Steve quickly began to realize that the drive back to Los Angeles – and probably the one from there to Houston afterwards, too – was going to be a very long one. Downey seemed to love talking about Tony Stark almost as much as Stark himself did.
"The thing about Tony's character arc," he said, through a mouthful of sour cherry candy, "is that it's always about responsibility. That's carried through all of his movies. In Iron Man 1, he's in that cave in Afghanistan because he wasn't paying attention to what his company was doing, he was busy partying and wasn't taking responsibility for what he helped create. So he decides that's going to be his mission, to take back that responsibility. And at the end, he outs himself. He doesn't want a secret identity, because he wants to have that check on his behaviour that comes with people knowing who he is. If he misuses his power as Iron Man, it needs to come back and bite him."
"Uh-huh," said Steve. He'd seen video of that press conference. No matter what Downey said, it sure looked to Steve as if Stark just wanted the credit for being a hero.
"Iron Man 2," Downey went on. "He won't give up the suit when the government demands it, because he doesn't want that kind of power in the hands of people who aren't accountable. At the end, Justin Hammer is held accountable for what he's done. He doesn't get killed, Pepper has him arrested. Then in Avengers, Tony's out to expose SHIELD's dirty laundry, because here's more people who have a lot of power and aren't accountable for how they use it. Case in point, they think they can nuke New York and get away with it."
"That was the security council, not SHIELD," said Steve. "You know, the exact same people who would have control of the Avengers under the Sokovia Accords." Surely anybody could see the hypocrisy there.
But Downey had built up a head of steam and wasn't going to let Steve stop him now. "Iron Man 3," he said. "Tony blew off Killian at a party thirteen years ago, and the guy went all Syndrome from The Incredibles and grew up to be a supervillain. So Tony has to take responsibility for that and for his own mental health issues, which he's been neglecting. And Age of Ultron is all about Tony taking responsibility for something he helped to create. It's practically a metaphorical retelling of Iron Man 1, with Ultron standing in for Obadiah as the monster Tony irresponsibly built! Tony is all over responsibility, and as a fundamentally irresponsible person, I appreciate…"
"Is it responsible to let innocent people die when you could have saved them?" Steve interrupted. Downey was talking about this as if it were some kind of literature analysis. Didn't he realize by now that Steve came from a real world, with real people's lives on the line?
"No," said Downey, "but neither is destroying a building to get at the one bad guy in the middle of it. Tony doesn't think the accords are perfect, but they're a step in the direction of finding a compromise. Like Scarlett said, there are no perfect solutions in an imperfect world."
"Exactly!" Natasha agreed. "It's not as black and white as you think of it, Steve. It's always more complicated."
"As long as we're talking about it," Downey said, "I gotta ask. Thor! Whose side would you have taken? I've been wondering."
"Not knowing all the details of the conflict, it is difficult to say," said Thor. "As I said last night, I do not like being unable to help people in need, but nor do I wish for those who are not in need to suffer. And one cannot go to war without a formal declaration," he added. "A lesson I learned at great cost."
"Bruce would have been Team Cap," said Downey, "but that's mostly because he hates Ross."
"Nice to know somebody's on my side," grumbled Steve. He looked up, and caught Hayley's eye in the mirror again. "What about you?" he asked. He had to admit, if there were a good example here of poor decisions putting the innocent in danger, it was Hayley's presence. She was stuck with them because Steve had taken something into his own hands when he shouldn't have.
"What about me?" she said, an eyebrow raised. "Or what about Agent Carter?"
"Both," said Steve. That doubled the chances of her agreeing with him.
"Peggy thinks it's pointless to argue with Steve Rogers no matter your opinion," she said, "because he's a stubborn plonker and you'll never change his mind. I imagine she said so to her superiors on many, many occasions. And Hayley thinks you should both be quiet and let her drive, because she is far too tired to do so while distracted."
She didn't want to give him an answer… that meant she, too, though he was wrong. "Fine," grumbled Steve.
"Don't sulk," Natasha told him. "It's my fault for bringing it up. We're all way to strung out to talk about things like this. I'm not surprised that Bob is Stark's most ardent defender, though." She smiled. "If you're going to be an actor you have to understand exactly what your character is thinking. That's why you're so bad at it," she said, giving Steve a gentle poke.
He wasn't in the mood. "The guy who plays me can't be any good, either." Not if he agreed with Stark.
"That's not fair, Steve," said Hayley. She sounded remarkably like the fans protesting Thor's treatment of Loki.
"Yeah, trust me," Downey said, "Chris practically is Captain America. You should see his twitter. Half of it is him arguing with corrupt politicians, and the other half is fawning over dogs."
"He loves the role," said Hayley. "He loves everything Captain America represents. He almost didn't accept the part when Marvel offered it to him, because he wasn't sure he wanted to be that kind of movie star, but he just fell in love with the whole concept. If you could talk to him, he'd tell you that himself."
Steve wasn't sure he believed that. How could this man claim to understand what Captain America stood for, and yet not agree that the Accords were an unacceptable muzzle? A way for politicians to sit by and watch people die while patting each other on the back and insisting they'd done the right thing? Or even a way to use the Avengers as a weapon – it was a very small step from telling somebody yes you may to yes you must, whether you like it or not. Steve had once been a soldier who took orders, but that had been a very different kind of war, where he knew who the enemy was.
This time, Downey was awake to see how Natasha got them out of Canada again. He was both impressed and appalled. Once they were safely away from the border crossing, he got out of the van and removed the license plates.
"That's not gonna keep us out of trouble," said Nat, as he climbed back in.
"I'm sure you have a back-up plan," Downey replied.
She did. They stopped for gas a little later, and while Downey paid – using his own credit card, after Nat wrote the numbers down for him on the back of their Wal-Mart receipt – she stole the plates off a very similar van that was sitting out behind the station with one tire missing.
"I'd start a list of the crimes we've committed this weekend, except that I didn't start right away and I don't think I could remember them all." Downey climbed into the driver's seat, while Hayley scooted over to the passenger side, and tore open a granola bar to munch on. "Jail sucks. There's nothing to do. And I really wanted to do Sherlock Holmes 3 eventually. I haven't spoken to Jude since he started doing The Young Pope and I miss him."
That seemed like a statement designed to invite questions. Steve thought of several, but refused to give Downey the satisfaction of hearing him ask them.
Nobody wanted to spend another full twenty-four hours on the road, so they pulled over and camped out in the van overnight. In the morning they found a little coffee shop in a roadside diner in northern Utah and ate breakfast there, while going through the local newspaper with a metaphorical fine-tooth comb. There was a small article titled Terror Attack Rocks Canadian Comic-Con but that was it. Nothing about aliens at NASA, which suggested that the Chi'Tauri were at the very least biding their time.
The waitress, a bleach-blonde woman in black-rimmed glasses that all but overwhelmed her pale face, brought them their bill. She then began to gather up the dishes, and put them in a pile before taking a deep breath, setting them down on the table again and saying, "okay, I need to know."
Steve saw Natasha brace herself, but the waitress turned, instead, to Downey.
"Are you Robert Downey Junior?" she asked.
"No," said Downey, without so much as a blink. "I'm Tony Stark."
"People ask him that all the time," said Natasha.
Finally, in the middle of the afternoon, they pulled into the parking lot outside the studio. It all looked exactly the same as it had when they'd left – the hangar-like building, the row of trailers, even the food truck and the cast and crew sitting around in folding chairs eating lunch. Half a dozen conversations seemed to be going on as people passed script pages around, and the arrival of the van didn't merit more than a passing glance or two – until Steve and Natasha got out.
Silence fell. People stopped in mid-sentence or mid-mouthful to stare at them. Maddy actually dropped her clipboard.
"Uh, hi," said Steve. "Is Donny still here?"
Maddy scooped her papers up off the floor and ran up the steps to the building. "Ridley!" she shouted, as she opened the door. "Ridley!"
A moment later, Donny himself appeared from between two trailers and hurried towards them. He was wearing another NASA t-shirt, although this one looked like it had been in a fire, and he had a black eye, a scraped cheek, and a bandage on his right hand. For a moment Steve wanted to ask him what had happened, then realized it was probably just makeup. Steve himself probably looked just as bad if not worse, and his injuries were all real.
"Where have you two been?" asked Donny. "Ridley's been flipping out. He's looking for replacements for you. He was on the phone with Margot Robbie this morning."
"We need to talk to your friend Kevin at NASA," Steve said.
Donny stared at him in open bewilderment. "Huh? Why?"
"We need to…" Steve looked at the rest of the cast and crew, who were still sitting or standing around, staring at them. They were going to need to tell Donny the truth, he realized, and they couldn't do it with an audience.
Natasha agreed. "Not here. This way." She grabbed Donny's right arm, Steve took his left, and they dragged Donny over to the Chris Evans trailer. Dodger ran ahead of them and waited at the door, and when Natasha opened it the dog bounced up the stairs and turned in a circle in the kitchen, delighted to be home. Steve and Nat took Donny inside, and got him seated on one of the living room sofas.
"This is bad, isn't it?" asked Donny. "Whatever it is?"
"It is," Steve said. "Listen to me. I'm not Chris Evans. I'm Steve Rogers."
Donny blinked, then started to get up. "I'm not playing," he said, holding up his hands.
"Sit down." Nat put a hand in the middle of his chest and pushed him gently back into his seat. "Just hear us out."
"Did you hear about what happened in Canada?" asked Steve.
"Uh… George Romero died?" Donny guessed.
"No, the thing at the convention," said Steve.
"A comic book expo was invaded by Chi'Tauri looking for Loki," said Nat. "He came here trying to hide from them but they managed to follow him after finding Tom Hiddleston in our universe."
"We can't get back, because there's no magic here," said Steve. "So we need to find another way, and we figured NASA would be the place to start looking."
"Thor and Loki are outside, with Hayley Atwell and Bob Downey," added Nat. "You can ask them if you like."
Donny stared at them. He opened his mouth, then shut it again, his eyes darting back and forth in his face as he either tried to figure out what to say or else searched for an escape – it was impossible to say. Before he could make up his mind, however, Steve heard the sound of sirens.
"Oh, crap," sighed Steve.
The cops knew where they were going, and Steve and Natasha didn't have time to escape – the trailer was quickly surrounded. The only way in or out was the door, Steve was in no condition to fight, and Natasha couldn't take them all by herself. All they could do, as the door banged open and the police came charging in one after another, was put their hands up and let themselves be arrested.
"You have the right to remain silent," a cop said to Steve.
"Yeah, I know," said Steve. He was probably going to. It was about the only thing he could do.
They were escorted outside to the waiting police cars. On the way, they passed the van – another cop was standing there, writing notes while Downey and Hayley talked to him. Thor and Loki might have still been in the vehicle, but if so they'd ducked down out of sight. Or maybe they'd had the sense to get out and run.
"I don't think Bob's gonna bail us out this time," said Nat, as they were put in a police car.
"I thought you knew his credit card number," said Steve.
She looked out the window, where Downey was in the act of giving a piece of paper to the police. "Yeah, that's not gonna help."
They were taken to a police station in Los Angeles rather than the one in Malibu – this one had cells with solid doors instead of barred walls, painted in a horrible shade of pale blue-green, the kind of colour that appeared in hospitals or prisons. There weren't even any bars here to rattle. Steve didn't say much when the cops tried to question him, because there was nothing much to be said. He'd had reasons for doing all the stupid things he'd done over the past few days, but nobody would believe him if he talked about them, so he kept his mouth shut.
Maybe Thor and Loki could still make it back, he thought. Maybe Bob and Hayley and Donny would be able to help them. Maybe once Loki was back in their own universe, he could bring the rest of them back by magic… although it was distinctly possible that even if he could he wouldn't bother. Maybe Natasha could still break herself and Steve out of jail.
Or maybe they were exactly where they deserved to be.
There was a knock on the cell door, and a policeman – a white man in his forties, with bushy eyebrows and mustache but a shaved head – opened it a crack. "Hey, Evans," he said.
Steve propped himself up a little. His cell had a bunk bed in it, and he'd been lying on the lower bunk with his good leg hanging off the end and his bad one folded awkwardly under it. "Yeah?" he asked.
"Johansson wants to talk to you," the cop said.
"Oh?" asked Steve, trying not to sound too hopeful. She must have a plan for getting them out of here.
"Yeah. Come with me."
The man let Steve lean on him to hobble to one of the little interrogation rooms. These were even more claustrophobic and depressing than the actual cells, with linoleum floors and cinder block walls and the single eye of a video camera staring from one corner. Steve sat down in a chair made of hard red plastic, and the cop thoughtfully pulled a second one over so he could put his injured foot up. A moment later, Natasha came in.
She was still wearing the clothes she'd bought at the Wal-Mart – distressed jeans, red chucks, and a t-shirt with a butterfly on it in sequins. She came and sat down across from Steve without saying a word, her face completely blank. The cop stepped back and shut the door, leaving the two of them supervised only by the video camera.
"I'm sorry," said Natasha.
Steve didn't answer. He had been prepared to hear a plan and start carrying it out. He didn't know what to do with an apology.
"This is… this is my fault," she said. "I tried to take charge of the whole situation because I didn't want to invoke the Accords, even though I should have known we'd need more help. Then once we got here, instead of focusing on what we needed to do to get back, I went to see Mari. I felt like I had to… I just had to see her, I had to know what that was like, to have a child look at you the way Clint and Laura's kids look at them." She hung her head. "It sounds so stupid now, even to me, but I had to. You understand, right?" She risked a glance up at him, and there was something in her face that Steve had never seen before. She was begging.
And he did understand. Steve understood, because he'd also needed to see Peggy, one last time. He'd needed to just pass his fingers through the illusion of that thing he could never have. "Yeah," he said. "I do."
"And now we're in here instead of saving the world, because of me," said Natasha. "You were right, if I hadn't done that, this would all have been much easier. So I'm sorry."
What could he say to that? He couldn't tell her it was all right because it wasn't, but… "I'm sorry, too," he decided. He was worry he hadn't been able to learn from her mistake, sorry he'd gotten involved in this, sorry he hadn't fought when he could have and had fought when he shouldn't. "Loki said this world had everything any of us ever wanted, but it's all lies. Mari's not your daughter, and Hayley's not Peggy."
"And there's no Jane Foster for Thor, and Loki's fans only love him as part of a story," Nat agreed. "He is the god of lies. It would be."
It was worse than that, though, Steve thought, because in order to have those lies they would have to give up the truth. They could stay here and assume their alternates' identities as actors, living a lie and lying for their living. Steve was a rotten liar because the truth was too important to him. When he lied, he was always worrying about what the consequences of the lie might be. He'd been able to star in half a dozen Captain America movies because he was playing himself, telling a form of the truth. He couldn't play anybody else.
Steve did his best lying when he just avoided the truth rather than actively denying it. That was how he'd managed to lie to Stark for a couple of years, keeping the truth about his parents' deaths from him by simply never letting the subject come up. He'd told himself he was protecting Stark from something that would hurt him, but the truth was that he'd been afraid Stark would hate Bucky for it – and now he hated Steve and Bucky both.
Steve had taken something into his own hands when he shouldn't have, and sure enough, he'd suffered the consequences.
"So now what?" he asked Natasha.
"I don't know," she said. "They're not going to offer us bail this time because we're a flight risk – I overheard one of the cops talking to somebody from the DA's office. They're worried that if we tried to flee the country over one charge of assault, we must be involved in something way worse."
That figured. "So we have to escape," said Steve.
"I guess," said Natasha, but she wounded oddly reluctant. "Honestly, though, that's just gonna make this worse. We've already ruined these people's lives and careers. Johansson's husband is going to want a divorce and he'll probably take custody of Mari. Both of us will have trouble finding acting work after running off for a crime spree like we did. Can we really, in good conscience, do any more damage?"
"Can we really in good conscience let the Chi'Tauri take Loki?" asked Steve. "Tom Hiddleston has a life, too, and I'm sure he wants it back."
"I don't know." Natasha pushed her hands into her hair. "Like I said… it's all so much more complicated than just yes or no."
What was she suggesting, then? "We can't just sit here and rot in jail!" Steve said.
"Technically, we can," said Nat. "It depends on how badly we want to get anything done."
She sounded as if she actually thought that might be for the best. Steve had never heard that kind of hopelessness from Natasha and it scared him worse than any number of alien invaders possibly could. He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders.
"Nat," he said, "we can't just quit. We have to go home – that world needs us!"
"I know," she said. "But I need some time. I need… I don't know what I need. I wish I'd told Thor to just go to Stark and do things through official channels. Then at least it would be them instead of us."
"There's nobody better than us," said Steve, although at the moment he wasn't sure he believed it. "There's nobody else I'd trust to deal with this."
She shook her head. "That's always been your problem, Steve."
The policemen showed them both back to their cells.
Steve spent the night in restless sleep, broken by periods of exhausted wakefulness. The police had offered him some Tylenol but he didn't trust them or this insane alternate universe enough to accept it, so he lay awake in the dim, ugly fluorescent lighting, trying desperately to think about something other than the damage he'd done. He hoped somebody was taking care of Dodger. If Bob Downey and Hayley Atwell didn't deserve to be part of this mess, then Dodger definitely didn't.
What was wrong with him? People had been hurt in the hotel and at the convention, and Steve was worrying about a dog.
What was Chris Evans going to think when he returned home to find he was now a criminal with a bad ankle? That his friend Donny thought he was crazy and that Scarlett was losing her family because her husband thought she'd been having an affair with him? If he hadn't already thought 'Captain America' was a foolish character he hadn't wanted to play, he would when he found out what Steve had done with his life. It was a damned good thing Steve hadn't given in to the temptation to call Evans' parents, because that could only possibly have made things far worse. It still might, of course… what if they came to see him in jail?
Steve didn't have a watch or a phone, and there was no clock or window in the little cell, so there was nothing to tell him when morning came. He eventually gave up on getting any more sleep and tried to get up and pace, but his abused ankle hurt too much. His stomach grumbled, and he wondered if anybody were going to bring him something to eat. Steve had never been in jail before this all happened, but surely they would let him have meals and showers. He limped over to the door and peeked out the little window, but there was nobody in the hallway outside.
"Hello?" Steve knocked on the inside of the door. "Is anybody out there?" If he asked for food, they'd have to bring him some, right?
There was no response.
He next tried the video camera in the corner, waving at it in the hopes of getting somebody's attention. That garnered no reaction, either. Shouldn't somebody be watching the feed? Was the camera even on?
It was impossible to say how much longer he waited. It felt like hours, but with no reference for the passage of time, it might have been only a few minutes. Eventually, the door opened and a muscular policewoman with salt-and-pepper hair in a tidy bun looked in on him.
"You've got visitors" she said.
This time, Steve didn't bother to get his hopes up. It was probably Evans' parents, for no better reason than so Steve could finish ruining everything. "Do they have breakfast?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, we've got food. Sorry, we've been… distracted. I've also got a crutch to help you walk." She opened the door the rest of the way to offer it to him. "Follow me."
She led Steve back into the little interrogation room, which was now crowded with people. They weren't Evans' parents, though – instead it was Bob Downey and Hayley Atwell, and Donny Glover with Dodger the dog in his arms. All three of them looked pale and worried, as did the other two cops who were in the room with them. Donny put Dodger on the ground, and the dog trotted over to lick Steve's hand.
Steve reached down as best he could to rub the dog's head. "How are you doing, buddy?" he asked.
A moment later, Natasha arrived, also with a police escort. She also seemed surprised to see who it was, but at first nobody said anything. Bob held out a bag from Krispy Kreme.
"Officer Gamba said they forgot to feed you," he said.
"Thanks." Steve straightened up and accepted the bag, but didn't open it. Something way bigger was going on here than his empty stomach. The serious silence in the room felt as if they were about to hear that somebody died… and Steve immediately had two awful thoughts about who it might have been. "Where are…" he paused, making sure he was saying the right names. "Where are Chris and Tom?"
"They're okay," said Hayley.
"We're all okay," Bob agreed, and then seemed to realize something. "You've been in here all night… they probably haven't been letting you watch TV."
Steve saw the colour drain from Natasha's face, and felt something similar probably happening to his own. "What happened?" he asked, although he had a feeling he already knew.
"The Chi'Tauri are in Houston, aren't they?" asked Natasha.
Donny held out a newspaper. The photograph on the front looked like the view from a news channel's weather camera – it showed a complex of buildings and parking lots that Steve vaguely recognized from one official visit and a number of previous news stories – the Johnson Space Center. Smoke was rising from several points within and around it, and an inset showed a blurry close-up of the object hanging in the air above. It was a Chi'Tauri leviathan.
The headline said simply, They're Here.