Chapter Text
Hulk watches from the shadows as Thanos picks his way through the human debris of the Stateman.
Thanos’ eyes drift over the scattered bodies with callous interest, his gaze lingering a little longer on the bloodied form of Thor. Then, in his own time, Thanos looks up to acknowledge Loki. Hulk sees Loki mask his fear and anger in an instant, his face calm and disinterested by the time he meets Thanos’ eye. And then, over the gurgling wounds and anguished gasps, Hulk hears Thanos’ start to speak.
“I know what it feels like to lose…”
Hulk hears the words but doesn’t analyse them. He is not distracted by their true significance – Hulk is just waiting for his cue.
“The Tesseract or your brothers head. I assume you have a preference?”
Hulk watches as Thor convulses, green flesh twitching against the instinct to intervene. But he has been told not to intervene. Not until he hears his cue.
“As much as I am enjoying this…” Loki speaks calmly, ignoring his brothers continuing agony, “…Neither of us can ever find the Tesseract without him.”
Thanos stops then. Thor’s body slumps, hanging like meat from Thanos’ huge fist. Thanos’ narrows his eyes at Loki.
“And, as noble as it would be to sacrifice myself so that you would never find it – it just isn’t in my nature.” Loki smiled thinly “I could care less what you do with the lesser Son of Odin. And perhaps the Tesseract is better lost forever than in your hands. But it does seem such a tragic waste.”
Thanos’ fingers flex against Thor’s skull with a sickening crack. Loki doesn’t blink.
“You’ll tell me where it is, or I will kill you both” He tells Loki simply.
“If I tell you where it is, you will kill us both. For as long as I don’t tell you, you’ll let us live. Or any hope you have of finding the Tesseract dies with us.” Loki cocks his head, and smiles
“Your optimism is misplaced, Asgardian”
“Well, for one thing, I'm not Asgardian.” Loki corrects him “And for another... we have a Hulk.”
That’s his cue.
It’s the last thing that makes sense. After that, there’s the shock of being thrown to the floor so easily, a sudden shift in his very understanding of physics…the flash of metal, the cracking of bone… the world on its side, as Thanos towers above him, as fast as that…. Hulk watches as Thanos snatches Thor again, pulling him off of his feet as though he were weightless. He sees Thanos speak to Loki, close, too close for Hulk to hear the words…And then the colours. So many colours.
When Bruce wakes up on the floor of 177A Bleecker Street his very first thought is that he’s losing time.
He tries to talk. Before he even opens his eyes, before he thinks of where he is or who he might be talking to, he remembers that desperate need to warn someone. Thanos has Thor. Thanos is collecting infinity stones. Thanos is coming. But his throat is raw and his whole body hurts and there are so many words in his head. And panic, the high-pitched alarm of panic, that only grows louder the longer it takes him to get himself together.
He tries to explain what happened and realises he doesn’t even know. He doesn’t know where Thanos took Thor and Loki, or why. He has no idea what Loki’s plan was, or whose side he was on. Thanos whole plan doesn’t mean anything to Bruce. The two men that have found him, Dr Something and a name Bruce didn’t hear, have started firing questions at him. He can’t answer any of them. For a moment, Bruce can only think of everything he doesn’t know, and the sheer amount of it threatens to suffocate him. Then he stops himself. He puts his palms up, and stops the men from talking at him. He tries to think – what does he know? What can he be sure of?
“Tony Stark. I need to get in contact with Tony Stark.”
*
Tony was actually having quite a good day.
Of course, that meant something different, these days. Everything is relative. There was a time when any one of his morning meetings would have been enough to ruin his whole week. A time when that dull ache in his chest would have been abnormal. A time when being completely numb to the world would have been cause for concern. But things were different now, weren’t they? And these days, an argument with Ross actually reaching a conclusion made it a good day. There being no stabbing pains in his heart made it a good day.
And he wasn’t thinking about Steve right now. That made it a very good day.
Because, however much pain and stress Tony had accepted as part of his life, there was a time when things had been much, much worse. A time when he spent every meeting in a state of rage or anxiety, barely able to keep up with all the demands. A time when his heart had felt as though it was in the process of being torn out of his chest, all day, every day. A time when he spent every second hating Steve or missing Steve, or thinking this wouldn’t be such a mess if Steve hadn’t left – which was really just a weird mix of the two. Now, there were minutes, hours, even whole afternoons when Tony didn’t think about Steve. There were even times when he didn’t worry about the future of The Avengers, or dream about how things should have been, or expect a full-scale alien invasion. Whole days when he didn’t really think at all. And he knew that didn’t mean he was over it. Pleasant numbness, while infinitely better than constant pain, was not recovery. He still had so far to go… but even that was a progressive thought, really. Better than not being able to imagine it ever ending…
But he wasn’t thinking about that. Or anything. Because he was having a good day.
Tony even had time to leave the office to get lunch. Not that he had any intention of getting food – it was the quiet he wanted. A few minutes away from the questions and the reminders and that uneasy awareness that someone was about to come around the corner with another problem. He felt less edgy, away from the office. At least until the anxiety of what he was going to walk back into kicked in. That gave him twenty minutes or so to just be.
On a whim, he decided to walk through the park. Usually, he chose to walk through the city, more relaxed around the structure and design of the urban landscape than he was the random offerings of nature. But today was a not-thinking day, and Tony was just following his feet. He walked passed happy blonde couples, jogging side-by-side. He sidestepped scruffy young men, absorbed with their phones. He went by young mothers with strollers, and old men walking dogs, and teenagers on skateboards. It was like walking through a screensaver. He felt pleasantly distant from all of them, barely aware of what he was looking at –
Until the air opened up in front of him.
“Tony Stark.” It didn’t surprise Tony that this apparition knew his name. All universal catastrophes were for him; if anything, it seemed fitting that one should finally speak to him directly. And, for now, he was too busy trying to make sense of the shimmering lights and shifting settings that were appearing right before his eyes. A man he’d never seen before, in clothes that didn’t fit the circumstances, standing in a place that wasn’t the park, but was in the park- “I’m Doctor Stephen Strange. I need you to come with me.”
Well, turned out it was going to be a thinking day after all.
“I’m sorry. You giving out tickets to something?” Tony heard himself speak, pulling something from his emergency store of backchat while he tried to catalogue the situation. Responding to a crisis was instinct now, and procedure popped into his head like a computer command. Is this man the threat? Is this man alone? What abilities does this man have? Who is the target, and how can Tony get him away from them?
“We need your help” The magical doctor told him, gravely “It’s not overselling it to say that the fate of the universe is at stake.”
Tony filtered through this information the way FRIDAY interpreted vocal prompts – “we need your help” = ally = DO NOT FIGHT YET. “Fate of the universe” = alien = stand by for conflict.
Call Steve = Invalid command.
More information required.
“And who’s ‘we’?” Tony demanded, poised to critically analyse whatever answer Doctor Strange gave him.
And then he saw Bruce.
That face was so familiar to Tony that he very nearly smiled. There was a swell of comfort and joy – immediately punctured when he realised what a state Bruce was in. The critical analysis was washed away by a wave of sympathy, and there was a panic of a different kind. Not the ordered, professional panic he’d become desensitised to; the heartfelt fear for a friend.
“Bruce” Tony spoke, already walking over to him.
“Tony. You have to come with us. We need your help-”
“Yeah, of course” Tony waved him quiet, “Obviously.”
*
Steve was always thinking about Tony.
Even when Steve wasn’t thinking about Tony directly, it always came back to him. Steve’s whole life now, and the lives of his team, were all down to what happened between him and Tony. Everything he wished was different would’ve been different, if it weren’t for what happened with Tony. Even thinking about Bucky, that achingly familiar regret that predated Tony being born, even that lead to Tony, now.
Some days were worse than others, though. This was a particularly bad day.
It didn’t help that they were on their way to collect Wanda after one of her secret meetings with Vision. Steve did his best to smile along with the others, to convince himself that young love was nice and it was simple as that – but he hated it. And he hated himself for hating it, he would have much rather just been happy for them, but there it was. Everything about Wanda and Visions little rendezvous made him think of Tony, directly. Knowing that Tony would have been involved in arranging it, that he was at least allowing it. It was enough to make Steve picture him, enough to make Steve miss him, enough to trigger another pointless conversation in his own head.
And then there was the fact that Tony was making a meeting possible for someone that wasn’t them.
The fact that Tony had enabled Wanda and Vision to bridge the divide, but, after two long years, Tony had never once called him. That pressed against a specific little splinter of pain, and Steve knew it was unreasonable, and unjustified, and downright embarrassing.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Steve sighed, and look another long look out of the side window of the Quin Jet. Another reason Steve hated it when Wanda and Vision met up – it always involved a lengthy trip on the Jet. Steve disliked being on the jet more and more as time went on. It felt increasingly claustrophobic. It made it obvious when he was pacing.
“You look worried.” Nat spoke from the cockpit, her eyes fixed on the horizon.
“No more than usual” Steve answered easily. He was practiced at knocking observations like that aside. Unfortunately, Nat was practised at persevering.
“Yes, you do.” She corrected him, coolly. Steve exhaled slowly. He didn’t want to have a conversation right now. He was embedded in his own head, constantly being called back from the real world by his thoughts. Everything felt like an irritating distraction, today. And he thought about saying if you say so, but he knew it wouldn’t help. If anything, it would fan the flames, convince her there was something worth digging for. And there wasn’t, really. He was just having a bad day.
“I’m always worried when Wanda goes to meet Vision” He settled on a half-truth.
“If anyone can handle herself, it’s Wanda.”
“Yeah, I just hope she doesn’t end up having to handle herself.” Steve sighed. He’d passed a lot of his endless nights planning for the inevitable upending of his world, however it happened this time. Whatever new life came after the Fugitive Avengers period, whether it was waking up in the year 2056, or on another planet, or to discover that Sam and Natasha were actually both Loki in disguise, or whatever. He’d considered being caught, on his own or with the team, all the places they might get sent, all the choices he might be faced with as a result. All the ways it might happen. That really was another reason he hated it when Wanda went to meet Vision. There really was the chance she’d get caught, and then the Fugitive Avengers would be over, and then Steve would have to become a whole new person – again.
“If you’d rather she didn’t go-”
“Of course I don’t not want her to go” Steve lied.
I just wish I could go too.
But he couldn’t admit that he’d thought that – because then he’d have to think about all the reasons he couldn’t go. All the reasons he could never go home.
And then, belatedly, he realised he’d picked up something in her tone, too.
“Why, what’re you worried about?” He asked. He saw her press her lips together, caught out. Like maybe she almost smiled.
“I’m just waiting for Wanda to message back” She said, as though it was nothing. Steve set his teeth.
“From this morning, you mean?”
“I’m not worried.” Nat assured him, finally turning to look at him “If she was in trouble, she would have messaged back. Like I say – she can handle herself.”
Steve knew he should be worried – but mainly, he was annoyed. He was annoyed at Wanda for not following the plan, for not doing what she promised she would, for not thinking about the impact her actions had on everyone else. They’d been through all this with her last time. He was annoyed at her if she wasn’t in trouble, if she was just lying in bed with Vision and ignoring her phone. And, loathed though he was to admit it, he was even annoyed at her if she was in trouble, because if she was in trouble, they were all in trouble, and it was all because she had to have this thing that Steve couldn’t have… Oops. He hadn’t meant to think that.
If Wanda was in trouble she’d have messaged back. If Tony wanted you, he would have called.
Or that.
Steve had to stop himself there, because if he didn’t he’d tumble into all the other things he really shouldn’t think. He’d start thinking about calling Tony, which would just be hours of remembering all the reasons that he couldn’t. He’d done it enough times to know. And he never called Tony, so.
Steve didn’t like himself much right now. That was happening more and more often these days, too.
*
When Bruce, Dr Strange and Wong had finished their presentation on the situation, Tony’s first thought was this isn’t fair. For a few long seconds, it was his only thought.
The idea of ‘Infinity Stones’ was surely something any person would need a few minutes with. Just that. The scale of the threat was beyond the realm of human understanding, clearly, much less human intervention – how were they expecting him to handle this one? How could anyone handle this one? With Wong, a shell-shocked Bruce and a tool in a velvet cape to help him? This was an impossible task, a puzzle with no answer –
But then Tony remembered. Fair had nothing to do with it. If life had taught him one lesson, repeatedly, it was that one. There was no one he could complain to. No one he could run to.
Call Steve Rogers.
And with that, Tony realised he was reacting to this far too emotionally.
“Tell me his name again” He said, as a sign post that he was starting over – it certainly wasn’t because he’d forgotten it.
“Thanos.” Bruce told him earnestly. “He’s a plague, Tony. He invades planets. He takes what he wants. He wipes out half the population. He sent Loki. The attack on New York, that’s him. This is it.”
He sent Loki
Tony felt a drop of sudden, bottomless fear, like staring into the face of death. In that second, Tony felt like he understood that he’d just reached the crisis point of his whole life’s story. That everything he was, everything he’d been through, everything he’d ever done, had all been leading to this. It wasn’t just the fear of an enemy he couldn’t beat, or even the consequences of losing – it was a primal, spiritual terror. This is the end of my story.
He shook it away, decisively.
“What’s our timeline?”
“No telling. He has the Power Stone, which might already make him the strongest creature in the whole universe, and if Loki is taking him to the Space Stone-”
“If?” Tony clarified.
“I don’t know if he even has it, Tony – for all I know, it burned on Asgard, and Loki was just trying to save his own skin.”
“But if it burned on Asgard, doesn’t that solve our problem?” Tony tried.
“If it did, maybe-”
“Not really.” Doctor Strange interrupted “Even if it stops him pursuing his original plan, controlling five infinity stones would allow him to destroy life on a scale hitherto undreamt of.”
“Did you seriously just say-”
“-And we don’t know that the Tesseract is destroyed” Bruce cut in. “This is Loki we’re talking about. There’s at least a chance he did hide it somewhere, and that he’s leading Thanos to it, right now.”
“We know where this one is” Tony gestured to the Time Stone “Why don’t we just stick this one down a garbage disposal?”
“No can do.” Doctor Strange answered gravely
“We swore an oath to protect the Time Stone with our lives.”
“Yeah, well, I swore off dairy-”
“Tony, Loki potentially has an Infinity Stone.” Bruce stepped in “Thanos definitely has one. This-” He gestured vaguely to Strange “-is not the stone we need to worry about right now. We know where this one is. Vision is out there somewhere with the Mind Stone, and we need to find him now.”
Tony’s stomach twitched. This really wasn’t fair.
“Yeah. That’s the thing…” Tony started, but really, it was so many things. He hated that Vision even went to see Wanda, he was still hurt and embarrassed that Vision hadn’t come back – he knew full well what he’d have to do to find him.
“What do you mean?”
“Two weeks ago, Vision turned off his transponder.” Tony admitted “He’s off-line”
“Tony, you lost another super-bot?” Bruce asked, aghast.
“I didn’t lose him” Tony straightened his shoulders defensively. “He’s more than that. He’s evolving.”
“Who could find Vision then?”
There was a conflict in the very core of Tony then, a sudden awareness that he was standing between two realities. The reality of the whole universe, in which Thanos was the threat and there was obviously nothing more important than stopping him – and the reality of him personally, in which there was nothing bigger than the issue of calling Steve, nothing that wasn’t viewed through the prism of that. It was like an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object. The two things that were ultimately important, according to two entirely different sets of criteria, neither immediately more important that the other.
“Probably Steve Rogers” Tony surrendered. He was oddly vindicated to hear Strange and Wong cursing behind him, pleased that someone appeared to appreciate the gravity of the situation. Bruce clearly didn’t.
“Call him.”
“It’s not that easy…” Tony began, already thinking of how far back he had to go to fill Bruce in. “…God, we haven’t caught up in a spell, have we?”
It wasn’t that Tony couldn’t think of how to explain it. It was that Tony could think of too many ways of explaining it. He had too much detail, context and background on every single point. Tony had been thinking about this for two years. 741 days working on the thesis of how things happened between them, and why Tony had done what he did at every turn, and all the ways in which Steve had hurt him. How to explain all that, quickly?
“The Avengers broke up” Tony summarised “We’re toast.”
“Broke up? Like a band?” Bruce gasped “Like…like the Beatles?”
No, like Steve lied to me for years, turned everyone against me and then ran his Shield through my heart. Like Steve turned all the Avengers into criminals in order to keep his friend out of trouble, while pretending it was to stop a threat that never existed. Like half of them are on the run, Rhodey is paralysed, Vision chose Wanda and now there’s just me.
“Cap and I fell out hard” Tony went for the understatement of the century “We’re not on speaking terms.”
“Tony, listen to me. Thanos already has Thor, assuming he hasn’t killed him. Any minute now he could get his hands on the Tesseract and head straight to earth. It doesn’t matter who you’re talking to or not.”
Well, of course it doesn’t
Tony already knew that his feeling didn’t matter. If only he could stop feeling them.
Taking the flip phone out of his pocket, the sheer intensity of his emotions threatened to overwhelm him – how could that be, if they didn’t even matter? He opened it and found Steve’s number without looking, without even thinking about it. Muscle memory. He’d opened this phone and scrolled to this number so many times, mostly just daydreaming but occasionally with his thumb hovering over the dial button. Sometimes just reading Steve’s name. He actually knew the number off by heart now, but he opened it anyway. He just looked at it, for a moment.
…destroy life on a scale hitherto undreamt of…
…If you need us, if you need me, I’ll be there…
…You could have saved us. Why didn’t you do more?
He pressed the dial button.
*
What were the chances that Tony would call when Steve had that phone in his hands?
Pretty high, actually.
Steve had fallen into the habit of just looking at it when he was thinking, like he might have clutched a photograph or a keepsake, if he’d had one. Tonight, when Steve had found a quiet corner of the Quin Jet to hide in, he’d realised he was already holding it. He couldn’t even remember taking it out of his pocket. And Steve stopped thinking about using it a long time ago. Any hope he’d had that it might ring had melted into a sadness that it never would. But still, he held onto it, a totem of all his hurt and regret.
And then, that night, it came to life.
Steve flipped it open before it could finish the first ring, like it was something he was trained for. He’d not even recognised what was happening before he had the phone up against his ear. And then he heard that breath on the other end, and every part of him remembered.
Tony…
“We need your help” Tony began, in a voice that sucked all the hope out of Steve’s chest. A cold dread rushed to fill the void. Tony was in trouble. And, although that should have been obvious from very fact of him calling, it was only when he heard him that Steve realised what it meant.
Tony is in trouble
“We’re on our way-”
“Wait.” Tony spoke like he was gritting his teeth. Steve felt his words lodge in his throat like a pill he couldn’t swallow. Please don’t tell me not to come. “We need to find Vision, too.”
“Vision?”
“He’s off line, and – I can explain when you get here, but we really need to find him.”
When you get here.
Steve’s next breath trembled with the effort of containing his relief. But, instinctively, he knew he had to contain it. He had to be Captain America right now. He had to think of what to do, rather than feel anything about it.
“Wanda was just with him.” Steve thought out loud.
“I know.” And that edge of sarcasm, the one that used to irritate Steve so much, was so achingly familiar that it brought a lump to Steve’s throat. “But I don’t know where- wait, was?”
“We just picked her up – we can find Vision. She can find Vision” Steve assured quickly, thinking he was being efficient, feeling desperate to hold on to Tony however he could. “We can bring him with us.”
“Where are you?”
“Over Europe – they were in Edinburgh, in Scotland-”
“Right, okay. Then I need you to get Vision, and I need you to come here. To the Avengers Facility in New York.”
Home.
“Tony, what’s going on?”
“…hold on a second.” There was a soft scuffle on the other end, a low murmur of voices in the background.
“…Hello? Captain Rogers?” An unfamiliar voice jarred against his ear.
“Who is this?” Steve demanded in his Captain America voice, already picturing scenarios in which Tony had just been attacked.
“My name is Doctor Stephen Strange, Tony Stark has asked me to explain…”
Tony has passed you over to someone else
There was a childish little kick in his head, an impulse to sulk. To tell Stephen Strange, whoever he was, to butt out, to shut up, to put Tony back on the phone or Steve wasn’t playing. Steve had been thinking about this phone call for two years. He was, first and foremost, hurt and baffled to find that Tony had immediately handed it off. He had to tell himself, very firmly, to grow up and pay attention – still only getting the basic outline of what was going on.
“Right, okay, fine, we’ll be there as soon as we can” Steve told Doctor Strange on auto pilot, because that was the bit he was sure he was sure about. And then he thought about all the bits he wasn’t sure about… Thanos and Infinity Stones and Loki and…wait, going home? Finally, Captain America stepped up, and started putting things into the right order. “Are we going to be arrested as soon as we get there?” Steve heard Doctor Strange repeat his question, and strained to make out Tony’s response. Captain America pointedly ignored any irritation Steve felt at this stupid message passing game.
“No.” Obviously wasn’t what Tony had said, not verbatim. But Captain America was firmly in place now, and wasn’t prepared to indulge Steve’s tantrums. So, rather than demand to know exactly what Tony had just told him, Steve told Doctor Strange,
“Tell him we’re on our way” and closed the phone.
There was a sudden stab of regret that Steve hissed through like a burn. He should have asked more questions. He should have given more details.
He shouldn’t have severed the only link he’d had to Tony, however indirect it was.
But he’d done it now. He had to think what he was going to do, now.
“Hey Cap” Sam appeared in a doorway, obviously alerted by the tone of Steve’s voice. Steve could see he was already standing in combat mode, subconsciously checking his weapons. “What’s going down?” Steve thought about all ways he could start, all the things this crisis was objectively about – how to explain why this was so important.
There are these things called Infinity Stones…
There’s a warlord called Thanos…
The whole universe is at risk…
“That was Tony. We’re going home.”