Thank you to everybody who read or reviewed the last conversation. You are all absolutely fabulous. It's time for more Tony and Steve from the bad timeline. They are so hopeless, but maybe they'll figure it out eventually. If it happened in one timeline, it could happen in another, right? We shall see. But progress has been made because Steve changed Tony's name in his address book.
Also, this begins an arc of very heavy Tony/Steve content. I know many of you will be very happy about that. As I watch the Disney+ shows, I need a better timeline where Tony and Steve get their shit together. Please no discussion about Falcon and the Winter Soldier in the comments. However, it's OK to start talking about WandaVision. Actually, some of the upcoming chapters will have Little factoids that we learned from WandaVision. I'm probably going to be doing the same with the other shows as they come out. Especially anything related to how life was during the blip.
Conversation 28: Maybe This Broken Ship Can Still Float
Tony: So, you probably heard by now that Laura from the Good timeline managed to get multiple text messages from home. Because the princess and multiple Leo Fitzes are alive there. Apparently, they managed to perfect trans-dimensional text messaging in under 24 hours.
Steve: I've heard. Friday is very chatty.
Tony: She is. It totally makes sense that she is an LMD teenager in the other timeline because she's such a teenager now.
Friday: I resent that remark.
Tony: It's true, sweetie. You're my adorable, sassy teenager. You're training me for Morgan.
Tony: Anyway, in about two days, we will have another text message conversation, but we need to get Simmons on board. To get Simmons on board, we need Hunter. However, I can't leave Pepper with both kids by herself because that would be cruel.
Steve: Kamala could stay over and help. Your driver could take her back to campus in the morning. You still have a driver, right?
Tony: Pepper does. It's five years, and I'm still not used to the non-Happy driver. So I try not to use the service even though Sasha is lovely. But I will float the idea by Pepper. Then you can ask your daughter if she is OK with that.
Steve: I get that. I'll mention it to Kamala if Pepper is OK with it.
Tony: Today, I found out in the other timeline Happy is kind of with Pepper because the May Parker Riley there ended up with Professor Olivia Octavia.
Steve: OK, how do you know all this? That name is really familiar.
Tony: Because your wife arrested her with the help of Silk and the other Spider-Man two months ago. I think the name Doc Ock is more memorable.
Tony: As for how I knew about this, Friday prepared me a primer on the other timeline. I wanted to know about Hydra-related bullshit, and she decided to give me relationship rundowns. Teenager, I tell you, teenager.
Friday: I wanted you to be prepared if we successfully make it to the other timeline. Understanding interpersonal relationships and team dynamics of the other timeline can aid in that endeavor. That seems more important than learning how Hydra tried to assassinate several of your family members multiple times.
Steve: What?
Tony: So, I assume Friday didn't forward you Laura's text messages live when she was chatting with the good timeline? How kind of her.
Steve: May got access, but I didn't. She told me she would tell me what I needed to know later.
Tony: Well, then you two can chat on our car ride to see our kids. The whole point of this text message conversation is to ask you to come with me to visit the kids.
Tony: We could take the kids for the night, and Pepper can have a break.
Steve: Or me and May could take the kids back to Brooklyn and let you and Pepper have some quality time.
Tony: OK, confession time because I trust you not to go to the press; Pepper and I aren't really engaged anymore. We haven't been since before Morgan was born. However, with the world as unstable as it is and being stuck with the asshole members of the board after the decimation, we kept it quiet.
Steve: I have been doing play dates with you and Pepper for the last three years, and you never said anything before.
Tony: But you never saw me kissing her or anything else. You actually rarely even saw us together.
Steve: She was at the cabin with you when May and I went to ask you to help.
Tony: Because Deke tipped her off that you were coming, and he thought things would go better with her there.
Tony: I think there might be something going on between those two.
Friday: Ana 2018 transmitted Deke Fitzsimmons' report on how he ended up in 2018. A copy has been sent to your Stark pad for your review. I think you will find it illuminating.
Tony: Well, I will have some late-night reading when the kids are sleeping, and May has her little chat with you. That is if you'll come along?
Steve: I'll come with you to Manhattan. However, May is going to stay here. She doesn't want to leave Simmons unsupervised.
Tony: Hunter is coming to the compound.
Steve: OK, Melinda said she doesn't want to leave Hunter and Simmons together unsupervised. She also has reading from the other timeline.
Tony: I can completely understand that even though I leave Hunter unattended with my children.
Steve: Good. You can tell me about what Friday means by Hydra killing most of your family on the ride down to Manhattan. Was it Bucky?
Tony: I really don't. Although it wasn't your boy. Hydra didn't want to bring out the big guns until they had to because the big gun would break when he's faced with the ghost of his past.
Steve: Please explain, Tony?
Tony: OK, but I don't know all the details because I haven't dug into the Hydra primer yet. In the other timeline, because of my communication with your other self, that Steve figured out that the story of my Aunt Ana dying in a freak lightbulb changing accident was a complete lie. Steve 2.0 asked Friday to investigate, and she got the timeline refugee Fitz to look into it. Because he was ex Hydra in the framework, he knew where to look for the bodies.
Steve: That makes sense. May retained a whole lot of knowledge about Hydra operations because of her time in the framework herself. It's been useful to her now.
Tony: Fitz definitely found some bodies. My aunt didn't die because of a weird light bulb changing accident, but because Hydra tried to kill Howard. Unfortunately, Ana was collateral damage. Of course, I found all of this out reading the other timeline text messages.
Steve: Oh shit!
Tony: Glad to know you curse.
Steve: We've known each other for over a decade. You know that I do. You were there with me when I tried to put Barbie's dream house together. I cursed like the Army man that I am.
Tony: We weren't speaking to each other for a few of those years. Also, you refuse to look at the instructions or have Friday read you the instructions. You also wouldn't let me design something better. Morgan has the best Barbie dream house. I gave Barbie her own science lab.
Steve: I'm sorry about that. That is something you would do.
Tony: I am too. Laura told me that Steve 2.0 saw through the light bulb story because of something in your own childhood. Laura wouldn't tell me what that was. Although I'm supposed to ask about family in Nevada.
Steve: Since you finally told me about Pepper, I'll let you know the truth about my family. You know that in the history books it says that my father died in World War I. But did you ever look at my Shield file?
Tony: No, because a lot of that is just complete bullshit, you know, until your wife took over. Also, if you wanted me to know, you would tell me.
Steve: Thank you for that. The dying in World War I thing was what my mom told me and everyone else. When I went down in the ice, that's what I believed. At the same time, I had memories that didn't add up. I remember seeing him hitting my mother.
Tony: I'm sorry.
Steve: She left, or maybe he left her. I don't remember everything. I was so young. Being a single mother was hard, so she told everybody that he died. If you hear a lie enough, you believe it.
Tony: Especially when you're a little kid. I never questioned the light bulb thing. Although knowing the truth in hindsight, I understand why I was shipped off to boarding school. If I was in the same situation, I would send Morgan away. I already have. She's with Pepper in Manhattan while we are working on Operation Keep Away. Laura and I are even trying to come up with a way to bring all the kids from her timeline here just in case the purple one still wins so they won't get snapped.
Steve: So that's what we're calling this now? That wouldn't be a bad idea.
Tony: Yes. So how do you have family in Nevada?
Steve: When I woke up, I had a SHIELD dossier with information about all of my friends and associates.
Tony: I bet it was hard finding out that Aunt Peggy ended up with Uncle Daniel.
Steve: I was glad she found somebody even if she lost him to a heart attack nearly 2 decades earlier.
Tony: That was a Hydra induced heart attack per our friends in the other timeline. Although the fact he made it to the 80s was a small miracle. Daniel was suspicious of Hydra contaminating Shield way back in 55. He told the wrong superior and was almost murdered at a hotel. Aunt Peggy saved his Ass. Daniel was told by a mysterious contact named GR to fake amnesia and not tell Aunt Peggy about Hydra. Or at least that's what they can gather from the Krazy Kanoe files. It was a Shield safe house that has existed longer than Shield itself. I really want to read those.
Steve: Also, while reading the files, I found out I have a half-sister in Nevada, or I did before the decimation. My father went out West and had a whole other family but never became a better man. He beat the hell out of them too. He ended up in jail. Even in the 50s, they didn't like wife beaters or people who hurt their children. So he was killed. Your dad and Peggy kept the truth out of the history books.
Tony: Do you want me to comfort you or congratulate you?
Steve: I don't even know.
Tony: These conversations are really hard.
Steve: Extremely. Although maybe that's how our other selves managed to work through everything.
Friday: Ana 2018 actually sent me the transcriptions of their text message conversations that led to their reconciliation and eventual engagement.
Tony: Yep, you are such a teenager. So, sugar cookie, do you want to read how our less idiotic selves managed to work through all their issues?
Steve: No, because they are not our issues.
Tony: Everything was exactly the same up until a month after the Avenger uncivil toddler squabble.
Steve: Since then, a lot has changed. You got back with Pepper and then subsequently broke up and never told me.
Tony: And you got married just to keep two kids out of the inhuman Interment camps without coming to me for help. And I would've helped you. Even if I was still furious at you, I would help you protect those kids.
Steve: I know that now, but I didn't at the time. We have our own issues to work through that are completely different from our other timeline counterparts.
Tony: Point.
Steve: Although I would like to know how the other us worked through their problems. It couldn't just be as simple as actually talking to each other?
Friday: After analyzing their messages, I have determined that the secret to their success was open and honest communication. They played icebreaker games like 20 questions and also answered the 36 questions that lead to love. It was a PR project to appease Jane Barnett.
Tony: The secret really is open communication, which I suck at. Also, I miss Jane so much. She was the best PR person. I've fucking hate the snap.
Friday: They were already in love with each other before they began speaking to one another per my analysis of the messages.
Friday: I have sent the list of 36 questions to your Stark pad. I suggest that you ask each other these questions during the drive to Manhattan.
Friday: Actually, Laura just requested that you go through the questions. She wants you two to work through your emotional bullshit for the sake of half of all life in the universe.
Tony: At least we'll have something to do on the drive. Do you want to get burgers first?
Steve: Sure. Let me pack.
Tony: We're going to take the kids to Brooklyn, so there's no need, and I have a bag at Pepper's place. I actually probably have more clothes there than here. I do have my own bedroom there.
Steve: You still have one here. You'll always have a place here, no matter what.
Tony: Good to know.
Steve: And I'm still going to pack a bag just in case we decide not to go to Brooklyn.
Tony: That's the Boy Scout in you. You're always prepared.
Steve: I was never a Boy Scout—Way too queer.
Tony: I'm looking forward to you proving that.
To be continued…
Yes, progress has been made, but they're still really oblivious. Did you pick up on what inconvenient truth Friday told Tony and Steve about that they ignored?