Note: Thanks to all those who have stuck with me so far. Dealing with OCs is never fun. But here, we finally find out what became of Tony. As a side note, it's been pointed out that I am not, perhaps, giving the Avengers enough credit for their efforts. My fault, not theirs. I'm far less clever than Natasha is. Many apologies.
Warnings for the chapter: None.
It was interesting that no one recognized them when they were not in uniform. Or, in Bruce's case, big and green. Bruce took them down to a Thai grocer he had discovered tucked down a side street.
The owners knew him, but only insomuch as he shopped there somewhat frequently. They did not know Steve, and Bruce found himself introducing the man as a roommate, which was as close to the truth as one could get in their circumstances. After all, it was odd. They were like a clubhouse. Avengers tower, home for the wayward superhero and odd assassin. The closest definition Bruce ever had found was dormitory. Except their home was far nicer than any dorm Bruce had lived in.
"You think Natasha would join us out for dinner?" Steve asked as they headed back through the rain toward the tower. It was not far, or Bruce would have hailed a cab. But Bruce wanted the soothing white noise, and it wasn't worth the minimum fare.
"I should get this stuff in the refrigerator," Bruce reminded Steve.
"Oh. Right."
He felt bad for their team leader. Steve might be the one in charge, but Tony was like the cool uncle they all went to when Daddy got too strict. Bruce actually had very little interaction with Steve on a normal day. Certainly less than Tony usually did. He was more interested in the mind behind the Iron Man mask than he was in anyone else on the team, no matter how nice they seemed.
Bruce really could not have explained why. Not without sounding extraordinarily sappy. He doubted Tony would have gone for that.
"Did you hear that?"
Bruce glanced up at Steve, frowning at the question.
"Hear what?"
"I swear I heard someone shouting your name," Steve was looking around, but this was New York City. Even on a cruddy day like this, there were people out on the sidewalks, enough of a crowd that it was difficult to determine who might have called out.
They paused by the tower, looking back into the crowd. People looked at them curiously, because the only people who came and went from Avengers Tower were usually Avengers or there on related business. But Steve did not say he heard anyone again.
"Strange," Steve murmured, holding the door for Bruce.
He kicked off his wet shoes and unzipped his jacket. The weather in New York at this time of year was unpleasant at best, but it had been nice to be out in it for a little while.
"I don't suppose you could use any help in the kitchen," Steve offered.
"Captain America, rice cooker and dish boy," Bruce said lightly.
"I did plenty of that before joining the army," Steve chuckled. "Afterward too, come to think of it."
Something struck the glass door behind them.
Hard.
Startled, both men turned, Steve immediately on the defensive. Although no one yet had been brave enough to attack Avengers Tower, and Bruce could not come up with a reason why anyone would throw something at their backs, they were not without opposition. Most of the attacks had been political in nature, and once again Tony had come to their rescue. He and Pepper handled all of the Avengers PR, and they handled it well.
There was a child at the door.
"What the…?" Steve breathed, relaxing out of his fighting stance. "Is that a little girl?"
It was. The girl was small, probably no more than five-one or five-two, and sorely underdressed for the weather. She had also plastered herself to the door, pounding on it and shouting something they could not hear. She hollered again, and Bruce felt himself straightening in confusion.
"She's saying your name," Steve realized. "Mine, too."
Bruce set down the groceries as Steve pushed the door open. It had a one-way locking mechanism, or Bruce was certain the girl would have already been in the building.
"Steve!" the girl's voice was high and reedy. Even without knowing her well, Bruce could see she was upset. She grabbed at Steve's jacket the instant the door opened, clearly intending to hang on for dear life. "Thank god! Thank you!"
"Hey there. Hold on," Steve staggered, the girl's clinging body throwing him off balance. She was tangling into his legs, pushing closer than was really appropriate, her hands tight enough in his shirt that if he were to try to force her off, the cotton would tear. "What's wrong? Bruce!"
For someone who had supposedly spent a year traveling around the country with USO girls, Steve was remarkably incompetent when it came to dealing with them. He was not much better with children. Bruce suspected it was only because she was a soldier in her own right (and she would sooner cut his testicles off than deal with any advances or patronizing behavior) that Steve was able to work with Natasha.
Bruce set a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder, bending down to put himself closer to her eye level.
"Honey, it's okay. We won't kick you out," he murmured. Dark eyes turned on him—wide and wild and flooding with tears—and instantly lit up with recognition. Bruce barely had a chance to realize what was happening before two slim arms were suddenly tight around his neck, a small, shivering wet body clinging to him. He tensed, then patted her back uncertainly. "Um… there, there."
The girl gave a shaky laugh.
"Christ, Bruce. You suck at this comforting thing."
That had been spoken almost directly into his ear by a trembling female voice. Bruce frowned, hand stilling on the child's back.
"We can pretend this never happened later, but please, Bruce," the girl begged. "Please don't make me let go."
Bruce went rigid, instinctively recoiling to look at the girl. She wouldn't let him, her arms tightening, a pleading moan humming in his ear.
"Don't," she hissed. "Don't do this to me."
"Holy god," Bruce breathed, looking to Steve in his shock. Steve just looked confused, but Bruce knew. He knew. "Tony?"
He grunted as the weight on him suddenly doubled, Steve's bracing hand saving him from a fall. The girl had all but leapt upon him, and he grabbed at her instinctively.
Bruce reacted without much thought after that. The girl's arms were nearly choking him, her legs locked around his waist. It should have been awkward as hell. Instead, Bruce wrapped his arms around the narrow back as tightly as he dared and refused to let go.
Over a month of not knowing. More than four weeks of thinking Tony scrubbed out by the parasitic presence of Cassie. A month of that, and suddenly Tony was here, alive and safe. Bruce was not quite sure how to handle it. The best he could manage at the moment was to keep from letting the other guy loose and just cling to his friend, even if it felt a little off.
"Tony?" Steve echoed incredulously. "Are you serious?"
"Oh, my god, Steve," the girl groaned. "I don't even want to hear it. Is Clint around? Because if he says anything about this shit, I will throw him off this tower!"
"Thank god," Bruce mumbled into the girl's hair. "We didn't even know if you were still alive!"
The girl—Tony—sobbed and clung to Bruce with every bit of strength she had in those skinny limbs. Admittedly, it was not much.
"We should get her upstairs," Steve suggested gently. "I need to call Clint and Thor. Do you need any help?"
The girl could not weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet (which he knew because she was drenched), and Bruce was not about to let go. No matter the body, this was Tony, and Bruce had had quite enough of the other person in their midst. He was not ready to let go, even if he had been feeling any strain, which he wasn't.
Natasha was sitting at the kitchen counter, sorting through a stack of books, when Rogers and Banner returned from their shopping trip. She was inclined to ignore them at first. She had stumbled upon a book by one of the authors Cassie liked that had struck an jarring chord with her. Not really one for fiction, Natasha had initially struggled with the storyline.
An hour later, she was still reading it.
It was not as though she liked it. Quite the opposite. The book made her extremely uncomfortable, which was saying something. She decided she would not be giving this book to Cassie.
The book had made her so uneasy that Natasha decided Rogers and Banner's return was actually something worth noting. She set it down and looked up when the elevator pinged and opened, revealing the men.
Natasha frowned.
"I was unaware you could purchase people at the grocery now," she said mildly. "At least, not in this country."
There was a young girl wrapped around Banner such that one would think that death awaited her if she were to let go. Banner stopped in the entrance, while Rogers immediately dashed off down the hall.
"Doc?" Something was off here. It was not even the girl—stranger things had been brought into the tower—but rather the way Banner held her. There was a desperation in the scientist's eyes that Natasha had never seen in him. "What's going on?"
Rogers returned with more towels and blankets than one person could possibly need. Dropping most of them, he wrapped one of the towels around the girl's shoulders.
Truly curious now, Natasha got up to join the men and this waterlogged little girl. Rogers was muttering at her, probably trying to convince her to let go of Banner. He was mildly successful, if that was the case. The girl let her legs drop, standing under her own power, but she kept a solid hold on Banner's shirt.
Up close, Natasha realized her initial impression had been wrong. This was not a child. Though small, the girl was a teenager—her actual age probably somewhere between fifteen and seventeen. She was smaller than Natasha, the top of her head nowhere near reaching Rogers' shoulder, so the mistake was easy to make. Her figure was obscured by towels now, but Natasha had caught a glimpse of the slight curve of breasts not quite hidden by an oversized tee shirt.
The girl was pretty, despite an obvious attempt at hiding it. The clothing was too large, looking as though it was borrowed or stolen. Her hair was a black that was too dark to be her natural color (although the pale brown roots were just as telling) and chopped short. It was a ragged job. Natasha imagined the girl had done it herself with only a mirror and a dull set of scissors to aid her.
It was a look Natasha had tried for herself at roughly the same age. This girl was attempting to look like a boy. It wasn't really working for her either.
All this Natasha noticed over the course of a few seconds. She had created a picture that she was not sure she liked.
"Who is this?" she demanded. Banner did not even look at her. He was too busy examining the girl, his face growing darker as he did. "Cap?"
"It's Tony," Steve said sharply.
Natasha felt her face go blank.
"What?"
Red-rimmed eyes turned on her. They were the wrong color. Too much green in them to belong to Stark.
Rogers did not repeat himself. He set his jaw and scrubbed at the girl's hair with a towel, looking torn between stubborn knowledge and helpless disbelief. Natasha did not blame him. The only things that had her believing any of it was the fact that she knew Captain America would not lie to her and that Banner had never looked so relieved in his life.
"How is this possible?" she asked finally.
"We're still going with the magic theory," Rogers muttered.
"Fuck magic," the girl grumbled, crowding into Banner's space until he was incapable of doing much more than return the embrace. She narrowed her eyes at Natasha, silently daring her to comment. Natasha was not sure which to be more intrigued by: the female factor or the way the girl clung to Banner.
"You have bruises on your wrists," Banner said, deceptively mild.
"I'm not talking about that yet," the girl slid her arms under his and buried her face in his shoulder. Though muffled, Natasha could still interpret the next request, "I want a shower and my bed and a stiff drink. Not necessarily in that order."
"Are you old enough to drink?" Natasha asked skeptically. She did not wait for an answer that she would not likely get. "You were missing for a month, Tony. Where have you been?"
"Cross-country road trip," the girl—Tony—mumbled into Bruce's shoulder. "I thought it would be awesome to learn the joys of hitchhiking. I am installing an emergency line for future occasions where one of us is suddenly no longer ourselves so that I never have to sit in a Mack truck again."
Bruce's hands twitched against the girl's back.
"You hitchhiked?" he demanded. "Are you okay? Did anyone hurt you?"
"I am so far beyond the realm of okay now, Bruce." She was going to pass out. Natasha could see it in the sudden paleness of the face resting against Bruce's shoulder, in the sudden laxness of the hands in Bruce's shirt. The girl had used up her reserves to get to the tower, and now she was safe. Adrenaline crash was worse than caffeine and sugar combined. "Don't look at me and think it's even possible for okay to be on the books."
"Don't let him fall," Natasha ordered.
Bruce looked up in alarm, then tightened his grip when the girl collapsed against him in a dead faint. Steve automatically pulled the towel away, moving to assist, but Bruce waved him off.
"I got it," he assured the captain. Bruce was possibly strong enough to lift Tony normally. This small female body could not weigh more than a hundred pounds, and he scooped her up with ease. "You should call Pepper and Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes while you're getting the rest of the team back here."
The two men were falling over themselves for this girl, who they believed to be Tony. The belief was probably not wrong, which meant something.
Natasha left them to it. She needed to speak with their other guest.
Cassie looked up when Natasha entered the room. It was interesting, Natasha mused, how the body was Tony Stark's, and yet there was more of Stark in the wry expression on one small teenage girl's face than there was in the man in this room. There was probably something wrong with how easy it was to accept this mess, but then again, Natasha had dealt with Loki. This was nothing.
"I have a theory, Cassie," Natasha murmured. This was not the persona she had projected when typically dealing with this man-woman-child, and she could tell he had noticed. Already the man was tensing, his hands curling tight around the book he had been reading, gaze gone wary.
"Natasha?" The shake in the voice betrayed fear. Natasha clamped down on a vicious satisfaction and forced herself not to smirk. Her lips twitched anyway, but she managed to keep her face mostly impassive.
"A young woman—sixteen or seventeen—with dyed hair and green eyes," she said calmly. "Small and weak and incapable of overcoming the strength of those around her. So she turns to other means of escape."
That sick look was satisfying, even if it was Stark's face.
"I don't know how you did it, but we're going to fix this," Natasha informed the intruder. "Stark is more resourceful than you are, obviously, if he was able to do what you could not."
"You can't make me go back," Cassie breathed. The horror of the words flooded the room. Natasha almost pitied this creature. "I'll die before I go back."
"Is that a threat?" Natasha lifted an eyebrow. Cassie lifted a defiant chin, and Natasha did smile then.
The intruder never saw it coming.
Pepper was there within the hour. Thor declared he was on his way, and Rhodes said he had used his emergency leave already but would fly in when he could. Clint was harder to contact, and Natasha finally placed a call through to SHIELD. Some creative threats had her put through to him, and she was impressed with his extensively vulgar vocabulary. He swore he would be home the next day.
"Where is he?" were the first words out of Pepper's mouth when she stepped off the elevator.
"In his room, with Dr. Banner and Captain Rogers," Natasha informed the woman. She would have been in the room as well, but by being the last to lay claim, she had been delegated greeter. Thus, she was pointing Pepper to the right hallway. (Not that Potts needed to be shown. The woman had helped build this place after all.)
They went to the bedroom together. (Thor would let himself in through whichever entrance he so pleased, and there was no point in trying to predict it, assuming he arrived anytime soon.)
"Oh, my god," Pepper breathed when she saw the small form in the oversized bed. Stark was still out, sleeping peacefully while Banner monitored his vitals and Rogers monitored the cool damp cloth across his brow. "Is this… is that really Tony?"
Natasha had already come to terms with it. After having spent a month with a girl residing in Stark's body, it was now less difficult believing a man could be trapped in the form of a teenage girl. She had even begun to think of the girl in masculine pronouns.
"It seems that way," Rogers said, shifting to let Pepper claim the spot beside the unconscious girl on the bed. She hesitated, staring down at the pale, smooth face haloed by dark-dyed choppy hair.
"Only Tony would know who and what I am and try to tackle me anyway," Bruce said. Despite the harsh words, his eyes were warm and grateful. "It's really him."
"Tackle you?" Pepper looked up, caught somewhere between relief and agony. She had already taken up a slender hand between her own, cradling it as though it were more delicate than a butterfly's wing.
"Gave an impressive performance of being a lonely koala," Natasha clarified. "Or perhaps an octopus."
"I'm a little concerned as to what he had to go through to get here." Bruce had hold of the other arm, his hand strong around the frail-looking wrist while he looked at his watch. "He's not bleeding, but the bruising is suggestive of more than a simple fight."
"Why is he unconscious?" Pepper asked, fingers gently massaging the hand between hers.
"Exhaustion, mostly. He's running a low-grade fever. Nothing bad enough to knock him out. I'm sure running around the city in the rain didn't do him any favors."
"I don't understand why he didn't call us," Pepper whispered. It was unnecessary. Tony had slept through being undressed and redressed and bundled into a bed. Mere conversation would not disturb him. When he was ready to wake, Natasha knew he would. "I would have helped him."
"We won't know until he wakes up," Rogers retrieved the cloth, changing it out with a new one. Water drained over the bridge of the girl's nose and down thin cheeks in a parody of tears, but he left it to air dry. The evaporation would create a cooling effect.
"What about the other one?" Pepper asked abruptly, angry eyes unerringly finding Natasha's. "That person charading as Tony?"
"Cassie," Natasha said point-blank. Pepper knew the name, had been informed of this, but only now was it sinking in. "Whose body do you think this is?"
"You're saying… this girl and Tony swapped bodies." The words were skeptical, but the tone was less than disbelieving. All of them had made the connection. Tony had not been carrying anything—no money, no phone, no identification—but there was little doubt as to what name truly belonged with this girl sleeping in his bed. "How is that… you know what? Stupid question. I don't even know why I'm asking. More importantly, is this something you can fix?"
"We'll fix it," Rogers stated.
"If not, we'll just dispose of the other one and have Tony come out as his own daughter," Natasha said.
"That's not remotely funny." Once Pepper might have sounded shocked. Now, however, she merely sounded weary.
"It wasn't intended to be," Natasha arched an eyebrow. "I simply see no other option should we be unable to reverse this."
"We'll fix it," Rogers said again, shooting Natasha a harsh look. The man had always been an optimist, and he was not a fan of any sort of fatalistic commentary. Too bad Clint wasn't there. That man always offered levity in a bad situation. He and Stark got on famously.
"Should I contact a doctor?" Pepper asked, smartly changing the subject. She sent Banner an apologetic smile. "Not to impugn on your intelligence, Bruce, but—"
"I'm not a medical doctor, I know," Banner did not take any offense. For someone who was known for what happened when he lost his temper, Bruce was one of the most mellow people Natasha knew. "Tony's condition has not changed in the last hour, so I wasn't too worried. My recommendation is to give him time to rest and recover, and if he hasn't woken in another couple hours, we'll take him to SHIELD medical."
Pepper was quiet, her hands still cradling Tony's, gently warming it in her palms. Whatever she decided, so long as it did nothing to threaten the Avengers, would be carried out, of course. This woman had power of attorney for Stark. She was the one who could make any calls he was physically or psychologically incapable of making for himself.
"One hour," she said finally. "SHIELD medical as a last resort. We've got doctors on payroll who are very discreet, but I don't know if this is something for them."
"SHIELD doctors are generally more about field medicine," Natasha cautioned. "They couldn't find anything wrong with Cassie."
"Physically, there isn't anything wrong with… Cassie," Banner said, voice dark with annoyance. It was no secret that he hated anything and everything to do with the girl currently residing in Stark's body. He frowned and looked up, meeting Steve's eye. "I have a friend—he's a scientist as well, but he's done a great deal of medical study. Last I knew, he was in upstate New York. I'll give him a call."
"Anyone we know?" Natasha inquired, her probing tone provoking an uneasy glance from the scientist.
"SHIELD might know of him," Banner admitted. "Supposedly Tony met him some years ago. Dr. Henry McCoy."
Natasha did not even have to search her memory banks for that one. She arched an incredulous eyebrow at Banner.
"Beast?"
"He prefers Hank," Banner said stiffly. "I'm going to call him anyway. If there's anyone Tony will respond well to, it's him."
Steve looked between them.
"Who is McCoy, and why did you call him Beast?"
Note: Making this assumption that Steve has yet to have met the X-Men. I know these things cross over all the time, but I'm pretty firmly entrenched in movie-verse, which does not like to mingle quite so freely. Hopefully I don't utterly fail at this...