Point of View
by: Shadow Chaser
Part 1 – Ripple Effect
Tony never gawked. It was such a...distasteful word: gawking. Sounded something a bird would do and it was so touristy. Tourists gawked. Tony Stark never gawked. He stared. Yes, he stared, leered, wanted, admired, enjoyed, found-"it"-pleasant-to-look-at, all sorts of things but he never gawked. Not once in his whole life, even when Angela was the cutest girl in his grade and he fell in love with her at first sight when she kicked the ball into his face during the first grade rivalry kickball game.
He stared...okay, maybe he was gawking.
Howard Stark stared back and oddly enough, the two of them blinked at the same time before Tony forced himself to look away, trying to find something else to stare at. And found himself focusing on Peggy Carter. His first immediate thought was that Peggy was definitely a looker and that Steve was a lucky bastard. His second thought, hot on the heels of his first one, was that he was in so much trouble - focused on the glare he was receiving which made him feel like he was just a kid again being reprimanded by Aunt Peggy.
"See something you like?" her words were acidic and full of disdain that made Tony want to shrink right into the ground before he managed to compose himself and coughed lightly.
"Uh, hi," he cleared his throat, "um, I'm Tony, and uh-"
"Are you Leviathan?" Tony's earliest memory of Peggy Carter was fifty-something woman who had the sharpest tongue and meanest wit ever. She certainly taught him some of the more acidic responses he had to people who pushed him around when he was a kid. He certainly now believed the stories with the silvery-gun she now pointed at his face in the second it took him to blink.
It took him another second to process her question and he spluttered, "W-What? Leviathan? What-"
"Leviathan, what do you know about it?" none of the SSR files or SHIELD's files spoke of Peggy being this bold or reckless as she suddenly marched forward, gun still pointed at him with an uncannily unwavering grip. He belatedly realized that she had marched right up into his personal space and pointed it straight at his chest – right where his miniature arc reactor used to be.
Though he had no qualms about a woman getting up into his personal space, finding it kind of kinky with a pseudo dominance of sorts, he found himself backing up and right into one of his tables, hands held up in a universal gesture of surrender. "I have no idea-"
"Don't lie," though she was at least a head shorter than he, she somehow made him feel like she was towering over him and he tried to gently push back.
"Okay, okay, um, why don't you lower your gun-"
"Talk, Tony, that's your name, right? Are you impersonating Howard? Is that what Leviathan is trying to do? Is that what you're trying to do? Force Howard to be charged for crimes so you can seemingly sell his weapons to the highest bidder in the black market-"
"Oh..." Tony realized what year the three had just come from though he had literally no idea what the heck was this 'Leviathan' Peggy was talking about. "Ohhhhh..." When Tony had been growing up in the late sixties-early seventies, he remembered some of the dinner parties his father used to throw. There were many stories told in Howard Stark's speeches, but there was one that was always repeated more than once – the story of how the U.S. Government had accused him of stealing weapons to sell on the black market and how they had repaid the mea culpa to him after he had been found completely innocent and exonerated of all charges. It had happened almost right after the war and Howard never let people forget it.
"Peg, might want to back off, I think he's going to talk," Howard spoke up behind her. Tony saw him take a step forward, though his butler Jarvis looked a little nervous and almost took an imperceptible half-step in front of Howard to protect him. Something in him twisted a bit painfully at the gesture, almost as if it had been long forgotten but recently remembered.
"1946?" he tested out and saw Peggy frown.
"What about this year?" she replied and he nodded absently.
"Thought so," he mused quietly before taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Okay...hooboy...so... Um, honestly, I have no idea what Leviathan you're talking about- Hey-wait, I'm telling the truth here Peggy!" he had raised his hands higher as Peggy pointed the gun at him again before her eyes narrowed dangerously and Tony realized that he had broken the first rule of a seemingly impossible Einstein theory – time-travel revelation with the potential of creating a paradox. His next thought raced along the lines of possibilities and impossibilities, calculating through the variables and trajectories of just revealing he knew Peggy's name along with everything else he knew- Did he violate the Grandfather theory that all movies seem to make seem like a big faux pas? Or did that theory not exist and if he did, did he create an alternate timeline by just saying her name? Were they already in an alternate timeline?!
In the seconds it took his thoughts to race along the multitude of paths, he realized that he needed to say something else before Peggy Carter fired her gun at him. "Okay, okay, you've got me, okay?" he lowered his hands, holding him out in front of him and saw her gun lower fractionally, but her finger still rested near the trigger.
"Talk," she said, her voice still hard and not even giving him an inch based on the gesture he had made. Tony had heard the stories his father always told about "Auntie" Peggy, had not really believed them even growing up and occasionally seeing her actually kick butt, but now...now he really believed them. Peggy Carter scared him with her relentless steel and unflappable demeanor, even when she held her gun with the steadiest of aim.
He tried for a smile, but only found her stony look grow a little harder and coughed lightly. So far, everything was as he remembered, nothing noteworthy that stood out in his mind – though he supposed if he did accidentally send himself into an alternate reality, it would be the same thoughts running through his head. But he was mostly sure that he had not enacted a Grandfather Clause or something time and dimension shattering. The only saving grace was that he now knew at least one of the capabilities of the 0-8-4 that Coulson had left with him; time travel. Or some variation thereof. Still heady stuff if one thought a little too hard about it, but maybe since the world had not exploded, he had not done any irreparable harm or damage to Einstein field equations of general relativity or even created a temporal paradox – at least that was the hope.
The other theory was that it was a perfectly stable time loop.
The only problem with that theory is that he had no idea what made it a stable time loop. Was it that he did not say much, spilled everything, or did not even say a thing at all? Tony was hinging on this theory more than the other one not because of some physics or astronomical impossibility, but for the simple fact that his head was starting to spin and hurt from even thinking about all of this.
"This is like a bad rendition of Back to the Future or something," he muttered mostly under his breath. Dr. Jane Foster would probably have a field day or something with the astrophysics involved in time travel and it would have been his first suggestion to contact her, but she had been incommunicado for the last few months – or at least nowhere near her email or cellphone. He supposed that after the very public fall of SHIELD she and her friends probably had the foresight to change all of their phone numbers and maybe move elsewhere so that HYDRA would not be able to get their dirty little hands on them.
Or perhaps she was up in Asgard again. The BBC had reported a Thor sighting about a year ago followed by several Bifrost activation sites that heralded Thor's return and leaving over the past year. Who was to say that Jane wasn't currently in Asgard safe and away from all of this – it was Thor's priority to see to her safety after he had first appeared to go after Loki a two and a half years ago.
"So, um," Tony wanted to rub his hands together, but judging by Peggy's icy look at him, he was not inclined to get a bullet in his chest and so refrained from doing anything. "Where to start..." he blew out a quiet breath, "no, I'm not trying to impersonate Da-uh, Howard over there. I, uh...just so happen to look like him – at least that's what people always said."
Peggy only blinked once, unconvinced and Tony continued hurriedly, "And honestly I have no idea what the heck you guys mean by Leviathan, but I'm hazarding a guess here that you guys have something similar to, uh, that?"
"Howard?" Peggy did not look back as she addressed him and Tony saw beyond her white-bloused shoulder to see him scrambling to pick up the 0-8-4 that had fallen to the floor and was completely inert. Tony wanted to mention something about latent radiation and dangerous things that should not be handled with bare hands until Howard produced a handkerchief from his pocket and gingerly picked up the object with his hand in it. It wasn't much, but Tony took the peace of mind for what it was.
"Yep, looks like our suspect," his father's voice was a lot...lighter than Tony remembered and he blinked several times. He was stunned at how it sounded without the stress, worry, and gruffness that he had come to associate with his father when he had been growing up. "Definitely not active though, unlike what just happened."
"Well?" Peggy tilted her head fractionally at Tony and he saw Howard put it down again, shaking his handkerchief off before Jarvis took it from him and produced a cleaner one for him to carry.
"Well...?" Tony had no idea what she was asking and saw her frown, irritation flashing across her dark brown eyes.
"What did you do to make it inactive?" she gestured with her chin towards the inert 0-8-4 and he shook his head.
"What makes you think I know-"
"You did something-"
"Listen Peggy, I have no idea-"
"And how do you know my name?" she cut him off, "you claim not to be Leviathan-"
"I'm not!"
"Then how do you explain all of this?" she gestured with her free hand to the surrounding workshop.
"An advancement in technology that can't even be replicated from 1946 and quite possibly will make all three of you really rich if you've managed to memorize everything there is about the future- J," he said really quickly before calling out to JARVIS, "am I going to end up being my own grandfather after this?!"
"I can't begin to calculate that sir," JARVIS's voice piped down politely, but it made all three of his unexpected guests jump and look wildly into the air. Peggy's gun waved all over the place for a few seconds before she trained it back on him, shaking her head.
"What was that?" she demanded, "who else do you have here-"
"Just me...err, well, not really. I mean there's a few thousand employees in this building alone that work for me, but they're on the other floors below and this is just my personal workshop and, er, well, it's where I live-"
"Is that a transistor-based phonograph model?" Howard suddenly interrupted and Tony glanced back at him to see him peering beyond him. Tony turned to look over his shoulder and saw that indeed his father's transistor phonograph, one of the first to be made in 1955, was sitting on the table, playing one of the 45s he had in his vast collection that Tony had inherited. In fact, it had been playing one of Duke Ellington's pieces while he had been researching and scanning the 0-8-4.
"Err...yes...?" Tony realized that it was nine years out until the first transistor-style phonograph would be created and wondered if he had irreparably changed the course of history. He searched his memories...and it did not seem like his father had invented it since his mind still registered the vague memory and image of the phonograph to have been brought in 1955, or rather 1954. Maybe he did change history a little...or his father had created something yet again that was limited by the technology of his time.
"I've never seen one before-"
"Howard!" Peggy's firm tone stopped the other man from moving forward to look at the thing and Tony snapped his attention back to her as she raised her gun a little higher.
"You steal technology like Howard's to sell on the black market-"
"No!" Tony shook his head before he sighed and resisted the urge to scrub his face, "J, what's the odds that the others are going to have their history altered from this?"
"Unknown, sir," JARVIS replied and he saw the three flinch again, but while Peggy and Jarvis looked suspicious of the computerized voice coming from all directions, Howard had the most peculiar look on his face as he stared up at the ceiling; as if he was trying to puzzle out where it came from. "But based on recent scans, I am willing to put forth the notion of a potential stable time loop, sir."
"Yeah, sure," Tony snorted quietly, "hooboy...okay, Peggy, please, please, please, for the love of all that's holy, don't shoot me after I tell you this because one, you'll probably set off the internal alarms in this place, and two, I really don't want a certain person coming down here to find you guys. Actually, make that certain two people. J, you know who the hell I'm talking about, where is Thing Two anyways?"
"He has been where he was this morning sir," Tony was grateful that he had programmed JARVIS for some discretion and that his A.I. was very good at picking up his cues or lack thereof at times.
"Good," Tony was not ready to handle the possibility of 'Thing Two.' It was his nickname for the stray 'Thing One' had brought home roughly two and half months ago. 'Thing One' only got his name because Steve would not leave 'Thing Two's' side and stuck to him like glue. Plus, it was one of the few references that Steve got that always elicited a reaction from him. All other pairing references mostly induced a shaking of the head or a confused reaction meaning he had not seen the movie, television show, comic, or even caught up on memes. Calling Steve 'Thing One' and his thought-to-be-dead-former-best-friend 'Thing Two' was funny...until Steve actually called him the Cat in the Hat back one day – making Tony laugh long and loud.
"Thing One?" he queried.
"En route from the hospice," JARVIS replied and Tony cursed inwardly.
That was not good. There was no conceivable emergency he could cook up to prevent Steve from entering the tower. One, because it was Steve they were talking about and he would run headlong into danger to save whomever needed to be saved. And two, it was Steve; because besides spending time with Peggy Carter in the hospice, he would spend the rest of his time with a one Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes in hopes of helping him recover from his long years as the Winter Soldier. The only time he would not spend with the two was if he had a mission that Maria Hill gave them courtesy of Coulson's limited intel or otherwise, or if Sam was around and forcibly pushed him outside for a run or something.
"Calling for back up?" Peggy asked, eyes narrowed at him.
"It's not human, is it?" Howard interrupted them, staring and pointing vaguely at the ceiling.
"E-Excuse me?" Tony blinked and stared at his father who rubbed his chin, still staring up at the ceiling.
"That voice that keeps talking to you, 'J' was it?" Howard said, "it's not human...I think. The modulation, kind of a bit off, like it's coming through the speakers, but with a little more clarity. The cadence is marvelous, definitely very human-like, but there's something about it that doesn't sound like it's human."
"Former HYDRA mechanized robotics?" Peggy asked, as she kept her eyes on Tony who flicked a look at her. "Is that what Leviathan is? Is this what this 'J' is you keep talking to? Leviathan?"
"From Hebrew, meaning whale, it's referenced in the Bible in Job 41, Psalm 104:26, and Isaiah 27:1. Psalm 74 references that Leviathan has multiple heads, allusion to HYDRA-"
"Are you the new head of HYDRA after Johann Schmidt died?" Tony took a definite step back at the sudden coldness in Peggy's voice as she cut into what JARVIS was saying.
"Yeah, no, if anything I'm one of the people that will help cut the damn head off and burn the stump so it doesn't grow back," he replied defensively, "HYDRA killed my fa- er, they killed people I cared about. I'll gladly watch them burn in hell."
"Then why do you look like Howard here? Why the deception?" Peggy demanded once more and Tony finally gave into the urge and scrubbed his face, earning the click of the gun's safety being disarmed, but he was nearly at his limit.
"J, if everything changes after this, I want you to record all of this for posterity and play it back to me telling me what an asshole idiot I am, okay, for screwing up and plunging us into an alternate timeline."
"As always, sir," JARVIS replied politely and Tony half rolled his eyes at the snide tone his A.I. adopted.
"I look like Howard here because you guys aren't in 1946 anymore. It's September 17th, 2014 and I'm Tony Stark," he gestured to Howard, "I'm Howard Stark's son."
Two pairs of disbelieving eyes met his own and Tony only had a split second to think that there had been three before he stars exploded in his vision along with a flash of pain, then blackness.
Howard could only stare as the man who called himself Tony, or rather, Tony Stark, crumpled to the ground, Jarvis standing near him with a rather large wrench in his hand. "What-"
"Let's go. It could still be a trap," Peggy was having none of it and gestured roughly for them to hurry towards the door, shooting the glass out with two shots. He nodded numbly as he forced himself to move past the older man's limp form, a part of him whispering apologies for what was definitely going to be a rather large shiner on his head when he awoke. He had not expected the older man to say that he was his son. Granted, the man's words before that was incomprehensible; after he told them that they had somehow, impossibly, traveled to the year 2014. It had to be a trick...
"Sir," Jarvis' was by his side once more, wrench still in hand and Howard shook his head, waving away his butler and friend's concern.
"I'm fine...just..." he ascended the stairs following Peggy as she cleared the stairs in front of her with a professional aplomb. He bit his lip as he glanced back down towards the direction of the workshop they had messily exited from, feeling oddly paternal. Maybe it was because the other man looked eerily like him. Maybe it was something he had said that made him want to go back downstairs and make sure that this Tony was all right before escaping with Peggy and Jarvis.
"Don't let him get into your head, Howard," Peggy called back sharply and he huffed out a breath, focusing him as he nodded once.
"Right," he tried to banish all images of Tony lying crumpled on the ground from his mind and instead, watched the stairs that they were climbing. There was no alarm, nothing to indicate that they had alerted any of the others in this building, but the further up they climbed, the more Howard was thinking that maybe this Tony was right. Maybe they had somehow traveled to the future. The stairs for one, the lighting for another in the stairs, everything looked bright, clean, and polished. There was also the smell. It wasn't antiseptic, no, it just smelled different, like there was something metallic tinged with a sourness that had the faint odor of being at a molding factory. The sourness wasn't that bad, it just smelled a bit odd and for some reason, he thought the smell was commonplace.
"Here," Peggy said after a few more flights and exited through another pane of glass shattering with a couple of bullets.
"Ma'am, might I suggest you not go that way-"
Howard blinked at the intrusion of the 'J' voice, but it was too late for whatever the voice, or whomever was at the end of the voice was saying as he stepped out into what looked like a really nice looking penthouse floor. He would have admired the décor except for the sudden stricken look on Peggy's face as she stared at a fixed point to his left. He looked towards the fixed point as did Jarvis and Howard felt the bottom of his stomach suddenly drop out.
"Oh my stars..." Jarvis whispered next to him.
"S-Steve?" Peggy's voice was a strangled hush whisper as standing near a set of elevators a few feet away from them was none other than Steve Rogers come back from the dead.