"Okay." Tony said a short while later, brushing his hands off on his jeans. "We saved my life and destroyed most of my lab which involved a not so insubstantial amount of male bonding. We uncovered a Nazi infiltration into our government's most classified agency. We also just ate the most amazing street tacos this state has to offer for dinner, you're welcome. The only thing we have left to do now is to sit here and listen to me tell a story with open minds. The fun part is, you don't have to believe me at first, and questions for proof are encouraged. I am 80% sure that none of you are going to leave here fully believing me. My hope is that over time, as I'm right about more things, you'll see that I'm not crazy and I'm absolutely telling you the truth."
Tony pulled the stool from the piano over to face the curved couch as he addressed the people in the room. Thankfully, there was room for everyone else to sit on the couch. They all sat across from him, aside from Fury who elected to stand behind it and tower over everyone.
"I'm from the future. Alright. Pause. I know, everyone has questions."
"Tony that's ridiculous. You aren't from the future. Even you can't build a time machine. That's impossible." Rhodey asserted looking annoyed.
"I don't know man. I've only known this guy for a day, but did you see what he did in a couple of hours the lab? I'm pretty sure if anyone could, it's this guy." Clint countered lazily from his spot beside Natasha.
"Even if he could, time travel doesn't work like that. It isn't like Back to the Future. Any attempt to change things would just result in a different timeline variation. Also, if he's from the future, that means our current Tony is just bopping around somewhere else in exactly the same timeline, which could cause either mass confusion or result in paradoxical anomalies." Pepper argued from between Rhodey and Happy.
"Most importantly though, you can't have created time travel because you promised me in our last month at college that if you ever managed it, I could have first go." Rhodey argued heatedly leaning forward to meet Tony's eyes. Pepper laughed silently beside him and rolled her eyes.
"Now, Honeybear. You know I would never break a promise I made at three in the morning in my underwear. That's just bad luck. When I did invent time travel, I promise I made sure you went first. Right after we sent Clint for the test run." Tony pushed on over Rhodey's indignant reply and Clint's victorious whoop. "But you're right Pepper, or I should say, I'm right, because I'm the one who taught you all of that when you asked me to invent time travel to give you more time to finish paperwork. That is exactly how the time travel that I invented worked. Thankfully, that's not what I used to travel to this time."
"Okay, I'll bite. What did you use, Stark?" Nat asked, sharing a smirk with Coulson and Maria Hill.
"Has anyone ever heard of the Infinity Stones?" Stark questioned, knowing no one would have. "Of course, you haven't. Okay, so I'm about to tell you some things that you aren't going to believe for a while. But in the coming months, I'm going to be proven right."
"Wait. So, we were actually supposed to believe the time travel thing?" Happy interjected. "Cause I gotta tell you, Boss. I kinda feel like even that's a stretch. I mean. You don't really look any older. And if the palladium has been poisoning you since you got that thing, how could you work on time travel before you fixed that and not go back to before you even got the injury? What's the point in that."
Tony sighed. There was no way he was going to be able to tell this shit linearly. "Fine. You raise some pretty good questions Hap. The reason I don't look any older is because of the kind of time travel I used. As I traveled through time, time traveled through me. I've been de-aged. Which also answers the question Pepper posited earlier about whether there was another Tony Stark running around in this timeline. There's not. I'm the only one. I was able to travel back through my own timestream instead of entering a new one. Imagine it like a video tape; I've been rewound. Affectively, the only part of me that's from the future right now is my mind."
"So, you admit this is all in your head then?" Fury finally spoke looking bored. "Can you just skip to the part where you tell us how the fuck you know who we are and how exactly you found out HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD?" He demanded leaning over the back of the couch to better stare at Tony menacingly.
"Actually, no. I need to start with the Infinity Stones or none of this is going to make any sense." Tony answered, ignoring the look Fury was giving him to grab a tablet from his coffee table. It wasn't exactly high tech, but it would do for any examples he needed to draw.
"Fine, Stark. But you better get to the fucking point soon or I'm dragging your ass in for questioning." Fury grouched, finally taking a seat beside Hill.
"Thank you." Tony sighed and wondered how to start. This would be so much easier to explain if Thor had already made his visit to New Mexico. There was no one to back up his assertion that magic was real. "Okay. So, Fury. You said you've never heard of the Infinity Stones. I believe you. However, you have come into contact with one. According to Carol Danvers, you helped her recover the Tesseract from some aliens back in the 90's. It was a glowing blue cube."
And now Fury was standing again.
"That shit is classified, Stark! How the fuck do you even know that name?" He demanded heatedly, leaning into Tony's personal space.
"I know her name the same way I know the story. She told me when she rescued me from starvation in the middle of space in the year 2018. You were dead. Although, I guess neither one of us knew that at the time." Tony snapped, already getting annoyed at how many interruptions he had had. He was definitely regretting the whole 'questions are welcome' statement he had made earlier. "Now, can I please tell you what the Infinity Stones are and how they work?"
Tony waited until Fury sat back down to continue. "The Tesseract is one of 6 stones spread across the galaxy. The cube is merely a vessel for the stone within. It can manipulate space matter. It's called the space stone. The others are called and can manipulate reality, power, soul, mind, and time. When used together, they can manipulate everything and do anything the wielder wishes." Tony chanced a glance over the people on the couch. "How we doing? You need me to elaborate on any of that?" he asked.
"Yeah. Who made them? Where'd they come from? How'd you find them? Also, that's not science." Rhodey answered, apparently the only one willing to play along anymore. Even Clint was looking a bit annoyed now.
"Thank you for asking Honeybear. I have no idea who made them, I'm not sure where they came from, the story I tell next will tell you how I came to have them, and no. It isn't science. It's magic." Tony gave a little flourish with his hands at the end.
Clint sniggered from his spot on the couch. "You mean it's a trick. Real magic doesn't exist." He stated rolling his eyes at Tony.
"Fine. You can all believe what you want. You asked how I know you all though, so I'm gonna tell you. Along with a bunch of personal things I could only know if you had told me or if I had had years of knowing you all to learn them, and I'm also gonna give you a rough timeline of events that are going to come true in the next few months and prove my story to be right." Tony said, standing up to pace the room, leaving the tablet behind on the table. Thankfully, no one had asked for any visual aids so far, so Tony had yet to need to draw anything.
"Let's start with an event that's going to happen in about 6 months. A man called Thor, an alien prince with powers like a god, is gonna land on Earth in New Mexico. He'll be accompanied by a massive hammer that no one can lift made of materials that are not of this world. A week later, once he has learned the lesson his father sent him to Earth to learn, Thor will summon his hammer and use it to beat the crap out of a droid his brother sent to Earth to beat him up. Then, he'll go peacefully back to the world he came from." Tony ignored the looks of disbelief and amusement this portion of the story earned him.
"This is mostly important because of SHIELD. The appearance of super powered aliens causes an uproar for the upper management and they decide to dedicate a team of scientist and agents to poke at the tesseract to see if they can both, learn more about it, and arm themselves in case of an impending alien invasion. Which is of course the very thing that actually summons the invasion when it happens a few months after Thor visits." Tony said, glad that everyone was finally being quiet enough to let him talk.
He hoped they were all still paying attention. He had some doubts, particularly about Maria Hill who was surreptitiously tapping away at her phone when she thought Tony couldn't see her. Oh well, he'd let it slide. Maybe she was just multitasking.
"Now, this next part I only learned from Thor, far after the events took place. Apparently, after he went home, he and his brother had a fight for the right to inherit the throne or something. This was because while he was away Thor's brother Loki found out he was actually adopted and was worried that Thor was set to inherit only because Daddy loved him more. During the fight, their father woke up and told Loki to knock it off, which, to Loki, meant that he was secretly siding with Thor, and so Loki, being the overdramatic bitch that he apparently is, threw himself off a space bridge and fell into an abyss." Tony did his best not to look too confused at this part of the story. Thor had been very drunk when he had recanted it for everyone while Tony and Bruce had been working out the last of the kinks in the time travel plans. He had also started crying halfway through, which had made it even harder to understand him.
"Wait… Their names are Thor and Loki. What, is their father named Odin?" Clint snorted incredulously.
"Actually, yes. They're supposedly the ancient beings the figures in Norse Mythology are based on. They're like a thousand years old or something, I think. Whatever, we're getting off topic." Tony shook his head and rubbed at his eyes. "Look, just try, and suspend your disbelief. Remember, this is part of the story which can be proved as soon as Thor comes to Earth six months from now."
Tony threw himself back onto his piano stool to continue. The pacing wasn't helping him think. "Okay, anyway. Eventually, according to what Loki later told Thor, Loki fell through a wormhole in space for about a week and then wound up on a mostly devoid planet called Sanctuary that was occupied by two beings. One was called The Other. The leader was called Thanos. Loki claimed to Thor that after months of The Other's torture, they used a scepter to twist his mind. He had always longed for the right to rule Asgard, as it had always been promised to his favored brother. They twisted that desire in him to convince him to conquest Earth. Thanos then granted him the very scepter that had been used to warp his mind and sent him to Earth to open a wormhole and lead their alien army to demolish us."
"I'm sorry, what?" Rhodey asked looking put out. "Tony, are you telling me this guy lead an interplanetary attack on Earth and then claimed emotional manipulation made him do it?" Tony noticed Natasha look down at her feet.
"You would be surprised at how thoroughly people can be brainwashed man." Clint defended gently moving his arm around Nat's shoulders in a subtle motion.
"Clint's right Rhodes. It's incredibly easy for people even on Earth." Tony asserted. "Never mind the fact that this scepter was powered by the mind stone. It could cause true mental manipulation. Under its influence you would maintain almost everything of your own personality, except for whatever motivations you would have to resist doing its master's bidding. And make no mistake. Thanos was its master. Loki was just the guy carrying it."
"Anyway," Tony continued. "Thanos sent Loki to Earth to collect the Tesseract, as he wanted to use it and the scepter to rule the Galaxy. Loki used a wormhole created by the Tesseract to get here, and then using the scepter he immediately turned as many SHIELD operatives as he could. Including you, Clint. The control of the scepter made you kill friends. I know you were still highly upset about it years later. My easy forgiveness of you and then complete unwillingness to understand another situation involving the mind control of the man that I found out was used to kill my parents caused a pretty big rift between us for a few years. You were right though, and in the end, after I viewed the files on what all had actually been done to the man, I admitted it and forgave him. So, thanks for telling me I was being an unreasonable asshole and all that stuff. That's off topic right now though." Tony reminded himself.
He ignored the shock and discomfort on Clint's face. It seemed like he was beginning to take Tony's story seriously. Though, a quick examination of the rest of the listeners told Tony that Clint was the only one. "The next part is when I met all of the rest of you. Well. Some of the rest of you. I already knew Fury as he had offered me a spot on a team he called the Avengers, but then I started acting like an idiot because I was dying from Palladium poison and it gave me an existential crises. Then he sent Natasha to investigate me under the assumed name Natalie Rushman, and I made her my new assistant."
"WAIT. You fired me?! What the hell, Tony!" Pepper interrupted indignantly.
"Of course, I didn't fire you. I thought I was going to die, so I went ahead and made you CEO so that no one could contest it like they would have if I had left it in my will. Then, I gave Rhodey an Iron Man suit that I named War Machine. Later, after he let the US Army get their smarmy hands all over it they painted it up like Captain America's long lost robot brother and redubbed it the Iron Patriot, because they insist on being the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet, but again, I'm getting off topic." Tony defended himself, ignoring the dumbfounded look Pepper gave him at that news. He noticed Rhodey looked excited at the prospect of his own suit, but thankfully refrained from interrupting.
"Fury summoned us all to Germany to help him track down Loki who was there to steal some dude's eye. Nobody ask me why, it's been like 11 years so I really don't remember, and I'm not even sure anyone even told me then. We were transporting him back, It was me, Natasha, and Captain America-"
"What?!" Clint exclaimed in amused skepticism.
"Man, come on, you cannot expect us to believe that shit!" Rhodey yelled doubtfully.
"Fucking Captain America. Come on Boss. This shit isn't even funny anymore." Happy said tiredly.
"Where did we find him?" Coulson interrupted the statements of disbelief with a note of seriousness. Tony was surprised. The man had been quiet since he sat down, and Tony hadn't realized until then that he was watching Tony without an ounce of suspicion. It seemed he was giving Tony the benefit of the doubt. Or at least reserving his judgement for the end of the story.
"He's somewhere in the Arctic. I'll show you the exact coordinates as soon as we finish here as long as Fury promises not to let SHIELD oversee his reintegration into society. Don't forget kids: SHIELD is HYDRA too. They messed him up pretty bad last time. He was already an old geezer from the forties who kind of had a permanent stick up his ass and a mild no-fun policy without their help, but they made it so much worse. Gave him all kinds of misrepresented knowledge and completely impeded his ability to function normally in the 21st Century without their support. I am not about to let that shit happen again. It was a bitch trying to deal with him the first time. Especially with all the right-wing propaganda bullshit they tried to force down his throat the first time. The poor dude didn't even know gay marriage was a thing until after it was legal in every state, and he still only found out because he happened to pass by a wedding in the park on his way to the gym one morning. Poor old fucker was so confused when he called me to ask for an explanation. And then he was embarrassed because apparently everyone had assumed he would be a bigot." Tony laughed, remembering what was likely the last easy conversation they had had before the team had been broken up by Tony's guilt complex, his lack of impulse control, and the Sokovia Accords.
Tony shook himself and refocused. "Anyway, back to the story. We had Loki captured in the jet, and then Thor, who no one on the jet had ever met, flew in, and stole him. After a small misunderstanding and subsequent tumble, Thor helped us collect Loki again and we all continued back to the Helicarrier. Which we found out later is exactly what Loki wanted." Tony sighed and gathered his thoughts, taking a sip of his watered-down drink from dinner before he resumed.
"Bruce Banner, a scientist who was trying to create a new super soldier serum and accidentally turned himself into a giant green guy with a very low I.Q. called The Hulk, but only when he's angry, was also on the Helicarrier. His scepter was put in a mobile lab for Bruce and me to look over. We didn't know until later that it was influencing us all to disagree and fight. While we were all distracted squabbling with each other and finding out about the Tesseract powered weapons SHIELD had neglected to tell us about, Loki had Clint track the carrier and, once we were close enough to New York, he had Clint crash a jet into the side, which triggered Bruce to go big green and angry and try to smash the shit out of Natasha. He eventually jumped out of the carrier while attacking a SHIELD driven quinjet that was attacking him, don't worry the driver survived, and Bruce met back up with us later after he had cooled down some. Clint made it into the ship and he and Natasha had a super amazing spy fight which culminated in Nat knocking Clint unconscious for a little bit. When he woke up, he was back to his normal self, and the mind control was gone." Clint looked relieved.
"Unfortunately," Tony continued, "Loki escaped and took his scepter with him. We figured out he was headed to a building I owned in New York that was powered by my element. He needed it to power the massive wormhole he was having a scientist build over Midtown to funnel Thanos's army in. We all went to New York to fight the aliens and attempt to close the portal. At some point, while we were fighting Loki and the aliens, the scientist that had built the wormhole machine got knocked out. When he woke up he was able to tell us about a failsafe he worked into the portal. We only needed the scepter to close the portal, so Natasha and Selvig, the scientist, grabbed it."
Tony sighed. "They were about to close it when Fury informed me that the idiots above him had decided to send a nuke to bomb the city. When the nuke arrived I flew it up through the wormhole and directed it back at Thanos's forces before I lost power. At that point I finally understood what was happening. This wasn't a spoiled disgruntled prince come to claim a land to rule, this was an entire fleet of powerful enemies intent on wiping Earth completely out of the galaxy.
I lost consciousness and fell back through the wormhole right as it closed. My suit was completely drained and Hulk had to catch me before I became a smear on the pavement, but I lived. Then we collected Loki and took him back into custody, and everyone went out for Shawarma. That's how we all met. And how we formed the Avengers. The End. Questions?"
A/N: So, for the next few chapters, Tony will continue summarizing every thing he's been through since he became Iron Man. All of this will technically be a rehash of the MCU movies leading up to Endgame from Tony's perspective. Hopefully no one finds this too boring. I know it can be annoying sometimes when it feels like the story's going nowhere new. I promise this one will. Just hang in there and we'll get there eventually.
The only main differences from canon in his story will be that Tony and Pepper didn't date for very long which honestly probably won't even be referenced in the rehash and also, as I tried to make obvious, the old fan theory that Loki was under the influence of the scepter during the events of the first Avengers will true in Tony's version of events. I will be taking nothing from the Loki show because as much as I enjoyed the main premise, and the TVA ,and Owen Wilson, and so many other things, it really wouldn't work in this fic as the TVA would definitely prune any reality that involved this much unauthorized time travel. Also, I just really didn't like how having so much of the main focus on Sylvie seemed to push Loki into becoming a background character in a show that was supposed to be his. Plus, I really wasn't a fan of the Loki/Sylvie selfcest ship.
Also: Please let me know if you see any typos or mistakes so I can edit them. I always check, but I have MS and I really haven't been feeling very well this week (read: like dogshit. I literally feel like dogshit.) so I'm sure I've probably missed a few.
Let me know what you thought! =)