Chapter Text
"There has to be a safer way to do this," Cap said, staring at Strange's device with open distrust.
"It's our best choice," Strange said.
Tony rolled his eyes, plopped himself into the chair. "Appreciate the concern, Cap, but out of everyone in this room, which one was at the time A) old enough and B) awake enough." He flashed a smirk, still couldn't find it in himself to inject the same kind of warmth into it that he might have a year or two ago. "Not to mention having access to almost endless resources and Howard Stark?"
Cap snapped his mouth shut, but didn't look particularly happy about it. "We should've sent Fury," he said at last.
"Yeah, well, when we had that chance, we weren't desperate enough to try, were we?" Tony asked.
Cap turned to Strange. "Can't you at least send him back a bit further?" He glanced at Tony. "You must've gone home for Thanksgiving."
Strange tapped the stack of journals sitting on the table. "These are all we've got to go on," he said. "And they say Stark Senior's epiphany came on December seventeenth. At Thanksgiving, he wouldn't have had the answers we need. Any accidental changes Stark makes to the timeline might prevent his father from having that epiphany in the first place. The timing is tight, but it's our best bet."
Tony flashed Cap a crooked smile. "I trust Aunt Peggy," he said. "How about you, Stevie Wonder?"
Cap grit his teeth, looked ready to object again.
Tony barely held back a snarl. "You're not worried about me at all, are you? You think I'm going to kill him. Fuck, probably think I'm going to use the command phrase to make him kill himself."
"You hate him," Cap replied, something barely restrained right there in the back of his voice.
"Yeah, well," Tony said. "You know my reasons. But I won't. I promised her."
"And you've never broken your promises," Cap said.
Tony squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, mostly so he wouldn't end up accidentally breaking his hand on Cap's jaw. "Who paid for the army of lawyers that got the charges dismissed?"
"And yet he's still in prison," Cap said.
"For shit he did after he stopped being brainwashed," Tony said, forcing the words out through gritted teeth. This was going to become a screaming match for the ages within a few moments if he let it. So he didn't. Holding himself tightly in check, he turned to Strange. "Do it."
Strange nodded. "Once you've done what you need to do, it'll take you back here." Then he was holding one of his amulets, chanting some spell or other, and Tony could practically feel his mind disconnecting from his body, could feel it being flung back, back. Fuck, he fucking hated magic.
***
Slamming back into his body hurt worse than fighting the Hulk. He reached up, grabbed his head and held on tight, tried as hard as he could to make his skull stop feeling like it was about to explode. Somewhere on the other side of the room, something moved. Someone breathed. Tony yelped in alarm, and fuck if that didn't feel like it was splitting his skull apart all over again. He twisted around, tried to get a look at the intruder, except the bed was fucking tiny, and he went crashing to the floor, legs tangled up in his own sheets.
A bedside light turned on. "Tony, what the fuck?" groaned a voice that sounded suspiciously like Rhodey's. "Are you kidding me? What's your damage, dude?" A pause, and then the good old exasperated Rhodey voice. "How much did you have to drink last night?"
Well, fuck, this did feel like pretty much the worst hangover ever, and that light had to be some kind of laser, the way it was cutting open his eyeballs. "Rhodey, what are you doing in my bedroom?" Tony groaned.
"Our dorm room. You're wiggin' out, dude," Rhodey said, and okay, yeah, that sounded like an introduction to thankfully extinct bad eighties slang, which was-- Fuck. Strange's little trick had actually worked, what the hell?
"Rhodey, what date is it?" Tony asked, squeezing his eyes into his temples, and God, was that-- Oh hell, that was the fucking mullet he'd spent the past thirty years trying to suppress every memory - and photo - of.
"Fuck'n A, Tones." Rhodey sat up on his own tiny bed, rubbed the back of his hand over his slitted eyes. "Are you all right? Did someone slip you something?"
"No," Tony said quickly. "No, I'm good. I've just got a headache like you wouldn't believe. You." He frowned, looked up at the Playboy calendar hanging in its place of honor on the wall. 1987, indeed. "I just remembered I've got a paper to hand in, and I couldn't figure out if. Today or tomorrow?"
"It's Wednesday," Rhodey said. He blinked. "Well, I guess since it's way past midnight, it's actually Thursday. The seventeenth."
Tony squeezed his eyes shut. The crazy bastard had actually done it. He let out a long breath, pulled himself up off the floor and collapsed back down onto the frankly rather uncomfortable bed. "When's the alarm?" he asked.
"Eight," Rhodey said. "Go to sleep, Tones. You might be able to run a whole day on fumes, but we aren't all teenagers anymore."
"You don't know the half of it," Tony muttered, but he did pull his sheets back up to cover him and do his best to go back to sleep. Eight should give him plenty of time to get to Long Island before night, and trying to drive while his head was pounding like this probably wasn't a good idea anyway.
"G'night, dweeb."
"Night, barf bag," Tony replied, grimacing internally at the word choice. Fucking eighties.
***
The eighties sucked. The tech was useless. Tony had no suit and no car of his own, and talking his way into getting to rent one when his driver's license refused to stop claiming he was seventeen years old was fucking tedious. The model he did finally get his hands on, probably more thanks to his last name than anything... Long story short, it sucked.
By the time he made it to the stretch of Long Island road where his parents had been killed - would not be killed, oh, whatever, time travel was damn confusing. Either way, it was already dark. How the fuck was this his life? Looking for the most highly trained sniper in the world on a rural stretch of road with plenty of foliage for cover and the ocean to camouflage sound, in the dark, without the suit, JARVIS or even a shitty pair of infrared goggles? Fuck all, he'd be happy with just a damn beach bum metal detector right now.
As it was, he was going to have to try to put all the years he'd spent squabbling with Cap to some kind of use. Tactical thinking wasn't Tony's best trait, genius or no. He was too prone to taking things as they came, to improvising and thinking on his feet. It wasn't a bad thing. Fuck, the combination of him and Cap was why the Avengers had lasted as long as they did, even with a fleet of spaceships hanging in the sky above them. And when Cap wasn't there, he had JARVIS's input. Right now, he could've really used either. He stopped, sucked in a deep breath. He pulled on his frankly ridiculous leather jacket, got out of the car and took a moment to make sure it was well hidden. Then, silent as he could manage, he shut the door behind him and tried to take in his surroundings, tried to scope out the best sniper spot. If this were an Avengers' situation, where would Cap tell him to put Hawkeye?
Tony glanced down at his watch, momentarily grateful for the eighties' love for all things glow-in-the-dark. If it had been a digital watch he wouldn't have even dared lighting it. For someone as sharp as the Winter Soldier, it would've been too damn obvious. 7:43 PM. He had eleven minutes. Eleven minutes to find someone who'd been a trained assassin for longer than Tony had been alive. Fuck this shit.
He glanced around himself, tried to catch as many details as the darkness allowed. On the far side of the road, the land rose. Not much, but enough to give a higher vantage point. A few trees ensured a thickening shadow. Even if it wasn't where Barnes was hiding, it would give Tony a better view. Pulling the jacket - which, frankly, did nothing to warm him - closer around himself, he took the final few steps to the road and darted across it, hoping he looked enough like just some random teenager up to no good that had nothing to do with the HYDRA mission that Barnes would ignore him. The hairs on the nape of his neck rose. He could practically feel that pair of cold, dead eyes on him. It wasn't until he was back in the shadows that he felt like he could actually breathe again.
The cold breeze beat at him again, made him shudder and try to huddle deeper. His face felt irritatingly cold. He missed his beard, and was kind of annoyed by the fact that he was still a few years away from being able to grow a decent one. Well, in this timeline anyway. No way in hell was he going to live out years as twink Tony in the eighties all over again. That had sucked enough the first time around. He just needed to find Barnes, stop him, then follow his parents home, get Howard to spill what he knew about the Tesseract and the Infinity Stones and he'd be right back in the future where he belonged.
Rather than order his mind and help him keep his head in the game, those thoughts lodged themselves in his throat, sharp and cold and painful. Might be where he belonged, but not really any less sucky than the eighties. He shut the thoughts away before they could get to him, before his breaths could start coming too fast, before it could all hit him. He'd been surviving like that for months now. He could keep doing it at least long enough to get the job done. He sucked in another breath, quiet as he could manage, glanced at his watch. Seven minutes left to go. Tony crouched down, made sure to keep low as he began to creep up the side of the small hill.
Somewhere off to the side, he heard the faintest click. Tony froze, heart hammering in his chest. Despite the cold, he felt a bead of sweat trickle down the side of his face. He'd have given damn near anything to have a repulsor right now. Even a gun would've been an enormous step up, and that was despite the fact that no amount of training had managed to make him good with one. Just, something. Anything to feel a bit less vulnerable, a bit less like a stupid, weak-limbed seventeen-year-old trying to sneak up on a professional killer who'd lived longer than Howard and been active since more than a quarter of a century before Tony was born. He kept still, didn't even dare to breathe, but fucking hell, his heart wouldn't stop hammering and there was no way in hell Barnes hadn't heard him. Slowly, all too aware of the time running away, Tony counted down from a hundred. Glanced at his watch. Two minutes left. He was going to have to start moving.
Tony clenched his hands into fists to stop them from shaking. This version of his body didn't handle adrenalin all that well yet, and all the danger centers in his brain were blaring. He drew in a shuddering breath, took a cautious step forward, and another, and another. Just another few steps and he'd be at the crest of the hill. He put his foot forward, set it down, shifted his weight. He felt the snap before he heard it, the hard outline of a fallen twig, the give and the break. And then he heard it, louder than a gunshot. The shock went through him, made him gasp and shudder. His heart was pounding harder than a race horse, somewhere in the vicinity of his throat where it most definitely did not belong. Fuck. Still, he somehow managed to keep his breathing even and mostly silent, took another step. One minute left, which, shit, he couldn't let this go wrong, couldn't have come this far and not get the answers he needed. He couldn't--
There was no warning at all. One moment, he was walking, alone, and the next the cold muzzle of a gun was pressed against his temple. Tony froze, stood stock still. One wrong movement and he was dead. He was too damn frightened to even feel that surge of boiling rage Barnes always brought out in him. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony could see the approaching headlights of a far too familiar car. He had to act now, or Barnes would simply dispose of him and shoot up the car exactly like he had the first time around. Tony didn't want to even begin to guess what would happen to him if he got himself shot up in his past body. Couldn't be anything good. Tony sucked in a sharp breath. Then, "Vo-syem a-deen dva pyat shest. Stend vniz i zhdut zakazy." The Winter Soldier froze, arm lowering until the gun was armed at the ground. Tony turned to face him, took in the muzzle and goggles, the matted hair and metal arm. "Been a while, Barnes," Tony muttered before turning his gaze back to the road, intent on watching the car get by safely.
The headlights were getting closer, piercing through the darkness. Soon enough, Tony could make out the old Rolls Royce, could imagine Jarvis and his parents inside. They'd ride past. In a few minutes they'd be back in the beach house. All Tony would have to do was ditch Barnes, follow them and get Howard to talk. The car came closer at a pace that felt almost slow. Probably had something to do with Tony's elevated heartbeat and the adrenalin still flooding his system. The car came closer, was just passing them. A flash of light blinded Tony for a blink of a second. His vision came back a bare moment later, but everything was different. The car was swinging from side to side, swerving wildly, picking up speed. Another flash, as if something was ignited, and Tony was rooted to the spot, could do nothing but watch as the engine exploded and the car went crashing into a tree.
No sound had ever seemed louder.
For long moments he couldn't move, could do nothing but stand there and watch, mute, breathless, as flames licked around the wreck. And then the rage struck, flying into him, and he was turning around, grabbing the front of Barnes's tactical uniform, pressing himself up close and personal without a shred of fear. "What did you do?" he shouted. "What the hell did you do?"
Barnes blinked. "Nothing," he said. His voice was flat, perfectly even, inflection muffled by the muzzle. "My evaluation is that the target has more enemies than us. Means a higher chance of a clean getaway. We should return to the rendezvous point and await extraction, sir."
Tony gritted his teeth. Barnes was telling the truth. As far as he knew, Tony was now his CO. He had no reason to lie. Biting down the urge to growl, he shoved Barnes away from himself and set off running, straight back down the hill towards the wreckage. Too soon, he could feel the heat of the fire, feel it licking at his clothes and his skin. He pressed on, made his way closer, one arm up to shield his eyes. Smoke turned his throat scratchy. Some far corner of his brain told him what was left of the car was going to blow, that there was still fuel enough left for another explosion, that he needed to run in the other direction, needed to get to safety. He told it to shut the fuck up, focused on the slap of his feet against the ground, let the sound and feel of it keep him grounded, distracted from the mess in his head. A huge part of him was urging him to forget all about what he'd come here to do, just focus on saving his mother, saving Jarvis, even Howard, if he could, and to hell with all the rest.
His eyes stung, and he knew it wasn't all from the smoke. He swallowed around that months-old hurt, pushed it down deep where it belonged, and forged on.
A figure was crawling out of the car, slow and labored, faltering once before picking itself back up. Tony rushed closer, bent down. That was... Fuck, that was Howard, the way Howard would've looked if he'd crawled through a fire, which, well, he had, and fuck, Tony needed to get his brain on straight right this moment. "Dad?" he asked.
Howard looked up, his haggard face sooty, his white hair singed. "Tony? Tony, what are you doing here?" He doubled over. A ragged cough tore through his frail body. When he looked up again, his eyes were wet. "Tony... Maria and Jarvis, they're. They're..."
Tony swallowed, squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. "I know, Dad," he said. "I know." And he did. Fuck it, he'd had God knows how many years to process this, move on. It shouldn't be hitting him so damn hard right now. He took a deep breath, tried not to cough from the smoke. "Dad, I need you to tell me what you found out about the Tesseract. The, the Cosmic Cube. Whatever. What is it you found out?"
Howard frowned, blinking. And Tony got it, all right? He wasn't acting like his seventeen-year-old self right now, but screw that. He needed answers, needed them fast, needed to get the fuck out of here. Some of that must've shown through on his face, because Howard actually fucking answered him, "It's a doorway, Tony," he rasped, stopping to cough again. "Doors open both ways. They open both--"
Before another word could be spoken, someone grabbed Tony, and then he was being thrown over a muscled shoulder and was bouncing every which way as his ride - Barnes, of course it was fucking Barnes - ran for the hills. They barely made it fifty paces before the explosion tore through the night, throwing them both forwards and to the ground. Tony landed on his back with a muffled thump, felt all the air go out of him. He curled up on himself, coughing, did his best not to look at the blazing inferno the Rolls Royce had become.
"Sir," Barnes said, stepping into his line of vision. "We should return to the rendezvous point before the emergency responders show up." His hand was extended.
Tony considered knocking the hand away and pulling himself to his feet, but his whole body ached and Barnes was right. They did need to get a move on. Grudgingly, he reached up and clasped the offered hand, letting Barnes haul him to his feet. "You know where I stashed my car?" he asked. At Barnes's nod of confirmation, Tony set off. "Let's get out of here."
It wasn't until he was behind the wheel that he had time to stop and wonder what the hell he was doing. He should've left Barnes on that field. Everything was a hell of a lot more complicated with a Red HYDRA assassin in tow. And fuck it, fuck all of this. Howard hadn't had any answers, or, if he did, he hadn't managed to tell Tony, which made this whole damn thing pointless. And not just that, but he still had to figure out the answers, or he'd be stuck here. In the end, gritting his teeth, he set the course for the beach house. Maybe Howard's study would hold some answers.
He sped up the driveway and came to a stop, wheels screeching, in front of the house. It wasn't as ostentatious as the Fifth Avenue mansion where Tony had spent most of his pre-boarding school childhood. Tony liked it better, despite the extra bits of forced proximity, had been grateful when, around the time he started at MIT, his parents had made this their primary residence. He pushed that thought away, bundled it into the back of his head along with everything else he didn't have time for right now, opened the car door and stepped out. He was halfway to the front door of the house when he realized Barnes was still sitting in the car behind him, military-style stiff-backed. Groaning, he turned back around, jogged back to the car and fuck, every bit of his body hurt. He was going to be a fucking bruise tomorrow. He threw open the car door, leaned in. "Get out. Go... secure the perimeter or whatever it is you're good for, and then make yourself scarce somewhere inside. No one sees you. Understood?"
Barnes gave a sharp nod, opened the passenger-side door and slid out, disappearing into the shadows within just a few steps. Tony rolled his eyes, turned back and walked up to the door. It took a long moment to remember the password that went with his thumbprint on the frankly ancient electronic lock, but then he pressed it in, opened the door and stepped inside, turned on the lights. The past rushed out to meet him, a plethora of sights and smells he'd forgotten decades ago, had preferred to leave behind along with the house when he donated it to the Maria Stark Foundation.
Tony let it all roll off him like water on a raincoat and made his way to Howard's study. He let himself in, picked the lock to the liquor cabinet with practiced hands, pulled out an aged Bowmore, cracked the seal and poured a few fingers into a tumbler before plopping down behind the desk. He rolled his shoulders, sighing at the pop he earned, held up the scotch. "To Dad, for being as fucking useless as ever," he muttered. Still, the stinging in his eyes after he threw back the scotch had very little to do with the strength of the liquor. He put the tumbler away, opened the drawers one by one until he found Howard's stack of notebooks. Then he leaned back in the chair and got as comfortable as he could for a long few hours of reading.