Chapter Text
New York City is a good distraction.
It’s probably more chaotic than usual, Harley tells himself, uses this to make mental wiggle room for how overwhelmed he’s feeling. The whole world is in chaos. Half of the universe just came back.
Tony didn’t.
Damn him.
Doesn’t mean they’re not still connected. They are. The Starkphone in his pocket is proof of that.
Welcome to your city home, Harley, the AI murmurs into into his earbuds. The entrance is on your right.
It takes a couple taps through the Keys app (and fingerprints, and an eye scan, and voice recognition), but he pulls up the keyscreen that unlocks the street level door, and then the elevator, and then the front door of his new apartment. Twenty-seventh floor. Can he call it a penthouse? He’s calling it a penthouse. He owns the roof, too, apparently.
It’s probably awesome. He’ll find out in a minute, when his stupid eyes stop crying long enough to actually see. For now, back pressed hard against the reinforced door, he’s just glad it’s quiet.
Are you feeling better, Harley? asks the AI, soft and pleasant and oddly personal. He tells her he is. It’s not a lie. It’s been a few minutes, and he is feeling better. He keeps his back pressed against the door, mops up his face, and asks her to text Abby that he’s arrived and everything is awesome and he’ll call her soon.
He’s careful not to look at his phone screen as the AI pulls up Abby’s contact. A week ago, Abby was thirteen. Bratty and snarky and fiercely protective of her big brother. A week ago, Harley was seventeen, taking university classes online and serving as Rose Hill’s primary mechanic, electrician, and general fix-it man, while finding out just how catastrophically dating can suck and packing his needy baby sister’s lunchbag every night before crashing into bed, no matter how irresponsibly late he’s stayed up this time.
Harley’s still seventeen.
Abby’s eighteen. Abby’s eighteen, with a house and a boyfriend and a baby and hands stiff with scar tissue from five-year-old burns. Burns she got trying to rescue Harley from a burning garage.
Harley wasn’t there to rescue. He’d been working with a welding torch when his hands turned to ash. Watched the first sparks catch as he stopped existing, no mouth left to scream.
Then he existed again.
Would you like me to give you a tour? murmurs the AI. If you would like a snack first, the kitchen is fully stocked.
“Aw, I’m good, thanks,” he says. It still feels weird to engage with a disembodied voice, but she’s easy to talk to. "So, uh, what do we need to fix?"
The AI guides him over hardwood floors and past soft grey wall to a state-of-the-future lab, walks him through the steps to throw files from the phone up onto giant holographic screens. He’s worked with older versions of this tech before—Tony never stopped upgrading his garage workstation—but it all starts overwhelming again. Like Mom and Abby, this is more familiar than not, but the not part is just—hard to breathe around.
He existed. Then he didn’t.
He’s not entirely sure he exists now.
"Give me a sec," he pleads with the AI. "I'll—I got this, just—a moment. Just need a moment."
He doesn't know why he expected some sort of reprimand. Something pissed or impatient in the AI's lilting voice—but all he gets is a sympathetic Of course, Harley. Take all the time you need and it’s reassuring and intimate in ways even his proud paranoia can’t read pity into it.
So he takes a minute. And another minute. And in those minutes he starts wondering, just like he's been wondering for the two days he spent getting here, what the fuck he thinks he's doing.
Helping Tony, whispers the small, giddy, desperate inner voice he's been relying way way way too much on. It’s not the only voice he’s got to rely on though.
“Hey, can you—can you play Tony’s message? Sorry I keep asking you to—”
I can play it as many times as you like, comforts the AI. Playing message.
“Kid. Harley.” Tony’s voice. Rushed, bright, feverish. “I think I figured it out. Actually if you’re hearing this I definitely did, because you’re here to hear it, and I’m glad. I—don’t have time to explain, or even double check like I usually would, but I’m pretty sure I’ve put everything you need plus a many things you’ll hopefully never need on this phone and this phone is going to get to you if there’s a you for—well. You know what I mean. So I did it, I’m awesome, but I’m also dead, and I’m that asshole who’s gonna ask for your help even after I’m dead so—Harley, I need your help. Okay? I mean you don’t have to. But there’s stuff I want fixed and you’re the guy who can fix it. And—I want my kids to be there for each other. Time’s up. Thanks, kid. You’ll do good. You always do.”
The message ends. The time stamp puts it at an hour no one should be awake, two days before Harley started existing again. Before Tony Stark did the stupid superhero thing and died saving the effing universe.
Harley gets up. Forces focus. There’s plenty to focus on: gleaming metal countertops, a wall hung with every mechanic’s tool he’s ever used or longed to use and more than a few he’s never seen before, a ridiculous amount of safety gear ready displayed pointedly on the custom rack in front of it. He’s willing to bet the hooks on those tools won’t retract until the AI thinks he’s got the right safety gear on. Because Tony Stark is a freaking hypocrite.
I’m here, he thinks, breathing carefully around the growing ache in his throat. I’m here, Tony. Whatever you want me to do—I don’t know if I can—but I’ll try. I’ll try. I’m here.
He’s seventeen five years after he stopped being anything and he’s a thousand miles away from a home his family doesn’t live in anymore and he does not, in fact, know what the fuck he’s doing. He’s just so, so grateful for something to do. “All right, Miss AI, go time,” he tells the ceiling. “Whataya got for me?”
Blueprints and project outlines and file menus flood the holographic screens.
“Got any playlists to go with any of this?”
Music shifts the still air lighter, easier to get in and out of his lungs. Starts off with song he added to three separate playlists a couple weeks—five years ago. Focus. Fix. Find something to fix. He does. One of the renderings catches his attention—some kind of compact mobile armor, it looks like, a titanium-gold-encased add-on to a polymer combat suit. It looks like—a projector? Yes—it projects an energy-field shield, and the concept is that it responds to real-time battle analysis to anticipate where it needs to be. The potential here is insane—heavy-duty protection without significantly increasing weight or hampering flexibility—and Harley is here for it.
Heh. Here.
A couple renderings have been dragged into a trash file, but not deleted. Satisfied that he’s got the basic schematics down, Harley dives right into those. He knows for a fact that he learns more from Tony’s failed trials—and working up from there into what didn’t fail—than from every engineering and design class he’s taken combined.
One of the discarded case designs looks like a spider. A tiny gold spider that would track across a suit like an itsy bitsy sidekick. It’s—it’s wicked. It’s beautiful.
It’s fucking perfect.
Harley drags the spidershield files out of the trash.
“Let’s make you real, Itsy Bitsy,” he murmurs. “Itsy-Bitsy Prototype H-1, coming right up.”
He can do this.
Harley Keener exists. Probably.
Either way, he’s got this.