but I do not know how to proceed with the most basic needs of my life? I'd be vulnerable."

"So it's sort of like an instinct? An extended form that gives you background knowledge so you can't be tricked?"

"In essence, yes. Brace yourself, this part might be tricky." The warning came just as they entered the center part of the mist and every bit of light was blocked out, even from his reactor and from Elsa herself. Thankfully, it lasted only a couple of seconds before they were back at the bottom of the Well, where Tony had woken up and not from where they had left, the little alter where Elsa's egg had been. "The innermost sanctuary is to be utilized only in times of need. It is an entrance into the memory of Ahtohallan and extremely sacred and also very dangerous."

The bubble that had been carrying them burst and Tony landed easily on his feet, though staying that way was a bit of a challenge given that the ground was still weird, nice friction while still and utterly slippery they second he made the tiniest of movements with his feet. "Well, that's just perfect," he mumbled in dismay when he realized he was back to square one, having no idea how or where to go, only this time he was trying to get out.

Still, on a more cheery note, FRIDAY sounded extremely happy to 'see' him again after his brief disappearance from her reach when he and Elsa had ended up in the memory of Ahtohallan. 'I can't believe that this is my life now.' As if he didn't have enough crazy already piled up on his plate.

"So, how do we get out of here? We should hurry, before those idiots blow the entire place sky high."

Elsa floated around him and reached one of the boulders coated in ice. As soon as she was just a few meters away, the boulder glowed and a door appeared right in the middle of it, with a staircase leading upwards and some sort of lighting and everything. Tony stared at it for a long moment before figuring 'Hey, this is my life. What can you do?', shrugging and starting to climb, easily welcoming Elsa into his arms when she insisted on snuggling against his chest.

00000

Meanwhile, it was absolute chaos in the main chamber of the Temple of Ahtohallan as everyone panicked over the sheer power the Sorcerer Supreme seemed to hold. He wasn't holding back and Loki, Wong and the Northuldra had to keep up and remake shields over and over again to keep the Avengers safe as Mordo tried to fight back and HYDRA agents ran for their lives. There was no trace of the usually merciful, oath-bound doctor in sight as Stephen let himself vent and it was interesting to see him reach for the power that was his by right of his position as the Sorcerer Supreme.

The Avengers, even Thor and Loki, were flabbergasted. They had known that someone called a 'Master of the Mystic Arts' had to be powerful, let alone the person carrying the title of Sorcerer Supreme, but this was not something they could have imagined. After hearing just how strong the defenses around the dragon egg were and after seeing even Thor and Carol and Vision powerless in the face of them, to see Strange seemingly tear through them as though they didn't even exist ... And to see this rage ... It didn't fit their image of the sorcerer that liked to hang around Tony. It was like he was a completely different person, as if something had snapped and Strange had decided to hell with it and was just done.

Still, this outburst of power unnerved them.

Nebula was perhaps the least surprised. She'd, after all, seen this man stand up to the Mad Titan and fight him with four Infinity Stones in the Gauntlet and Thanos had still not taken him down easily. Now, the blue cyborg had to wonder whether the man had thrown that battle because it was necessary to ultimately defeat her 'father' and he was only now showing the true extent of his strength and power. She wasn't even surprised that it happened only after Tony's death. The only reason Nebula wasn't participating in the carnage was because Vision was holding her back and she wanted to stab him since she knew he couldn't turn intangible anymore but the thought hurt. He was, after all, one of the few things that remained of the first person who accepted her right off the bat. It had taken ... years for Gamora to look at her and see more than Thanos' eager assassin and soldier, more than a killer. Tony Stark had known Nebula for barely a day before he decided to draw her into his circle.

Losing him felt as bad as losing Gamora and perhaps even worse in some ways, for all her memories with Tony were only good ones if you excuse the first few ones where she was either acting as his bodyguard or trying to keep him alive. And even those were more uncomfortable for how they made her feel vulnerable to have become attached rather than because they were bad.

And now her last memory will be of Tony willingly falling to his death and she'll never understand why.

All she knew was that if Strange didn't kill Red Skull, she will.

Red Skull, himself, was cowering behind some of the rubble caused by the fight between the two sorcerers. Or, to be more precise, the rampage of the Sorcerer Supreme's power while Mordo tried to fend him off enough to survive. The Supreme Commander of HYDRA cursed himself for ever having made an alliance with the suicidal fool as he heard Mordo continue taunting Strange, as if the man wasn't angry enough as it was! Mordo obviously had a few screws loose and Schmidt admitted he must have been out of his mind to team up with him. He had been the warden of the Soul Stone for decades, for fuck's sake! He'd gotten a good peek into almost every soul in existence! He'd seen Doctor Stephen Vincent Strange's near obsession with keeping Dr Anthony Edward Stark alive! It would have been a complication, sure, but he had been aiming on simply severely injuring the genius engineer so Strange would abandon everything else and tend to the man he loved. He had not meant to push Stark into jumping into a place from which there was no return! He should have known to pick a different opponent, but Stark had kept coming at him and he had lost himself in battle and his own curiosity about the man that the universe kept hidden even from the glimpse of the Soul Stone and its warden.

Suddenly, there was a bright light from one of the walls, the surprise of seeing a whole new door appear out of virtually nowhere making everyone stop and face the possible new threat, guns and weapons and spells at the ready as they expected possibly another elemental spirit to appear as a guardian, only for more than one jaw to drop when the light died down and Tony Stark himself climb up what appeared to be a set of stairs with something bundled up in his hands. The should-be-dead man stopped in his tracks when he saw them all staring at him, took in the scene he had walked in on and gave an awkward wave.

"Hey, guys."