Chapter Text
The ricochet of the double propulsor attack was spectacular.
Both Tony and Rhodey were thrown on opposite sides of the mansion as the glass shattered around them. His ear rang from the blast, vision completely white for enough seconds that he seriously worried he had lost some senses in the explosion.
Even though he was in the armour and it had thus cushioned his fall, he definitely felt the pain in his back and in his body from that crash. Not terrible as some of the other pains he had felt in his life, no. But still, he knew he was going to be sore the next morning.
Still, Rhodey forced himself back on his feet as soon as his eyes made out the HUD again, and he tried to focus on where Tony was still slumped on the ground.
He doubted that the attack had hurt him any more than it had hurt Rhodey, but Tony had been pretty drunk all throughout the night, and was thus more disorientated than Rhodey was.
And there was the other thing.
Rhodey could have taken the suit and flown away, at this point. Tony was in no shape to stop him, and it wasn’t as if he was going to. This fight had had less to do with Rhodey putting on Tony’s armour without permission than people thought.
Rhodey could have flown off with it, and Tony could/would not have stopped him.
But Rhodey did not fly off.
Instead, he forced himself to his feet, and gingerly walked back towards Tony, trying not to destroy the mansion any more than it already was.
“What, here for round three?” asked Tony, when he saw him approaching. He did not move from the ground, but his tone held that fed up note Rhodey could only detect because he had been looking for it. That fed up tone of ‘what more do you want from me’ Tony had employed a lot back at MIT - with people other than Rhodey - and that he had not heard in many years.
He wondered if it had been there, throughout the fight, that tone. If Tony had been as done with the entire thing from the beginning, but Rhodey had been too focused at how angry he was at him to hear it.
He hoped it hadn’t, but he had a feeling it maybe had.
He had a feeling he had been so focused on his own work, on his own feelings, on himself, that he had not heard Tony’s call of help - a call for help meant for Rhodey only to understand.
But that was then, and this was now, so Rhodey bent his legs - bent his legs - as well as the suit allowed him, and then pulled off his helmet to look at the point where Tony’s eyes were, behind his own helmet.
“Talk to me,” he ordered.
“What is there to talk about? You ruined my birthday party. You-”
“Five rum and cokes,” interrupted Rhodey, and Tony fell silent.
Five rum and cokes.
Something akin an oath, that they had created back at MIT.
It had taken five rum and cokes for Tony to admit Howard’s physical and psychological abuse of him, and it had taken five rum and cokes for Rhodey to admit to Tony the first time he had considered killing himself.
Since then, it had become their promise/vow to each other.
If one asked the other for five rum and cokes, they were asking for the truth, and the whole truth. They were asking the why , for the real reason behind it all, and they were swearing that not only would they not repeat the information to anyone, but that they’d also not judge them for it. That they were going to listen to everything being said, and that they were going to be there for them after it, in whatever way they could.
It was their promise to one another. A promise that they very rarely used, that was mostly a last resource; but that existed between them nevertheless, and that they had promised themselves and each other to always honour.
Rhodey wondered why he had not asked, before.
Perhaps, part of him had not really wanted to know.
Tony’s helmet snapped back, and there was an inscrutable light in his eyes that had not been there a few minutes ago. Any performed drunkenness was now missing from his eyes, replaced by a serious expression and eyes trying to figure out what had changed in the past few minutes.
“Five rum and cokes,” he repeated, as if to make sure, as if it was a question.
Rhodey nodded. “Five rum and cokes.”
“I am dying,” said Tony, without needing any further prompting. His eyes were still fixed on Rhodey’s face, as if he was afraid to look anywhere else. His fists were clenched beside him, and he was doing his best to keep his expression blank. “The arc reactor runs on Palladium, and it is poisoning me the more I use it. But if I take it out, the shrapnel in my heart will kill me way faster than the palladium ever would. I have been trying to find a solution or a way to lessen out the effects, but there is nothing. So, since I am dying, I have come to the conclusion that I might have some fun before it.”
The last time Rhodey had been told Tony was dying, he had been nearly dying himself, with Vanko using his suit to try and kill Tony. He had been so high on adrenaline he had barely processed it, instead focusing on the part where Tony was no longer dying.
He had quelled the panic before it could form, and had not really understood the emotional toll the entire affair had taken on his friend until his legs had stopped working and, for the first time in years, he and Tony had been forced to slow down, sit down, and finally really talk to one another about everything.
This time, even though he knew better, the fear clawed at his chest immediately, horror clear in his eyes and face. He knew better, he knew how to fix this, but he still couldn’t quite stop himself from grasping at Tony’s hand.
He also did not really want to stop.
Because last time Rhodey had had to choose between his duty and Tony, and he had chosen wrong (Tony might have let him leave with the armour, but it had taken months if not years for the small fracture in their friendship to be fixed).
Because Rhodey had lived in a world where Tony Stark had died, and he knew what that was like. He knew what it was like to live without Tony, and he had decided he could not do that. He could not do it, the world could not afford to do it, and so he had come back in time with one vow: he would never again let Tony kill or sacrifice himself.
Never again.
Time travel.
Rhodey could still not quite believe that it had worked. Could not quite believe that they had managed to do it – again – this time without using the machine or the Pym particles. Could not believe that he was now somehow inhabiting a body thirteen years younger than he was, a body without the injuries the years had made accustomed to, and with fully functioning legs and spine.
He had long since resigned himself to the fact that, unless he was wearing Tony’s braces, he was never going to be able to walk again. It had taken a long time, and a lot of talks from therapists as well as his mother’s love and Tony’s existence, but he had accepted it, understood it.
And now here he was, upright once more, running a broom over the destruction he and Tony and the party had reigned on the living room, with Tony helping him out.
With Tony alive. With Tony whole. With Tony younger than he had been, with all that bravado and arrogance that Rhodey had not even noticed SHIELD, the Avengers and the world had snipped away from him, piece after piece.
He remembered himself, at this point in time.
He had been flying towards the Edwards base, angry at himself and angry at Tony, angry at being put in a situation where he had to choose between friendship and his career, doing his best to control an unfamiliar suit Tony had only ever let him play around with in his workshop, and wishing that Tony would, one day, grow up.
His phone was still buzzing in his pocket, but this time Rhodey had no interest in making the choice he had made before.
He had lived in a world where he had been given an honourable discharge because of injury for more than seven years, and he had lived in a world without Tony at his side for about a week.
He knew which one was worse, which one he was ready to sacrifice the other for.
“Are you not-” started Tony, when his phone vibrated again, and Rhodey shook his head.
“No. Actually,” he then added, pulling said phone out. But he did not answer it, instead turning it off without even checking to see who was calling. He knew who was calling, and it could wait.
“Rhodey,” said Tony, looking slightly conflicted.
“No,” reiterated Rhodey, pausing the sweeping to look him in the eyes. “There is nowhere that I need to be more than I need to be here. I don’t care what you think on this particular topic or what you want to say: you are the most important thing to me right now.” He glared at him. “You are my best friend, and have been suffering alone for far too long already. I won’t let you suffer for any longer, not if I can do anything to help.”
Tony blinked a couple of times, much more quickly than he needed to, and Rhodey kindly decided to not bring any attention to it.
When he spoke again, he seemed to have gotten some control over his emotions again.
“I’ve tried, Rhodey,” he said, and now he sounded more resigned than anything. “Why do you think I gave Pepper the company? Why do you think I promoted Happy? Why do you think I had a super suit that fit you like a glove just waiting in my workshop for you to take?” He shrugged. “There is nothing I can do, nothing that I haven’t tried already.”
Was this how SHIELD had found him? Rhodey had only gotten the bare bones of this story, and Tony had purposefully skated right over all the injured feelings and depression, only focusing on the science and his own genius.
Rhodey did not know if he had not noticed back then, if Tony had fully distracted him with the brand new element or if he had just had not had the emotional capacity of asking the relevant questions.
He and Tony had wronged one another in their lives – it was basically unavoidable, when they had known each other for that long, when they had been best friends.
But after seeing him die killing Thanos, after seeing him being the one to make the last sacrifice… all he could focus on was his own wrongs, his own mistakes, his own regrets.
“You need to survive long enough to figure out a cure,” said Rhodey, the emotion in his voice not fabricated. “Hemodialysis might not be a final cure, and I know how much you’d hate having to suffer that, but it can help you long enough to figure out a cure. Right?”
Last time Tony had not considered that, and Rhodey had called him a dumbass over it.
It seemed that it was the case this time around too, considering the expression that appeared on his face.
It quickly faded back to the resignation, however. “It might help me, yes. But Rhodey, there is no cure. This is it. This pony’s got no more tricks-”
“Don’t you dare give up on me now, Stark,” said Rhodey, letting go of the broom and turning to his best friend once more. Tony startled, but did not move out of the way as Rhodey approached him, putting both hands on his shoulders. “You will not quit on me. If there are no more ticks from this pony, pull one out of your hat. If there are no more solutions out there, create one. Do the impossible. I don’t care who you hack, where you steal, or what you do: do anything you need to do, anything you can do.
“But do not quit on me, Tony Stark. Don’t you dare give up .” He pointed a finger at him, almost laughing at the way Tony went cross-eyed, trying to keep it in his line of sight. He didn’t, because nothing about this discussion was funny. “You do not get to die before you hit fifty, and you do not get to die before me. You ride with me, okay? If there are no more miracles, you will make one. Right?”
“Right,” repeated Tony. The fear that last time Rhodey had not even guessed at was barely hidden in his eyes, but he nodded. “I will just make one more miracle. What’s one more?”
“What’s one more,” agreed Rhodey, smiling.
This close, Tony looked so young.
It was weird, because he wasn’t really young. He was on the wrong side of thirty already, and he had more than enough scars and wrinkles from his less than healthy lifestyle throughout his teenage and early adult years.
But the age from New York, from ULTRON, from SHIELD, from the Avengers, from that damned Civil War, from Thanos and those five years from hell were gone.
It was shocking how much that had changed and aged him.
Rhodey wondered how it was going to feel, looking at himself in the mirror later on and seeing the same.
“If you’re not going to kiss me, you should probably stop breathing in my carbon dioxide,” pointed out Tony, one eyebrow raised.
Moment broken.
“In your dreams, Stark,” said Rhodey, even as he stepped back from him.
“How did you guess?”
“Three words: Summer of 89.”
“You are not supposed to bring up summer of 89!”
“I did, bitch!”
Getting Tony to tell Pepper the truth of things took a lot of convincing, but Rhodey had dealt with Tony’s stubborn ass for a few more years than the stubborn idiot was aware of.
It still took him dragging him physically into the company and stopping him from buying the strawberries Pepper was deathly allergic to .
But it was worth it. It was worth it for the way Pepper broke into tears in Tony’s awkward arms right after she was done being horrified and angry for how long he had suffered in silence, for the way her love for him was stronger than her upset, and she wasn’t afraid to show him. And it was worth it for the surprise in Tony’s face, who somehow still did not understand people actually liking and caring for him.
Rhodey could not really fault him, with the experiences he had had.
Looking at Pepper’s tear stricken face hurt.
Pepper was one of the people Rhodey felt the worst about leaving to the past.
The whole time travel business was not super clear to him, in terms of the difference between travelling via Time, Soul and Mind stone vs using Tony’s quantum machine, but if he had understood his companion correctly, their jump in the past meant that the universe from which they had originated was now gone.
Which meant that his goddaughter was gone.
Morgan H. Stark.
If there was one person he had mourned for as much as he had mourned Tony, it was his daughter.
He mourned what her life could have been like. He mourned what she had lost, with one snap of fingers. He mourned her life without Tony, who had loved her so much (“I think we are going to win this thing, Rhodey. Morgan loves me 3000: we cannot lose with those odds.”).
And he mourned that now she risked never existing, all because of Rhodey’s actions.
Because there was a chance that even if he lined up things perfectly and managed to get Tony and Pepper together, Morgan could still not be born.
And that was just… fucking terrible.
He had loved his goddaughter, and she had loved him.
It sucked to think that he’d left her without saying goodbye, just as her father had. It sucked to think that he might never see her again.
“You will find a cure,” said Pepper, and Rhodey turned to focus on the once couple.
She wasn’t asking, and Tony forced a smile. “I’ll definitely try,” he offered.
“Do or do not,” quipped Rhodey, insistently glancing at the Stark Expo model in the corner of the room, “There is no try.”
“Thank you Yoda,” said Tony, rolling his eyes. “But speaking of do or do not… I was thinking about Rushman.”
Pepper raised an eyebrow, confused. “The spy?”
Rhodey did his very best to not appear too surprised or shocked by the easy way in which Tony nodded, as if it was somehow common knowledge that the woman was a spy.
He had been thinking of how to subtly nudge him into firing her and cutting off any possible contact from SHIELD (he was not sure of when exactly they had gotten to him, but he knew it had been at some point after he and Pepper had stepped back from him because of his behaviour), but apparently they had always known?
Was this a new development? It did not sound as if it had anything to do with his time travel, but-
“Oh, we never told you,” said Pepper, noticing his expression. “We are not sure what agency she is from, but the red head employee you’ve seen around Tony at the party is probably a spy. Between her bogus resume and the fact that she just so happened to be the next in charge notary to be sent to us even though she has had maybe one week of experience at the company at that point…” she rolled her eyes.
“Plus the bugs,” helpfully added Tony. “Every time she comes by, JARVIS finds a bunch all over the place. We are currently trying to figure out where she is from.”
Damn.
Perhaps that was why Romanoff and Fury had struck so quickly. Between Tony’s recklessness and the way he was catching up to them, they’d had to strike as quickly as they could, to dangle ‘the only solution’ before him and convince him to throw his lot with them, convince him that he ‘owed’ them.
But now they wouldn’t be able to.
The one thing SHIELDRA loved more than power was living in the shadows, existing without the rest of the world noticing them. They wouldn’t dare attack Tony while he was with a high ranking member of the military, that was too much of a risk both because of who he was to Tony and who he was to the military.
Apparently, the only thing he needed to do to ensure that SHIELD did not get their dirty claws in Tony’s back was be there for him and have his back.
It stung, a bit. But what had been had been, and things were going to be different now.
“Hey,” he said, interrupting the discussion between Pepper and Tony, and doing his best to sound nonchalant. “That’s the model that was in your dad’s video for the Expo, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Tony, frowning at it. “Why is it here? I should-”
“Funny,” said Rhodey, tilting his head slightly.
“What’s funny?”
“If you ignore the trees and those useless stands, does that not look a bit like an atom?”
Was it a little risky, coming out and saying it like this?
Most certainly. But he had no idea of how SHIELD had helped him figure it out, and Rhodey was not letting them get anywhere near him anyway. Also, Tony did not have the time to figure it out all by himself.
Pepper frowned, clearly not seeing it all.
But Tony’s eyes widened, and Rhodey decided it had been worth the risk.
Watching Tony create Badassium was much more exciting than hearing about it had been.
Especially since Tony had severely understated and undersold the entire thing.
Intellectually, Rhodey had known that Tony had created a new element. It had changed the colour of his reactor slightly, and helped him retrieve those little slices of sanity that the belief he was going to die had taken from him.
He had seen the articles, following the event. He was science savvy enough to understand the utter awe and shock from everyone in the scientific community as another letter was added to the periodic table. He had been appropriately proud and shocked to see it.
And he had even been the one to push him to re-create the element in this timeline.
So yes. Intellectually, Rhodey was perfectly aware of the fact that Tony had created a new element all by himself (fuck Howard Stark, he was not getting a shred of credit for this, as far as Rhodey was concerned).
He was aware of all of this.
But it was quite another thing, watching him actually do it.
It was another thing helping him destroy his workshop to create a particle accelerator. It was another thing physically helping him balance and move things around, elements and objects alike. It was another thing, being able to watch from the front rows as he turned numbers, calculations and a dream from an Expo model into an actual element.
By the time Tony was holding the new triangle shaped reactor core, Rhodey had long since lost his ability to talk.
“Congratulations sir. You have created a new element,” said JARVIS, and yeah.
Yeah, he had.
“Sir, the reactor has accepted the modified core. I will begin running diagnostics.”
“Wow,” said Rhodey, trying to tamper down some of the shock he felt.
He had known Tony could do this. Tony had done this before, even if he would never know.
But it was one thing for him to do it after whatever proof SHIELD had given him and the videos he said he had watched of Howard.
It was another thing entirely for him to do it after Rhodey made one comment about the Stark Expo model.
It was another thing yet for Rhodey to be there and be able to watch him do this all by himself.
Tony turned to glance at him, and his expression turned from awe to something that was trying to be smug but couldn’t quite manage it. “You told me to make a miracle,” he said, shrugging. “Happy?”
“General approval,” said Rhodey, coming closer to him. “You have almost impressed me.”
“Almost impressed you,” said Tony, rolling his eyes. “I’ll show you.”
“Sir!” called out JARVIS, as Tony started to exchange the reactor for what he had inside.
“Woah, shouldn’t you run some tests?” added Rhodey, equally as worried. Had this happened like this the first time around? If so, Rhodey had missed a chance to kick his ass for being so damn impulsive.
“If you and JARVIS want to run some tests, run them,” said Tony, shuddering at whatever the reactor felt like, as the light in it grew brighter. Rhodey was starting to become concerned too.
“We are unclear as to the effects,” tried JARVIS.
“Either I die or I don’t,” said Tony.
“That is a terrible philosophy,” complained Rhodey.
“It served me so far,” pointed out Tony. “Damn. That tastes like coconut. And metal. Oh wow, yeah!”
“Tony?” asked Rhodey, as the brightness reached blinding levels of brightness.
But then it started to dim again, and Tony remained standing on his own two feet, looking a little wide eyed but as good as always.
His skin was already less pasty than it had been before, and he did not look as if he was about to keel over any time soon.
“Miracle,” repeated Tony, and even though he was not back to 100%, the ever present grief, the tiredness, the exhaustion that had been in his eyes prior to this was gone, replaced by his signature smugness.
He was alive, and Rhodey and Tony now knew he was going to stay alive.
He had survived this.
Rhodey clapped his shoulders. “I knew you could do it,” he told him, and his voice was not gruff at all.
Tony smiled, putting a hand on Rhodey’s arm. “Yeah,” he said. “You did. Five rum and cokes, right?”
Rhodey smiled. “Five rum and cokes.”
It took Rhodey a little longer than he’d have preferred to take care of the last loose threads, so it wasn’t until hours later that he returned to the Mansion.
Taking Vanko and Justin Hammer off the chess table had been easy, with his prior knowledge of their activities.
The duo had not seen him coming, and all it had taken was an anonymous leak to the right people.
Luckily, Vanko had not yet done working on his drones, and Justin was a baseline man with no redeeming qualities: caught by surprise as they had been, they had not stood a chance.
Hammer had been arrested as in the previous timeline, though with no reckless endangerment and manslaughter charges, but Vanko had killed himself before anyone could get their hands on him – this time actually dying.
Rhodey was actually quite glad for it.
Vanko had been the only other person alive who knew the secrets for the arc reactor; with him dead, Tony was safe, until he eventually got the thing out.
And that was what mattered to Rhodey.
That was the number one reason he had come back to the past. Sure, he agreed with Wong’s saying that Thanos should have been defeated the first time around, and that the repercussions of the lack of Infinity Stones plus the quantum time travel to their universe were going to be big and possibly universe ending, of course. Saving the universe was important.
But Tony had been Rhodey’s number one priority, and he continued to be Rhodey’s number one priority.
Though the idea of having to keep him alive with the limited information the man had given him regarding the next 10+ years of his life was quite horrifying.
He had barely managed the first time around, and considering the chaos theory… yeah, this was going to probably give him grey hair faster.
And let him not start on the part where he had to keep this entire thing a secret from Tony.
It was going to be-
Rhodey stopped in the living room doorway, frowning at the sight of the television and Tony on the couch watching. Less about Tony’s position in front of the television and more about the contents of what Tony was looking at, actually.
“Tones,” he said, frowning. “What are you doing?”
“Preparing,” said Tony.
“Preparing?” echoed Rhodey. “What could you be preparing for, by watching Back To The Future ?”
“I am mentally preparing myself to understand the time travel secrets that have brought a future Platypus back in time to me in 2010,” explained Tony, turning to grin at him.
Shit.
Rhodey quickly prepared himself to push past the initial panic and laugh and ask him if he was crazy, but Tony spoke before he could. “Please don’t insult my intelligence by pretending otherwise, Honeybear. I’m more interested in the how you managed to come back in time and why you did not bring me with you, and how and if you are going back to the future at any point in time. Because I don’t think you are a bodysnatcher, but you are also not my Rhodeybear. You are, actually. But your eyes are older than that of my Rhodeybear, and you look more tired and upset and emotional. Like crazy emotional, and that is not you and it’s not us.”
He smiled, patting the spot beside him. “So… how accurate is Back to the Future?”
Rhodey considered him.
Tony was one of the smartest men in the world. With nothing but a rough idea, Tony had created a new element, a time travelling device and a gauntlet capable of handling the might of the Infinity Stones. All of these things had taken him no more than a few days of work.
Tony was a genius. And he was also one of the people who knew Rhodey best in the whole world. Tony had known him better than his own mother did by their second year at MIT.
In retrospect, thinking that he would or could have somehow missed the subtle changes in Rhodey, no matter how hard he tried to hide them, had been rather silly of him.
If the situation had been reversed, Rhodey failed to imagine a universe in which Tony would have come back from the future and he , after days in each other’s company, wouldn’t have noticed.
It was stupid to imagine the opposite could have happened.
Most importantly, Tony had trusted him. Rhodey had clearly not been the man Tony recalled, and he had been steering Tony into some specific directions since he had arrived into this universe.
If Tony had realised that Rhodey was not really the same 2010 Rhodey he was used to, he’d have to have noticed this too.
He had to have realised.
And still, he had trusted him.
And still, he had listened to him.
And still, he had given him a chance.
Rhodey had come back in time to protect Tony, and while keeping the secret was a good way of doing this, lying was not.
If he told him he could not tell him, he was pretty sure Tony would respect it.
But Rhodey was not going to do that.
He was his Tony.
“Depending on the time travel method, both very and not at all,” said Rhodey in the end, sitting beside him. “Man, Wong is going to kill me. For now, I think I’m safe from her, though. Why do you have to be so smart?”
“It’s a curse,” agreed Tony, coming to cuddle closer to Rhodey. “And who is this ‘Wong’? Or this ‘her’? Should I be jealous?”
Rhodey snorted at the mere idea, fingers going to Tony’s wild and unkempt hair.
He held him a little bit closer.
Then, he started talking.