Chapter 21.
Steve watched the sky.
The Whisperer.
It had almost been a peaceful month. But peace never lasted very long for them. Normalcy was out of the question – not that Steve had any plans. If he were home right now, he would be reading, watching movies, trying to catch up on entire generations of culture. He was in the middle of the novel 1984, which was not what he thought it would be, and halfway through the list of mobster movies Sam had made for him. He was piecing it together, one day at a time.
Maybe nothing he did was normal.
"You seem pensive." Thor joined him on the roof, lying on the tiles. He set Mjolnir beside him, folded his hands behind his head, and let out a relaxed sigh. "I used to sit on the highest spire in Asgard and watch the skies. One time, Loki snuck up the spire below me and screamed. I was so startled I fell off the spire and skewered my leg on a flagpole."
Thor chuckled.
"Is that a good memory?" Steve wondered, his words producing steam in the cold air.
"Oh, yes. Childhood antics." Thor glanced at him, "But I suppose you were thinking about the Whisperer. My mother told me tales when I was a boy – I never thought them true until now."
"About the Whisperer?"
"Yes, though not by name. Her stories match this character fairly well."
"Tell me, then."
"I can't remember how it went, exactly," Thor admitted. "If she were…" He cleared his throat. "It was about a stranger who would come upon doors on dreary nights. He would ask to be let in. If he were let in, he would disappear, no harm. But if he were refused, if he saw cruelty, or selfishness, or greed, he would draw it out of them. Mother said it would make a greedy man sick with desire, an angry man red with fury. When it happened, the afflicted had to be killed, lest they-"
He stopped.
Steve watched a cloud drift over the moon. "Why would the Deltarans want someone like that? How did they even contact him?"
"Deltarans detest technology. Stark presented a problem they could not overcome, and the Whisperer is almost exactly the opposite of modern machinery. Some say he is as old as the universe. As for how they contacted him… we may never know."
Steve let the silence grow, content to sit there, pouring over what he knew. It was below freezing outside, but dry. Everyone else was inside, huddled around the fireplace. Steve and Thor were probably the only ones who could tolerate this temperature.
A thought struck him.
"Did something happen to your mother?"
Thor gave no reaction on his face. His words were soft. "Yes. When I was dealing with… She died. And my brother, Loki. It was all fairly recent."
"Why didn't you say something?" Steve followed that up immediately with, "I'm sorry."
Thor met his eyes, pressed a smile.
Steve gazed out into the neighborhood now – houses as far as the eye could see, half of them ready to move into, the other half still being assembled. Fenced in yards. Soft concrete driveways. Sprinklers humming on the yellow lawns. If he had been a normal man, born into this time, with no powers, no shield, no Avengers, would he live in a place like this?
"Hey, you guys telling ghost stories up there?"
Steve looked over the lip of the roof, where Rhodey and Bruce were waiting. Both were bundled up in winter coats, shifting from one foot to the other, looking profoundly uncomfortable.
Rhodey went on. "The fire's warm and Barton bought marshmallows. Just say the word and I'll eat yours for you."
"Just bring it up here," Thor said. "Oh, will that be a problem for you? I didn't see a ladder."
"I can just grab my suit, hop up there," Rhodey said.
"You will break the roof." Thor set Mjolnir in his lap. "You have to be graceful, like a cat."
"Oh, graceful, like a god with a twenty-ton hammer and a seven-foot-tall super soldier?"
Steve smiled, "Hey, whoa, I'm only 6'2."
"And my hammer is quite light if you're worthy. Perfectly balanced."
Steve slid off the roof, snapping his shield onto his back. He gave the quiet neighborhood another glance, wondering what tomorrow might bring.
Bruce said, "Did they have smores when you were a kid, Steve?"
"Yes, actually. Hard to get chocolate during the war, though."
Steve sighed as he walked through the door. A wave of heat washed over him.
"Oh, were you in a war?" Nat said from a perch near the fireplace.
It gave her face a warm glow.
Steve sat on the ground below her, taking a skewer and a marshmallow.
"Do you still get cold?" Bruce asked, passing a bag of graham crackers to Steve.
Steve shrugged. "I feel it, but it doesn't bother me."
"He was frozen for a while," Rhodes said, biting a smore and talking through it. "Common knowledge." He slapped Thor's hand when the god reached out for him, "Hey, make your own."
Thor said, "I just want to try it. I think I got the ratio wrong. Explain it again."
Bruce looked into the fire, thoughtful.
Steve was about to ask what was on his mind.
But Natasha nudged him, "Your marshmallow is on fire."
It was nice to see his team so relaxed, given the current situation. Even Rhodey seemed calmer. Maybe him and Nat had talked it out.
"We might be here a few days," Steve said. "So tuck in, stay close, keep your coms on."
XxX
Tony used to hate the ocean.
He had a lot of distinct memories of his father – always in focus, replaying like movies in his head. Howard loved the sea. His work focused on engineering, energy, weaponry, but his fascination was with water. He used to go on and on about a submarine Hydra invented, an underwater drilling operation he consulted on in the Indian Ocean, an underwater volcano that had provided the element he needed to build a better rocket.
He loved the water more than he loved his own son, it seemed.
Now that he was older, Tony could appreciate his obsession.
He was passing over the Atlantic, his suit twenty feet above churning waves. An entire world lived down there, just under the surface. He would never care about it like Howard, but understanding his father nowadays seemed important. It seemed critical.
Slowly, a storm formed around him.
It was almost like Tony was seeking it out.
He took the suit through the rain, flying higher as the waves began to rise thirty or forty feet from sea level. Tony wished he could be worried.
"Sir, the storm is becoming hazardous, even for the Iron Man suit," Jarvis warned.
Good old Jarvis.
He was disconnected from his servers, a disembodied AI that lived in the suit. Tony kept turning him off and on, off and on, trying to escape the silence, and then trying to turn off the noise.
Everything was all mixed up inside.
"Not a great suit then, is it?" Tony said, veering up as a wave surged just below his belly.
"There are few manmade technologies that can resist-"
"Yeah, yeah, save it, Ahab."
Tony saw nothing ahead, just a dreary gray mist. Rain. It was deflecting off of his face mask.
He stopped, hovering midair, lowering his helmet. The rain came down like a million little needles. It was cold, too cold to tolerate, but it gave him a small semblance of peace.
Maybe he would die out here.
"Your heartrate is slowing," Jarvis advised.
Tony put his helmet up and continued, "Where am I?"
"Three hundred miles from shore, on your current path."
"Good."
"Power level is critically low."
"What? How? This thing is powered by an arc reactor."
"It appears parts of the reactor were damaged during your fight with Captain Rogers."
Tony groaned. "Why are you only telling me this now?"
"I was disabled, sir."
A red light flashed on his interface.
"Sir-"
"Yeah, I see it."
Tony closed his eyes, staying his course, feeling like himself a few precious seconds.
"I have to get as far away as possible. Just keep going."
"You're risking your life."
"It's better than risking theirs."
He suddenly dropped out of the sky.
The Iron Man suit hit the water, the impact barely felt on the inside. Tony shut his eyes, thinking this might be the end – and there was peace, because he was too far away to do any more damage back home – but the flotation devices on his suit deployed. He bobbed at the surface.
"It would appear we are at the edge of the storm," Jarvis said, his voice swishing with the waves. "A vessel has been detected on the radar."
Tony clenched his jaw.
If he just went unnoticed, he could stay out here. He could stay out of New York until he figured out how to fix this.
But a flash of fury bubbled up inside, a flash of insanity.
Rogers.
"Deploy emergency flares."