Over the next three days, Leigh keeps Tony, Rhodey, Nat, Steve, Bruce, and Scott fed and watered as they work out the intricacies of using Scott's Quantum Realm for the purposes of time travel. For three nights in a row, Leigh hears from Tony about the simulations he's running, explanations of concepts like the EPR Paradox, Quantum fluctuation, and the Planck Scale. She's not able to attend many of their planning sessions, though, because she's busy with Ember.
It's… not tenable, for Leigh. On the morning of the fourth day, she calls up Mrs. Rhodes. She asks her to pack for a few days' worth of a trip, just in case.
It doesn't take Aleshia Rhodes long to get set up with Ember when she gets there for dinner; the two of them have been friendly since Em was born. When Leigh warns her friend that they might get really busy, Leshia actually reaches out and puts her finger against Leigh's lips.
"This is probably the most important thing any of us are ever going to do. Go do it. We'll be fine."
Tony had texted her not to worry about feeding them dinner, that they were on a roll towards a breakthrough, but when she doesn't hear from him going on 9 PM, 10 PM, 11 PM, she starts to worry. Ember's long since gone to bed when Leigh heads down to the cluster of labs on the 40th floor that Tony has been using for this endeavor.
When she gets there, though, they're empty.
"FRIDAY, where is my husband?"
"Ma'am, he asked me not to say anything unless you asked. He's at the Avengers compound, with the others. They left shortly after lunch time."
"Are they close to implementing their Time Heist thing, FRIDAY?" Leigh asks. She feels a terrible sense of foreboding, like she's parachuted out of a weather plane into the path of a hurricane after observing it for several passes. "And, please don't volunteer information to him about what I'm asking, or my subsequent movements, please?"
Two can play at that game.
"Right now they're callin' in others from around the universe, it seems. Part of their plan to gather up a team. They're constructing equipment, clearing out a large space in the main building, and will be receiving shipments tomorrow for the time machine."
"In other words, settling in at the compound."
From her parachute, Leigh's starting to feel the winds of the outer edge.
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She finds it hard to sleep. Her first instinct is to set her alarm for 4 AM, pack enough clothes for at least five days, and start driving one of Tony's stored Audis up to the facility, so she can show up to give him a piece of her mind at just about 6 o'clock in the morning. The thing is, though, she has a sense of history, of the importance of what it is they're doing, and Leigh feels like she has a part to play in that. Depending on how that part plays out, she might be called on to be a member of their team, and that means she wants to have some time with Ember before she heads upstate.
When she gets dressed in the morning, it's with that possibility in mind. Leigh had included a pair of black tactical pants that Nat had given her as a wedding present when she'd packed to come to the tower. They fit perfectly, even though she'd had a baby in between being gifted them and wearing them for real, which is a great ego boost on a day like today. On top of them, she puts on a wrap skirt in a cheerful mustard color. It's ankle length, and the ruffle that crosses up from her feet to her waist covers the fact that she's got pants on at all. For a shirt, she pulls on a black camisole with lace accents and a soft, long-sleeved yellow mesh lace shirt. The tiny white flowers scattered across her skirt have little black centers, and the whole outfit looks like her standard whimsical, cute outfit. To complete the look, she uses a double elastic and puts her long hair up in a high ponytail. Her hair's so long it falls around her face like it's past shoulder-length, but since she's got two on her, she can easily braid it and tuck it in, if she needs to.
Leigh looks at herself in the mirror, and feels like she's wearing a disguise. Everywhere in her outfit, she can see preparation, but she doubts anyone else will. Even her shoes are hiding something- they're genuine running shoes, but she'd bought them from an Etsy shop that glues lacy doilies in gorgeous patterns over the shoes to make them look unique and quirky.
She goes in to wake up Ember, having asked Aleshia if she minds that the toddler will be awake and bouncy earlier than expected. Em doesn't always wake up as early as 7, sometimes she sleeps in till nearly 7:45, but Leigh wants to get on the road.
"Hey, Love Bug," she says, when Ember wakes up to the weight of her Mama sitting on the bed.
"Pitty yellow, Mama," Em tells her, rubbing her eyes.
"Thank you! Hon, I gotta go help Daddy with something. I might have to be gone past bedtime. I need you to be good for Aunty Leshia, and I'll talk to you on a video call if I get the chance, okay? Eat your peas!"
Em giggles, as this is an ongoing battle. "Aunty Leshia no like peas too, Mama! Shhhhhh."
"I am outraged," Leigh says, pretending to frown.
"Go hep Daddy, Mama. I love you!"
Leigh leans over to scoop her up, and holds her close. "Love you too, Ember. See you in a little while, okay?"
"You want pancakes?" Leshia asks from the doorway.
"YES yes YES yes," the little girl sings, pulling free from Leigh and scrambling out of her bed.
"And just like that, I'm no longer relevant! Perfect, thanks. Any message for your own wayward spouse?" Leigh asks.
"Nothing that won't sound manipulative," Aleshia says, smiling secretively. "Tell him I love him."
"Will do."
Leigh watches her friend talking to Ember as she gathers the ingredients for pancakes (something they always keep on hand in each residence, considering their daughter's pathological love of them) for a little while. She wonders if Leshia understands the importance of the double pats she's being bestowed with, but Leigh knows that drawing attention to herself now would do more harm than good.
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Leigh gets to the Avengers compound at 9:34 in the morning. She sees that FRIDAY had been right- there's a huge delivery truck there with no less than four men in uniforms unloading giant crates of supplies. Not wanting to risk damage to one of Tony's favorite cars, she parks pretty far away, in the corner of the lot. With her overnight bag on her shoulder, Leigh walks toward the compound.
A breeze has picked up here, and its persistent tug on her hair reminds her that she's walking straight into the wind-whipped storm surge.
When she gets inside, she can hear two sets of voices. Tony's with Bruce, their voices carrying along the long hallway to her left that leads to where the truck is unloading. Natasha, Steve, and Scott can be heard laughing and talking to her right, but she can't make out anything they're saying, they're too distant. Ahead of her, she hears a door close. Leigh stands still and waits.
"Busted," Rhodey says as soon as he sees her.
"What in the silver-soaked fuck were you thinking?" she demands.
"You know how he gets. He lent me one of his cars to drive half of us down here, that's how far gone he was," Rhodey protests, holding up both hands.
"I just drove that myself. An hour and fifty minutes, give or take, and none of you could spare a minute for a phone call or a text? You'd think you're planning a kegger, not the rescue of half of all life in the universe!"
"Shit, I was really hoping that was a voice call on an amp," Tony says from behind her.
Leigh turns and looks at him. He's strung out, she can tell that immediately, drunk on inspiration and hubris. Eyes bright and manic, hair mussed, body language all tense and jerky. Tony's got some odd bracelet thing wrapped around his four fingers, and there's a coffee stain on his golden brown AC/DC shirt. For the first time since he left without telling her, Leigh feels like she might want to cry.
"I can't believe you thought that was okay," she says, instead.
"I didn't," Tony says baldly. "I knew you'd be pissed. I just didn't want to deal with it right then. I don't really want to deal with it now, but I don't always get what I want."
"I'm gonna go finish eating my Danish, because this is absolutely not what I want, right here," Rhodey says, power walking down the hallway to Leigh's right.
"Go finish helping them unload that stuff, because the baggage you have to unpack between us is going to take some time and dedication to keep it from catching us both on fire," Leigh tells Tony.
"Did you plan that out over the hour and change you spent driving?" he asks, defensiveness tensing his posture even further, despite the way he's jammed his hand in his pocket casually. Leigh knows for a fact it's fisted in there, maybe even with a fingernail pressing into his skin to keep his mind sharp. He's probably the one that's been planning his defense, Leigh realizes, because that? Is a low fucking blow.
Luckily, she has the moral high ground, which is good because the floodwaters are rising.
"I don't plan to say hurtful things anymore. They're all purely reactionary, in the moment, now."
Tony nods, looking off toward the truck that's visible through the large windows of the hallway he'd come through. He looks back at Leigh.
"If you need to do this now, we can do it now," he says, pulling his hand out of his pocket, letting it fall loose beside him. "What we're trying to do is important to you, too."
"I want to be part of the team, Tony," she tells him.
"You are. I just acted, I still do that, sometimes. This- it's going to work. We've called in a couple more people, and when they get here, we're going to go get Thor, we're going to go get Barton, and then we're going to figure out who goes and gets which stone from what time and place. You want to sit in on all that? Great. You're smart, you're good at details," Tony says, excitement ramping back up. He walks over to her, ducking his head down a bit. "I assume you called Aleshia for Em?"
"Yeah," she says, letting his slight misread of what she meant about the team stand. If she can listen in on their strategy meetings on what to do (after missing their meetings on how to do it), that is better than nothing. "I'm gonna go find Nat."
"She'll tell you where my stuff is, to put that away in there," Tony says, nodding at her bag. His expression turns from cautious relief to vulnerable with just a small shift of his facial muscles. "If you want to, that is."
It's the moment where Leigh can choose the type of the fuel she places in his engine, but she loves him dearly, so of course she chooses the highest quality she has access to. "Of course I do. Just because you're a selfish idiot doesn't mean I don't want to listen to your weird sleep noises. Go on, I'm sure they're putting those pallets in the wrong place or something."
"Goddess," Tony declares, grabbing her hand as if to kiss it. Instead, he yanks her up against him and kisses her, brief and fierce. When he walks back down the hallway, it's with confidence.
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Leigh, Nat, Steve, and Tony are eating Bruce's tacos in the dining area when the two people they've been waiting show up. Nat has already warned Leigh that they're aliens, real, obvious aliens, different from the way that Thor is an alien, though Leigh hasn't actually met the norse god yet. When the two aliens in question walk into the room, though, Leigh immediately understands what Nat meant.
The raccoon-looking creature is dressed for war, and so is the blue-tinged cyborg woman. Leigh recognizes her from the story Tony told her about his journey home after being stabbed and losing the young man he'd been mentoring, Peter. He had said he doesn't necessarily like Nebula, but he respects the hell out of her. When she walks in, he gets up to greet her.
"You don't look half dead. It's better," she says to him. Her voice is rough, like the only way her vocal cords make noise is by a concerted effort.
"Thanks," he says, laughing.
"Tony, you wanna pick up where I left off, here? There's only a couple left to make. I need to leave and pick up Thor," Bruce calls out. He's wearing an apron, which Leigh finds only about half as adorable as Nat clearly does.
"Oh, my god, I swear, he's just doing that to set me off," she mutters.
"Set you off or set you off," Leigh asks, holding back from adding a wink, but only just.
"New recruit?" the raccoon guy asks Nat, walking over to Leigh. "Name's Rocket."
"No- well, maybe? This is Leigh, she's married to Tony. I never mentioned her?" Nat says, frowning a little.
"Can't see there'd be any reason to, you were coordinating a universal strike team, weren't you? 'Oh hey, this is my friend's main squeeze, thought you'd like to know who he spends time-'" Leigh breaks off at the completely delighted look on Rocket's face.
"So when she says you're married to Tony, she means you're married to Tony, not just, you know, a trophy wife, or whatever," he pronounces.
"Okay, if you're going to imply I'm pretty enough to qualify for that, I'll decide to like you," Leigh says, grinning. She stretches out a hand to shake his, the action pressing the tag from her black camisole to press against the hickey Tony put on her neck. He's been reinforcing it every night- except last night, of course. For his part, Rocket seems taken aback for a second, before he offers her his own hand to shake.
"Married to Tony?" the cyborg woman says with interest. "Are you the helmet woman?"
"Uh, no, no, she isn't," Steve says awkwardly. "Tony recorded a message for Pepper, from the ship, when they were stranded," he explains to Leigh.
"Because he didn't know she wasn't there to come home to… Oh, Stars, that must have been even more gutting," Leigh says. Tony had explained that he was in a really low place towards the end of his time on that ship. She can't imagine how much worse it would be to have gone through what Tony had, to be rescued so close to death, and then get that final, terrible news.
"Well, I gotta head out. Time to go threaten a drunken god," Rocket says when they see Bruce gesturing to him from the doorway.
"Hey, Rocket?" Leigh says, after he's already gotten halfway to the door.
"Yeah?" he turns, but not much.
"Send me a message if you find out what beer he likes. Even a drunk god can't quit cold turkey. If you can promise his favorite, it might help."
"Nice," Nat says.
"Smart, I will. See ya later, Trophy Wife," Rocket says, laughing.
"That went way better than I expected it would," Nat says.
"Strange to underestimate your friends," Nebula remarks in her odd, rough voice. She settles herself into a chair across the room, facing away from them.
"So once they get back, hopefully with Thor, what's next?" Leigh asks.
Nat looks down at the table for a few seconds, and when she lifts her head, it's with steel in her expression. "Next, I go get Clint."
In Leigh's mind, the palm trees are doubled over, but it's not from hurricane force winds. It's from the force of Natasha Romanoff's determination.
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Thor is… not at all what Leigh was expecting.
She'd gotten the message from Rocket about the beer and left right away, but the ship is back before she is, partly because it took a while to load up Tony's Audi.
This time she parks near the door, popping the trunk and opening all the doors so she can get help carrying it all in. Leigh uses the trick she always employs for groceries, she loads up a bag on each of her forearms and gets two six packs in one hand, one in the other, because it's all way too heavy for longer than the twenty-five feet she's going to walk with them.
When he sees her in the doorway to the cafeteria (coming in sideways, because she's too wide with the way everything's swaying), Scott gets up right away to run over and help.
"Wow, you went all out," Scott says, taking the two six packs and the bag from her left arm.
"This is a drop in the bucket. Remember whose credit cards I have access to," Leigh laughs.
"Ahh, beer delivery. I should look into this for New Asgard. Much nicer," a tall, blonde man in scruffy clothing says in a distinctive accent as he shuffles towards her. In her mind, Leigh knows this has to be Thor, but she doesn't really want to believe it. He's got a beer gut, his hair can't have been washed in months, and as he comes nearer, she realizes he stinks. Thor walks directly over to stand in front of her, looking down in obvious approval. "Really pretty, too."
"Your beer, my lord," Leigh says in a tone of voice so obviously sarcastic she expects Thor's eyes to narrow, and for him to realize something's up. From across the room, she can hear someone cackling, and she leans over to see that it's Rocket. Leigh wonders if he and Nat were waiting to see Thor's reaction to her beer errand before they left.
"Attitude could use a little work," Thor says pleasantly.
"Yeah, well, I don't get paid, so…" With her left hand, Leigh gingerly picks up the bag handle from where it's been digging into her right arm. "Here," she says, offering the six pack she's holding in her other hand.
Thor takes it, then his eyebrows furrow. "Is that a brand?"
Leigh sighs, setting the bag down and rubbing the groove in her arm. "I'm going to find Bruce."
"It's Stark's name, in his handwriting!" Thor calls out after her.
"Wow, I somehow went five years without noticing that, weird," Leigh calls out behind her. In the lobby on the way to the time machine room, she runs into Nat. "Hey, heading out?"
"Yeah, just had to change, grab some things," she says. Natasha is dressed like a super assassin, it seems like, but as Leigh watches, she puts on a soft-looking coat and holds up an umbrella. "It's raining in Tokyo right now," she says, her expression a delicate mix of vulnerability, hope, and determination.
"Am I allowed to hug you when you look like this? Is that, I don't know, a violation of operational norms?"
In response, Nat just comes over and hugs her with her free arm.
"There you are! I was speaking to you, beer girl."
Leigh turns to Nat. "I never asked this before, but how come all of you can recognize Tony's handwriting? Did he have a slam book with handwritten insults to all of you hanging up in the break room somewhere?"
"SHIELD made Tony sign all of the liability forms for our equipment. Every time we got something new, it was on there," Nat says. "I used to think it was him being narcissistic about it- you know, all, 'I'm why you have this stuff,' but now I'm not so sure. Those forms were about who pays up when you break it. He probably could have pushed back on that, but he didn't. He just replaced it all, at his expense."
"I'm the one supposed to be encouraging you right now, Nat!" Leigh says, a hand pressed onto her heart.
"Ahh, Natasha. Interesting hair," Thor says.
"So yeah, good luck, have fun," Leigh says, putting her arm around Nat's shoulder and directing her toward the door. "Rocket?" she calls out, hoping the creature will hear her.
"You're ready? Good. I can't believe you people think I'm strange."
Leigh tries not to laugh, but Rocket's already headed out the door. She spins around and starts for the hallway leading to where she thinks Bruce will be, because if you've got fifty six packs to carry, he's your man. It appears that Thor has other plans for her, however.
"Why do you carry Stark's brand? Did he become some sort of powerful beer distributor in my absence?" He leans over, his eyes bright. "Do you think I could get a discount? We were warriors together, you know."
Leigh sighs, reaching up to untangle one of the filthy locks of his hair that is tangled around his ear. "It's a soulmark, Thor. I don't work for Tony, I'm his wife."
Thor reels back, and she smells the beer on his breath. It's impressive how coherent he is (which is, you know, not stunningly so, but still) with such a concentration of alcohol in his system. Must be a god thing, Leigh tells herself.
"You?" Thor says, obviously shocked.
"Yeah, okay, you can fuck off now," she decides, stung by his incredulity. Even though it's childish, she jogs off, wishing she'd pushed Scott to go get the beer instead. When she gets into the large warehouse space, the crane is helping to mount strange-looking mirrors on long, flexible stands, extending from the ceiling. "Bruce!" she calls out, seeing a tall green figure.
"Hey," he says, smiling at her. It's still hard to get used to, even after more than a year- Bruce is happy now. Almost all the time. "Hey Thor, what do you need?"
"I've caused offense," Thor says, out of breath.
Leigh sighs, looking away from both of them to see if she can see Tony.
"I'm sure we can clear it up, what happened?" Bruce says easily.
"She brought me beer. A lot of beer. When I saw the mark on her wrist and she told me she's married to Stark, I reacted poorly. I was disappointed in the loss of a friends and family discount," Thor tells Bruce. He says the latter part in a small, sheepish tone.
Leigh sees Tony, predictably gesturing with his hands, a pencil caught in his mouth, leaning over while standing in the lifted basket of a cherry picker, directing the workers below him. He's not strapped in. She starts toward him.
Someone grabs her by the wrist. It's Thor.
"I was surprised because you look differently than someone I'd expect to be with Stark. I meant no offense," he says. Leigh winces, tugs at her wrist.
"Not helping there, buddy," Bruce says, reaching out to dislodge Thor's hand.
"No," Thor says, scrunching up his face in a way Leigh's seen Ember do when she's been caught doing something wrong. "You're… real looking. Beautiful, but not covered in clothes that cost more than most of the people of your country make in a year. You're not wearing shoes that look like they could kill both of us. I am sorry to offend."
"As drunk compliments go, that's a pretty good one," she concedes. "If you excuse me, though, I need to go drag Tony off of that thing and kill him myself, before he does it while gesticulating. And if you are the one who let him go up there without a safety harness, Bruce? You're next."
"That's fair," Bruce says.
"I like her," Leigh hears Thor saying in a terrible attempt at a whisper, as she's walking away.
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Nat's face is red from being scrubbed clean when Leigh sees her next, hours later. If her expression had been anything other than fiercely pleased, Leigh would have worried that her hurricane has started to expand its boundaries to her friends, too, fueled by the hot tears she can tell that Nat has shed in the past few hours.
"He's taking a shower," Nat whispers. "Made me promise not to lurk."
Forty minutes later, they're all starting to gather in the warehouse area. The time machine's apparently finished, and Tony and Bruce have finished doing whatever 'make sure it's safe' things they'd had planned. Leigh's not sure whether to feel impressed or terrified that they've built the thing in the space of a few days, and want to test it with an actual human being less than two hours after it's finished. Tony had told her they'd started it two days after Scott came to the tower, so it's been four days, but Leigh doesn't think that diminishes her argument all that much.
As for Tony, Leigh's barely seen him all day, so she drags him out into the hallway outside the door, hands him a water bottle, and crosses her arms.
"I've had plenty to drink, Leigh," Tony says, trying to balance the bottle on her folded arms when she refuses to let him hand it back to her.
"Coffee is a diuretic, Tony."
"All right, fine. Fine. But you have to let me smell your hair."
"Do ever not let you do that? Or am I supposed to pretend this is a victory for you?" Leigh widens her eyes comically and presses a weak, Southern Belle hand to her chest. "No, not the haiyah!"
"Just come closer and turn around, or I'll push you up against the wall and do it," Tony says, waggling his eyebrows.
"Don't threaten me with a good time," she says, but does what he asks.
"You forgot, didn't you?" Tony says, pressing his thumb against his mark. Leigh shivers, shakes her head. He kisses it, scrapes his teeth across it just a little. "Love you."
"Love you too," she whispers, feeling the heat in her face.
"I couldn't picture it," a sardonic voice says, behind them. Leigh turns, hears Tony's quick, nearly silent indrawn breath.
"Barton. Glad to see you," he says.
Clint Barton does not look at all like what Leigh had been expecting, either, but unlike Thor, it's not due to disappointment. He looks like a character in an indie film in his tight black jeans, a slouchy teal tank top that reveals a whole sleeve of tattoos, and a badass-looking haircut that's half-shaved but still shaggy.
"Hey, Tony."
"Hawkeye, Leigh Stark. Leigh Stark, Hawkeye," Tony says, pointing back and forth between the two of them.
"Clint is fine," Barton says, reaching out a hand. Leigh shakes it. "Nice to meet you, Leigh. Or should I go with Mrs. Stark?" It's softly spoken, but she suspects it's a dig on Tony including the 'Stark' in the introduction, while avoiding Barton's name entirely.
"Rocket calls me Trophy Wife, so Leigh is a step up, I think."
"He what?" Tony laughs. "Where the hell did that even come from?"
"Yeah I'm going to erase myself from this narrative," Clint says, shooting a look at her face. He saunters into the warehouse room, and Leigh raises an eyebrow at her husband.
"Obviously I didn't intend to imply that you weren't hot enough to count as a trophy wife," Tony says with extreme care.
"The teammates I have met today seem to universally find it refreshing that you're not married to a bimbo, which seemed kind of hurtful to more than just me at first," Leigh says, her lips twisting up into rueful expression before smiling. She doesn't say the name Pepper Potts, but figures Tony knows that's who she means. "But then I realized, everyone's been fucked up by the Snap, Tony. They all expected you to have a full-on billionaire tantrum, buy up some casinos or sports teams, marry a plastic-bodied twenty-something, and drink all day. A thirty-something woman in a handmade lace sweater is always going to be unexpected, in the face of that."
"How shocking that instead, I'm one of the ones who has it all together, you're saying? Kid at home, cute wife on the streets, sexy wife in the sheets, you're saying?"
"You've changed your shirt twice today after spilling coffee on it, Tony. Twice."
"About to test this!" Bruce calls out.
It turns out that they have to wait a bit as Scott trades places with Barton. Seeing Clint disappear in front of her is shocking and exciting. Living with Tony is living with a living, breathing science fiction script that's always writing a new chapter that expands her expectation of what could be possible, but this is beyond that to something tangible. Something world- universe changing.
Seeing Clint reappear carrying something he wasn't carrying before? is a REVELATION.
Clint tosses the catcher's mitt to Tony, and even though her husband is faced away from her, Leigh just knows that he's got a look of determined delight on his face.
It's happening. They can bring everyone back.
Leigh's hurricane lifts her straight up into the stratosphere.