It was only a short flight, over in less than a minute; Steve had taken longer ones hanging out of planes or helicopters... well, planes back in the day; helicopters were from recent weeks. They landed out behind a building where no person or security camera could see – at least, no security camera that Tony had managed to spot – and uncloaked. The feeling of disappointment that accompanied the dull colours of reality was just as sharp as it had been before, and Steve shook his head hard to clear it.
Tony's armour collapsed into normal clothes and a backpack, and Steve looked down at himself. He hadn't seen any laundry lines on the way in – often the Commandoes' first port of call, when they were out far enough to be cut off from a friendly base. "Damn it," he muttered.
"Take off the outer layer and turn it inside-out," Tony suggested, looking pleased with himself – and, sure, okay. Steve had to admire the effect – inside-out, with the cowl down, the top half of his suit didn't look too different from the black jacket that Tony was sporting, and the pants could have passed for normal in New York. The boots were still distinctive, but he'd probably pass. His shield, though...
Tony solved that problem by spreading some of the silvery metallic substance of extremis over it, and it faded into a non-descript brown – once Steve slung it on his back, it could have been mistaken for a backpack. Tony also dabbed the stuff on the cuts made in the outer uniform by the arrows – true to his earlier claims, they were already knitting back together slowly on their own, but Tony looked personally offended by their presence. "You could have mentioned something earlier," he muttered at Steve, but Steve found himself more distracted by the way the nano-stuff seemed to make the damage just vanish. Nifty stuff, that.
Shame about the side-effects, he thought sourly.
It wasn't a great disguise. True, they looked different than they had in the city: Steve hadn't taken off his cowl in there, and Tony hadn't removed his helmet, so if it came down to a description of what they were wearing then they'd be fine. Steve had gone into plenty of Nazi towns in worse disguises – and been chased out of them, at times, but he'd gotten out alive. After, though, might be a different story: while the people here, like Asgardians, seemed to be taller on average than humans – tall enough to make both their heights unremarkable – their features were different. Their hair was going to stand out, especially Tony's; he'd gone with a ridiculously bright shade of blonde. Their complexion, eyes, and clothing all marked them as foreigners. If they were being hunted, then their pursuers would hear of this. And then they'd know that they were going west.
Well, it wasn't like they had much more than a vague hope lying westward, Steve reflected. If they picked up that they were being followed, then they could make a break north or south, try looking for another city in one of those directions instead.
"Their communications are weird," Tony said, his eyes searching the sky. "Not a lot of traffic I can pick up... I don't think they've heard about us, though."
The town wasn't large enough to have a permanent market, but there was a larger-than-most central building which was topped in the same style as the city's pagodas and dressed in rich silks: either government, or religion, and if word hadn't already gotten out about them, then either would be their best bet for finding out which direction they needed to go. As they approached, however, one screen door was flung aside; and a young man wearing a coarse, un-dyed robe – more of a wrap, really – was thrown out onto the white stone road, bringing with him the stench of rancid sweat and old urine.
And blood: dried, but present in worrying quantity.
"Beggar! Be gone from here, and don't come back until you've had a dunk in a river!" cried a voice from within – evidently, the woman who had done the throwing. "Mind it's downstream from the town, too!"
The poor guy began picking himself up, making it as far as his knees before collapsing into great, blubbering tears. He raised his hands to cover his face, and in doing so revealed streaks of dried blood all down his front and one arm, splashing over onto the sleeve as well.
Not your world, not your world –
"Sir, are you okay?" Steve asked, switching off acknowledgement of his nose and jogging over. He gave the guy a more thorough once-over as he got nearer – it didn't seem to be his blood, though, or if it was, he must have had a healing factor to rival Steve's. That didn't mean that he hadn't been though hell, though – he looked up as Steve approached, and his eyes rolled in fright.
"Oh please, do not beat me, I am going!" he wept, scrambling to his feet and managing to lose one of his sandals in the process, and then hopping about awkwardly until he could get it re-tied. "I am sorry – I am going –"
"I'm not going to hurt you," Steve said, hands up and open, empty. "I can tell you've had a rough time – maybe we can help."
"Steve, are you serious?" Tony's voice hissed over the comm. "We've got enough problems to deal with already."
Steve ignored him. Sure, they had big problems – the entire Earth was counting on them, even if it didn't know it. Back in the War they had plenty of big problems. But right now, they didn't even know who to ask about directions – the locals didn't seem all that friendly. They could afford some kindness.
"We don't have time to help every down-on-his-luck sob story – " so Tony had picked up on the blood, too, " – who just happens to..." he trailed off. Maybe he'd noticed Steve was ignoring him. When he spoke next, his 'voice' on the comm. was thoughtful. "Or. Okay. I guess we're doing this."
The young man's sobs had quieted, and he was now staring at Steve with a mix of fear and hope. "Please, I have not seen kindness for days. I was beset upon the road by ogres, and – " a fresh gush of tears threatened, " – my disciples have been eaten, and so has my horse, and all of my supplies pillaged; I have but my sack and nothing else, and even with my passport no one will even look at me, and I have no money for the bathhouse, or for food – " and he broke into sobs again.
Ogres? Was he being literal? God knew it was possible, with everything else they'd seen.
"Well, we don't have any money either, unless they accept AmEx." The second part, muttered in an undertone, earned a quiet snicker from Tony. "But, here – " Steve dug out one of the ration bars from his belt. "It tastes weird, but it's filling."
The man fell on it like he hadn't seen food for days, ripping open the wrapper with filthy hands – Steve could practically feel Tony cringing behind him. "Oh thank you, thank you – " he licked crumbs from his fingers and fell to his knees. "I am in your debt – thank you – you have reminded me that kindness can exist even in this imperfect mortal world."
"Thanks aren't necessary," Steve said firmly. "Though, if you happen to know how to get to Maklu – "
"You are making the pilgrimage to Heaven?" – and if the guy's eyes got any wider, they were going to fall out of his head. "That is where I am going! Or trying to go." For that matter, if he kept crying at such volume, he'd need to drink some water before he became dehydrated. Steve thought about frowning at Tony for ditching his water bottle, but he didn't want to upset the guy any more. The guy looked like he might faint if Steve scowled in his general direction. "But the road is so long! I knew it would be dangerous, and treacherous, but I didn't think every unholy demon would be waiting for me upon it."
"Well, as it happens, we're trying to get there, and we can fly," said Tony, stepping forward. "With 'we' meaning 'me and I can carry my friend, and if you take a bath first and point us in the right direction then I can carry you too'."
"But you can't get to Maklu by flying," the man sobbed, looking utterly disheartened once again.
"You can't?" Steve glanced over at Tony, who had gone still, his face blank.
A hiccough; "N-no, the states for the Passage to Heaven exist only in the first harmonic along the Great Roads."
" – Son of a bitch," Tony swore, clothing flashing over to gold and red, and in the next heartbeat he was sky borne – and then gone, leaving Steve staring after empty space. At least he'd cloaked himself from the dragons – or Steve hoped that was what had happened –
"Tony!" he snapped into his comm.
"Back in a – " There was a hiss of static.
Damnit, Tony."What did you mean?" Steve turned back to the only other source of answers. "If we fly, what happens?" The guy sobbed – Steve resisted the urge to shake him. Useful for hysterics, but given what the guy had been though, this might well be shellshock, in which case attempts to snap him out of it would just be cruel. "My friend just flew up – where has he gone?"
"Straight up. Only the l-lateral spacefolds are d-different at heights," the man sniffled, but he was now starting to look confused, like this was something that Steve really ought to know – like how two plus two was four. Personally, Steve preferred Thor's explanations – at least Thor could understand why they didn't get something; this guy looked like he was wondering if the only nice person in the vicinity was just nice because he was a total dunce.
"Shit, he's right," said Tony over comms. "There's – Jesus, this is weird. If I wasn't looking for it I'd never pick it up..."
Steve turned away to stare at the sky, but he couldn't see anything. "Can you get back down here?" he asked tersely.
"Chill, Cap, now that I know about it I can compensate for it," said Tony, and Steve would have sworn that he calculated it to just the right level of nonchalance to make Steve grind his teeth. His next words were in a grimmer tone, though: "Though if I didn't have a computer in my brain, I admit keeping the calculations straight long enough to navigate anywhere would be tricky. Explains why there's no comm. chatter about us, though – we're nowhere near that city anymore." A low whistle. "Earth is closer to Mars than we are to it."
It took NASA nine months to send a spaceship from Earth to Mars. How big was this world? Or was it a bunch of worlds? How had they not noticed changing worlds? It had been pretty damn obvious all the other times Steve had gotten yanked from one to another. "Can you compensate enough to get us to Maklu?"
"Let me check." The comm. went silent, without even the static anymore.
"Tony?" Steve raised a hang to his ear – a stupid gesture, one he knew he didn't need, but he'd never been on enough undercover ops – not in modern times – to break it. "Tony!"
There was no response. What did that mean? Tony hadn't gone supersonic overhead; they'd have heard the boom. If he'd moved – but how long would it take a radio signal to get from Earth to Mars? Had they just been separated? No, Tony had said he could compensate – or was trying to compensate –
"I'm sorry," wailed Smelly – Steve felt instantly bad for thinking of him that way, but the heightened adrenaline made the stink worse. "Please don't be angry at me!"
"I'm not angry at you, son," Steve said, and, "Tony!"
" – back now," and there was a roar of repulsors as Tony dropped into visibility and out of the sky, his landing pose three-point-perfect, the helmet melting away.
"Excuse us for a moment," Steve told the now-only-snuffling young man. No point in frightening him further. Then he grabbed Tony by the arm and bodily dragged him about fifteen feet away, hissing,
"Do you ever stop to think – "
" – what? I got back – "
" – just running off, what if you hadn't been able to come back?"
"It hasn't even been thirty seconds to you, what're you – look, genius! Supercomputer in head! Able to fly a dogfight and solve P vs NP at the same time, it wasn't – "
"Yeah, that's how we wound up here!"
"That wasn't – " Tony started indignantly, and then deflated. "Okay, fair point."
"I get it, you see things and it takes time to explain it to the rest of us," Steve said, forcing himself to speak evenly. "But if you run off and get yourself killed, I can't come and get you. And that leaves me stuck here, too. Think about that, will you?" Because arguing about how they would both be safer – arguing about the purpose of teamwork and its place in modern warfare – wasn't going to get through Tony's head, he knew it wasn't.
Tony had sobered; he met Steve's eyes squarely, but there was shame in his own when he did. "Right. Another fair point." He hesitated. "I'm sorry, Steve. I guess I've gotten used to working alone."
"Well, get used to having a team again." Steve breathed in and out, a huffing sigh to clear his lungs, and turned back to his... rescuee? He wasn't quite sure what the guy was – although at least he seemed to be calmer than he had before – which wasn't what Steve had expected. They were behaving badly, he knew that.
"He's right, unfortunately," Tony said quietly. "The roads have a different field around them – they're... tunnels through spacetime? That's a shitty comparison. I don't know how to explain it without a lot of math... but he's right. I'm not sure even flying close to the road would work; the readings I got show it drops off so quick I'm pretty sure there needs to be periodic contact to renew the mobile field, and the period's not long."
That... wasn't good. If Steve understood it right. He rubbed at his forehead. "We could stay in radio contact in the fighting before the city, and you were flying around then."
"You weren't on the road, though," Tony said. "And the road's key, if we're going to get to Maklu. We might actually have to walk." He glared at the road like this was personally offending him in refusing to give up its secrets. "And hope like hell we're on the right road, because they're all like this."
Walking. How many months would that take?
Steve's rescuee was staring at Tony like he was a promise from heaven, and his eyes flicked over to the covered shield like it, too, held the secret of happiness... Steve frowned, shifting uncomfortably. From Earth to Mars – but if Asgardians could hear across worlds, maybe this place had communications that spanned that far, too. "Son?"
"You are going to Maklu," the young man said. "And you do not know the way. In the worldly tongue I am known as Tripitaka, after that buddha who brought back the scrolls of Heaven to the poor east. If you will shave your heads and take vows, then I will accept you as my disciples and guide you upon the path to the Heavenly Mountain."
"Yeah, we're not doing the vows part," Tony said flatly.
Tripitaka looked so crestfallen that Steve added, "Sorry," reflexively.
"But you are to be my disciples," he insisted. "I know you are. The Bodhisattva Kuan-Yin visited me in a dream and told me so – and look," he dug into the worn cloth bag that he carried, and pulled out golden bowl, much dented on one end; a plain but obviously well-cared-for metal circlet, like someone might wear to keep a cloth head-covering in place; and an obviously very sharp razor-blade that looked a lot like the one Steve usually used for shaving, except even more old-fashioned. Tripitaka held out these items with the expression of a man offering incontestable proof. "And she guided me to the rock these were buried beneath and I dug them up the next day, so you cannot claim that it was merely a dream of no substance at all."
Steve held up a hand. "Hang on. Who's this... Bodhisattva?" He was pretty sure he wasn't pronouncing that right at all, enhanced memory or not.
"The holy Kuan-Yin, Who Observes the Sounds of the World, the Mercy Goddess."
"But why would she... huh," Tony said, and reached out to take the circlet from Tripitaka; the monk happily let him have it. "Okay, I can believe she's from Maklu."
"Extremis?" Steve asked warily.
"The properly working kind – maybe." Tony frowned at it, flipping it over and over between his hands, staring at it. He broke the look long enough to give Tripitaka an irritated glance, and then, gingerly, set it on his head. His gaze went very far away. "Huh."
"Well?" asked Steve.
"Not sure," said Tony vaguely. "It's got some kind of built-in interface popping up, but it's not letting me – "
Tripitaka mumbled something under his breath, nonsense words; Steve shot a glance at him, but his lips were barely moving. He looked nervous. "Tony, maybe you shouldn't – "
Tony's face twisted in agony; he dropped to his knees, clutching at his head with a half-strangled scream. Steve lunged forward to pull the damn circlet off and had to pry Tony's gauntleted hands away first, but even then the metal wouldn't budge beneath his fingers. It was like it was welded to Tony's skull, except that Steve could break welds – he couldn't use more force than he already was; he might break Tony's skull instead. Or worse: the edges were vanishing beneath his fingertips, like the more he tried to pull it away, the more it tried to burrow beneath Tony's skin. Shit.It had to be something like the maglock – something internally activated. "Tony! Stop accessing it, turn it off – "
Tony sagged in his grip, seized-up muscles going limp, but when Steve tried to pull the circlet away it still stayed locked fast. At least Tony was no longer screaming – he didn't sound entirely with it, though, as he breathed, "What the hell...?"
Steve straightened, keeping one hand on Tony to keep him from toppling over, and rounded on Tripitaka. It was all he could do to keep from barking at the man like a drill sergeant – "What is that thing?"
"It – it is one of the treasures of my namesake," babbled Tripitaka. "The headband worn by the Great Monkey Sage during his journey to the west as Tripitaka's disciple. See, I knew Kuan-Yin was right! It would not have worked if you were not the ones meant to come with me."
Tony was climbing to his feet, no lingering traces of pain present in his demeanour other than considerable wariness – so Steve left him to stand on his own, strode over to the monk, and pulled Tripitaka toward him with a hand fisted in the front of his robe. He glared down – a long way down; Tripitaka was probably even shorter than Steve himself had been before the serum. "You mean it was supposed to do that?"
"I – " Tripitaka's eyes were round as saucers, and Steve realized what he was going to just a moment too late. He still mumbled – nobody without enhanced hearing would have picked up the syllables – but the moment the first sound dropped from his lips Tony was screaming again, and Steve lifted Tripitaka into and shook him hard, breaking the awful mumbling chant –
"Do that again and I will kill you," Steve promised him, feeling the sick resolve of necessity settle in his gut. Oh, he might be able to knock the guy out – but they didn't have any way to bring him to justice, and he had the bad feeling they'd been conned.
"No, no!" protested Tripitaka, flailing his feet. "You can't – you're supposed to come with me as my disciples!"
"We are not coming with you," Steve said, barely keeping it from being a snarl. "Tell us how to get it off him!"
"Jesus Christ, my empire for an Advil," Tony said from behind him, sounding muffled, like he was speaking into his hands. Steve turned so he could keep an eye on him – he was, in fact, speaking into his hands, having retracted the armour's gloves to pry at the metal band with his bare fingertips. That... wasn't a good sign.
"I don't know," protested Tripitaka. "The Bodhisattva only taught me the mantra of constriction!"
"Then how did this – monkey sage get rid of it?" Steve demanded. Oh, Lord, if the answer was death –
"When he ascended the mountain of Heaven and reached true enlightenment it vanished," squealed Tripitaka, and Steve forced himself to relax his grip before he accidentally strangled the lying little monk. There had to be a special place in hell for men who abused their religious authority with such goddamned temerity. "You have to come with me – "
"We're not," Steve said, dropping him to the ground with disgust. Tripitaka didn't manage to keep his feet, even though it was only about a foot of a drop, and landed in a heap on the road. Steve leaned down, picked up his sack, and emptied it out beside him – but there wasn't anything else that looked like the circlet. Still, the first jewellery... "Tony, anything weird about the rest of this stuff?"
"No," said Tony after a second. "I think. Shit, maybe it's just turned off." His voice was almost normal – almost. There was a thin, shaking undercurrent that he wasn't quite managing to hide.
Steve nodded, and began picking up the rest of it to stuff it back into the sack – they could drop it into the river; hopefully that would be enough to keep Tripitaka from using it on somebody else. "We're leaving, and we're taking this with us," he informed Tripitaka. "If you try using that phrase again, we'll come back, and I will kill you."
It was almost like the War, being in occupied territory, dealing with members of the Resistance who went too far over the line – but there was no authority to turn to here, no friends, no family, no fellow members of the Resistance who could see past their terribly justified pain. Here these people killed people because apparently it didn't mean anything – what if they thought of torture the same way?
"If you kill me, I'll just say it from the underworld," Tripitaka said, his voice trembling but not backing down despite the fresh tears on his face. "Monkey wouldn't obey Tripitaka, and he wouldn't have reached Heaven if Tripitaka hadn't forced him to keep to the paths of holiness; and you won't either, if you don't have a priest to guide you. This is my duty – "
Steve turned his back on him; the rest of the words filtered into his brain and were catalogued, but he needed to know – "Is he right?" he asked Tony in a low voice, kneeling down and putting an arm on Tony's shoulder. "Could he – "
That somebody could curse you all the way from Hell – well, it wasn't like it was unheard of in religion. It just wasn't the sort of thing that Steve had expected to see working through an alien device. It would be from another world – and in this world, without satellites, the radio had cut out when Tony had gotten too far away. But radios worked – well, Steve wasn't entirely sure how they worked, but he knew it wasn't by sending the sound itself across all that distance; there was some sort of intermediate signal. On the other hand, Tony had said that Asgardians, and other small-g gods, could hear their names spoken across such distances. If they could do that,then they could probably make devices that triggered on it, too...
They had been so damn lucky that Loki had no head for strategy or tactics or logistics. Fury hadn't been wrong when he'd said Earth was hopelessly outgunned.
Which didn't help their current situation any, Steve thought, as Tony gave a small nod. Steve gripped his shoulder tighter – Tony's face was far too pale, and though he was doing an admirable job of keeping any sign of tension from his expression, his eyes wouldn't settle – he kept flicking his gaze about, rapid-fire fast, scanning for threats–
Steve found himself reconsidering letting Tripitaka live, with a sort of brutal resolve he hadn't felt since the War. But killing him wasn't an option.
Time to review what options he did have, then. He could knock him out, or do worse – enough brain-damage and he wouldn't be speaking anything. A broken jaw would accomplish the same thing – probably; he wasn't so sure he could knock out Tripitaka permanently without just outright killing him. Humans were damn fragile, and this particular type of alien didn't seem much tougher. The people in this village probably weren't inclined to give him medical care – which gave poor odds for Tripitaka surviving. But if he left him incapacitated, then he might heal, or get healing, or – damn it –
"I promise, I promise I won't use it again except if you leave," squeaked Tripitaka. "You have to take me with you!"
"I think I'd rather just kill you," said Tony, too calmly, as he climbed back onto his feet. Steve helped – or tried to; Tony wouldn't bend, wouldn't let him take any weight, but Steve was damned if he was just going to let him go, not with that look on his face.
"Well – you can't!"
Steve swore, mentally, with every curse he'd ever learned from the Army, and a fair number that were particular to Depression-era Brooklyn – because the bastard was right. If they left him, if they cracked his skull open – unless they came across someplace they could stick him in prison without worrying that he'd just get himself executed for being rude in court, or decide that if he couldn't make it to Heaven, he'd at least be a damn nuisance in Hell –
"Extremis," said Steve, speaking solely to Tony. "Can you – I don't know, infect him with some nanobots and use them to prevent him from talking?"
Tony shook his head, face pale. "No. Hard override, no infecting other living people: first thing I put in, back when it was still malleable – even I can't get back around it now."
A gag. Restraints. They'd have to feed him – how far would Tripitaka's dedication go? Humans could be damn creative about suicide, and they didn't even know how Tripitaka differed from human; the people here – or back in that city, so far back as to be on another planet – they had different vocal chords, so what else was different? They only needed to fail once –
"Fuck," said Tony, vicious and succinct.
"Your lasers – "
"Are a no-go. Even thinking about trying to cut it off makes it start burrowing into my head." Tony's voice was quiet, flat.
"How sure are you that he'd be able to trigger it from beyond the grave?" Steve kept one eye on Tony, and the other carefully on Tripitaka, who was scrubbing off by the side of the river. He didn't trust the monk to not fall in and drown – and then take it out on Tony. But the man really did need to clean off, and so here they were, standing near the grassy bank just past where the last farmer's field ended.
"I appreciate the thought." Tony smiled tightly. "Very sure."
Steve glanced sideways at him.
"The dead and the living can cross paths, depending on the afterlife. You should read some of the legends." He wrinkled his nose. "Who knew, all that mandatory Classics paid off."
"I've read some." Steve shrugged one shoulder. "Hard to tell what's real."
"Well, this part is." Tony was far too subdued for Steve's comfort – and he was volunteering information. Cooperating, and meekly. Steve wanted to strangle Tripitaka. "When I – fell, I told you – I ended up in one. An afterlife, I mean. Boring place, the owner was pretty dour – had surprisingly good company, though." His gaze slid off of Steve toward the ground, like he couldn't bear to look at him any longer.
Steve blinked in sudden understanding, and had to force himself to breathe in. Out.
This shouldn't feel like a kick to the gut.
"You weren't – " said Tony, right at the time Steve asked, "What did – "
They stopped, looking at each other – and then away; they needed to keep an eye on Tripitaka... whose arms were pinwheeling; he'd mis-stepped, one foot sliding out from beneath him. Steve started upward in concern, but a moment later the monk fell over backward and managed to land on the flatter part of the embankment behind him.
"You're not a replacement," Tony said, and didn't that feel like just another sock in the gut, because Steve hadn't even considered –
Had he?
That week when Tony hadn't known him, after Anthony had wiped his mind – hadn't he wondered since then if the man he knew was real? Tony had been crazy, then dead, and now he was possibly part zombie – Steve hadn't known him. Why was it so hard to imagine that the reverse had been true, too? Except that Tony said it wasn't.
"You sure about that?" Steve asked instead of his original question.
Silence. Steve glanced at him again; Tony's shoulders were slumped. "No."
Steve shook his head and laughed softly. "It's not like I can hold it against you."
It didn't matter. They were friends now – right?
"I'm sorry I can't – " Tony's voice caught; he broke off and coughed before he tried again. "Everything died, Steve. It took maybe half an hour. After that there was just the dead – and there you were again."
"Tony. It wasn't me."
"Similar enough, when you weren't being a dick." It was a half-hearted insult; pathetic for use against enemies and not funny enough to be an endearment toward a friend – a poor effort all 'round. "I don't know how long – I think it was months. Time was strange. It's strange here, too – time is passing slower for you when we're split up, I've been checking your watch."
Steve started, his train of thoughts diverting onto another track. "What?" Tony had said – It's been thirty seconds for you. "When you went to go check the..." he waved a hand at the sky to indicate spatial weirdness, "how long was it for you?"
"Couple of hours," Tony admitted, and, "Don't look at me like that."
"I'm not – "
"I could see there was time dilation after two minutes, I knew you'd be feeling it slower. I needed the additional scans to tell me how muchslower, but it wasn't hard." He hesitated. "I already apologized for this."
He sounded apologetic now. Was that because he really meant it, or because he was still shaken by the circlet sitting on his head, the one that the fingers on his left hand kept worrying at?
This wasn't – helping. "How close do we need to stick to the road?" Steve asked instead.
"Close. The field strength damps pretty quick in air – I wish Bruce could see it, the readings are... it's amazing, really, how it works. The path it takes you on – anybody standing beside the road oughtta be impossible to see, but hey, there they are... until you blink, I guess." He held his hands about a foot and a half apart and brought them together, then apart again. "The capacitive effect is a lot stronger in the horizontal plane – you keep the field with you when you step off of it, for just a bit, until the charge wears off. Sort of. Well, not really, but it's a good enough comparison."
A bit of excitement was starting to come back into his voice, bringing back the memory of grease and metal, murmured explanations over holograms in a darkened room. "You figured out how it works that quick?"
Tony snorted. "Oh, god, no. What it does, yes – sort of. How, no way. It's even more complicated than the bifrost in one of the gold-marble-worlds. I wish I had more time to play with it." He sounded wistful. "I could take a bit of it apart, probably. Something that large – it's got an energy source I could tap into, send you home."
You. Steve glanced again at Tripitaka, had given up on using his clothes as rags to scrub himself with, and simply climbed in, holding tight to a nearby tree-root. He looked like a drowned rat, but somehow, Steve couldn't manage to feel much sympathy for his shivers. "I'm staying."
Tony took a moment to answer; when he did, it was over the comm., and quiet. "Thanks."
Tripitaka must have slipped on the river bottom – or perhaps he was just that naturally clumsy. One moment, he was standing upright in the shallows, the next he was being carried downstream, doing a poor imitation of swimming that barely managed to keep his head above water.
"Damnit," Steve muttered, lunging for the bank – because he certainly wasn't going to put Tony in the position of needing to fish the bastard out.
Not that it kept Tony from going after him anyway. "Steve, your suit's awesome, but it's not waterproof," Tony said over the faint clicking noises of the armour solidifying. He stepped past Steve and into flight so smoothly that Steve did a double-take. He'd been good before extremis – but that kind of takeoff was something else.
Tripitaka's head disappeared beneath water; Tony skimmed close to the surface, one hand out to balance himself in the air, and with the other hand punched down into the river, emerging with an iron grip about Tripitaka's wrist. He reversed course smoothly, with admiral care for his passenger – Tripitaka's momentum swung him out, but not far, the forces gentle enough that –
"Look out!" Steve barked, the shield in his hands before he had time to register what he was seeing. He pivoted, arm curling out and extending, the shield singing as it flew through the air. The warning had been unnecessary, shouted without thought: Tony had already been reacting, and his sharp, sudden acceleration whipped Tripitaka around and just over the shield's arc. It connected solidly with the scales of the monster rising from the river: a sea-serpent – or, well, a river-serpent. It looked an awful lot like the dragons – it had the same type of shimmering, subtly iridescent scales – but its five long fins marked it as different: one starting from the crown of its head and flaring straight up and two more on each side, pointing up and down. From head-on it looked like an x-wing with an antenna stuck on it. Then it twisted to the side as the shield struck it, and Steve got a good look at the lethally sharp blades spiking off of those fins at artistically pleasing intervals.
Damn it. Another dragon attacking them for no reason –
- hang on–
"Tony, back off," Steve snapped, and then, projecting his voice like a drill sergeant (or rather, like Annie, who had been the chorus line leader for the USO girls and could have bellowed any drill sergeant into the ground), "We do not intend to trespass! We're backing off!" Names – they'd said they had to declare –"My name is Steve Rogers, and my companions are Tony Stark and Tripitaka. We're travelling to Maklu. As pilgrims," he added, because even if it wasn't exactly the truth, it was close enough – and he'd take every advantage he could get. His shield arced back toward him and he raised a hand to catch it.
Tony was already back land, of course – even carrying a squishy passenger, he could have flown across Manhattan during that speech. Now he hovered above Steve, having dropped Tripitaka in a groaning heap about a hundred yards back from the bank. But the river-dragon had paused as Steve spoke – listening? He couldn't tell. How was he supposed to read the expression of something, somebody, who was so completely alien?
The giant head wavered; the fins flared, rippling down its enormous sides to where they vanished beneath the water – rendering it effectively invisible to Steve, at least. Did it have some way of hiding from Tony's scans, too? Or had it just travelled fast enough that speed allowed it to seem like it was sneaking up on them? The sky-dragons had gotten the drop on Tony back at the city, but that could have been by the same effect. Space itself was weird here (and God knew that something that would make Tony sound so gleefully awed had to be really weird), and that made it hard to come up with a yardstick against which to measure their abilities. A yard might be a mile – might be a solar system.
The river-dragon dropped entirely beneath the surface. The fast-running river carried the ripples of its presence downstream and, within seconds, dispersed them entirely. A retreat? Or a tactical repositioning so it could ambush them from another angle? The road ran along this river for now; the thing would have plenty more opportunities to ambush them.
"It's gone," said Tony, sounding baffled. "How the hell did it– I'm impressed."
That answered the question about whether it could beat Tony's sensors, at least. Did it? "It didn't just swim really far away really fast?"
"If it hit a spatio-temporal distortion sharp enough to vanish on my sensors like that, it's dead. Though I suppose it could help... use the folds while... huh..."
That tone was familiar. Alright – time to get a move on. They needed to get to a town willing to take pity on pilgrims, and try buying supplies supplies in exchange for a day or two of labour – according to Tripitaka's complaints on their walk over to the river, the locals were spiritually bereft and would offer no sort of succor at all. If it hadn't been for the underhanded monk's trump card, Steve would have tested that assertion – but he didn't dare set Tripitaka off into the sort of hysterics that he'd been in before. On the other hand, Steve didn't want to give him too much free reign – if he stopped being such a snivelling coward, then he could turn the current situation completely FUBAR.
And Tony... hadn't said anything one way or the other.
"Alright," Steve said, striving for a normal tone. "You can think about it on the road – it's time we were moving anyway, and I don't wanna be hanging around here if that thing decides to come back."
Tony landed, his jet boots squishing softly in the ground of the bank – with the armour, he had a heavier footprint than Steve, although not as heavy as the Mark VIII would have made. "I hate running in this thing, it's such a waste of time," Tony sighed, retracting the faceplate, and then perking up as a thought occurred to him. "Hey, I could reconfigure the armour for roller-skates – the road's smooth enough. Repulsor propulsion – "
"Run the numbers a few more times first," Steve said, because even if that sounded like the stupidest idea in the world, it might work. But it probably wouldn't be very comfortable. "Until then, I'll carry him." He certainly wasn't going to ask Tony to do it – aside from any personal concerns, if Tripitaka needed to be choked out in a hurry, Tony likely wasn't going to be able to do it. Letting the guy walk was out of the question - just the short trip over to the river, away from the road, had been painful. Steve could have outrun him at age six, asthmatic and all.
"Sure. I need to figure out where to pull the mass from." He sighed. "Extremis lets me self-repair the armour, but the damn dragon charred off a half-kilo of it."
And then he'd wasted some of it on the fake passports, too. Did this mean that they needed more supplies than just food? "Can you make more?"
"It's all nanobots, Steve – yes, I can make more, but since I'm not exactly a fusion reactor I need base elements." He brooded. "Well, part of me's a fusion reactor, but not one that works like that. I have some supplies... eh, but a half-kilo's not worth the effort of digging into those reserves. I wish I knew how Bruce does it."
Base elements. Well, everything was base elements, right? So he needed... iron? "They had metal tools back in that town."
"Awesome nicknames aside, not actually made of iron, here."
"Gold-titanium alloy, I know."
Tony snorted. "So you were listening."
"Always was."
"Right." Tony looked away, shifting uncomfortably. "Add in a bunch more carbon, these days, but that's not a problem. I've got spare titanium and gold to spare, though picking up more wouldn't hurt. The main problem is that building more isn't instantaneous."
And until then, Tony would be functioning with under-strength armour. Great. Steve clapped him on the shoulder again, acutely aware of how much he was checking his strength. Maybe he didn't need to, against Tony, who rebuilt himself with extremis. Maybe he did, more than ever. "Next town, people'll be friendlier."
"Sure, if we can get there without being eaten by a dragon," Tony said dryly. He shifted again, and grimaced as the mud squelched around his boots.
"Time to go," Steve said softly, and he dropped his hand, took a breath, and squared his shoulders. You can do this.Without killing the bastard.
"You saved my life!" Tripitaka exclaimed at them both as they neared. "See, I told you, you're meant to be my disciples."
"You need to stop talking, except to answer questions,"Tony said, his voice flat and metallic through the helmet.
"But I'm meant to impart holy wisdom to you."
"There is nothing holy about what you're doing." Steve loomed over him. He seemed to have bounced back awfully fast from being robbed, destitute, and then attacked by a river dragon – even though his clothes were all still soaked through, and despite the sun shining down, it wasn't all that warm. Probably it was from having power over somebody else – Tripitaka struck him as that type of bully. "Because we have to, we're taking you with us to Maklu. Since we gotta stay on the roads, I'm going to carry you."
"Oh, that will be much faster," said Tripitaka, looking nervous but pleased, which was somehow more annoying than if he'd kicked up a fuss.
Tripitaka's clothes were damp and disgusting – the monk himself was damp and disgusting – but since the river apparently wasn't safe, Steve would just have to put up with it until they found a friendlier village. He knew from hard experience long before the War that the smells would fade to unimportance in a few minutes. Having the foul smell soaking through his uniform was less unpleasant than the mental weight of carrying around the odious little man, piggy-pack style. Tripitaka barely weighed anything.
"Roller-skates," Tony said firmly in his ear, jogging along beside him. They were sprinting, by any normal human standard, but Steve could keep this pace up all day.
The movements of the armour were too precise – no, that was the wrong word. Too repetitious. Each step was exactly the same as the last one. Before they'd been running a minute, even if Tony hadn't previously mentioned that he was using the armour to run, it would have been obvious.
"You are very fast," said Tripitaka, clutching at Steve's shoulders more strongly.
"Shut up and meditate," Steve told him, and to Tony, "Using wheels to travel over a flat road? That might just work." Except – roller-skates, really?
"Ha! No, you're right, the point is to maintain a minimum amount of contact with the road... if I put the wheels on my hands and fly horizontal, that'll be much more efficient."
There was a Stark Industries inside joke that Pepper had once told him, about the various ways Tony Stark had made his engineers cry over the years in his pursuit of efficiency. It would have been crass to say it, though, so instead Steve just said, "Sounds like a good way to give your passengers a deadly case of road rash."
"I never said the calculations wouldn't be complex. Good thing my brain's a supercomputer now, isn't it?"
Right, because Tony being infected with extremis was such a good thing.
"And – hang on. There's a bridge up ahead – and something on it."
Steve squinted. Was it just his imagination, or did the road blur? It could have been heat radiating off of the stone. They drew nearer, and it resolved steadily: the road sweeping into a gentle arc, stone supports falling away beneath, the gentle rush of water – a lot of water, but without much in the way of rapids.
On top of the bridge, near the rails, was one of those uncomfortably six-legged horse-like creatures. It had on a tall saddle – which tapered a bit, until Steve could see how it might be possible for someone human-sized to sit on the thing and still be able to walk afterward – and a great many saddlebags, more than Steve thought an ordinary four-legged horse would have been able to happily carry, especially packed as full as they looked. There were bright green ribbons braided into its mane and tail, and an intricately wrought bit in its mouth; the reins had been wrapped around the saddle pommel, though, rather than about the stone rails. Its owner was nowhere to be seen.
If there was an owner. The horse eyed them curiously as they made their way up to the bridge – at a walk, now, more cautiously than before – but as soon as they'd stepped foot upon the span, it tossed its head, whinnied with something that sounded like joy, and headed straight for them at a fast trot.
"Alien horse, huh," said Tony, raising his hands, palms up and repulsors glowing, ready to fire.
"It might be friendly," said Steve. It could be. He slipped his shield so that it was ready to throw anyway.
"Oh, yes!" said Tripitaka. "The Bodhisattva said that the river dragon would be my mount. This must be him, come to make amends!"
What?
The horse trotted up in a friendly fashion, slowing to a halt several feet away, at which point it neighed happily and stuck its head out – for a carrot? Or was it looking for an opportunity to bite him? Steve's real-life experience with horses was limited to catching glimpses of them through train-windows, when the USO tour had passed near the occasional field with them – he'd never been this close to one before. Of course, he still wasn't anywhere near an actual horse – and it was probably pretty stupid of him to think of it like a horse. The dragons had all been able to talk; the horse didn't look like a dragon, Tripitaka's bizarre comment aside, but there was a good chance it was just as smart as any of them.
"Uh, I'm Steve Rogers, this is Tony Stark, and we're going to Maklu," said Steve. If it was anything like a dragon, it was probably best to get the necessities of polite – or at least non-homicidal – society out of the way first. "And this is Tripitaka, who is... coming with us."
The horse nickered softly, and butted its head forward – Steve tensed, and almost brained it with his shield, but it just seemed to want to nuzzle at his hand. Well, that was... promising?
"You are the river dragon who is to carry me to Maklu," said Tripitaka happily, hopping down from Steve's back and stepping forward to reach up for the reins. It was a long way up, Tripitaka being as short as he was, and as damp and still dirty as he was, he made a poor contrast to the fine quality of the horse's mane and its gear.
But the horse didn't seem to mind – or at least, it was too polite to show anything if it did mind. Though it did stop nickering so happily. Instead, it solemnly dropped down, into an awkward half-bow, before settling enough that Tripitaka would be able to easily reach its back – or should have been able to easily reach its back. Tripitaka immediately tried scrambling up and nearly fell over the other side before Steve caught the back of his robe and hauled him into a balanced spot.
The horse rose gracefully up to standing again and plodded off the road some distance, Tripitaka hanging onto the pommel for dear life despite the sedate, practically snail-like pace. Steve watched apprehensively for a minute before going after it: it was heading for the river-bank. But the horse stopped before the actual water, at a spot where the drop-off turned into a small pebbled beach, shallow water not nearly deep enough for a river-serpent to swim or hide in. Then it dropped to its haunches again and whinnied. Pointedly. Tripitaka, perhaps shoved by a rocking motion on the part of the horse, tumbled to the ground.
"I think I like him," remarked Tony. "Let's call him George."
"If it's a him," said Steve, and shrugged. "Maybe he has soap?"
"Hey, George, do you have soap in those saddlebags?"Tony asked aloud.
George whinnied again, dipped his head around to one of the saddlebags, and began tugging at the fastening with his teeth. He worried at them for a few seconds before giving a gesture that looked like a shrug – evidently easier for a horse that had three front legs instead of one with merely two – and looking pointedly at Tripitaka. Apparently not completely blind – maybe self-interest made him smarter? – Tripitaka unfastened it and began digging through it, coming up with a cloth bag holding something shaped like a brick.
"Okay," said Tony thoughtfully. "Operation: Rollerskates has gotten upgraded to Operation: Jet-car. Shit. I don't have enough raw materials on hand for that. We're gonna need to go shopping."
"What should – we call you?" Steve huffed out sometime later. The river was far behind them; they were travelling at a pretty good clip now, enough to wind even him. The horse was breathing harder, too. Tony didn't sound like he was putting out any effort at all, but then, the armour was doing the running for him – and anyway, he was communicating over the radio with his mind. Lungs didn't enter into it.
The horse whinnied, then made a noise that sounded much closer to a growl than anything Steve had ever expected to hear from a horse. It was a surprise to the horse, too – its eyes rolled back, ears flicking back to lie as flat against its skull as they could go, and it briefly kicked up its pace to outstrip both Steve and Tony.
"Woah!" exclaimed Tony, taking off from the road and jetting along to keep up, but the horse slowed after only a few seconds anyway – which was a good thing, because Steve wouldn't have been able to catch it even while sprinting.
"That is not becoming behaviour!" squeaked Tripitaka, who was holding to the saddle pommel with a death-grip. "Shame!"
The horse, for its part, did actually look embarrassed, head drooping and its stride turning into something that somehow resembled a shuffle without actually slowing it down any further.
"I guess we can't – pronounce your real name?" Steve asked, after he'd put on enough speed to catch up. Looked like, for all the doubts he'd had about the horse, he was the one who was limiting their speed now.
Damnit. He thought he'd left that behind in Brooklyn.
The horse bobbed its head in a nod, then shook its head from side to side, and Steve hazarded another guess. "Or – you can't?" Maybe it really was a river dragon. Though if it was, then why was it now a horse? Surely a dragon could carry them just as well.
"Secretariat, then, in honour of the most kick-ass horse to ever horse," said Tony - only the first word aloud; for the rest, he continued on the comm.
"I didn't realize – you knew anything – about horses. Bit old-fashioned - for you," Steve said in an undertone, and louder, to the horse, "It's up to you."
The horse did that very strange weight-on-centre-leg shrug again, giving the impression of droopy resignation. Steve studied its long face and decided that it wasn't resignation at the name – it didn't look directed at him, but inward. Unhappy that it couldn't pronounce its own name? That might be evidence in favour of it actually being a dragon...
"Money, dear boy," said Tony, with a mocking – and terrible – English accent. "I'm pretty sure I have a stable of derby winners somewhere – not sure, I might have donated them to the Boyscouts."
The hesitation was minute, so much that it almost wasn't there. Have? Had. And if he hadn't donated them to the Boyscouts, then he certainly didn't have them anymore. That came with being declared dead. But with so much of the estate frozen or seized, Pepper didn't have any anymore, either.
"That is a strange name," said Tripitaka doubtfully. "You should be called after your predecessor. I give you the name of Yulong." At this, the horse looked more cheerful.
Steve tamped down a feeling of instant dislike. The horse wanted to be called that? Fine.
"Fuck it," muttered Tony over the comm., so quietly that Steve wasn't sure he'd meant to send that.
"What is it?" Steve whispered, turning his face away so that his lips couldn't be read by either Tripitaka or Yulong.
"Sorry," Tony said, contrite and recriminating – self-recriminating. "I should have noticed before – idiot. It's not just the Norse. Myths and legends aren't so made up out here. I think we've fallen into one – or a re-enactment of one... if time is going strange, that might be the same as the real thing. I should have read up on Chinese legends before I left, clearly. Why the hell did I ever think this would be straight-forward?"
"Optimist," Steve said, a little bit smugly. Tony could pretend to be a world-weary cynic until hell froze over; it hadn't taken more than a month of his company for Steve to realize that, hidden behind that facade, Tony's inner core of optimism shone brighter than the arc reactor. Tony believed that the world could and would be better than it was.
Despite everything, the fact that he still did made Steve's heart lighter.
"Oh, shut up," Tony said, but at least if he sounded annoyed at Steve he didn't sound so angry at himself.
He wasn't asking the obvious question, though. Steve grimaced. "Alright," he said, the sternness he'd been aiming for not quite making it through – the huffing and puffing sort of hindered it. "Tripitaka. Who was – your predecessor?"
Tripitaka's face wrinkled into a look of utter reverence, so deeply that for a moment he even loosened his grip from the saddle's pommel – although he immediately clung on again as soon as Yulong's rhythmic gait had him sway in the slightest. "I should not be surprised you do not know," he sighed pathetically. "Holy Hsüan Tsang, called Tripitaka when he ventured out into the world, was a priest of great holy power. Some thousand years ago or more he was charged by the Bodhisattva Kuan-Yin to venture forth to Heaven and there receive the scrolls of Transcendence and Persuasion for Good Will, to be brought back to the east and enlighten the souls of the ignorant folk who dwell here."
"He went to Maklu," said Steve.
"Yes, they are now known as one and the same," agreed Tripitaka, looking put out at being interrupted. "This was not the case in ancient times, as every child ought learn at school. You are very untutored." Steve focused hard on running, the placement of one foot in front of the other, the exact angle of his arms and depth of his breath; and it was not a long pause before Tripitaka continued, "To him he gathered four disciples. The first was the Great Sage Who Is Equal To Heaven, the Monkey-King, whose impatience and arrogance would have driven him from the path to enlightenment save the presence of the ring which I have placed upon you." Here he glanced at Tony.
The road wasn't interesting enough anymore. "Move on," Steve said harshly.
Tripitaka peered down at him from his perch atop Yulong, but continued. "The second was a gluttonous pig-spirit, whose name the Great Temples now cannot agree upon; and there are some who contend that the true name has been lost to time. The third was the river ogre Sandy, who was quiet and steadfast but had sinned greatly by slaying and eating travellers; and the fourth was Yulong, one of the sons of the Dragon King of the West Sea." Here he paused again. "Each of the Great Temples has an extensive version of the myth, but apart from these details, there is no unanimous agreement. All but the Temple of Great and Eternal Sorrow hold that Tripitaka was successful in his quest, bringing back the entirety of the knowledge that the Great Buddha had intended for him to spread, and that soon-after – a day, a year, or a decade – he vanished along with his disciples, to return to the west and become a Buddha himself." He shook his head sadly. "The lack of agreement among the Great Temples has been the cause of much disharmony throughout the centuries. But," and he brightened, "I shall learn the true story when we reach Maklu itself, and then it may be brought back to the east, and all shall be at peace again."
"That's why you're – doing this?"
Tripitaka nodded solemnly. "I am not very suited to the life of a warrior monk," he confessed. "I am no good at healing the physical body, although I have a very great knowledge of scripture and am an excellent guide."
Like hell you are, Steve thought. And, hell – Loki had been claiming he'd come to 'free' them. God save humanity from nutso aliens like him and Tripitaka.
"But without physical might to force wisdom upon them, no ruler is willing to heed mere words from a lowly monk; the greatest sages of the Great Temples have forgotten their mandate and now maintain their power through the cruel use of force. I was near to despair when Holy Kuan-Yin appeared to me in a dream, and commanded me to journey west! And at my lowest point, she led you to me – and then this fine horse. So I shall keep faith and not despair. Surely the mandate of Heaven is upon us!"
Right – Steve never heard that one before. A champion of peace and diplomacy – except when it came to Tripitaka's own goals. A 'small' injustice could be excused in the name of a higher righteousness. No one would listen to him? Better make them, then – by pain or by fear, it all worked out the same.
They ran on in silence for a while after, until Tripitaka, apparently feeling that he needed to 'educate' his disciples, began to lecture on the basic tenets of Buddhism – the version practiced in this world, at least. It was too much of an effort to try to listen to him without snapping at him to shut up, shut up, so despite knowing that he ought to be looking for insight into Tripitaka's mind, Steve ended up tuning him out, turning his thoughts inward.
Gentle strains of jazz music began echoing from his comm., and Steve glanced over at Tony, lips twitching. The facemask showed no signs of amusement, of course, but the volume increased slightly.