A/N: Not much of action in this one; more like tossing foreshadow breadcrumbs. The next few chapters will deal with something big, Mass-Effect related.
A/N: Since I am keeping Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. canon until the end of Season 4, there's an obvious question that comes to mind; how's Coulson still alive after so many years even though he made a deal with Ghost Rider?
Well, in my fic's canon, he did make a deal… but the Ghost Rider didn't demand the T.A.H.I.T.I. magic holding him together to be destroyed. Since the Real Deal was revealed only in Season 5 - coincidentally in the episode titled 'Real Deal'; isn't that crazy? - I can get away with it.
In my fic, the Rider asked for something very different, something that will play a major role in this fic, much later down the line.
The deal won't come to light for a while, and in my fic, no one knows the truth because they've all forgotten that he made the deal in the first place (they had much bigger things to worry about re. Decimation).
But it will be revealed, I promise you.
Too many questions, and not enough answers right?
I know it's frustrating. But patience is the name of the game. Every thread that I keep open will be answered, somewhere down the line. One of the threads that I alluded to in Chapter 7 is closed in this one.
Buckle up for the long haul, folks.
I am going somewhere with all of this.
Disclaimer:
The Iron Man is a sci-fi novel by Ted Hughes. I do not own it. I have just used a tiny, relevant passage in this fic.
Warnings: Mentions and vague descriptions of night terrors. I don't actually know whether this could be a trigger, but better to be safe than sorry. Stay safe, friends.
Back now again the old road
disappearing through white woods,
where he lay down and breathed
no more.
- Gravel; David Baker
April 7th, 2025
Stark Residence, Georgia
The slam of a door, followed by the unusually heavy tread of footfalls are her only warnings before Pepper rounds the corner and walks straight into her.
Isabelle grabs her elbows to steady her, so she's startled when the other woman places her fists against her chest and shoves. It's not a hard push, by any means, but it's unmistakable. Her hands drop as if burned.
Pepper looks stricken. "I'm sorry, I just…" she runs a trembling hand down her face. "I can't - not tonight." And she brushes past her and disappears down the darkened hallway.
Isabelle stares after her for a long moment, before heading for the room Pepper had just emerged from. In the beginning, she had actively avoided that particular part of the house, because she and Morgan have very little in common, and Isabelle had done nothing to change that status quo, but the past few nights have forced her to reevaluate that opinion.
It's too early, however, for Morgan to be sleeping, so curiosity overcomes her natural reticence, and she knocks and pushes open the door. Faint moonlight shines through the window, highlighting the overturned chair on the floor almost accusingly. From the bed, Morgan's eyes snap to hers - Isabelle imagines an almost anticipatory look to her gaze, so, after a moment of hesitation, she steps inside.
One of the blankets is trailing the ground, so she picks it up and tucks it beneath Morgan's feet. Her niece's eyes follow her unblinkingly as she rights the chair and settles in.
It occurs to her only then that she hasn't planned past this moment and now has no idea what to do. "Your mom's just tired tonight," she says finally, awkwardly. "Is there anything I can do…?"
Morgan doesn't reply for the longest moment, before wriggling out an arm and pointing to the bottom drawer of the nightstand. Isabelle opens it to find a well-worn, dog-eared book, and she knows what it is even before the familiar cover greets her.
She snorts. "Your father was not a subtle man," she says softly, staring at a copy of Ted Hughes' The Iron Man. She flicks through the yellowed pages.
"Daddy always said it was your favorite bedtime story."
She strokes the blocky figure on the cover, which - now that she's looking with seasoned eyes - looks eerily similar to the Mark 1. "I think it had more of an impact on him, actually."
"Read the last chapter to me," Morgan orders.
She stares. Her fingers tighten around the book. "You...uh, want me to… oh. Okay."
She clears her throat and flips through the pages.
"There was no time to be wasted…"
Her voice is monotonous, and she suspects she sounds as though she's reading a mission report rather than a story, but Morgan doesn't seem to mind. Her eyes disappear beneath the covers.
"... At this point, the Iron Man was terribly afraid. For what would happen if the flames went on getting fiercer and fiercer? He would melt. He would melt and drip into the flames like so much treacle and that would be the end of him. So even though he grinned up at the dragon as though he were enjoying the flames, he was not enjoying them at all, and he was very very frightened…"
It's then that she's interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a muffled sob.
She pauses, and there's just steady breathing for a while, and just when Isabelle is about to get back to the book, she hears it again, louder this time.
"Hey…" she murmurs, tugging the blankets gently, " - hey, hey, hey. What's wrong?"
"Nothing," a small voice hiccups wetly.
"Want me to get your mom?"
"No!" Morgan cries, tossing the blanket. Her face is streaked with tears, and she fists at her bloodshot eyes. "Please don't tell her!"
"Only if you tell me why you're crying."
Her eyes flicker to the Iron Man on the stand. "Do you… do you think he was afraid? When he was burning?"
It hits with a cold understanding that the child isn't talking about the character.
Isabelle swallows. She has no words that would bring comfort; she only has the truth. "Yes," she says, her throat thick. "He was very afraid. But not of dying. He was afraid of leaving you."
"Then why did he do it?!"
"Because the Iron Man had something to protect. The Iron Man might've been very afraid, but the thought… the thought of the dragon swallowing the whole world, swallowing you - that was more terrifying."
Morgan sobs harder then, smearing snot and tears all over her face. "I'm," she tries, and her breath hitches, " - sorry," she mumbles miserably, sniffling into the tissues Isabelle hands over.
"Nothing to apologize for."
She shakes her head vehemently. "I'm a Stark. Starks are made of iron. Starks don't cry because even the best sword rusts in saltwater."
Isabelle flinches, the echoes of ancient words ringing in her head, with a voice that should've never known them. "Who told you that?" she whispers hoarsely. "Did Daddy say that?"
"No. I made F.R.I.D.A.Y. replay some of Grandpa Howard's videos. He said that to Daddy when Daddy was crying in his workshop."
The sudden rush of familiar anger startles her, betraying the fact that she hadn't done half as good a job burying her childhood resentments as she'd thought. She can't even pinpoint the incident that Morgan speaks of - there had been so many.
"Well, I think you got part of that wrong, baby bird." The endearment startles her as much as it does Morgan, who peeks behind her tiny fingers. "Stark men are made of iron. Stark women, however, are made of titanium. And you know the thing about titanium? It's strong and resistant to corrosion."
She swallows. "So you can cry, and it won't make you any less strong for it. It won't make you any less of a Stark."
Morgan nods, her lip trembles, and then she bursts into tears. It is ugly, and sad, and raw; everything that Isabelle is, but can't afford to be.
She eases the child into the bed; Morgan, who mentions her dad almost any chance she gets, a habit that no doubt frustrates and hurts Pepper, especially tonight when the weight of memories would've snapped the thin control the woman has over her own grief.
Her mother's portrait in the Mansion comes to mind, seated in front of a piano, bright and joyful.
The song comes to her much more naturally than the story had.
April 8th, 2025
New Avengers Facility
New York City
He dreams about this place sometimes.
It has never been home to him, not like the Tower had. Even after the Decimation, he'd preferred traveling the world, helping where he could - as Bruce Banner and as the Hulk, and later, as both. But the few memories he has of the Compound have left indelible marks on his psyche.
The modified seismometer he's installed on his StarkPad beeps insistently. The escalating spikes on the graph are punctuated by sharp tremors beneath his feet, and his hand grabs onto a metallic beam to steady himself.
He waits until the quakes peter out, then follows the readings to the origin. The path the device is forcing him to take seems oddly familiar, and a cold pit forms in his stomach.
His huge feet stutter to a stop even before the instrument drops into a high-pitched flatline.
It's a while before he is able to repel the haze long enough to punch in a number with thickset fingers. "This is Bruce Banner. We… uh… we met a few years ago."
"I know who you are," says the face on the Pad, calm and unruffled, even so late at night. "Why are you calling me, Doctor Banner?"
"... I just found something. And I think you might be very interested in it."
Stark Residence, Georgia
A scream rends the night open.
She is taking the stairs three at a time even before her mind acknowledges the conscious decision to do so. Pepper's already in Morgan's bedroom, gently restraining the thrashing child. Morgan's eyes are closed, her face red as she shrieks desperately.
They have established a routine for this, so Isabelle takes her place while Pepper heads to the bathroom and emerges with a wet cloth. "Tonight's a bad one," she murmurs.
Pepper gently dabs her daughter's sweaty, distressed face. "Some months are always worse. October, April… though I don't understand the reasoning behind the latter, it's not as if she was in any way affected by the…" she breaks off, but the damage is already done.
Isabelle doesn't reply. After all, it's the very same reason Pepper had insisted she stay here, at the lakehouse, this whole week, ostensibly to celebrate Morgan's upcoming birthday, but she knows the real reason - the redhead just wants to keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn't disappear again, right on the anniversary of the Snap.
It's the very same reason she's not going to risk sleeping tonight, dendrotoxin patches or no. Her sister-in-law shouldn't have to deal with two sufferers.
Pepper's eyes are heavy with self-loathing. "I'm sorry, I just… the anxiety must've carried over - she was on edge the whole day."
"Weren't we all?"
The other woman just shakes her head, rises, and heads back into the bathroom.
Predictable though it has become over the past few days, being on the outside of a night terror hasn't gotten easier. There's little she can do except try to keep Morgan calm and wait for her to come out of it on her own.
But tonight, it seems, is anything but routine.
The child shudders out a breath as her head shoots up, and her tiny palms grab onto Isabelle's face with surprising strength, forcing them to lock eyes.
Morgan's are burning a brilliant orange.
Her mouth opens. "It's all connected," the child monotones, in a voice that seems to fold in on itself.
Before Isabelle can do more than inhale sharply, Pepper walks in. "Oh. She never wakes up this fast."
"What… no," Isabelle breathes, easing her niece back into the bed. Her eyes are still wide, a bright orange flooding outwards from the iris, into the pupil and finally the sclera, until all she can see is the fiery hue. A sudden thought makes her stomach sink. "Did you ever test her for Extremis?"
Pepper freezes. "Tony took some blood," she says. "Results came back negative; apparently Extremis isn't genetically transferable. Where'd that come from?"
A pearl of unease forms in the pit of her stomach. "What else could explain the orange eyes?" She asks, pointing to Morgan's unblinking gaze, now fixed at the ceiling.
Pepper tips her daughter's head back and checks her pupils. "I don't see anything."
"What're you talking about; it's right there, look - ."
But when she turns back to the child, her irises have returned to a familiar brown. Eyelids flutter and close.
After a moment, tiny whistling snores emerge from her mouth.
A cold shiver runs down Isabelle's spine.
The other woman is looking at her with an expression that makes her lungs tighten. "Izzy," she says carefully. "Maybe you should get some sleep."
Isabelle squeezes her eyes shut, forcibly shakes herself out of the orange-tinted vision. "Have you been monitoring the frequency of the terrors?"
Pepper stares for a long, concerned moment, then sighs and sinks into the bed, her fingers running softly through Morgan's hair. "It started to get worse around September; before, they used to be weeks apart. I've tried medication, meditation, therapists… none of them work."
There's a question she almost doesn't want answered. And with Extremis memories flooding her brain - "She mentioned him… burning. Did she… see Tony? After the battle, I mean."
"No. I didn't allow her to, not until… not until after T.A.H.I.T.I." She swallows. "Though I think at this point her imagination is making up something much worse than reality."
"There's little that can be worse than reality."
Her sister-in-law's eyes are haunted. "You'd be surprised."
The silence that follows is broken by F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s tentative voice overhead. " Skipper, there's an anomaly…"
"No." Pepper's voice is unyielding as she glares at her.
"Pep…"
The chair wobbles dangerously as she jumps up. "You're not going, not now, not tonight!"
"Whatever it is - I'll come back."
"You can't promise that!"
"If I may… " F.R.I.D.A.Y. interrupts, " - this is different. Master Wong sent coordinates."
There's a discernible hesitation before a hologram of the map of the UNAS pops up over the bed. The A.I. zooms in, and Isabelle staggers as though hit.
It feels like fate, like dominoes falling, one event after another, and she's doubly glad now that Morgan hadn't seen her father immediately after the Battle, charred and broken, ripped apart by something that should never have been held by mortal hands. Stephen Strange's parting words ring in her head.
Tony Stark's story is not yet finished.
"I need to go."
Pepper is so pale Isabelle fears she's going to pass out. Her head drops, and she shudders out a deep breath and then nods.
Isabelle surprises both of them when she stumbles forward and brushes a trembling kiss onto her cheek. Pepper freezes then buries her head in her shoulder. She can feel the wetness of her tears against her skin.
"I'll come back," she says again, and it's low and fierce, and she means it with every cell in her body. "I promise." She's hardly able to tear herself away from the other woman's warmth, and her eyes linger on Morgan's steadily rising sternum before she feels a hand circling her wrist hard enough for it to hurt.
"You need to go," Pepper says, urgently. Her eyes are wet but determined. "I'll wait."
Isabelle can't find it in herself to shatter that hope she can see in her eyes, even though they both know this isn't going to end the way they want.
New Avengers Facility
New York
She hasn't been here since the Battle.
She knows Jim comes here, on the anniversary of the day it happened, as though the sight of it would somehow redeem him of his supposed failures, but she herself hasn't had the courage to return.
The sand is orange and brown, stained with the ashes of monsters and the blood of heroes. Nothing grows here, nothing has grown here since the Battle, but she finds it fitting, in a way, that this place, unlike all the other places where people have died, has become nothing more than a barren wasteland, a place of death.
Perhaps, if she had been a better person, she would've liked something to have grown here, grass, flowers, maybe even weeds. A sign of renewal of life, of Tony living on in nature, nourishing the world.
But she's not a better person. This fits, she thinks to herself, swallowing back the ever-present grief combined with nausea. This is how it should be. Let every soul know that her brother died on this spot, and the universe itself mourns him so much that it hasn't been able to even attempt to restore the place of his death.
She shudders out a breath and lands in the midst of the ruins of the once prominent Compound. It's been picked clean by vultures, both human and beast. Hearing the telltale crunch of glass underfoot, she slips around the corner to find a huge figure scrounging in the ruins. He looks up. "Oh, good, you're finally here."
"Bruce? What are you doing here?!"
"Looking for my sensors," Bruce Banner replies, pointing to the huge pile of half-melted metal bars and rods behind him. "I rigged them up after the Snap to monitor any potential gamma emissions or similarly unexplainable energy bursts. Never bothered to turn them off. Apparently, some of them are still working, despite being buried beneath tons of rubble."
Isabelle's brow clears. "You were the one who found the anomaly."
He nods. "My systems pinged with some pretty heavy-duty seismic activity around these parts." As though prompted by his words, the ground trembles beneath their feet, forcing Isabelle to brace herself against his tree-trunk like forearms. "Kinda like that one," he points out. "Wong can tell you the rest."
She nods as she rights herself and walks those few hundred meters to where Wong stands.
She finds that she knows where she's going even before she gets there.
Before her lies a very familiar pile of rock and broken metal beams that stars in her nightmares, like a perverse cairn, forged before even its subject passed, as though the universe itself was waiting for her brother to die, even as it mourned his loss.
But she can say for certain that the sight before her, while cruelly familiar, has never occurred in her dreams.
Sparks of light flicker in and out of existence in front of the pile of rock. In a blink-and-you-will-miss-it moment, a football-sized hole rips the air, and she expects to catch a glimpse of a very different, very dark, and very alien landscape through it.
But it's something much worse.
A perverted ocean of planets and bolide objects in space that distorts around itself; breaking apart and putting itself back together in twisted, paradoxical ways.
Like on Svartálfheim, the flood seems to be reaching out, bearing down on the portal and then rolling back into itself when it fails to break through. "What's holding it back?"
"The three Sanctums form a barrier against malevolent incursions from Dormammu's realm. As long as they stand, the Dark Dimension will not come through." Despite his words, Wong's eyes are tighter than they've ever been, and his legs are in that familiar stance she'd seen only during the Battle of Earth.
The earth shudders again, stronger this time. "What's with that?"
"Like Selvig's breach, this one is also being held open deliberately by someone, or something. Energy is bleeding into this dimension from another, manifesting in the form of earthquakes. This requires a lot of power, and any suspects I might've had are accounted for. Except…," he hesitates, and she knows who he's thinking of.
"Strange. You think he survived that?"
He shrugs. "Strange's magic is only surpassed by his ingenuity. There are few in this universe who could survive in Dormammu's realm for any length of time, and he is one of them - Time Stone or no."
"… but the location?" She fights to keep her voice from betraying any hope in her voice. "The positioning of the portal can't be a coincidence."
"This is a vulnerable location - the veil keeping dimensions apart is fragile around this area due to the massive amount of magical energy discharged by the Stones."
"The Stones were used back there," she points to somewhere behind her. Neither of them turns to look. "This was where…," she can't finish the sentence.
"The war was won," Wong says quietly, and it's not at all accurate, because they didn't win that day, she didn't win that day, but she's also not had to live through the Decimation, so winning now means something very different to those who survived the Snap, and those who didn't. "But this is also where the Stones… collected what was owed ."
Like with Morgan, there were no words he could've used to ease the blow, so she grits her teeth against the now-familiar agony and turns back to the breach. It is mostly steady now, and big enough for a fully grown adult to crawl through. "Can't you stop them from coming through?"
He shoots her a look. "I can, but I don't think I should."
"Explain."
"Whoever it is has been incessantly trying to get through for hours. There's little to no guarantee they'll stop even if I close this breach permanently. There are far too many vulnerable places in the universe. What's to say they won't just try with one that we can't get to easily?"
"A chokepoint," she nods.
Just then, a flash of fire bursts out of the portal, prompting them to stumble back. Isabelle lifts icy fists, and bright mandalas snap out of Wong's own raised ones. But before they could do more than ready themselves for a battle, a figure stumbles out of the fire. With a snap, the breach closes behind him.
He falls to his knees, racking coughs shuddering through his body. What was once probably a black leather jacket is filthy and shredded. Thick, ropy scar tissue divides the landscape that is his chest, which is stained with blood and dust.
The only thing that is intact and stainless on his ruined form is the thick metal chain wrapped around his torso.
Tony wouldn't be caught dead wearing that attire.
The sorrow that follows the disappointment is so fierce it almost brings her to her knees. She swallows harshly.
It's then that the stranger's eyes - lit up by the same flames he'd walked out of - lock on hers.
His mouth moves.
Isabelle lowers her fists. Wong makes an aborted motion but doesn't stop her as she walks to the man, who's swaying alarmingly, exhaustion woven through every muscle in his body. But his eyes are still blindingly bright, and so intent upon hers she has no choice except to answer their call.
She is close enough to hear his murmurs. A second too late she realizes she is also close enough for him to grab her.
She has overestimated his exhaustion because he grabs her suit and reels her in. He smells rank, as though he hasn't showered in months. She grabs his arm and sends a warning bolt of cold air. It makes his skin burst out in goosebumps but he doesn't otherwise react. He puts his mouth over her ear.
"The prison is empty," he says and then passes out, slumping sideways into the dead soil.
The Dungeon
The Castle, W.A.N.D HQ
LOCATION: CLASSIFIED
They tell him he's been asleep for almost fourteen hours.
Robbie Reyes rolls his neck and sighs. The adrenaline still burns in his veins, but that's all that burns - for the first time in a long time, the devil inside him is silent.
He's wished for this for years, hoping the Rider would let him go once he felt that Robbie's due was paid - but this wasn't the same. When it comes to the Rider, silence means nothing good.
His prison is surprisingly roomy, holding a containment unit like the one Coulson had hidden him in, back when they'd still been dealing with that rogue robot. They hadn't told him how long ago that was, but one look at Gabe had let him know that it'd been long enough.
He eyes the individuals gathered around him. There's just one that he doesn't immediately identify - the bald monk, Wong. The others are either pleasantly recognizable or bizarrely so - because, despite everything he's seen, coming face-to-face with two Avengers still feels loco.
The Hulk is startling, but it's the sight of Isabelle Collins leaning against the wall is what makes the Rider stir. It's the first sign of life Robbie has sensed in weeks, and so his eyes rove over her figure clinically, assessing the threat she might possess.
He only blinks away when she arches an eyebrow.
Agent - Director, now - Coulson sits before him, flanked by Daisy and Gabe. He'd taken control almost as soon as he'd entered and had ordered Robbie to be freed from his restraints. It'd been a relief; silent or not, the Ghost Rider did not like to be caged, and only the sight of his brother - free, unharmed, and walking - had allowed him to control him as long as he had.
Coulson clears his throat. "You've been gone a while, Robbie."
His perception of time is shot to hell - Daisy barely looks older than the last time he'd seen her, but Gabe and Coulson look as though they've aged decades. "Looks like," he agrees.
"We are very eager to hear an explanation."
"Even them?" He nods towards the Avengers and the monk.
"You can trust them," Coulson says simply.
The devil inside him senses no lies, so Robbie sighs and leans back against the chair. The Rider hadn't been happy with their new reality of having to rely upon allies, but what's coming can't be stopped by just the two of them.
"After I left the Darkhold where no one would find it, I roamed the deepest parts of the universe; fighting, killing for the Ghost Rider," he begins. "Time doesn't pass in those dimensions the same way it does on Earth, so we don't know how long ago it was when we felt it for the first time." He shakes his head. "Like reality itself was ripping apart at the seams."
Wong stiffens. "…the Snap."
"The what?"
"The Decimation," Daisy explains, as though that's supposed to mean something to him. "You… you don't know? It didn't happen to you?"
All of their faces are pale. His heart thuds faster. "What didn't happen to me?"
The silence that falls is deafening. Their mouths open and close, as though struggling to describe just what they'd been through. Nausea churns in his gut.
It's Gabe who finally speaks up. "Half of all life in the universe got wiped, Robbie."
Half of…?
Gabe has never been much for exaggeration, so the look on his face tells Robbie that his younger brother means every word. It sends him reeling, trying to imagine the horror of it, the sheer impossibility. "How's that possible?"
There's no answer until Coulson looks over to Collins and nods. She works her jaw. "Something called the Infinity Stones," she admits finally. "Thanos used them to cull the population of every species in the universe to exactly fifty percent."
He isn't able to suppress his flinch as the Rider roars inside his mind. The table twists beneath his unforgiving grip, and he groans as hellfire starts scorching at his skin. "… the Rider hates that name," he says through gritted teeth. "The Mad Titan. Half of all life… ¡Dios mío! "
He can sense that his face is more skull than skin, so he heaves in fiery breaths, trying in vain to control the beast that rages inside him. Coulson's team is impassive, but the rest - the ones who don't know him - are staring with various degrees of shock.
Strangely enough, it's the Hulk who finally brings him out of it. "Thanos is dead," he says. "And the Snap was reversed. We made sure of that."
Robbie shakes his head. "He still used the Stones four times. You have no idea the chaos he's wreaked…" he breaks off as Isabelle Collins visibly stiffens, and locks eyes with the Hulk, whose face has lost some of that green tint.
Coulson is looking at him strangely. "Thanos didn't Snap four times - that was…" he stutters to a stop as realization floods his face.
That's when Robbie parses the rest of the Hulk's words. "Wait, reversed? Who reversed it?"
"I did, five years later," the Hulk admits in a low voice, sounding almost haunted about it. He waves his right arm, which looks like it's slowly, painfully healing from the kind of devastation wielding all the Infinity Stones could wreak.
Robbie looks around. There's an understanding that's in the back of his mind, waiting to explain all of these… these differences that he's noticed since he woke up. The strange age differences, the weight he can see in Coulson and Gabe's eyes that's absent from Daisy's, the presence of Avengers in his prison. "How did you reverse it?"
The Hulk hesitates. "We… I brought them back. All of those who were… Decimated."
Robbie shuts his eyes. He can understand it - of course, he can. It would've been hell, it would've been worse than hell, but people always survive, no matter the devastation. He'd done so, after the car accident. So had Gabe. Some would've even bloomed - turned their lives around, making the most of their second chance, married, had children.
To turn back time to before Thanos Snapped would've been unthinkable for the survivors. They'd done the only thing they could.
And in so doing, they'd shattered the universe.
The Rider snarls.
"There was a fourth upheaval," Robbie says. "Smaller, but… had a much deeper impact."
The silence that follows his words is so deep and so heavy it seems to ignite the bits of his soul he still has left. His gaze is drawn to the unnaturally still figure of Isabelle Collins, whose face is wiped clean of all emotion.
They're all careful to not look at her. It doesn't even seem as though any of them is daring to breathe.
"Who was it?"
Her exhale is quiet. "Tony Stark," she says emotionlessly. "He used the Stones to destroy Thanos and his army, wipe them from existence."
There's one thing Robbie's never admitted to anyone, not even to himself if he's being completely honest with himself. The truth is - the thing that's inside him has always been tempted towards broken people, to those so lost they would easily sell their soul to Death himself if he came calling.
Daisy'd been one when he'd first met her. So had Mack. And it's why Robbie himself had proved to be a prime host because when he'd been thrown from his car and hit the road, his soul had crumbled into more pieces than his body had.
And Isabelle Collins - Aquamarine; her soul is strained to the point of breaking by an ocean of grief. He'd have been fooled by the tissue-thin facade of indifference if the Rider hadn't reared up at her words, straining against his restraints to consume her in his Hellfire.
He sighs heavily. He feels the weight of the Decimation in his bones, even though he's never experienced it himself. "And what of the Stones themselves?"
"Destroyed by their own power."
Robbie should've known.
"Thanos -," he says quietly, " - has doomed us all."
The monk understands far more than he lets on. Everyone turns to him as Robbie tries to ensure the Rider won't just burst out of his body and incinerate everything in their path.
"Thanos never understood the Stones beyond what he thought they could give him," Wong explains. "To him, they were just immensely powerful objects that were as old as the universe itself. But each Stone once served a vital purpose in the cosmos."
Coulson stares at him. "Imagine you're explaining to your mother," he tells Wong, who sighs.
"Think of reality as a building. If an earthquake weakens or destroys the base, the foundation, the whole thing comes crashing down. The Infinity Stones were that foundation."
"And Thanos the earthquake," Coulson fills in the blanks. "If the Stones are so vital, then why aren't we just… poofed out of existence?"
"Because it is still crumbling," Wong explains. "Around you, inch by inch, so slowly most can barely feel it. But already there is cause for concern. The inner dimensions - the lowest levels of the building, so to speak - experience it the worst."
Daisy nods to Robbie. "You were in one of these inner dimensions?"
He shakes his head. "I was - until the fourth Snap threw me into something the Rider called the Void or the Dark Dimension."
That has a reaction. Gabe starts, and his eyes flicker to Collins, who goes stiff. Robbie's eyebrows rise. "You've been?"
She nods, her eyes distant. "Breach tossed me into a planet flooded with dark energy from that place. Lost a lot of time."
He nods. "Random breaches into the Dark Dimension have been springing up since Thanos destroyed the Stones. But dark energy is not the biggest problem," Robbie says urgently. "I discovered that the darkest part of that void was once used as a prison." He swallows as the Rider falls silent. "And it is empty."
Collins straightens.
"There are… echoes in there - hollow, empty spaces where terrible evils once existed. Evils that have escaped through one of those breaches I mentioned."
"What were these evils?"
"I don't know. All I know is the Ghost Rider… retreated when he felt them. He… he abandoned me in that void, which would've killed me if I hadn't found the breach I came through."
"So…," Daisy asks, " - you're saying that he… knows what they are?"
He meets her eyes. "Daisy - I'm saying that the Rider fears them."
Gabe rears back. "What can scare the devil himself?" he whispers.
"... something that is incomprehensibly powerful."
The Great Hall
Coulson announces a brief recess to let it all sink in, but Isabelle and Bruce decide to use the break to catch up on some context.
They silently watch the footage of Ghost Rider fighting rogue LMDs on a datapad. She's heard of this… thing. Rumors had come in from LA after the Avengers' Civil War, but she'd always assumed it to be an urban legend. But now they tell her that their prisoner - Gabe Reyes' older brother - claims to be possessed by the devil.
Her fingers snake out to pause the video. The scream of incalculable rage as Robbie Reyes burns into the Ghost Rider, even muted, sends a chill down her spine.
Bruce leans back against the wall and sighs. "His story sounds familiar."
She turns to him. "As in… made up?"
"No. I think he's telling the truth. What I mean is -," he swallows, " - he's talking about this Ghost Rider not coming out, being afraid of whatever escaped this… void. You don't expect a being so powerful as the literal devil to fear anything."
She stares at him as the pieces connect in her mind, and thinks of the conversation she'd had with him, years ago, even as she'd been worried sick over her brother leaving for space in a flying donut. "You're thinking of the Hulk, aren't you? When he got thrashed by Thanos."
He's silent for a long moment, then seems to brace himself. "Do you know why I did an eighteen-month stint in a gamma lab to make myself like this?" He waves at his huge form.
She shakes her head.
"Because even after the Snap, he refused to emerge. I tried begging, bargaining… threatening. Nothing worked. For the very first time, when I actually wanted him to come out, he refused."
He straightens. "But I knew I needed him. So I did the only thing I could - I combined his strength with my mind." His eyes are blank. "Everyone thinks this is what I was supposed to become eventually; that this is our legacy."
"Isn't it?"
"No, Izzy. To get here, to be able to Snap the Gauntlet myself - I had to kill the Hulk. "
She rears. "Kill the… I don't get it. I thought he was… I don't know, a voice in your head."
His smile is bitter. "I don't have anything except his brawn. I had to relearn almost everything about fighting because Hulk's strategy, limited as it was, didn't carry over when I combined us." He looks at her pleadingly, as though willing her to understand. "If I hadn't… if I hadn't forcibly done this to myself - I wouldn't have been able to Snap the Gauntlet and bring back everyone. I wouldn't even have survived putting it on."
"Why didn't you tell us?"
He shrugs, turns away. "Didn't really know how to say it. And besides…" his voice drops to a whisper, " -Tony knew."
She swallows. Something in her aches to know more about the parts of her brother's life she's missed, while at the same time rails against the utter injustice of her not being able to be with him at his most important moments.
"He tried to talk me out of it. We argued about it for days. He thought I should wait for the Hulk to come out whenever he was well and truly ready, but the world was in chaos. He was needed, I was needed, and here he was, being a chicken." He scrubs his face. "But Tony… Tony thought the other guy was traumatized after being thrashed by Thanos."
"Was he right?"
"I don't know. Guess I'll never know. All I knew was that the world, the universe needed the Hulk, and if the Hulk wasn't going to reappear, I would make him. That was what the gamma radiation experiment was, at first - a threat to his existence. A bluff," he insists, his eyes suddenly bright, as though she needs the confirmation. "The other guy knew what I was thinking, what I was planning - he was aware of it. I thought it'd be enough to snap him out."
"But it didn't."
"No. I think - after Ragnarok, he began to trust me. He didn't believe I'd go through with it, and he thought Tony would be able to stop me if I ever tried something like that."
"He would have," she says quietly. "He wouldn't have allowed you to go through with it, not if he…"
"Knew about it, yeah," he nods, looking defeated in a way she's never seen him, not even after Johannesburg. "Tony kept an eye on me, so I slipped away. Went somewhere F.R.I.D.A.Y. couldn't track me down and worked for eighteen months. At the end of it, the Hulk and I were one, because he was dead."
"Do you regret it?"
"I can't, can I? Because I could do the Snap." His voice cracks. "But it feels like, with this, I should've been the one to Snap again. I would've survived it, I think. My chances were definitely higher than Tony's ever were."
His eyes pin her to her place. "Sometimes I wonder… what would've happened if I had listened to Tony?"
"Would he still be alive now?"
Once again, she finds that she has no answer.
"So that's what you're here for?" Daisy asks. "To hunt these evils?"
Robbie shakes his head. "They're too powerful; without the other guy's help, I can't track them down. No, I've come to face a threat much closer to home - anchors," he growls, and he doesn't know how much of that is the Rider, and how much of it is him - in this situation, their hatred is equal.
"What's that?"
"Tears in this dimension that allow other dimensions to bleed through, created by the destruction of the Stones. They can be anything. Places where something terrible happened. The breach that I crawled through - that was one. Mystical objects of great power." He takes a deep breath. "Even people can be anchors, like the android."
"A.I.D.A. wasn't a person."
"But Ophelia was," he points out. "When she created a human body with dark matter, her soul answered the Darkhold's call and became a vulnerable point, a doorway into this realm for evil things to latch onto from the other dimensions."
He leans over the table. "You saw the damage she caused, and she was just one of these things. People becoming anchors are rare, but it is possible. Sorcerers know how to shield themselves, but most humans don't even know there's something to shield against."
"How do you fix them?" Daisy asks.
"I can do it. So can powerful sorcerers. Places are relatively easy to cleanse, and material anchors like powerful artifacts can be destroyed or negated."
"And how do you deal with the people who are anchors?" Collins pipes up from her corner.
He meets her eyes. "I know of only one sure way of destroying the anchor that lingers in a person's soul - burning it with Hellfire."
"That doesn't sound pleasant."
He shrugs. "It's not. The soul will be consumed along with the anchor."
Coulson straightens. "I told you before, Robbie - that's not the way we do things around here."
"You don't have a choice. If there are anchors who are people in the universe, then they've to be stopped before they can destroy the whole of this reality." His face is grim.
"You do not want to face the kind of monsters that can crawl through otherwise."
W.A.N.D. doesn't have anything to hold Reyes; and besides, they don't want to.
Magical mumbo-jumbo still goes over Bruce's head unless he can scientifically quantify it, but he's seen and heard enough to understand that whatever the Ghost Rider's mission, it's up there with the Time Heist on the importance scale.
Wong still has questions though, quietly murmuring to the Reyes brothers. "You said before that you found the breach that you came through. You didn't create it?"
Robbie shakes his head. "The Rider had already retreated by then, and I couldn't call on his powers. That's troubling because someone or something strengthened a breach through a vulnerable location just so I could pass through. Someone powerful enough to maintain stability even now, when the veil between the dimensions is so thin."
"Sounds like they helped," Gabe says thoughtfully.
The older brother snorts. "We know better than to trust another Good Samaritan, don't we Gabe?"
Gabe flinches, then nods after a long moment. Beside him, Wong looks pensive, almost troubled, his eyes far away.
With a wave of his fingers, brings down the wards that prevent the creation of portals or breaches. "Do what you have to," he says quietly. "Cleanse these anchors, but coordinate with us. And for god's sake, Robbie - don't kill anyone."
Reyes seems bemused at being given orders by his younger brother. "I won't… unless they get in my way."
"I don't know…" Agent Johnson shrugs. "I got in your way."
His smile is bright when he turns to her, and his eyes shine with something that makes Bruce think wretchedly of Natasha. "You did," he says softly. "I'll… try to find another way. No promises, though."
"That's all we ask," Coulson says.
Something compels Bruce to step forward then. "Give him time," he says insistently. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Izzy stiffen. "I know he's… scared right now, but he'll come back."
Robbie Reyes eyes him for a long moment, before smiling humorlessly. "I know what you're doing," he says. "And I know you mean well, but… it's really not the same." He licks his lips, thinks for a bit. "You became one with your devil because he was already a part of you. He was born from you."
He spreads his arms. "But the Rider is just that - a rider, and I'm his cabbie. He's slowly burning away my soul. One day, I know he'll leave me for another, and that day I will turn to ash . "
He nods at Bruce's stunned look, then turns away and unwraps the chain from around his torso. With an elaborate flick of his wrist, he rotates it. Sparks burst out of it to form a portal that looks out into a dark alley.
His eyes linger the longest on Daisy Johnson - who nods shyly - before stepping through without a backward glance. The portal closes with a whisper.
Bruce feels lost as they all disperse. Maybe he'd gotten this all wrong, maybe he's just…
"Hey," Izzy's voice breaks through his downward spiral. She's looking at him as though she knows exactly what's going through his head. "I'm heading back to the cabin. Pepper would love to have you over for dinner."
He shakes his head. He's glad he has a valid excuse for this - he doesn't think he can face the evidence of his mistakes… not tonight, at least. "Wish I could, but this," he circles his finger around the Castle, " - was supposed to be just a detour. I was supposed to be on my way to Wakanda this morning - they called me in for a consultation."
Behind him, a throat clears, and he turns to see Wong step forward. "Perhaps I can help with that. If you can make arrangements with T'Challa, I can portal you to Wakanda directly. Offer stands for you too, Collins."
Bruce hesitates, then nods. "I can do that," he says, truly relieved. Maybe getting involved in some cutting-edge research with Princess Shuri will get his mind off things he shouldn't be thinking about.
Izzy stares at him, then looks down and nods.
"See you around, Bruce," she says quietly, before stepping into Wong's portal, directly into thin air. She hovers over the moonlit Georgia lake, and her eyes turn back to him one last time.
The portal snaps shut just as she lets herself fall.
General Context:
Ted Hughes' The Iron Man: I read this book as a child. There are so many parallels to this and Tony Stark. The eponymous character 'privatized world peace' too, in a sense. It's a delightful book. Give it a shot; you won't regret it.
MCU Context:
Try to Remember - This is the song Isabelle sings to Morgan. It's from the musical comedy The Fantasticks. It's also the song Maria Stark sang and played on the piano in Captain America: Civil War. I'm not entirely sure on song regulations in fanfic, which is why I have removed the actual lyrics from the chapter.
Professor Hulk - Bruce Banner's transformation into the Hulk in Endgame never sat well with me. I loved the Hulk. MCU's decision to negate his character arc in Thor: Ragnarok - which was one of the best and most powerful storylines in the movie - was, in my opinion, one of the reasons that inspired me to write this fic.
Bruce Banner to me is, and always will be, a tragic figure, someone who struggles with his own duality. That's what made Mark Ruffalo so powerful as an actor in the original Avengers movie. He portrayed Banner's internal conflicts extremely well. Others might not share my views, but I personally believe what they did with the Hulk was just lazy storytelling. The character deserved better.
In Endgame, they also never addressed why the Hulk refused to come out to fight in the Battle of Wakanda, which is another glaring plothole that I've exploited.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Context:
Daisy Johnson/Robbie Reyes - Back when I was plotting this fic, I kinda was invested in these two. They complimented each other well, I thought, especially with the way Daisy was back in Season 4 - the whole goth-vibe, the vigilantism driven by grief, keeping her loved ones at arms' length.
Now that I'm watching Season 7, I find myself shipping her with someone completely different, someone who will be way better for her in the long run ( if you've been watching the last season too, you know who it is ). Unfortunately, there's no possible way I'm gonna be able to bring that character into my story. So Robbie Reyes it is.
This isn't much of a shipping fic. So their relationship will be mostly off-screen. Just a hint or two over the years.
Season 4: The Framework, Darkhold, and Ghost Rider will play a role in the future.
A/N: Check out my Instagram, the_a_i_1502, for fan art I submit with every upload!