Before the first shards had hit the ground, the presence made its rage felt: a directionless force buffeted Steve, denying his lungs the power to draw breath. Steve tried, and with great effort, managed to bring his hands up to clap over his ears; but this was a futile effort: none of the pressure was really sound. He could feel it resonate within his bones, but it was silent, as was the battlefield – both outside the building and above it.
The first broken pieces hit the stone floor and bounced, breaking further, then further, into dust. It became a cloud that spiralled upward, borne on the fury of a god denied – a god beyond all other gods; this wasn't anything he could worship, but Steve knew it was more than Loki or Hercules or Amora. The cloud ate away the roof and spiralled further to the skies, and Steve was helpless to do anything but watch – the unending pressure would not let him turn his head away. A stray enemy ship that got in the way of the cloud was obliterated and added to it.
Something else was spiralling down from the sky to meet it, originating from a point so far off that Steve couldn't tell where it began. It might have been the being that was the source of the presence; or perhaps it was something else. Steve didn't know.
A long, brown-and-green dragon curled itself about the broken remains of the building and stuck its head in, carefully avoiding the power flowing up from the centre; Steve watched it from the edge of his vision, unable to turn and look. Then, as though it were withdrawing into itself, the dragon's tail began to shorten – the coil retreated rapidly until it was very near the head, and then that shrunk, too, as the tail's end split and a woman walked forward on two legs. Then Steve could look, and did – and found himself staring, heart aching and furious.
"That's very rude, ma'am," he told the whatever-it-was. Another demon? Or maybe just a dragon with demonic powers.
"You," hissed Tony. Steve glanced at him – he had pulled himself over onto his side, shaking from the effort of it, and was glaring at the woman with a look of utter hatred.
"I'm sorry, Steve," she apologized. He could have forgiven her pretty much anything, with that face – except the act of wearing it. Sarah Rogers had been her own woman, and there was not one damn person in the world – this or any other – who had the right to pretend otherwise. "I appear as you expect. Many find it unsettling."
"It's disrespectful," Steve said tightly. He tightened his grip on his shield.
"It's tribute," she corrected gently, and Steve – grimaced. Would his mother have agreed? It was hard to try to even think about, with an alien in front of him wearing her face. "I am Kuan-Yin. I've come to send you home."
Steve looked around, deliberately – there weren't any more ground troops within sight – damn it, Yulong – but there were still plenty of ships overhead. Yet they, too, were being rapidly destroyed by the ever-widening dust-storm of two meeting powers – a sight he could look at now and not be compelled by; it felt like he was watching it through a three-foot thick wall of military-grade glass. Kuan-Yin was protecting him, he realized with another start of anger.
"Now?" he demanded. "Now you can send us home? What about your war?" Had she known what Tony would try to do when she'd asked him to guard the Window, and kept Steve back to stop him? A fine hash he'd made of that – but she'd also sent Tripitaka, hadn't she? She'd played them all like puppets.
"The war is over," said Kuan-Yin, casting her gaze to the sky. Her words rung with finality. "It is not an end any of us had foreseen, but it is perhaps a better end than any of us could have hoped for."
"What is that?" Steve nodded to the sky.
"The Living Tribunal has stepped forth and pitted its might against Thanos," said Kuan-Yin gravely. "Such a manifestation is not a thing that this realm shall long withstand; but when it defeats Thanos here, that shall be the Mad Titan's end. This multiverse shall live on, wounded though it may be by the loss of its heart." She smiled at him, warm and understanding – he half-expected her to say, Steve... "You should go home, Steve. Your world is waiting for you to bring its cure."
"First things first," Tony spoke up. He pushed himself up into a sitting position – painfully slowly, but when Steve would have moved forward to help him, Tony flinched back violently. Steve got the message. "Your damned collar. You said you could take it off in person."
Steve could count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of times he had seen his mother wear that cold look, icy pity and disdain all bundled up with rage and barely restrained. She hadn't liked to let him see her so angry, although her wrath had never been directed at an undeserving target. "A child learns by example; an adult by pain; and how do the soulless learn? I see that they don't."
"Oh, bite me," hissed Tony.
Her gaze was full of knives. "I told you I knew you were no copy. Do you wish to know how I knew? A construct is designed without a soul; they are not meant to have them. Mortal sages might look at you and see only its lack, but I can see where it's been ripped from you – a gaping wound, emptier than the Void. Your emptiness will consume you, and anything you're allowed to touch. I'd thought, hoped, to err on the side of mercy – but you'd have thrown the entire multiverse away for fewer lives than would fit in a grain of sand. Anything to assuage your guilt." She shook her head. "The soulless do not learn. You need a leash."
No. Not like this. Steve raised his chin – then lowered it again. "Not like that."
"This is the lesser evil," said Kuan-Yin, shooting him a dismissive look, and there was something broken, something dirty about hearing those words from her. God knew he'd heard it from Tripitaka, and the Great Sage Soen, and every priest they'd met on this journey, but from her it sounded damningly wrong.
She took a small blue marble from a pocket of her nursing uniform – a child's toy. It might have been either blue or green. The light was beginning to die; the duststorm above had encompassed the whole of the sky as far as Steve could see. It hadn't yet spread down toward the buildings, but it would – he could feel it, approaching. A storm that wasn't a storm, but two powers greater than a mortal mind was meant to observe.
"Please," said Tony. His voice was utterly without inflection.
Kuan-Yin tossed the marble between them, and in a blink of an eye it grew into an entire world, blue and green and – dark, and Steve staggered and nearly stumbled, completely unable to see. His eyes adjusted a moment later: Tony's arc reactor was the only source of light. The other nodes upon his armour were no longer glowing, melted as they had been when he'd – broken.
But it wasn't like the end of the world had been; it wasn't dead silent – there was a quiet humming all around them, ventilation and running electronics, whirring motors and fans. The air wasn't freezing, either, just slightly chill. Large, sleek mechanical shapes loomed out of the darkness, and a few seconds after he turned his back on Tony entirely and gave his vision a chance to adjust again, he could make out the rest of their surroundings.
They were in the mine in Ohio. Tony's equipment was still on, but of course – there were no lights.
"We're back," said Steve. He turned back to Tony. "Are you – is there anything – " he changed his first question – the answer was obvious – but the second was no better, and so he cut himself off.
"Anything?" Tony asked, and chuckled humourlessly. It quickly turned into a racking cough, and he doubled over until he spat something dark out on the floor – blood, perhaps. "Anything? No."
Steve looked down, cheeks heating in shame. What Tony had wanted to do – even not knowing the full risks, it had been wrong. Tony had been wrong. The Window had broken almost immediately after Tripitaka had gone through, and Tripitaka had been actively trying to not damage it; how much worse would it have been if Tony hadn't been prevented from attempting to change things? But if Steve had done the right thing in not stopping Tripitaka – not that he could have –
- don't be a liar, Rogers, you didn't even try –
He was so tired of hearing about the lesser evil.
"We need to get up to the surface as soon as – you can," Steve said. He had to clear his throat to ease the roughness, before continuing, "And the cure – we need to get that out as soon as possible. To... whoever possible."
It had been weeks. Maybe more, considering how they'd gotten bounced about in time as Maklu had fractured around them. Extremis might have spread a lot faster in that time, however long it had been. Somehow, the knowledge that the truth was just an elevator ride away made the uncertainty harder to bear than it had been in all the long weeks leading up to this point.
"Right," said Tony sarcastically. "Save the poor shmucks still standing. And then I'm off to jail, I guess." There was still an edge of pain in his voice. He hid it well, but they'd been through too much together, by now, for Steve not to recognize it.
Steve's stomach twisted. It didn't mean that he could just let Tony walk away, though. He wasn't responsible for extremis getting loose – not entirely – but that didn't take away his culpability for the virus itself. Even disregarding that, he'd smuggled murderers from prison, and then planted three of them with murder chips that had killed them. Yes, he'd been in an altered mental state when that had happened – but did Steve have the right to make that call? He wasn't any sort of doctor.
But. There was always a but. "It oughtta be left to the judiciary," Steve admitted. "But there's no way you'd get a fair trial." There wasn't a person alive who didn't know all about the nanoplague, and have a strong opinion about it, too. Hell, unless Tony was extradited – and Fury would never let that happen – the worst things he'd done were all outside of American jurisdiction. And since he wouldn't be extradited, it would get left up to the doctors. Or, rather, Fury... and the politicians.
He definitely couldn't just be left on his own. Not with what he'd just tried to do – and not with what had just been done to him.
"Trial? Please. Like that'd happen. Go on, tell 'em everything you know about me," Tony said, taunting. "Tell them I have eyes in every traffic camera in New York – oh, and I got the security systems and every satellite and everything else, too. Tell Fury that. You think they'd risk a trial? You're delusional."
"What would you have me do?" Steve asked him. "Let you go? Scot-free? There are at least six million people dead – "
"I could have saved them," Tony snarled.
"Or killed them all," said Steve, because this was the point: that even if Tony wasn't mentally culpable for what he'd done under the influence of a thrice-damned stain on his soul, he sure as Hell wasn't showing any signs of changing his behaviour. "You're not God, Tony, you have to stop trying to play at it!"
"God? Damn right I'm not – because I actually try to fucking do something!" Tony lurched to his feet, supporting himself off of a nearby piece of machinery. "You think leaving it as it is will fix anything? You're a goddamned moron – "
"I'd thought you'd have learned by now that doing something isn't always the answer, not when it's the wrong thing to do," Steve sniped back.
"Sure! Why not just sit on your ass and pray to God! And hey, if it's the fate of the multiverse, maybe someone else will intervene," Tony threw up his hands. "But guess what, Steve, nothing less is ever gonna be worthy of that sort of attention – look at how long it waited to interfere this time," he threw Steve's words back at him. "One little world, twenty million measly little lives? There's no god out there who gives a shit! There's no great benevolent power, there's just a bunch of power-mad aliens out to fuck us over if they think it'll get them ahead. So yeah, I tried and I screwed up, but I can't just fuck off and do diddly-squat while everybody else dies – again! You didn't even have the balls to stop me yourself, you just stood aside and let them all die!"
He finished his rant and stood glaring at Steve, half-panting for breath as Steve stood, shocked motionless. It wasn't Tony's snarls or shouting that had given Steve pause – it wasn't even his words, as cruel as they were (were they true?). But the sight of Tony openly weeping, tears tracing their way down his cheeks even as he shouted, was enough to hold Steve still.
"Maybe they're aliens playing at gods. And maybe none of 'em are as good as we'd like 'em to be," Steve said, when it was clear that Tony had run out of steam. Too much of what he'd said was damn true – if, in part, because Tony had had some truly shit luck in meeting gods. But the latter part... Steve had stood aside and let Tripitaka make that choice. Steve could try and ignore it all he liked, but there it was.
"It doesn't mean we should lower ourselves to that level, of thinking we're above it all, that we have all the answers – that we can step in and change things for everyone," Steve finished.
"Act or don't act," Tony said sharply. At least he was no longer yelling – he wiped a hand across his face, grimaced, and wiped again. "Both are choices. If it's not me acting, it'll sure as hell be somebody else – and gods don't give a damn about humans." His voice grew steadily flatter as he spoke.
"'Somebody else' hasn't caused mass deaths, so you'll excuse me if I find it hard to buy your theory," Steve said flatly. "It was your own mistake you were trying to fix and you screwed up trying to fix it, Tony. The Window broke. Don't try to wriggle out of that."
Tony closed his eyes. He looked exhausted – exhausted and in pain, swaying on his feet, his lips pressed tight and pale together, bloodless. "I could have saved them," he said again, low and shuddering. It wasn't denial. It was just grief.
"No," said Steve simply – but he knew from the look that Tony shot him that this was something on which they were never, ever going to agree.
Damn it.
The silence between them clung, thick and heavy; Steve let Tony collect himself. "Alright," said Tony, breaking the silence just as it ran past the awkward point. "It's done." He scrubbed at his face again, then turned to scraping one nail under the edge of the thin, golden second skin that was all the armour he was wearing – it ended at his palms and the backs of his hands – like he was trying to peel it off.
"What's done?" Steve asked, because he knew Tony wasn't referring to the topic of their discussion. He gave Tony another once-over: Tony's hands were no longer shaking, nor the rest of him, but there was something listless in the way he picked at the remnants of the armour clinging to his skin. The bulk of his armour lay in a heap at his feet, half of it melted and half of it still looking like plate. At least the wound on his shoulder was healed over. Everything else... what Tripitaka had done to stop him hadn't resulted in a physical wound.
"Extremis. Zombies. I've got a hardwire to the surface from here – I grabbed a couple of satellites as soon as we got back. I just got the pingback confirmation that a link was secured to the hive. It's a defensive disadvantage of a hive-mind – stronger than the individual, but grab one and you've got them all. The new code I wrote for it'll reach saturation in a couple hours."
Done. Just like that. Steve blinked in disbelief. Not that he wasn't overjoyed, but – it seemed too much. And it was tempered by the still unknown variable.
The answer to that question wasn't unknown to Tony, though, not if he had access to satellites from down here. Steve cleared his throat – and then again. He was suddenly, painfully aware that he still hadn't had anything to eat, or much to drink, since – God knew how long. If another crisis kicked up, the adrenaline and serum might keep him going, but otherwise he was going to become useless very shortly.
"How many?" he asked, and then, before Tony could answer – because he wasn't sure which answer he wanted more, "How long were we gone?"
Tony paused, his eyes flicking up and catching Steve's. "About eight milliseconds."
Steve gaped at him – and then caught himself and shut his jaw. Eight thousandths of a second – no wonder Tony's machinery was still running. Eight thousandths – no time at all. Weeks of delay, and he'd resigned himself to the mounting costs, but this –
The nanoplague was over – would shortly be over, anyway. China could rebuild. Bruce could start sleeping through the night again, maybe. Natasha could come back from France. Rhodey could stop spending week-long stints in the War Machine suit. He could finally take the time to rebuild his team properly. Pepper –
God, such selfish reliefs. But it was over.
"Have you called SHIELD?" he asked, when he could think straight enough to speak. He felt light-headed – he needed something to eat. And water. And some sleep. The adrenaline was fading hard – and Tony, still wearing nothing but the sheerest metal coating, he wasn't doing any better. Lord, they were a matched pair.
"If I say I haven't?" Tony asked quietly. He tilted his head to the side and forward, just enough so that light bounced off of the thin headband that he still wore. "Your war's over, Steve. Mine is still out there. And I'm not going to stop fighting it."
"I'm starting to wonder if you didn't program it into you," Steve said. He tugged off a glove and pressed a finger into the sharp edge of his shield, letting the brief pain wake some of the adrenaline back up – enough to see them both upstairs, maybe.
"Nah, this is me, born and bred," said Tony, his tone a horrible parody of carelessness. "Didn't you hear Kuan-Yin? Not a clone. Just obsessed, unable to learn, and fated to die horribly."
Steve had known people who could fit those terms – people who probably had a soul, even if it was as black as Hell. Tony wasn't one of those people. Kuan-Yin was wrong about that. Still, he hoped that she was at least right about Tony being the original – so that there wasn't another of him out there, terribly injured and constantly dying...
Well, in all the realities of the multi-verse there likely was, but it wasn't one Steve had ever met... hopefully. He'd thought, somehow, being in Maklu again, that Anthony might show up – he'd parted on good terms with the Magistrate, after all, and they'd found out what the war was about. That he hadn't was probably the more likely outcome – the multiverse was vast – but Steve still wished he would drop by sometime and explain what the Hell had happened to him, why he'd never come back.
"I'm glad," said Steve. He was so tired. "That you're you."
"But you won't – "
"Can we not?" Steve asked plaintively. "Just – don't. Let's go upstairs, and call SHIELD, and – can we please try to work this out without you running off and playing god and making choices for the whole of Earth. Just give me a chance to try to sort this out." He spread his hands in supplication. "If you – don't you want to prove her wrong?"
"And if I say no?" Tony shifted his head again, minutely – just enough to make the light reflecting off of the headband catch Steve's eye, and he knew exactly what he was doing, the bastard.
If he said yes –
If he said no –
"Just call SHIELD," Steve said, and he turned away to stumble through the dark toward the elevator, occasionally tripping over the machinery and wires littering the floor. There wasn't a button, just a lever, and he had to fumble around to find it, his mind feeling slow and dull. As if to double-down on the point, his stomach growled. He didn't flip the lever, though.
Out on the floor, far away, he heard Tony breathe in, hold his breath for a full five seconds, and then let it out in an explosive sigh. "Okay," he murmured, and Steve could hear him gathering up bits of the extremis armour. "Okay."
SHIELD descended upon them in much the same totality with which the massed armies of Thanos had descended upon Maklu. Two minutes after they'd walked out onto the hillside road, Steve was squinting up at spotlights shining down on them from no less than three quinjets – and Steve had no doubt that other reinforcements were either hovering just out of sight, or quickly inbound. Lines dropped down around in a perimeter and black-clad commandos rappelled quickly down them, weapons up and on them in an instant.
"Stand down," Steve ordered, pulling his cowl off so they could all clearly see his face. "He's with me."
"And surrendering," said Tony, raising his hands. His air of nonchalance might have been more convincing if he hadn't had to lace his fingers together behind his head to stop his hands from shaking. "Willingly. Seriously, did Fury not mention that part?"
"Sir," one of the commandos nodded to Steve. "No offence, but we have orders." She waved two others forward, and they started giving Tony a very thorough pat-down. Steve fought down the urge to roll his eyes. Tony had managed to get the armour malleable again in the elevator, and was now wearing what looked like one too many layers of bulky clothing. A pat-down was useless unless they just stripped him naked, and then that was still probably mostly useless – Tony had even managed to hide the headband, and Steve didn't think it was just by using the ICG.
"We got a hit, ma'am," said a commando at the outer part of the circle nearest to the mine – one not actively carrying a gun, but rather a tablet. He was talking to his radio, but the quinjets' engines weren't loud enough to make it impossible for Steve to hear. "I think. There's definitely some sort of cloaking tech around here, but it's not responding to disruptors."
"It's right where it looks like it should be," Tony said helpfully, ignoring the way it ratcheted up the tension. "It'll be visible in a second."
And it was, the fenced-over, abandoned mine entrance suddenly replaced with a tunnel wide enough to drive a semi-truck into. There was no flicker or shimmer of transition as it changed.
"You could have turned it off before they got here," Steve told Tony in an undertone, exasperation colouring his reaction.
"It was queued to go last," Tony said, comm.-only, lips not moving – which was a lot weirder than when he was wearing the armour and had his face hidden. "Timing the self-destruct for some of the tech down there's a bit... tricky. Not so much to contain the blast... that's why I picked this mine, it's deep enough – you didn't even feel it, did you? – but to make sure all the essential stuff gets taken care of..."
Steve shot him a look – he was not about to start talking to himself in front of SHIELD, not if Tony was playing this game – and got a sigh over the comm. in return. "I think we've already seen that it's best if SHIELD limits itself to one world, don't you?"
That wasn't a fair comparison. It especially wasn't fair coming from Tony – Tony, who'd made him promise never to breathe a word to Bruce of what his counterpart had been like. But... it still had validity. It would probably be best if no one went reality-hopping unsupervised before they could work out some kind of oversight.
He'd promised the other Natasha that they'd try to send back aid. Simply not exporting more trouble seemed like a poor effort.
"I need to speak with the Director, ma'am," he told the commando who seemed to be in charge.
"And we're working on getting you to him," she shot back, with more bite than SHIELD agents usually showed him. "But the package isn't going anywhere near the Helicarrier."
Wise, if they weren't of a mind to trust Tony – although futile, if it came to that. Steve didn't think it would, but this did confirm that Tony hadn't told SHIELD very much at all in his first call. Fury was going to take that news so well.
"Go with SHIELD, Steve," Tony said aloud, rolling his eyes as his assigned guards started getting extremely personal with the pat-down. "I'm a big boy, and these are the good guys. More or less. If they try to stab me in the neck, it'll probably be with a sedative, not a poison." He looked cocksure, posture all arrogance; Steve could see the exhaustion beneath it. He could feel his own, too. "You wanted a chance," he continued privately. "This is it."
Well. He had that right. "Ma'am," Steve nodded to the commando who seemed to be in charge. "I'd like to go to the helicarrier. And I need a notepad – the pen and paper version."
Clint was waiting for him when his quinjet landed out on the deck, flanked by a pair of SHIELD commandos who hung back at his easy gesture. "Man, you are in so much shit," Clint crowed as they walked to Fury's office. The commandos kept up a discrete escort behind them, which was really sort of laughable.
"Don't start," Steve told him.
"What, or you won't water my plants the next time I take off AWOL?"
Steve groaned. He'd put that in half so that they'd know it was him, but – oh, good Lord.
"At least everybody'll know you're not crazy, now," Clint continued brightly. "Once the rumours that Stark's infected you with nanites and turned you into a zombie-puppet die down, anyway." They passed a pair of harried-looking technicians as he said this, and got identical incredulous, half-panicked looks.
"Thanks," said Steve, feeling his expression flatten out.
"No problem-o," Clint shrugged, and said, very casually, "Sorry for doubting you."
Steve glanced at him. Clint's posture and stride was as perfectly relaxed as his voice – except that he wasn't looking at Steve. Clint was a spy – if he'd wanted to hide that, he could have. He could have looked him dead-on and told him that like it really was nothing. But he hadn't.
"Thanks," said Steve, very much sincerely this time, as the door slid open to the conference room. Inside, the Director was waiting, with a very nervous-looking Bruce.
"Steve," said Bruce, and Fury, "Captain."
The old urge to correct him – 'Retired' – flared for only a moment before dying entirely. He'd asked Tony for a chance to work with SHIELD on this, and he'd need all the credibility he could gather if he wanted to bring Tony in on anything.
"Bruce," and, "Sir," Steve said, the latter more formally. "I'd like to debrief."
"Like you did in December, or are you actually going to tell us what's going on this time, Captain?" Fury set his hands together on the conference cable and leaned forward in his chair.
"There're still reasons I'd like to not explain everything," Steve admitted, focusing in keeping his gaze on Fury – a better tactic than focusing on keeping his gaze off of Bruce. "But I think I can fill in a lot of the gaps now."
"Tony Stark, back from the dead," said Fury. "That man has more lives than a cat."
"You believed me before," Steve pointed out. Bruce and Clint both dropped their gazes.
"I did," Fury acknowledged. "But when he didn't show up later – well, I had to wonder. I didn't think he'd stay underground." He shook his head. "It seems I misjudged him. You tell me, Captain – do you believe him when he says he's cured extremis?"
"You don't have to ask me, Director. He said it would be finished in a couple hours."
"We're already seeing signs that something's changed," Bruce put in, calling up a display on the table's surface and sliding it over to Steve. The mess of data didn't make much sense to him – this was obviously something out of Bruce's personal notes, all numbers rather than the graphs and visuals that Steve was used to receiving – but he nodded anyway, because he trusted Bruce's judgment. "A lack of movement... I think it's killing the people already infected."
Steve swallowed. Tony hadn't mentioned that part – except, in all their shouted words of death tolls... Steve had said six million; Tony said twenty. Damn it. He should have picked up on that. "I think they were already dead."
"The Chinese are going nuts – zombies acting weird does not make them happy." Clint lounged against the top of one of the conference room chairs. "If you don't call it soon, sir, they're gonna panic."
"Well, Captain?" Fury pinned Steve with his stare. "Can Stark be trusted?"
"Yes, he can," Steve said firmly, not letting himself waver an inch – if it came down to staring contests, the serum was going to give him an edge. He was exhausted, but they'd fed and watered him on the flight out to the Helicarrier; he could take this fight. But... honesty forced him to add, "With this, at least."
That got him a disbelieving stare from Bruce, and a quiet snort from Clint. Fury held Steve's gaze for a few seconds longer, and then, with a demeanour that specified that he was in no way conceding the staring contest, turned to Clint. "Barton, go help Hill calm the Chinese down. Feel free to spread it around that it's a cure, but SHIELD needs to keep where it came from locked down."
"Sir, you know that's a losing proposition. The entire 'carrier knows."
"Just get it done, Agent."
Clint didn't roll his eyes, but he did sketch a damn lazy salute before he pushed off of his chair and left.
"You say Tony can be trusted with this," Bruce said slowly. He was hunched in on himself, in a way designed to avoid attention, to be just one more tired face among the crowds – never-mind that there was only the three of them here. "You mean he can't be trusted with other things."
"He wants revenge against the guy who invaded last year," Steve said, and then he had to pause to correct that. "...sort of. That person's real identity is complicated. But Tony's ultimate goal is to keep the same thing he witnessed from happening to other worlds, including the entirety of ours. He's... kinda single-minded about it."
"This is about the New York invasion?" Fury leaned forward.
Steve took a breath. "Yes and no. Mostly no. I'm getting out of order in telling this. I oughtta start at the beginning, but I have to say first – sir, Tony is not crazy. Anymore. There were outside influences acting on him before, affecting his judgment, and those are gone. He can be a very valuable asset to this world, and I really do think that his threat assessment of the alien is accurate. He should be allowed to help deal with it. But he needs support – people to keep him grounded."
"That's going to depend a lot on him," Fury told him.
Well, that was true. Steve hoped Tony would be at least a little cooperative; the president might be a Captain America fan, but even Steve's cachet – as ridiculous as he usually thought it was – only went so far. And Tony... Tony had a lot to make up for.
"I'm aware of that, sir. But a lot of this shouldn't be said aloud." He tossed the notepad he'd borrowed on the table. The flight out to intercept the Helicarrier – currently heading at full speed back to the US –had been almost ninety minutes; he'd done his best to make them count. "I took the liberty of writing you a briefing."
Time: 04:17:51 EST
Estimated patch saturation: 99.9943%
"Stark," said Fury, pulling the heavy steel chair back and dropping into it. Tony concealed a wince at the sight. Fury had to be wearing body armour to be able to do that – these chairs were really damn uncomfortable, and Tony could now say with almost complete certainty that he was the only cyborg in the room. At least, he wasn't getting any signals off of Fury.
That room was aboard the Raft, which he was pretty sure Fury had chosen only half because Stark Industries hadn't been anywhere near the contracting for it, unlike every other SHIELD base-slash-prison that Tony knew of. Granted, until a few hours ago he hadn't known about the Raft, either. And that was impressive – because a holding facility of this size, stuck on the ocean floor... relatively shallow water or not, well. Hiding it was impressive. Hiding it from him – how had Fury managed it, when he hadn't even known it was necessary?
How much had Steve told SHIELD?
Internal monitors picked up an increase in heart-rate; he ignored it ruthlessly. If extremis hadn't still been undergoing the rewrite from the patch, he'd have shoved such tells off onto a separate server and firewalled it away from any possibility of emotional compromise. Hell. Maybe he had that backward...
Pride goeth, Tony, said Steve in the back of his head, except that it wasn't actually Steve, or even a hallucination of Steve. It was just the sound of his pride tumbling off a cliff.
Every time I think I've hit rock bottom...
No time to dwell on that. Not with Fury leaning forward like the wrath of a one-eyed god. Had Odin ever worn a coat as badass as that? In some strange world, probably. It took Tony off-balance, then, when Fury didn't sound mad; he sounded a little bit resigned - this was a tone Tony had grown used to hearing before he'd entered college – a little bit cheesed off, with quite a lot of mild calculation – really, the intricacies of what Nick Fury decided to show anybody, and why, would need a computer way more advanced than a Stark-brain on extremis to sort out.
So complex, really, that Tony almost missed the question.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
"Right now? Freezing to death," Tony answered promptly. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing here." They had stripped him naked, as soon as he was separated from Steve – so they weren't complete idiots, although it didn't seem like they'd figured out what his clothes were, yet – and though they'd given him new clothes, orange ones, they were just thin enough to be uncomfortable with the Raft's air conditioning.
Still, SHIELD had treated him in a surprisingly civilized fashion. They'd even let him shower once they were done searching him. It was probably more than he deserved.
19 641 2?
He nudged the counter into inactive mode. It wasn't something he needed to be thinking about, not if he wanted to pull this off. And he had to – he couldn't stay here too long. Not with Loki out there.
Not with most of his brain tangled up in the ongoing extremis rewrite. If he'd had access, he could have stolen processing power from satellites and external servers, but those were out of reach in this shielded, underwater room; he still wasn't sure if Fury realized exactly how crippling that was, but he had to know to some extent. With the loss of his clothes had gone the bulk of his armour nanites, too. The longer he was separated from it, the more reintegration was going to be a bitch all over again.
But it was a relief, too. Because if they were doing all this – but they hadn't used – then Steve hadn't –
With a wrench, Tony tore his thoughts away, thinking longingly of the stop command. He couldn't use it right now, he reminded himself. Not during the rewrite, not when it was already prone to causing errors. He couldn't.
Jesus Christ, come on, I shouldn't need it just to deal.
"Really? That's what you're going with?" Fury arched both eyebrows. It made the eye-patch wiggle a bit.
"What? In the short term, sure. In the long term – alien abduction? Forced captivity, forced to make a new kind of weapons and test them on myself? I could plead insanity and get it, don't you think?"
Fury didn't look impressed. "Believe it or not, Stark, I am actually on your side, here. If you could stop trying to self-immolate along with all those burnt bridges, you might even realize that."
"I know you are." His fingers were about to start twitching nervously – he forced himself to stop, and to keep on stopping, without writing any patches. Just until he could, again. Just until then. "But you did a shitty job of it, Nick. What do you want me to say?"
That was the problem with messages meant to be received after death – they were too tempting an opportunity to reveal far too much. If he had managed to defy Steve, defy Tripitaka...
st – FUCK.
"I think you could start with giving me something that would at least agree with what Captain Rogers' has said in the past, given how much he's not said." Fury spread his hands, tilted the heavy steel chair back – somehow managing to make it look effortless despite how heavy the thing had to be.
Tony bared his teeth at him. "Gimme my phone call, and then we'll talk."
How far would Fury go to try to keep him here? Trapped under the water –
Not that Fury needed to, not when Steve had –
Fury stared at him for a long moment – or at least it felt long beneath that gimlet eye. Maybe it was all of one second; extremis' clock could say whatever the hell it wanted on the matter, but Tony didn't care. It didn't last forever, which was the important point: Fury climbed to his feet, somehow seeming weary in the doing of it – an affectation, only – and gave him another glare when he was done with that small action. "When you've realized you can do more with your mind and body free, let me know, Stark."
Didn't matter. He needed the time to have the populace forget; to have the cure run its course; to have credit weighed in his favour. Five thousand things behind the scenes to take care of, and he needed to show that he wouldn't just walk out of here; people needed to trust their government and wasn't that a fucking joke –
stop
Error: Operation denied for duration of patch application.
...I wish I hadn't coded that.
Fury headed for the door. He didn't bother with a quippy last line – though, Jesus, the way that coat billowed was quippy enough, Tony had never been able to pull off that type of power-walk – except that maybe he could, now, with his four extra inches. Stupid vanities – and extra reach in a fight; an extra edge over the public; people looked up to people they looked up to. People were idiots.
Takes one to know one.
The guard outside pulled the door closed, and it swung shut with an impressively final thoom.