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.
It wouldn't be inaccurate to say that the Avengers as a whole were running around like headless chickens the second Tony slipped through a damn portal of his own making, but it would be unappreciated to be stated so blandly. The panic was, after all, well warranted, given that Stark's survival was the condition for the continuation of all of existence.
Especially when, as far as they were concerned, there were so many bad omens happening outside, in the world. Like the blizzard getting stronger and the overall temperature dropping rapidly over a dozen degrees.
So, yeah, panic was warranted.
Especially when all magic stopped working.
There was nothing they could do about it. Strange was in a fritz over it all since the second Tony had run through his own goddamned portal without a second of hesitation or looking back and the thing had closed before anyone could even fully register what had just happened. Then, seconds later, an already bad, hopeless situation got even worse and while no one wanted to think about what that might imply, they were very well aware of what it meant.
Both thankfully and unfortunately, they didn't have all that much time to ponder it, as the new development for the worse meant the world needed them more than ever. Everyone that could go out - which meant none of the sorcerers, Asgardians and anyone else dependent on magic - had boarded the sturdiest jets and ground vehicles they had at their disposal and headed out to save people from buildings collapsing under the weight of the snow and the strength of the wind. There was a lot to do and world leaders from all over were calling the Compound but without access to either the portals or the Bifrost, they were all stuck in New York and the world didn't exactly like that. As though they didn't want to go help where they could!
Wong had forbidden Stephen from even thinking of using magic in any capacity. They didn't even know what was causing the dimensional energies from being inaccessible to them and just letting the fool try could tear apart whatever was left of the fragile existence around them and hurry along the end of the world. And if not that, then it would certainly lead to the idiot's death from over-exhaustion. Wielding an Infinity Stone. especially the Time Stone, without the protections of both the Eye of Agamotto and his own powers, would be lethal and not just for him, but for everyone else. Even if Wong had to agree that the situation was desperate enough to warrant it.
They were at it, the rescue and evacuation in the freezing cold, all those who could take it and survive it, for barely an hour when, suddenly, it all just stopped and that, in many ways, was even more frightening. For if the world was raging, it meant it was still alive. Now, everything was as still and quiet as a grave and everyone in the world, aware or not of what this could possibly mean, held their breath behind their teeth lest it be their last.
Then, in a rush of blazing flames that somehow did not harm a single living thing or damage any property, the world was swept in fire and the snow melted. Wong watched with Stephen as magic unlike any they've seen before seeped everywhere there had been damage done, even from before the impromptu ice age, and start healing. Stephen was staring at his hands in utter astonishment as they iced over before the same burning flames swept down them to leave his hands still scarred, yes, but there was no pain and there was no shaking. The two sorcerers watched as the Sorcerer Supreme flexed his fingers without difficulty and Strange let out a sob.
Sam Wilson only just caught James Rhodes when the man buckled under the ice that encased his legs before fire burned over them, tongues of flames licking out of the few cracks on his armor meant for releasing extra heat before it all disappeared and Rhodey pushed himself out of a rapidly opening War Machine armor. The braces on his legs had been deactivated, somehow, and yet Rhodes was standing on his own, shaking with effort legs. No additional help. He could wriggle his toes and feel them.
Back in the Compound, a portal opened and out came the sorcerers that Wong and Stephen had thought lost to them, along with the snow demons that had accompanied Hiku, though thankfully, there were no Eyebots nor Witchfinder Wolves behind them, only to sound of an awakening and perfectly healthy rain forest. Hiku stared in disbelief at his people before he was descending on them and holding his brothers in arms close.
"Master Strange ... " Master Hamir whispered, staring down at his regrown left hand in wonder and disbelief.
"Doc, you're the doctor and the neurosurgeon and the magician," came Bucky Barnes' voice over the comm systems from where he had been helping lift an overturned truck that was blocking a building's entrance full of children and some elderly citizens down in Brooklyn. "Is my seventy years lost arm supposed to regrow out of nowhere?" He asked hysterically and the sorcerers all felt very feint. Stephen's hands were shaking all over again and this time it wasn't because of the results after his accident.
"This is impossible," Wong felt the need to say, voice just barely there, as he stared at all the miracles that should have been impossible taking place. "There is no way anyone or anything can do all of this."
"No one knows what dragons and their hatchers can actually do," Aidna whispered, as stunned as the rest of them as every ache in her body from years and fighting and life simply evaporated.
"I don't think I'm qualified to be a Black Widow anymore," came said woman's from the doorway, where she was staring at the holographic projection of FRIDAY's scans of her abdomen. There was a perfectly healthy uterus and ovaries just where they were supposed to be. The redhead's face was full of wonder. She had long since resigned herself to the fact that she'll never actually have any kids of her own. Now, she was a perfectly normal woman with all the right parts that had once been taken from her.
Then, as surprising as always, a portal appeared and through it stepped none other than Tony Stark, his arms full of a much larger form than they were used from the young Elsa. Namely, a bleach blond girl, no older than perhaps ten to twelve years of age, wrapped up in what appeared to be Tony's hoodie and socks, her face burrowed into his neck. She appeared to be sleeping like a baby. Tony, on the other hand, looked to be on the precipe of hysterics or panic as he looked at them in a desperate silent call for help.
"Anyone here know how to take care of a nine year old girl that's actually a dragon?"
" ... I'll get Scott and Clint on the line."
00000
"Did anyone know dragons could do that?" Bucky asked as Tony got what appeared to be indeed Elsa tucked in. "And why does she look so much like the Elsa from Frozen without looking like an animated cartoon character?"
Tony couldn't help but rub at his forehead in an attempt to prevent a headache from developing, though he wasn't all that sure how well that was going to help. If at all, he thought a bit bitterly and then got even more bitter when the headache immediately abated as though it had never even been there in the first place. He scowled, knowing he was being irrational about the relief from the pain, especially as he was currently running on zero caffeine, but not getting a headache was just one more thing that proved he was less and less human-normal by the day. There were many things he needed to get used to, as there had been since he woke Elsa up and hatched her from her egg, but this was new and completely different and something he did not actually want to learn to live with.
Magic? Yeah, sure, okay. Both of the people who shared his soul were very much magical, one its warden, the other its governor, so to speak. Magic he could get used to. An abnormally long lifetime? Okay, harder but manageable when he thinks of all the lives that will be born in the wake of his own continued survival and all the wonderful things that can be discovered and invented and just happen. It was a sacrifice and he was used to those.
Being able to constantly feel the Flow? That he could live without, thank you very much. Not that anyone asked before he was told to just dive in. He didn't regret it. Elsa would be dead if he hadn't done it, which meant the sacrifice of his own solidarity of mind was insignificant in comparison, but he'd just wish to have a little break from it.
He didn't know whether he wanted to scream or send prayers of thanks that the break actually came the second he asked for it.
Apparently, dragons and their kin don't just watch the Flow of Existence but command it, too, to a point. He doesn't like it. That's too much power in the hands of someone like him, who had nearly blown his own planet up when trying to save it from itself.
"It's an ancient defense mechanism of some sort, to be able to blend in with the locals to hide themselves and their young ones. Dragons developed it after the first of the purges started happening in a dimension far from our own," he finally replied to James' question, deciding to deal with all of the craziness once Elsa was awake and they settled into the new status quo with Strange and the fact that, apparently, the Soul Stone likes to watch over them like either an overprotective mother hen or like a creeper. "As for the appearance she took, it's entirely up to her imagination, I think. She liked it like this and chose to look like it."
" ... You two are way to obsessed with Disney princess movies," deadpanned Stephen from where he was checking over her vitals as the actual fucking doctor instead of Bruce, as the other scientist had offered. Tony, quite frankly, didn't want anyone near Elsa in her vulnerable - perhaps even more so right now, in this seemingly human form - state. Stephen he knew he could trust. The bond between them hummed merrily, sometimes so much so that they both found themselves blushing for no apparent reason except that their souls were excited to have someone so complimentary to themselves bonded to them. "Also, you seem to be rather knowledgeable about all of this, all of a sudden."
If he were anyone else, that would have sounded accusatory. Stephen didn't. If anything, it was more worry and concern - for him, nor for the potential chaos he might cause with that knowledge. How refreshing, even if he was mostly used to it by now from Stephen and Peter and now Barnes and Lang and, occasionally, Hope and Carol. Rhodey, Happy, Pepper and Harley don't count. Hell, even Fury doesn't count. The guy was good at hiding it, but Tony had always known the one eyed bastard was somewhat fond of him, even if he never outright showed it or said anything about it. Which was a dick move but one he could understand. They were both men who knew they endangered anyone whom they come to love.
"Well, there were the books and then the trip to Ahtohallan and I seem to remember now a ... mirror made of ice or crystal, showing me many things I had no way of knowing beforehand," he frowned, thinking about that and wondering why he thought Stephen might have been there. Then again, Stephen had asked him something about not remembering something along those lines. Maybe Stephen got a front row seat when he had come into his mind to wake him up and save him from a frozen heart (seriously, he was going to have a long talk with Disney about all of the shit they got so accurate, as well as Aidna to see how much of the movies were actually fucking accurate). "And then, after entering the Flow, I think I might know more than any other single person before me has that wasn't a dragon by birth."
"Sounds ... overwhelming," Lang offered awkwardly from where he was sitting in an armchair, trying to keep his distance but not actually leaving since Tony had asked him for help. He looked decadently uncomfortable in the illegally comfortable armchair of Tony's private living room, which should be against the law because that thing cost a fortune just because it was so comfy. "And you said the thing was made of actual fire?"
"And met the first ever dragon summoner?" Barton, who was trying to appear casual where he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed while his eyes betrayed him as he mapped out the exits, asked, his attention turning to Tony. "What were they like? Man? Woman? How many heads?"
"Not summoner, Ib. The first dragon pair was not so dependent on each other. The dragon was long since born hen they made the bond between their souls. Only later did Ib summon dragons from their eggs. And I have no idea if they even had a gender but they appeared humanoid." Though he still got some shivers when thinking about the first Ib because they had a rather intense presence around them, both from years and the wisdom such years piled up and the sheer power. Stark did not want to know how they came upon such power nor did he want to have that same power rest on his own already overburdened shoulders. "And the river appeared to be made of fire because it looks like the power of all of magic and those who watch over it. Elsa is the only one left so it was a mix of freezing and scorching flames. Diving into it felt like losing myself for a moment, but Stephen did me a huge favor in binding our souls together. I had an outside anchor besides Elsa, who was sinking into the Flow even more than I was."
"Good to know that was the right move to make, at least," said Sorcerer Supreme said as he straightened up from his examination, apparently done. "She's looking fine, now. Almost all of her vitals match a humans except for the spikes of magic my own is picking up from her, which were ridiculously huge already but are now even larger. The need for proper training for you was already in discussion before all of this happened, Tony, but now it's a necessity. As soon as the both of you properly recover from this ordeal, we'll need to start. Elsa's instinctive control has been shot before the power boost so she might need some time to get that under control and, well, you just need to learn how to properly wield your magic. Shouldn't take too long, for either of you."
"Good, because we still have those Empurikil bastards to deal with."
"Empirikul," Stephen corrected with a sigh, but Tony noted it was definitely more fond than exasperated. "And we can't deal with them. Not when they have weaponry that seems to neutralize magic itself. Hiku suggests we don't unless we have to, no matter how dangerous they are."
"Yeah, well, Hikupakularmadiramis can shove his advice and suggestions up his ass because he doesn't know what I do," Tony muttered under his breath before taking in a lungful of air and focusing on where Elsa's magic was shared between their souls. He didn't have access to the whole thing but he had control over most of it, which was already frightening enough, thank you. Before anyone could ask what he knew, Tony managed to conjure up an image of the Earth out of sparks, much how Stephen and his sorcerers used magic, but his were the colors of gentle purple, almost white blue and a bit of pink here and there. The shields around Earth that protected it from Dormammu were a solid purple, though, as were the sanctums a bright pink to stand out against the rest of the image.
What drew everyone's attention, though, was the vortex like dark blue that seemed to be fixed in place while the image of the Earth casually spun around and around on its axis. It was ominous as it should be.
"And what is that?" Barnes asked, sounding wary. Tony almost wished he had let him be the one to hold the rest of the rouges and the other Avengers back instead of leaving it up to Vision, Nebula and Peter, but the man still had trouble adjusting to the fact that the metal on his body now was armor and not substitute flesh for his once missing arm.
"You know how Hikupakularmadiramis and his friends opened a rift in reality to come from their dimension to ours? Well, it's still there." At the shock on the faces of everyone in attendance, Tony gave a grim smile. "And it's going to open in, approximately, two to three weeks time. And the Imerator knows this and he is waiting for it."
"And he will come through," a new, by now familiar voice said and all of the men whirled around to look at the now awake human-looking Elsa, startled by how her eyes had not changed a bit, still looking like two crystals of ice cut perfectly, still as sharp as ever and still looking first towards her summoner, her hatcher, her kin, her Ib. "And he will hunt us."
"And he will fail," Stephen said with determination, face grim but not budging when Elsa's eyes turned to him, taking in the bond that connected them through Tony, deeming it alright before looking to the engineer again. He was by her side in an instant.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, small hand reaching out to place it over where the shards of her attempted protection had almost frozen his heart. There was pain in her eyes and voice that no seemingly-nine year old should feel.
"It wasn't your fault," Tony answered in a thick voice, a hand of his own reaching out for Elsa, brushing her so light hair out of her pale face. He wondered if this was what fatherhood felt like and how Howard could have found it so difficult or so scary as to run away from it every chance he got. It was overwhelming, yes, but it was just oh so worth it. And while he knew Elsa was his partner, his equal, she was still currently only a child. The status of their relationship can change when she grows up a bit more. For now, she was just one of his children, as far as he's concerned.
Elsa didn't appear all that happy with his answer. "Never again," she promised and her magic nearly flooded the room as a bright shine appeared underneath her hand over his heart. Tony held perfectly still until the light show died and she shifted her hand before he looked down, only to find a pendant on what looked to be a chain of pure energy. The pendant was made of ice crystals and looked like the exact replica of the star from Frozen 2's logo, Elsa's star as the fifth elemental spirit after she tamed the other four. Fitting, given their history.
Tony just smiled and accepted it. Never again, he agreed, if for different reasons.
Never again will Elsa be in such danger under his watch.
Let Ahtohallan be my witness.
