Tony closed his eyes on Steve, and opened them again to see Maria Stark.
"Hello, Tony," the thing that was not his mother said. His mother had never called him Tony – she'd called him Anthony when she was angry and mio caro when she was not. But it looked like his mother – had his mother's voice, right down to the very minute burr, the flaw that'd killed her singing career before it could start – not that her family would have let her be a professional singer anyways; the Carbonells were old money. The scent of the expensive perfume she'd always worn lingered in the air.
Somewhere, elsewhere, the rest of Tony's mind was rewriting code from the base up, writing anti-viral and encryption protections that could withstand anything human or alien, because the last couple of days had proven that extremis was, even discounting the zombie-making part, full of security holes. So: patches for him, a worm for the rest of Earth – system-breaches that would make the hive-mind thing the zombies had going on about as formidable as a medieval castle trying to fend off modern artillery.
But that was all distant, remote. He was aware it was happening, but he had no control over it, or even a good view of it. He had been cut off from extremis again, and all those soon-to-be-implemented security fixes were as distant as Earth itself right now. Though this time he supposed he'd deserved it; he'd thrown his mind wide open to link to the library nexus.
At least Frigga had had the decency not to take Maria's shape.
"People see me as they expect to see me," it said. She said. Aha, it was a she.
"Really? Because I'd kind of been picturing you like an even bitchier Christine Everhart," he told her.
"Don't be ridiculous, Tony," she said gently. "You have more respect for Christine than that."
Tony froze. It was a moment before he could even think to talk – a moment –
No extremis here, he realized all over again. No, he was in his own head. No extremis – but he wasn't feeling blind like he had before. He felt – human, and he felt like feeling human was normal, the status quo. That was – strange.
"I don't like what you're trying to imply," he said flatly. "Kuan-Yin, right? Goddess of Mercy?" He added just a touch of a sneer to the last word – nothing over the top. Never let these types think they were worth going over the top for.
"That I am," said Kuan-Yin, nodding his mother's head regally.
"So." Which question to ask first? "Why like this?" He was hooked into the city net – if she really wanted to talk to him that badly, she didn't need to have waited until he'd gotten here.
"I wanted your consciousness to be as intact as possible when I spoke to you," she explained, settling down on an overstuffed armchair that had... it might have been there before, actually; Tony wasn't sure. This place had the feeling of a dream: the unimportant details didn't get filled in.
"Well, that backfired." Tony indicated the space behind him with a tilt of his head. "We're missing my better half."
"Programming can be duplicated," Kuan-Yin explained. "Personality, memories... but consciousness – the unique identifier – cannot, no more so than a soul can."
Tony gave her a very thin smile and spread his hands out at his sides. "Bullshit."
She tapped her cigarette over an ashtray sitting on a small side-table, and gave a long, smoky exhale. "You think you're a copy? You aren't. It's very curious, how this consciousness – your consciousness – managed to wind up separated from its soul – but you are the original, that much is clear."
He wasn't a clone. He wasn't a clone?
Tony snorted and stuck his hands in his pockets – because he had pockets, no armour here. Pockets worked just as well, if he had to put on an attitude and couldn't risk any sign of shaking hands. "So you know about that. I wasn't sure – don't you find it surprising?" he taunted her. "Curious, that some guy without a soul is wandering around a city designed to be lethal to him?"
He wasn't a clone. That made no sense – it was the obvious explanation for... everything, the when/where/whys that didn't otherwise add up. No, he had to be a clone – but if he wasn't... shit. This was fucked up. Funny, how he'd gotten so used to the idea that thought it might be wrong could be disconcerting.
"Not lethal. We have no desire to punish automatons – merely to keep them out of the city, for the safety of everyone. As for how you circumvented our defences, I don't have to wonder," Kuan-Yin said serenely. She took another drag from her cigarette. "I know you've seen the end of the multi-verse, Tony – the complete failure of all our defences is the only thing that would have let you wake up. This is, in fact, what I need to discuss with you."
Tony mirrored her, and found himself holding a cigarette in one hand that suddenly wasn't in a pocket. He hadn't smoked in years – nicotine had never been his vice of choice. "So what, come to fix that mistake?"
"I brought you here, Tony," she replied. He was beginning to get sick of her infinite patience. "It wasn't easy, trying to guide you here from afar without compromising the shield." She smiled wryly. "I had to enlist the White Tiger's aid. Do you know how rare it is for a cat to be helpful? I owe him many favours, now... but even a gate guardian can't simply stroll forth into the mortal world, these days. It all had to go via proxies – the monk, the sorcerer, that damnably disobedient koi fish..."
"Yeah, I've got some objections to your idea of helpful."
"Obviously, I did not realize you did not have a soul when I provided Tripitaka with the collar."
"And that makes it better?"
She regarded him curiously. "Have you ever learned without the application of pain?" Tony opened his mouth, prepared to lie, but – she was in his head - "Adult souls, set in their ways, never do."
He couldn't even argue with her. People were idiots; himself included. The best he could do was grumble, "Don't let Steve hear you say that."
"You give him too little credit. I am sorry, Tony; I'd remove the collar, but it would take my physical presence and that's not something that can be spared at this time. We digress. I need you to come here," she said, and just like that, there they were: no longer sitting in nothingness, but standing before a squat, rounded building that looked out of place compared to the silk-and-glass spires of its surroundings. It was made of some sort of dark stone, as black as the road was white, and had no entrance as far as Tony could tell – and somehow, he knew this was true on its other side as well. It was all still just a dream, after all.
"Maklu is the centre of all worlds and from us all worlds spring forth," said Kuan-Yin. "You have been to this place before. I know not what you did then, but whatever it was, it threatens the entirety of the multiverse."
"I've never been here."
"Not yet."
Tony frowned. If they were out of sync in timelines, then he could see what she meant. But changing something that had already happened – there wasn't enough energy for that; it would be the destruction of a universe in the creation of a new one. Ordinary time-travel just split off another branch reality; you didn't travel back in time to your own, but to a parallel world. On the other hand, this was Maklu, the centre of everything, the prime reality – aspects of each of those two new parallel worlds would be incorporated here. So it... might actually be possible.
"I need you to do exactly what you did before," Kuan-Yin said. "Change nothing. If you change a thing – everyone dies."
"Now we're back to impossible," Tony complained. "Change nothing? You want me to set up a stable time loop."
Backwards time travel was one thing, time loops another – he missed extremis, fiercely; trying to work out the math in his purely biological brain was so slow.
"There is already an unstable time loop in place. It shall continue to iterate until it stabilizes or something breaks. If it breaks, it has the potential to take with it every atom of this cluster."
He didn't need to run the numbers on how many lives that was – he already had, long ago. But no matter how staggeringly large the potential death toll – "Still doesn't make sense. You want me to believe this is possible – I'm having difficulty, here. A stable time loop? Fine, the energy would be horrific, but at least smaller than the cluster's sum total. An unstable loop? One recreating – let me get this right – " he peered at her over the tops of sunglasses that he might not have been wearing a moment ago – "the entirety of this cluster – " she nodded at him, " – whenever it iterates. No, the math doesn't work. That's like trying to build a fleet from the spare parts of one jet-engine. You might as well try to push a car from the inside, it won't go – there's no way that the energy requirements – "
"This contains a doorway," Kuan-Yin said, waving her cigarette at the building. "We call it the Font of Time. It looks out upon the underpinnings of reality – beneath which lays unreality."
Tony swallowed.
That sort of instability – the instability required to do what Kuan-Yin was suggesting, producing energy out of nothing – was just – existing? The quantum uncertainty of whether or not their multiverse would continue – a constant roll of the dice. "How has this not destroyed the universe yet?"
"We're not sure," said Kuan-Yin. "The Font is a curious construction – it's not just a window or a doorway, but a control device. If entered, a certain amount of direction is possible. Presumably this is how you created the loop that we are trapped in."
"How many iterations?"
She lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. "Impossible to know. They do not exist." She paused. "We know that the loop is unstable, but not much else. It should stabilize when you perform the exact same actions in the past as your future self-has already done. The multiverse will cease recreating and resume its normal course, with this part of history merely marking a knot in the weave."
"Or I could make things better," Tony murmured.
"Presumably, this is what you have been trying to do each time you come here – trying, and failing, since here we are yet again and you are still not satisfied."
"If I've got more chances to get it right – "
"But you don't," said Kuan-Yin. "Everything you touch during any loop is pulled in. You travelled back from another multiverse inside this loop – if it flies apart, everything in this multiverse goes, because your loop stretches around it. Every time it iterates differently, this is what you risk. And you do risk it – the Font can only endure so much. We don't know what the breaking point is, but we do know it exists."
"Uh-huh," Tony said, but he didn't listen. Couldn't. Right now the bulk of his processing power was elsewhere, and like hell he was letting this chance pass by without at least running the numbers – and then probably saying fuck them and trying anyway, because if he could just try – "How do I do this?"
"Stand within the Font, and look out upon the Gap; the Font will give you control of what you wish to see. It requires willpower."
"The Gap," Tony murmured. "The Void."
"Yes." Her voice was smoky as she added, "For obvious reasons, no soul in this city could do so."
Not with the sights that lurked within – Tony remembered his reaction to those, even if he didn't remember the sight itself. But it had pierced through rock, stone, metal, armour – the back of his head – and JARVIS... hadn't seen it. Concentrating on anything would be impossible; just the memory of the sight had been enough to drive him insane.
"That's why you keep 'automatons' out," Tony realized.
"Yes. You are extraordinarily unusual, Tony – to have had a soul and lost it; until now I'd have thought it impossible. The river must have been very confused to let you pass at all; your friend should not have been able to drag you out on this side."
He glared at her accusingly. "And all the others? Every reality I've looked into, 'constructs' are dying. Tell me that's coincidence."
She shook her head. "It may be coincidence. It isn't us. You do have other enemies, Tony."
Yeah, that was an understatement. Or perhaps a misdirection. He blew out an angry breath and dropped his cigarette on the ground, snubbing it out with his shoe. "You thought I had a soul." And she thought he could somehow face the things in the Gap? Never-mind that it was a fate worth than death, that was stupid.
"Which caused me many doubts." She puffed out a breath of smoke. "They were overcome by the knowledge that you had somehow already controlled the Font for a long enough period of time to cause this problem."
"Okay. Fine." He couldn't tell how the rest of him was doing with the extremis problem. Hopefully well-enough along – or maybe this would be one of those cases where he woke up and it hadn't been two seconds. If that was the case... then he was going to have to wait a bit longer at the library nexus, because he needed to finish with extremis first, and send Steve back with the cure. "You want us here, wait for me to disconnect and then poof us here in person."
"I can't."
Tony glared at her. "I refuse to believe you people don't have portals."
"We have a realm falling apart and a city under invasion," she said, and met his eyes with a gaze far more direct than any his mother had ever used. "If Thanos is given a chance to enter through to the places and times he has not yet conquered, then all your efforts will be for naught. Mark me well, Tony – this is very important. But although it's not smaller, it is far easier than our war against the Mad Titan. The multiverse is imperilled on all sides. I know you wish to return your friend home, and I know you wish to change things so fewer might have died."
She reached up and placed a hand against his cheek. He couldn't fathom why he let her, except that when she smiled, her teeth were far too pointy and sharp, there were far too many of them there to fit in her face, and he couldn't see Maria in her at all.
"Do the right thing, Tony."
He woke up, his mind crashing back together and diminishing.
Download complete.
run
Warning: Operation may affect root.
override
Installing. Installation will be complete in: 7h 4m 11s
"I'm good to go," Tony said, and opened his eyes. His vision wavered as part of the patch hit a sensor processing centre – he ignored it. Good to go. The coding for the zombie-cure was hidden in the back-end of it – a much simpler bit of programming than what he was applying to himself, which was nothing short of a full system upgrade. He'd been out for – two minutes. With the library's processing power, it had been as good as ten years.
"About time," said a voice really close to his ear. Not Steve's. Tony jerked away, the armour moving about him and pulling him into the air – defend and absorb, and oh, he had ideas, now, ideas from data culled and compressed for just these purposes – written into the software, but the hardware implementation was going to be more involved for than was allowed in seven hours, four minutes, five seconds. Things like upgrades to the ICG, the subspace generators, his repulsors, his internal security – those things he could do on the fly. Faster synapses, force-fields, portable portal machines – those would take more time.
Part of him was looking forward to it. The rest of him had weaponry trained on the... cat... sitting next to his head.
"Tony," Steve said, and his voice was filled with relief. "Please stop passing out. I'm starting to worry I'm boring."
It was a pathetic attempt at humour, but Tony took pity on him. "You? Never. What's that?" he indicated the cat, letting some of his weaponry cycle down since Steve seemed both aware of and unthreatened by it.
"The White Tiger," said Steve. "Guardian of the West." Oh. So that was what she'd meant.
"It's a housecat."
"All housecats are tigers at heart," drawled the cat. "Ready to rip off your face should you fail to please them. You are displeasingly late."
"So sue us," Tony replied. "It's your damn road."
Steve, for some reason, seemed to find that funny – Tony caught him concealing a smirk. But then he turned serious. "Did you get extremis figured out?"
"Yup. And a better portal machine." One for which he currently didn't have the materials. "Which we're using as soon as I'm done with this favour, and don't think you don't owe me for it. Twice over," he warned the cat. It yawned at him.
"Favour?" Steve frowned. "If you've got it – we should get back to Earth as soon as possible. Especially if they think you're in danger of destroying something here."
"Bit late for that," Tony admitted. He touched back down on the ground and offered Steve his hand again. "Come on, I'll explain on the way."
"You'll get shot down again if you attempt to fly out of here," the cat pointed out. "I shall show you a faster way."
Tony looked to Steve, who raised an eyebrow. Damn. "Fine."
The cat sat there, looking at them for a few seconds, and then, apparently bored, began grooming itself.
This somehow translated for Steve, because he picked the cat up – Tony half-expected it to claw him across the face, but instead it looked quite contented as Steve held it carefully in the curl of his arms. "You're learning," it said smugly. "Very good. The black door on the left."
"You could just give me the directions," Tony pointed out. There was no way the cat – the talking cat – didn't have access to the net. They headed for the door anyway, Steve still cradling the damn thing, and it slid back smoothly with a bit of applied pressure, revealing stairs going downward. His first instinct was to recoil, but no, it wasn't a sewer below – it was their power system. Built with plenty of space in mind.
"This grid runs beneath the entire city," the cat explained. "And you're more of a fool than most if you think putting sensitive information onto the net is a good idea when there are Titanic ships hanging in the sky."
"Please, like you don't know how to tight-beam."
"Can we talk about it aloud?" Steve asked. He had a slightly pinched look.
"Down here, yes," said the cat.
Tony made another sensor pass over the exposed trays that made up a good half of the walls and floor – yeah, plenty of interference here, and... not at all the sort he was expecting. Electrical grids gave off EM interference – obviously – but this... this might have a solid basis for cooking up a shield that would keep annoying gods from being able to hear their names spoken. Had he learned about this, when he'd been hooked into the library nexus? There was so much in there – he'd known it all, and then he'd only been able to take a fraction of it with him...
Processor upgrades in the near future, Tony promised himself. It would have to do.
"Why didn't you take us this way before?" Steve asked. He sounded annoyed.
The cat was unperturbed. "Do not think these tunnels free of risk. Speak, mortal."
Tony rolled his eyes, and began talking, filling Steve in: city breaking, time-loop-making machine, underpinnings of the universe, yada yada. He left out the part where Kuan-Yin had looked like his mother. That was... not something that really needed discussing, right now. Not with Steve. Sarah Rogers had left Steve orphaned at a far younger age than Tony had lost his own parents; when Steve had spoken of her – only twice, in the entire time Tony had known him – he'd made her sound like a saint.
It didn't take long. When he'd finished, Steve was frowning. "You want to go back in time."
"I've already gone back in time," Tony corrected. "Already... will have gone back in time. What future-me did in the past has led to me being here now and able to go back, but – this time..."
He knew what he was gambling with. He'd spent far too many sleepless nights running the numbers for another multiverse. And yet... if he could just get it right – he wouldn't have to change much. Hell, play his cards right, and he might just be able to infuriate Schrödinger - change the outcomes that he didn't already know.
Earth.
He didn't know about Earth. Which, ordinarily, didn't mean that it didn't exist, because he wasn't a solipsist. But this was time-travel talking about right now – Schrödinger's exasperated question actually had a fully realizable answer. Earth was the cat: dead, alive, or covered in zombies, he was the observer that mattered. And he didn't know that a time-traveller from the future hadn't put in something to extremis' base code to make its victims' brains go dormant instead of dead.
Although the nuclear launch –
He could have been hallucinating that bit –
Okay, maybe that's reaching.
"Do you know what it was you changed?" Steve asked. "Future-you, I mean."
He felt his lips curl in a smirk that Steve couldn't see. A physical reaction, rather than mental – so he was still human enough to do that, lack of soul and computer for a brain and all. Did he know? All the 'why me's and the 'how's – okay, not all of them. He could still remember what the norns had told him: if not you, then another.
But that only worked once. The second time...
"Oh, yeah. I know."
The cat was in his arms – Steve would have preferred to use just one arm, if he had to carry it at all, but whenever he tried to shift an arm away it hissed at him – and then it wasn't. They were underground still, travelling on the 'grid' – whatever that was – so he couldn't see immediately if there were any other changes, but there had to be some. Unless the cat had just decided to leave, which couldn't be ruled out.
"Heads up," said Tony, and, "Back off. What're you..." Steve had backed off, and Tony was now talking to the wall, holding his hands out about a foot away and moving them back and forth.
"If it's not going to blow up, we should keep moving," Steve said.
"Don't take it for granted."
"I wasn't." He hadn't been – he had his shield in hand, and he was ready to pull Tony away.
"Hah." But Tony let his hands fall. "Not right now. Maybe in half an hour. Come on."
He started walking again and Steve followed, picking his own way as carefully as Tony was – mostly, trying not to step except exactly where Tony had, and ducking whenever cabling or solid beam partially obstructed the way. Half the floor was weirdly glowing metal and that he could avoid on his own, but the cat had directed him to avoid a few other places which he hadn't pinpointed anything off about. Hopefully Tony had known what was wrong with them.
"So what was it?" he asked.
"I got myself back."
"From the reality we were stuck in?" Steve asked. Where he'd been injured – dying. And after that, had taken extremis.
Oh, he thought, getting it. If Tony had gone back in time and infected himself with extremis, some version he'd cooked up here, then no wonder he hadn't turned into a zombie.
"...not exactly," Tony muttered. "We were – I was stuck, with you. A different you." He paused, giving himself a boost over a mess of cabling with the repulsors; Steve leapt it instead. "It was the one thing I never could work out – you don't know how far out I was stuck, Steve. I could tell you, but the human mind isn't built to comprehend distances that vast."
"I thought you... built a bridge back."
"I did. Flicked it on, it tossed me out – in some random direction. I had no clue where to point the damn thing, Steve. And instead it just happened to toss me back from exactly where I'd left? So that the rest of you didn't even realize I'd been gone? I'd need to teach you about hyperoperations just to tell you exactly how miniscule the odds were. The chances that entire Earth would have spontaneously undergone nuclear fusion before I could get back were greater than the chance that I could randomly pick the correct angles and distances. Hell, with the mock-up I was working with, I didn't even have the precision to choose a correct angle – I wasn't trying to get to Earth, just somewhere that wasn't there."
There was a wealth of emotion in his voice that the armour's speakers weren't stripping out, intentionally or unintentionally. Anger and hatred that spelled bad news for Loki – and loathing, which might spell very bad news for them. They were in the middle of a war directed by somebody definitely not Loki, and extremis... extremis hadn't been Loki, either. Sure, Loki had turned up and made life difficult for SHIELD in many annoying little ways – but extremis itself...
"Okay," said Steve. Best way to get Tony to focus was to bring his attention back to the problem. "So... you're going to find your...self, the past you, and punt him back to Earth?"
Tony huffed a laugh. "Yeah. With a helping of extremis. I'm pretty sure I had it in my head, all along – it just... wasn't activated, not until it came into direct contact with the home-brewed version. At least not in this iteration." That sounded speculative. "Not entirely."
"But if you change things, then the loop might not stabilize."
"It might not stabilize this round," said Tony. "I change things this round, and for the better – next time around, I do the exact same thing as I did this time. Presto – history fixed for the better."
"Or everything could explode," Steve said dryly. Shenzhen... the casualty counts... God, if they really had a chance to save those people... but how many other lives would they be risking? Tony had just said it - the human mind isn't built to comprehend distances that vast. He'd never been one to shy from odds, not to potentially save the living – but these people were already dead. "Give me the odds, Tony."
"I don't know. It's impossible to tell what iteration this is – all the previous information is overwritten when this one is destroyed." So they could save everyone and they'd still have died. It just would have been forgotten by the universe.
"Take a guess."
"Honestly? If I had to say from the damage to the city alone – pretty bad odds," Tony admitted. "But that's skewed by the invasion, and Kuan-Yin made it sound like the invasion was the bigger threat. On its own, I think the odds are in my favour. I only need to get it right once."
"You only need to screw it up once, too."
"I need to not change too much – that's a pretty large amount of wiggle room. Each iteration can bring me closer to the goal – I just need to set it in motion. Or keep it in motion – what are the odds that I already started down this path? Pretty high."
"That's playing dominoes with the lives of every being in the multiverse at stake." Steve shook his head. "Jesus, Tony – "
"It's not like dominoes – "
"No, it's not, because you can't look me in the eye and say you know where the pieces are placed. Tony, I hate what Hansen and Borjigin did with extremis just as much as you do. But the people it killed are dead. You can't prioritize them over the living." He reached ahead and grabbed Tony's arm. "What is past is past."
Tony looked back, the faceplate polished and utterly non-illuminating. "Come on, time to get up top before these things really do blow up on us. That way," he pointed, and a part of the wall slid aside, revealing steps up.
They led to another building, but this one wasn't in the same mostly-intact condition as the library. Chunks of stone and metal had been ripped out of the walls and floors – attached chairs or desks, perhaps – and thrown about. They were fortunate that there wasn't more wreckage to make their way more difficult – it didn't seem like there had been much in the way of furniture, at least not on this floor. Actually, it almost reminded him of the lobby of Stark Tower – polished, open, airy, and subtly luxurious despite the ugly ostentation of its outside.
"Two-fifty meter dash to it," Tony said, pointing out the doors. Twilight was falling outside, lit by flashes from above; Tony had already dimmed his armour's lights to blend in, although from the tint of light coming through the windows, Steve was pretty sure they were one-way. Still, it didn't hurt to be cautious; he was keeping to what cover he could find, too. "Cloak and fly."
"Ready when you are," Steve said, even though he wasn't. He needed more time to talk Tony out of doing this. He needed – he needed Bruce here, an outside scientific objective that he could trust, because Tony's judgement in this matter was the furthest thing from uncompromised.
"On three – "
They slipped through the doors and zipped around the corner, pulling Gs not quite as bad as when Tony had started evading in the middle of a firefight, but still worse than any other bit of flying Steve had done with Tony – maybe not passing out or puking from that exercise had convince Tony that Steve could handle a bit more. And despite the fact that they were in the middle of a war zone and he was on the verge of pissed off at Tony it was still exhilarating, close call against a building and all – exhilarating, and all too brief, since they were going something closer to Tony's usual speeds. Tony pulled them up into a hover a few dozen feet off the ground beside the building that they were presumably looking for.
"Well, crap," Tony said over the comm. They weren't the only ones interested in the building – a veritable swarm of chitauri were set up around it, hammering away at it with everything from a sort of energy cannon to actual, extremely lethal-looking hammers – if not quite so lethal-looking as Mjolnir. If they were doing any damage at all, the building wasn't showing it on the outside. In fact, there didn't seem to be any way in at all, although Steve was aware of just how little that meant.
"Scan for entrances?"
"Gee, I hadn't thought of that," and yeah, Steve had probably deserved that. "Damn it. Maybe if I can get a closer connection..."
Tony eased them over the foot soldiers – and, possibly more importantly, beneath the shadow of the ship above them. It wasn't one of the black ovaloids that he'd seen so many of before – this one definitely looked more chitauri, all scales and skeletal curves. Only gliders had come through the portal in New York, but Tony had said there was a mothership. Maybe this wasn't one, but the way it covered the sky made it seem plausible.
"Okay," Tony breathed over the comms as they lowered, gently, towards the roof. "Don't fry my brai – oh, whoops," he finished at a more normal volume, as they dropped through the roof and into the building itself. "Uh. That was easier than expected."
It was almost empty inside – a barren floor, except for a large, thin slab of black rock standing upright in the centre, much like a doorway. A single figure stood beside it, easily recognizable: Tripitaka, although he was wearing different clothing and he seemed, somehow, less... small. Not in any physical sense, but there was something – something very different.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Tony barked, as he lowered them to the floor and disengaged the mag-lock.
"Helping you," said Tripitaka serenely. Maybe that was it. Tripitaka had meditated a lot on their trip – and he liked to play at serenity – but...
This might have been the first time that Steve actually thought he was at peace with himself, completely unafraid despite the army outside hammering on the walls.
And they were still hammering. From the inside, the walls out were transparent, barely tinted like one-way glass. But the energy bursts from the chitauri cannons weren't audible, and from here it was clear that they were having absolutely no effect.
Tripitaka caught the line of his gaze and said, "Maklu may have fallen back to the inner defences, but those are very strong."
Tony had thrown his hands up in the air. "Why would anyone think you could be of help?"
"I'm not capable of aiding in the defence, but I have spent the last two months studying the links – that is to say, the nanites and their networks," said Tripitaka, "and I'm given to understand that your past survival may depend upon granting yourself a primitive version of those. Your access to the library nexus indicated strongly that you aren't fully familiar with the base code."
"Doesn't matter, I wrote an upgrade while I was in," Tony dismissed. "And patches. Dumbed-down understanding can come later."
Steve wandered over to the large stone doorway – carefully stepping between the pair of them.
"But your past self clearly did not have that upgrade," said Tripitaka. "And even if it was, that would be transferring information into the past. You need a more basic version, one that already exists in this time. I have it here."
"Like hell."
"Tony," Steve interrupted. Tripitaka had been here – two months? Maybe he knew what he was talking about... but... Steve gestured at the doorway. "This is it?"
"...uh-huh."
"The Font of Time," said Tripitaka softly. "It would be unwise for you to touch it."
Steve shot him a look. "I wasn't planning on it."
"Only guy going in there is me," agreed Tony, tilting his helmet back to gaze up at the Font – it was impressively tall, even if it was dwarfed by the enormity of the room they were in. "Two trips. One to grab me – if I recall, I'll be pretty out of it – and another to put me back. I'll dose me with nanites in-between – probably not the best idea to be trying to do it in the middle of unreality." He hesitated, and then stepped past Steve.
Steve stopping him by grabbing onto the armour hard enough that if Tony stepped forward, he'd pull Steve into it along with him. "Tony. Hang on."
"Uh, hello?" Tony gestured with his other arm to the walls. "Crisis? Army outside?"
"Not gonna be helped by you jumping in and making things worse," Steve said firmly.
"Argue about this once I figure out if it's even possible," Tony said. "I may just get lost inside."
He was coming back. He wasn't lying about that, Steve was sure – he hoped he was sure, but he let go anyway. "Don't get lost."
"Stop worrying so much, Steve. If I really fuck up, you'll never even know." He stepped into the Font – though it; it was not quite six inches wide – without looking back.
Steve looked at Tripitaka, and he felt a little sick. "What happens if he changes things? Just something small – not enough to break everything."
Tripitaka looked back steadily. "It would still be another iteration, St – Captain Rogers," he amended, with a grace that Steve hadn't thought he had. "The Font can only endure so much."
"Do you know if it's close to breaking?"
Tripitaka shook his head. "We – souled beings – cannot look upon unreality. It doesn't end well."
"He's going to risk everything," Steve muttered. Everything everything, he thought, because it was too ridiculous not to think it – it wasn't the everything that people meant when they said that line in films; it wasn't a company, or money, or a world. It was, quite literally, the entirety of their multiverse.
Maybe not everything, he thought morbidly. There were, after all, other clusters out there – like the one Tony was currently attempting to retrieve his former self from. Hopefully, before that former self went too crazy – except that if he was never crazy – there'd be no zombies. No Fin Fang Foom, no reason to go to Maklu.
If all those people hadn't died – but, no, that wasn't right. Maybe there was some way that they could have been saved; Tony could write into the nanites a compulsion to go to Maklu, or something. Although if he could, then – "Why not just explain everything to his past self? Then when he does it, the next time around, it would – or, maybe, the time after that," he said, thinking it through aloud.
"Conservation of information," said Tripitaka. "One can reach back and move information – matter – from place to place within the same time, but the majority of this loop takes place outside of any central node. Those places cannot have timelines created from unreality imposed upon them – it will not hold; they're not strong enough to avoid being consumed by the unreality. Within Maklu, the structure is more stable – he may learn of and act upon the loop from here, because this place can withstand it. An outer realm would never survive having something such as the Font upon it."
Steve rubbed at his forehead. "Back up. You thought he should still put nanites in himself – nanites programmed with your help. That's something from the future."
"No, this place is currently far back in time," said Tripitaka, tilting his head at the walls – walls that the Chitauri were still trying to knock down, unsuccessfully. But all of their efforts were... not bouncing off, Steve realized. There was no backlash – the energy was going somewhere, but into the wrong building. They were in a different time. "Standard Makluan links – ones stripped down to their most base code, which shall barely be enough to prevent the links that this 'Fin Fang Foom' tampered with from destroying his mind – they are very common here. Half the buildings are made of them, and this one is no different. They can be provided as they are, without providing any input from his own future. That, it is essential he not have until upon a world that can support it."
He still wasn't sure he followed. "That seems like cheating."
"Yet it has already happened at least once – did he show any future knowledge before you reached Maklu?"
"No." And then, he had to admit – "Not that I'd have known." Hell, if Tony could program himself to think things – maybe Tony hadn't known.
"Then we have a very good chance of stabilizing the loop. If he insists on breaking conservation, that will change quickly. You must make him see reason," said Tripitaka, and of course that was when –
He's been here before.
He doesn't have a perfect memory of it. Extremis had backed up all his existing memories, copying over what data it could retrieve – hell, it must have been doing that since before Alternatony wiped his memory, all unknown to him – but human memories are fallible in a way that extremis' storage options aren't. And these memories had been twisted and shifted by pain and terror as his soul tried to rip itself apart and his mind tried to keep up.
That's not how the Gap looks to him now. Now it's just... empty. Blank. He'd freaked out back when he'd stood on a dying world, but this isn't dying; this is how it always had been.
There, he tries, thinking of that other cluster, dying. It may be outside this one – but this is the Gap: and the void exists around everything. He feels the focus of the Font shift and settle... on him again. Great. That wasn't useful.
It won't take him places, he quickly realizes. Of course. Font of Time, after all – it can't settle upon a place. But he has himself to use as a reference. The last time I was here, he thinks instead, and with a flash of orange there is himself there – a void within the Void, some similar part of himself, like a copy, and he grabs himself and –
– Tony tumbled back out of the Font, from the same side he'd entered, pulling himself along by the arm.
But not, Steve was pretty sure, the self that he'd meant to grab.
Anthony looked terrible. His clothes – those ridiculous, ridiculous clothes – were scorched and torn, and his cape had been mangled so badly that only a few tattered shreds still hung from his shoulders. The half-mask that had always covered his face had been ripped away, and the skin and eye beneath it were a bloody, ruined mess. He was shaking too badly to stand and Steve dove forward to catch him as Tony caught himself on repulsors.
"This is new," Anthony whispered from cracked, bloodied lips as Steve lowered him to the ground, half-cradling him. His one good eye was open wide, painfully wide, like he couldn't bear the thought of closing it, and his gaze moved constantly, never pausing for a moment. "I miss the stars."
"Oh, Jesus," said Tony, setting back onto his feet.
"A – Tony? Can you hear me?" Steve asked, trying to check that he wasn't further injuring him – as beat up as he was, it was hard to tell, especially with how badly he was shaking. Anthony's focus moved over him and beyond, refusing to settle. "Tony, you're safe."
"Not exactly," Tony muttered, and then, louder – in an almost pitying tone, "I take it his investigations didn't go well – if this is the same one. Does seem like a pretty big coincidence if it's not."
God, had he been trapped in there, like this, for that long? "Can your nanites fix this?" Steve asked, looking between them.
"His soul is beyond repair," Tripitaka said, his own gaze very remote, like he was concentrating on something that the rest of them couldn't see. There was no distress in his voice – it was as if he was completely beyond caring, whether it happened to Anthony or Tony or even himself. He was so serene that Steve hated him all over again.
"Tony doesn't have a soul and he does just fine," Steve snapped.
"Great. You got an idea for how to get it out of him? Because I don't," said Tony.
"It is usually considered impossible," Tripitaka agreed.
Anthony turned his head closer against Steve's stomach. "I miss climbing mountains," he mumbled. "Before they started throwing me off of them."
"We'll take him back to Earth, then," said Steve, trying to rub a gentle hand over Anthony's arm – the better arm. It didn't seem to do a thing to soothe him. "He can at least get proper medical care."
"I don't remember seeing what he's seen, but I remember my reaction," said Tony. "He's not shaking because he's injured, Steve. Honestly... it'd be kinder to kill him."
Like Hell. "We are not killing him."
"I knew you'd say that," Tony remarked, and stepped back through the Font.
"Please," begged Anthony, and Steve couldn't tell which he was asking for.
"We're gonna get you treatment," said Steve, easing him fully to the floor and shrugging out of his outer uniform top so he could roll it up for a pillow. He looked to Tripitaka. "Give me your outer robe." Tripitaka took it off and handed it over without objection, and Steve draped it over Anthony. It wasn't ideal – the floor was cool, too – it was the best they could do for now.
Anthony reached up, then, and grabbed Steve's arm with surprising strength. "You don't know," he hissed, pulling Steve down. "You're just as bad as them."
Gently, Steve disentangled himself, grabbing Anthony's hand with his own, instead. "I'm gonna get you help," he promised, and Anthony laughed at him, creaky and horrible. "You're – "
Before that, he thinks, and – oh. This is familiar – his previous self, riding a beam of light that is disintegrating around him as unreality rips it apart. He's staring back along the path, at something that Tony can't see – can't comprehend, can't be affected by, not anymore. So he doesn't see as Tony grabs him – and, ah, with the connection to the older armour's systems comes the realization that his younger self has just passed out.
Probably for the best. Tony pulls them back –
– Steve stopped himself as Tony fell back through again, but this time, the other's armour was definitely the right one. The image of Tony lying on his back in that suit of armour, unmoving and not breathing, was indelibly burned into his memories. And this armour was just as dented up as that one had been.
"Unconscious, that's good," Tony said, letting his past self not-quite drop to the floor. He made a pretty loud clatter anyway. "And... breathing, that's even better... oh. Goddamnit, JARVIS," he muttered, and bowed his head.
Steve did likewise, a moment of mourning – broken, suddenly, as from far, far away there came a distant noise like thunder. It was not terribly loud, but there was an immensity to it that made it clear that its lack of volume was due to vast distance and not small magnitude. Outside, the small army besieging them didn't seem to have heard it; they showed no reaction and just kept on hammering away. Soundlessly.
"What was that?" asked Steve. The answer was obvious – except that they were in an alien world, so maybe it wasn't. He hoped it wasn't –
"The Enemy grows near," said Tripitaka, tilting his head as if listening to something. "They're not yet upon us, but we don't have much longer." He held out his hand, which had been empty a moment ago, and within it was a small wooden bowl containing perhaps a tablespoon of liquid silver – nanites. "I called these from the buildings around us while I waited here for you, after Kuan-Yin had shown me the way. I believe they will suit your purposes; they are intended to record and preserve information. I understand that your past self will become infected with a corrupted set of links, but these will be well-able to keep you and your memories intact despite any interference, and allow you to tread this road again."
"Not the plan," said Tony, kneeling down. He put one palm over the faceplate of the armour.
Steve shook his head. "Tony, hang on."
"You heard him," Tony replied tersely. "We're running out of time."
"You doing something hasty isn't going to help." Steve said, making sure to keep his tone even as he crossed over and grabbed Tony's wrist – not quite putting out pressure to try to make him pull away. Not yet.
Tony did that on his own, shaking Steve off at the same point. "Steve, I'm trying to save lives here."
"You're risking lives."
"I know," Tony acknowledged. "But the odds are good – "
"They're not," Steve cut him off. "Look, I don't like him and I know you hate him for a damn good reason. But it seems like he got a crash course in this. If you go around programming your past self to do things, it won't work. You can't take knowledge back – you can only transfer matter."
"He tell you that?" Tony demanded.
"Yes." Steve grimaced. "I don't like it either, Tony. But just stop one moment to listen."
Tony leaned back on one knee, staring first at Steve with the Iron Man's expressionless mask, then at Tripitaka. "You think he knows what he's talking about? You're asking me to do the impossible. I sent information back last loop – you want me to duplicate what I did then and not send back anything, that's not gonna work."
"Ah," said Tripitaka. "Then you did not listen last loop."
"Obviously," said Tony. He raised his hands as if to be compromising – but his voice sure wasn't; was it compromise or confrontation? The armour made it impossible to tell. "And matter, information, they're the same damn thing so I know he's wrong – no, shut up!" he barked, cutting off Tripitaka, who had been about to speak. "Look, it's dominoes – we're somewhere in the middle. I told you it was likely. One tiny change at a time, and when we get to a point where the consequences of not sending back info are less than catastrophic – then I can stop. I will. I promise."
Steve laid his hand on top of Tony's past self's faceplate – where Tony had put his hand before: a clear warning. "Did you promise that last time around?"
The Iron Man armour stared back at him: unblinking, unflinching. Was Tony the same, inside of it?
"What is that point, Tony?" Steve asked softly, insistently. "What do you lose if this time is the last domino? Tell me what's at stake."
"Earth," said Tony. "At the very least, a hundred million lives."
"They're already dead, Tony."
"Schrödinger's Earth – they're not dead unless we end it here. Come on, Steve – what I sent back last time, it was subtle. We're close. Iterate a few more times – "
"How much is 'a few'?"
Tony paused. Steve waited, almost holding his breath – if Tony was going to start lying to him, now... now would be it.
But he didn't. He stayed silent, instead. Steve shook his head. "With an army moving in each time – no. Tony, the risks – so long as there is a risk, it's unacceptable."
Tony recoiled. "Wow. I – wow. Never thought you'd be a 'good of the many' guy, Cap."
He didn't know what that was a reference to, but he could get the meaning regardless. "You know I'm not. This is different, Tony. The people you're trying to bring back are already dead, and I regret that, a lot, yes. But they're gone. You can't risk the living for the dead. Tony – give me the benefit of the doubt that I know what I'm talking about here when I say that you have to let them go."
Tony stared at him for what felt like an age.
"I can't, Steve," he said softly, finally, letting his hand drop back onto to his past self's armour – not upon the faceplate; but that was probably just symbolic. "I have a chance to fix this. I have to try."
Steve felt something chill inside him, some remnant of the ice. He set his jaw and stood. Jesus, how could Tony not see? How had Steve missed that he might not? Thunder boomed again in the distance – not so far in the distance, now. It almost sounded like artillery fire. "I can't let you do this."
Tony looked up sharply. "You can't let me do this?"
"I can't let you risk every living person in this universe – in all these universes," Steve said, and begged, "Please. I don't want to have to stop you. I don't want to have to hurt you."
Tony rose to his own feet. "Funny, I thought that was my line."
Steve felt himself balance, shield ready – months of fighting zombies and super-zombies, and maybe he'd taken a few weeks off, but the serum never let him forget skills once learnt. Tony seemed to be waiting for something; he'd paused. Steve spared one last hope, but he wasn't conceding... and Steve couldn't afford to let Tony have the first blow, he knew that.
Thunder boomed again, and Steve attacked, shield leading.
It was his only hope of getting through the armour. He might be able to throw Tony, if he could get the proper leverage – but Tony could fly and, with extremis, easily catch himself mid-throw. Unarmed blows wouldn't so much as make him blink. So Steve threw himself shield-first into the attack and scraped through a layer of nanites as Tony instinctively tried to blast him away with the repulsors – no effect on the shield, of course; it just reflected back at him.
Steve nearly got in another slice, but extremis had made Tony faster. Not super-zombie fast – thank God, or Steve really wouldn't have had a chance in this fight. And he hated it, hated every step of it as he lashed out again and again, whipping the shield's razor-sharp edges around and slicing whatever part of the armour came within reach, driving Tony backward – away from his past self, and Anthony, and the Font – until finally Tony flipped himself up into the air.
"Jesus, Steve," Tony said, and he sounded pissed.
"Stand down," Steve told him.
"Would you?" Tony demanded, and vanished beneath the effect of the invisibility cloak.
Steve parried a repulsor blast with his shield and whipped around, dodging invisible grabs. He'd trained, since getting his ass handed to him by the other Natasha fighting in the dark – not as often as he'd have liked, but the serum didn't forget. Tony could cut off sight but moving fast, in metal, made sound, and Steve could hear it easily, could parse the displacement of air almost as well as he could parse visible cues – and Tony wasn't expecting him to be able to do so. He carved a chunk of armour off of one of Tony's shoulders and his shield came away with a long bloody streak upon it, and Steve grit his teeth and flattered himself to the ground, dodging again and –
Pain erupted in his right thigh as he failed to block a brief, too-swift blast of Tony's lasers – a single shot, quicker than the repulsors, but more lethal, and that was bad. He had to end this quickly, because he didn't want to hurt Tony and if Tony didn't mind hurting him then his odds went from bad to terrible. Adrenaline covered the pain a moment later and he leapt over another blast, spinning a one-eighty in the air and catching some still-invisible part of Tony with a kick, then another slice of his shield – and then shock radiated up his leg, an electric current that he could not fight, could only endure with grit teeth. His leg muscles wouldn't respond, and he could almost compensate – but not well enough.
An invisible gauntlet grabbed him by the shoulder, dropping more armour – more nanites, more electricity – onto him, and Steve's shield fell from a suddenly nerveless hand. His legs could no longer support his own weight – never-mind pain, his limbs simply would not obey his commands. Up! he ordered himself, but he kept falling toward the floor anyway.
A crimson boot reappeared from thin air and kicked the shield away, making it skitter across the floor, far out of his grasp. Steve gasped for breath – his lungs weren't keen on following directions, either. Dimly, through the lingering shocks, he felt something hard and metal close around his wrists.
"This is really stupid, Steve," Tony said, and he sounded angry, an anger punctuated by the artificial thunder that now rumbled continuously outside. "You're fighting me, really? On this? Like this?"
Steve struggled for breath, managing to get a wheeze in as he watched Tony go back to kneeling over his still-motionless past self. Feeling was returning to his body with a generous helping of pins and needles – he tried to pull his arms forward, to lever himself up, but Tony had bound them behind his back with something – had bound his feet together, too.
"Tony," he gasped. "Don't."
"Saving people's lives is the right thing to do."
"You can't trade... living for dead..."
"Not what I'm doing."
"What you're risking!"
Tony stood, hauling his past self up over one shoulder – he was done. Ready to go back through the portal – ready to gamble with the lives of countless innocents. Worse than gamble – by sending back information he was going to destabilize the loop further, but he was flat-out refusing to consider the dangers! "You don't really believe that."
Steve glared at him. "Tony, for God's sake, stop this! Pull your head out of your ass and stop making this about your own guilt! You can't do this!"
"Then stop me," said Tony, and he waited there while Steve glared, impotent and furious. Finally, Tony tilted his head to the side. "You – huh. Funny."
"You think this is funny?" Steve snarled. Tony was sarcasm and quips and black humour in the face of death, but this was so much more than one life.
"Kinda," said Tony. "It hasn't even occurred to you, has it?" He turned his head to the side – toward Tripitaka, kneeling serenely beside Anthony, who was trying to sit up and shaking too badly to do so on his own. "What about you?"
"I will not stain my soul again. I will not be a coward," said Tripitaka calmly, letting Anthony cling to his hands and mutter nonsense at him – nonsense that Steve could barely hear over the pulse of blood in his ears, he was so angry. "I will not commit evil to avoid evil."
"Huh. Steve? You sure? Come on, I know you heard him when he used it. Super-soldier hearing – I've read all the notes on you and I've seen you in action. There's no way you missed it. Come on." Tony held his free arm – the one he wasn't using to steady his past-self – out at his side, the universal body language – come on, take your best shot. "You think this is really wrong? You want to stop me? Then stop me."
Steve's breath caught again in his throat, and this time it had absolutely nothing to do with being electrocuted.
He could stop Tony. Steve could drop him where he stood – and keep him down. Keep repeating the mantra that Tripitaka had used to torture Tony into compliance – and he'd have to keep repeating it; Tony was too brave to be kept down by fear alone. Not for this.
Hell, they'd been beating each other up just a moment ago – Tony's armour was still growing back over his shoulder-wound, going slowly because it was repairing flesh at the same time. Tony had electrocuted him to bring him down – and if Steve hadn't screamed, it had still been damn painful.
And it was brief and still different.
"Never figured Captain America for a coward," said Tony, and he turned back to the Font. Steve stared at him – five steps from it, then four – each one a missed chance and if he didn't decide, the decision was going to be taken from him. It was unthinkable, and it was his one damn chance –
"No, no no no," cried Anthony, tottering upright with Tripitaka's help – and, with a snap of his fingers, throwing a shimmering yellow forcefield over the Font. Tony jerked back just before he ran into it faceplate-first. "No. You do not do that to him."
"Oh for – you're crazy, and you're half-dead," said Tony, sounding exasperated as he rounded on his sorcerous counterpart – who, Steve winced to see, looked like he was about to fall over any second. Anthony had been horribly injured – he shouldn't be on his feet, and Steve strained all the harder at his cuffs – then gave up on that plan and started inch-worming his way toward his shield. If he couldn't break them, then he could cut them off –
Anthony didn't back down, and Tony raised a hand, palm glowing in warning. "If I hated fighting Steve, I've got far fewer reservations about you."
"You're young," said Anthony, and he threw his own hand out, slamming Tony a good hundred feet back until he hit a wall so hard that the entire place rang like the inside of a bell. His past self tumbled from his grip half-way there and lay sprawled upon the floor like a broken doll. "In the sea of broken stars, there is power."
"And you're crazy," Tony snapped, standing and vanishing mid-sentence. Beams of laser-light pinpointed his location a moment later, only to be thwarted by another golden shield, reflecting off at such an angle that Steve had to roll frantically side-ways to avoid losing his leg at the knee. He started wriggling faster toward his shield – Anthony was in no shape to keep this up. His shield of magic was already vanishing beneath the onslaught, and with a cry, he fell, just as Steve reached his shield.
"No!" Steve yelled, and Anthony's body... turned into a bunch of purple smoke.
"You have a lot to learn about the light in the mind," Anthony's voice came, sing-song, from everywhere and nowhere. Steve couldn't see either of them now – couldn't hear them, either, over the increasingly high-pitched whine that was echoing within the chamber. He grit his teeth and screwed his eyes shut as he manoeuvred himself awkwardly, trying to get the right leverage so he could break his bonds with the shield – no easy task with all limbs bound. And then some... things... were reaching up from the floor, writhing black arms with shrivelled hands – one reached down, grabbing his shield, and he nearly snarled at it until he realized it was holding it out and steady for him.
"Thanks," Steve muttered, unable to hear his own voice over the ringing, and he cut the bindings at his wrists – and then had to cut them again, this time immediately wrenching his hands apart as far as he could, to prevent the bindings from fusing right back together. When he had his wrists apart he tore the stuff from each one at a time, then took his shield from the arm and freed his feet, simultaneously trying to figure out where to aim for as soon as he was free. He still had no clue where either Anthony or Tony were.
"It figures I would be fucking annoying in any world," said Tony's voice, cutting through the ringing and bringing back the silence – but only for a moment.
Anthony started laughing – a terrible, despairing laugh, intermixed with giggles of hysterical glee. "Got you!" he crowed, and, "Petards and look, hoist, engineering in action! No such thing as magic," he mocked, and Tony appeared from nowhere at the side of the room and slammed into the floor with a terrible, sickening crunch of metal. He didn't move afterward.
Anthony reappeared, too – about a foot away from Steve, and Steve jumped. "Me's usually do like you's better," he commented absently. Yellow fire was flickering about his hands – and jumping from his hands to the nearby ones growing from the floor. They leaned it toward him, like he was a warm fire on a cold day.
"Oh, God," said Steve, staring. Tony's armour – it was crushed like a tin can, and there was blood leaking from the midsection. "Is he dead?"
"We're all dead," said Anthony, beginning to shiver again – abruptly, he sat down upon the floor; he'd have collapsed bonelessly to it if Steve hadn't reflexively caught his arm and eased him down. Steve didn't kneel down to keep him upright – he couldn't take his eyes off of Tony.
The building shook, and a rumble of thunder went off right outside. Steve looked up and out. The chitauri had moved aside, making room for another division – more chitauri, or different aliens, Steve couldn't tell: they were all taller than the average chitauri, but their features were hidden beneath robes and armour, and fearsome masks – unless those were actually their faces, stuck in hideous grimaces. Steve hoped not. They had drawn something that was unmistakably a cannon up one of the roads, and as he watched, it fired again, pounding the side of the building and making the entire structure tremble.
"Captain Rogers," called Tripitaka. He was kneeling beside Tony – past-Tony, who was still unconscious and stuck within the armour. "We do not have much time. I cannot lift him; you must aid me."
"Within the fire is candlelight," said Anthony, hunching inward upon himself. His summoned arms crumbled away into patterns of dust, still reaching toward him.
Steve glanced between Anthony – and Tony, oh, God. Please let him be alive. But the building shook again, and he jogged over to Tripitaka instead.
"We need to send him back," said Steve, picking Tony's past self up and carrying him over to the Font. He wished – if he could have gotten the armour faceplate open without damaging it irreparably, he would have. But he couldn't. "How do I operate the Font?"
Tony had known without having to be told. He'd probably just downloaded the knowledge straight into his brain.
"You do not," said Tripitaka absently, sitting down cross-legged before the font and gesturing for Steve to place Tony beside him; reluctantly, Steve did so. "I shall do so, as soon as I finish removing nanites that Tony already placed, and replacing them with ones in sync with his timeline."
Steve stared at him.
He'd changed, but –
"This is my task," Tripitaka said.
Steve shook his head. "No. I can't ask you to do this."
"You're not," said Tripitaka. He still sounded serene, as he placed his hands on the armour's chest, closing his eyes and becoming nearly as still as a statue himself.
"You know what it'll do to you!" said Steve, regretting a moment later the volume of his voice as he looked over at Anthony. But Anthony didn't seem to notice – he was curled up into a ball, clutching Tripitaka's over-robe around him and rocking back and forth. Steve knew he ought to go to him – but he couldn't leave Tripitaka, leave anyone, to this...
"It may not have a chance," said Tripitaka philosophically. "I am but half-finished here, and I believe we are out of time."
The building shook again – this time, from the opposite direction. Steve turned – the aliens had gotten another one of those massive cannons set up, this one to pound it from the other side. They weren't unencumbered, there – at their rear, they were getting attacked in turn by figures that Steve couldn't quite make out – but it was clear what their objective was. There was another round of doubled, shaking booms, and then both guns fired in tandem. With an aching wrench, a long crack ran up each side of the building, meeting at the top.
Steve jogged over to Anthony, hauled him up, and dragged him over to Tripitaka – Anthony didn't even seem to notice. Then he went to Tony – Tony, lying still and broken, his armour cracked and... he was breathing, Steve realized, recognizing the sound in the silence between cannon-shots. The armour had broken open, and Steve could hear him breathing. Very slowly – so slowly that ordinary human sight would not have been able to pick it out – those broken edges were regrowing, shifting and repairing. Anthony hadn't killed him.
"Please don't try it again," Steve half-ordered him, half-prayed, and carefully picked him up and carried him back over, not too near his past self, but within reachable distance. Tony had to be out of it; he didn't twitch, although Steve knew he must have done more damage in moving him.
"Keep working," said Steve. "I'll buy you as much time as I can."
If he died here, without bringing the cure for extremis back – maybe Earth was doomed.
Just have to not die here, then.
"Anthony, can you set up a shield around us?" Steve asked, as the cannons fired again. There were now craters in each side of the wall – they weren't yet through, but those were awfully big dents...
"Seraphim's blades," said Anthony, and he uncurled an arm just enough to make a grandiose gesture, sending shining white scythes of magic arcing toward one wall. It shattered outward, each spike exploding into fire like napalm, covering dozens of alien soldiers and turning them into a screaming, panicking mob.
But outside of that mob, there were more soldiers who hadn't gotten splashed, and they shoved forward with brutal efficiency – impaling the still-screaming wounded on the ends of long weapons that they withdrew and then fired. Steve stepped forward and swatted the energy blasts aside with his shield, as beside him Anthony yelped and conjured up a delicate fall of snow. Or at least it looked like snow. It didn't seem to be having any effect on their attackers, at least. More were coming through the hole in the wall that Anthony had made, slowed by the corpses – and still-living, still-twitching bodies – of their comrades; Steve arced his shield toward the first half-dozen and flipped sideways to draw fire from the enemies now coming up – draw and evade, as he flipped up and back and caught his shield. Just in time – he'd taken out weapons and probably more of the enemy than he deserved from that throw, but not all of the others had fired at him. Tony – both past and present – had taken several, as Tripitaka ducked down behind him.
"Anthony, a little help here!" Steve begged. He could catch only glimpses of the other side, enough to know that the fighting had gotten closer – but the cannon was still firing, if at a slower rate.
"Sons of Thunder / Daughters of Storm / Lend to me now / your mortal form!" cried Anthony, and lighting flickered over him – flickered faster and faster, until he was a brilliant spot of it that Steve couldn't look at, energy arcing off of him with thunderous cracks. One hit the shield straight-on and bounced, connecting with the enemies' and turning them into more shrieking, screaming, burning corpses-to-be – and draining Anthony of his temporarily summoned power. He slumped over side-ways – not unconscious, but staring straight ahead unblinking.
"The next person who steps forward dies!" Steve roared at the aliens standing behind those corpses. "Take my advice – let someone else go first!"
They stepped back, instead – and behind them, up a path, another group was rolling forward something that looked a lot like the earlier cannon, except with three barrels instead of one, and some sort of semi-transparent shield around the front of it.
"Take your best shot," he invited them. He wished he knew what was happening with the cannon behind him. It hadn't fired in a while – had Maklu's defenders seized that position? – but if he looked away, that would be an invitation those in front of him would not be able to ignore.
Overhead, a dragon roared. The infantry snapped their rifles upward – Steve took advantage of their own distraction and threw his shield, taking out four of them as he dove forward, getting a look at what was overhead on the roll. Not just a dragon – an entire choir of them sang out, their voices together sounding like the Chief Magistrate's: a great church organ, an orchestra, the largest symphony in the world. One plunged down directly toward them from the clouds, a thousand-foot line of green fire washing from its mouth and over the hovering chitauri warship; the ship immediately began to list to one side. Two more dragons flew low – and Steve barely got back in time before they breathed upon the cannon and the troops assembled around it, sending gouts of fire through the broken wall.
He didn't manage to get out of the way of the cannon exploding, not entirely. The edge of the shockwave hurled him right past Tripitaka, and his clumsy attempt at a roll didn't dispel all of the force of the landing. Behind his battle, another had been fought – Steve didn't know who had won, but the cannon there was destroyed as well; and up the street was coming a charge of horse, with Yulong right at the front.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Steve swore, the relief almost like another adrenaline boost.
A chitauri tried to gut Yulong with the sharp end of one of those energy weapons, and the dragon-horse grabbed with his teeth, tossed it aside, and then kicked the chitauri's head in. Steve turned back, watching the ebb and flow of fighting – there seemed to be more foot soldiers, now; the tide of battle had pushed the infantry this way. Overhead, enemy ships were beginning to fire back; enormous, scaled corpses fell from the sky, and draconic roaring was now mixed with unmistakable screams of pain and fear.
"Tripitaka, how much longer?" Steve demanded, moving back over. Tony was – Tony was just beginning to stir; extremis had begun to work faster, although it was still a far cry from the speed at which he usually rebuilt or disassembled the armour. But his wounds, at least, were beginning to close over with metallic scabbing. Anthony, however, was a gibbering wreck – unless the nonsense syllables he was muttering had some arcane meaning. Since they didn't seem to be producing any magic, however...
"I am close to done," said Tripitaka distractedly. "He was quite thorough." He spared a moment, however, to glance at the sky himself. "The Emperor himself," he murmured, and bowed with profound respect. "The mortal realm has come to the defence of Heaven."
Steve glanced in the same direction Tripitaka had. From the east, a light was growing, bright enough to be mistaken for the rising sun, had not the sun already begun its westward descent; and more dragons streamed forth, a seemingly endless number of reinforcements. But despite that impression, already there were less of them in the sky – and more chitauri warships, dropping in from God-knew-where. The alarming, impassive black ovaloids seemed to climb out of shadows that hadn't been there before; and the light in both the west and the east diminished as more and more enemy ships screamed forth with raking fire, sending draconic and humanoid corpses hurtling ground-ward.
Nor were the ground troops spared. A trio of chitauri ducked into the building, ahead of pursuit by Yulong's forces – Steve took them out with a pair of throws, and prepared to go meet the friendlies. They looked to be trying to set up a perimeter about the break in the wall – a perimeter that would be needed, but which they didn't have time to develop, because he could see more enemy infantry stampeding through the street coming toward them. Steve took a last glance back, to make sure that the wall behind them still stood – and then had to dive that way.
Steve caught Tony's arm, which he was painfully, slowly reaching towards his past self – caught it, and forced it down, back against his side. Tony made a sound that was half a grunt, half a moan of agony – "Don't," said Steve, "I'm sorry, don't." Tony fought his grip, but weakly – the thin metal bandages extremis had woven for him cracked and he began bleeding again. He still kept fighting – Steve had to half sit on him to keep him from crawling towards his goal.
Ahead, Yulong's forces met the oncoming enemy charge, and the battlefield immediately dissolved into a general melee – and then it vanished entirely, as one of the ovaloid ships panned a wide, black beam across it, and every moving thing upon the field turned to dust.
No. No, Yulong –
"I am finished," announced Tripitaka.
There was no time to mourn.
Steve released his hold for only a moment, intending to help Tripitaka, quickly – but Tony lunged forward, with greater strength – greater, but so, so much less. Steve pinned him again – and Anthony surged upright into a sitting position, then stumbled to his feet.
"No, no, no!" he mumbled, pulling at his ears so hard that Steve feared he might do himself real harm. "No – " he took off at a run for the entrance, just as another beam passed over it, and Steve let go of Tony with one arm to throw his shield for Anthony's feet, tripping him up and setting him head over heels across the stone. The sorcerer curled up into a ball again and covered his eyes.
"Stay, Steve Rogers," said Tripitaka. "This is my purpose." He tugged at Tony – Tony-that-was, and Steve wished he could see him, just once, face-to-face – he didn't even know that Tony, not yet. Not really. He'd never get to know that Tony – even now, it was too late: he'd seen the things within the Void, had a shadow cast upon his soul.
"Thank you," said Steve, and Tripitaka stepped into the Font, hauling the past in behind him.
"Damn you," rasped Tony, and he ceased struggling. His breath hitched once, twice, and he turned his face down, away, so that Steve couldn't see it.
Steve climbed off of him – and, warily, stayed between him and the Font. When would he know if the time loop had stabilized? Would he know? He didn't even know how the cat, or Tripitaka, or supposedly Kuan-Yin had known in the first place.
It didn't matter. Either way, they had done what they'd come here to do – maybe they hadn't succeeded, but they'd done all they could. Now –
There was a great moment of silence, a moment of mourning, and the sun in the east went out.
"Nooooooo," moaned Anthony, crawling upon hands and knees toward Steve and falling over half-way. "No, no, it's here, here, s'after it – "
An Impossibility rears up before Tripitaka and he screams, and keeps screaming. He will scream for the rest of his life. It is alright, he consoles himself. That is not going to be very long. The portal looms before him, the past of the unconscious burden he carries; he waits a moment more, for the portal to close – all his courage burning up along with his soul – and in the instant after it does, he dives through.
His soul hits reality and it is with relief that he lets go, dispersing on impact; the people of Earth never see him. Tony falls through a bright May sky toward New York.
No one tells him to remember.
Worlds turn over. Time slips. They iterate, again and again, and now it is the same each time:
"I know you're not real," Tony tells Steve, who is standing – as always – just outside the edge of his vision. "When you're real, you're a lot nicer to me."
"I'm trying to save your life," Steve says, with such sincerity that Tony almost believes him this time. It's the same look of sincerity that Real Steve wears when he's found something in his history books that make him very happy or very angry. For a moment, Tony wonders, and then Steve adds, "They're going to kill you and slice up your corpse. I'm trying to save your life, Tony. You can't trust them."
"Yeah, that line's way more convincing when it's Clint and Natasha, and oh, god, I'm talking to my hallucinations," Tony mutters. He needs to take a break. He needs to see actual Steve, because he can stand seeing the others and hearing their voices, but not with Steve, not when Steve spends so much time with him – the only flesh-and-blood person Tony really sees anymore, and if he can't keep the two of them straight then he's going to go crazy. Crazier.
"I'm going to skin you alive and wear your face as a mask," says Steve. He sounds sad about it, the sort of sad that inspires people to make large donations to charities for orphans.
"Oh, fuck off," Tony suggests, and he turns away from the screen.
When he returns, he's had another idea in the meantime, and he never gets to finish the patch he was writing for extremis' system hardware repair.
"Steve," Tony's image tells him, and Steve feels half-guilty, almost wishing his message hadn't survived – why had it survived, when Pepper's hadn't? The image licked its lips, and kicked at the ground. "I owe you an apology. I've been unfair to you."
No, Steve thinks, and Why did you do it, then?
"You'll understand when you read the files," the image says, eyes dark and expression opaque. But there aren't any files left – Tony destroyed them all. "And you'll probably think – but you'll be wrong. No matter what came before – so I was an idiot, I needed a kick to see what – look, what I'm trying to say is. I am your friend. Well, was, if you're seeing this. But that's not the point – the point is, I look at you and I see you. Please don't doubt that."
What the Hell is that supposed to mean? Steve wonders.
Tony wakes up, and shit, this is not his day, because if that's a mirror he looks like ten miles of bad road and what the hell is he wearing?
"What the hell did you do to your soul?" his reflection asks him.
Not his reflection. That's an improvement. "What the hell are you wearing?" Tony demands.
"ULTRON, you idiot, this won't kill me!" Tony yells, but nothing happens – nothing discernible. ULTRON doesn't know – of course ULTRON doesn't know, they'd never discussed the immortality curse in his presence, not when he was online – Tony hadn't wanted to discuss it at all. Or had there been more to it than that? Some instinctive realization that this has always been the way it's going to end, or some hidden prejudice?
"Steve – oh, god – " this is his fault. He's fucked up so badly. He's fucked up, and if he ever had a way out then it's useless now, because he can't fucking remember. Fucking human memory – he's going to make a goddamn EMP-proof camera and take it everywhere he goes from now on, record and replay –
Something wakes up in his brain, like that was a coded phrase. Wakes up, and he can not-see-but-it's-there alien symbols, and somehow, he knows it's code. Programming. There is something in his head.
There's something in his head, and it's indexing his memories, putting them back in order.
There's something in his head, and he doesn't have write-access.
The zombie spits against the ground, acid-green spit that makes the mud bubble, and growls with two distinct voices, "You defy us? We will consume you."
"Mister, better than you have tried," Steve snaps back, but his heart isn't in it.
At the end of the day, this guy isn't his enemy. He's just another victim.
The zombie rushes forward.
The first time Steve had gone up against a super-zombie, he'd gotten his ass handed to him; but then he'd been weak from hunger and the residual effects of fighting off extremis. He's killed several since. They're ridiculously fast, and hard to hit – the ROCAF has had some luck with conventional weaponry, but too often the zombies can avoid it with an almost preternatural sense of where not to be. But in a close fight – they're vulnerable. When they commit, they're tied down – and then it's just a question of hitting them hard enough.
By the time Rhodey shows up, it's over.
"You went AWOL," Steve says, and he's angry. Angry at Rhodey, angry at Tony – he misses his team, badly.
"Nah, I asked permission, Haymitch said she could spare me for twenty," Rhodey says. Steve can hear him rolling his eyes. "Jesus, man. You could have waited ten minutes."
Steve wishes Rhodey would stop trying to wrap him in cotton wool – they've all been trying, since he was 'gone', and it's getting damn tiresome. "He was heading for a city." So far, they've been lucky to keep the zombie outbreak mostly isolated to within south China, holding the borders of Myanmar and Thailand while the Chinese have kept a lid on the north and the east. There's no reliable way to keep the superzombies behind quarantine, though: they have to be constantly on guard, ready to track down those that break through. Track down, and put down.
Steve might be tired, but he can't be spared.
Steve cuts Tony off. "Look, I don't like him and I know you hate him for a damn good reason. But it seems like he got a crash course in this. If you go around programming your past self to do things, it won't work. You can't take knowledge back – you can only transfer matter."
"He tell you that?" Tony demands.
"Yes." Steve grimaces. "I don't like it either, Tony."
Tony leans back on one knee, staring first at Steve with the Iron Man's expressionless mask, then at Tripitaka. "You think he knows what he's talking about? Steve, look, it's dominoes. I won't change big things, I won't blow up the damn Font – but one tiny change at a time, until we reach a point where everything inside this loop is not so goddamned fucked. Then, I can repeat it, make it stable."
"What is that point, Tony?" Steve asks softly, insistently. "Tell me when good enough is going to be. Explain the stakes, here."
"Earth," Tony says. "At the very least, ten million lives."
"They're already dead, Tony."
"I can't let you do this."
Tony looks up sharply. "You can't let me do this?"
"Thank you," says Steve, and Tripitaka steps into the Font, hauling the past in behind him.
"Nooooooo," moans Anthony, crawling upon hands and knees toward Steve and falling over half-way. "No, no, it's here, here, s'after it – "
"Tony?" Steve asked him warily. He might be unhinged – he was still capable of throwing lightning about. If his wards –
"Death's would-be Lover, eternally scorned," babbled Anthony, "a thing – not a thing – how does an un-thing court a thing? A universal constant, no less – gate – the gate, the loop, oh, no – "
Steve could feel it, a presence stealing over his skin – war and murder, greed and blood. He looked about, and then more wildly – someone was here, he knew that much, but –
"A break, a crack, a fault," said Anthony, staggering to his feet again. He tottered toward Steve, swaying and nearly falling – Steve held out an arm to steady him but Anthony continued straight toward the Font, brushing him off. "I'm sorry – your shield, I saw it, I saw it, I can – " he held up his hands like he was praying, and Steve – fell.
There was no ground.
There was no air.
There was no Steve.
"Makes sense," murmured Anthony. There was no Anthony. "A fault – a crack – copies without limit, or rather, limited infinity – not allowed. Not for you!" he screamed up at the thing that was there, within the unreality that Anthony had thrown at Steve, when he had been Steve, when he hadexisted – Anthony laughed, and laughed. "Crack open, then, and break!"
And he stepped into the Font.
"God of Lies, where be thou found?" Tony Stark, Sorcerer Supreme of Earth, asks of the universe – and then looks up in time to see himself – no alternate, this – fall out of the sky, turning upon him with a spell that burrows past his every defence – of course it does. After all, he's the one who designed them.
He barely has time to wonder why before he dies.
A crack forms across the face of the Font. It is a construct greater than any single paradox, but it is already under stress. The loop formed by the previous iteration may be stable, but to get there took too much energy: and now this new instability drives the energies higher still. More fractures spread away from the first as Time repeats, changes –
"Never figured Captain America for a coward," says Tony, and he turns back to the Font. Steve stares at him – five steps from it, then four – each one a missed chance and if he doesn't decide, the decision is going to be taken from him. It's unthinkable, and it's his one damn chance –
He can't do it.
Tony steps back into the Font, and stability –
– flies –
– apart –
The fractures bleed orange light, each mote flaring for only a moment before dispersing back into the Unreality beneath it. The cycle iterates, slipping out of control, unbounded, reality overwritten with energy from nothing. Five thousand ways they journeyed from Manhattan to this moment, ten thousand, ten million – it is impossible to say how many; at the start of each new cycle, the previous one is overwritten, so that each might as well be the first.
And always, at the end, someone goes back – or sends something back. Sometimes, something is sent back further. Always, things change, and yet they still end up here – because to prevent the collapse of their multiverse, someone must.
"You can't kill me like this! You think I haven't tested this?" Tony screams at ULTRON.
"You are a threat," ULTRON says flatly. "Bringing you here was a mistake."
And Steve isn't there to stop him, later –
A butterfly flaps its wings in China.
"You are unworthy of my secrets," declares a rebel child of Maklu.
"A dragon named Fin Fang Foom slaughtered its way across half of Asia. You owe us were-gild," Steve says stubbornly. The judge isn't listening to him – he wishes he had any of his team here beside him. Natasha – Tony...
A hundred iterations and none are the same: they swing wider and wider apart. With every piece of information dragged out from prior cycles - cycles that no longer exist, information that exists only by paradox - the stress upon the Font grows. The paradoxes are too much for a stable time-line: it must keep changing, or collapse. Until this point someone has always made it back – made it to the Font, gone back, changed something. The loop continues. But with each change, the probability of failure grows, and the cracks across the Font spread.
"Then listen well," purrs a dragon. Maya makes notes until her fingers cramp, and then keeps writing.
"Sir, we have a hit in Alaska – "
"What the hell happened to the border guard? Damn it – Rogers, I want you on this. And somebody get me Dr. Banner."
"I can make him forget," says Anthony.
He does and he leaves and never returns.
"Before you inevitably try to kill me, you should probably know I'm immortal," Tony tells ULTRON.
"Before you try to kill me and Steve, you should probably know that I wrote another layer into that virus," Tony tells ULTRON.
"If you do try to kill me, don't let me see it coming," Tony tells ULTRON. "I don't want to know."
"Jesus – I'm sorry. I... Jesus. I don't blame you for killing him," Tony tells ULTRON, and loathes himself a little more.
A butterfly flaps its wings in Ohio.
Paranoia, and Tony doesn't tell ULTRON anything.
"ULTRON, you idiot, this won't kill me!" Tony yells, but nothing happens – nothing discernible. ULTRON doesn't know – of course ULTRON doesn't know, they'd never discussed the immortality curse in his presence, not when he was online – Tony hadn't wanted to discuss it at all. Or had there been more to it than that? Some instinctive realization that this has always been the way it's going to end, or some hidden prejudice?
"Your technology is more advanced than ours," Steve tells his older counterpart. "I get that whatever's going on with the gods," he doesn't quite trip over it this time, "is probably more important. But if you can spare us scientists – that could save a lot of lives."
"Turn back, mortals," the soldiers warn them.
"I can't let you do this."
Tony looks up sharply. "You can't let me do this?"
Something critical within the Font snaps beneath the strain. The collapse distorts the loop, sending shockwaves even further backwards and forward through Time -
"It is a gap in the universe. We call it the Window of Time. We do not look upon it, for obvious reasons – but it seems Thanos greatly desires to try."
"You want me to defend it."
"If it is accessed, the results could be catastrophic. We have placed many defences upon it, but at the last... if they fall, you are perhaps the only living being who might be able to withstand it."
"They won't send me back to Earth, Tony. I might as well come with you."
"If you see it – "
"Then we won't let the enemy get it open."
The distortion spins out cracks like spiderwebs.
Tony knows he's becoming paranoid. Every time he looks at Steve, sitting on the couch in his workshop, he has to wait and check – is he real? Or is he going to warn Tony that everyone's about to kill him?
Which is real?
"Oh my god... a window..."
"What?"
"Steve – it's not just a window – it can be opened. The latch is on the inside..."
"Tony, you're not making any sense."
"It's a loop. It's a time-loop. It's not just a window – " his hand passes through the black stone easily, and it doesn't come out the other side; if he wriggles his fingers, he can feel the Nothingness. "This is it. This is what I've been looking for – "
He steps forward.
"Tony!"
"You can't destabilize a time loop. It's impossible," says Tripitaka. "The Window doesn't work that way – it can't pull energy back through into reality. It shows the framework but cannot change it."
"You can shut the hell up," says Tony.
"Look, I don't like him and I know you've got damn good reasons for hating him, but – "
"Steve, I've done this before, okay? I know him. I couldn't remember before because I blocked it from myself, because we needed him to get this far, but – I remember now. I've already done this, sent nanites into the past with instructions for myself – he's wrong. We can change this. I know how, now. Before, I got it wrong, but this time – it's a done deal."
The light is fading, spread too thin into the nothingness of Unreality.
"Come on, Steve, if you really believed that – you'd stop me." He looks back at Steve. "Or... no. Wow. It hasn't even occurred to you, has it?" Jesus. Even bound and on his knees, staring back at him with shock and fury – Steve is wrong, he has to be, but Tony's heart warms at the privilege of being this man's friend.
"I will not stain my soul again. I will not be a coward," Tripitaka says calmly. "I will not commit Evil to avoid Evil."
Tony steps through.
Tripitaka is lying on the floor, insensate from Tony's earlier punch. At the time Steve had thought it well-deserved, but now Tony steps forward and – five steps from it, then four – each one a missed chance and if Steve doesn't decide, the decision is going to be taken from him. It's unthinkable, and it's his one damn chance –
He can't do it.
Tony steps through.
"To choose between two evils is still to choose evil," Tripitaka says contemplatively. Old, sour hatred twists Tony's mouth in a grimace – so he's still human enough to have that reaction. Should have figured that Tripitaka would still be human – well, humanoid-alien – enough to remain an annoying fuck-wit, too. "But to not choose is, in itself, a choice. The Holy Bodhisattva teaches that we must always seek the choice that is good, or at least that is not evil. I must try – "
Tony rolls his eyes and turns back to the Window, ignoring him. Tripitaka can philosophize all he likes, but Tony doesn't have to listen. He steps through.
Fading...
Tony's standing in Steve's kitchen like he's not just turned his entire world upside-down.
"You're a time-traveller," Steve says slowly.
"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you before." Tony looks down, laughs a bit. "I was kinda afraid I'd break something."
If the idea of 'cutting things close' were applicable, that would be what he's doing. But it isn't. The Font-Window-Tear is one over-stressed thread from total collapse, but it will not collapse without this action; it is as impossible as the idea that he would not act.
The break he makes is deliberate, the iteration carefully chosen. A reflected wave is coming back at him from the other side of time; this new shockwave is coordinated to have an extremely exact effect at two precise points in time – one of them now. One of them long ago. In between changes merely to match – but not too much. Civilizations can rise and fall along the crest of a wave in Time... or change just a little.
The light fades and is gone, taking with it another, more metaphorical kind of light.
He's done here. He goes. The universe remains a little bit darker – and exactly as dark as it always was. The change from that past point travels forward to now, and –
"The harmonious law of this kingdom must not be broken; I am sorry for your people's loss, but my ruling must favour the lesser evil."
"You think us barbarians, scum of the earth," says an old lady seated at the end of the table. There was a vast number of wrinkles lining her skin – Tony's memory recorder tried to store the image and nearly got caught in a fractal error – and her spine was curving deeply, yet she gave the impression of sitting up very, very straight: unbowed, unbent, and unbroken. "What should we do? If the village gives up no children, then our crops all wither, locusts devour our stores, and all our cured meat rots, so that many more children than just two die. So we sacrifice two each year, and weep over it, so that their age-mates may live to see maturity."
"But is this the right action to take?" Tripitaka asks. "If we fail here we risk causing many more deaths. Two would be the lesser evil. These people are not wrong in following the teachings of Heaven."
If he ever sees the Chief Magistrate again, Steve decides, he is going to have words with her. He'd thought... he'd thought better of her. Maybe it's just the people of this kingdom distorting what Maklu truly believes, but whether the Makluans set themselves up as gods or were set up by others, they have a responsibility for what people believe in their name.
"The Lesser Evil," says Tripitaka contemplatively. "Is it to act now, or do nothing? Both are decisions. Oh, my Lady, I am sorry – you taught me that indecision is an evil all its own, but I am too stupid to see the right path forward."
Tony rolls his eyes and turns back to the Font, ignoring him. Tripitaka can philosophize all he –
Pain consumes his world.
Steve tries to go to help Yulong's defenders, but Tony's hand is reaching for his past self – trembling, shaking from the after-effects – and Steve dives towards him barely in time to prevent him from making contact, grabbing his hand and forcing it down –
"Stay, Steve Rogers," says Tripitaka. "This is my purpose and my penance."
Steve can't thank him for it.
An Impossibility rears up before Tripitaka and he screams, and keeps screaming. He will scream for the rest of his life. It is alright, he consoles himself. That is not going to be very long. The portal looms before him, the past of the unconscious burden he carries; he waits a moment more, for the portal to close – all his courage burning up along with his soul – and in the instant after it does, he dives through.
Tripitaka's soul hits reality and it is with relief that he lets go, dispersing on impact; the people of Earth never see him. Tony falls through a bright May sky toward New York.
No one tells him to remember, or to forget. No one tells him of dragons or a foreboding obsidian slab. No one tells him of the things inside his head, mindlessly watching through his eyes. The only voices he hears are of his own insanity.
Worlds turn over. Time slips. They iterate, again and again, and now it is the same each time...
"Damn you," rasped Tony, and he ceased struggling. His breath hitched once, twice, and he turned his face down, away, so that Steve couldn't see it.
Steve climbed off of him – and, warily, stayed between him and the Window. It was still there – if Tony made to go for it, he still might try to change things, and this time... Tripitaka wouldn't be there to make the decision for him. Steve couldn't face that choice again – would rather have done anything than face it again. They needed to leave. They'd come here to defend the Window – but Tony was now its greatest immediate threat. They needed to leave.
There was a great moment of silence, a moment of mourning, and the sun in the east went out.
Steve could feel the thing that stole its light, a presence crawling over his skin – war and murder, greed and blood. He looked about, and then more wildly – someone was here, he knew that much, but – a crack appeared across the black face of the Window, a dry snapping sound like a broken limb, and Steve froze. So did the presence.
A whisper of wind curled across his cheek, and the Window shattered into a hundred thousand pieces.