Author's note: Thanks to Sarah Duncan, MagicLia16, LilyAnneBlack, Nimrodel 101, sofiarose613, birdy, FigurativelyDying, jerseydanielgibson, girliemom, SpanishGirl and Guests for your reviews! They are really encouraging.
5:42 p.m., December 16, 1991
Howard Stark pulled the blanket off Tony's head without ceremony. "Who's the homeless person on the couch?" he asked.
Tony staggered to his feet, and from her vantage point in the hallway, looking through the potted tree fronds, Natty could see him valiantly trying to look sober, even though he was visibly wincing as he turned to face his father.
Howard inhaled deeply through his nose. "Whew. You even smell like a homeless person. Whiskey? That wouldn't be my Macallan 1926, would it?"
"You put it on my plane," Tony said, sounding hoarse. He cleared his throat roughly, and then cleared it again. "I assume it wasn't for decoration."
"My plane. And my whiskey." Howard scrutinized him for a long moment, and then said, "Pack your bags. Time to go."
"Pack?" Tony repeated confusedly, rubbing his temples with eyes squeezed shut for a moment. "I haven't even unpacked. Mom told me to come home for Christmas."
"Change of plans," Howard said.
"Your father's flying us to the Bahamas for a little getaway," Maria put in, still playing a gentle melody on the piano.
"Hop to it, we need to leave within the hour," Howard said.
Tony didn't move, beyond putting one hand down on the arm of the couch in a not-so-subtle effort to steady himself.
"Well, don't thank me all at once," Howard said after a long pause.
"Be nice, dear, he's been studying abroad," Maria said.
"Really, which broad?" Howard asked, reaching over and pulling off Tony's Santa hat. "What's her name?"
"Candice," Tony said, and Natty automatically shrank back further behind the tree, hoping against hope that she wouldn't get dragged into the conversation somehow. "And I can't go to the Bahamas, Dad," he added. "I have plans."
"For what, a toga party here at the house? They have girls in the Bahamas, you know," Howard said. "And probably well-aged whiskey, too. Everything you could ever need." His sarcasm was evident.
Tony stared at his dad for a long moment, drawing himself up and squaring his shoulders. "Let me guess. You just need to make a quick stop at the Pentagon first. Right?"
Howard frowned. "The Pentagon?"
"Yeah, the Pentagon. You know, that five-sided building full of G-men who breathlessly await your latest contribution to humanity?" The longer Tony talked, the less mushy his words were; he was concentrating fiercely. It almost sounded like he was delivering a pre-planned speech. "Or were you planning to pretend you're just popping in to enjoy the holiday menu at the commissary?"
Howard looked blank. "What are you talking about?"
"Your super-soldier serum. Don't you need to deliver it before you leave town?"
Maria stopped playing the piano, and looked over at Tony in surprise.
"The serum? How did you-" Howard broke off, and turned to face Maria. "Did you tell him?" he asked, bewildered.
"Of course not," she said quickly.
Howard's confusion gave way to a sudden suspicion. "What, have you been spying on me?" he demanded of Tony.
"I'm not a spy, Dad, I'm just a second-rate version of you who doesn't care about anything but women and whiskey."
"Where did you hear about the serum?" Howard demanded.
"Well, I'll tell you, Dad. I heard about the serum because I was doing what you wanted!" Tony shot back, his tone defiant although he was suddenly trembling, his eyes glistening. "You hated my MIRV missile idea, remember? Fine! I decided to try something different. To make you happy! So I built this."
He reached down into his pocket and pulled out something so tiny that it could only be seen as a round silver glint between his thumb and forefinger.
"A listening device. Smallest ever built. I put one here in the music room and set up some relays. I wanted to see how far I could shuttle the signal without losing integrity. But I turned it on from my workshop here in the house to test it first, and let me tell you-" His tone was savage now. "-when you let in Wendy Moira Angela Darling or whoever that Brit was and told her all about your disappointing son, I could hear everything, clear as a bell."
Maria's mouth dropped open. "Howard-" she started, looking at him with a horrified expression.
"Don't you dare take his side!" Howard snapped, pointing his finger at her in warning. He looked back at Tony, face reddening with anger. "You had no right to listen in on my private conversations."
"I put it in here so I could hear mom's music!" Tony objected, flinging his arms out in a vehement gesture. "How was I supposed to know you were going to have a top-secret meeting in here in the middle of a fundraiser?" He took a deep breath, controlling himself with an effort. "So... you're making a new super-soldier, huh? I guess that makes sense, since you lost the last one at the bottom of an ocean."
Howard had gone abruptly cold. "Don't talk about things you don't understand."
"Both of you, stop it," Maria said, her voice rising. "Howard, let Tony-"
"Well, I wish you the best, Dad, because I, for one, am really hoping you succeed." Tony's voice was thick with sarcasm. "So go ahead, go make yourself another Captain America." He fairly spat the words out. "Maybe you can adopt him, and then you'll finally have a son you can be proud of."
Howard had swallowed back his rage. "You know, they say sarcasm is a metric for potential," he said coldly. "If that's true, you'll be a great man some day. Now get your bags. It's time to go."
"You go. Go to the Bahamas, or go to hell. I'm staying here with Candice."
Howard shook his head. "Do what you want," he said, clipping off the words abruptly. "I guess you will anyway." He glanced at Maria, whose makeup was steadily getting ruined by the tears streaming down her face. "I'll get the bags."
He strode out of the room and, to Natty's relief, went straight up the stairs without taking a glance in her direction, his face set and his mustache as stiff as a brush.
Tony walked over to the music room's entrance and crossed his arms, leaning up against the door frame and trying to look nonchalant, but the hurt was all too plain to be seen on his face. His mother followed him, looking concerned.
"I'm so sorry," she said, almost in a whisper.
"Not your fault," he said shortly. "Never yours."
Maria opened her mouth to speak, hesitated for a moment, and then said carefully: "He does miss you when you're not here."
Tony stared at the Christmas tree in the foyer with unseeing eyes. "Yeah. Sure."
"Come with us," she said, reaching up to stroke his arm gently. "It's Christmas, Tony. You can't stay here alone. Let's just… let's just be a family for the next few days. The two of you don't have to talk about…" She sighed deeply. "You don't have to talk about anything with him if you don't want to. Just… come have Christmas with me. Please."
"Wish I could, Mom. But we wouldn't make it a pleasant holiday for you. And you deserve one." He shook his head slightly. "It's better this way. I should really…" He swallowed. "I should just get a place of my own. You could come and see me whenever you wanted."
She shook her head quickly. "Don't do that, Tony. Don't. I'll talk to him. I'll make sure… I'll make sure you can feel at home here. This is your home." She rubbed his arm. "You can always come home."
His only answer was a clenched jaw, and slowly her shoulders sagged.
"I'll get him to cut the trip short," she said at last, her voice a little choked. "I'll make sure we're back by Christmas Eve. All right?"
Tony nodded slightly. Blinking back tears, his mother leaned forward, resting one slender hand on his chest, and kissed his cheek tenderly.
Then she stroked his cheek with one hand and tried to smile a little before turning to leave, her heels clicking on the tile floor until the front door closed behind her.
The portal in the backyard snapped shut, and without hesitation Sarah shoved the sling ring in her pocket and darted toward the minivan, grabbing the dented driver's door and tearing it off its hinges. She unceremoniously tossed the door on the lawn and reached in, gently brushing Tien's hair back from her face to check her pulse.
There was a heartbeat. But it was faint. Sarah quickly checked for broken bones in the spine and, not finding any, carefully scooped Tien up in her arms, pulled her out of the minivan and laid her down on the grass. Immediately Dave was by her side, ready to assist.
Neither one of them were an ER doctor, but it wasn't hard to determine the problem: the front of Tien's shirt was soaked in blood, and there was a large glass shard lodged in her chest. Sarah and Dave exchanged horrified looks, and then glanced over at the others.
Harrison had carefully lowered Mike to the ground and Bram was checking him over now; he was no ER doctor either, but he knew basic emergency care, and even though Mike looked battered and bruised, he was breathing and alert and Sarah could tell at a glance that Tien was the priority right now.
"Harrison, run inside and call 911," Dave said breathlessly.
After one shocked look at his mother lying unconscious on the grass, Harrison raced to obey.
Working together, Sarah and Dave peeled back the torn shirt to get a better look at the injury. Blood was seeping out in rhythmic pulses, which meant the heart itself was damaged. Probably perforated by the glass. Pulling the shard out was out of the question; it would only make the bleeding worse. But Tien had clearly already lost a lot of blood, and in the time it would take for the ambulance to arrive, and even more time to get her to the hospital and into an operating room...
Sarah and Dave exchanged glances, both understanding the grim truth: Tien was not likely to last that long.
Through the open back door, they could hear Harrison talking urgently to the 911 operator. Sarah looked back down at Tien, mind racing, knowing there was no time for mistakes or hesitations, and came to a simple decision.
"Your serum," she said, looking up at Dave. "The cardiovascular variant-"
"-isn't tested yet," Dave said tersely. "And neither is your magical technique. We can't-"
"-we can't possibly make this worse," Sarah interrupted firmly. "We may not have tested it yet, but we know how the serum works. If she desires to be healed, she will be. It's as simple as that."
Dave's distress was evident in his eyes, and he hesitated for a long moment, obviously realizing she was right, but not particularly wanting her to be, and she knew why. As a geneticist, he had long ago learned that a slow, deliberate, thorough process was the key to getting reliable results. Spur-of-the-moment decisions were not in his purview.
"Honey, by the time the ambulance gets here-" she said, keeping her voice low so that Mike and Bram wouldn't hear.
"Okay," Dave said suddenly. "Okay. We'll try." He ran over to the shed that housed their laboratory equipment and punched in the code. He barged inside and came back out seconds later with a blue vial clutched in his hand. He knelt by Tien's side and loaded the serum into a syringe, his hands surprisingly steady.
He put his thumb on the plunger, and then hesitated. "But if she's unconscious-"
"Only her body is unconscious; her astral form is fully aware," Sarah pointed out. "Dad blacked out in the chamber before his transformation was complete, and it worked just fine."
Dave nodded, then took a deep breath and injected the serum.
Sarah was already gearing up to do her part, getting her hands into position, breathing deeply and slowly, imposing a calm on herself. There was no time for doubts, no time to indulge her own emotions. There was only the energy flowing through her body, and the long-practiced motions she had developed for coaxing it to flow outward. Within seconds she felt the power seeping from every pore in her skin, but kept her eyes closed to maintain focus. Moving her hands slowly and deliberately, she felt the power drain from her own body bit by bit, but she carefully reserved just enough to maintain her own life functions.
When she began to feel woozy from energy loss, she knew it was time. Opening her eyes, she flung her arms outward in one sharp, precise motion, feeling the power crystalize into two tight beams intersecting her chest, firmly anchored in the anahata field Master Mahika had taught her about. The glowing energy curved back behind her body in twin loops for a long breathless moment, and then she snapped that energy forward, compacting it into her cupped hands held down by her belly.
She looked down at the trembling azure ball of energy she had gathered and, taking a long slow breath, she pushed it deliberately inside Tien's body.
Instantly she felt a wave of weakness wash over her, and dimly she was aware that she was falling backward, that Dave was supporting her own limp body, but all of that seemed vague and unimportant: first and foremost in her consciousness was a hyper-awareness of Tien, a powerful shift in perspective that left her centered in someone else's being, rather than her own. Tien's sense of self, her deepest desires, her chi, was now mingling with Sarah's own.
To blend two astral forms into a single physical space was a serious matter. Sarah knew that. She'd expected disorientation. She'd expected turmoil, a clash of opposing wills, maybe even a sense of violation.
But she felt none of that. Instead she felt, of all things, a serene familiarity, and with some astonishment Sarah realized that contrary to what she had naively assumed, this was not the first time that her astral form had mingled with someone else's.
It felt like...
Like her very earliest memory, running into her parents' room in the middle of the night frightened by a bad dream, and feeling her father's strong arms wrap around her, and her mother's lips press against her hair.
It felt like crying with her friend Jenny the day she'd found out her little brother had leukemia.
It felt like being in church while the organ played and sunlight slanted in through the stained-glass windows, with the wafer melting in her mouth.
It felt like holding hands with Dave as they recited their vows at the altar, and it felt like their babies moving in her womb. It felt like a thousand good-night kisses to her children, and the bittersweetness of watching them grow and change.
In fact, it felt identical in every respect to love.
She'd even felt this with Tien herself before. Tien, her sister in marriage when she hadn't had a sister by blood. They had helped each other raise their children. Comforted each other through the stresses of adult life, especially their mutual worry over Mike and the dangers of his profession. Their spirits had already brushed up against each other, no magic required.
We're not made to be separate, Sarah realized with sudden certainty. None of us. We're made to unite.
Experimentally, she tried moving her awareness around a little, sensing that Dave's serum had done its job. Tien's genetic structures had been loosened, and her body was prepared for a transformation. The only question now was what that transformation was to be. It would be Tien's decision. She was only here to provide guidance and strength.
But Sarah didn't have to go searching far and wide to find Tien's wishes; Tien knew her body was damaged. Her desires were fixed on caring for her family at all costs... which meant her will to live was very, very strong.
She wanted to be whole again.
They both wanted it.
Sarah opened her eyes, and without hesitation or fear, she reached forward and yanked out the glass shard.
A blinding blue light flared, and then everything went dark.
6:04 p.m., December 16, 1991
Natty waited until she heard Howard roll the suitcases outside and shut the door behind him before emerging from her hiding spot behind the potted tree and returning to the music room.
Tony was still standing in the doorway, arms folded protectively across his chest, his face set and his dark eyes unfathomable. She approached him and silently offered the Tylenol and the glass of water she had been clutching this whole time.
"Oh," Tony said, coming out of his reverie reluctantly. "Yeah. Thanks." He popped the pills into his mouth and knocked back the water, wincing as he swallowed it all down.
"I guess you heard all that," Tony said then, a little glumly, setting the glass down on the curio cabinet and leaning against the door frame again.
"I'm sorry," she said simply. What else could she say? Grandpa had always believed that the wildness of Tony's grief over his parents had had an edge of guilt to it. And now she knew why. It hadn't been the kind of conversation most people would choose to have if it was the last time they were going to speak to their loved ones.
And then a horrible feeling washed over her. A selfish one. What if she had just had the last conversation she would ever have with her parents? It had all been so rushed and confused. Not the way she would have chosen, either.
The fear threatened to choke her. When she had volunteered for this mission she had assumed it would be a chance to serve Tony, to pay him back in some small way for the things he would one day do for her and her loved ones. To protect him, maybe even comfort him a little on what was about to become the worst day of his life.
She had known his parents would be in danger. She had never dreamed her own parents would be in danger. That maybe this would be the worst day of her life, too.
A glance out the music room's window showed her that Grandma and Grandpa's car was parked far down on the road outside the Stark property. It was mostly hidden behind a thick evergreen bush in the gathering gloom, but her eyes were sharper than most and she could see the faint gleam of metal even from this distance. It was undeniably comforting to know they were so close, but it wasn't enough. It was her father and her mother she wanted. She had taken it for granted that they would always be there for her. Her family was everything to her. Her whole world. Safe and secure.
Now she was afraid, but this time it wasn't fear of the Winter Soldier.
It was fear of the future.
"The future can't come fast enough," Tony said with sudden vehemence.
It hit so close to what she'd just been thinking that Natty stared at him, startled out of her dark thoughts. "What?"
"Ever think about that?" Tony continued. "Can't be worse than now, right? So it's gotta be better. Wish I could hurry it along somehow." His handsome face was pulled into a frown of concentration. As if he were already trying to come up with ways to make it happen.
He was so wrong that it wasn't even funny... or at least, Natty started to think that, until suddenly it was as if she saw the pages of Grandpa's comic books flipping backward through the years, issue by issue, leaving behind the bleak battlefield covered in fluttering ashes and the somber faces of the Avengers gathered around a burned-out suit of armor... and instead moving on to a lake house, where a dark-haired little girl with her arms wrapped around her dad's neck was planting an enthusiastic kiss on his cheek. And then there were more scenes flashing before her eyes: Tony willingly leaving his beloved workshop to follow a red-headed woman with a teasing smile downstairs to bed. Tony shelling out vast amounts of his hard-earned money without a second thought to equip the Avengers and build them a headquarters and fund their missions. Tony being the life of the party, too busy trading clever quips with Rhodey and Bruce to even think about drinking hard, his manners so easy and charming that even Steve Rogers couldn't help but smile to see it, even if he tried to play it cool...
And then, struck by some impulse she didn't fully understand, Natty found herself flinging her arms around Tony's neck and clinging to him like he was a life preserver. He felt solid and real and safe, and to her shock she found that she needed reassurance every bit as much as he did.
"Wow," Tony said with a slight chuckle, putting his arms around her in return. "How come you didn't do that on the plane?"
"There's more good than bad," she whispered, her voice thick with emotion as she pressed her cheek urgently against his, the better to feel the warmth radiating from his skin, knowing he wouldn't understand her words but not caring. "A lot more. I swear to you-"
"What?" he murmured in her ear, puzzled. "More good in what?"
"In the future." She shook her head slightly. "Or the past. Most people think they're different places, but my family knows better. There's a bridge between them." She took a quick breath, feeling intensely comforted by his tight grip around her waist. "But it'll be worth it, Tony. Every second of the pain. I promise."
Tony pulled back a little and looked into her eyes.
"I'm too hung over to understand one single word you're saying," he admitted. "But darned if you aren't as cute as a button while you're saying it." He reached out to gently smooth back a strand of her hair and gave her the same kind of look she'd gotten from Jason Schaffer when he'd taken her home after the Homecoming dance, only with none of the awkward teenage nervousness behind it.
Tony Stark really was every bit as single-minded as Grandpa had said. But for some reason, Natty no longer found that vaguely annoying. It was part of who he was, and in a way it was actually kind of endearing.
"Shut up," she told him.
And then he kissed her.
Steve and Peggy sat in their car, waiting together for any sign of Hydra agents nearing the Stark property. He held Peggy's gloved hand tightly in his own, feeling her silent shivers despite the thickness of her winter coat: they'd turned off the car to avoid detection, and now that the sun was nearly down, it was growing steadily colder.
A few minutes ago, they had watched Howard come out of the house with two suitcases and a golf bag, walk down the cobblestone path and disappear into the large, detached garage on their property.
Steve had had a handful of such glimpses of Howard over the years; always from a distance, always careful to remain out of sight, never giving in to the temptation to speak to him. He'd had to rely on Peggy to give him news of Howard, and let her speak words on his behalf when they were worried about Howard and felt that he needed their advice. He'd been Howard's friend for all these years, in every way that he could be... but Howard had never known it, and Steve could not deny that it had hurt to stay aloof like that.
And yet, despite years of restraint, tonight he felt his heart hammering in his chest, fingers itching to open the car door and race up the hill, aching to talk to Howard himself, to shake his hand one last time, to tell Howard he had missed him, that he was proud of him, that one day Tony would make them both proud.
But he couldn't be selfish. He'd seen the time stamp on the CCTV footage of the car crash: 7:01 p.m. Howard had less than an hour of life left, and Steve couldn't throw that precious time into disarray by coming back from the dead just to say hello.
And yet...
The things he had heard through his earpiece a short time ago were making his head swim with questions. Questions that had no answers.
Mike had told Bucky not to kill the Starks... and Bucky had agreed to his new orders without hesitation.
Steve never could have guessed such a development. And even though he understood how all this worked, had lived his life by the Ancient One's rules since the day he came back home to Peggy, he suddenly found himself wondering: Was it possible that they had actually changed the future? That Howard and Maria's lives would somehow be spared after all?
To his own surprise, Steve found himself accepting the possibility. Daring to hope for it. Embracing it.
Saving the lives of Howard and Maria was unquestionably good. And if they had changed this one thing, other changes would follow. Maybe other good things.
Maybe Tony would straighten himself out sooner. Reconcile with his father, waste less of his life in wild living. Become a nobler Iron Man. One who was better suited to work peaceably with the Avengers when the time came. More ready to commit to Pepper Potts, and more capable of meeting her needs. If they had started a family sooner, if Tony had lived long enough to raise Morgan to adulthood...
Or maybe he would never become Iron Man at all. Without the guilt that had so often driven him, what would he be left with? With his parents alive, would he ever have taken that fateful trip to Afghanistan where the Ten Rings had captured him, and his desperate circumstances had spurred him into new creative heights and made him rethink his involvement in the weapons business? Could Pepper have fallen in love with the unrepentant playboy version of Tony Stark? Could she have succeeded in changing someone like that into a family man?
And if not — if there was no Iron Man, no reformed Tony Stark — what would happen when the Chitauri attacked New York and a nuclear bomb was launched at Manhattan? Could any of the rest of them have stopped it? And even if they could, what would happen when Thanos himself came for the Infinity Stones?
Maybe they would still be able to stop him.
It was a very big maybe.
Steve was no Sorcerer Supreme. He had no tool to show him any alternate future, terrible or otherwise. With certainty gone, he was as blind as any other being in the universe now, seeing only the past and the present. It was a terrifying thought, and Steve knew in a flash that he had become too complacent, that he had come to rely on his foreknowledge too much.
I have to live like there's no tomorrow, he realized. Whatever we've done today, whether we changed something or not, it's already done. All we can do is our best, and face the consequences of our choices, good or bad. Just like everyone else.
Slowly, as if moving in a dream, Steve put his hand on the handle and opened the car door.
"Steve?" Peggy asked suddenly from the driver's seat. "What are you doing?"
"I'm gonna go see him," Steve said.
She frowned. "See who?"
"Howard," Steve said.
"What?" Peggy looked alarmed. "Steve-"
"While I still can." He squeezed her hand and then let go to swing out of the car. He stood on the gravelly road and leaned in for a moment. Peggy was looking up at him open-mouthed. "You stay here," he told her. "Watch for Bucky." He glanced down at the gun lying between the seats. He knew there was no point in telling her not to engage: she'd do whatever she felt was right, no more and no less. If they hadn't changed the future, Peggy would be safe tonight. If they had...
If they had, then all bets were off.
"I love you," he told Peggy.
"I love you back," she said automatically, a faint hint of a dimple flashing in her cheek despite the worry in her eyes.
He shut the door, and disappeared into the night.
TO BE CONTINUED
Author's note: Let me know what you think! Feedback is always helpful.