Stiles made his way down to Tony's workshop nervously. They had found a remote cabin in the woods and had modified it enough for them to live and be the mad scientists they were. It helped both of them to be away from the other survivors of Thanos' Snap. Stiles still remembered the noise it had made, echoing through his head. It kept him up at night and even brought him to Tony's bed more than once. Then again, on the whole scale of shitty things, the Snap barely reached number one. He still had Tony and that was all that mattered. They would find a way to deal with this.
He looked down at the dirty notebook in his hands leafing through the pages again and again as he neared the workshop where Tony was working on a new version of the arc reactor.
"Are you going to keep standing out there?" Tony called out without looking up from his soldering.
"Tio," Stiles spoke up nervously, sliding down against the wall behind Tony "You know how we were talking about combining science with magic?"
Tony glanced up from the arc reactor, blinking at Stiles "Yeah. And we never did because it's impossible."
"I don't think it is," Stiles shook his head and got up "I've been experimenting since... Well, since the world went to hell." He held out the small notebook "Look at this."
Tony looked through the notes, mouthing along with the words he was reading. His face cycled through a myriad of emotions before it settled on disbelief and hope "Fucking hell, this might actually be it, Stiles. This might work."
"I know," Stiles murmured, smiling shyly "I'm a fucking genius."
"Not as much of a genius as me," Tony grinned, ruffling Stiles' hair "But yes. You are a genius, foxy." He still remembered the first time he had called the kid that. Stiles had dropped what he had been holding and flinched violently. After that, he had been a bit more careful with the nicknames but after they got to know each other, Stiles eventually got used to the nickname and knew that Tony wouldn't make fun of him or what he went through.
Stiles huffed, trying to fix his hair "Hey, I was the one who figured this out."
"Yeah," Tony hummed "But you messed up that equation. It's unbalanced."
"What?" Stiles snatched back the notebook and looked through it "Oh, come on."
Tony laughed, patting Stiles' shoulder "Sorry, foxy."
Stiles grumbled under his breath and slapped Tony's hand away. They were silent for a moment before Stiles took a deep breath "Should we do it?"
"You know what?" Tony leafed through the book a second time and then a third "Yes, we should. We need all the time we can get to prepare for the purple grape. Hell, if people had listened to me and I had ignored them…"
Stiles turned his head to look at Tony with a fire burning in his eyes "We'll fix this. Even if we can't make them see… We're awesome together, so what are we waiting for? It's not like we have anything to lose, right?"
"If we die trying then at least we don't have to deal with Thanos coming back," Tony nodded "Or with the other survivors. They have been trying to find us ever since we settled here."
Stiles grimaced at the thought "Yeah. No, dude. I think it's best if we keep this between us. I don't know about you but I could see Captain Popsicle trying to get back to the Forties or something."
"Oh, fuck no. So, where do you think we should go?" Tony asked, frowning in thought.
"I think… around the time I went to Eichen, maybe?" Stiles spoke up hesitatingly. He really hated himself for saying it but that had been the change in his life… He had come out stronger for it.
"No way," Tony shook his head "No. I'm not letting you go through that again. Not Eichen, not those HYDRA bastards and not the possession. We're going back to Vanko. That should give us enough time and should be early enough for you, right?"
Stiles tilted his head, trying to place the timeline "That would be just after Peter's death. Before Derek started turning his pack…"
"Then that's where we will go," Tony nodded "You should be able to blame your personality changed on the fact that you set a person on fire. It would be believable enough, I think."
"You think that would work?" Stiles asked sceptically "I mean… Yeah, I have PTSD and shit but I doubt that it would be believable to anyone. No matter how much I want this to work."
Tony shook his head and placed his hand on Stiles' shoulder "Kid, normal teens ten to get PTSD from that. Nightmares at the very least."
"I'm not normal. And everyone involved seemed to know that. Shit, I faced off against Derek and Peter…"
"Back then?" Tony snorted "Were they even interested in what you were doing? As far as I know, they didn't know you were this amazing of a person. I think you can pull this off."
Stiles bit his lip and looked down at his hands "Yeah, my dad was barely home back then. Scott spent most of his time with Allison and Derek and his pack hated me. Not like they would care."
Tony sighed and let his hand wander to the back of Stiles' neck. He rubbed soothing circles and leaned his forehead against the younger male's "I'll get to you as soon as I can, I promise."
"I'm not sure if that's going to make things better or worse. In case you haven't noticed, you don't do subtle very well," Stiles pointed out.
Tony looked at him in mock offence, his hand coming to rest on his reactor "I'll have you know, Tails. I'm the picture of subtlety." They looked at each other before breaking into snorts of laughter. Tony slowly got himself back under control before he sobered up completely "We are going to do this. It's going to work. We're both working on this…"
Stiles let his head drop onto Tony's shoulder "I'm going to miss you… Dad."
The billionaire froze for a moment before he slung his arm around Stiles, pulling him closer "I won't give you enough time to really miss me, son."
"You'll find my number?"
"I'll set FRID…" Tony broke off, his throat closing up when he realised that JARVIS would still be around if they went back "I'll set JARVIS on it."
Stiles raised his eyebrow "You'll need my full name for that."
"You think I don't have it?" Tony asked, his tone bothering on amusement "Give me some credit, tails. I just don't know how to pronounce that monstrosity of a name."
Stiles gave an amused huff and buried his head in Tony's neck. He loved how close they were. After dealing with a pack of werewolves for years, he had become very tactile and HYDRA had robbed him of that. While it had taken years to become comfortable with human touch again, now Stiles loved to cuddle up to Tony or even just let their shoulders brush "Dad?" He shivered lightly, his hands clenching in Tony's shirt "Please… Try not to take too long. I don't think I can stand to be around Scott and the others for too long."
"Don't worry, kiddo. I'll make sure that you won't have to handle those idiots for longer than absolutely necessary."
Stiles sighed before he spoke again, his voice stronger than before "We have work to do, then."
"Yup," Tony agreed "And only a limited amount of time before the cabin gets stormed."
"Then let's go and save the universe…"
"Where would they be without their anti-heroes, right?" Stiles snorted, shaking his head.
"Well… Batman's MO is kind of your thing, so why not," Tony laughed "But you won't see me running around in tights anytime soon."
Stiles groaned "Thank God. I don't think I could stand another Rogers."
They both shuddered in sync before Tony ran a hand through his hair "Yeah, no thanks. I'm good on that front."
"Is it wrong that I wish that James were here?" Tony asked after they had started to gather materials and drawn up plans "Fuck, I wish we could have gotten to him and kept him as far away from Rogers as possible. I can't even…"
"We will, dad. We will find him and make him better," Stiles vowed before he froze, looking down at the equations with a pale face "There is something I didn't account for in the maths."
Tony looked up, a frown on his face "I don't like that look on your face, tails. Talk to me."
"I took into account that we have our memories but little else," Stiles gestured "If we stop most of what happened to me… Well, we're losing valuable resources."
"Your magic," Tony nodded, realising where this was going "And the serum… How would you allow for that?"
Stiles shook his head "I'm not sure we can."
"Maybe there is a way to bind in blood? Or we could try to take something with us. I'm reasonably sure that I would be able to re-create the serum and Extremis in the past…" he trailed off, shaking his head "But that wouldn't bring your magic back."
"Wait," Stiles exclaimed, sitting up straighter "How about we put in these." He scribbled down a couple of formulas and functions "I'm not a hundred percent but if we power those lines with magic, then we should be able to lock the serum, Extremis and my magic into out memories. Then they would get transferred and we'd only have to unlock them. It would probably make our younger bodies sick for a while but I think we should be able to do this."
Tony took a look at the formulas, added a few things and tried to change them around before he nodded "That could work. Actually, this is a stabiliser for the whole process. That addition took the chance of failure down to 55%."
"So we're doing this?" Stiles questioned, looking over at Tony wanting to make sure that the older man was still on board with this.
"We're doing this," Tony nodded, his expression hard.
A few days later, the two were standing in front of the time machine's screen, debating on testing the contraption. Everything they had needed to get done, they had managed the day prior… Everything apart from the final tests.
Stiles whirled around when he heard the front door splinter "Forget running test, we have to go now."
"How can we make sure they don't follow us?" Tony asked, tripping over his chair to get the machine ready.
Stiles tapped the computer, setting it to delete everything, making sure that it was progressing fast enough "I'm ready."
"Great. Come here," Tony gestured, hooking up Stiles to the machine while Stiles entered some last-minute variables, pouring his magic into it.
They could hear pounding footsteps trekking through the house before the machine beeped. Stiles looked over at Tony "Ready?"
"As I'll ever be," Tony nodded "Together?"
"Always."
