Title is from 'Welcome Home' by Radical Face
This is a fan work for entertainment only.
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Chapter 4: Welcome Home
"Kitty! Get away from there!"
"Oh! Oh! I think he's coming to!"
Tony groaned and tried to roll away from the bright voice that felt like it was piercing straight through his skull.
"Kitty! For heaven's sake, let him come to in peace."
Kitty? He didn't know any Kitty. Was she new here? And what was he laying on? It was so soft... In jumbled bits and pieces his escape and subsequent crash landing on Earth came back to him and he shot up with a gasp.
There was a startled yelp and his skull cracked into something hard that sent stars and sparks bursting through his head. With another groan, Tony clutched at his forehead and tried to make out his surroundings through watery eyes.
"What did I just say!?" came the first voice. "Give him some space." A deep blue blur shoed a brighter, pinker, blur away and a cup of something cold was pressed into one of his hands. "Here, drink this."
The water was sweet and free of the metallic tang that had been ever-present during his imprisonment, and it grounded him into the present. By the time he had finished off the cup his head was feeling a bit clearer and he could process the world around him with more success. He was laying on a bed, maybe more of a cot, in what may have once been a large warehouse, but had apparently been converted for people to live in. Large shelving units had been pushed aside and rearranged into makeshift walls, sectioning off several 'rooms' in a far corner. A kitchenette of sorts took up another corner, next to a set of couches surrounding a table that appeared to be made of two large desks shoved together.
"Do you... live here?" he croaked out. He was on Earth right? Phasing through bushes, floating through the sky, controlling lightning. Maybe he had gotten it wrong. Maybe this wasn't home.
"Just part time." The girl, Kitty, the one who had dragged him out from under the bushes, had apparently not gone far. As she spoke she dropped down to sit on a cot set to his right, one hand pressed delicately against a red spot on her forehead. The dark suit she'd worn earlier was gone, and now she was dressed in pale capris and a pastel pink sweater. She looked even more like a truant high schooler who should be patrolling the hallways of a bright and bustling mall with her friends, not sitting on a grey cot in a greyer warehouse. "It's like a satellite location."
"Please," the woman who had handed him the water, the same one with the smooth voice and shockingly white hair from the forest, gently took the empty cup back from him. "Excuse our manners. My name is Storm, and this is Shadowcat, though we often call her Kitty."
"We?" Tony asked.
"Yes." She placed the cup aside on a small end table. "There are several more members in our group, but they are busy keeping their eyes on the perimeter. We may have brought some undue attention on ourselves with our display of power in the forest. Introductions can be taken care of when they return. Do you think you could handle some food?"
Tony was quickly distracted from his worries by the thought of food, real food, not just the horrible slime they had fed him in space. "You have any shawarma?"
The younger girl, Kitty, made a face. "What's shawarma?"
The smile on Tony's face wavered when his mind churned up no answer. "I don't know," he murmured, trying to dip into the cloudy bank of memories around New York, but coming up with nothing. He felt like he was missing the punchline to his own joke.
"Weeeell," Kitty drawled while the two women exchanged a quick look. "I don't think we have any of that, but we have some leftover Mac n' Cheese from lunch if you want something quick."
Leftover Mac n' Cheese sounded like the most amazing thing in all of existence, and his hunger must have been plain on his face because Kitty immediately hopped up and trotted off towards the open kitchenette.
"While she is doing that," Storm said, collecting his attention once more, "perhaps you could tell me your name?"
"Tony," he answered, realizing he'd never introduced himself. "Tony Stark."
The woman's pristine white eyebrows twitched upward. "The billionaire?"
So they had heard of him, which meant this was probably Earth, but it didn't explain why they possessed these strange skills, and why they were living in a warehouse. "Yeah, that one," he confirmed. "How far are we from New York?" The ride down from space had been dizzying, but he was reasonably certain he had crashed down somewhere in the United States, at least.
"Quite a ways," Storm murmured. "Why would you want to go there?"
"Well, I mean, beside my friends, family, and loved ones, there's my house and all my stuff that I'd like to get back to." And his suits. He wanted to see Pepper with his own eyes, and he wanted to give Corvis one nasty surprise the next time they met. He needed to know what happened after the blast, to his teammates, and to the Tesserect.
A strange look had taken form in her eyes, something uncannily like pity swept politely under her calm demeanor, as she asked, "How did you come to crash on Earth in a spaceship, and with the Chitauri on your tail?"
Tony didn't like the look in her eyes at all. "I was kidnapped and imprisoned, but I escaped. I'd like to get back home now. Who are you people? What's going on here?"
A hand settled on his shoulder and pressed him gently back down to his cot. He hadn't even realized he had stood up. "Calm down," she soothed. "There is no need to raise your voice." As he settled back down he swallowed against the tightness in his throat from shouting. "I believe we are your friends, and it seems, we may have some long stories to share, but first, why don't you tell me how long you have been gone from this planet?"
Tony opened and closed his mouth a couple times before answering. "I don't know. What is... what is today's date?"
"I believe it would be mid October two-thousand and thirteen."
Over a year. He'd been gone for over a year. Part of him felt like that was impossible, and another part felt like it should have been longer. Most of him just wanted to go home.
"I need to go," Tony said, pushing himself off the cot again and looking around for his shoes. "I need to get back to New York, so just point me in the right direction and-"
Storm stood as well, but made no move to stop him. "You must have been gone a very long time." There was that damnable note of pity again, buried under her calm composure. It reminded him of Steve, and it drove him nuts. "There is nothing left there. It was all destroyed in the blast."
The blast. Tony froze in the middle of checking under the cot and stood to face her again. "The nuke?" he croaked out, a frozen hand settling against his heart and squeezing. "I stopped it."
The wrinkles in the corners of her eyes deepened just a fraction.
"No!" Tony shouted, his hands balling into fists. Because she had to be lieing. "I stopped it! I sent it through the worm hole! I blew it up!" Even as he yelled, visions drifted through the back of his mind of distorting warp fields, and the nuke approaching the wormhole.
"You are tired," Storm stated, softly. "Perhaps this conversation should wait until-"
"No, no, tell me. You're going to tell me everything. Right now. What happened to New York? The world? Who the hell are you people? And where are the Avengers?"
"Very well." Storm lowered herself back to the cot she'd been sitting on and gestured for Tony to do the same. He did, with begrudging relief. His body hurt a lot more than he wanted to admit right now. When she was satisfied that he wasn't going anywhere, she folded her hands neatly on her lap and began. "I confess, the details around the event in question were somewhat... lost in the ensuing chaos, but I will tell you what I know for certain. When the Chitauri began their assault on Earth, the military launched a nuclear weapon at the city, in the hope, I believe, to stem the flow of the invasion at the cost of the city."
"I know," tony interrupted her. "I sent it through the wormhole, though. It should have..."
"There were reports that someone tried to send it through the portal the aliens were using to launch their assault," Storm continued serenely, as though he hadn't spoken at all, "Unfortunately, they did not succeed entirely, and the weapon activated inside of the portal rather than on the other side. The resulting blast destroyed New York and shook the world, but it seems the portal shielded the Earth from the worst of the radioactivity. The portal was... warped, however. Rather than collapsing completely or flickering out, it created a permanent sort of scar across the sky. I believe the favored name for it nowadays is 'The Devil's Eye.'"
"What are you saying? The portal is... still active? That's not possible. That shouldn't be... possible." His long-awaited dream come true of escaping was swiftly turning into a nightmare.
"I am sorry that you have struggled so hard to return only to be met with what must feel like poor news indeed."
Tony barely even registered Storm's words.
"What happened to my friends; The Avengers?"
"I'm afraid I don't have many answers there. If they are alive, then they would have gone underground quickly. I doubt they will be easy to locate. The Chitauri are looking for something on Earth. Those cities that survived the initial blast were decimated by the waves of invasion to follow."
"They're after the Tesseract," Tony thought out loud. "That's the only thing they could be after. If they don't have it, then the Avengers have to." They were still alive. Tony's mind clung to that thought like a starving dog to the last scrap of food. They were alive, and he would find them, reassemble the Avengers, and kick every Chitauri's ass from here back to whatever evil planet they had come down from.
"The Tesseract?" Storm echoed.
"Yeah it's a... glowing blue cube, about..." Tony held up his hands to approximate the shape of the Tesseract, "Yay big. It's ancient, extremely powerful, and, I'm guessing, not from Earth."
"Lunch!" A happy voice and a flash of pink was Tony's only warning before a warm bowl was pressed into his hands. He couldn't help the flinch or the wave of sudden terror that stole over him, and as he jerked violently away the bowl tumbled through his grip and clattered against the ground.
"Kitty!" Storm swiftly stood and sidestepped the splattering food.
"I'm sorry!" Kitty cried, sounding truly apologetic this time. She bent down and began scooping the spilled noodles and cheese back into the bowl while Tony stared down at her through wide eyes, his heart hammering against his ribs and his breaths coming in great heaves. "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Are you okay?" The girl sat back on her heels to glance up at the frozen man with eyes bright with worry and guilt.
"I'm fine," Tony gasped out, willing his limbs to stop trembling.
Kitty opened her mouth, but Storm's hand on her shoulder stopped whatever she was about to say.
"Why don't you get rid of that spoiled food and fetch him another bowl. Carefully this time."
The teenager nodded and hurried to do as Storm had suggested, casting one last apologetic look over her shoulder and mouthing another 'sorry' as she went.
As Tony caught his breath and calmed himself down he turned back to Storm. The woman had sat back down, once more the very picture of peace and serenity as she patiently waited for him to work himself back to normal. "I-"
"You do not need to apologize, or explain," she said. "Just rest a minute, and we can continue once Kitty returns with a new bowl and you have eaten."
Kitty returned faster this time, careful to call out her approach before handing the bowl over slowly, and then took a seat quietly next to Storm. For the next few minutes, Tony was pretty well occupied with his food. Neither woman pressed him for any answers while he ate, and he was grateful for that at least. He took his sweet time, chewing every bite thoroughly. He missed real food.
Once he had scraped every last noodle and scrap of cheese from his bowl he set it aside and straightened up to face the strange women, signaling clearly that he was ready to continue.
"Why don't you tell me where you have been all this time. Where did the Chitauri take you?"
"A ship," Tony scrubbed at his face and tried to collect the details of the past year into something sensible. "A very, very big ship of some sort. I think it's called the Sanctuary. That's what Corvis called it anyways... They weren't exactly big on sharing information with me. Except their torture techniques, they were pretty free with sharing the details of those."
"You were there the entire time?"
"I think so. I don't... remember much. It's all so dark and jumbled..."
"How did you get free?" Kitty asked, her knees bouncing as she leaned forward.
"I stole a ship. They brought someone new in, some sort of.. telepath... and she was messing with my mind." From the corner of his eye, he saw the two exchange a quick glance.
"What did this telepath do in your mind?" Storm asked, as if telepaths were just an everyday sort of thing people ran in to. With what he had seen of these two so far though, maybe that wasn't so far fetched.
"Looking for something? Torturing me for kicks? Who knows any more? They left me alone after a while, and I managed to wiggle loose and escape to the ship bay. I made it down to Earth and then... you know more than me after that I think." A huge yawn took over as Tony's brief story wound to a close, and suddenly he was fighting to keep his eyes open.
"That is plenty for now I think," Storm announced, standing to gather Tony's bowl and fork. "Get some more sleep. You are safe here. When you wake up again, we can finish our introductions and talk about what to do next."
Tony leaned back and slipped his legs under the sheets again, letting out a long sigh as he lay his head on the pillow and let the luxury of a cot and blanket lull him quickly back to sleep.
End
Chapter 5 Preview: "...The abandoned campsite was right where the stranger, Hawkeye, had promised. To the soldier's annoyance, there was even a bed roll layed out next to a set of tin dishes and a large metal pot. Pinned down under the pot was a hand written note with instructions on how to boil water for sanitation and for making coffee. The note was quickly crumpled up and thrown into the stream..."
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*Shows up five months late with Starbucks*
Seriously though, sorry for the surprise hiatus. Some stuff came up irl, including some of my usual fall depressions, and I just... lost the spirit for a while. I've been drawing every day, though. And that's been fun. Even made some art for the Astroverse on my Tumblr. Anyways, whatever funk possessed me seems to have finally passed, and I'm back to the keyboard. It may take a bit to get back into the full swing of things, but at least I can make words again. The next chapter of Luciferous shouldn't be long. It's written, just needs a few passes for editing, and I need to get far enough into ch 16 to have a preview.