Seeing, Not Believing


"Hill, maybe you should take a look at this."

Maria paused for a moment, before looking over to the supervisor behind one of the many computers. He took his headset off, quickly tipped in a short key sequence and the picture on the display started to play with full volume. Maria leaned over his shoulder, narrowed her eyes at the video; the security cameras showed the special prison cell, their newly arrested prisoner standing inside with his hands folded behind his back ... and, interestingly enough, one of their security personnel. She frowned in surprise, not remembering ever having authorised anything like this. What was that guy doing there alone?

She watched the full live-broadcast until Fury appeared on the screen, took the tablet she had used to broadcast the video and then quickly headed off. With a few steps she reached the glass table; some of their special guests – Romanoff, Banner, Rogers and Thor – had already gathered around it. Nobody said a word while they all watched the conversation between Loki and the director in silence.

"Natasha, I think we have a blind passenger", Maria briefly explained, coming to a halt beside Natasha. She handed her the tablet and Natasha, despite her mild confusion, reached for it; she too watched the short recording and then zoomed into the man dressed in the SHIELD-uniform – the cameras didn't seem to catch a clear picture of his face. Natasha frowned, contemplating. The man must have watched out for the cameras, he must have known he hadn't been allowed to be there – and yet, he had taken off his helmet, as if he had to proof something to Loki. He looked strangely familiar, as if she had seen him before ... but that couldn't be ...

"That looks like– ..."

"Stark. I know, I was thinking the same thing. But Coulson is already on his way here – with Stark."

"An who's supposed to be Thanos? What stones is he talking about, do we have anything about it in our data base?", Natasha asked alarmed, glancing over to Maria. As far as she knew they never came across any of those items and her colleague only reaffirmed her assumption when she slightly shook her head no. But that man ... he apparently knew what was going on – and talked about it in a civilized conversation with Loki, their prisoner, who already had numerous lives on his conscience. Something was definitely not right. "We have to check the security personnel. Somehow, that man managed to get on board and he it seems that he knows his way around; or Loki turned around even more of our people than we originally thought. We have to head him off before he can leave the ship."

"I'll order an investigation. Is Fury still with Loki?"

Natasha nodded and gave Maria the tablet back, who left the deck of the Helicarrier immediately afterwards, and so everyone was left looking at her. The broadcast of Fury's conversation with Loki had already stopped, but none of the attendees seemed to have gotten any new information out of it. Natasha frowned, contemplating; she couldn't hope for an answer from Banner or Rogers and so she looked directly at Thor, brother of their crazy prisoner. "Does the name Thanos ring any bells?"

"Not to my knowledge, no", Thor replied, his gaze absently drifting to one of the enormous windows of the Helicarrier. "What I know is that Loki is in possession of an army, the Chitauri; they are not from Asgard or any other realm we know of. He will lead them into battle; they are meant to conquer Earth under his order – in return of the Tesseract, I suppose. Thanos I do not know, but Loki possibly met him before his arrival on Midgard."

"He wants to open a new portal", intersected Bruce, who stood beside the glass table, his arms crossed; everybody turned towards the man and taken aback by the sudden attention he sheepishly adjusted his glasses. "He will need an astrophysicist to do so – Selvig."

Thor looked as if he was about to reply, but was suddenly interrupted by one of the supervisors reluctantly clearing his throat. The screen in front of him displayed an image of the Helicarrier and the area around it. "Agent Romanoff, we have an unidentified flying object departing the Carrier – it possibly launched from here. We didn't give clearance for take-off and every attempt of making contact has been rejected so far."

Natasha narrowed her eyes in confusion. What the hell was going on?


Light rain was falling from the still overcast sky. It was getting dark. He let FRIDAY direct some additional energy into his repulsors, moving away from the Helicarrier at a nearly flight-like pace. The giant ship was flying through the air several yards behind him and with every second Tony brought more distance between himself and the Carrier.

"FRIDAY, locate Scott's tracking-signal."

Mr Lang is currently located on 6th Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan, Sir

Tony managed to bring up a small smile. "The one time we have to be a little discrete and the guy practically lands right beside Times Square. Whatever, confirm the signal before he changes his position again. I don't wanna have to look for him in the crowd."

Crowd. Tony bit his bottom lip; when was the last time he had seen a crowd of people in the streets? It felt like years had passed; everything seemed distant to him, strange, as if nothing of the mess in the last months had ever happened – only that it would. All of it would happen if they didn't change anything now. All the civil wars, all the anarchies and dictatorships ... all this turmoil, because a mad titan had decided to snap his fingers and every second person on this planet had turned into dust in a matter of seconds. Tony closed his eyes for a short moment and suddenly all those terrible pictures appeared in front of his mental eye; he watched in horror as all of his comrades on Titan disintegrated, bit by bit, watched Peter, clinging frantically onto his shoulders and begging with that soft voice of his, watched as the boy vanished into thin air and the dust slid through his shaking fingers. God, Peter.

Sir, I register an increased heart rate. I am initiating the protocol for a possible panic attack. You are now temporarily on autopilot

"No, it's all right ...", Tony tried to protest with a weak voice, even if he tensed up and his whole body stiffened, the tight feeling in his chest growing stronger with every new breath; his helmet was suddenly way too small, he could barely breathe. And then, out of nowhere, a calm voice came from the speakers that were installed in his iron helmet, and she laughed and rambled on and on about trivial things – and Tony seemed to relax for a moment; the voice warmed his clenching heart. Pepper. He kept his eyes closed, just listening to her – and after a few minutes he could feel his racing heart slow down again. Even if he had not dared to hope for it back then Pepper had survived the titan's purge and never before had he felt more grateful; she was still there, she was still there.

Sir?

Tony took another deep breath and let his suit glide through the night on its own. He should not think about all the things he had already lived through once; it could happen like it had before, but it didn't had to. Everything could still be changed, corrected; they could still put things on the right track. He was in the past, goddammit, everything had to change. Tony pursed his lips and then finally opened his eyes. "I'm alright, FRIDAY."

And with those three words the autopilot deactivated and within a few seconds Tony had retrieved full control over his suit. For a few minutes he flew over the illuminated city just a few yards beneath him in comfortable silence and Tony couldn't help but smile. Everything was still there. "And FRIDAY?"

Yes, Sir?

"Thanks."

No problem, Mr Stark

When Tony finally was over Midtown he dimmed the lights of his suit as much as he possibly could and then slowly approached to land just above the Bryant Park. He tried to reach the ground in between a couple of tall trees, took several twigs with him and probably scared a cat on one of the thicker branches to death on his way down; but as soon as he landed on solid ground he let his suit disappear into the device in his chest again. Never before had he been more thankful for his achievements in the field of nanotechnology (or that he had reinstalled his arc reactor) than in this moment. A small smile appeared on his lips when he thought about the current technological status of his younger self. Everything had to start somewhere, he supposed.

Tony noticed a few people turning around in surprise and felt prying eyes on his back when he passed by – of course, this was New York and he was Tony Stark aka Iron Man after all. Besides that, crashing through a bunch of treetops in a public park probably wasn't the most unobtrusive thing to do. He sighed. Great.

Even at night the Bryant Park was well-visited and so Tony tried his best to push through the dense crowd without running anyone over; and while he was already heading for an exit he noticed a man with a baseball cap and – without thinking too much about it – snatched it off of his head. Somewhere behind him he could hear an angry exclamation but Tony had already left the park in a rush and was now walking down 6th Avenue. He looked around, unsure where to look for his time travelling accomplice, the cap pulled down low over his face. Right now they were in the lab. Right now they were locating the Tesseract. It seemed so unbelievable, it felt like an illusion, like a dream, if it wasn't for–

"Stark!"

Tony turned around and spotted Scott between unfamiliar faces, saw him hurry towards him, fully dressed in his red and silver suit; he looked just as stirred and hyper as Tony felt. Scott stopped right in front of him, practically bouncing up and down in excitement. "God, it worked, it actually worked! At first I thought I just changed places, but then I saw the date on the newspapers and, man, I almost freaked out! I can't believe it – we actually really truly did it!"

"Yeah, we did it", Tony repeated silently, a small smile forming on his lips. Scotts overexcited nature had been getting on his last nerve far too many times in these past months and yet he had never had more understanding for his child-like thrill and over-the-top enthusiasm than in this very moment. Nonetheless, a more serious expression settled onto his face; their little time travel had only been the first hurdle. "That alone wasn't enough, Scott. Work's far from done."

"Yeah, sure, I get it", Scott replied immediately and Tony could see how hard he was trying to keep his excitement down. "So, what's the plan? The date's correct, but our time travel didn't really take the hours all too serious."

Tony sighed, before turning away from Scott, contemplating, and looking over to a few of the many illuminated skyscrapers of Manhattan. It was still the middle of the night, and yet he noticed soft daylight fighting its way onto the black sky. Just a few hours from now hell would break loose in New York. Just a few hours from now the world would change. He turned around once again, facing the only friend he knew at his side, at least for the time being. "The portal has to open. If I can't shoot that missile through the space hole there will be a whole army waiting for us in the near future. We have to take out the Chitauri."

"Okay. And then?"

Tony thought about Loki and their conversation on the Helicarrier; he thought about how the two gods had left Earth with the blue cube and practically brought their own doom to Asgard. He thought about the future and the only possibility to save it.

"Then we have to keep the Tesseract from leaving Earth."