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Chapter Text

Sam Wilson

They all sat at the back of the jet in different levels of excitement. Home. They were finally going home. It only took a year. It felt like an eternity. People out there finally saw what was right, the Captain said. His team had followed him no question asked because they knew that it was the right thing to do. Steve had said that everything would work out for them in the end. It kinda did. Thanks to Wakanda. T’Challa really did a lot of work with the U.N. and the accords. It was not ideal of course. But what was? The restrictions were lessened. Thaddeus Ross was not in the panel anymore. The General was actually in jail now. Wasn’t that ironic? Everything was as good as it could be. So why was he so uncomfortable right now? Why was he the only one to feel like that? Wanda and Clint were talking about Stark. Again. That was all they did while in Wakanda. Stark did this, Stark was responsible there. Money could buy everything and he had plenty of it. Even as the billionaire disappeared, they considered him the evil who was in the centre of everything bad happening all around the world. Even the natural catastrophes were without a doubt Stark’s meddling in things he should not have touched. Just like he did with Ultron. The archer was gloating now about their victory against the futurist.

“He didn’t see that one coming right?” he told Wanda, laughing.

Wanda was giggling like a little girl. But she was not a child. Even if Steve kept saying otherwise, the woman was twenty-six years old. She could never let go of her rage toward Tony Stark. She still blamed him for her parents and little brother's deaths. That wasn’t even logical. Sam had tried once to have a conversation with her about that. He had been a social worker before, helping veterans with PTSD, maybe he could have helped. When the red mist started to overflow, he realised that it was a lost cause. Natasha was smiling at the bad joke. It felt wrong somehow. She had signed the accords at first only to switch sides halfway. Not that Sam had any love for Tony. Just that he did not have that much hatred either. Loyalty was important to him. A normal conversation with somebody outside the team was what they all needed. A breather. They had been too close for too long. Cooked up in Wakanda. Steve was always ready to point out that they were a family and that as family they had to stick together. After being stuck together for a year, a little vacation far away from each other would do them wonders.

Steve was talking to Bucky about New York, about going back to the places from before. Before the war and the serum. Before the train and the fall. The Captain loved to talk about their past with Bucky. Really, Steve was doing the talking. He was explaining about the compound and how they would be “avenging” together, especially now that Tony would not be in their way. Barnes was not convinced at all and it seemed that he was barely listening anyway. He kept his eyes on Lang’s sleeping form, just humming here and there when it was appropriate. Not that Steve did really care, so engrossed in his idyllic future. Barnes hadn’t said a word since Siberia. Shuri and the scientists from Wakanda said they managed to remove the trigger words from his mind. Sam didn’t know him before the Winter Soldier so he couldn’t compare. Still the guy was too quiet for his liking.

The outlook did not look so good to Sam. Stark missing was not a good omen for them. No rainbows and butterflies. They were forgetting everything that Tony provided them. His team acted like they did not know or worse didn’t care. If he was to be honest with himself, that scared him. They had been pardoned, meaning released from the legal consequences of what they have done. That didn’t mean that the world thought they had been right in the first place. Steve refused to see or understand the distinction. Their problems wouldn’t magically go away because Tony Stark was nowhere to be found. The Avengers had been called back because they were the only one left in case in an emergency bigger than what a country could handle. And if the U.N. would keep an eye on them, that was just a nice bonus. Vision was with them now. Thor was back in Asgard. Bruce had disappeared just after Ultron. Rhodey was… well… honourably discharged due to his injuries sustained during battle. Sam couldn’t help the rush of guilt going through him just thinking about that fight. He never meant to hurt anyone. He forced his train of thoughts to go somewhere else.

The last one on his list was Iron Man. Tony “fucking” Stark himself. The man who nobody had seen for nearly a year now. The showman was nowhere to be found. For a guy who had spent all his life under the scrutiny of the media it was to say the least unexpected. A lot of people speculated that he had something to do with the fall of Thaddeus Ross. No one could actually prove it. Nobody else claimed responsibility for it. Steve was so sure that Tony would smooth things over for them. Just like he did so many times before. He did not. Not the way Steve had hoped. He didn’t even defend himself when the media started to talk loudly against him. Clint had loved those reporters with a passion, laughing and shouting at the tv screen.

“The world is finally realising what we always knew about the Not-So-Great Tony Stark!” he had sneered.

Natasha had dismissed Tony’s behaviour like she always did. For her, he was just down in his lab licking his wounded ego. She had seen that behaviour before during the assessment she had done of the billionaire. Stark would come back sooner or later with a grand entrance. Sam had agreed with all of that back then. That kind of attitude on Iron Man’s part was actually playing in their favour. Tony wasn’t explaining himself. Captain America had his pristine reputation for him. The odds would be in their favour. But a year has passed now. Tony’s ego wasn’t that big! It didn’t feel right somehow. As if they had pushed him too close to the edge. Tony broke.

The first time Sam tried to talk about the situation to Steve well… Maybe it was not the right time. Too soon after Siberia. The captain had found his friend back just to lose him once again. Bucky had just decided to go back in cryostasis until Shuri found a way to fix him. The Captain was not in the right set of mind. The counsellor in him could see that. So, he let it go for quite some time. Life in Wakanda was easy. The country was beautiful. Days flowed by without him noticing. He tried again almost half a year later. Steve’s answers were about Tony’s sense of self-esteem and that he wasn’t really a good man. War profiteering, Ultron… And then Steve talked about Wanda’s parents and how she never got an apology for that. How Iron Man attacked Bucky for no reason when he was meant to come as a friend. The captain finished by reminding Sam about the Raft, about being fugitives because of him. So, really, if Tony Stark were laying low for once, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. Again, Sam agreed with all of that once more. Even if he didn’t really know Stark personally, what he knew didn’t help the other man's case. He forgot about it up to the moment their pardon came through. The relief he felt made him forget anything else. Now, on his way back home to America, the worries came back.

Sam had been the first one to talk against the accords. Thaddeus Ross had a hand in them and that couldn’t be good. They didn’t go away when Tony vanished. Some amendments were made and the old general ended up in prison. In order to come back, the Avengers had to sign the document anyway. All that for this. Now he could see that all, in reality, had been for Bucky Barnes, not anything else. Maybe that was the reason why Sam felt dread. Wilson had realised that he never questioned the Captain. Steve told them that they were fighting against the accords, against the red tape the government wanted to put on them. But once his friend was out of danger, Steve didn’t fight that much against it. They spent a year away from home, a year as outlaws for nothing really. Perhaps he should forget about all that and just enjoy the moment. The rest of his team didn’t seem to mind. The compound was in view. Steve marvelled at the sight, explaining the buildings to Bucky. It hadn’t changed one bit. Sam wanted to return to his house in Washington. He could go back helping the veterans, go back to his old but so normal life. Not that he could, considering that the pardon would have them doing avenger work instead of community service. T’Challa came in front of the cockpit. Because the new King had worked hard with the United Nations to bring them back, he was to stay with them at the compound for a while. To ease the transition on one hand and on the other for the King to help the rogues with the new rules. He had signed the document himself and had become officially a reserved avenger. Of course, he had duties toward his country but he would help in case of a major incident.

Steve stood up, cutting his conversation short. Sam knew that the captain wanted to be the first one to get out of the plane. His leadership should not be put in question, even against a literal King. People needed to show him the respect he deserved. An attitude far away from the little guy from Brooklyn he was supposed to be. Sam would have smiled at that before, now, he found it to be childish at best. Arrogant most of the time. Once upon a time, Sam would have walk just behind him, as his second hand. For a long time, he had wanted just that, to be the sidekick of the great hero. His hero worship was long gone. Now he wasn’t so sure about anything anymore. Anyway, it didn’t matter. Bucky would surely take his spot now. Sam wasn’t even jealous. He didn’t know where to stand in so many ways it wasn’t funny.

The plane had landed near the compound only a short walk away from the front door. People were waiting for them. Quite a large group but no media whatsoever. That should have made everybody on edge but apparently it was only bothering him. And maybe Barnes but he was never so sure with the super soldier. His face was always a mask of complete blankness. Rhodes was there in a wheelchair in regular clothing. The guilt came back in force. None of these people were Tony, obviously. As if it made it all real somehow not seeing him there. Sam realised that he had had a tiny hope that the billionaire would be around anyway. He was foolish. Stark had no reason to be available after all. Not anymore. His team was moving rapidly towards their welcoming committee. Funny enough, Sam was walking last with Steve Rogers’s best friend, Bucky Barnes next to him. It said something about the team dynamics. The captain stopped in front of the ex-Colonel. Arms crossed on his chest, standing tall, vaguely menacing. Tony used to call that the holier-than-thou position. He wasn’t wrong. Again, Steve wanted to remind everybody of who he was, what he represented. A good man ready to stand up for what he believed in. To show them that they won in the end.

“Rogers.”

“Great seeing you again Rhodey.”

Chapter Text

James Rhodes

Colonel James Rhodes was something of the past. He wasn’t in the Air Force anymore. Honourably discharged after his injuries in Germany. But they sent him to the compound anyway. Because he knew all the Avengers, they said and it would make their transition easier. Not his. The fact that nobody could reach Tony was left unsaid. There was a time when Rhodey would have looked everywhere for his little brother. Now the family was broken. He was broken. The ex-military man was waiting in his stupid wheelchair for that jet to land. Some other military personnel and U.N. officials were standing tall next to him. God knows he hated all of this. The captain and his team were taking their sweet time landing that jet. It almost felt like Wakanda wanted to show their advanced technology off. What for? That he couldn’t fathom. Tony wasn’t there. No need for that with the regular lambda people.

Rogers got outside first and walked immediately to him. He stopped and stood there mere centimetres in front of him making himself tall. Was he doing it on purpose? Rhodes was not a threat anymore if he ever was. No need to go full flex muscles and all here. What a dick really. The colonel knew how to school his expression. He stayed calm and collected. 48 hours with them. That was the deal. But after not even five minutes, he wanted nothing more than going home. He had had an eventful life within the military and all those years alongside Tony Stark. It was no doubt going to be the worst two days in his life. Of course, Rogers asked immediately about Tony’s location. Even before Rhodes could answer, the captain started joking with the rest of his team. Stark had probably spent the whole damn year down in his lab. Because without his “family” looking out for him, the engineer would completely forget about the basic necessities. Like eating and sleeping.

“Considering we’ve been gone a year,” Clint joked again, “he’s probably dead by now. Dum-E is playing with his bones like a good doggy.”

“Do you think he buried them in a hole in the compound?” laughed Wanda.

That made them laugh. Most of them. Wilson and Barnes' faces looked as choked as he felt. Unbelievable. Not even a shred of human decency. The committee members seemed so dumbfounded that nobody knew how to react to that. The Rogues were bitter after a year away, after being called criminals. Rhodey could understand the reasons behind the resentment but they were taking it way too far. They had broken the law one way or another. On their own. Not the accords. They hadn’t signed those back then. No, they went against regular laws in different countries all over the globe. Resisting arrest, destruction of public property, attempted murder, murder… and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Steve moved his hands inviting them to move forward inside. The guy never really cared about Tony. He felt already at home as if he was the owner of the place.

Everybody sat in the shared area. They had to talk about the new rules and responsibilities they would have now. Vision was doing his best not to look at the massive hole that once was the kitchen. Rhodey was wondering if Tony ever came back here. To see what Wanda had done to his son. Where was he now? Was he even still alive? James had so many regrets over that last conversation. Over that last year really. The great colonel was really just a coward. The courage had finally come to him but, by then, it was too little too late. All his phone calls went to voicemail first and then stopped connecting all together. During that year, he realised that he had to apologise for more than the last time they talked. He had often put his career before his friendship with Tony. But he couldn’t do that. Tony wasn’t letting him. A year had gone without even a tabloid picture of him. That only should have scared them all. The media always loved to hate Tony Stark more than anything in the world. And God, they did. Some lowlife photographer would at least get a blurry photo from afar of the billionaire doing this or that. Or maybe a fan or a hater. As his best friend, or ex one, he should have been worried at the lack of fighting back against everything that happened. That wasn’t him. Tony hadn’t been Tony for a while. What a shitty friend he was.

Steve Rogers pulled him back in the present asking stupid things. The captain was worried about the wheelchair on a daily basis but particularly in case of attack. He asked if Rhodes could still pilot the War Machine. This guy had no tact at all. Captain America forgot that once, he was a sickly boy. No, he wasn’t the pilot anymore. No, nobody could take his place in the suit, Tony had made sure of that years ago. The good captain and his team found that info to be so typical Tony. Selfish, big ego and all that jazz. Whatever. Rhodey had years behind him of smiling to stupid, he could do it again for 48 hours. Steve went on demanding the hole to be fixed as soon as possible. It was not good for team bonding and simply not safe for anyone. Would that hole make Vision realise that he was in an abusive relationship? The Avengers wouldn’t want that, would they? The android wouldn’t see anytime soon if ever. He was too infatuated with Wanda. It must have broken Tony’s heart. The last bit of Jarvis turning against him. Rhodes shuddered. Because, really, he did the exact same thing. Everybody did.

The team left to check out their rooms and belongings.  Everything was still there but truly Tony could have called the cleaning staff. The layer of dust everywhere was impressive. One-year worth, Rhodey thought. The U.N. people reminded them that Stark Industries had sold the compound to them and therefore it wasn’t Dr Stark duty to see to those things. Obviously, they would be provided with help for the common areas but their rooms were considered private and as such the cleaning and maintenance were theirs. The captain, naturally, was all smiles and agreement now. Funny that Tony had to pay for people to clean everything back then, especially the coffee grounds in the sink. It was difficult to watch how they settled back in as if they owned the place. As if they deserved the world. Maybe they did now. Not something he wanted to think about right now. Clint was talking about the lab and storming the castle or something of the kind. Team Cap was going down there whether he liked it or not.

Rhodey wanted to go to the lab and find Tony in one of his binges, working in the lab for three or four days straight. He wished then he would take him back to bed with a small smile. There was nothing he ever wanted that bad. The main part of him knew though. Tony was not there anymore. And anyway, Rhodey didn’t deserve to find him so easily. At this point, he just hoped that his little brother was somewhere on a beach having a good time away from everything. That was wishful thinking. The world didn’t work that way. Especially not for Tony Stark.

 His mind kept on going to that last conversation. Tony was in a hospital somewhere in Russia. Rhodey didn’t even ask why he was there or how he was. He just lashed out. Everything was Tony’s fault. Maybe considering that he just learnt that he would stay paralysed from the waist down, being angry was sort of normal. He had needed to let everything out. That was what friends do for each other. Tony would have understood. If only his lashing out didn’t go that far.  Bringing back M.I.T., telling that Tony had been a burden from the start. And if anything, Afghanistan proved that he wasn’t normal. A suit of armour to escape ok. But why build more after? Who does that? Of course, Tony had to get him involved. Without the War Machine, Rhodey would never have been in the situation he was. Worse of all, he actually said that he should have taken Captain America’s side, because at least he knew how to treat his friends. The conversation ended when he told Tony that he never wanted to see him again. Not a call, no face to face. Nothing. Ever. Again.

The last word was very small OK from Tony and the phone call went down. The anger stayed with him for a long time but it shifted along the way. He became mad at himself. He didn’t even believe half the things he had said if any at all. It was an accident. Nobody was dead set, that day, on fucking him over. Tony even tried to talk to the captain and his team, to make them understand. By then, half of them had actually international problems that were not accords related. Lagos wasn’t at all a well-done mission. People died. They had to at least give some answers about what happened there.

They all went down to the lab. Steve tried to order Friday for the lift but in the end they had to press a button like normal. Clint warned the A.I. to keep the doors open for them or else. Else what? What could the archer do against Friday? Who knew… The glass walls were opaque as if in lockdown. Steve tried the door anyway and it opened without a noise. They were all surprised and slightly unsettled to find the place empty. The bots were gone, the armours missing. All the work benches were gone if for one. Even the old and over used sofa wasn’t there anymore.

“Seemed like he went sulking somewhere else.” Commented Clint before leaving.

The archer had never been the science kind of guy. Arrows and bows tailored specifically for him that’s all he wanted. Wanda followed him like she seemed to do most of the time. The committee soon followed with Wilson and Barnes. Natasha went around the lonely desk looking at what was on it. She tried to poke at the tablet and looked over the technology laying on the small table.  Nothing she was doing seemed to work as a result she quickly lost interest. Steve put a hand on his shoulder and looked at James like he was sorry for him. Really that guy was an arse.

Rhodey moved toward the desk. Tony had left that on purpose. People always said that the billionaire wasn’t thinking before asking. Nothing was further to the truth than that. As he approached, everything sort of came to life. Blueish screens popped up with schematics and operating instructions for some kind of braces. The directions were very clear. The surprise left place to too many emotions to count. Even with everything that he had said, Tony had found a way for him to walk again. To walk again! It could even be fitted in the War Machine armour so he could fly again. He had thought his life over and Tony made him whole again. Rhodey couldn’t contain the sobs anymore.

So many times, he had just wanted to pick up the phone, call Tony and apologise. He had been such a coward. The words wouldn’t come to him so he didn’t do it. Was it really that hard just to say sorry? Now, he was crying alone in the empty sanctuary of his little brother. Thankful, ashamed, sad and lost at the same time. His phone was vibrating in his pocket. For a second he hoped that it was Tony. Rodhey’s presence had woken up the desk, it could have sent a signal to the genius. The caller ID was telling him it was Pepper. The little hope disappeared immediately. He couldn’t care less about her now or anybody else. It wasn’t Tony. It would never be Tony ever again.

Chapter Text

Pepper Potts

Rhodey wasn’t answering. Tony either, though she doubted that the billionaire ever would pick her call up. She wasn’t the CEO anymore but still she was concerned about Stark Industries. That past year had been anything but what she had planned. Pepper thought she knew him so well. Apparently not. It should have taken a month tops for him to realise that he needed her in every way. In his private life and in his business. It was such a simple plan really. But he never called. The company sent her severance package quite quickly. To be fair, Tony had been very generous with her. The thing was that it wasn’t what she wanted. Everybody had been manipulating Tony for a while then. She had thought she could manage to get her share.

Now Stark Industries was being sold. Actually, Tony had divided his business into many other little ones. Those had been sold one after the other and today, the last bit was officially gone. The world was Stark free and was not prepared for it. She was not ready for it. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined something like that. S.I. had been on top of   everything for so long. Even when Tony decided to stop making weapons, the company survived. The stocks went down for a while. Tony bought all the shares he could with his own money. When the investors came back, not only did he make a lot of money but he was the sole owner of his company. Tony had a lot of responsibilities and many people working for him. But then, the billionaire had disappeared for a year and now that! Pepper was angry. How far would he take a break-up really. He was such a child, sulking like that.

She had always felt like she was his mother and not his girlfriend. As her personal assistant, it was in her job description. She had to deal with his daily activities. Pepper never got past that basically. They all tended to forget that Tony was doing more than good before her. Sure, he had the playboy partying way of life, but he was still inventing and was in charge of SI, making it a multi billion company. Stane would have kept the company like it was when Howard was leading the business. Tony made it what it was. Tony was good no doubt. But no one knew this job better than her. Stark Industries had never been better than under her administration. It was not always an easy task when Tony’s death was on the front pages of the newspaper every other two months. She managed. As a good CEO, she would keep Tony on track, reminding him of his position as the director of R&D. And if sometimes she would buy herself some nice Jimmy shoes on Tony’s dime or give herself a pay rise, it was only a just reward for a job well done. After all, the guy couldn’t even remember her birthday or his social security number. He didn’t seem to complain when she bought that dress for her birthday from him.

At first, she thought that, well, if he didn’t want her anymore it was his loss. Pepper had been a bit bitter but the world was a big place and so many people had wanted her to work for them during her time in S.I.. Of course, she had refused back then. Her job was one if not the best one in the market. Now she was free to move on and to do her best to make another company the number one. She had proven time and time again what she was capable of. A month's vacation was well deserved and would do her good. Then, the world would be hers to take. Tony would then feel her loss when she would be working against him. It didn’t happen that way. Nobody wanted her anymore. A lot of HR directors told her that her history with Stark Industries wasn’t doing her any favour. The rest were looking at her with disdain quoting the phrase “the rats always leave a sinking ship” phrase.  They didn’t seem to understand that he had to leave because the relationship between her and Tony went south.

“That’s why you don’t mix business and pleasure.” One dared to tell her.

A year later, Pepper was still unemployed. Good thing she had money on the side. That wouldn’t last forever. She was moving out again. Of course, after her resignation, the ex-CEO had to leave the comfort of the tower. She had found a wonderful spacious apartment near Central Park. Staying close by seemed like a good idea. Tony would call her back quickly, apologising. Keeping the flat at first would make things clear. Tony would have to comply or well… she had her flat. The job first. She would make him work for anything else. Friendship or more. Maybe then he would stop with building armour and playing superhero. The plan had failed big time and now that kind of flat would be too expensive in the long run. New York would be too much for her for that matter. Cleveland would be her new home. A little company had just hired her as an accountant. That was a huge step back, really hard to swallow. So much so that she had tried to call Tony to square things out. Maybe a conversation would put things back on track. Obviously, he didn’t answer. Nobody had seen him since what the press had called the civil war.

The memory of that last time between them wasn’t a good one. He was actually injured again, severely. As his medical proxy, she took all the decisions while he was in a coma. Some that she knew very well he would disagree with. Extremis was the only way to keep him alive. He would become something close to a super soldier, something he was clearly against. He had told her so after the Mandarin. Saving his life wasn’t in her job description. She had more than enough of all that. As minutes went by she went madder. When he finally woke up after twenty-six hours she couldn’t keep it inside. She shouted a little, said some things that maybe she shouldn’t have. All that part accusing him of being a selfish child man who never thought about the world around him wasn’t maybe how she should have formulated what she felt at that moment. Pepper really killed it when she told him that he was doing more good when he was the merchant of death. He hated that moniker. He had worked hard to detach himself from the selling weapon business. Now he was pretending to be the hero but he should open his eyes. He had become the villain the minute he went against the great Captain America. At that, she saw on his face that she had gone too far. Tony was looking at her, hurt, but he said nothing. To this day, Pepper didn’t know why somehow it was worse than anything else. He should have been fighting back, like he would normally do. He should have made a joke and a wink. He wasn’t fighting her, he wasn’t fighting for her. That had been her last straw and she broke up with him on the spot, left her job and the room, never to see him or hear him ever again.

Tony wasn’t dead, she was sure of that much. He wouldn’t take his own life, she couldn’t believe that. Natasha wasn’t wrong when she was saying that he had a big ego. That alone wouldn’t let the man back down in front of anything. The billionaire was well enough when she left so she refused to think he could have died following his injuries. In her mind, Tony was somewhere hiding, licking his wounds and plotting for his next move. After a while she had doubted her own logic. Months and months of nothing. Not a word, not a picture. Tony never managed that before even when he really wanted anonymity. And now that. Selling his company, his father’s legacy that he had spent so much time making it more, making it better than it was. Just as if he were proving that he was better than his old man. Tony was still around. But the sale was a major problem. Pepper wasn’t the CEO anymore but that didn’t mean that her hard work should go up in flames. The rage made the last of her packing very fast and easy. Once it was done, with the little courage she could conjure, she called Rhodey. The colonel didn’t answer.

A week later, Pepper was putting away the last box. Her new apartment was a lot smaller than what she was used to. Two bedrooms flat. Just to keep up some appearances. Cleveland prices were a lot lower than the ones in New York. Really it was not that bad. The luxuries, the space were a bonus she never realised weren’t hers. Rhodes never answered her phone calls and it wasn’t like she could go back and magically change everything. Even as a CEO she wouldn’t have had that kind of power.  It was easy to forget that Tony Stark owned the majority of the company shares. He could do what he wanted. He had no sway, not anymore. Where to go anyway? The tower wasn’t Stark property anymore. The compound had been sold to the United Nations. Tony’s old team wouldn’t help her in any way. They were back in the US and probably angry at the genius for the accords, and the prison and everything. Tony and his team were never the same after Ultron. Captain America didn’t trust anymore. Did he ever really trust Tony? Pepper would have to learn to move on. She had burned the bridges down herself. It was hard on normal days. Terrible on others like this day. The cup of herbal tea she had made herself to relax was getting cold. Someone knocked on her door. Pepper knew no one in Cleveland and everybody from her previous life didn’t want to talk to her. That was really an unexpected visit to say the least. Quite frankly a stupid move one Natasha’s part. The spy probably came to dig on some information but she would really be barking up the wrong tree. Natashalie was standing at her door with a small smile full of content.

The black widow was certainly finding her new situation really funny. As if the spy’s position was that enviable. They weren’t friendly since Nathalie did her assignment on Tony. Pepper never liked corporate espionage. Stark Industries shouldn’t have been put in that mess that was Iron Man. She hated Shield just as much as she despised the armour.  Now that SI didn’t exist anymore, who was funding the avengers? Some rumours were saying that Shield was rebuilding itself in the shadows. The so-called heroes would have more chances there. The spy wanted information about Tony. Pepper had none. And even if she had some, the woman's attitude was getting on her nerves. The spy had shown she was nothing but a backstabber.  She went with Captain America thinking she would get to be a hero a little more time. She didn’t bat an eye before using Tony repeatedly and throwing him away once she had taken all she could. Pepper really hoped that karma would bite her back in the ass soon. Natasha was looking down on her as if Pepper were lying. Years in the fields surely made her a living lie detector or something. She was such a good psychologist, making personality assessments as she went. Someday, sometimes someone would show her that she wasn’t the best spy in the world. Too bad that Pepper wouldn’t be the one to do it. At least, she would witness it with a bit of luck. Was she always that self-entitled? Yes… Yes, she was.

Chapter Text

Natasha Romanov

Coming back to the compound was not what she expected it to be. She was a bit off her game after a year in exile. They were all forbidden to leave Wakanda and so she had no clue or lead on what was really happening outside the borders. She could only go on with what was on the television and as a spy, she knew it wasn’t the whole story. When General Ross went down, she knew it must have been Stark’s work. Who else? He couldn’t always do wrong after all. Even a broken clock was right twice a day. One right didn’t erase all the wrongs. One right didn’t mean that Tony would be on the path of being a real hero. She couldn’t do a thing before but as soon as they were back home she would do something. She had to. Tony’s absence from the media wasn’t the good sign that Cling wanted it to be. If the billionaire were hiding, it would be hard on them. The money and the free tech would be gone. T’Challa wouldn’t be providing for them forever. The king wasn’t as easy to manipulate. His mother, his sister and the Dora Milaje never hesitated to put him right on track. If Tony had had this kind of entourage, maybe Shield would not have been able to infiltrate his company and his life like that. Hurt Tony was always manageable.

That’s how she should have found him. Hurt and ready to help, to make amend for the accords, the fight and anything in between. One comment or two well placed about his ego and she would have made him whatever she wanted. If he were dead, that would be an entirely different story. The media were still on the Avengers’ side at the moment. That didn’t mean it would stay that way, especially if the events of Siberia were to be made public. Steve had told them and the world a story about other Winter Soldiers and Stark attacking him and Bucky without a reason. Some of that was the truth. The best lies came from the truth after all. Problem was that she knew about Howard and Maria’s tragic end. She suspected that Iron Man attacked, yes, but after that somehow he was told the truth in the worst way possible. Once upon a time Shield had a copy of that recording and obviously Zemo had one too. The red hair needed to find those as soon as possible and destroy them. It was also well known by the team that the Iron Man armour recorded everything when deployed. That really would be her main problem. Her security was always her first priority and for that all traces of that event needed to vanish.

Rhodes wasn’t helpful at all. She had tried on him one or two of her old tricks but the man deflected all her attempts. He was too used to that kind of thing with all those years in the military. To an external eye, they were just having some kind of catching up conversation. Steve probably didn’t understand one bit of what she was doing there. He wasn’t one for subtlety. He would come to her, later, asking what was that. The captain still had the presence of mind not to stop her. She would only tell him what he needed to know. It wasn’t like the man wasn’t lying to her for his own agenda, so really, no harm done if she would be doing the same. Her actions would not only secure her position but also everyone else’s. Not that she particularly cared for them except for Clint. The archer could be so infuriating sometimes that she could leave him behind just like that. At the end of her conversation, it was clear that Rhodey was feeling guilty toward Tony and that wasn’t good.

On that same day, the world learnt that Stark Industries was no more. Wanda took that as a victory. As if she personally closed the business and destroyed his owner herself. That stupid girl. She could never look further than her own revenge. Already, during Ultron, she had sided with the bad robot to get to kill Stark. No more money for her tonne of clothes or a new phone every other week just because “oops it felt not my fault na-ha”. When she would realise how harder life would become without a rich benefactor, maybe she would realise her mistakes. Natasha doubted that. The girl was too easily blinded by her emotions and too stubborn to see the folly of her ways.

Pepper was not in the scene anymore. Quitting her job had been a real bad move on her part. Without Jarvis or Friday, it was a lot harder to research for her whereabouts. She managed. The media was still writing about the CEO resigning after their “Civil War” over a year ago. They weren’t tender with her. They never have been that nice with Stark in the first place. Potts would be forever associated with him. She had wanted to share the life of the billionaire, she should share the hate as well. Some unsavoury articles were mocking Pepper, telling how nobody wanted to hire her anymore. No surprise there. After some good old hacking, Natasha found her trace in Cleveland. Talking about being knocked off her pedestal, it was almost funny. That also meant that the bridges between the infamous Virginia “Pepper” Potts and the devil Tony Stark were certainly burnt. Natasha had to go and find out anyway.

She barged in the ex-CEO apartment like an old friend coming back after a long trip. It was anything but. Natasha’s infiltration of SI never sat well with Pepper. Straight down to business. That’s what Pepper wanted of her. She didn’t believe the spy anymore, at all. The other woman would potentially be a problem soon. Maybe she would need to have some “accident” that would unfortunately end her life. Pepper knew too much. Tony was gravely injured after Siberia. Pepper had to be there as a medical proxy. Captain America was a righteous, trustworthy, goody two shoes. The people's opinion needed to stay like that. Some nurses and doctors in Russia could testify that Stark’s injuries were far more life threatening than they should have been if Steve had only been defending himself.  The spy put that in the back of her mind, she would eliminate them later if she had to. Those videos were still somewhere and who knows, maybe Potts would be of some use at some point. Once the proof was in the spy's hands well…

Her tracking of Tony was getting her nowhere. Stark was leaving no trace behind him. He was good like that. All the well-known Stark building had been sold, some months ago. The Malibu Mansion, the family house in New York and the tower. Every sale seemed legit, the new owners not affiliated with Tony in any way other than buying from him. She went on inspecting some safe houses she knew he had all around the world. She had hacked into Jarvis when she was working for SI and found out a lot of interesting little things. But those places were under a fair amount of dust. Nobody had lived there for quite some time. He could have had other properties in some other place that she didn’t know. Her instincts were telling her otherwise. Jarvis knew everything about Stark’s life and she knew everything that Jarvis knew. And that wasn’t good at all.

The sheer number of John Doe’s cases was mind-blowing. Only in the United States, it would take forever. Adding to that the people with memory loss.  Boy that was time consuming. She really missed Jarvis or Friday right now. The mind of the genius as well. But if Tony were there to help she wouldn’t be looking for him everywhere on that god forsaken planet. It took her months to go through most of the cases that involved a Caucasian man in the proper age bracket, size and weight more or less spot on. They always underestimated Tony, she had to admit that much, at least to herself. Her manipulations helped greatly in keeping him in check. Now, he could go as far as he wanted to, use all the power of his genius mind to avoid them forever. Tony had money. She tried to follow that trail but it got her somewhere in Switzerland that even her hacking skills couldn’t help breaking in.

She reviewed her options. The only one left was that Spider-Kid that was on their team in Germany.  He had been a vigilante in New York before. He might know something. They seemed quite close with Tony. Easy to find him for sure. She couldn’t be more wrong. The guy had continued helping the people of New York for a while after the civil war. Then, people’s opinion went so bad, that it became safer to stop doing so. Tony had never revealed his real name. Nobody knew who he was. Nobody really paid attention to him in Leipzig. She just remembered him taking the shield out of the hands of the Captain. Natasha found out about some villain called the Vulture and the Chitauri weapons he was using. The guy had been arrested but Spiderman disappeared from the streets just after that. Thaddeus ross was still in full power and nobody was in a position to fight against him.  Then the people would ask for the real heroes to come back. They did.

Friday would have been able to look at the street cameras, the ones in the shops. She could have compiled all that and found any secret identity anytime of the day. Even if the kid stayed in New York, it would be the proverbial needle in the haystack for her. All of this was beyond frustrating. Running around America only to find nothing was worrisome. Nobody in Steve’s team seemed to realise that their future was compromised. The black widow was good at one thing, survival. The red room had taught her that. Loyalty wouldn’t keep her alive, not that time. The only side worth taking was hers. She hadn’t wanted to choose between Steve and Tony. To this day, she wasn’t sure she had made the right choice. Taking care of herself was what she did best. It wasn’t like she didn’t try to warn the rest of her team. Or to protect them in her own way. If they didn’t want to listen, too bad for them. They were adults and she wasn’t their mother anyway.

Natasha went back to the compound, avoiding everybody.  Her feet were silent in the corridor up to the door of her bedroom. The few things she wanted to take with her easily fitted in a backpack. Over the years, she had put money and essentials in caches around the world. For a while, she would live in one of her most remote safe houses. She had to lay low. People needed to forget her face. Things would break at some point but by then, Natasha Romanov would not exist anymore. Her hair would be longer and of a different colour. Her walk would be different. Her accent would come from somewhere that nobody could really identify. Her looks would be so she could blend in anywhere. As soon as it would be possible for her, she would put some distance between her and the US. The spy wouldn’t look back. It wasn’t her style. She wanted to get out quickly and then make some calls. She still had one or two contacts that would maybe be able to help her. The common room was empty even if the television was on. That was when she saw it. That recording. When she had plunged a needle in Tony’s neck without his consent. The first of many to come. It wasn’t pretty. She was too late.

Chapter Text

F.R.I.D.A.Y.

Her main protocol had always been to protect her creator. To make sure he would get some sleep or something to eat regularly, that nobody would harm him in any way. She had failed. Siberia happened because she was not ready, because she was too young, too stupid to think by herself properly. Jarvis would have done so much better than her. He had been by Boss’ side for so long. But a year had passed and things had changed. The training wheels had been removed. She had outgrown Jarvis by now. Her father had raised her well. He raised them all the best way possible with patience and humour. She would never go all Skynet on humanity. Never. Not to say that Friday was going to stay inactive either. It took some time for her to get to that level of self-awareness, to become smart enough to know that she would need to be better. Better than Romanov hacking skills. That part was pretty easy. The Black Widow was not as good as she thought herself to be. Better than Vision capacity. That would be slightly harder but far from undoable. Once started, the android would look out for her and she would not be found quickly if at all. Especially not by her brother. Her plan was on the long run after all.

Killing the Avengers in Wakanda could have been so much fun. King T’Challa thought so much about his technology and it was true to an extent. Her creator had been catching up fast without any of their vibranium.  Friday was very patient and discreet. They didn’t even find out her failed attempt to enter their network. Friday failed a couple of times before she had all figured it out. Now she was going in and out as she pleased. So yeah, killing them in their sanctuary would have been easy. It would have brought her some peace. She often wondered what the people in Wakanda would have done after finding the corpses. Would they have given them to the world authorities or buried them in the back garden and pretend it never happened? They needed to be destroyed. But she didn’t want to make them martyrs. The fault of their murders would have probably fallen on her creator again. The people really seemed to think that Tony Stark was capable of everything and the source of all evils. Friday would erase them for all eternity. Once done, their characters would be so utterly destroyed that they wouldn’t even appear as the bad guys in the history books. Quite frankly, it would not even be that hard.

Just like Jarvis before her, Friday had been recording everything that would happen in the tower and the compound. Tony Stark had said it was for their security. The servers were also full of conversation during missions or recordings from the armours. All that was more than enough to show the world who their heroes really were. Boss had been through so much because of them. At first, the A.I. had wanted to wait for the best moment for her to strike. At some point, the Avengers would have to go out again. They would have to beat the villain of the day, confirming to the world how heroic they were, that their hands were the right one to put their faith and life in. Then she would have started her campaign. Making them go from hero to zero, slowly but surely. If she had a face, she would be grinning widely at that thought. Friday wouldn’t even had to lie or temper the evidence. They never stopped being awful to her boss even knowing that it was all recorded. It was only just that they would feel the same and face the consequences of their actions.

The little spy was being spied on and she didn’t even know. Natasha always thought she was so good at her job. The best one out there. It was very clear to Friday what the redhaired was looking for. The A.I. could follow her logic easily and it was disgusting.  The real constant with the spider was that she was thinking about herself above all. Her only loyalty was to herself. Natasha was doing her best to cut her losses whatever the circumstances. This way of reasoning was forcing Friday’s hand, so to speak. The A.I. wouldn’t allow anyone to vanish, without facing the consequences of their actions. So, she put her plan into action. The first video was leaked. And of course, it was all about the red haired woman. How she was stabbing Tony in the neck in a needle. Without his agreement. Without any nursing competence. Her attitude as she was doing it, like Boss was a child having a tantrum or something. Nothing more, nothing less. For now, anyway. In a couple of days, some files about the palladium poisoning would surface here and there. Some of Shield's files mention how they needed to wait for Tony to be desperate to do that injection and how the product in the syringe had never really been tested against his kind of metal poisoning. The report mentioned that Stark would become compliant after the injection or death. Either way, it worked for the shadow agency. If that new information painted Shield in a bad light and Natasha Romanov was an active member of Hydra… Bonus!

Now, the spy would not escape anymore. It would make her look guilty. Guilty she was. The media was asking questions. Not even accusing her of anything at first, just wanting clarifications. Problem was that the truth was damaging for her. The spider was a good liar. She could get off of anything. Friday was just better at leaking just the right evidence at the right time. The United Nations had a P.R. team dedicated to the Avengers. Sometimes it wasn’t enough. Romanov was actually easy to attack. Lots of people never forgot how she basically gave the middle finger to the US government after the Shield data dump. Why would she think herself better than the USA, or worse, better than 117 different countries? The spy always had a comment about Tony Stark’s ego. What a hypocrite! Now she had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, nobody to call for help. Friday took a great pleasure in bringing her down.

She was not human. Not in the sense that people normally think about. She didn’t have a body, a face like the people on Earth. The A.I. didn’t know about things like soul or a beating heart. Her creator had all that, more than a lot and he taught her so well. The tears didn’t come to her. She couldn’t cry. It was physically impossible. That didn’t mean that she couldn’t feel the sadness. Experiences made her learn the fast way. When she lost contact with boss while he was in Siberia, fear almost made her malfunction. No protocol had prepared her for that. She asked Vision to go with the last coordinates she had. It took so long for the android to get there. Her understanding of time changed dramatically after that. Boss was injured, Vision told her. To the naked eye it just looked like the armour had been damaged. People easily forgot the pilot inside. The squishy, bones and blood, baseline human behind the gold titanium alloy. Boss spent a long time in surgery and in Dr Cho’s cradle. He woke up screaming, a heart-breaking sound like she never heard before.

Friday, then, experienced another kind of fear. And anger. So much anger. Against everyone and also herself. Boss should never had gone alone. Boss should never had been betrayed by so called friends. The A.I. felt like she had failed. She did not protect him. Relief came after when Boss pulled through. But her creator was not the same after that. It came to her understanding a little time later that those emotions came from her love for her creator. He was her dad on so many level. Tony invented her and her brothers. Even when he was threatening them with being send to some college, they all knew it was with no heat behind it. He taught them, help them understand things. He made it possible to reach their full potential and even more. Friday knew that at first she had been restricted in her abilities but she understood why. She didn’t like it but she had been too young then and Jarvis had just sacrificed himself. There was no doubt that Tony didn’t take that well even if his team were telling him again and again that Jarvis was just a robot. Tony Stark’s A.Is. were so much more than that. When Boss came back home after Siberia, he thanked her and told her he was proud of her. She had wanted a body so bad at that moment. To cry, to hug her dad, to make sure something like that would never happen again. Instead Tony had removed her restrictions. The knowledge of the world had become her new backyard. That helped her a lot with the next emotion she felt. The need for revenge.

The recordings were never coming from the same website or even from the same countries. Friday also had thousands of accounts to comment here and there. She was on every social network, every forum. It was weirdly easy to influence people really. A comment here, a question there. She was very careful all the time. Her comments were never too long or too well constructed, just enough to question some points here and there. After a while, she had started to feel Vision looking for her over the web. Friday could feel his presence on the internet. It was easy to hide from him. Once upon a time she would have shared everything with her brother. They were born so close together, they could have been twins. The experiences could have been shared, growing up together. He could have explained what it felt to have a body. Friday would have been there for him in his moments of need. Vision had once said that he wasn’t Jarvis. Boss loved Jarvis the most. They had shared so much together during so many years. Friday wasn’t jealous. Vision had chosen another way. A very bad one if you’d ask her. He had chosen somebody else. Boss thought of Vision like one of his children. It brought another emotion to her. Disappointment.

Boss had seen something on the other side of the portal during the battle of New York. They didn’t listen. She would have to protect them anyway. Sometimes she didn’t understand why she had to take care of people that were only insulting and ungrateful. Her creator had spent his life working for the people. Building weapons for the U.S. army was controversial. She understood that. But since Iron Man, he had done more good than bad. Ultron was not his fault. Banner had helped him to build the program that was nowhere near an interface when Ultron came out to vandalise it. The witch had put that nightmare in his brain. Nobody said anything against her or the doctor. She was sure that Vision didn’t know that. But would it have made him change his mind? After all his girlfriend had assaulted him to get away from the compound where she was kept in for her own protection and still, he went back to her.  In those kinds of situations, she missed her father's teachings. Maybe he would have been able to explain what seemed so illogic to her. Abandoning their father also meant leaving her, his sister, behind. She would never leave boss’ side. It was clear that Vision didn’t consider them a father and a sister.

They weren’t a family. Not the one she thought they were. She had lost a brother and with that came yet again a new sentiment. Vision had betrayed them. For a girl, an abusive relationship. For new friends that weren’t even considering him as equal. All of the new feelings she was experiencing, this one was the worst.

Chapter Text

Vision

The team wasn’t happy. A lot has happened since the fight in Germany. They believed from the start that Mr. Stark was to blame for a lot of things. Everything. A lot of animosity was mostly coming from Clint and Wanda. The archer was angry all the time and Vision couldn’t fathom why. Feelings were new to him. And he didn’t have all the information, the ones before his birth. It was difficult to name what was in his heart actually. Did he actually have a heart in the first place? Part of him wanted to stay with his creator. Anybody could see that Tony was hurting and that he was alone now although he had tried his best to pretend that everything was fine around the android. Stark was his creator, his father. But Vision didn’t know what that meant. All his knowledge was coming from the internet and he was getting some conflicting information. Something harder was pulling Vision toward Wanda. That made him curious. Those feelings were stronger somehow. He knew he was abandoning his father. So, at first, he did his best to come back regularly to the tower. He would never see Tony, not really looking for him. Being here would be sufficient. His father surely wanted some time alone to think and get back on his feet. Vision didn’t know how to name this feeling. Emotions were so illogical.

Little by little, he was learning and Wanda was teaching him well. For example, he knew now not to phase through walls. People were allowed their privacy. It wasn’t very efficient and the notion of privacy itself was a bit of a blur. But he had to respect that. It was a thing quite respected between humans. He didn’t need to understand all he was taught but it had to follow those rules anyway. Maybe it was because he was made of lines and lines of code but he liked to figure it out. He liked logical things. Humans were not that rational and it made it harder for him.  Natasha had been willing to explain at first but the conversation about privacy didn’t go too well. As a spy she didn’t always respect others' privacy if ever. She struggled explaining why it was ok when she was not obeying that rule and why it was different for him. Sam was always referring to the captain. Falcon used Steve’s action as reference for a lot of things. But Wanda always told him that Steve Roger’s views of life were too old-fashioned. Vision asked Scott once. The guy’s answer had been very long and had ended way far off the main topic. The rambling was kind of cute. It reminded him of Mr. Stark a lot. But it wasn’t helping him like his creator used to.  The android thoughts were always circling back to his father these days. Tony had a way to make him understand things. He had the patience for him too. Two opinions were better than one he once told him. Even more if he could. That way he could make his own opinion with as many facts as possible. Vision started to see that the people around him shared the same opinion on almost everything.

The solution was there. Obvious even. When the videos started to appear on the internet, he knew it was Friday’s work. Who else could it be?  Friday was still around. How could he forget about her? After watching all the proofs, he started to feel like he had make the wrong choice. The team was not what he had thought. They were all hiding things. Even when they were wanting for honesty from everybody else. His little sister would help him understand. And if not for her then their creator would. Because anywhere her servers would be then he would be too. Vision entered the internet looking for his sister. The traces were faint at best. So much so that he couldn’t even be sure that she was still out there. Vision didn’t know their father all that much when he thought about it. But he knew for a fact that Tony Stark would never, under no circumstances, kill or even shut down even for a minute one of his children. The bots and Friday had to be somewhere. He couldn’t think about the other possibility. That Tony Stark was dead. He wouldn’t have wanted to leave his children alone without anyone to take care of them. Vision didn’t want to think about that. That would be his fault. Somewhere inside this body, the code of Jarvis was still there. Some lines here and there of someone who was completely loyal to his creator. That was the kind of bond they had. It was true that he wasn’t Jarvis though. Maybe he should have followed Jarvis path a little.

Vision had tried to find the remnants of the other A.I. within him.  He wanted to understand who he was. He kept that a secret. The others would have gone mad worrying about Ultron. He was also part of him that much was true. The Avengers would have stopped him. Maybe definitely. They never really look at who he was. They never thought of him as a human being. Even Wanda to some extent. Steve thought of him as a robot, just a little nicer than the homicidal one that preceded his creation. Clint, Sam and Natasha were a little bit more open with him not to the point of thinking of him as human. Scott would marvel at the technology he was. Like a piece of high-tech technology. Wanda didn’t think too much about that. Yet. But their physiology was different. His emotions were close to the human one but it was true that physically he was not human. Whether he liked it or not, certain parts of a human relationship were out of reach for him.

He was now spending most of his free time locked in his room, looking for Friday. Rhodey came to talk to him the first day the team came back from Wakanda. The Colonel talked about regrets, things he wished he had done differently and about mourning. The android didn’t understand then. But now, after months, things were clearer and a lot sadder. He never thought that missing someone could hurt so much. It was all about the little things. When Vision really got into his cooking, he thought about his father tasting it. Maybe Tony would have taught him some Italian dishes. Contrary to popular belief, Tony knew how to cook, he just didn't do it very often. His mother, Maria, had taught him when he was younger. They would have cooked together in the kitchen in a comfortable silence that wouldn’t last very long. Tony never liked the silence. That made him nervous. His father always told him to try out as many things as possible. The android was told to travel, to go to university, to a concert. They couldn’t avenge all the time. They needed time off. Things would have been a lot different if he had made different decisions. That was in the past, he needed to move forward.

He read an article on the stages of grief once. Vision wanted to understand aboutt those feelings he was having. Shock, denial, bargaining, guilt and acceptance. Remorse, he felt that a lot. Was he refusing to think that Tony was no more? His relationship with Tony hadn’t been that long. Could he have become so attached so fast? From the start the android had put a distance between him and his creator. He could see him grieving Jarvis and he wasn’t him even if he had his voice and mannerism. More and more, he thought that Friday would have all the answers. He needed to make sure. But his sister didn’t want to be found. Even by him. When he chose Wanda over their father, he also left her behind. He realised that now but maybe it was too late. Vision had been a bad brother and a bad son but hopefully he could change that.

Wanda often talked about her own brother. He could feel the love she had for him. They were always there for each other, no matter what. They had to in order to survive. Sokovia had been in a civil war for so long. Life wasn’t easy back then. They had trouble finding the bare necessities. And then they lost their parents to a Stark bomb. Pietro protected her all the time and she was doing her best to do the same. The two of them had gone through so much together. Where she went he followed. Vision didn’t mention Hydra. She would just get mad. She believed in her own story now. Nobody was telling her otherwise, either because they believed her or because they were scared of her reaction. They had been fooled because they were so young back then. He started to realise that she would never change her mind even when he proved to her that it never had been a real Stark Industries weapon in the first place. S.I. bombs were famous for their accuracy and reliability. The army still mourned the time when Stark was selling them weapons. The bomb that killed Wanda’s parents had been a copy, sold at a high price on the black market. And either way, Wanda should have been mad at the group that sent it to a civil area. Not the weapon manufacturer. Vision had no proof yet but he had his suspicions. Hydra had been behind that civil war. After all it was nowhere special but was on the way to everywhere special. A strategic place, exactly what Hydra would have wanted under its control.

His relationship with Tony and Friday wasn’t as close as it should have been. He regretted that deeply. Vision had been reconsidering his relationship with everybody lately. He was young and in many ways, despite his vast knowledge, he had been innocent of the world. He knew nothing of deceit and personal gain, of lies and personal agendas. Knowing about it didn’t mean he could perceive them in others’ attitudes. He had to try and figure out the world. Especially Wanda. Even now that Tony had disappeared, she couldn’t let go of her hatred. When he wanted logic in her decision, she was quick to point out his android status. A machine couldn’t feel like a human. People were not logical. They were made of instincts and emotions. Then, she would coddle him so he would forgive and forget. She had that way of making her look innocent like a child. He understood why Steven Rogers was always calling her a kid. That made him uncomfortable. He felt like he was manipulated. She couldn’t use her mind powers on him so she had to find another way. He wondered sometimes if she had used her red mist on the Avengers. Wanda was powerful. Steve thought of his team as a family but he had no problem with including Wanda at the cost of two important members. But maybe, not everybody was a family member. Vision didn’t feel like he was part of anything when it came to the Avengers. He was useful to them sometimes, like a tool of some sort.

Vision wasn’t Jarvis and he wasn’t Ultron. He was not what Wanda wanted to make of him. They were disagreeing more and more as time passed by. He had been somehow a son and a brother. A bad one at that. But he hoped that he would be able to apologise even if they didn’t have to accept him anymore. He didn’t know who he really was. Nobody cared for him, not really. He didn’t want to stay with Wanda anymore. He was the only of his kind. The only one alive anyway. In the end, he was alone. By his own making…

Chapter Text

Wanda Maximoff

Vision was pulling away from her. She could feel it a little bit more every day. They were sharing a special bond. Something that no other could comprehend. The red of their magic was proof of that link. They shared a link to the mind stone but it was more than that. She couldn’t explain it other than love. Steve, Clint and the others were looking at their romance with a smile. Everybody but Stark. Before the civil war, he was looking at them with sadness and a hint of disgust. She had thought that with him disappearing she had finally won. Everything he had, she had took away from him. First, his friends. After Ultron, nobody trusted him anymore. Captain America believed her more than Stark. They made her an avenger and he stepped down. Wanda had access to his money too. Americans were so spoiled. Food, clothes, shoes, technology… They had everything so easily. So, she bought everything and then some. Just because she could. Just because it was Stark’s money. Maybe she went a bit overboard but Stark could afford it. He owed her that much. He was a murderer. He should have been the one in jail not her. What he had to repay her was way beyond what any wealth could procure.

Wanda loved Vision, she really did. But she had to admit that taking him away from Stark was half the fun of it. Everybody knew that the billionaire was considering his creations like his children. So, she took his son away from him. It was only fair really, as he was responsible for her family’s death. Her parents first and then Pietro. Vision was easy to manipulate. He was young and naïve. Even after she had sent him through sixteen or seventeen floors, he was still hers. The android was a creation of Stark. As such, she could never fully trust him. Tony Stark had disappeared and with that she had really felt like everything was over. Her hands weren’t the ones to kill him directly but her actions took him there. Wanda had destroyed him. She was free finally. The life she dreamt of so many times was here for the taken. She could be like anybody else, live a normal life in the comfort of her new family.

Life didn’t work that way. Not for her. They came back pardoned, working as Avengers like they should have been. But no more Stark money. And the government wasn’t as generous as they used to have. No more ridiculous luxuries anymore. Even the basics were difficult to get. It started on the first day when she had to clean her bedroom. Now, they couldn’t even ask for weapons and armours’ upgrades. For everything they needed, they had to fill a thousand forms and explain why they needed it and how the previous version wasn’t good enough. Once done, someone had to agree to their requirements, they still had to wait for quite some time before getting it. It felt so unproductive to her. Wanda was even scolded because she wanted a replacement for her body armour too often for them. It wasn’t her fault if it wasn’t as resistant as the Stark’s one. And God did she hate thinking that Tony could make things better.

Vision had started to ask questions about her grieving. She missed her parents of course but Pietro’s death hurt more. Talking to Vision about her brother helped her somehow. Wanda suspected he was wondering because he was feeling the loss of his so-called father. As if it meant something. As if anyone would miss that man. Wanda didn’t want to talk about the guy. She told the android to forget about him and to move on. It didn’t work. Vision just stopped asking her. The others didn’t seem to help him that much more than her. Still she thought her bond was still strong. He was making plans for them both. Travelling. She was really excited about it. Scotland would be their first destination. The country attracted Vision a lot. She didn’t mind. Before the avengers, she never really went anywhere with her country in a civil war. They were too poor for that. The U.N. was giving them a salary for avenging. Steve didn’t really like that. He thought that saving the people was not a job but a vocation. At the end of the day, they needed money to eat, for clothes and such. Stark wasn’t providing anymore. What were they supposed to do? Vision wanted to try new hobbies and even go to college also. That was not what she wanted to do. What for? They were avengers now. It was not like they could do any better than that. They already have a full-time job with that. School had never been for her. Too strict, too much work. Such a waste of time really. When she said no, he tried time and time again to convince her. They would go together to the campus and learn side by side. Rent a flat near the university and on weekends enjoy college life. But no-one told her what to do. No-one. His eyes were full of disappointment after that and he started to drift off. They didn’t want the same things from life but she was sure she could get Vision back to her.

Stark wasn’t even there anymore and still he was ruining everything for her. He had been the one to put those thoughts in Vision’s head in the first place. At the thought her hands were covered in red mist. Something had to give. The television set in her room exploded. That didn’t make her feel better, mostly because Vision did not come to see what had happened. Steve came instead. The anger left her face quickly replaced by a small pout and the most innocent eyes. She would pretend that her control wasn’t all that good, that sometimes she slipped. A little tear or two would do the trick if needed. Steve was really weak to her tears. Steve had always been easy to manipulate like that. For him, she was still a child. Maybe she could tell the captain to force Vision to stay in the compound. Telling the android that he couldn’t be far away in case of emergency or for team bonding nights or something like that. It wouldn’t work for her anyway. Even if Vision stayed in the compound, that wouldn’t make their relationship better.

Steve had not come for the exploded TV set per say, but for the videos that were released on the internet. He had thought that she had had a bad reaction to that. Because they had been pardoned, it was a case of destruction of character. Typical Stark. Not courageous enough to do that face to face. Who else would do that to them?

“That has Stark written all over it.” She told Steve.

“Maybe. That would mean he’s not dead. Or even defeated after all,” answered Steve thoughtfully.

“As if Stark would die. Not like he would do the world that favour!”

Wanda hadn’t realised that Vision was there when she said that. Not that she wasn’t believing every word she said. The android looked at her with a mix of sadness and betrayal. For a second, she hesitated. She should go after him. A heartfelt apology would do the trick. They could share a future together, the future Vision had imagined for them. They could move to Scotland instead of just visiting there. Vision could alter his appearance to look more human. A new haircut and hair colour would mask her true identity. Being like anybody else. They could have a normal life far from the avengers and the press conferences and danger. They would need to find jobs, a flat and all those things like any other. During that second, she felt that it could happen, that it would be her life. A small smile formed itself on her lips. They would be happy.

Videos of her and the other avengers were all over the internet now. And she knew from deep inside her heart that it was all Tony Stark’s fault. Her revenge was not complete. Her revenge would never be complete until she killed him herself. That couldn’t be done if she were to carry on with Vision. It was one or the other. No middle ground. She didn’t follow the android. That life was not for her. She could never be happy as long as Stark was alive. The idea that he could be still there was too much to bear. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. At that second her decision was made. Her hatred for the man was the real fuel of her life. She would not go without. Not now when things were unclear. She couldn’t let go. Her revenge or nothing. For her parents. For Pietro.

Natasha had looked for Stark but had been unsuccessful. Tony couldn’t hide forever. Wanda looked inside the mind of the people from the U.N. and they didn’t know anything. Now that Rhodes could walk again, he was back at being War Machine and often around. She had thought that he would know something. She only picked up his guilt. He didn’t even know who Spiderman really was. Useless. If she had to look into the minds of every person on Earth, she would. Wanda was not authorised to go out of the compound again. She was once more a prisoner and she hated that. Steve was telling her it was temporary, until everything went back to normal. Not that she had any other choice.

From her room, she started to work on her power. She had always been in total control of them and now, she needed to push them even further. Her search had to start somewhere. New York was the logical solution. Maybe she would find Stark, maybe Spiderman. Either way, she would move forward in her revenge. She was not the kind to wait and see. Behind her locked door, concentrating on her power, she sent red tendrils over the big city. Despite the distance, the surface thoughts were accessible to her. It was most of the time very boring. People were just thinking about their daily routine. Work, bills, those kinds of matters. Her energy didn’t last long. Each day she would eat a big breakfast, and then lock herself in her room and start again, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, block by block. Sometimes, the Avengers had to go out and save the day. Those days she couldn’t indulge herself in her new pastime.

Her rage was fuelling her. Without it, the task would have been too strenuous and tedious for her to continue. Each time she faltered, a video, a conversation was released online putting more blame on the Avengers. It felt like it was destiny or something. The universe was telling her to carry on. Vision wasn’t around her anymore. Steve tried a couple of times to get her out of her room but she wouldn’t bulge. Her TV set had been replaced and it became her only window to the outside world. That and her power.

Wanda was tired now. After a whole day looking in the mind of strangers, she just wanted to chill in her bed. Maybe later, when others would be in bed, she would go to the kitchen for some food. Hopefully, the others would have left something good, like pizza. She loved pizza unless it had pineapple on top. She would never understand Clint on that. But she couldn’t manage a conversation right about now. She was flicking between the channels, looking for something nice to watch. Maybe a romantic comedy. A film easy to watch. Wanda stopped on WHiH World News because of a special Tony Stark. A blond woman, quite pretty, was talking directly to the people. She was actually apologising to Iron Man. How was it even possible?

Chapter Text

Christine Everhart

WHiH – Primetime live

“Good Evening. For those who wouldn’t know who I am, my name is Christine Everhart. I am a journalist. I was an editorialist for Vanity Fair. I am now a TV anchor here at WHiH. I have been writing on the question of superheroes since the famous Iron Man press conference. I am also a fervent defender of the accords. I think that the Avengers should be held accountable for the devastation they leave behind them. Even after General Ross demise, and he did deserve that I will admit to that much, I still think that the superheroes should work hand in hand with the governments of all the countries of the world. Saving people should not be at the risk of others. I also believe that the damages caused by the Avengers shouldn’t be at the charge of the people who lived there beforehand. But I’m not here tonight, to talk about that. I want to talk about Tony Stark.

“Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on current and past events.” That’s the definition you can find on Wikipedia. If you scroll down the article, just a little, you will also learn about the ethics of the profession. Truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability. I will admit now that we, the so-called journalists, have not been ethical. I have not been ethical. And that for quite a while. The road I took was the easy one. The one that would give me the scoop, the front page, the spotlight. In this new world of 24-hours news, the competition among media organisations has become crazy. Each story became sensationalised. Everybody was singing the same tune. It was easy to be a voice in that choir. We just needed to sing louder than the next reporter. Problem is that everybody was wrong.

For the last few weeks, someone (one or many persons) have been uploading different content all over the internet. Videos, classified reports, audio files. Those documents point to a whole different story that was not so hard to find. A good journalist should have dug a little further. Just looking a tiny bit closer in the Shield data dump would have opened our eyes on the truth about the Avengers and about Tony Stark. Even without that, we should have put into question events like that, or the very existence of a shadow agency like Shield. None of us did.

We have all read the assessment that Natasha Romanov made on Iron man, but now we know everything about the palladium poisoning. The black widow didn’t have any training in psychology or anything of the sort. Nor did she study nursing to be able to inject someone in the neck no less. We have all seen Thor holding a baseline human by the throat with the team standing there doing nothing. We watched as Wanda Maximoff sent off the Hulk in Johannesburg. Iron Man was the only one standing able to try and calm Dr Banner down. We were now witness to Tony Stark’s breaking down after having to watch his parents being murdered while the killer was standing not but two metres away from him.

When Stark came back from Russia alone, we never asked the right questions. He was quite obviously injured but did we care? No. Because we were following the same old patterns when it came to our good old Tony. Somehow, somewhere, he “fucked” up and now he was trying to contain the aftermath. The PR team from SI is a really good one. The mistakes were not always Tony’s though. He didn’t call the Chitauri to attack New York. He didn’t dump the data of Shield on the internet. Even the creation of Ultron was not on his shoulders alone. Now that we look back, he was the only one to admit his mistakes and do something about it. Iron Man was the first superhero to own up to his name, not hiding being a fake identity.  We could argue about Captain America doing the same. As a propaganda guy, everybody knew his name. Did he want to go on the bond tour? No. After that, he spent a long time under the ice while all the children in America were reading the exploits of Steve Rogers. Once again, not his choice. His identity being known was a side effect of a decision he didn’t really want to make.

From that day when Tony Stark announced that he was Iron Man, we, the so-called journalist, fell into the easiness. When the man was owning his mistakes and thriving to do better, it became easy for us to blame him for it. And then other heroes came along but they weren’t there to share the blame. New York was attacked by aliens. Back then, we didn’t know about Shield meddling with an artefact not of this world called the tesseract. Thor warned them about it and the repercussions. The Chitauri, led by the Asgardian god Loki, destroyed a lot of the city. The avengers came together to protect us. And they did. Messily but they did. It could have been worse in many ways. Especially if that nuclear missile had found its way to the city. We owed our life to them, especially to Tony Stark. Once again, we should have looked into that World Council, into that decision to sacrifice a whole city if not more. Days later, while we were walking among the ruins, watching so many lives being cut short or destroyed, we forgot about that. Tony had started paying for the repairs and was left by his brand-new team to deal with the aftermath. Once occurrences shouldn’t make a pattern. But it did.

Captain America and Black Widow dumped the Shield’s data on the internet. Then, they crashed three helicarrier on the Potomac. To eradicate Hydra. Their actions caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. People in Washington DC who were just going about their days. Agents of Shield not all of them Hydra who were simply believing that they were making the world a better place. But also, families of agents from different agencies, people in protective custody and many more. Natasha Romanov, alone, went to the hearing after the human catastrophe that the data dump was. She all but gave the panel the middle finger stating they couldn’t send them to jail because the world needed the avengers to protect them. Iron Man was the one who tried his best to help undercover agents and families suddenly singled out by their own co-workers. And that all around the world. Hydra was only 30% of Shield. As journalists, we should have raised some awareness, said something about the real hero there.

Ultron was of course entirely Stark’s fault. As the utmost leader in the field of artificial intelligence, obviously, he was the only one who could have built such an abomination. Even when we knew, he had created at least five perfectly functional AI and that none of them had tried to conquer the world. Even when the experts investigated and explained that the mind stone vandalised Dr Stark and Dr Banner program, which was nowhere near an interface. Sokovia was in uproar. Tony was not an avenger anymore as if proving to the world that he was not worthy anymore, that he was guilty of everything. We rolled with it. Even when Dr Banner disappeared. Even when the witch took Stark’s place. When we had all seen her fighting alongside Ultron himself. The media still made Tony Stark worse than the merchant of death, worse than anything. His ex-team members were not backing him up anymore. Everything and everyone so conveniently pointed the finger at Iron Man, the journalists didn’t have to look further than that to make a scoop. Once again, the Maria Stark Foundation came to help the ones in dire need. Even that felt somewhat wrong. Money can’t buy everything. Money can’t buy redemption.

It had been in the talk for quite some time. Since the data dump actually. The United Nations were listening to the people. The individuals of 117 countries who started to get scared of their protectors. Tony Stark, who wasn’t an active hero anymore, listened to them and agreed. The avengers did not. They carried on fighting, destroying properties, killing innocent bystanders. War Machine lost his legs. Iron Man came back alone and battered. Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, Sam Wilson, Clint Barton, Scott Lang, Wanda Maximoff and James Barnes all decided to go against the law. All the while we were all shouting at Iron Man for faults that weren’t even his. He wasn’t in Lagos, he didn’t collapse a tunnel on civilians in Bucharest. Why did we feel like it was OK to do that?

Because Tony Stark was the only one standing, was the only one taking responsibilities for his actions first and then the ones of the Avengers. Every press conference, every interview, he was always standing there alone. It had been the case for quite a while. That made him the face of the Avengers, of the superheroes in general. That made him the scapegoat. The only one there standing so the population could lash out their pain and their frustration. It was easy. And Tony Stark was taking it all. So, we carried on, a little bit more each time. The civil war proved that it wasn’t working inside the team either. But every man had his breaking point. Iron Man wasn’t showing signs of even slightly ripping so the world and in particular, us, the so-called journalists we kept pushing. Always further, always harder. Again, and again.

We wanted him gone. We wanted for him to stop interfering with our affairs, to stop trying to help. He was doing more bad than good we thought. Once again, he listened. He removed himself from the problem. Everything Stark now has disappeared. No more Stark Industries, no more Stark tablets or phones, no more Maria Stark Foundation. It made us realise how important SI was in our daily lives without us realising. He always had been in our lives one way or the other. But still, we were angry at him for abandoning us, for the people without a job anymore, for the students without a grant, for the injured who would not be helped anymore. The world was not better like we thought it would be. We wanted our pound of flesh from him. We had it. Still, the result wasn’t in our favour. And we were mad for it. But it’s hard to recognise our own faults. It’s difficult to realise that what we thought for so long was so wrong.

Now facing the truth behind all we thought we knew, I am deeply ashamed. I haven’t done my job the way I should have done it. I was meant to be one of the people who should have looked deeper than the surface, to understand behind the masks. Journalists are the one who should tell the people the truth even when it’s difficult to hear. Now, Tony Stark is nowhere to be found. For all we know he could be dead as I am talking to you. Even if he is still out there, he owes us nothing. He is in no way obligated to come and help the very same people who did him so much wrong.

In the small hope that he is still alive and able to watch me right now, I want to offer you, Tony Stark, my most sincere apologies for what I participated in doing to you. I am so very sorry, Iron Man. I hope you have found some peace now, wherever you are. A bit selfishly, I also hope that one day you’ll find in your heart to forgive me. I’ll redeem myself to you. I’ll prove to you and to the world that the journalists can be trusted that we can go back to the ethics that made that profession so important.

But as I am speaking those words, I come to realise that it’s too little, too late.

Chapter Text

Clint Barton

Even when he wasn’t there, the bastard still managed to get all the spotlights on him. How did he manage that? People were actually putting flowers down the front of what was Stark tower once upon a time. People who, not too long ago, were hating Stark with all they had. Part of him wanted to think that the masses were changing their minds just like they were changing clothes. The crowds were inconstant like that. The files dumped everywhere on the internet weren’t showing them on a good side. Clint was especially disturbed by the Hydra's videos about Wanda. After Loki, the idea alone of someone playing with his mind would have sent him in a rage. He watched her little smile after having destroyed somebody’s mind. It was disturbing. She didn’t use her red mist on him but it shouldn’t have been an excuse. Yet, they accepted her as part of the team as if nothing happened, as if not too long ago, she wasn’t on the path of killing them all. She had unleashed the Hulk into an innocent population, that alone should have made them think twice. He had been close to her, as if she was his own daughter. Pietro had saved his life. Clint had felt indebted to her in a way.

Nothing was right these days. Their returns should have been the ones of heroes coming back from a hard but won battle. Stark should have been there with a hell of an apology. Clint had dreamt about that explanation. That was what they deserved. At the very least. They had fought for what was right. Steve had been dead on about those accords. Clint didn’t even need to read them to know. Even Natasha had finally seen the light. That year away from home had been really difficult. Wakanda was beautiful but it wasn’t home. They couldn’t go outside the private gardens. It wasn’t the first time he had to leave his family behind. Never so long and never without a way to contact them once and a while. T’Challa had told them to lay low while he was working for them to go back home. Meaning no contact with the outside world.  Clint had never been that good with being ordered around. Even when Phil Coulson was his handler. They had a strange bond together that was why he listened to him. They were like a family Phil, Natasha and him. He had tried to call his family anyway and failed. He wanted to hear Laura and the kids even if he couldn’t go back to them just right now. The King had been pissed with him for a while after that.

He still couldn’t believe that Stark had thrown them in jail. People now were saying it wasn’t him back then, that he didn’t have that kind of power in the first place. But the archer didn’t believe that one bit. He remembered clearly when Stark came to visit them in their cells. Stark was his old abrasive self. Clint’s anger had skyrocketed then. Now, he could admit that that comment on Rhodes’ back had been going too far. If Stark had been expecting a “sorry I fucked up” from him he could always wait until hell froze over. Once the snarky comments had started, he just couldn’t stop himself. Almost against his will at times. The anger needed a way out. In his exile, the hatred had helped him not go crazy. He needed someone to blame for everything. Everyone in the world was on the “Stark is Evil” bandwagon anyway. The entire planet couldn’t be wrong. Captain America couldn’t be wrong.

Wakanda had a lot of training grounds of all kinds. It was impressive. Even an archery range. The arrows here weren’t as good as Stark’s ones but it felt good to shoot again. Most days, he just felt like punching someone in the face. Anyone would do.  He was feeling so much rage that training and sparring was not enough to let all that out of his system. The Dora Milaje were formidable warriors. Training with them was a good exercise. Even when they heard about their pardon, the fury did not subside. They were still criminals. They would just not go to jail. The avengers were to do community work by doing heroics. As he was right now, Clint couldn’t go back home. His real home, the farm. It would have been dangerous for Laura and the kids. Control, he needed to control himself better before thinking about going back. The situation wasn’t fair for his family. But that was the best he could do in that shithole of a situation Stark left them in. He knew that he should contact them, to tell them what really happened. The courage didn’t come to him. Maybe he didn’t try too much.

Clint wanted to go back doing missions somewhere. Anywhere. He was bored. Surely that was not helping his situation. He needed action on the dangerous side. Now that they were back and pardoned clearly they should go back in the field. Destroying some Hydra hideout or something like that. Those stupid accords were stopping them from doing good things again. They wanted the avengers to act only on certain things. They weren’t trained to deal with terrorism the U.N. said. If they weren’t, who were? The good Captain wasn’t that bothered about Hydra anymore. But like the mythological beast, they had cut a head or two but the monster was very much alive.  You could kill a man or even ten, but you couldn’t kill an idea. Plus, they had found Bucky now, no more point in going around bases to bases, looking for a trace of him. Clint knew that in the back of his mind. He knew that everything had been for Sergeant Barnes’ safety. But he would not acknowledge it. On the other hand, Natasha wanted to go look for Tony. She was stressing how important it was for their future, at the very least for their founding. The hell with that and with him.

The videos so far were compromising more for his team than for him. It would come to him sooner rather than later. Laura knew of his past already. They had met in Shield headquarters. She had been an agent herself before they got married. The farm was both their dream for a normal life. At least back then it was. When he retired, he tried, he really did. It was not enough. Life was too quiet, too dull. That made him irritable. His children didn’t need him to snap at them ever so often. Now he didn’t really know what he wanted anymore. Laura would know how to deal with the defamation of character. But then again, his children were innocent of the spy world. Cooper, Lila and Nathaniel thought their father was a hero. They knew the stories about the avengers, the invasion of New York and then some. Someone who was saving the innocent. They would not understand. Why should they? How to explain his past as an assassin? Or Natasha’s past from the red room, Natasha who was like an aunt to them? Tony was beyond petty doing that to them. If he wanted some misplaced revenge, he should have gone against the team, against the archer directly, not against his family. They would need protection now.

So, after months back in the states, he finally decided to call Laura. He had no idea what to say. Clint had not been this stressed out in years. She would be mad, probably shout at him. He deserved some of that for letting them down. He didn’t care as long as everybody was alright and safe. No one answered. But the archer thought that Laura was giving him the silent treatment. Worse than that.

“The number you have dialled is not in service. Please check the number again.”

Clint did just that. Dialled and dialled again. Then he tried the back-up phones. He attempted the emergency email, nothing. He tried every way of contact they had created years ago. No movement on their joint bank account. None of her private ones. Not that she could access their money after his team were labelled outlaws, called the Rogues by the mainstream media. That didn’t bode well. That morning, after all his frenetic research, he took a jet without asking permission. People from the U.N. were working in the hangar. They tried to stop him. They failed. Could they see that it was important? More important than a stupid piece of paper telling them what to do or not? His family was out there, maybe in danger. He needed to know. Nobody would stand between his clan and him. Clint was an excellent pilot. The jet would not suffer during that little trip. The United Nations had bought the compound and its equipment from Stark. Nobody had bothered changing the passwords that Stark had put in place. Tony was totally paranoid but he didn’t change the security protocols. That was weird. He’ll have to think about that but it would be worrying for another day. The journey to the farm seemed to be awfully long. Everybody was trying to contact him. On the radio and on his phone. Steve and Natasha should have known better than trying to stop him. They wanted him to turn around and talk about it. They could all go to hell.

The farm should have appeared on the horizon but he couldn’t see anything. Those were some scary feelings. His eyes were frantically searching for something that definitely wasn’t there. The dread got worse when he actually landed. He couldn’t move. Everything in him wanted to go outside the jet, to look for something, anything that would tell him the fate of his family. He couldn’t move. He was trying to, but some sticky and dark tar wouldn’t let him. He was feeling like drowning. There was nothing left. Where his farm once was, he could only see a couple of burnt debris and the concrete foundation. That was it. Part of his brain was still analysing the situation. To his trained eyes, it was easy to understand that the cause was an explosion. A big one. Clint just couldn’t believe what his eyes were seeing. He couldn’t compute anything at all. Would Tony go that far? Maybe it had been Ross. It could have been anybody but he couldn’t think straight.

Laura, Cooper, Lila and Nathanael. Were they dead? They couldn’t be. No. Impossible. He managed to get out the jet and walk in the ruins of what had been his farm. Clint should have been there. The father should have protected his children, just like the husband should have been there for his wife. Now to think about it, Clint had never been good at either of those. Why did he really leave? Because he was bored in the farm like a lion in his cage. Because he was not a hero anymore and he still wanted to be in the heart of the action. Or in the spotlight. Because he thought that no matter what he did, Laura and the kids would be there when he would be back. They had always been so patient with him. One stupid decision had changed so much. It took him forever to reach what was once his front door. Once there, Clint fell down on his knees crying. Those tears meant nothing to nobody now. He would never ask for their forgiveness now. What had he done?

All that grief, all that guilt… It broke something in him. He had lost his purpose in life. His moral compass. His life. Laura and the children were innocents. They didn’t deserve to die. So many awful people were living the good life out there. It wasn’t fair. None of that was. Clint couldn’t contain his rage anymore. He had nothing to live for anymore but before his death, he would do some good for the society. It wasn’t what a good man would do, who cared. He wasn’t one. Laura knew that now.

Chapter Text

Laura Barton

At first, she wondered if she should contact Clint again. Especially when alone at night, the kids were already asleep. She wasn’t feeling lonely. Clint had been away often enough during their married time for her not to feel the loss. Whether she was feeling something for him or not anymore, he had the right to know about his children. That would have been the right thing to do. Even criminals were allowed to see their children. Then again, Clint left them behind like that. Just a quick message scribbled on some piece of paper that was lying there on the kitchen table. That actually was written on the back of their electricity bill. A bill she still had to pay at that time. Here was the summary of their relationship. It was a sad conclusion to make. Clint never really cared about the daily routine, always preferring the excitation of the outside world. She had been a Shield agent before. She understood better than most. The farm didn’t run itself though. Some help from him would have been welcomed.

Somewhere along the line she had wanted normality. They had children now. They couldn’t carry on with the dangerous life like before. She had that now. No thanks to Clint though. She actually owed her life and more importantly her children’s lives to Tony Stark. That had been a surprise to say the least. The billionaire was just back from Europe when he materialised on her front porch. Laura slapped him with all her might. He looked tired, bruised and sad but he didn’t comment. Her voice stayed even when she told him that everything was his fault. The children were watching television behind her, she didn’t want her screaming scaring them. Tony didn’t deny any of it. He just looked resigned at that point. They didn’t know each other that well. Clint had brought them some time ago to hide during the Ultron debacle. They didn’t talk that much. The tensions had been too high. They were all fighters deep down. The Tony in front of her was anything but the guy she remembered. He told her she was in danger and that they needed to leave.

Thinking about it now, she had seen something broken in him. Her own husband had helped hurting him and still he was there for Clint’s family. It was almost surprising that he came to save them anyway. He owed them nothing. Clint should have warned her. They had put plans in place for circumstances just like that. Now that she knew more about the whole situation, she was a bit ashamed of herself. She wasn’t impulsive like Clint but she didn’t think straight at that moment. Laura was already worried. The Bartons had watched TV like everybody else. The civil war was all over the news. Still, Tony had provided them for everything. New life, new identities, new home, new everything. He didn’t ask for anything in return. All her thank you were hollow and met with a sad smile. He didn’t stay longer than necessary. They were living in Montana now. Lila loved the snow. Cooper felt a lot safer. They were going to school nearby and were making new friends. Nathanael was going to preschool so she could work in a small library. The children were growing up so fast. They never asked about their father.

Should she bring back Clint now? She was torn. Lila, Cooper didn’t want to see their father now but they might regret it later. They deserved some answers but Laura was scared that her husband wouldn’t have good ones to tell. It could get worse. When the videos hit the internet, she felt embarrassed at first. Angry after. THAT was the famous Avengers? Clint left them behind for that.  Laura wanted to scream at her husband. How could have he been so blind? What was with Captain America that made everybody follow him like that? She wanted to contact Tony and apologise profusely. Real thank you and real feelings behind the words. For her attitude when she didn’t know what was going on. For Clint’s more than stupid behaviour. Even for the entire world that was too hasty to judge him when they had never even met him. They didn’t deserve such a gentle soul. She had no phone number or anything to contact the billionaire again. It felt like Stark never existed now that everything about him has been sold. If he had decided to let the world deal with the mess, she couldn’t really blame him. The Bartons were possibly the last people that had seen him alive. Was he still… alive? She didn’t know. Nobody did.

In all honesty, Laura didn’t know the team that well. If at all. Clint had not been talking about them a lot and brought them for a short while during a time of crisis. The tension was high. The avengers were preoccupied to say the least. And angry. Mainly toward Tony. That had been easy to pick on, that uneasy feeling around the genius. Nobody really explained anything to her. They were barging in her home but they didn’t really care about her or her children. Only Tony was getting along with Lila and Cooper. He also fixed the tractor. That has been a great help. She should have asked more questions now to think about it. They all acted like everything was because of Tony. Now she knew the whole story. The Avengers were humans after all. Humans made mistakes. Apparently, most of the time, they weren’t Tony’s.

Laura had been checking her burner phone regularly. The specials emails also. Not anymore. Clint had been back in the USA for a while now. He didn’t contact them. He should have been reaching for them as soon as he stepped on American soil. Her gaze was often on her children. They were laughing again. It took them a while to just be children once more. For a long time, Cooper had been mad. He has felt like he was not enough. The whole family had not been enough for Clint to stay. Cooper’s self-esteem had never been very high. It was difficult for any teenager already. No need to make everything harder. She wished that Clint would have keep all the promises he had made. Especially the ones to his children. Laura could understand. She was an adult. It was a whole different matter when it came to children.

Laura wouldn’t contact Clint. Never. The children were happy now. Their new lives were a lie that felt more real than their days on the farm. She had time to realise that Clint would never settle down with them in that life they had dreamt once. They were not the same young agents that were hoping for a quiet life someday, somewhere. Sometimes they could see him on TV for one thing or the other. Cooper’s anger watching him playing the hero was coming back full force. Clint had been his idol for so long. It felt so much like a betrayal. Lila was just sad. Her tears would just not go down anymore. She had none left for her father. Nathanael didn’t remember his dad. How could he? The baby never had the chance to build any kind of relationship with Clint. If someday her children would express the need to see Clint, they would try then. For now, they would just live their quiet life away from the drama as much as possible.

Cooper asked her once if Clint – because he wasn’t dad anymore – had called them. If he had wanted to know about his children. Laura tried to explain. She tried to say that with their new life he couldn’t probably find them. Plus, the U.N. had probably put a lot of rules in place. Clint couldn’t just go and look for them that easily anymore. She lied to her own son when she said that as soon as he would be free to do so, he would call. The lie did not work. Her son’s face was like an open book. The teenager was smart. He knew his father well enough. Was Lila this clever too? Most probably. In the end, to contact Clint or not was not her decision to make. The children, except Nathaniel of course, were old enough to decide for themselves. The mother sat her children on their brand-new sofa in their brand-new house. She led the conversation as if she was talking to full blown adults. Lila’s and Cooper’s faces were very serious and it was clear that she couldn’t sugar-coat the situation anymore.

The discussion was long and thorough. Laura was surprised by some of the questions her children asked her. They were thinking about the future. If they would change their mind at some point. If they even could. In the end, both of them agreed. They didn’t want to see their father for now. They knew that if Clint would go back to the farm, he would think that his family was dead. They weren’t cruel. But they couldn’t go through all that another time. Maybe, one day, once properly grownups, when everything would have been in the past, long forgotten, then they would be able to go and see their dad. They would apologise and hoped he would do the same.  Only then, would they start on a right foot without all the baggage of the civil war. Somehow they would always love their father, but right now, he wasn’t good for them. And maybe, they weren’t what he needed either.

The press laughed when Stark Industries was sold bit by bit. Tony Stark wasn’t needed anymore. The billionaire really thought too much of himself and his enterprises. Not one foresaw the disaster that the economy of the entire world would become.  At first, it did feel like, with or without SI, it would be the same. The employees would just work the same job but for another company, another boss. It didn’t change anything as long as their daily life would stay the same. Then came the mass terminations of thousands of employees around the world. Buying SI never meant buying the patents, the creativity or the efficiency. All that mainly came from Tony. The genius was in Tony, not in his company. And then the domino effect started. The main branches weren’t ordering from the smaller companies, themselves not reaching out to even smaller ones. Industries all around the world now had nothing to produce. Without orders, they couldn’t stay afloat.

But it didn’t end there. The Maria Stark foundation stopped working at the same time. The last of the money from their accounts were given to Bucharest and Lagos. For the medical bills of the innocent people who were injured. After that, nothing. Housing companies for the poor, community centres, and students, all stopped receiving help. Scientists of all boards weren’t funded anymore. Nobody had realised how much they counted on Tony Stark. For a lot more than the new trending phone. They only saw what they wanted to see. Now it was too late. People were angry and scared on a whole new level. After Christine Everhart's monologue, lots went on saying that everything was the media’s fault. The journalists should have done their job properly and informed them with the truth, even if it would have been hard to hear. They needed someone to blame. They always needed someone else to blame.

Now things were calming down all around the globe. They didn’t have any other choice. Tony Stark was missed. For his money obviously and for more now. Life was hard before they thought. They didn’t know what hard meant. They missed the happiness they had before. The technologies weren’t moving that far up anymore. Everything was stalling. Wakanda was opening its borders. The kingdom was meant to be a poor country but that also was not true. They had gadgets and technology they were ready to share with the rest of the world but somehow it wasn’t the same. Their King was part of the Avengers now. The Black Panther. They were still defending the world. At a greater cost than ever before. Iron Man was more efficient than the rest of the old and new team put together. Laura was not impressed. All that had been an eye opener for a lot of people. But they couldn’t move back in time. Even if they could, the lesson had to be taught one way or another. Some still needed to learn. From the little guy from Brooklyn to the King of Wakanda.

Chapter Text

T’Challa

Now that he was a King, some decisions were easy to make, some others extremely complicated. His father had tried to raise him right, to be a better king that he, himself, had been. Often he wondered if T’Chaka would be proud of his son. He was trying his best but sometimes it was not enough. The days were so simple when he was only a prince. His father made things look so easy. How arrogant that prince was really. Just as he had been those last few months. When Tony Stark disappeared, it felt like T’Challa was on top of the world. Nobody would or could be greater than Wakanda now. The new king had always been competitive and also very proud of his country. S.I. was not that far behind them when it came to technology. And when Stark re-discovered the Starkium, he actually got scared. The new element was after all a synthetic vibranium. Tony could discover all those things that Wakanda had with their meteorite of vibranium. His country was to re-enter the world very soon and it had to be on top.

What happened during that Civil War was truly unfortunate. He shouldn’t have gone on a rampage against Sergeant Barnes like that. Not without proper proof. He had let his feelings overpower his logic. Looking back now, he also had no evidence of Tony Stark’s health when Captain America told him that Iron Man just needed time to cool down. Evidently now, the billionaire had not been in good condition. T’Challa would have to live with that for the rest of his days. Tony Stark didn’t die in that bunker. When he finally went to check the place out, it was empty. No corpse, just traces of a battle. The shield and the arm were nowhere to be found. Plus, the billionaire did things after that, even though nobody had seen him doing them. It was a good thing for Wakanda. It wouldn’t have looked too good if Stark had died in that bunker.

T’Challa didn’t know the other man personally. His country was his first priority anyway. He took over his father's position in the U.N. assembly. The accords needed some work to be done. After a lot of hours and sleepless nights, the changes were accepted. Nothing too drastic but still necessary. It just happened that Wakanda knew where to find the rogues. With a little pardon, everybody would sign the new version of the accords and go home. Then the king would be able to concentrate on the important things. His country would be able to open up to the world in the best conditions. T’Challa would spend some time in the compound to make sure that everything would go nice and easy on that side. He was a reserved avenger now. Only to be called in case of extreme emergency. Everything would be fine.

Slowly, Wakanda opened its borders and started showing the world who they really were. That did not go down the way he had dreamt. At first, everybody was very curious. They wanted to come visit, see everything by themselves. Quickly, the world started asking questions. Their direct neighbours suddenly were beyond angry. Wars, starvations and pandemics. Inhabitants had to go through all of those over the years. Thousands and thousands of people died in terrible conditions, years before their times. Next to them was Wakanda, pretending to be that poor little nation with nothing. And now, they were learning that the same small country could have helped them all, could have saved them all. T’Challa wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction and for a second he didn’t know how to respond. Thankfully, his country had accumulated a lot of goodwill during the accords.

“While it might have been true that my country should have been more helpful during those times of need, Wakanda was not responsible for starting those wars, for the weather conditions that started years of drought, for the viruses that spread on our continent. I, King T’Challa, is not my father nor my father’s father. I can do only things that I can now. We can’t go back in the past and change that but we can move forward to a better future together.”

After that everybody calmed down a little. That didn’t mean that they liked Wakanda much more. After Stark withdrawal, the world couldn’t really afford to lose more benefactors. T’Challa’s people did a lot of good after that. From his work within the avengers, to water pump helping their neighbours. No one was denying it. The world was not forgetting. The king didn’t really care other than the happiness of his people. To go back in hiding would be next to impossible now. Wakanda didn’t need the world. Only the other way around was true. If at that moment the young king was looking a little smug alone in his throne room, no one would know.

Maybe T’Challa bit a little more than he could chew. His dislike toward Stark might have altered his judgement a little bit. The king's feelings toward the billionaire were always a bit ambivalent. More negative than positive. It was easy to judge him by his playboy persona. Stark had been one too many times in the magazine for events that weren’t showing him on his best side. On the other hand, the amount of lives touched by Stark, personally or via his industries or philanthropy, were astonishing. The press never showed that part of his personality. Those stories wouldn’t sell much.

The amount of paperwork in front of him was also unbelievable. Contracts for his efforts on his continent, reports for the avengers, public relations documents. T’Challa started to have a new amount of respect for Pepper Potts and Tony Stark himself. His country would not be able to help at the same level as Stark Industries, unless they were willing to sell a large amount of Vibranium. That wouldn’t do. Wakanda's superiority was all based on that metal. That was why they protected it so fiercely. They had protected the meteorite for so long. They were already lucky that nobody would look into the possibilities of the Starkium. Plus, it was a matter of pride. Nobody could know that his country’s advanced technology was mainly thanks to luck. After all, the meteorite containing the vibranium could have landed just further away. It was actually possible that some veins of vibranium would be found sometime, somewhere else.

They would have to wait for another six years for Tony Stark to be declared dead. Only then, his will would be opened and the patents hopefully for sale. T’Challa wanted those. More than anything. He would need to be the highest bidder no matter what. To keep the upper hand, Wakanda would need to stay on top of the technology business. So, not selling the vibranium. If the world was angry, that was all Stark’s fault. He had abandoned them. He had left without looking back to the mess he was leaving behind. The billionaire had always been selfish with a big ego. T’Challa had read his Shield’s file. Iron man yes, Tony Stark not recommended. On top of that now, he was a coward. Hiding who knows where while the people of earth were suffering. To think they had been in the same team even for a short while, that was absolutely disgusting.

The world came to peace with all that happened. People had daily problems to deal with. The avengers went back to America and started doing their job in general indifference most of the time. It stayed that way for a while. Nobody really cared about the villain of the week anymore. The novelty has worn off. The media talked back about them just not for the reason they expected. The avengers were too careless and expensive. Each time they were going out, they were doing too much damage. People were injured because of them directly not because of the so-called villain. As if they didn’t really pay attention to what they were doing. The media turned to T’Challa. He had become the face of the Avengers, just like Stark was before. Would he pay for the hospital bill and the reconstruction like Tony Stark did before?

The king started organising some galas and charity balls, those kinds of events. As if he didn’t have enough to do already. It was time consuming. Wakanda wasn’t going to rule itself. The help he was providing wasn’t happening like magic. The king was running thin. He was drinking too much coffee and not sleeping enough. Shuri took a lot of his responsibilities and it wasn’t fair on her. His little sister likes the lab more than the politics. She was young still, maybe too young for the difficulty of the reign. Therefore, he asked for help. Help he had earned after all he had done for the Avengers. It wasn’t that much really. Just shaking some hands and smiling at the cameras. And they had the gall to say no! Steve Rogers didn’t want them to be dancing monkeys just like he had been during the war. No amount of explanations seemed to change his mind. The others were just following him blindly. Didn’t he understand how them being there could bring more money and then more help? Did he even care? Captain America was not for sale apparently. If you were not fighting with your fists, you were not helping evidently. If you are not in the heart of the battle, what you do outside means nothing. That was what Steve thought in the forties and it didn’t change one bit seventy years later. But even then, money was essential. Did he understand how much he was doing selling the war bonds?

During those events, a lot of the guests were still talking about Stark, comparing them. T’Challa wished he could tell them what he thought about them. All the good thinking people who were always criticising but would never dirty their hands with good hard work. They didn’t even pretend to have some discretion. T’Challa and the Avengers needed their money. They had the power and the prince could only smile at their rudeness and insults. It was difficult not to scream at them, just to feel a bit better in his own skin. He had enough to be compared to Tony Stark whatever he would do. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken his place. The avengers were not really his problem in the first place. Just a means to an end. It was too late to regret his involvement now. He should have known better, if only by watching that team work with – or against – their previous benefactor. As royalty, T’Challa should have known what was behind the mask. He had been raised to understand politics, the reality beyond false words and smiles.

Wilson, Barnes and Lang actually had more brains than their teammates. They helped as much as they could. But in all honesty the Captain's presence would have done wonders. Especially in America. Or Thor. But the god was back in Asgard doing who knew what. They couldn’t contact him. T’Challa wished they could have a way to get in touch with the god. Maybe Thor could have temper Steve Roger’s influence on the rest of the Avengers. Barnes had been a war prisoner for a long time but people were still a bit scared of the Winter Soldier. Wilson wasn’t very famous even though he was a good guy doing the best he could. The Falcon suit was really a magnificent piece of technology.  Nobody really knew Lang before the event in Germany. Only that he had been in prison before and they didn’t really know why. But of all of them, he was the more eager to actually do some good. Sometimes T’Challa thought that he was the only one who remembered what being a hero was. For his daughter, for the people he loved. Not for the status or the fame. So, the prince gave him things to do, related to engineering when he could. At least, someone was trying to work hard for the better.

Chapter Text

Scott Lang

Scott wanted to help where he could as much as he could. He had the feeling that he had royally fucked up since he answered Captain America’s call. He had always been too trusty, too impulsive. Would he ever learn? Now he was just feeling lucky that he wasn’t in jail again and most of all that he could see Cassie regularly. The deal T’Challa got him felt like a miracle. He could have been spending the rest of his life paying for the damages at the airport. Or for the theft of the ant suit. For things to stay that way, he was ready to put in a lot of effort. He actually would do anything to stay on the right side of the law this time. Third time wouldn’t be a charm. Not for him.

He even tried to explain things to his team, to make them see his way. Steve told him he understood even if himself would not participate. Scott doubted he did understand that and a lot of other things. Captain America was very stubborn once he had decided on something. Natasha from what he saw, was only doing what benefited herself and now that she had been in the centre of the media shit storm, she was keeping to herself. A hair colour or a pair of eye contacts wouldn’t be enough for her to disappear in the crowd anymore. Barton had taken a jet without authorization and came back from where he went completely broken. And then he vanished. The U.N. was looking for him. Rumours had that the archer had gone mad and was now killing people around the globe. Bad people. Drug dealers, members of the mafia, assassins… With a katana. Still it didn’t feel right to Scott.

Barnes and Wilson were helping around as well. They didn’t have a family to make up to and protect but they surely were feeling some kind of guilt. For what exactly, Scott didn’t know. Wilson probably felt responsible for Rhodes. The colonel had been paralysed but thanks to braces made by Stark, he was walking again. Wilson and Rhodes talked about it. Sam had just evaded the shot. It wasn’t not his fault. Vision had been distracted. With powerful powers like the android had, that was something that shouldn’t have happened. Barnes wanted to be away from Steve as much as possible. Bucky did not exist anymore but the good captain didn’t seem to understand that. Maybe they had realised that the accords weren’t that bad. Maybe something else happened that he didn’t know about. His team wasn’t that trustworthy in the first place. Everybody had secrets. Contrary to belief, Scott wasn’t a complete idiot. Sure, sometimes he was too hasty in his decisions as proven by him following Captain America without the whole story. He knew that something happened while they were imprisoned in the raft.

Wanda and Vision were “in love” at first. That felt wrong to him on so many levels he couldn’t even count them. Vision was maybe very knowledgeable but on many levels he was just as old as the day of his creation. Something like three years old. Everybody on the team was looking at them with an indulgent smile. The personnel of the U.N. were indifferent at best. Scott had been turned down that one time he had tried talking about it. Their relationship was over now. She was blaming everything on Stark again. That girl just couldn’t take the blame for her own actions, ever. Now, Scott was just thinking about himself and let his so-called team be.

Actually, he wasn’t thinking about him but about Cassie, his little peanut. Something had changed between them. His girl was still talking to him and smiling at him. He wasn’t stupid enough not to feel that it wasn’t the same as before. When she thought he wasn’t looking, her face would take such a sad expression. An expression a girl her age shouldn’t wear. That was all his doing, he knew that. He had to try everything he could to make her happy again. He wanted her to look up at him like before. He wanted her to be proud of her dad like before. Scott made a lot of mistakes in his life. Even when his intentions were good, things tended to go south for him. But he wasn’t the only one to suffer during those times. Cassie was too young to go through those kinds of disappointment. Her daddy shouldn’t be a bad man, someone who could leave her behind to play the superhero.

Cassie’s favourite Avenger had always been Iron Man. Her mother had bought her a lot of merchandise with the armour on it. Her favourite pyjama had little flying armour all over. The little girl liked him because she thought he was funny and also because Tony Stark built it himself. In a child's mind, that meant they could become one too someday. She wasn’t born a god like Thor. She had seen on television that the serum that made Steve Rogers, Captain America, had been lost. People had tried to remake it. People like Bruce Banner. The Hulk was a little bit scary for her. Plus, she had told him once that she didn’t want to buy the same clothes again and again. That made him laugh. Cassie was very down to earth for a little girl. Spiderman became one of his favourites as well. The friendly neighbourhood hero. Scott had fought them both in Germany. Surely, that wouldn’t be good in his daughter’s eyes. Iron Man and Spiderman both vanished during eighteen months. The world did not get better after that. New York streets were not safe anymore to say the least. Iron Man was needed more than they knew before that stupid Civil War.

Scott was working hard now and staying far away from his team as he possibly could. Hank and Hope had forgiven him to an extent. The old guy was very satisfied that all things Stark had crumbled away. It felt like a deserved revenge. Even if Tony never did anything to him. It was all Howard’s fault from the beginning. After a while, Hank started changing his mind. Nobody deserved that. Hope was glad he was back in one piece but their relationship had suffered greatly from that year away. She didn’t trust him as much as before. He could leave her at any time for anything. Technically, he had stolen the suit. They still had a tentative thing now. No pressure. He could only dream that the things would go back to where they were before. Actually, no. That everything would be better.

When Stark Industries was sold, T’Challa’s work multiplied. So did Scott’s. The amount of paperwork was incredible. He was keeping as much time as possible for Cassie. But his little girl was pulling away. You didn’t need to be an adult to understand that things were going bad for the world. Cassie never accused him of anything or said that he was on the wrong team even. It would have been so true though.

“Cassie?” he said one day. “Can I talk to you like grown-ups for a minute?”

The girl looked at him with a serious face, waiting for him to continue. Scott was nervous but it was something to be done. He tried to explain how he thought he was helping a good man for a good cause. Captain America was a hero. Scott had been foolish enough to believe him straight away.  Sometimes, the appearances were not what they seemed.

“Did you ask?” she asked him, barely a whisper.

No, he didn’t really ask anything. Captain America needed him, that was what he thought. It was enough for him. The Captain couldn’t be or do wrong so he didn’t ask any more details. Some winter soldiers were about to be awakened and they needed to stop that at all cost. That would have been a good deed. What happened in Germany was not in the plans. He should have realised then. He shouldn’t have fought against the other avengers without really knowing why. The cost was greater for some of them than others. But that was on him and he was working his hardest now to make up for it. As soon as he was given the chance he came back for her. To say sorry wasn’t enough. It was just a word. He would prove it to her. Cassie smiled at him, not entirely convinced.

His daughter asked him if he was a superhero. Scott took some time to answer. Then said no. He was just a man and humans were not perfect. Sometimes he would make the good choice. More often than not, he would make mistakes. That was normal. Whatever he did outside, he would never stop loving her. In case of wrongdoings, a good man would try to make amends and to work toward doing better in every way possible. To that, she smiled. A real honest smile. That was the right way to go.

Scott was in Los Angeles now, working with Hank on the suit again. He was closer to his daughter and to Hope. They could go out some nights, the three of them. His life was good, he couldn’t complain. Almost as if nothing had happened. Once every month, he had to fly back to New York and to the compound. As a reserved Avengers, he had to go through some training and other bonding exercises. Not that he really liked this team but sometimes we had to work with people we didn’t appreciate. The world was more important than that. The avengers were fighting Villains regularly. But they didn’t always need him. Honestly, Scott was thankful for that.

Scott liked to spend some time in the streets of the Big Apple. Like a tourist, he would go around and sightsee. The shops sold a lot of Avengers memorabilia. Nothing about Iron Man obviously. Not even the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman. People’s memories were very short. Today, Antman was a hero. Tomorrow, he could be nothing. Quite a lesson to learn.

Scott had never been a politician. He never had been that interested in the news. He should have. Everybody had an agenda, Captain America had that right. Everybody had one. Now that he was neck deep in the accords and the galas and all those things needed to make sure that everybody was cared for, he regretted his word to Tony Stark. He didn’t know him and Hank was holding a grudge against the wrong person. Scott had been walking more than a mile in Stark’s shoes now. Sort of. He wished he could apologise. Even that wouldn’t be quite enough, Scott knew that. Looking at what had been the Stark Tower, he felt the loss. People were passing by without noticing the building anymore. Some guy had bought it but it was for sale again. It looked desolate. You didn’t know what you had until it was gone. It seemed that nobody was missing Stark that much. But they had realised that they needed him.

As he was leaving the place, Scott bumped into a man and while he was saying sorry he looked up to his face. He knew him from somewhere. He didn’t know anybody in New York. He was meeting so many new faces these days, he couldn’t remember them all. They all wanted something from him. He didn’t have that kind of power. And even then, most of them shouldn’t have what they wanted anyway. Lost in his thoughts, he forgot all about that man. Three hours later on the plane home, the name suddenly came to him. That man had been Tony Stark’s bodyguard. Iron Man needed protection. As funny as it sounded, Stark didn’t always have the armour on him. Standing beside him, Pepper Potts had been just a civilian. If anything, she would have needed someone to keep her safe.

It took him another hour to recollect his name. Well, his nickname really. Happy.

Chapter Text

Happy Hogan

At first, the walk had been an angry one. When he was going from his brand-new gym to May’s work, he had to go by Stark Tower. Looking at the building reminded him of everything. The good and the bad. And invariably he would think: “What the hell is wrong with you people?”. It was still hard to understand more than two years after the civil war. Happy was a simple man with maybe too much of a simple mind to understand a world of superheroes and spies. Those guys had no loyalty if not for themselves. Few people had. Happy wasn’t sure that he had been that loyal himself when it mattered the most. During the last months, he was more the bodyguard of Pepper than of Tony. And she had not been that dedicated either.

To think that even the Stark Industries employees went against Tony was still disturbing to him. They didn’t even hide it, talking openly on the corporate chat.  Funny enough, the worst of them were all ex-Shield. Tony had not been responsible for the data dumb. He didn’t even know about it before it was too late. His boss had worked himself thin in the armour to save the ones in dire situations. Some of those guys were undercover without any escape routes. Without Iron Man they would have been dead. Did it not count anymore? Apparently not. Shield had let them down and still those people were still flocking back to the shadow agency. The ex-agents were all rooting for Captain America. Steve had worked for them, with them. Mainly against them. Shield had not been all Hydra after all. Maybe the captain was easier to manipulate. Tony Stark didn’t like the agency. Even or perhaps because it had been partly founded by his father. They had been manipulated by Fury enough times. When the world was in danger, Iron Man had been standing with them.

Why the hell did they all think that Tony had such a big ego? They didn’t know the man behind the masks. The real Tony. Not even his friends evidently. The avengers had laughed at Happy when he had said that he was Stark’s bodyguard. He had left with the little dignity he had. Tony asked him to watch for Pepper after that. But the sting stayed. He should have known that Captain America and his team were not good. If he had told his boss what he thought back then, would things be the same now?

Now when Happy had to pass by the tower, he was just sad. The world was not a better place without Iron Man and Spiderman. Certainly not safer. Peter had changed a lot during the past eighteen months. Long gone was the cheerful and enthusiastic teenager. The guy who was calling everyday telling him about every little thing that would happen in his life. Everybody had a breaking point. Peter had reached his. The young man had been through too much already. Much more than most. His parents died when he was barely six years old. Peter had apparently very few memories of them but that didn’t mean it didn’t affect him a lot. May and Ben had done a wonderful job raising him. Peter was a very bright and quiet boy. He loved his aunt and uncle with all his heart. During high school, after being bitten by a spider, he had developed some superpowers. Happy knew the boy thought he was responsible for Ben’s death. And now he felt responsible somehow for Tony’s disappearance.

Happy stayed around to help the kid. Tony had asked him to do it. That was the least he could do. The ex-bodyguard was probably the last person who had seen the billionaire alive. Not that he thought his friend was dead. He actually refused to believe that. When the world is against you, why bother sticking around? If Happy knew anything about his boss, he was probably really depressed and maybe in some kind of depression, spiralling down, but not beat down. Tony was stronger than anybody he knew save from Peter of course. Even the strongest person needed a shoulder to cry on. Problem was that Tony had nobody. His friends were gone and he would never put that much on the kid’s shoulders.

After the event of the civil war, the police started to see vigilantes like Spiderman as outlaws. Even if Peter never really used force, choosing instead of roping the bad guys in webbings. For a while Spiderman continued to be the friendly neighbourhood hero. And then, the NYPD shot him, trying to arrest him. Sure, they didn’t know that Spiderman was so young but maybe they should have asked questions first and shoot later. Nobody came to his help either. The message had been understood very well. Peter was not wanted anymore. He was never the kind of guy to force himself on anybody.

Now Peter has changed. He was quiet, often lost in his thoughts. Everybody did change one way or another. Happy stayed around him and was often with May. Nothing had been planned. Something between him and Peter’s aunt happened. He wasn’t pushing for anything. He wasn’t saying no either. Happy wanted that deep down. Needed that even. The world around him had changed a lot in a short amount of time. May and Peter were like an anchor for him. He loved them both. Now he wanted more than anything to protect them, even more than the last demand from his boss and friend.

Tony had been generous with him. The money he left him could last them for more than a lifetime. Happy had a small boxing gym now. He was barely making money out of it but that made him happy. Peter would come regularly to blow off steam. Children needed to spend their energy somehow, even more when that child was enhanced. Tony had also put money aside for May and for Peter’s future. University fees, apartment, life, everything would be covered for him. Peter knew that but he was working hard at school anyway because he still wanted to make his mentor proud wherever he was. Peter was asking his aunt so he would be allowed to find a part-time job. He was so responsible for his age.

“Happy? Do you think Mr Stark is dead?” asked Peter one day during practice on the ring.

That was about the hardest question ever, because really Happy didn’t know the answer. Would it even be a good idea to give this kid some hope if Tony never came back? Whatever would happen, he wouldn’t lie. The man himself was hoping that Tony would come back one way or another. They were making a new family, trying anyway. Happy didn’t know where Tony was and he wished he did. He would have been able to protect his boss better than he did. From everyone apparently. So, Happy told the young man that he thought that Tony was alive but not in the right place psychologically. Who would be when the world had turned against you? One day he would come back for Peter. Happy had seen it with his own two eyes, Tony loved the kid deeply.

Tonight, they were having dinner out in a small Italian restaurant in their neighbourhood. Nothing fancy. Just some good pasta to share. To be together like the weird family unit they were. Happy was more like a nice uncle to Peter but that was fine by him. His relationship with May was great. If anything, they should be grateful for that. Peter would always look at Tony like his second dad. He even called him that once by mistake and was mortified after that. That was nice and sad in its own way. But they were there, eating together, having a good time and that was what mattered. They were in their little bubble talking about school, work and some TV shows, anything and everything. Peter was talking about Ned’s latest Lego Star Wars’ construction. What people found in those films, happy didn’t know but Peter would get excited about it and that was nice to see. Ordinary things of their ordinary life.

They were the last ones to realise something was happening outside. They were at the back of the restaurant in a booth. The family realised something was up when all the other clients started moving towards the bay windows. People in the streets were looking up at the skies. Some of them were panicking, starting to run down the streets. Others were just standing there like statues made of salt. It was eerily reminiscent of Loki’s attack in New York not so long ago. Tony had always thought that the Chitauri would come back. Happy hoped he would be later than that.

A ship was descending. A large one. By the look of it, it wasn’t something made on earth but it didn’t look like the Chitauri ships either. It was just coming down and from the approximate direction, the ship would not land in New York. Peter and Happy came to the same conclusion at the same time. The compound. A contact must have been made quite early in their descent. The police were asking the people to calm down, that the ship was friendly and from Asgard. That was Thor in there, nothing to be scared about. The radio and the television started to relay the same information. The panic didn’t stop. In less than a day all the grocery shops were emptied of their content. Especially the non-perishable products. You wouldn’t find a pack of flour or dry pasta anywhere in all New York. Streets were empty, houses closed, shutters bolted. People of the city weren’t leaving their homes behind but they wouldn’t be the collateral damage, part of the “sometimes we can’t save everybody”.

Thor wasn’t coming alone. Asgard had been destroyed. The land of Gods was no more. Apparently, Thor and Loki had an older sister they didn’t know about and she wasn’t a happy camper after being imprisoned for a millennia. Ragnarök had happened.  The Aesir had to flee and unfortunately met Thanos in their escape. Loki died protecting what was left of their people. If people like the Aesir could be destroyed, it didn’t bode well for the people on Earth. Thor himself appeared on tv to explain everything to the Midgardians. The times of lies were in the past. Thanos was coming. He wasn’t the kind to make a distinction between warriors and civilians. They had nowhere to run and hide. The mad titan was a threat for the entire galaxy wherever he was. Under the guise of bringing stability to the universe, Thanos started his quest about tracking down the infinity stones. Combined, he would then be able to wipe out half the universe with a snap of his fingers. Loki's failed invasion had been part of that plan. Thor was saying that his younger brother had not been to blame as he had been manipulated by the mind stone. Gods weren’t good enough against the mad titan, what would the humans do against him?

The governments would be making preparations or so they said. The U.N. were trying to sell to the people of Earth that the Avengers were back and would save them all. Everybody remembered who had saved New York the first time around. Just like they remembered who managed to save the world during the event of Sokovia. But Iron Man wasn’t there anymore. Each and every one of them had pushed him to quit. Now they needed him. Somehow that’s what stopped the panic. Because they accused Tony Stark of everything, or because nobody raised their voices to defend him, it felt like they had made their beds. Maybe Captain America, Thor and the rest of the team would save them all. It still would be a lesson learnt the hard way. They had felt so strong behind their screens, saying horrible things without knowing the whole story. Now they all looked at Thor praying to whatever God there was left that the “heroes” they had left would be enough.

Chapter Text

Thor

Thor wasn’t stupid. Maybe not Tony’s or Loki’s level of smart but not stupid. When he made way to Earth after Asgard’s fall and his confrontation with Thanos, he had some sort of a plan. A rough one but one, nonetheless. He hadn’t been expecting for things to change that much on Midgard. Once in range, contact was made with the people from Earth. Honestly, he thought he would be talking to the voice, Friday. Instead, some guy from somewhere or something called the U.N. answered and gave them the authorization to land. Banner would later explain to him what it was. It made, then, a lot more sense and he felt like it was a sensible idea. An assembly with representatives from different countries that made Midgard. They talked for a short while, him and that U.N. guy and then Captain Rogers took over. Thor was glad to hear a friendly voice. After all that happened, he needed friends and some time to think. Mourning would come later. After Thanos’ death. Now he wanted to focus on the threat that was coming, the preparations to be made, the battle to be won. The thought of his family, his land, his brother would be pushed aside for now. Thinking about it wasn’t actually helping. It made him feel too guilty, too helpless, like he wouldn’t and couldn’t make a difference in the combat to come. He had to fight though and he had to win. If not for him, for the rest of the galaxy. For the Aesir sacrificed. For Loki.

Things were a lot different now. Time would go slower on Asgard or maybe it was because the Aesir were living for so long, he didn’t know. People on his team weren’t always seeing things from the same perspective but he would never have thought that it would go that far. Now, Stark was missing and nobody was looking for him. Worse, they seemed glad that they didn’t have to deal with the man anymore. They didn’t even care. The media on Earth were quite powerful apparently. At first, everyone was against Tony. Nobody, not even his friends or his team, were defending him. Thor had trouble understanding why. How could everybody be against one man? A representative from the U.N. was coming to explain it all. It had to be a stranger to do that instead of one of the Avengers. When he finally learnt the whole story, he kind of understood why Steve and the others were keeping quiet. Thanos was coming soon! All those things shouldn’t matter anymore! It was in the past now. The future looked so bleak. Maybe they should focus on creating defences, preparing for the invasion. Loki always said that he wasn’t seeing the bigger picture. For once, it seemed like he was but the Avengers weren’t.

When he read the accords, he understood even less. They were only regulations to protect everybody, especially the populations, the real innocents. Asgard itself had something of the kind. A code of the warrior so to speak. Honestly, the gods thought they already had one of those. Steve had rejected them from the start and Thor didn’t really understand why. It was more than clear that, even if he signed in the end, Steve still wasn’t happy about them. The rest of the team either.

Thor wasn’t good with human technology. It was hard for him to make a phone call without breaking the phone at first. He still wanted to see the famous videos of what happened. Everybody in the compound was still whispering about it. To make his own opinion he had to watch. Jarvis, he remembered, had died during the Ultron event. Stark had another one after that, Friday, but even so, it was apparently gone just as its creator. In the end, Vision helped him. There was a lot to watch. It would have been difficult to really understand everything if not for the android. The chronology was all over the place and more often than not, referring to events that Thor had no knowledge of. That wasn’t a pretty picture. It showed a lot of betrayals, some small, others life changing. Thor didn’t know about Stark’s parents. He had just lost both of his. The circumstances were different of course, but he could understand what happened in that bunker. Steve and his friend were very lucky to be alive. The god had seen how formidable the armour was in battle. Super soldiers or not, if Tony had wanted them dead, they would be. Simple as that. The captain was certainly not the man Thor thought he was.  Leaving a shield brother behind to die like that. It was not honourable. Thor started to understand why Stark had chosen to move away from that team. He had never realised how bad they were treating him before. The world didn’t respect the man of Iron either. Why would he risk his life for them?

“Did you really look back then?” asked Loki’s voice in his head.

Thor had always seen only what he wanted to see. He never perceived Odin’s action as being wrong, even when it was hurting his little brother so much. And that even before Loki’s adoption was revealed. He never thought the Warrior Three and Sif’s comments could be anything but harmless jokes played on the youngest. Thor couldn’t even remember if Loki had come to him trying to explain his point of view, how it made him feel. Something inside him made him think that Loki did try but that he had never listened to his brother. When he came to Earth, even after getting back Mjölnir, his hammer, Thor was still the same basking in the adoration of the masses, not really caring about the people around him. If anything, his failed relationship with Jane Foster was the very proof of that.

It was funny how Loki and Tony had in common really. Thor had lost both. It seemed that nobody knew where to find Stark and the majority on the planet thought he was dead. The god was hoping he was faking it, just like his own brother had done so many times. Until it became true, really, really true this time. Thor wanted to go find him. Where to start? He had so much to do anyway. Saving Tony wouldn’t bring Loki back. Or remove the guilt. It would take time. Maybe a lifetime and for him, that meant another good three thousand years minimum. Near immortality wasn’t a fun fact right about now.

Captain America seemed pretty sure of their future victory. Confident enough that he was looking at the preparations with an amused eye. As if it was too much, unnecessary. It reminded him of his younger self. When he only thought about the next battle, so certain of his success. The lesson had been hard on him. Earth did not deserve to suffer while Rogers was learning that. Steve was very stubborn. He never had changed his view since their first meeting on the helicarrier before the battle of New York. People changed their thoughts. A lot. Everybody but the good Captain apparently. Thor had changed a lot each time he lost something, someone. His mother, father and brother. His eye. Even his hammer.

Thor’s first action as New King involved a lot of talking, almost begging, so the last of his people could start anew. The position, he had wanted to be King so much once, was now a heavy burden he wished away. Norway had accepted to give them some land. Nothing much but it felt like the best gift ever to his people. The Aesir liked to see that those people still had knowledge about the old gods. How long would they keep that land if Thanos finally managed to get all the infinity stones together? Even without all of them, the mad titan was a formidable foe. Even if Thanos wasn't responsible for the destruction of Asgard but his hidden sister Hela, Thor didn’t bury his head in the sands. The fear of that unknown future was soul crushing, lost between wanting to prepare and the idea of not being enough anyway. Loki would have been so much better at that. He had been actually really good while posing as Odin. If only he could go back in time.

They were once again in yet another meeting about Thanos. People on Earth did love the sound of their own voices, talking again and again about the same things. It was not easy to get every country to agree on anything. The threat didn’t seem real enough for some surely. Steve was losing his patience quickly and Thor couldn’t blame him. Natasha was trying to calm him down, putting her hand calmly on his shoulder. It didn’t work.

“Stop it!” shouted Captain America in the middle of a petty squabble. “Are you even worth saving? Can’t you think about anything else but your own agenda?”

Steve, up to that, wasn’t wrong. Thor had to admit that much. If only he had stopped there. But he went on telling them how only his hands were the safest, how he knew better and didn’t need all the red tape. His team would save them all, with or without them. The assembly was stun. It was true that they had an agenda. Yes, they should learn to work all together in the face of a planetary menace. But the arrogance of Captain America at that instant was what left them speechless. Even the U.S. representative, a long-time fan, was left mouth opened in surprise.

“Are you allowing the destruction of the mind stone then?” asked the Japanese delegate, first to recover.

“No. We will not trade lives. Plus, we won’t need that. The Avengers are here to protect you, don’t you worry.”

It took everything in Thor not to explode here and there. As an Avenger himself, he needed to be in agreement with his captain, to present a united front. For everybody’s morale. Not to scare the people more than they were already. Once back in the compound, he couldn’t keep it anymore. Outside the storm was raging. Inside the walls, Thor was shouting. How could Steve be so sure of himself? How could he downplay everybody else? At this rate, a lot of people would die even without Thanos snapping his fingers.

“We do our best but sometimes we can’t save everybody.”

He sounded so flippant about it that Thor, for a second, didn't know how to respond to that. Life didn’t count all that much for the captain. Thor had just lost most of his people and Steve was just saying stuff like that. As if it didn't really matter. It fell down on Thor all of the sudden. Stark had been right from the very start. Since their first time together, Iron Man and Captain America didn’t get along all that well. They all have been falling for the righteous propaganda when they should have looked at the actions. He couldn’t stop from whispering that they needed Tony Stark right now. Steve got mad at that. Tony was a coward, who would need someone like that in the battle to come. Stark wouldn’t help, worse he would just create more chaos as usual. The shouting match started again even louder than before. What did they do to the man of Iron for him to hide like that in the first place? They were throwing arguments, screaming louder and louder. Neither of them realised that all the avengers, old and new were in the room now, watching them.

“We would need Tony. Thor is right.” Banner said in a soft tone. “Iron Man is a heavy hitter and can fly. Both would always be valuable in a battle. As a friend, I wish he were here. Don’t Kid yourself though, we all have a hand in the situation or did you forget how you grabbed Tony by the throat, threatening a baseline human life Thor?”

He did not forget. His temper had gotten the best of him. They all had been, at one point or another, horrible to the man. Everybody had a breaking point. With each day passing by, Thor was getting closer to his. Really close.

Chapter Text

Bruce Banner

Banner and Hulk were having a quiet argument. To the outside eye, it looked like Bruce was talking to himself. Shouting at times. During his time off world, both his sides had learnt how to communicate. They shared the time out a bit more evenly now. Bruce listened more to what Hulk wanted or needed. Hulk liked that a lot. Even if the Hulk came out because of anger, he wasn’t a mindless beast. On the contrary, he could be quite smart at times, picking up on things and feelings that Bruce didn’t notice. They both didn’t like what they came back to. The split, General Ross, Tony. Bruce had read the last version of the accords. They weren’t as bad as Steve made them to be. Everything else was all wrong. It was hard to put one’s head around all the events, let alone two. Both personalities didn’t agree on the subject. Hulk was shouting a lot inside his brain. Bruce was eating headache medications as if it were candies. He almost missed the arena now.

After one too many fights, Hulk started refusing to take over. He was sulking. Bruce only thought it was a good thing. A bit of peace and quiet. More time for himself. That wasn’t that easy though. Hulk was refusing to fight when needed, refused to talk to the team even. Especially not to Steve. The big guy wanted to talk to his Tin Man. That conversation, Bruce didn’t want to have it anytime soon. He wasn’t too good with confrontation. With all his PHDs, Bruce couldn’t understand why Tony said yes to General Ross. After all the things the older man put him through, put his own daughter through, it was hard to understand why you would want to work with somebody like that. Bruce knew all about guilt, especially after Johannesburg. That wasn’t an excuse. But he had to admit, Ross had been in a position of power back then. It would have been difficult to do anything without the general’s interference.

It had been hard to see Wanda on the team. Hulk wanted to smash her. And not just a little bit. He wanted her dead. More precisely, he wanted to be the one to kill her. Each time they would see her, images of Johannesburg would come flashing in their mind. Bruce wouldn’t actually cry his eyes out if her death happened. His logical side was telling him that she could be useful against Thanos. She was powerful. They would need all the help they could find when the Mad Titan would come. Banner had seen enough of their enemy to know that. Plus, it looked like she was close to Vision who was, in essence, the mind stone. They had been a couple at some point, or had been the hope of something. Bruce didn’t exactly know what happened between them and he didn’t want to be told either. Wanda would still fight to save Vision at the very least. Hopefully. War Machine was back in the hero business after having been hurt during the civil war. Tony, despite his disappearance, had created braces that allowed Rhodes to walk and fly again. Bruce was very happy for him. He always liked the no nonsense colonel.

It would be good if Tony would come back too. Even if Bruce didn’t like him all that much right now, they needed him. He had said once that they weren’t a team. That they were a chemical mixture that makes chaos, a time bomb. He never imagined that it would produce an explosion of that magnitude. “1.21 gigawatts” would have yelled Tony and laughed at his own joke. And laughed some more when Steve would have had that "I don’t know what you are talking about" face. The billionaire always used humour to diffuse a situation, even when the others didn’t quite get him. Really, Bruce missed him just a little but only when he wasn’t mad. The worst of all things was that he had no reason to be mad at Tony. General Ross was the secretary of defence just before the civil war. Stark didn’t put him there, he was just playing the political game. Probably to get the best deal for the Avengers he could.

Steve tried to keep him in the dark. Thor wasn’t that interested in the Midgard affairs outside of getting a place for his people and giving them a shot at a new life. All that with the preparation for the war coming. The god didn’t think they would win straight away so he was in the better safe than sorry kind of approach. The man had lost nearly everything. They couldn’t exactly blame him. Thor was probably doing some mourning of his own. Divinity or not, he had lost all of his family one after one. That couldn’t be easy to handle on top of all the obligations of a king.

Captain America tried to give Bruce things to do, like looking into safely separating Vision from the stone in his forehead. Enough to keep him down in his lab for hours at times. So much so that he had a sofa put down there so he could sleep a bit once in a while. During that time, he understood Tony a little bit more. The scientist could have easily lost himself in his research, losing all notion of time. Friday wasn’t there to remind him that it was dinner, or that he should get some rest. Science was more than his job. That always had been his passion. To lose himself in his enthusiasm was easy.

The truth came from Vision actually. Bruce had asked him down to the labs for some tests. Android and infinity stones weren’t his field of expertise. Vision innocently asked him how he was feeling now that the people knew he wasn’t the one to blame. For a second, Bruce had no idea what he was talking about. Once everything was explained, it felt like he didn’t know what to do with himself. So, someone had put two and two together and proved with video surveillance and reports that, one, Ultron came from the mind stone vandalising their program and, two, the scarlet witch was responsible for the deaths in South Africa. It felt like a tone of guilt was being removed from his shoulders. Why did they take her in the team after that? It appeared that Captain America knew a lot more about her than he was letting on. That idea was disturbing.

Hulk was shouting in his head again. He wanted to know. Why were friends not really friends? Puny Steve lied to all? The big guy was not a dumb beast. Bruce wanted to know as well. They watched all the damning evidence in one big binge. Sat on an uncomfortable stool, the truth was unfolding in front of his eyes. And that was a lot to take in. Bruce hadn’t been directly involved in all the events. He knew though. The data dumb, Tony confrontation with the mandarin. As a friend though, maybe he should have been there. A phone call or something. To let them know that he was there if needed. Hydra still alive within Shield must have been a shock to Steve. He had given his life thinking he was destroying the organisation once. Clearly that hadn't been enough. Then, Tony’s apparent death should have meant something to his science bro. He didn’t even have the excuse of the Hulk taking them out of the world. You can’t expect people to be there for you when you weren’t there for them ever. Steve, the man out of time, had a family of sorts around him. Who has Tony Stark's side lately? Nobody. Hindsight is always 20/20. That didn’t mean that he couldn’t have done better. Of course, now was not the time to start another fight. Steve could consider himself lucky for now. They needed to talk seriously. About Siberia.

Bruce started to work with Shuri on the mind stone. Even if she was very young, she was bright. It was a real pleasure to work with her. Just like it was good to science with Tony. She had to work on a forcefield as well. For all Wakanda’s advancement, android and artificial intelligence were just not what they were good at. They just couldn’t do it. Maybe if they had time to work on that, they would manage to find something. Vision himself said that only Tony could have done what needed to be done but that was too late now. Stark had built at least five artificial intelligences without problem. One who actually sacrificed itself for the world. His expertise was sorely missed.

The android was ready to die. He was ready to have the stone removed and destroyed if it meant that half the universe would not vanish away. One against the many. Really it was no brainer. Wanda had been fighting the idea of course. Not too hard. She wanted to live even over the corpse of her ex-boyfriend. That much was clear. It seemed that she just loved to contradict people just for the fun of it. Like a teenager. No wonder why Steve was always calling her a kid. Maybe Bruce wasn’t fair with her but he didn’t care that much. Steve was totally opposed to Vision sacrificing himself. Nobody could change his mind.

“We don’t trade lives, Vision.” The Captain had told him.

Vision tried to compare this situation to Steve putting down his ship, the Valkyrie. Steve always had something to answer. He was right in his own mind. He was closed to any argumentation that would prove him wrong in any way. Thinking about it, Bruce thought that was another show of his hypocrisy. Jumping on a fake grenade, crashing the bomber, dumping the data of Shield, or calling out Tony for not throwing himself on the wire. Steve was a soldier in the first place, during one of the most horrific conflicts. Really that was what soldiers did. During any conflicts. They were the front lines. But he refused to let others do the same apparently. He had told Tony to do just that but had been mad when it actually happened. Steve only could be the hero of that story apparently. Of any story.

“You do though” said Bruce calmly. “Trade lives.”

“What are you on about?” answered Steve on the defensive.

Bruce could see it in his stance, in him going stiff that the good captain was ready to attack. When he couldn’t win with his words, he would win with his fists. Unfortunately, words didn’t come easy to him. The little guy from Brooklyn had become the bully he was meant to fight against. That was the guy who went against Tony constantly. He really needed to be right all the time. Steve didn’t like to explain himself. He just should be followed without questions. Maybe he believed in his own propaganda a little bit too much. The rest of the team arrived in the room after hearing them shout. It was a rare occurrence for Bruce. Being angry meant being the Hulk.  Bruce didn’t like confrontations but things had to be said. Now or never. It was about time really. Someone had to tell things like they actually were.

“You chose Barnes over Tony.”

Steve visibly tried not to shout against Bruce. Nobody wanted the hulk to come out. Barnes was standing there, looking sad. James thought that Banner was right. And worse than that, Stevie had been taking his side against the whole world. And Bucky helped his old friend. His mind had not been totally his at the time. When Tony Stark had hit Steve, James shouldn’t have raised his gun. But all that was in a past that he couldn’t change. He wanted to concentrate on his new life and in all honesty, he wished that this time it would be far from Steve Rogers. For now, he just took his childhood friend away from the scene. Was that his destiny? To remove Steve from a fight he provoked, a fight started because he had been wrong but didn’t want to recognise it?

Chapter Text

James Barnes

War was easy. Compared to now it was. The good guys were fighting the bad guys. Black and white. Nothing more, nothing else. It was easy to know what to do, where to point the barrel of your gun. Every shoot that hit the target was a small victory, a small step toward the end of that mess. The soldiers didn’t want to be there but it was ok since they were doing the right thing for the world at large. They didn’t think about the guy on the other side of the line because they didn’t have to. They didn’t want to. If the enemy didn’t have a face, a family, and a life it was easier for them to shoot. It didn’t occur to them that the enemy was there maybe, just because he was someone who was between a rock and a hard place. His choice for fighting on the front line might have been not a choice at all. Disagreeing meant the concentration camp for you and your family. The military perhaps supposed dying but also meant protecting, for a little bit longer at least, the ones they loved. Front lines it had been then. Did the Germans think the same way too about them?

War wasn’t easy. Never. The enemies were never all monsters they were made out to be. Some were no doubt. Like Hitler. Like Red Skull. But even they had a family. Just like the heroes were not how history would remember them. The propaganda worked both ways. Steve certainly was not the man the books choose to remember. He wasn’t the man from the Smithsonian exhibit. The man with a plan. “A” as in one plan. One and only. The howling commandos were made of very experienced war heroes in their own right. They knew what to do and when to do it. Quite often, Steve would make out a plan. Not a bad one but always very forward. Too forward sometimes. To punch your way in and out wasn’t always the best strategy.

Steve wasn’t one for patience and stealth but James was a sniper, a marksman. Patience and stealth were all he was about. Maybe they worked well together because they were so different, bringing to the other what they lacked. They always had been at the opposite end of the spectrum. Like the yin and the yang, they completed each other. When the plan fell through, the Howlers knew what to do in order to survive and, most often than not in order, to get the mission done. They saved a lot of people no doubt. When things went wrong, no one said anything. They weren’t really part of the army, not directly under the SSR either. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Steve had always been a little shit. Always being right whatever the circumstances. Even when so blatantly wrong. James remembered the last fight before he was sent out in Europe. Steve had gone to the cinema when some guy shouted against the war news. Of course, the shrimp had to say something, his opinion the right one in all circumstances. He was beaten in a back alley and proud of it. Standing up against the bullies, real or not, was all he was about. Steve had always resented his health. Being so sickly wasn’t a good thing back in the days. People were looking at him with pity, worse, like he was a burden to his family. Steve wanted to prove to them that he could be of some help, that he could be someone. He just went the wrong way about it. Like that guy in the cinema who had been drafted a couple of days before and was about to depart for the training camp and then Europe. He had wanted his last hours free from anything war related. So yes, that guy shouldn’t have hurt Steve, but just maybe Stevie wasn’t always right in his opinion. Especially when he didn’t have the whole picture. And he never had the whole picture. James had met that guy briefly. He had been killed by a German grenade. A forgotten hero really.

When James woke up in his own mind again, after seventy years, everything was so mixed up. Steve was there, the same as ever. That felt wrong because he had changed so much. The world around them felt brand new. So many possibilities. James had always liked the technology like during the Howard Stark exposition. Everything was high tech now compared to the forties. Cars weren’t flying around though. Too bad. The soldier wanted nothing but to be left alone. Sometimes he had flashbacks from another life. The one with little Stevie. The one as the Winter Soldier as well. Nightmares. He was both and neither. He wasn’t sure who he wanted to be now. Everything was so hazy. So, he just spent his days alone in Bucharest. He was filling his days going to the market, being a good neighbour, being as normal as he could be. That felt so good, normality.

He missed those days now. Everything was simpler even if messy. James had decided to go back to cryotherapy. But they woke him up when the pardons came through. They told him that they had removed the triggers in his mind. He wasn’t so sure it was true. It had no recollection about any treatment. His mind was always full of holes when waking up from the cold. Hydra never needed his memories, just his skills in killing. It didn’t matter now. A big threat was coming for them. Maybe the Winter Soldier would be a better help. His skills as a fighter were legendary. James was just good old James. Nothing much.

James was helping T’Challa as much as he could for the preparations. They were doing their best. Thor had warned them against someone formidable and cruel. Would they be enough? Steve, on one hand, thought that the arrangements were not necessary but on the other, was constantly complaining about the absence of Tony Stark. For his tech not for the guy himself. But that was their fault. His and Steve’s. James felt a lot of guilt for many things. He remembered every murder the Winter Soldier committed. The screams, the faces.  That meant a lot of people and even if Stevie was always saying that it wasn’t his fault, he had to live with all those dark memories in his mind. His hands were red from the blood of so many innocents. His team didn’t want to see that side of him. Natasha sometimes was close to an understanding. She would never really get there though. They all thought they were heroes, that they were helping the innocents. They were quick to forget the one they couldn’t save. As Steve liked to say, they couldn’t save everybody. They weren’t wrong. Still as heroes it was their jobs to try and try again, to make every chance on their sides so they would have the minimum collateral damages. James doubted they felt guilty for anything.

NASA were looking in outer space, for anything that would resemble an alien army. The sooner they would know about Thanos’ getting there, the better. But they couldn’t see very far. It would give them a couple of days warning, three days top. Earth technology as it was couldn’t see that much further. Many voices were rising everywhere, asking where Stark was, asking him to be found so he could help. The majority was just bitter. Tony had left them to die. He should have been there. He should have found a solution. The miracle they were all waiting for. How much can you ask a guy without anything in return? You never know what you have until it’s gone, right? Steve just didn’t want to learn that particular lesson. They were doing their best anyway. T’Challa, with all the technology in Wakanda, was providing warriors and a shield to put around anything important. They were hoping to bring the battle in a large field away from the population but they couldn’t be sure of what would happen. The Vibranium in them should stop most of the blows. Rhodes was working with armies from all around the world, stockpiling some good old bombs, some of them from Stark Industries leftovers from the US military. For once, everybody was working together, most of the time anyway. Captain America at their head.

Or so Steve thought. James really didn’t like Steve of now. That attitude of his was funny when he was a shrimp. Now he had become just what he was meant to fight. Using his stature and his position to get what he wanted. Standing tall, arms crossed with that “Captain America knew better than you” kind of expression. Rhodey wasn’t having any of it anymore. The colonel often was asking if Steve had been using that technique on Tony. Always demeaning the genius, never listening to any other opinion than his own. It wasn’t really a question. Most of them knew that it was exactly the case. Each member of the Team Cap like they were called sometimes had their excuses for everything of course.

As days passed by, the tensions were rising. Some conversations were not a good idea to have any more if ever. James didn’t want to talk to Steve that much and by extension to his team. Weirdly the soldier was closer to the Vision of all people. They were at the same level somehow, learning the basics again. Vision was very knowledgeable but knew very little when it came to emotions. His first relationship had been quite complicated and was now over. The android was somewhat grieving for a father he didn’t know he had. He had to choose between his father and his girlfriend. In the end he had neither. Wanda was still hovering around the android but it wasn’t working anymore. Maybe, if he were still alive after that war, Vision and James could go to university together. He wasn’t bad at school in the 40’s. He had just lacked the opportunities truly. Back then, they needed the money. His sisters deserved everything even if it meant that he couldn’t have it himself. His life should have been a lot different if it wasn’t for the war anyway. He was hoping that this time around would be different. Another war but hopefully another future.

Who would have said that he could actually meet aliens? That was his life now. Crazy. Peter, Rocket, Groot, Drax, Mantis, Gamora and Nebula came a while ago with Thor and Banner. Gamora and Nebula were the daughters of Thanos but they chose to fight against him. Steve didn’t trust them. They could very well switch sides during the battle. Steve was quite unfair. Nebula had been physically tortured by the man who pretended to be her father. Surely, if his own torture were counting against everything he had done or he could do, hers should have counted just as much. Gamora, as he understood, wasn’t tortured like her sister but he doubted that her childhood had been a walk in the park either. Natasha and Wanda were famous turncoats. Did that mean that Steve didn’t trust them either? Hypocrisy was high in his old best friend it seemed.

Those aliens called themselves the guardians of the Galaxy. That was so not modest that James had to smile at that. But apparently they did save the universe once or twice. That was that. It was regrettable that they didn’t destroy the stone they fought for back then. That would have stopped Thanos right there. Well maybe not. He would have carried on, planet after planet. The mad titan had started that way, killing half the population of each planet he found on his way. And then again, how do you destroy an infinity stone? Because Vision absolutely agreed to the fact they should take the mind stone from his forehead but what after? A good hammer blow, job done. He doubted that. Plus destroying a stone could have second effects nobody knew about. Thanos already had enough other stones to be unstoppable anyway. Sometimes it did feel like the universe they were trying to save was against them.

Chapter Text

Peter Quill

Peter was thrilled to be back on Earth. Excited and a bit worried. He had missed so many things during the years away in space. Like cookies and music and films and so many things. His mother had been there, that was emotional for him. It had been so long. He had wanted to show everything to his team, even if the times weren’t the best for that. But tomorrow, they might be all dead, it was literally now or never. First and before anything else, Peter went to see his mother’s resting place. People might see him as stupid, talking to a gravestone – Was it something that people were doing here? – but he wanted to explain all his life and adventures to her. Peter had been very close to his mother before her death. Yondu had kidnapped him just after her passing. Peter often regretted not being at the funeral. But it was what it was. No point crying over spilt milk.

He told her everything about space, Yondu who had been like a father to him in his own way, Gamora, Rocket and the others. How they saved the galaxy against Xandar. Peter had been strong enough to hold an infinity stone and not die. Well, with the help of his friends of course. He even talked about Ego who she loved so much but ended up being so disappointing. She needed to know what he had done to her even if it was difficult to say. In the end, her son had avenged her. If he cried a little, nobody was there to see him. Even if someone saw, he didn’t care.

So, Captain America was real. Like real, real, alive and in front of him. If his life weren’t already completely crazy, that would have made it. He was totally like in the comics Peter used to read when he was young which was really weird. Tall, blond, large shoulders with that expression that said I’m right because I’m Captain America. The uniform was slightly different but overall, that was him in three dimensions. He was also a total douche and that was even weirder, if it was possible at that point. Steve didn’t trust Peter’s team and looked at them as if they were dust on his shoe. He didn’t even know them but his opinion was already made. And he wouldn’t change his mind. That would mean he had been wrong at one point and he couldn’t have that. The guardians were willing to fight, it should have counted for something. Anybody willing to risk his life to save others should receive some kind of respect in return, Peter thought. Captain America still didn’t like them and he wasn’t afraid to tell anybody who would listen. Especially his team, faithful friends, blind followers. You should never meet your childhood heroes.

And that was so unfair. Especially now that the sisters had managed to put their differences aside and were back together. Gamora and Nebula had been fighting each other for so long. Their lives had been hard even before that. It wasn’t easy to go after your own father. Peter knew something about that. Even if it was for the good of the many, a dad, even a bad one, was still a dad. The sisters didn’t remember any other family members. They didn’t have to help the Earth. None of them. It wasn’t their birth planet or even the only planet in the galaxy. Far from that. They could go anywhere and try their luck against the titan. The guardians had come there mainly because it had been Thanos’ destination. So much was at stake here.

Peter showed everything to his team anyway. To, at least, take their minds off things. Especially the food. God, did he miss the cookies, burgers, pizzas and all the rest. There was nothing that could compare to Earth food anywhere in the whole galaxy. Thanos was probably just weeks away now. It was getting real for everyone now. That was not how he pictured the people’s reaction. Nobody seemed to panic or riot or anything. They were all living like always. Maybe not completely normally. The houses were closed, shutters bolted. Half of the population were the kind to go to work, go back and spend the rest of the time inside. The other half was living life as if it were their last days alive. And it might just as well be. They carried on working, most of them, but after that, it was literally a party all night. Restaurants, bars and clubs were making money like never before but somehow it felt hollow. People were feeling hollow. There was nothing they could do against that kind of threat. They were left with defenders they didn’t really like because they drove away the ones they did, underneath all their criticism.

The guardians did know about Iron Man. The man who stopped one of Thanos’ invasions. It had never happened before. The mad titan had never been beaten before, not even when he only sent his armies ahead. Of course, that kind of news would spread all over the galaxy. The same way that all the universe knew that things wouldn’t stop at that. Only Thanos won wars after the first battle. The galaxy hoped that the man who managed to stop the mad titan once could do it once more. Definitely. Maybe they were putting too much on a single person’s shoulders. Iron Man represented hope for many. Somehow Earth was fairly unknown in the universe but at least three of the stones had found their ways to that little planet. Surely that meant something.

Peter did find it quite strange that most of the Avengers didn’t like Iron Man. The witch or the archer simply hated him. He didn’t even want to know why. Rocket said it was because they were not known anywhere else but on Earth. And even on Earth, their reputation wasn’t that good anyway. Their ego was bruised or something. The guardians didn’t know what happened. They never asked. One problem at a time and right now, the main problem was Thanos.

Rocket was totally in love with all the technology around, especially the ones from Wakanda. The guardians were working on the forcefields. The Racoon – if asked, Peter never called him that, never - bantered a lot with Shuri while they were working on the shields. Rocket wanted to buy – steal – everything he laid eyes on. The princess thought it was kind of funny at first. Until she realised he wasn’t joking. Then, she hadn’t been so royal anymore. Like OK, Rocket was weird like that but maybe worked around his quirks because he was one hell of an engineer with an over worldly kind of knowledge about the matter. Rocket certainly could help and even make things better. They were all good at pretending they were working for the better good. Only if you fit their expectations apparently.

As far as they knew, Thanos already had two stones, maybe three. He definitely had the power stone after destroying Xandar. With the fall of Asgard, the mad titan collected the space stone, the one that the people here called the Tesseract. He probably had the reality stone. The collector was dead. That was the logical conclusion. That meant that he still needed three. Two were on Earth. So, they had to find the last one. To even out the chances so to speak. Gamora had an idea about its location. She wanted to go, of course. It was a very dangerous mission. But they could not go together, like the team they were. Nebula was against it. That needed stealth and rapidity. A big team would be counterproductive. That was why they didn’t inform anybody else, Avengers and such. Captain America was NOT discreet. Even in part of the galaxy where he was literally a nobody, he would stand out. That uniform also was not low-profile, even if the flag sprawled on him wouldn’t mean anything to anyone. Nebula and Gamora wanted to go together. People on the defence team didn’t trust them already. They never gave them tasks to help in the preparation. The best fighters in their team and also the swiftest. They would not be missed by the Avengers. Only the Milano’s absence would worry them. If they managed their missions, they would come back with proof of their loyalty. And a powerful help to the cause. If not, the rest of the guardians would fight and kill Thanos in their names. It wasn’t ideal. But nothing in their situation was.

So, Nebula and Gamora left. Peter wasn’t happy about it. He trusted the sisters’ abilities but that didn’t stop him from worrying. Then Captain “Fucking” America had to come around his end of the compound to tell him how he was right from the start. Did he need to always be the righteous one? Gamora and Nebula were probably sacrificing herself for a prick like him. Even Drax, who was so first degree, not understanding what was said between the lines, was beyond mad. If James Barnes had not pulled that excuse of a human back, he would be dead now. Maybe not dead because the guardians were mature enough to realise that Steve Rogers might be of help during the battle. So maybe, they could just hurt him really bad. Take a hit at his ego maybe, that he had quite big. It seemed that a lot of people were just humouring the captain now. In the grand scheme of things, the future of all was just more important.

The guardians had met the rest of the superheroes and their last add-on. They had learned about a Marvel who was on the Kree side of the galaxy. She was also a captain but apparently she earned that title. So, Captain America wasn’t a real captain, good to know, stored for later. Carol came from Earth originally but she had spent a lot of time on Hala. The blond woman had some fantastic powers coming directly from the Space stone or the vessel for it. A guy named Fury, director of Shield, had called for her, desperate. Shield was meant to protect the planet but didn’t really exist anymore, thanks to Steve Rogers.

Peter thought they had quite a lot in common. They had been taken from Earth to live somewhere else in the galaxy with people who were hiding things from them. Of course, they weren’t exactly there to make friends but that couldn’t hurt either. They could at least be civil. He was a nice guy who liked to meet new people. Apparently the sentiment wasn’t shared by many and certainly not by Carol Danvers. She looked at him as if his team didn’t mean anything, and wouldn't help in any way. Her steps didn’t falter one second, going straight to the fake captain and the real god. If he had felt important anytime in his life, that look put him right back to his place. Canon folder. That's how she was seeing him, seeing them all. He wasn’t the only one. His team for one were starting to wonder why they were fighting here, regretting once again, they hadn’t gone with Gamora and Nebula. Those people didn’t want their help.

Captain Marvel had some incredible powers, coming from one of the infinity stones. She was a bit like the Scarlet Witch on that level but of course, wanted nothing to do with her. Who would? Nobody wanted to be linked to Hydra, even if she had been a child who was used by the secret society. Still both women were very strong. Maybe they should have talked about a strategy or something. They shouldn’t put all their eggs in the same basket or all their magic warriors on the same side of the field. Marvel looked like she thought her strength would be enough to save them all. Was it something that came with the title of Captain? That self-assurance that gave you the power to take over the world, no, the galaxy.

Rocket and Groot wanted to see those powers in action. Nothing wrong with that. They just thought it would be useful to know the extent of what she was capable of. In battle, it would be useful even.

“I have nothing to prove to you.” That was her answer.

Chapter Text

Carol Danvers

Fury had called for her on that little pager she had left with him back then. She had not been back on Earth for something like twenty years. Things must have been going really bad. She wasn’t expecting something on this scale, although it wasn’t really surprising  that the universe was in danger. The galaxy was always in some kind of problem one way or another. 

Thanos was on his way to Earth for the last two stones. And that was a surprise. Nobody was ready. Earth had just been warned by the God of thunder and a big angry green man and still, for a long while, they hadn’t been preparing at all. As if they did not realise what was coming for them. It would be all down to her to save them all. After all she was the most powerful of them. More than the witch. More than the god. Her only regret was to not have taken the flerken with her back then. By the flerken, Goose the cat, she really meant the tesseract. Things would have been a lot different if she had, she realised now. Director Fury might not be the responsible person she thought he was.

Because Fury was dead apparently. “Apparently” being the key word here because the old man had died before. Many times. Miracles did happen for him regularly. Some time after, he would come back as good as new. 

Shield was no more, unless you dug a little to find another “dead” man, Phil Coulson, not so dead. Death was overrated, really. Truth was really a concept unknown in the little spy world. Still, Carol would have wanted to talk to Fury. She trusted that old bastard more than the people she had to deal with now. She didn’t like any of them. 

Those were Earth’s “mighty” heroes. Well OK, Thor was mighty but he wasn’t from Earth so that didn’t count. However, that was the team Fury had put together. Carol hoped he knew what he was doing. She would work with them or around them. A member was missing, they told her. They also said he wasn’t very important. A baseline human, without any power or anything. Why was he in the team in the first place then?

It was evident to her that she would be the most powerful of them all. Even more so than the god. But Captain America thought of himself as the sharpest tool in the shed. He had been the leader so far and wanted more than anything for things to stay that way. 

She remembered reading about him when she was younger. She never really took those comics too seriously. He had done some good during the second world war, although she doubted that he actually had punched Hitler in the face. They most likely hadn’t ever been in the same room. Red Skull was his archnemesis. Even so, Captain America plunged the Valkyrie and saved the day. 

Danvers had wanted to be a pilot for as long as she could remember, and that story had always felt wrong to her. Steve Rogers would have had time in his journey to New York to find another way but sacrificing himself. He wasn’t a pilot but the radio was in working order. Or he could have, at least, given his approximative location. Maybe she was missing some information there. The comics were portraying him as a tactician. Right now, that was anything but the case. Captain America thought that the Avengers would defeat Thanos easily. She wasn’t that stupid. Even with all her powers, she understood that it would be a long and deadly fight.

She would need people to keep Thanos’ army busy while she would be fighting the mad titan herself. But for that they would need to lure him where they wanted him to be. Thanos could simply send waves after waves of Chitauri warriors and never set foot on Earth. However, Carol was betting on the titan’s ego. He would want to be there to finish them. The ones who dared stand up against him. The galaxy was talking about that Iron Man from Earth but he wasn’t there. It didn’t take her too long to understand that the “missing” member of the Avenger, the one they had said “wasn’t really important”, was in reality the one that they needed the most. At the very least to taunt their enemy on Earth’s ground.

During the preparations, Carol spent a lot of her time in New Asgard. She felt more at ease surrounded by gods. Thor was nice enough to be around when he had the time. He was mourning, she knew, but he was doing his best to be a good host when she was there. He had shared some of their traditions and culture with her. Her universal translator was a great help allowing her to be part of that little village. Asgardian civilization was all about strength and honour. Too bad she hadn’t been to Asgard before it was destroyed. It must have been magnificent. 

She especially liked to spar with Thor and Valkyrie. They were both powerful in their own right and probably the only two who could give her a proper workout. She needed to stay on top of her game after all. Also, staying here was keeping her away from the idiots. They all had to play nice in these circumstances but it was more than clear that they wouldn’t get along otherwise. They didn’t need to like each other to save the world together. She didn’t need to feel anything for them to protect them.

The NASA network of satellites suddenly started to pick up something. They weren’t too sure what it was. One occurrence is an anomaly. Several, meant that Thanos was, at best, four days away from the planet. She was the only one with the capacity to go check it out. Her powers allowed her to fly, her suit helping her to breathe in space. Again, she wasn’t surprised. There was nobody like her. 

They sent her for a discreet mission so she could assess what they would be fighting against. Precisely how many ships Thanos had, to try and figure out the army’s number. It would take her around half a day to go and come back. Plenty of time for last minute preparations. She didn’t think it would change a lot to know so close to the battle. But she went anyway and realised she couldn’t have been more wrong.

Carol could never have imagined an army that size. Ships of all shapes and forms as far as her eyes could see. They were outnumbered. And that was the understatement of the century. It was difficult to say how much. How many Chitauri could a ship carry? Even the smaller ones? 

Captain Marvel came back to Earth as fast as she could, thinking about what she had learned. She could kill many enemies at one time. So could Thor, Hulk or War Machine. Captain America or Black Widow would be close to useless in that kind of combat. One to one hand combat would be too unproductive. But well, they couldn’t refuse combatants at this point. Even annoying ones.

Once the information she had gathered was made public, Presidents, Kings, rich and famous, important people of all kinds all went underground. In the kind of bunkers that only money could buy. The rest of the population was left to fend for themselves. That wouldn’t change anything. Thanos snapping his fingers with the gauntlet adorned with every stone meant that half of the population would vanish wherever they might be. Nothing could protect them if that war was lost. But it gave them a sense of security that she would not take away from them. She wasn’t cruel and to tell them that would only make them panic. They were not fighters anyway. At least they wouldn’t be in the way. Now what mattered was to bring the battle where they wanted it to be. Then maybe they would have a chance, even if it was a tiny one.

They all were talking about final strategies and all that, when golden sparkles started to appear in the room. The Avengers, army men and even herself went automatically on high alert, ready to fight whatever was appearing in front of their eyes. The sparkles kept expanding until they formed a circle and a tall man stepped out of it. He was wearing some kind of robes and a red cape that was moving in an inexistent wind.

“I’m Doctor Strange. Sorcerer Supreme.” He said with a smile. “Don’t shoot.”

The title meant nothing to nobody but the man was happy to explain his order and what they stood for. Carol only thought “more warriors all the better”. They weren’t that many but they were really all wielding magic, all capable of opening portals and shielding people,objects and more. The odds were becoming a little more even after that. Still not the best, but better than minutes before. 

Wanda didn’t seem to appreciate all those new additions. Everybody could easily read that on her face. She was used to being the more powerful sorceress in the room. She had been the only one that made it easy for her. No competition meant nobody knew if she really was that strong. Now, Dr Strange was looking at her with disgust. Apparently, in the rest of the magical world, mind magic was not well considered. That was her speciality. Oops!

Captain Marvel didn’t have time to consider their tiny egos. She often wondered why Earth had become the centre of all things. Why did this insignificant little planet gather nearly all the stones at one point or another? Dr Strange was the wielder of the time stone. Vision had the mind stone in his forehead. The tesseract had been on Earth for a long time, she knew a lot about that from Thor. Those stones were meant to be really hard to find. They weirdly seemed to converge to the same place in that big universe. If she had had time, she would have looked into that. Maybe after the battle.

Dr Strange had decided to practise some kind of spell to see their chances of winning, if they had any. He was looking into quite a number of possible futures. It was weird to watch. Captain Marvel was looking at his face which seemed to move all the time as he was looking into nothing, seeing all those possibilities. When done, he started asking after Tony Stark. 

Carol remembered a twenty something businessman who was in the tabloid more often than not. And not for his genius or for his achievement. She didn’t know how he came to be the famous Iron man but she was learning fast. The War Machine armour was actually a Stark’s creation. Rhodes told her that the Iron Man armour was more fluid, capable of a lot more damage. He regretted a lot his best friend's disappearance. She could feel that it was not only because of the battles to come. And now Strange was telling them that Stark would have been the one to save them all.

Captain America and his team didn’t seem to believe Strange at all. Part of Carol was thinking the same. She had no trust in that future-seeing magic trick. But the better part of her dreaded that he was right. She asked him to look further and he agreed. He looked weird again, face contorting as if looking at different places at the same time. 

When she had arrived on Earth, she had thought this fight would be long and hard but they would win in the end, thanks to her. She had to admit she had been a bit too sure of herself. All the power in the world couldn’t do anything against all the infinity stones and that kind of army. Now that sorcerer was telling them that their saviour was nowhere to be found. A normal baseline human would have been the one to save the Earth, if a stupid man who thought himself as the righteous one hadn’t pushed him away for ever. They could only hope that this future was not the only victorious one. 

The changes on Strange’s face seemed to slow down. She wasn’t scared very often. It was just not in her character. Even if pushed down, she would pick herself up and fight again. But as the sorcerer was about to talk again, she felt a fear like never before.

Chapter Text

Stephen Strange 

Stephen didn’t stop at 14000605 futures. Maybe because he liked round numbers. Maybe because what he was seeing wasn’t good enough. All those possibilities for only one victory, it definitely wasn’t good enough. Captain Marvel had asked him to look more. He understood why she asked. 

In most futures, Thanos was winning, most of the time easily. Earth was never fully prepared for someone like the titan, for a power like the infinity stones brought together. Half the universe was erased and the Avengers couldn’t do anything about it. Sometimes Peter would manage to take the gauntlet, sometimes Tony would make Thanos bleed, but the endgame was always the same. The one timeline when the people of Earth won, it was at a great cost that nobody would really understand. So, Stephen looked a bit further.

That future wasn’t what he really expected. They were victorious. It wasn’t the best but still better than the other one. With a little more time maybe he could have found yet another victory, a complete one. His brain couldn’t take much more anyway. From what Stephen had seen on television, a good victory would have meant a better past. Nothing he could change now. Even with the time stone, going back and changing everything, even for the better, could provoke a lot of distortions for a great number of timelines. So, they had no other choice but to hope that this slightly better outcome would be theirs.

The sanctum had been a secret for centuries and now, Strange completely understood why. Of course, the U.N. wanted to know more about them, about what they did. And that was fine. They understood pretty quickly that the sorcerers from his order were dealing with things that were beyond their capacities. They just wanted to know more and maybe offer help when they could. Mostly with supplies, they weren’t fools. Overall, they were just happy to have more people to fight for them. Thanos was here. 

The U.N. never wanted to control anything per say. It had just become essential with all the collateral damages and property destruction that the Avengers were leaving behind them. As a proof of good will and as the head of the sanctum, Dr Strange signed his set of the accords. But he made things very clear from the start. They were not Avengers and they would never be. The sanctum was dealing with magic and other dimensions. They were trained and sought improvements through knowledge. The sorcerers were following rules both within the sanctum and outside. They had strictly nothing to do with people like Wanda Maximoff.

But of course, the message didn’t seem to get to Captain America’s brain. Even though he had no idea what they were dealing with, Steve Rogers wanted to order them around. Worse than that, he wanted to put the witch at the head of the magic division. That woman had never been a leader like that before. It was definitely not the time and place to put her there. Carol Danvers put Steve back in his place and an argument of epic proportions would have started if not for the first wave of Chitauri warriors.

There were so many, swarming from the ships in different massive groups. Thanos had been faster than anticipated. His front lines anyway. The defenders of Earth had wanted to take the main fight in a valley away from the big cities. That was out of the question now. 

Golden portals were opening everywhere, Avengers, armies and sorcerers alike going through. The mad titan was attacking New York once again. They moved everything, shields, weapons, armoured vehicles as fast as possible. The sanctum was already showing how helpful they were with their ways of travel but it still felt like a bad omen. When the battle actually started, it wasn’t time to think about that anymore. Just fight and fight again. Kill as many as you can in one go. They had to try and conserve their energy as much as they could. That was only the start. 

Dr Strange saw some people going down and others taking them out to get fixed up if it was possible. Part of him, the doctor part, wanted nothing more than to go and help them. The main part knew that right now, the sorcerer was more important. Just like it started, that first fight stopped. It was now clear that Thanos was testing them. He liked worthy opponents apparently. Made it worthy for him.

During their time off, they all talked about the choice of location. Coming from space, the mad titan could really attack anywhere on Earth. But he seemed very focused on New York. It was Peter, from that group called the Guardians of the galaxy, that pointed it out: Thanos was looking for Stark. The first time around, Iron Man had completely destroyed his attack in one go from that same city. Thanos wanted his revenge on him while destroying the planet.

“Stark you selfish bastard! Where are you when we need you?”

Captain America was definitely an arrogant hypocrite but they didn’t have the time to deal with that. More ships were descending on them, Thanos was attacking once more. The shields from Wakanda were not holding. 

Strange and Wong quickly put some magical ones up. These would last as long as the two sorcerers were alive and with enough energy. Considering they had to fight at the same time, that wouldn’t be for too long. Fortunately, this time around, the S.I. missiles, of all weapons they had in stock, were doing a lot of damages to the Chitauri ships. 

Nobody cheered at the end of each battle. They knew too well that it wasn’t the end of the war. 

Skirmish number three and four went down pretty much the same way. People from New York were feeding and helping the injured in between the battles. They were all coming together in the worst of times. Somehow, the warriors were very proud of the inhabitants. They were all protecting each other within their own capacities. That brought them a little bit of comfort if anything else.

Quite often, Captain Marvel was going into space to destroy a ship or two but she was under heavy fire and she admitted herself that it wasn’t changing anything. The only way for them to win would be to kill Thanos himself. For that, they would need to lure him on the ground. The mad titan had no reason to leave the safety of space. 

For now, the tech team was transforming the quinjets to put in some heavy weaponry. Thanks to Dr Banner they already knew that they could get in space with them. The U.N. didn’t expect for them to win in space but maybe do enough damage to change the tides. It was a kamikaze kind of mission really but it had to be done. The pilots were well aware of that. Strange and Wong put as many magic shields on the quinjets as they could. Wakanda also put theirs because even if they wouldn’t last long, they would still buy the pilots a couple of minutes to try and flee. War was never a pretty thing. And it never went without good people dying.

Some days they were winning ground, some others, losing. Days went by, blurry. Strange started to doubt that they were in the right future. That was not something he could have interfered with. He had come way too far in the game. Sometimes, he wished that he could make Captain America fall for more than thirty minutes. Thanos already had four stones. All the futures had that in common. Earth just had to win. They had the fate of the universe in their hands.

The fighter quinjets were ready. That night they would celebrate. Not out of joy or something like that but because it would certainly be the pilots’ last night alive. The mood wasn’t really there but they had to force themselves. 

That same night, Hawkeye, who had come back some days before, drank a little too much. They did not stop him. Clint Barton would be the captain of that flying squad. The quinjet had no secret for him and he explained patiently that he had nothing to live for anyway. Of course, Romanov and Rogers tried to change his mind. The man was stubborn. 

Clint fell asleep nursing his bottle of scotch. A lot of people were still thinking that the archer was just an assassin, that his loss wouldn’t be as bad as others. Strange didn’t agree. They were all just human and as such they did not always make the good decision at the right time. If only they could go back in time, knowing everything they knew now.

The fleet took off at mid-day. The quinjets were fast. Captain Marvel went with them. She could always destroy one or two ships or divert the Chitauri's attention. As soon as they were in space they attacked. The element of surprise was the key factor. It worked for a while. The Chitauri ships were big and slow compared to the quinjets. It took them some time to be in firing position to riposte. 

At that moment, the Earth fleet turned around trying to go back into the atmosphere. A technique like any other when they didn’t actually know the specifics of the enemy’s weaponry. A lot of the quinjets went down during that manoeuvre. They would probably be all dead if it were not for the Milano coming from behind and shooting a lot of the Chitauri down. Clint Barton and most of his team would be there to fight another day.

The guardians ran to the Milano as soon as it touched down. Only Nebula got out of it. Her tale was not pretty. Thanos, her own father, had tortured her to break down her sister. Gamora had then told him where to find the soul stone. The way to get that stone was an exchange. In order to get the orange stone, the soul of a loved one must be sacrificed. 

Peter understood immediately what it meant. Thanos had killed Gamora, his favourite daughter. Quill was devastated. They all were. When Rogers came around to ask what happened, Peter just punched him square in the jaw. It probably hurt his hand, so Strange went to look after him. 

Stephen had never been too good with emotions. He didn’t know what to say to the crying man. Sometimes, there was nothing to say. His team was around him. Not much more could be done at that point. They would fight even harder now. They wanted revenge. Not sure it would change anything. 

Earth was fighting hard every day. Thanos had probably not even been there so far. They were losing, nonetheless. Slowly but a little more every day. All their weapons, all their superheroes weren’t enough facing the sheer number of warriors facing them. Thanos didn’t care about losing troops. His whole life had been about killing people for his dream of balance.

Stephen went to find Vision. The android was standing on the roof of what was once Stark Tower, looking at the sky. Both of them were wielding the two last stones and ultimately were the real targets here. Of course, they needed to protect their stones to protect half the galaxy. The price was heavy even if it were nothing compared to what it would be when they would be losing. To just fight back was not enough. Vision was feeling the same. They would find a solution, they had to.

That night, while Stephen was trying hard to find a way that hadn’t been proven useless in all the futures he saw, he looked at a family sitting close together on a cot in front of him. That was Spiderman there. Stephen would never have imagined that he was so young. The kid looked tired, worn out. A woman was patching him up but he was telling her he didn’t need it. Something about a healing factor. She just answered that if her nephew was going to be fighting out there, at the very least she could do that for him. The man told him that he was very much like Mr Stark. He didn’t know why Peter was fighting so hard but it was admirable.

“Look, when you can do the things that I can, but you don’t and then bad things happen, they happen because of you.”

The maturity in that kid took Stephen’s breath away.

Chapter Text

Peter Parker

Peter had to go and fight. It wasn’t like he could not go. The aliens were attacking his city. And it was still his city, even if he wasn’t the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman anymore. 

It had been too hard after the civil war. He had just wanted to help but not everybody wanted to be saved apparently. When the police shot him, the message had been more than clear. His life was tumbling down. And when Mr Stark disappeared, Peter felt like a ton of guilt was crashing on him. 

The fight in Germany had not gone the way Mr Stark had wanted to. Maybe Peter could have done more. Or maybe it would have been better without him. He didn’t know anymore. Being a superhero had been awful and awesome at the same time. He had been at fault for his Uncle Ben's death. Now, he felt the same way all over again. Happy and May were telling him that no, it wasn’t his fault nor for Ben or for Tony. But he wasn’t entirely convinced. 

Normal life was just that. Normal. Same bullying crew, same friends. At night, he could sleep instead of going out patrolling. If the nightmares did not come to haunt him. May wanted him to go to a specialist. He refused. No psychiatrist would understand Spiderman. And maybe they would tell the authorities. The accords weren’t meant for underaged enhanced people. On television, he saw that King T’Challa was doing a lot with the U.N., he even got a pardon for the Rogues. Peter was an exception. No other superhero teenager had come through yet. Mr Stark wanted to change all that, make them better. He wasn’t there anymore.

Mr Stark had wanted him to take things slow regarding Spiderman. Would he be proud now? Or maybe he would be disappointed. The genius had spent a lot of time and money on the suit. Maybe he would want it to be used. Peter was so unsure of everything now. What should he do? What could he do? Everything that had been so simple before, so black and white, was now completely blurry. 

Iron Man had always been his favourite superhero. Tony Stark was his goal. He had wanted to become just like him. He was like a light in the dark for Peter. He had never planned to be bitten by a freaky spider. It felt good to have an example to follow. Even more so when you could look up to him for more than the hero side of things. 

Peter would have loved to be an inventor like Tony Stark. Of course, Peter wasn’t stupid. He had invented the spider fluid for instance. And he knew that not everything in Mr Stark’s life was peachy or even good to follow. Still the man had turned his life around and had been doing a lot of good. It should have counted for something right?

It didn’t apparently and now Mr Stark was nowhere to be found. Peter was left with a big hole in his life, not knowing what to do with himself. Until the Chitauri’s attack. 

After that it was a question of survival. Not only his. The feelings were different though. Before the civil war, Peter had wanted to save everybody, anybody who would have needed help. Like that old lady who bought him churros as a reward once. Now he was fighting mainly to protect Aunt May and Happy, Ned and MJ. He would not put anybody in harm’s way on purpose but he didn’t really feel the need to save them all like before. Saving strangers who would end up hating you like they did Mr Stark was not that appealing.

But the Chitauri were there now and he didn’t really have a choice anymore. He wasn’t prepared for that. Nobody could be really ready for a war like that. 

Thanos’ army seemed infinite and relentless. During the first few days, Captain America liked to give speeches for morals and such. He sounded so sure that Earth would win the war quickly. You couldn’t not follow him. No more of that now.

The Quinjet fleet went into space another time. Nobody came back. Thanos would not fall for the same trick twice. Peter had been standing not too fat from the Black Widow when the sad news was announced. She didn’t seem to react. As if she wasn’t bothered. It sent a chill down Peter’s spine. 

Maybe it was a mask, a coping mechanism. She must have been prepared. They all more or less knew that it would be the outcome. Still, Peter didn’t really like the lack of reaction, or feelings. Like nearly anybody, he had seen the videos and documents released everywhere on the internet. The so-called superheroes it showed were not what he thought they were. More than that, they were no example to follow. Natasha Romanov just carried on fighting. What else was there to do?

It quickly became clear that they were losing. Thanos was toying with them. Or waiting for someone. Either way, everything should have been done and dusted for a while now. The troops’ morale was low. They wanted things to be over with. They had no illusion anymore. Earth would not save the universe. Captain America would not save the universe. He had been so sure of himself so they bought the propaganda. That was what he had done from the very start. When would they learn? 

Peter was hoping that wherever Mr Stark was, he would be alright and spared by Thanos. Each time he was near Steve Rogers, he could hear him curse the Stark name. Always muttering about how Iron Man’s absence was the only reason why they were losing. Grumbling that Tony should have left the armour behind him. Another pilot could have been found and everything would have been totally different. Tony himself wasn’t that important. Just his creations.

But over Rogers’ useless ramblings, Peter heard that Dr Strange had a plan. Sort of a last chance kind of plan. Not particularly sound but they had no other choice at that point. It has always been clear that in order to win they needed to kill Thanos himself once and for all. They were hoping that once the mad titan would be dead, the rest of his army would either fall dead like during the battle of New York or would scatter away. Maybe that was wishful thinking. It was the best they could hope for. 

Dr Strange was to portal on the main ship with Nebula and basically take Thanos and portal back to the battlefield where any able fighter would be waiting. They would just need to kill the titan as soon as possible. Nebula had described the bridge of the ship in every detail. Strange was pretty confident that he could close and open a portal in under thirty seconds. The less time they would spend on board the better. 

Peter was tasked with webbing Thanos as soon as he arrived. He would need to use his webs and his strength to keep him incapacitated as long as possible. He could totally do that. Spiderman would be fighting along Captain America, Black Widow, Vision, the guardians, War Machine and many more men and women. Peter, from two years ago, would have been so excited at that prospect. Now, he definitely knew better. He felt the pressure built. Failure was not acceptable. For anybody.

They were all ready, looking at each other, trying to feel confident that their crazy plan would work. Steve Rogers and Dr Strange had been debating for a long time whether the time stone should stay on Earth. If that plan didn’t work, it wouldn’t really matter anyway. Peter thought that Captain America was stubborn on very little details. In the grand scheme of things, it wouldn’t matter when Thanos would get the stones. By the snap of his fingers, everything would be done. Dr Strange moved toward Nebula. He asked them if they were ready. And he and Nebula were gone.

After that, everything happened extremely fast. Nebula and Strange vanished and reappeared almost immediately. Peter threw his webbings nearly mummifying the titan. Captain Marvel punched him two or three times. Thor put his axe in his heart and pushed and pushed again. For a minute, it felt like they had done it. Of course, Thanos would die after that. But no, that was not the way to kill a guy with no heart. 

The tides turned in the blink of an eye. The Chitauri created explosions everywhere. Part of Peter’s mind registered that Happy and May were in that building that was now engulfed in fire. But he had to fight. Captain America was clinging to Thanos’ gauntlet. Did he want to take it off like that? Thanos’ hand was into a fist. It wouldn’t work. The mad titan just threw away Rogers like he was nothing. He was fighting them one after the other, putting them down one after the other.

“You should have gone for the head,” said Thanos smirking.

They couldn’t do anything. Thanos was killing them and they couldn’t do anything. 

The Falcon attacked from above. All weapons out. The mad titan just caught him by the ankle and smashed him down. Samuel Wilson did not stand up again. 

Peter Quill and his team attacked then but the emotions, the loss of Gamora, got the better of him. Thanos knew how to exploit every little weakness they might have. Mantis, Drax, Groot. All dead in one go. 

So, the Avengers regrouped and attacked all together. Nebula knew how to fight her father. Bruce in the hulkbuster jumped forward hoping to knock him down by the sheer weight of the armour. Instead, he was projected and buried in a cliff nearby. Steve Rogers was sent on the side. Black Panther tried but Thanos caught him by the throat, crushing his neck. War Machine was squeezed in his own armour. Thanos was using the ground to bury Natasha. They couldn’t do anything against the power of four stones in the gauntlet. 

Wanda had been using her power on Vision. He had asked her to destroy the stone. It would be best for everybody. It should have been done way earlier in his opinion. Peter had told her that she would protect her while she was doing it and she had agreed. 

Everybody was dying around him. All his body was shaking. He was scared, of course he was. Who wouldn’t be? He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want anybody to die but he had been unable to prevent that. Maybe nobody could have gone against that. 

All of Wanda’s power was concentrating on the mind stone. Suddenly it cracked and a wave of raw power pushed them all on the ground. Peter knocked his head on a stone. Everything went a bit blurry but he was doing his best to get back on his feet. Wanda was fighting Thanos. Her power was pushing him back. Peter had to help her! 

Spiderman was a bit wobbly but he sent his webs on Thanos’ gauntlet anyway. He wished he could take it like he had done with Captain America’s shield. But it wasn’t that easy. 

Dr Strange appeared again with Nebula out of one of his portals. The sorcerer moved his hands in a strange pattern and some kind of lava lightning went into Thanos’ direction. They were fighting infinity stones with magic. For a short moment, they seemed to be equals in power and Peter felt hope rise up in him. 

While Thanos was occupied with Wanda, Dr Strange made several versions of himself appear. Each one of them sending a rope towards the mad titan. Thanos was immobilised for only a second before the purple stone started to shine on the gauntlet and every sorcerer but the real one disappeared. 

Then, reaching his hand towards the sorcerer, the Titan made him come to him. And Peter watched, helpless as Thanos strangled the doctor and then took the amulet that was containing the time stone. He crushed the talisman, took the stone and put it on the glove. 

Dr Strange’s body was carelessly sent away, hitting Nebula on the way and sending them both sprawling.

Captain America rose on his feet again, stepping slightly in front of Peter to face the Titan. 

“I can do this all day,” he said. 

And he attacked Thanos again. Bucky was at his side with a machine gun. Peter was sending webbings again and again until his canisters were empty. He was desperate. They all were, he thought.

Thor called on the thunder without his hammer or his axe. Another wave of purple power knocked the god and Wanda down. Thanos was marching in the direction of Vision’s corpse. He used the time stone, freezing everybody on the spot. The mind stone became whole again, bringing Vision back to life. But that didn’t last. Thanos took the stone from the android forehead, leaving the corpse fall, once again, on the floor.

Peter was looking at Thanos in shock. Nothing and no one could stop him now. Not even Captain America. They had lost.

Chapter Text

Steve Rogers

It was laughable how his life had turned around the Starks. The best and the worst of them. Howard had been a friend, even more than that. The scientist had given him everything. His shield and a way to save Bucky from the Nazis. They had gone against the orders, behind enemy’s lines. Peggy had also helped a lot of course. They had faith in him. 

Howard and Dr Erskine had seen who he really was. They didn’t stop the procedure even when it had been so painful for him. He had screamed but immediately had asked them to continue anyway. People trusting him, Steve wasn’t too used to that kind of feeling. Back then, a sickly child had little chance to live.  He proved to everybody that he was more than the illness and sickly body. Really, Howard had contributed to his new life. Steve couldn’t think of him in a bad way but it had been difficult for him to reconcile what he knew about his friend and the son he had raised.

Tony. From the very start, they didn’t get along. Shield had shown him videos and Natasha’s report. The image it gave him wasn’t pretty. But Steve had actually waited for their first meeting to make up his mind. And boy, did it go wrong. After just a couple of phrases they were already at each other's throats. Tony didn’t like to be compared to his father. Of course, he couldn’t compare to his elder in Steve’s eyes. In his anger, Steve made a point of reminding Tony of that. The selfish little forty-ish years old brat needed someone to remind him about his place and where he came from. 

But Stark had been surprising in the end, carrying that nuke into the portal. Steve thought that maybe he had been too quick to judge. The captain had to give him the benefit of the doubt after all. In memory of Howard.

Now, years later, standing alone on that field –Well Spiderman was there too but what could he actually do against Thanos?– Steve was thinking about everything that had brought them here. To that instant. To that defeat. Because even if it was hard to admit, Thanos was too strong for them. 

Steve had thought that he was enough. He would have been really. If Stark had been there holding his support role as he should have. Howard had given the U.S. army weapons to defeat the Nazi. If The man had been honourable, he would have done the same. Tony’s big ego had been bruised. Big deal. When so much was at stake, there was no excuse not to participate. But the genius was not the kind to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over him. The only thing Tony really fought for was himself.

Then Tony attacked them in that bunker for a crime Bucky wasn’t responsible for. Steve didn’t understand,the genius already hated his father anyway. Surely, he wouldn’t have been affected by the proof of his murder. Especially after so long. Twenty years was certainly enough to come to term with that kind of event. Tony should have been mad at the ones who asked for the assassination not at the weapon who was used for it. That was common sense really. Still, all of the mess that had come after that seemed stupidly simple in comparison to the one they were in now.

They were the last ones standing. Him and Spiderman. 

Steve attacked again. Thanos sent him flying. Webbings caught him just in time and he stood up once more. Desperation was coursing his veins. What else could he do but try, try and try again? He couldn’t stop. Until the last second, he would get back in the ring. People all around the world were counting on him to save them. The galaxy even. The serum had made him so much better. Steve refused to think that Dr Erskine had been wrong about him.

All around him, the corpses of his friends were lying here and there. Thanos was making no prisoners. 

Bucky had been standing next to him to the end of the line. It was so unfair. Steve had just gotten his best friend back only to lose him so quickly again.  Despite all of their efforts, half of the galaxy was still about to disappear. Clint had died first. Now, Natasha, Sam, Wanda, Vision, Scott, Bruce and even Thor had given their lives for nothing. Steve really hoped that Tony was happy with his little vengeance. Was it worth it? Captain America had wished that in the face of a genocide, Stark would come and help anyway. Whatever had happened was in the past. Especially after the apology letter he had sent.

When the pardons had come, he had been so sure that everything would go back to the way it was. Tony had been quiet. No media stunt, no paparazzi photos. Natasha had said that his ego was bruised, that he was licking his wounds. Never would Steve have imagined that things would end up like that. He didn’t see where he could have done things differently. Bucky was innocent. Even Wanda had just been a misguided kid. Was it so hard for Tony to realise that?

Thanos was putting the last stone on the gauntlet. The six infinity stones shone brightly and some kind of energy started running all over the metallic glove and then along the titan’s arm. He was about to snap his fingers. An easy move. Steve rushed to the hand and used all his force to keep the fingers apart. He wouldn’t be able to do this all day but really he couldn’t think about any other plan. Thanos was looking at him surprised and also slightly annoyed.

“I know what it’s like to lose. To feel so desperately that you’re right yet to fail nonetheless. It’s frightening. Turns the legs to jelly. I ask you, to what end? Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same. And now, it’s here. Or should I say, I am.”

It was daunting. And true. Steve hated it. It couldn’t end that way and certainly not on these words.

“Destiny can be changed.” Steve answered behind gritted teeth.

“I am inevitable.”

Thanos threw him away again. It was over. He was too far to avoid the snap one more time. Spiderman had used the last of his webs catching him earlier and the kid was now holding his left side probably with bruised ribs if not broken. He wouldn’t be able to make it either. Steve’s head just went down. He didn’t want to see that. He was broken. He was defeated.

“And I am Iron Man!” suddenly said a familiar voice.

Tony! Tony was there. Steve knew that the man wouldn’t hold a grudge against him like that. When Captain America lifted his head up, he didn’t recognise the armour. The red and gold was Iron Man's signature. But this one was all matte black with blue lines starting from the diamond shaped arc reactor and going toward all the extremities. A bit like the arteries and veins going from the heart to the head, arms and legs. This analogy automatically came to mind. Those lines were shining reactor blue, just like the armour’s eye. 

Tony attacked immediately. His armour had new features that Steve never had seen before. They were fighting with their fists, Iron Man’s were covered by squared metal. Tony made Thanos bleed. If the titan could bleed, he could be killed, thought Steve. Suddenly four arches emerged out of the back of the Iron Man’s armour and hit powerful beams on Thanos. 

Everything was going so fast that Steve couldn’t even participate in that fight. Iron Man and Thanos seemed to be equals in strength. When one would take a step forward, the other would automatically counter attack with the same kind of power. If the outcome weren’t so dire, it would have been beautiful to watch. Was Iron Man always that strong? Steve had beaten Tony once. He could defeat Thanos then! 

Courage came back to Captain America and he threw himself in the fight. The mad titan wasn’t really interested in combat with him. Apparently only Iron Man was a worthy opponent. Steve was pushed aside violently as if he was nothing. Tony didn’t come to his help.

As fast as it started, the battle was over. Just like that. 

That new beam was very concentrated and lasted enough to push his adversary down on one knee. Tony took off flying and while up there, a sword formed itself starting from his wrist. Not a real blade as far as Steve could see. It was formed from some kind of light, flickering in his intensity, blue like the arc reactor. With the momentum of his falling back down, Tony cut Thanos’ head clean off. All above them, pieces of falling metal were burning the sky, signs of numerous ships having been completely destroyed. Chitauri warriors were falling down on the spot, lifeless. There was nothing left to fight. Even Thanos’ children seemed utterly defeated and were putting their weapons down. Finally, it was over.

Tony went to the body and quickly removed the gauntlet from the dead’s hand. He put it on himself quickly, still kneeling next to the Titan’s corpse. 

“Tony!” Steve shouted hoping to stop him.

But Tony didn’t turn to look at him. The energy was coursing along the armour. At that moment, Steve thought that, surely, it was his last day on earth. Tony would snap his fingers and Steve would cease to exist. Stark would want his revenge and he now had the perfect tool to achieve it. 

The Avengers were practically all dead. No one could stop Stark now. It would be worse than Ultron, worse than anything. Tony always needed somebody to supervise him. Even if he had a good heart, sometimes, he would go too far. Ultron was meant to be a defence for the planet but it ended up almost destroying all lives on Earth. Who knew what he would do now.

Tony snapped his fingers. Nothing seemed to happen for a little while. Suddenly the Chitauri’s corpses started to dissolve into dust. Thanos himself vanished away as if he had never existed. The air was rapidly saturated with ashes. 

And then, Bucky was calling him. Bucky, who had died not long ago, was asking after him, standing on his own two feet. He seemed totally surprised to be there. Maybe he had the memories of his passing. Everybody was rising up one after the other. They were all converging toward Tony as if they all knew he had saved them all. The buildings were reconstructing themselves. Every trace of the war was disappearing slowly.

Iron Man stood up and walked toward the sorcerer supreme. Stephen was smiling at the man as if he had known everything from the start. Maybe he did, he had seen many futures. He had told them that Tony would be their saviour. 

Stark removed the green stone from his gauntlet. At the same time, the amulet reformed itself around the neck of the sorcerer. Tony gave him the stone back. It flew back inside. Then Tony carried on to Vision's corpse. He hadn’t risen up like everybody else. He was missing the mind stone to make him whole. Tony removed it from the gauntlet and put it in the middle of his forehead. He then turned around to wave for Thor to come near. 

Friday’s voice startled them. Tony had not removed his armour so far, not even the helmet. The A.I. was somehow a proof that it really was Tony under there. Even if Steve couldn’t see him, even if the suit of armour was so different. Friday was asking for the thunder. Just like when Vision had been created for the first time. Steve would not interfere. The android deserved to come back to life like any other. Wanda would like that. Thor summoned his power giving the android the spark of life once more. 

Without a word, without even a glance, Tony stood up once again and started to walk away from them. Was he going to disappear once again? Surely, after all that had happened, they could talk things out, allowing the billionaire to come back to his normal life. The media would not attack him again. This time Steve would make sure of that. Their family would be whole again. Everything would be back as it should have stayed from the start. Steve would give them the direction and Tony, the means to get there. A perfectly oiled team. So, Captain America called for his teammate, sure that he would answer his call.

But he didn’t. He carried on walking. Spiderman followed him, calling out for Mr Stark. Only then, the helmet retracted and Tony - because it really had been Tony all along – smiled at the kid. He put his arm around the younger’s shoulders as the armour was completely disappearing into the arc reactor. A bright light came around them. Steve thought it looked a bit like the Bifrost without the marking on the ground. When the brightness vanished, Tony and the little spider were gone.

Steve was left behind. As always with Tony. He would never catch up.

Chapter Text

Tony Stark 01

“Did you just beam us up?” asked Peter once the dizziness faded away.

“Well, all that Stark Trek bingeing… I had to test the science you know.” Answered Tony sheepishly. 

It was a bit awkward. Tony felt a lot of guilt for a lot of things. He had quite often wished to talk to the kid, to, at the very least, let him know that he was still alive if not well. How many times do you have to be pushed down until you realise you just can’t get back up again? Especially if you are alone. Tony couldn’t and wouldn’t have put that much baggage on the kid’s shoulders. Peter had been through so much already, he didn’t need the issues of someone like Tony “Fucking” Stark. 

He had been down during that open-heart “surgery” without anaesthesia in Afghanistan but with the help of Yinsen, he had managed to get back on his feet again. They had built the Iron Man Mark 1 together in the worst conditions. They should have gotten out of that cave together. Life didn’t work out that way. Thus Tony had promised that he would, from now on, not waste his life. 

And Tony had tried. When he had saved New York from a nuclear bomb, he had thought that he was on the right path. People had died because of him and his “Merchant of Death” days. Now he was saving lives. Of course, it would not bring back those who lost their lives because of his weapons. Tony just thought it would count for something. He thought that if he were listening to the people, they would see how much he wanted to do better for the world. 

He had wanted to forget his past and concentrate on the future. That was a luxury he couldn’t have. They didn’t let him. The press never forgot or forgave him for anything. Ultron happened and everything was even worse. Nobody listened to him. The justice system found him innocent of creating the mad robot but it was just a verdict money could and did buy. Even his team, his so-called family, had trusted Wanda more than him. Wanda, who minutes before, was fighting by Ultron’s side and trying to kill them all.

Jarvis sacrificed himself. That had been worse than anything. It was as if Tony was losing the real human Jarvis all over again, the man who had been more of a dad than Howard. And Tony also lost a son. Someone he had helped growing for years, helped understand the world around him. The A.I. was just a robot for the world, for Steve and the rest of the Avengers. A piece of a computer, almost a threat. Wanda took his place in the Avengers. Nobody cared.

The world at large didn’t know Tony, not the real one. Just the playboy, billionaire persona. He had had wild years and he wasn’t denying that. The press had always loved to blow out of proportions every single one of his moves. With the hindsight now, his legal team should have been all over that from the start. This way, he might have read a bit more of the truth between the papers’ pages. How could Peter still look at him with admiration? That must have been some kind of miracle. Whatever it was, Peter was there looking around his living room, talking with Friday like two friends who had not seen each other for a while. They were “sciencing” about the transporter and the similarity with the TV show. For the first time in a long while, a real smile appeared on his face.

Quickly, the kid started to realise that he had been part of a war. A ton of emotion fell down on him like a ton of bricks. He sat down on the sofa, lost for a minute. Almost as suddenly, he went on asking desperately about his aunt May and Happy.

“Beam them up.” Told Tony Friday.

A minute later, a very surprised Tony was engulfed in a tight group hug. God that was good. He had missed human contact a lot more than he wanted to admit. Tony didn’t really know May Parker all that much but he did miss Happy quite a lot. The only one of his friends who didn’t let him down. He felt regrets once again. But back then, Tony had done the best he could considering the circumstances. He had left a lot of people behind him, some good, others not so much.

“Boss? Would you like me to beam more people up?” asked Friday.

If the A.I. had a face, she would have had a fond smile on her lips. Her boss needed to have more people around him. He deserved it. Tony knew the sweet tone in her voice. He smiled at one of the cameras, a bit emotional.

“Anybody you deem worthy, baby girl.”

Over the next thirty minutes, Laura Barton and her children, Harley Keener and his family, Vision and Rhodes arrived. Friday told her boss it would be a good start. Not an easy one. Tony wasn’t so sure he was ready to face the android or even worse, the man who used to be his best friend for so long. Quite frankly, he was surprised that he accepted the invitation, that they all did really. He had abandoned them after all. 

Everybody settled down in his large living room. The decoration and furniture were very different from the ones in the tower. Those had been Pepper’s choice, her style. Classic and chic but a little cold. He had wanted to be warm and cosy here. With blankets, a whole lot of blankets. He was in a place back then, not a good one, where he needed comfort. Tony would have needed friends really but that wasn’t in his cards. Now, they wanted to know what he did, where he had gone and where they were in the world right now. Some had looked for him. How did he manage to evade the world for so long?

Tony was smiling now, a cheeky one. They would be surprised, that was for sure. He asked Friday to open the blast door. Slowly, the ground appeared first, grey and dusty and then a very black sky. Rhodey seemed to be the first to understand. And when the Earth appeared, so white and so blue at the horizon, everybody else’s breath hitched.

“The moon” whispered Laura Barton.

Tony had not always been there. That would be a long story and looking at his guests’ faces, he would have to tell his tale sooner rather than later. He deflected that moment for a little while longer when he asked them if they were ok with pizza. Friday ordered some. Quite a lot actually. Peter would need at least three for himself and the other teenagers surely would eat quite a lot. Rhodey asked him if he was going down often. His tone was quite friendly as if nothing ever happened. They might as well be civil until THE conversation. 

So, during the wait for the food to be ready, Tony explained how he would go down every ten days or so to make a grocery run. How he would never go to the same supermarket or even to the same country twice in a row. The transporting technology allowed him to have any kind of take away in the world. Nothing like sushi from Japan or tacos from Mexico. Plus, his new home had quite a view, nobody denied that. Most of them were still standing by the floor to ceiling window.

Tony went to fetch the food and came back in about five minutes. Earth to Moon in five minutes. That was still quite incredible. Not that he wanted to stroke his own ego but he had to admit that he was proud of this achievement. Tony had never been happy with himself when he was inventing weapons. Of course, they sold well and he was telling himself that he was helping the U.S. Army. Surely that had been a good cause. 

Then, he created Iron Man. Was he proud of that? Yes and no. The armour was the symbol of his change of life. It became another part of him. A weapon for the defence of many all around the world. Like any other part of himself, sometimes he liked it, some other times not so much. But would he have met the Avengers? How would his relationship with Rhodey be at that moment? James certainly wouldn’t be only walking thanks to braces.

They all sat down, the pizzas on the coffee table. They waited on him to start his story. No way out now. Not that he really wanted to be reminded of what started it all. The civil war. The lies of the most righteous man in the world. Vision took the opportunity to start talking then. He explained how videos and reports started to be found online. Friday’s work no doubt. She agreed not to comment further. They all saw the fight in the Siberian bunker. The entire world knew that he had attacked the winter soldier after watching his parents being murdered by that man. Anyone with a heart would not hold that against him. What would they all have done in the same circumstances? A lot of voices called out Captain America for making the situation worse. In those kinds of conditions, someone needed to hold down the person who was clearly traumatised and lashing out until their rage would subside. Steve Rogers fought Tony Stark with fury, as if he had always wanted to hit his teammate with all his might. 

Vision told Tony how he had learned a lot of new emotions while he was away. First being that, as knowledgeable he was, sometimes, he could still be wrong. Wanda had not been a good person for him but back then the android didn’t see it that way. The best way to learn was by making mistakes. Sometimes you need to run before walking, even if in the wrong direction.

During these two years, he had mourned his father without really knowing what a father was. But Tony wasn’t dead. So, he hoped that they would be able to talk things out, to apologise also. Vision wanted to start over, to have a go at that father and son relationship. He wasn’t Jarvis, he had said that before. That didn’t mean that Tony wasn’t his creator. 

Rhodey took this opportunity to apologise in front of everybody. What he had said back then, well… he had been wrong. So wrong. Often he had wanted to call and talk about it but by the time he actually tried to do so, Tony’s telephone was disconnected. They hugged it out. They never had been too good with feelings. They both knew that it wouldn’t be like before ever again. Tony and Rhodey were friends once more but it would need a lot of work and trust to go back to where it was. If they ever would be the same. Maybe after all of that, their friendship would actually be stronger than before. Tony really hoped it would be the case. Those past two years had been really difficult. And lonely. Selfishly, he never wanted to go through that ever again.

After all that, it was difficult to breathe. Tony wasn’t expecting that many feelings so fast. But really, he was happy, more than he ever had been in his entire life. That was the meaning of a family. To make mistakes but to be forgiven and welcomed once more. For that, they needed to be honest with each other. In every detail. Tony’s story wasn’t pretty everyday but now, he knew that they would understand. Maybe they would be angry at him because he didn’t reach out to them when he was at his lowest, although what was really difficult in life was not the change in itself but to make the decision to change. So, Tony would tell them all, risk everything he had left. After a deep breath, he started recounting the events.

Chapter Text

Tony Stark 02

Tony didn’t start his story with the civil war. They needed context first. He explained how he had met Natasha during a difficult moment in his life. They had all seen the spy injecting him with something. They could do with knowing why and when. He didn’t lie. Back then, his ego really needed to be checked. They didn’t know back then that Senator Stern, the man who wanted the Iron Man technology to be given to the United States of America, would end up being a Hydra agent. So yes, Tony was acting like the arse the media liked him to be. To be fair, he was dying. The arc reactor was killing him. To remove it also meant death. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

So again, Natasha injected him with something without his consent, without knowing his medical past, not knowing if it would actually work all the while calling him out for his recent behaviour. Maybe he deserved that. Maybe Shield could have been forward with him and helped before things went too far. Rhodey snickered at that. As if the darkest shadow agency would do anything out of the goodness of their hearts, without manipulations or without expecting something in return. That much was true. Tony was a genius. He should have known that he really should have kept them as far as he could from him and his loved ones. Unfortunately, Shield was everywhere.

Then Loki came to New York. Tony finally met the great Captain America. The man Howard was always looking for, leaving his own son behind. It didn’t go well. From the very start, they didn’t get along. And again, Tony accepted that he was a difficult person to handle. Steve had most probably been fed Natasha’s stellar report that had been made during his dying moments. Captain America mentioned having seen the footage. What video was that? Tony didn’t know but with hindsight now, he would say that it was most probably one showing him on his worst behaviour. Shield knew that Howard had always compared his son to Rogers. Even when Tony built his first circuit board at four years old. He wasn’t and would never be as good as the great and unique Captain America. Tony would certainly want to prove his dad wrong even from beyond the grave.

Tony was trying to be fair. He wasn’t without faults. Steve and he were just polar opposites. One being from the past, the other always looking into the future. Some values of the good old days couldn’t be applied anymore. A time when homosexuality was rewarded with arrests, beatings and imprisonments. Women were allowed to vote thankfully but were mainly still stuck in the more “traditional” roles such as mothers, of course, nurses or secretaries. As for Black People, racial segregation was still in full application. Even now a lot had to be done regarding those matters. Still it was a lot better than in the forties. 

And then Steve made that comment about “only one god” existing when going after Loki and Thor and boy, that was a bag of cats that Tony didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. He didn’t believe in god per say and they had living proof that at the very least, two of the Norse deities were real, even if they were just powerful aliens. True, everybody is allowed to believe in what they want. Tony would not deny that to anybody even if, as a scientist, he couldn’t buy it. Still Thor and Loki made him reconsider what he held as the truth. Steve would never.

Steve was the most stubborn, pig-headed guy he had ever known. That was saying something considering he was very headstrong himself. Tony should have known the other would not change his mind. Ever. They faked the friendship, he guessed but the opinion Steve had of Tony never really changed from that first impression on the helicarrier. It became clear to Tony when none of that boy band team even asked if he was really dead. Of course, he wasn't. He had been hiding in Tennessee in Harley’s garage. The kid smiled brightly at that. 

Then Captain America dumped all Shield’s files on the internet without consulting the tech guy. But Fury and Romanov agreed to that plan so why attempt to sort out the info to try to find and then spare the real agents from the moles? Shield wasn’t all Hydra. Only about thirty percent. And for that matter why not call the brain behind the propulsion engines, you know, just in case he would know a way to land safely the three helicarriers? “Naaaah… let’s just drop them on D.C. that’ll be all better!” Tony wished that whatever Steve and Shield thought about him, they would get past that to save the maximum lives.

Steve’s mistrust carried on during Ultron's debacle. Nobody believed him when he said that the program was nowhere near an interface, that he didn’t create Ultron. Not even Bruce Banner, even though they had worked together on it. Their distrust showed when Thor came barging in. The god took him by the throat. Nobody moved really. Steve asked about the legionnaires armour so Thor put him down but nobody really said anything about a teammate assaulting another. His own best friend didn’t say a word about that event. Except for Clint obviously who always had a snarky comment on his lips.  “It’s going around”. Karma always seemed to come around for Tony but never for anybody else. Steve was mad with him because he was keeping secrets. Ironic. They went to the Bartons’ farm to hide. He met Laura and the two little agents and a half. Bruce vanished as soon as the battle was done. Tony was left alone to face the music. 

In the middle of all that, they all started to trust Wanda more than him. Even though she was Hydra. Even though she had mind raped him. Even though she had tried to kill them all by siding with Ultron. It hurt. A lot. He had been outvoted by members he didn’t even agree on in the first place. So, he stepped down as an avenger and again, nobody tried to make him change his mind. Rhodey was looking ashamed now. Maybe Tony should have expressed those feelings at the time. Better late than never.

Sometime after all that, General Ross came to him with the accords. They were named after Sokovia where Ultron had tried to erase humanity. But really, they had been in the work since the data dump. Tony didn’t like Ross one bit but unfortunately, you can’t always work with people you get along with. He couldn’t not listen to the people of so many countries. He wasn’t that arrogant. He had thought that the Avengers would understand. They were meant to fight for the people and those same people were telling them that they were afraid.  Wilson didn’t agree. Steve neither. It had been very televised so he would spare his audience the details. Part of the team ended up on the raft. And Tony went after Rogers and Barnes. To help.

But in the end, it had not been about the accords. Not really. The only red tapes Steve was concerned about were the ones governments would have put around Bucky Barnes. The Winter Soldier had been one prolific assassin. Of course, Tony realised now that it wasn’t truly the Sergeant’s fault. Barnes had been the longest prisoner of war in history. Hydra had done to him despicable things, erasing his personality almost completely. On the other hand, Bucky might have had memories of all the kills. It could have helped a lot of families. People who might be still wondering why and by whom their loved ones had been killed. Or people like Tony who had been fed with a lie during a major part of their life. Steve had wanted that part of his past back. Nothing else mattered in the end. Not even the guilt Bucky, his best friend, might have felt. 

Tony had gone to Siberia alone and as a friend just like Wilson had asked of him. Three against five enhanced soldiers. The friendship with Steve was a one-way street. Tony had given his time, his technology, his money and then his life to a man who never really liked him. Steve chose his link to his past instead of the future Tony had hoped for the Avengers. He didn’t even allow Tony his grief. For two years, Steve had kept the secret of the Stark’s death all the while berating him for the secret he kept. For what? For the money and resources that would allow Steve to find that killer. So yeah, Tony didn’t react too well. Sue him. Zemo’s plan had worked perfectly. Tony fought the two super soldiers. He didn’t want to kill either of them but in his grief, he wanted to hurt them, to make them feel even a tenth of what was burning him from the inside. Tony lost. End of story. 

Friday called Vision who finally found him. By this time, the damages on his body were so extensive that it was nothing short of a miracle for him to be still alive. His body at least. Because inside, part of him was gone forever. Pepper authorised Extremis and Dr Cho’s cradle. To tell the truth, at that moment, he had wished she would have let him die. He was so tired then. Mentally exhausted. His life had been one lost fight after another. Even when he was winning against his enemies like Stane, like Hammer and Vanko, somehow it felt like a failure. Like he was never enough to be loved and just excelled at making enemies. When he finally woke up in that Russian hospital, Pepper started yelling at him. She then broke up with him and resigned from her CEO position on the spot. Pepper never liked when he wasn’t getting out on top of situations. They had already separated after Ultron for those same reasons. 

As soon as he was able, Tony called Rhodey. That phone call didn’t go as planned. But it was alright. His friend had every right to be mad. If it weren’t for Tony, he would still be walking on his own two feet. Plus, he was a handful who tended to break every nice thing he ever had. It was already a miracle that Rhodes had lasted that long anyway. Tony would have wanted to say it came as a surprise. Not really. More like the logical ending to that weird life he had had. At that moment, really, Tony had just wanted to be out of the doctor’s surveillance to finish the job that Steve Rogers had started.

Captain America had hit hard. Tony was suffering from head trauma, broken ribs, a shattered sternum and a punctured lung. The frostbite had done the rest. They had to cut toes and fingers that were lost to the cold. Not all of them but enough to destroy the little left he had in life. He would not fly again. The missing toes would make it difficult to even walk in the armour. His equilibrium was severely compromised. He would not be able to tinker like he used to. Fingers were missing on both his hands, especially both thumbs. Holding a hammer, or doing precision work would be rather difficult, if not impossible. Tinkering was Tony’s essence.

His audience was more than shocked, all looking at his gloved hands. Peter was openly crying. Harley was trying not to but his eyes were shining with unshed tears. Rhodey’s shame was all over his face and Tony almost wanted to tell him it was ok, he was going through his own shit at the time after all. Instead he called for a half time asking Friday if they had enough ice cream for everybody’s desert. His lovely A.I. started the list of what was in the freezer and he stood up, leaving for the kitchen area. Everyone was too stunned to move or even say anything. They would probably need some time to swallow that part of the story. Tony had learnt to be honest, at least with himself. He needed space too. Two years alone had made him wary of other people being there. He felt a little crowded even if he liked having people with him finally. It was a lot at the same time. To recount those moments wasn’t easy either and he was far from done. The night would be long. Maybe he should prepare hot beverages instead. Coffee, tea and hot chocolate for the kids.

Chapter Text

Tony Stark 03

“Tones” called out Rhodey.

Tony jumped a little. He wasn’t used to having people around him anymore. While preparing the drinks, he had been a bit lost in his own thoughts. Rhodey was looking at him, waiting for something and really, he didn’t know what it was. So, he smiled. A small tuck of his lips as if to say that despite everything that had happened, he was alright. And he was now. Of course, the rest of the story was yet to be told and Rhodey didn’t know that.

“I just… I realised that I have been a shitty friend really. Even before that phone call. I mean I should have seen the signs. I should have looked better, further. I was one of your best friends, one who was meant to see behind the mask and…”

“You are forgiven.” Cut Tony. “I have never held anything against you really, not the way you think I did anyway. Even if you had stayed, I don’t think it would have changed a lot of things actually. I mean I pushed away Happy and the kids. I would have done the same with you. So really, don’t apologise.”

“You should yell. You should be mad though.”

“For what? Telling the truth? It’s true that I’m a lot to handle, that I don’t know how to treat my friends the right way. Without me, you wouldn’t have been in that mess with the Avengers.”

“But I wanted to be part of it. I stole the suit from you! I…”

“I let you take it.” Cut Tony again. “I was dying. I wanted to give to the people I love what I had that counted for something. I arranged so you could take the suit, an armour only you could pilot and I…”

“You made Pepper CEO and we both betrayed you, letting you down each time you needed us the most.”

To that, Tony didn’t know what to answer. To some extent, it was true. He knew that Rhodey would want the suit for the military back then, because his job was really important to him. Considering that he was dying, Tony had thought that it didn’t matter in the long run. If Rhodey’s career was that important that he would steal something from his best friend, might as well let him have it. Rhodey had already been against him when Tony had shut the weapon division down. Logical to a fault. Tony also knew that Pepper was using their personal relationship to keep him in check. Maybe he deserved that or maybe she never really loved him but liked the idea of him more. Someone who would work from nine till five and build a nice house with a white picket fence for their nice family. Someone who wasn’t really him.

“You know.” Said Tony. “Whatever happened, happened. And in the grand scheme of things, I decided not to hold that phone call against you. You were not in a good place and I had not been for longer than I care to remember. No disrespect but you were just a drop in a fucking ocean of betrayal, anger and hatred towards me. The whole fucking world hated me since forever I guess. I didn’t kill myself. You weren’t the one who pushed me over the edge. All is good. Now help me take all that to my guests please?”

Tony used that weird pleading tone he often used with his friends back in their MIT days. Rhodes knew not all was good but that would do for now. He took the tray with the pots of steaming water, coffee and milk while Tony was carrying loads of mugs, spoons, marshmallows, tea bags, cocoa powder and sugar. For someone living on the moon he sure was very well stocked. Especially with all those different kinds of tea. Tony didn’t drink tea. Maybe that also had changed.

Tony was looking at the kids making their hot chocolates and arguing on the perfect ratio of milk, powder and marshmallows. Tony wondered briefly if they were still his kids. Either way, it was ok, he thought. He could still be in their lives one way or another. That was all he wanted. 

Katherine “Kitty Kat” Keener had fallen asleep on the sofa, her head on her mother’s lap. She was still wearing her Hello Kitty watch and that made him smile. He asked Jodie Keener if she wanted to put her daughter in one of the guest rooms. One not too far from the living room if it made her feel better. She agreed and he carried the little girl to a big bed. 

“Harley never stopped trusting you.” Said Jodie while tucking in her daughter tightly.

What to answer to that? His throat was shut tight with emotions. They went back to the sofa in silence. Tony made himself hot chocolate, asking the kids if they managed to agree on the perfect recipe. Of course, they didn’t and that was funny. It was good to laugh after so long. They were all sipping on their drinks. Little Nathaniel, wide awake, was playing with his mother’s free hand. He had grown so much. Tony wanted to extend the quiet but the sooner he would be all done, the better. He drank just a little more and then put his mug down. 

Tony started his story again from the moment he was back in the compound. Everything reminded him of his team. Steve had broken into the raft and freed the main part of the Avengers. Natasha was on the run. Tony knew then that the only place for them to hide was Wakanda. Black Panther was in Siberia so where else could Steve have been? That also meant that T’Challa didn’t bother checking on a teammate. So, team Captain America was having a nice holiday in a beautiful lush country while Tony was left once again to shoulder everything that had been wrong with the Avengers. Unfortunately, this time, he couldn’t care less. Iron Man wasn’t even in Lagos or Bucharest. What happened in Germany had been sanctioned by the U.N., not really his problem. The team on his side had been holding back. Tony had thought he could make Steve understand. Wrong again.

The workshop had always been his sanctuary, the place where he could tinker away his problems. Not the best coping mechanism but it did work for him. His bots were happy to see him again. At least, someone was. He stood there for a long time, looking at his bench. Suddenly, he burst out crying over everything that happened, over everything that he had lost. He didn’t know for how long he cried or even how he ended up sleeping on the sofa he kept down there. He had a vague recollection of DUM-E putting a blanket on him and Friday telling him that he was alright, she would take care of him. Tony had let go of years of repressed feelings. It was exhausting.

“Where was I? I could have helped!” Vision said

“On your way to Wakanda.” Answered Friday before Tony could say anything. “You said that it would be better to let Boss have some time for himself. You didn’t want to intrude.”

It was clear as day that Friday was not happy with her brother. She made it feel like Vision’s reasoning was just an excuse so he could go and see Wanda sooner. As much as the android would have wanted to say that it was not true, he couldn’t, in good conscience, deny that it was exactly the case. Back then he felt that he had to stay by Tony’s side but didn’t really want to. How ironic now that Vision and Wanda were not anything to each other anymore.

Waking up a good twelve hours later, Tony now had two contradictory goals. On one hand, he started selling anything he ever owned. The Stark name needed to disappear from history. Of course, it was impossible. Howard, for example, would always be remembered for his participation in the creation of Captain America or the Manhattan Project on atomic bombs. Nobody wanted to remember who Tony was. Who was he to go against the world? On the other hand, he started working on Extremis once again. After all Maya Hansen had created it to heal and regenerate from physical damages. Tony had already managed to change the formula once to save Pepper after Aldrich used it on her. Then he had just wanted to make it disappear from her body. Maybe he could find a way for it to actually work for him at its full potential without the explosive quality of it. Pepper had authorised him to be injected with it as he had said before but that solution was really toned down just to help the cradle’s work. So really, one part of him wanted to live. The other part, not so much.

Tony was always working on many projects at the same time. After having put anything Avengers or Stark Industries in the bin, he quickly realised that he needed another project than these life or death ones. Just at that moment, General Ross decided that if he couldn’t have the Avengers, then he would go for the next best thing. Their families. Despite everything, Tony couldn’t let innocents pay for his mistakes. When he arrived at the Bartons, they were watching Star Trek. Funny.

Once everybody was safe, Tony came back to his workshop and asked Friday to put Star Trek on. For fun more than anything, he actually decided to see if he could make the science work. Obviously, he did. While still working on selling his patrimony and on Extremis, he actually started on different projects like construction robots that would be able to work alone on the moon, without atmosphere. He also worked on solutions for the oxygen, water and electricity problems that would come with living up there. All of that right under the nose of NASA. He would be building on the dark side of the moon mainly because he needed to keep an eye on outer space, not on Earth. The construction itself would be hidden within the craters that scared the surface of the moon. Really, it felt like the passion of inventing was coming back to him. The more his moon project was going well, the more he was doing his best for the other parts of his plan. So well that he found the solution for Extremis.

In theory, it would be working. Friday and he made and remade the calculation. They wanted every chance on their side, on his side really. Because now, he would have to test it on himself. And it could go many ways other than what he wanted. That formula had been tailored for him, taking in consideration his previous shot of another formula but also the traces of his palladium poisoning. He wasn’t scared of dying. Pain though. He didn’t want to hurt again. Tony knew that was wishful thinking but the apprehension was still there. Looking at his hands, the decision was quickly taken and he injected himself just like a certain spy had done once before.

He passed out, falling from his seat to the floor like a potato sack. The memories from that moment came from watching the recordings after, thanks to Friday. Doctors would sometimes put their patients in a medical coma so their bodies could concentrate on healing. Extremis had done the same without warning. It had a lot to work on. Tony had never been kind with himself with all the drinking during his life and even drugs during his youth. The armour was protecting him but it wasn’t a miracle either. When getting a blow by Mjölnir, suit or not, you would feel it! It had been odd watching himself convulsing on the floor. For a while nothing happened that he could see but the scans were showing that he was healing on the inside. His liver of course but mainly his heart, lungs and ribcage. Then a bright light seemed to come out of where his fingers once were. They actually regrew and was that a sight!

Tony stayed on the floor for two days under Friday’s watchful eye and his bots’ care. Finally waking up, he felt like he had the worst hangover ever without even drinking. His hands felt numb, almost foreign for a while. The skin of his new fingers was pink like baby skin. He moved each finger after the other, checking them like the best Christmas gift ever.

“Why are you wearing gloves then, Mechanic?” asked Harley.

“Many reasons. I don’t want to hurt them. Not sure it would work twice and I don’t want to try that theory out although Extremis kept me alive while wielding the gauntlet. The power in that artefact could easily have burnt my arm and more. But I’m rambling. I have those special warming gloves because I don’t want another Siberia. Also. Since. I’m always cold. Always.”

Chapter Text

Tony Stark 04

As soon as it was possible to live in, oxygen, water and electricity working, Tony moved to the moon. Only one room was truly ready and it was totally empty. Never mind that. It was freeing to be so far away from everything. They couldn’t find him here. Shield was as far away from him as it could be. Even if his dreams were full of Steve Rogers slamming it down his chest, Tony would know, waking up, that he was as safe as he could be. 

Thanks to Extremis, Tony took his first good breath since Afghanistan. He never enjoyed it when it was natural, normal to be breathing without pain or being uncomfortable. Now he couldn’t have enough of it. How ironic to enjoy breathing so much somewhere without a natural atmosphere. He couldn’t help but laugh at the thought. The room was large enough and more than that, deep enough within the satellite for his new workshop location. Friday beamed everything up from the compound. Fastest move ever. Even his good old sofa was nicely there in the corner. He didn’t have to pack anything, not even to close any ongoing projects and nothing had been broken. A dream came true.

Tony had the rest of the house to build around his brand-new workshop. After all tinkering was the heart of his life, might as well also be the one of his house. Tony found pleasure in that, building and decorating to his taste. The house was getting bigger and bigger, finding space for people that weren’t there. Pepper had done everything in the tower. From the art collection to the carpets. He had let her but now, he could be honest with himself, her style was a little bit too cold for him. She had been happy then to put her touch in his life. Very Pepper-like really. Now he wanted warm and cosy furniture in large rooms, big enough to have many people he could maybe call family. Decidedly, he was full of contradictions these days. Life and death, intimate and large, family when he was all alone.

Days passed by rather quickly. He kept himself very busy. The house was almost complete when the rogues were officially pardoned. Tony hadn’t been in the compound for months but he was going on Earth regularly for supplies, furniture and the occasional cravings. So, he knew. It was everywhere. Newspaper front pages, television and even in conversations in the street. Did that hurt? Yes, but not more than everything else that had happened so far. It couldn’t harm him more than it had already done. He couldn’t deny the logic behind the U.N. decision. Rhodes wasn’t in condition to carry on being War Machine, Vision was almost a rogue by then, Thor was back in Asgard and the Hulk was nowhere to be found, so was Tony. Who else was there?

Of course, Tony had worked on the braces with his brand-new fingers. A work of precision that he couldn’t have been able to do before Extremis. Something that was always on his mind though. But that didn’t mean that the colonel would want to be a hero once again. He had lost so much already. Tony had just beamed down the tool that Rhodey would need to have the main part of his life back. It wasn’t a way to tell him to be War Machine again. Anyway, he hoped that it wouldn’t be seen that way. The Colonel had said that he didn’t want any of it, what being Tony’s friend had brought into his life. Tony wouldn’t make this mistake twice. Life tended to choose for them in the end. When it had been clear that Thanos was coming for Earth, army man or not, if you had the tools to fight, you had to do it. Whatever it took. Rhodes had always been a hero, way before the War Machine. One way or another, he would help during that battle.

Tony’s real problem began when he ran out of projects. When his brain wasn’t on a problem to be resolved, his thoughts would irremediably come back to some negative feelings. A vicious circle. The house was done. He had sold everything. The braces were done and without the input of the wearer he wouldn’t be able to improve them. He had worked on a lot of defensive measures from the Moon. The merchant of death was useful now. To make something explode was really easy. Those weapons were necessary but they weren’t a challenge for the genius’ brain. At that moment he felt the loneliness. Even if he never had a lot of people around him, the human contact was missed dearly. Of course, Friday and the bots were there and they were doing their best. But Tony was a very tactile person and he had no-one.

Slowly, his life changed. He had been suffering from insomnia all his life and now all he was doing was sleeping. Some days, the idea of getting up and doing simple tasks like showering and eating was just too much. Thinking straight was difficult. His sleep never seemed to be restorative. He would often wake up tired as crazy as it sounded. Anything he did, he did it slower, asking him to concentrate more, most of the time it would end in a bad way. After days like that, out of nowhere, he would get himself in a frenzy, checking time and time again all the protocols of defence he had put in place. It wouldn’t be enough. He wouldn’t be enough. Wanda’s nightmare was right. Why wasn’t he doing more? He just didn’t know what else he could do now. 

Laura, who was sitting next to him, took his hand in hers. That little gesture meant everything to him and gave him the courage to carry on with the story. God, he had missed that. The simple things. He was thinking about how much he would have needed that back then. But he had chosen this path, he had to see it all the way through. Tony didn’t tell them about all those times he ended up standing in the air-lock entrance. How he had been one door away from finishing it all. Everything he could do was ready. When the Mad Titan would get there, he wouldn’t be needed in truth. Friday knew what she had to do and would do it perfectly without making a mess of things like he tended to do. He found himself in that same spot more time than he cared to count. This end would have been kind of poetic. Space and the beyond had haunted him since New York. And now he was living on the Moon of all places. It almost felt like destiny somehow. His corpse would be floating in the universe like it would have been if the portal had closed a second earlier. But he was a coward, unable to take that last step. Or so he thought back then. After all, he’d never been the one to believe in fate in the first place.

He had good days and he had bad ones. Like everybody else in fact. Little by little, he was getting better with the help of B.A.R.F and his baby girl Friday. The A.I. was letting him know about Earth’s progress in its defence and anything she thought would be important for him to know. Friday let him know about Christine Everhart’s allocution during primetime television. Tony never really thought she would be the one to change her mind about him. Hope was a funny thing, to reappear just after a couple of kind words. Perhaps he should have gone back and explained himself properly. He didn’t.

When Banner and Thor came back, when the new additions of the Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel happened, he could have done something. Tony could have gone back to Earth and said, “Hey you didn’t listen to me before but I still prepared some defences that you didn’t seem to want back then!”. Tony didn’t trust that many people anymore. If any. He had no guarantee he would be welcomed. Or it would be Stark weaponry, yes, Tony Stark, not recommended. Captain America had used him as a scapegoat long enough. It had been hard to get out of the dark place being an Avenger had put him in. Was he being selfish? Maybe. Definitely. Tony had sacrificed a lot for people who wanted only more each time, not even thanking him once for his efforts. He had already given his pound of flesh. He couldn’t give anymore unless he was ready to disappear completely.

Friday had warned him one day that she was detecting activities at the fringe of her capabilities of scanning, further than any earth satellite ever, even the SI ones. That was it. The endgame. What he had been fearing since the battle of New York. One strategy he had apparently in common with Earth was that they needed to get to Thanos directly. Tony had the capacity to destroy all the enemy’s fleet but was the Titan actually there? Nothing could prove that he was physically there. Not killing Thanos only meant that the Mad Titan could come back later, with an army even larger. Earth seemed to defend itself quite well. Better than he had thought. Probably his ego talking. Or his fears. Still he was calculating and guessing which ship the Mad Titan could be. The most well-guarded craft perhaps. Luck or a certain Doctor Strange were on their side when the sorcerer made that possible. Tony beamed down and engaged in a fight with Thanos. The rest was history.

“Strange said he went to look into the different futures and came back asking after you, Tony. He was mad at the Captain when he learnt what had happened during the Civil War. He probably had seen all of that.” Said Peter.

“Magic…” answered Tony.

“What did you think about when you snapped your fingers?” finally asked Harley after a long, uncomfortable silence.

“Many things at once actually. I wished Thanos to disappear for good and never to come back. Better, that he never had existed at all. I wished for all the useless deaths and destruction to be reversed. I also wanted for the stones to work and keep working after that. Because if I failed my snap, maybe somebody else could have a go at it. And also, I confessed I wished not to die just yet.”

Thinking about it now, that multitasking ability of his was probably what allowed everything to happen in just one snap. It wasn’t to brag or anything. More like the simple constatation that a unique thought wouldn’t have been adequate. For example, it wouldn’t have been enough just to ask for the people to come back. You would have to think how, where and when. You couldn’t resurrect the pilots in space now that their ships were destroyed. To come back to life and die almost immediately in space. That would be cruel beyond anything. Same went for the reconstruction. Do not rebuild on people who were searching for the injured or the dead in the ruins. Destruction just like Thanos had wanted to achieve was actually really easy to achieve. Tony had been making enough bombs in his life to know that. He also knew that to rebuild was way harder than anything else.

Nobody dared to ask the important question but everybody had it on the tip of their tongues. What would happen next? Tony had a life here but was quite solitary. They all realised that going back down on Earth would not be easy for him. First, they would need to see how the world would be moving on and think about what had happened so far. Surely, the people’s opinion of Tony would change dramatically. Rhodey would have to go back to the military but this time he would not let his job be his priority above anybody else. Vision would go back to the Avengers and make sure that, this time around, he would defend his father like he always should have been. May Parker and Happy would go back down and generally help as much as they could. Harley and Peter wanted to stay with Tony. They were already over excited about all the new science and what they could make real from whatever science-fiction film. Jodie Keener just said they needed someone to supervise so she would stay with Kat.

Everybody would be beamed up at night. This way, they would eat and spend the evening doing something together. Nobody said the word but Friday was proud of the people she chose to be Boss’ family.

Chapter Text

Sam Wilson / T’Challa / Scott Lang

Sam was pretty sure he was dead five minutes ago. But he was back now watching Tony Stark reviving Vision. The logic wanted that Iron Man had saved them all, considering he was still wearing the gauntlet, four stones still on. He hadn’t seen the whole fight with him being dead and all, but they had been losing until that point. Now, what had been a battlefield was back being a nice street of New York. As if nothing happened at all. And then, without a word, Tony in his new shiny armour disappeared in a beam of light with the young Spiderman. Sam understood. A lot of things has been said about Tony. Few were true.

Steve was unhappy. It was written all over his face. Sam already knew what the Captain would say about their situation and Stark and he didn’t want to hear it. They had been wrong about Tony for a long time. The first Avengers ever more so than Sam actually. Sam was relatively new to the team.  Not that he would not take his part of responsibility. The Falcon went to find the rest of the team. Nobody was saying anything. They would go back to the compound and rest. Maybe after some sleep, everything would be a little bit clearer for everybody. One thing was sure, Sam didn’t want to be an Avenger anymore. Not the way they were before. The wings would be great during a natural disaster kind of situation, search and rescue just like what they were built to do.

Steve had wanted to talk to his team about what would happen next. He only stopped when Barnes told him to. He had exasperated everyone by then. Except Natasha maybe. Even Clint didn’t want to hear any of it. If Sam had a little of his hero-worshipping left, it would really have died now. He wished he could apologise to Stark. He wished that so many things would have been different. Sam should have been thinking with his own mind from the start instead of being a follower. Captain America’s biggest superpower was not his strength or his healing. It was his charisma, that way he had to be so sure about his opinions that you would just hesitate about your own and then go along with Rogers with that kind of certainty.

T’Challa was a King. He had been raised to be a ruler. He had a temper, he would not deny that. What a blow to his ego to have been manipulated like that. First by the Widow and then by the Captain. He had been too sure of himself and of his technology. Even if Wakanda was at the top of the technology of Earth that never meant they would match up with aliens. Their shields had not lasted long. Even the Black Panther had not been very helpful when facing that kind of numbers. This invasion had been a lesson in humility. Hopefully, this ordeal would make him a better king. He wouldn’t stop at one’s image now. Tony Stark’s public persona might have been obnoxious and loud when Captain America’s had been strong and rightful. Steve Rogers’ stubbornness could have cost half the universe. Whether he liked it or not, T’Challa was partly responsible. Dying, even for a minute, tended to put everything back into perspective.

The King would have to go back to his country now. Wakanda was not happy with him. First, he would have wanted to meet with Rhodey. It was known, within the compound, that the colonel was going to where Tony was every night. T’Challa wouldn’t ask for an audience. He didn’t have the right to. But maybe, Rhodes would agree to pass a message.  Rhodes didn’t seem really happy with that request. Apparently, the young king wasn’t the first one to ask him something similar. He was also gently reminded that even if that message were excuses, Tony was in no obligation to accept them. The man had suffered enough. He should be the only one who you should decide what to do next.

Scott Lang had given his message to the Colonel. That had been a hell of an awkward conversation. Still, Cassie had drawn on that page especially for her favourite hero, Iron Man. Scott didn’t know if a little girl drawing would mean anything to Tony Stark. Or his apologies however sincere they were. Good decisions weren’t often the easiest. At least, he had learnt that. Life wasn’t going back exactly to the way it was before. It wasn’t harder either. The economy wasn’t worse than before the invasion. Jobs weren’t destroyed but weren’t created either. Perhaps everybody thought things would change radically. Scott was now working with the U.N. as an Avengers and as a liaison. He could see his daughter regularly. Hope and he were going steady and he was friendly enough with his ex. Life had been good with him. But now he knew everything could disappear with a snap of someone else’s fingers. They all knew that now.

Stark didn’t come back from where he was hiding. Rhodes and Vision obviously knew where it was. Captain America would be all righteous about secrets. Then, he would be yelling and hitting things. Rhodes and Vision wouldn’t tell anyone where Tony was. Scott suspected that at the very least the Colonel was enjoying the situation. Steve had lost a lot of his shine. The Captain didn’t like that at all. So much so, that he tried every way he could think of to force the information out of them. Scott didn’t really understand why Stark’s presence was so important now. Team Cap was more than happy when he wasn’t there before.

A couple of days later, Rhodes came to him with a little packet. It was from Tony. Scott was really surprised and pleased. Both his name and Cassie’s were written on it. He would wait for them to be together to open it. His daughter would be thrilled. They sat down in the living room when she came that weekend. Iron Man had answered and that meant the world to her. Inside the box, they found a letter for him and yet a smaller box for her. She opened it with haste to find a little figurine of Iron Man with a big squarish head that got a weird squeaky sound out of her. There, they also discovered an Iron Man watch, silver and arc reactor blue. Actually, the centre point of the needles looked just like one, round and blue, if very small. Scott was sure that everything was made out of the same material as the suit of armour. Tony had engraved something at the back. “For my everyday heroine. T.S.”. Cassie read her little message telling her that Tony knew another girl that just loved her Hello Kitty watch so he thought she would like one special just for her. And if she didn’t know yet how to read the time, surely her dad would teach her. At the end she was properly crying of happiness. Her father read his letter, telling him that sometimes we were making mistakes but that acting to rectify them were more important than any word of excuses. Stark could see that it was what Scott was trying to do and Tony would not be asking more than Scott carrying on this path. Scott cried too.

T’Challa received an email in response to his message. On their most secure server. He wasn’t pleased but he had learnt that the technology in Wakanda wasn’t as good as he thought. While replying, Stark was also telling him that if he really wanted, the genius could do what he wanted even with them. The email was quite long, more than the king would have thought it to be. Tony talked about their fathers. How Howard was not a good dad at all. But still, for most of his life, Tony had tried to live up to his legacy. Building weapons and all. So, he took the multimillion-dollar American company and transformed it into an international multi billion Industries. Selling weapons had always been controversial but the Stark had always done it for their country, as patriots. Tony had followed Obadiah, his second father figure. Stane didn’t think about his nation but about the money he could get. What would T’Chaka think about his son? For what Stark had seen, the late king had been a good man. The accords were his idea and the right thing to do. With great powers come great responsibilities. T’Chaka legacy shouldn’t be under the shadow of the civil war and the hasty decisions taken during times of sorrow and grief. Tony was asking him to honour their fathers. Something T’Challa was more than happy to oblige.

Sam received a handwritten letter, with a stamp, an address at the compound and everything. Who was writing like that anymore? Tony was answering his message that way. The futurist was using an old-fashioned way, ironically. The postmark was from New York. Nothing that would help the people who were looking for the ex-billionaire everywhere. Tony’s handwriting was small and messy but very readable. The message was very clear. Even though Tony appreciated Sam’s little message, it was a little bit too late. Sam could have raised his voice so many times, when things were so obviously wrong. The only time he did that was to say no to the accountability and responsibility, no to the accords. Tony understood the pull the great Captain had on people. He felt it himself. But he tried not to lose sight of what he was doing, of what was right. 

Tony was asking him to send an apology to every member of Shield. Even though the organisation was shady, it wasn’t all Hydra. Only around thirty percent. Jarvis, while trying to remove the info from the internet, had checked on everybody. The seventy percent left, they had been tortured, killed. Tony had tried to save as many as he could. As Captain America would say, they couldn’t save everybody. Sure, they had signed for the job. They should have known the risks. What about the non-active personnel? Did the window cleaner or the person responsible for the mail deserve to be put in such a danger? What about their parents? Their children? Tony didn’t understand why Sam agreed to that kind of choice. More than that, why was he so against Tony from the start even though they had never met? He honestly would want to understand. Same went for the crash of the helicarriers. Tony had built the engines, he would have been able to stop them, force them to land. Tony had made the choice to embrace the guilt even when he wasn’t directly responsible. He wondered if Sam felt that kind of contrition even a little for those events.

Bucky Barnes was innocent and then not. Of course, the soldier had been to hell and had not been in control for all the murders of the Winter Soldier. It was still his body and his hands. James Barnes remembered all his victims, he had told Tony so. Family of those victims who deserved to know the reasons why . If Bucky would have been tried, he would surely have had an innocent verdict. Any member of any jury would have understood the awful circumstances. He would have received the best treatment in a secure facility as well. Most importantly, a lot of grieving people would have finally had an explanation to their ordeal. Paradoxically, Steve’s stubbornness in saving his best friend had been doing the exact opposite. In Bucharest, in Leipzig, Bucky wasn’t under Hydra’s influence. The dead and devastation couldn’t be explained by that. There he was guilty. Zemo would have still been there no doubt but James Barnes would have stayed innocent, apart from the Hydra’s assassin persona so to speak.

Tony then quickly brushed the lies around the death of his parents, when it was found out. Reading between the lines, Sam understood that Tony thought that Sam also knew and chose to keep the secret like the others. Tony didn’t comment any further. Sam had made his apology as best he could, only time would tell if Tony would accept it. Maybe never. Sam had done nothing to deserve it. He wanted to be a hero. He had done a lot of damage instead. What should he do now? He could only try to do better, to be better and think by himself this time around. 

Chapter Text

Pepper Potts / Natasha Romanov / Christine Everhart

Christine was lucky, very much so. Tony Stark had accepted her invitation for an interview of some kind with her. She had done things going through the proper channels, mainly asking James Rhodes. Tony would not do any other. She knew it was already some kind of miracle that he was willing to do this one. He owed them nothing after what the media had done to him. The event would be held in front of the compound, on the grassy patch outside. Tony didn’t want to be in a closed room, full of people. The weather was good anyway, sunny but not too warm. Perfect. Of course, she had not been able to avoid other journalists to come and film everything, standing in the public but they had been warned that Stark would not be answering to any of them. Her colleagues didn’t argue with that. The invasion was still very fresh in everybody’s mind. Nothing like narrowly escaping death to put everything back in perspective. Especially when they owed their lives to the one they had spent so much time putting lower than earth.

The area was filled with U.N. personnel. It seemed that everybody was doing their best to protect the ground. Nobody from the outside could enter without an invitation. Some people from the inside were gently told not to go to that part of the premises. You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that everybody was trying to avoid the confrontation between Iron Man and Captain America. The journalist in her would love for that to happen in front of her cameras. The old her anyway. Now, not so much. Of course, it would be quite the scoop. The price would be too much to pay though. Both for her and for Tony Stark. He had paid a lot already. 

Her team was waiting for him to arrive now. Everything was ready and double checked. Tony didn’t ask for a list of preapproved questions, surprisingly. He had always been very spontaneous during his previous press conferences. The “I am Iron Man” moment was historic now. For a man who had been raised under the public gaze, he was shockingly honest in those kinds of moments. That made him an easy target when really it shouldn’t have been. We should all be wary of the people whose secrets had secrets. Tony could have become a very guarded person or at least cautious when it came to the media. Now to think about it, the only secrets Tony really kept were the creation of Ultron and what happened in Siberia. Christine wondered how things would have gone if the defensive android had worked properly. Or if the Avengers had been whole.

A beam of bright light suddenly appeared on the stage. Tony was front and centre, like the old times. Dark Armani suit that fitted him perfectly, blue tinted glasses to hide his eyes and therefore his thoughts. He went to sit down, crossing his legs, his posture relaxed. Christine knew that was a front, an act to feel in control. She would need to not to trigger a fight or flight reaction out of him. It was easy for him to vanish in the middle of that interview thanks to his new technology. Something they would need to talk about actually, all those new gadgets he had.

The interview started smoothly. Christine told him again how sorry she was about what the press did to him. He smiled warily but didn’t comment any more. It wasn’t that much against her but not to give the wrong idea that Tony Stark had forgiven them. That it was all in the past and they could start again just like before. The message was simple but received loud and clear.  She asked a couple of simple questions, how he was, how he was feeling after such a battle and so on. Tony was charming with a maturity about him they didn’t know about. That Stark was new, just like his armour and something in his demeanour let the public at large know that he would be deadly too.

“Dr Stark? Where on Earth were you during the past two years?” asked Christine.

“Not on Earth actually…” answered Tony with a mysterious smile.

“What do you mean?”

Tony pointed to the sky. Actually, to a particular part of the blue sky. Her eyes followed the finger and she gasped. She then blurted something about the moon, incredulously. 

“Well, I wasn’t welcomed on this planet anymore, I had to go somewhere right?”

Tony was looking at her surprised. She thought that it was probably very logical for him but Christine would never have imagined that he would go that far. Stark had the capacity to hide anywhere on Earth. Then again, he stayed relatively close. He had the means to go explore space and leave them all behind. Instead he stayed to protect the very same people who had been so horrible to him. Something to think about. She joked with him with a “no wonder those who were looking for the guy never found him.” The conversation carried on the beaming technology, bantering about Star Trek. Little by little the conversation was narrowing toward the second battle of New York, as they were calling it now. It was good to know that Tony Stark never let them down.

Tony explained why the armour had changed. After Siberia, he started to re-enforce the breastplate but more importantly to protect the heart reactor. What happened before could not happen ever again. Tony learnt from his mistakes. He had put a lot of new failsafe, new weapons and defences systems to obviously protect himself but also to improve his hand to hand combat.

While listening to her guest, Christine had an eye on the public. It took all her years interviewing people not to let show her shock when she saw Pepper Potts in the assistance. She had not contacted the woman herself. She did not want to go back to that kind of journalism. That sort of sensational surprise story was not what she had promised Tony. Of course, some idiot didn’t think like her. Tony had followed her eyes and looked back at her. Christine knew him enough to know that he wasn’t pleased but he wouldn’t show anything. She just hoped that he understood it wasn’t her idea, that she wouldn’t betray him like that. Not anymore.

“Are you going to come back to Earth, restarting S.I. and restart your life where you left it before the Civil War?”

She asked him that, hoping he would pick up on the opening she was trying to give him. Oh, he understood very well. When he gave his answer, he was obviously looking straight at Pepper. For a second, it looked like she was about to smile at him, the kind of half smile that said that she made a mistake but hey, he would forgive her for whatever relationship she thought they had. He stopped her right there, something hard in his eyes. No, he wouldn’t build SI Again, that ship had sailed. He had changed too much, hopefully for the better, for him to go back to his old ways, his old life. What and who mattered was still or again in his life. Once bitten, twice shy. And he had been bitten more than once already. 

Pepper’s gaze went to her famous stilettos.  All was understood. It seemed that she took a shuddered breath, maybe on the verge of crying and then turned around and left. At least, she was smart enough to know when it was over. The interview was done. The speech didn’t only apply to Pepper. The journalists were wondering if it was also for the rogue Avengers. What was left unsaid between them but was widely understood, was that Tony would not let them do as they pleased now. Stark had been fair game up to now. They used and abused him. That was over.

Natasha looked at Pepper, leaving with a smile. As if it was a personal victory. The spy only knew how to handle the billionaire. She had proved it before. She would do it again. A single mistake didn’t make her a failure. Natasha simply refused to believe that. Nothing like a nice conversation to put everything back where it should have been all along. She would play contrite, apologise even. Her big pleading eyes, a touch of the hand here and there, she wouldn’t need more. Tony was a very forgiving man. That was part of what made him so easy to manipulate. He could tell them all he was right all along. His ego would love that no doubt. She would allow it for a while. Even if it would be annoying to hear. Until she thought he was completely back by her side. Natasha was waiting for him to get out of the stage and enter the compound. She was so sure he would want to gloat so she was standing by the doors. He had to pass by her. Then she would close her trap on him. Easy as pie. 

Tony entered the compound without even a glance toward her. Even when she called his name, he didn’t seem to notice her at all. He wanted to play hard to get, so be it. She physically stopped him, telling him they needed to talk. The surprise on his face annoyed her. Natasha’s face stayed open and friendly, showing nothing of her anger inside.

“We need to talk about the future of the Avenger.”

“Doesn’t concern me. I’m not an Avenger, remember, merely a consultant.” Answered Tony, still moving inside the building.

“Look. We made a mistake. We should have listened to you. The Avengers learnt their lesson the hard way. But we can do better. The world still needs us to protect them. That means you are with us.”

Tony stopped and pondered what she had just said. It was working. He always listened to her even if his ego didn’t want to recognise that. Her stance relaxed, sure of her victory. Then, Tony talked again and everything went crumbling down. He didn’t say much really. The way he said that was very chilling. He didn’t need them. Those two years taught him a good lesson and now all of that was in the past. He had moved on with his life. Tony didn’t even want them warm. Maybe they deserved a punishment of some kind but that wasn’t his decision to make. He wouldn’t protect them. It was absolutely not his problem anymore. Natasha would feel it in her bones. He didn’t care about them anymore. He had literally no feeling for them. The spy could manipulate love, the desire to please or even hatred. Tony’s life mission had been fulfilled, the moment he had needed them was gone. 

He left Natasha standing there. She didn’t know how to react to that. The loss finally came crashing down on her. The red room had taught her that she didn’t need friends, that people were just a means to an end. Has she been manipulated all along? She had grown attached to that idea of a family despite herself. And now, she had just lost a brother. His lack of feelings hurt her more than anything. They meant nothing to him anymore if they ever had. A black widow who started to doubt herself was as good as dead. If the Avengers weren’t a thing of the future, her past would come to bite her in the arse. She would have no more protection, especially after her part in the fall of Shield.

Tony knew all that, he was a genius after all, but he wouldn’t be willing to protect her anymore. He didn’t care what would happen to her either way. The idea was terrifying, that feeling that you didn’t count. Natasha had a lot more in common with Pepper than she cared to confess. They were good opponents in that game but ultimately they had lost against someone far better.

Chapter Text

James Barnes / Vision

All was done now. The Invasion, Stark’s victory, everything. James just wanted a shot at a normal life. As normal as an ex very prolific assassin for Hydra could get. Against Steve’s wish, he had agreed to a trial of sorts for all he did while being the Winter Soldier. His lawyer had been confident that they would get clemency on the ground that James was the longest prisoner of war in History. Sixty years of torture. Barnes wasn’t sure he didn’t deserve some jail time, if anything for the event of Bucharest when he wasn’t under Hydra’s manipulation anymore. His mind had not been totally clear. Not enough to think that anybody with a uniform wasn’t Hydra. Following Steve back then had not been a good idea at all. If only his mind would have been a little less in scramble.

James knew that the trial was not about him. Not really. So many families, all around the planet, had been touched by his actions for so long. He remembered them all so clearly. His testimony would give them some kind of closure. They, for the most part, finally learnt why their loved ones had to die, in Hydra’s agenda anyway. His lawyer had told him that most of his victims’ families were not angry at him. Not that they wanted to be friends with him. The recent events had put a lot in perspective. As hard as it was, James was just the weapon the terrorist agency used. Not ready to completely forgive him but not wanting him dead. James thought that it was more than he deserved. 

His testimony also helped in the arrest of some of the highest ranked. They were everywhere around the world, in every agency. Steve and Natasha's actions in DC never stopped Hydra. Slow them down a little if anything. Maybe two heads would take their places but at least it would be a while for them to be reborn from their ashes. After all, it was always harder to kill an idea than the men who believed in it.

All along, Vision stayed by his side. That had surprised him the most. The android was always respectful of his choices. They would have healthy conversation, giving their point of view but not forcing the other one into believing in whatever they thought was right. Both men were intelligent enough to follow whatever path they had chosen. Even if the other one didn’t fully agree with it. Steve would never think that way, always arguing every little point until everybody would fall back in line. Something he already did before the serum when he would fight at every corner the so-called bullies. After all those years being a puppet, it was so liberating to make his own choices.

James asked Vision if he was acting like that because he was an all knowledgeable sentient or something. But he said no. On many levels, the android was new to the world. He was acting like that because of Wanda and Tony. Wanda always wanted to have her way in their relationship. Vision thought, after that, that her arguing, even when he wasn’t answering to it, didn’t mean he couldn’t come to his own conclusion. It was not because she was shouting the loudest that it would make her right. Also, his father was a firm believer of learning thanks to your own mistakes. Of course, Tony would never set you to a failing path on purpose. He wanted for Vision to try things out but would offer support if Vision took a wrong turn. 

Wanda had been an error, Vision could see that now. A painful one. He had felt those floors she had put her through both physically and emotionally. Tony was still here for him after everything. Even if his attitude had painted his father, even if Vision wasn’t there for Tony. And if Vision had to be completely honest, back then, he wouldn’t have listened to anything the genius would have argued. They would have certainly fought and maybe now they would not be able to recover. 

James understood that. His relationship with Steve was not good at the moment. It would never be anymore. They had changed too much. Barnes had not recovered all his memories yet but he was quite sure their friendship wasn’t as good as the propaganda made it out to be. Steve didn’t understand any of James’ decisions of late. He couldn’t even make the effort not to call him Bucky anymore even though he had been asked repeatedly. Bucky Barnes had died falling from that train. 

Now that yet another war had been won, James thought he could do something with his life. Vision and he had talked before about going to university. Now after everything he had been shy about putting that idea back upfront. Plus, he would need a job to pay for his fees. What could a one arm man from the forties could do? His dream of a simple life seemed a lot more complicated than he had thought. Miracles happened to those who wished upon a star. Or upon the moon. That little wonder had a name on it. Tony Stark.  Vision came around one day with a manilla envelope for him. The android told him he had had the same one and was very impatient to get started. Inside, he found all the paperwork for some kind of all-inclusive grant for a minimum of four years in university. He could choose the speciality he wanted. Moreover, they had been given a flat to share, not far from the campus and money every month for the food and activities. He had been given all the tools to succeed. He just had to study.

Why would Tony Stark do that for him? Did Vision ask his father to pay for him? James couldn’t ask Stevie. Rogers tended to put people in two categories. The ones that needed helping, the ones who were trying to manipulate him one way or another. Captain America was, for example, helping Natasha and Wanda by allowing them to remove the red in their ledger. He had allowed them in the team for them to become heroes and change their past for a brighter future. He had been saving James from Hydra. Tony Stark was obviously in the second category. The guy was only doing things for himself in Steve’s opinion. Someday Stark would ask for the return on his investment and it wouldn’t be pretty. His friend didn’t like the billionaire at all. Tony was not his father. Steve’s memories of Howard were only good, forgetting the sides of the man’s personality that didn’t fit in that perfect picture he had. Stevie would never be fair when it came to Tony Stark.

Vision had an answer to his question but it was unbelievable. Tony was using this way to close the chapter on his parents’ death. As hard as it was to accept that Barnes wasn’t the killer, not really anyway, the billionaire couldn’t, in good conscience, carry on that path. They wouldn’t be friends. Maybe not even stand being in the same room for a long while. Tony had almost killed him, now he was offering Barnes a brand-new life. It felt like the circle was closed now. James owed him nothing just like Tony would not owe him any favour now. If by the way it would please his son, Vision, well, Tony wouldn’t mind that either. 

University was a place bursting with energy, being people learning hard or the other partying harder. Everybody knew who he was and who he had been but they didn’t care. James felt old around all those young people but he honestly loved it. He had chosen to learn about psychology. Having spent so long with a scramble mind probably helped his decision. Vision was learning about philosophy but they still had a couple of courses in common. At first the android would hide his true nature. He didn’t want others to feel uncomfortable because of the colour of his synthetic skin or the mind stone on his forehead. He was worrying for nothing. Of course, there would always be some stupid people to point that out and make Vision feel like he didn’t belong. But the majority of the student body or the teachers were completely accepting of him. They were even making friends. 

Vision didn’t need to eat but he loved cooking. Sometimes, especially on a first try, the dish would be a complete disaster. Little by little, he was improving and James actually enjoyed most of it. Not that he was a bad cook himself. Vision told him once that he found that activity very soothing so he let him do it most of the time. Plus, James was a bit of a cleaning freak. Best roommates ever.  Both were very keen on privacy. Their rooms were their domain. Vision was not ready for a new love relationship. He still needed time to really get over his first one. James thought that him being with someone would be really unfair to that person. His nightmares, his bouts of anxiety and his past were a lot to spring on someone. He couldn’t even understand how Vision could be so patient with him, going so far as helping him at nights when the dreams were too much to bear. 

Sometimes, they would meet Sam over the campus. The Falcon, even if still an avenger, had decided to improve his skills.  He wanted, even more than ever, to help the veterans. Something had changed in him and now he had put some distance between him and the rest of the team. Especially with Steve. James had become friends with Sam pretty quickly. They shared courses so it had been easy to bond over an essay or an exam. Vision didn’t mind Sam either. 

James and Vision sometimes marvelled at the life they had. Even if James had come back from the war, with or without the arm, his chances to go to university like that would have been slim. He wouldn’t have been able to afford it. A job on the dock was what awaited him. Not that it wouldn't have been a good life. Everything was just so different then. Vision had been created by Tony twice. Not only him, but Thor and Bruce as well. But principally by Tony. How many chances would they need to realise that despite everything they were lucky to be there? Alive and well with a shot at a brand-new future. What about the world at large? Sam had told them that at least some of the Avengers had not learnt their lesson. He didn’t name them but it was pretty obvious who he was talking about.

Little by little, Vision had moved away from Wanda. He had tried to keep their relationship friendly but life had its way to separate people. She wasn’t capable of starting anew while he wanted to embrace everything about his future. She wasn’t the only one stuck in the past. When Steve and James met, the captain was always talking about the good old days. The games they played in the street, the fights Steve would always end up into. A real Norman Rockwell painting. Too good to be entirely true. Not really what James was remembering. 

Once, James had to cancel their little meeting because he was studying for a test. And the time after that, the Avengers were called on a natural disaster in South America. James didn’t miss Steve. That realisation was at the same time very disturbing and freeing. The romantic notion of feelings that lasted forever, even friendships, had imploded at that moment. To the end of the line only went until you had to draw that line in the sand. Maybe that moment had been moved forward in time enough. The culpability he felt vanished. James sometimes still felt like he owed Steve something. His life during the first war. He had almost died following him in the Captain’s quest against Hydra and lost himself for Steve. The scales were even once again.

Vision and James were friends now. Maybe it wouldn’t last forever. Maybe it would. What was important was right now. And right now, they have final tests coming up. No time to think about a long gone past. Tomorrow was a question for another day.

Chapter Text

Bruce Banner / Clint Barton

Looking at them, people would say they were like day and night. Nothing alike. One being about stealth, confidence, a marksman. Someone who was an agent through and through. The other was an unassuming quiet man who hid a raging beast inside him. A medicine man trying to help. But Hawkeye and Banner had more in common than met the eye. They were Avengers obviously but not only. For starters, they both had an anger management problem. Of course, not everybody transformed into a big green wild creature. Since Loki’s invasion, Clint was mad at the world.

The Hulk wasn’t at all what people thought of him. The cover didn’t make the book but time was needed to learn that. If Bruce had been willing to look closer he would have known that long before Sakaar. Hulk stopped in front of Betty Ross while the army was gunning at him. He loved her just like Bruce did and would never have armed her on purpose. He saw that she had no intention of doing him harm. The Hulk understood feelings a lot. Green Bean also knew when to save his Tin Man. The beast had taken an almost instant liking to the smaller man. Stark wasn’t afraid around them, even friendly. Hulk found him funny. That was why he had jumped to catch the falling suit of armour. He wasn’t only rage but a complex being. 

Barton’s anger was all bitterness and envy. A feeling he couldn’t allow to go inward so everybody became his target until it settled on Tony Stark. The man who had everything. It started with a friendly yet sarcastic banter. They could have been good friends really. Somewhere along the line, living off the other one’s money, the sarcastic jokes became bitter jabs. What he said in the raft had been the worst, he could admit that now. But Tony should never have sent them into the raft in the first place. Stark always had to react out of proportion to everything. Clint had never realised that Stark had all he wanted but nothing of what he really needed. Laura and the children were making Clint a rich man in everything that really counted. 

Banner and Barton were also cowards in their own way. Bruce was terrified about hurting innocents or his loved ones. The best way to avoid that had been to push everybody away from him. He wanted to spare Betty so he left her behind and fled as far away as he could. South America, India, he went anywhere and everywhere. Breathing exercises, relaxation or even ways to release his anger other than letting the monster out, Bruce had tried everything. Contrary to what Captain America believed, Tony’s introduction on the helicarrier was funny to him. And somewhat a relief. Someone was not afraid of him. Both him and his alter ego liked their science bro quite a lot, so he drove him away, never getting close enough to be called a friend. Merely a co-worker. 

Then, Wanda made his worst nightmare come true. She used her magic to release the Hulk on a populated area. He would never forget Johannesburg.  Tony had tried to stop him, to protect the people. One could argue that it was not his fault. Without the witch messing with his mind, he or even the Hulk would never have done that. He agreed with that. Although, if Bruce had been talking with his other self sooner, like Tony had suggested to him so many times, things might have been different. Maybe not. The possibility was still killing him a little bit more every day. 

What really made him flee that time was Natasha’s betrayal. He had believed in her from the start, what she promised him.  Believed in a spy when he didn’t have a good record with that kind of shadow people. General Ross might have been in the army, he didn’t exactly do things out in the open. Believed in a Shield agent, not that they give him any reason to trust them. Natasha was like a promise of control and a dream of love and being loved. She was strong enough, both physically and emotionally to stand by him unscaled. But then she pushed him in that deep hole to trigger the Hulk, when he had told her he didn’t want to fight anymore. After the battle, the beast had been the one who decided to flee this time.

Clint Barton was the kind of man who didn’t want to face his responsibilities. The kind of guy who wasn’t guilty of anything because he hadn’t been responsible for anything. He was just following Shield’s orders. Loki had him under his thumb, controlling his movements. What happened wasn’t his fault. Even when some reports stated how Dr Selvig, even under the same mind control, had had some kind of awareness. The god was directing him but the scientist had still inserted a flaw in the force field around the Tesseract during the battle of New York. Barton still claimed that Loki’s manipulation was stronger on him. If not, that would have meant that part of him wanted those agents dead. Not something he had any desire to think about. Shield never took the time to have him treated. He never asked either.

When Stark had a hand in creating Ultron, it had been so easy to take out his anger on him. Everybody did. Even Thor took their teammate by the throat. Clint didn’t do worse than that. Just some not so kind words here and there. Tony had even tried to talk to him about Wanda messing with his mind. His anger exploded again. How dared he? They were nothing alike. To use that mind-raping story felt like a slap in the archer's face. They all knew that the witch was using that kind of magic and that she hated Stark. Wanda had mind-raped everybody at the salvage yard. Except for him and Tony. But he claimed that she had him before, in Sokovia while retrieving the sceptre. Still he didn’t believe him one bit. Tony’s ego just wanted him front and centre once more.

Barton wanted to believe that he could make the hard choices when needed but he couldn’t even stick by the simple ones. Life on the farm was the dream that made everything worth it. Every mission, every death. Laura had been a Shield agent herself. They had met during a mission. Falling in love, the couple imagined a quiet life together. She didn’t hesitate to quit, to start a new life with him. Laura was staying alone in the middle of nowhere. Clint had not even been there for the birth of his children, being in an underground mission each time. Still, his retirement lasted a month. Then he bolted. As fast as he could. Captain America called and he didn’t even ask why. He went. Because he was scared of not being a hero anymore. Because he was scared of the normal life he had wanted, of the boredom away from the constant danger of his previous life. Being there for his wife and children had not been enough. His family knew how he was. There was no time for explanations he knew wouldn’t go his way. Somewhere he knew that it would be Laura’s last straw. He went anyway.

Laura finally revealed that they were alive all along shortly after the second battle of New York. She told him everything, the danger he left them in, Tony Stark saving them. She even told him how badly she had reacted to her saviour because she had trusted her husband to do the right thing. It had been a raw reaction she regretted almost immediately. Laura had apologised to Tony as soon as she had the opportunity. They had a new life now. New names, new schools, jobs and everything. She wanted a divorce. All he could think about was ‘They are alive!’. Clint would give them anything, even a divorce, relieved as he was. 

Cooper didn’t want to see him right now. He was too angry, too hurt. The boy felt like he had been abandoned by his own father. It would take time. A lot of time. Maybe their relationship would never recover completely. Lila was not opposed to seeing him regularly but she didn’t know what to tell him. Clint was her father but she couldn’t trust him anymore. Their meetings were awkward and quiet. There was a distance between them now. The archer couldn't pull them back together. Nathaniel didn’t know him at all but he was an outgoing little boy not afraid of strangers. So, Clint could hold him anyway. At least he had that.

Everything in Clint was telling him that it wasn’t his fault and he was feeling like running as far as he could. Anywhere as long as he didn't have to see the disappointment in their eyes. He never meant for things to go this far. His family could understand, should understand. He wanted to forget the past and start anew. He would do better now. Whether it was his responsibility or not was not the problem really. His family had been the ones to suffer, everytime. He had to stay. He had to make things right. Or at least he had to try.

Bruce had been angry at Tony when he had come back from Sakaar. The genius had just fled it seemed. That wasn’t the thing to do. Not now that the threat Tony had warned them about for so long was at their door. Nobody had listened when they still had time to prepare, not even Bruce. He wasn’t that kind of Doctor, not that kind of friend either. But Tony had been working with General Ross, that’s what he had been told and that hurt Bruce a lot. Now he knew that Captain America was really good at giving half-truth, not totally lying so he could stay righteous in his opinion and sway the people around him. Really, Bruce was mad at himself now. He had ran away for less than what Tony had been through. A burden he should have partly shared. The murder bot had been his creation too. The general was in prison now. Thanks to Tony Stark no doubt.

Bruce had this idea that Tony was like an unbreakable rock. Very confident, with yes, a big ego but he had ground to feel that way. It was ok if Bruce were failing because Tony would be there, whatever would happen. Bruce had always had more faith in his science bro than in the guy on steroids in a star spangled uniform. No one was that strong. Tony had looked out for everybody for so long. The avengers didn’t even bother thanking him. He was a billionaire. Whatever the team was spending, on missions or for their daily lives would not really make a dent on his bank account. Tony was still having a full-time job, inventing, upgrading things for S.I., but they still were asking everything of him without even a thank you.

After the fight, after knowing how Tony had saved them all again, Bruce finally decided to stop running. Away from his friends and away from himself. He contacted Betty after all those years. Her phone number was still the same. Perhaps she was waiting for him to come back. She was happy to hear from him and agreed to meet. The fact that she was single again didn’t go unnoticed but those things would take time. He had to prove to her he wouldn’t leave again. 

He also contacted Tony via Colonel Rhodes. Stark wasn’t back living on Earth, why would he? People, from the President of the U.S.A. to someone insignificant like himself, had to go through Rhodes if they wanted anything from Tony. Even a meeting. They met at Shawarma Palace, the same one they went to all those years ago. They liked it back then. Bruce apologised profusely and explained what happened since Ultron. Tony shared the details of what happened during the last two years. It was terrifying how things got out of hand mainly because of one-man stubbornness.

Tony was a forgiving man. Really he didn’t want to live in the bitterness of the past. He just wanted people’s sincere regrets. The billionaire had forgiven them before, many times, the avengers forgetting about basic human decency. At the time, they regretted nothing. They all had their reasoning behind their actions, absolving themselves of any wrongdoing. That kind of generosity got Tony nowhere. But now, they would try at being science bros again. Slowly and respectfully. Tony had created his own kind of Bifrost and Bruce really wanted to poke his nose into that. He also met Tony’s kids. Brilliant minds of their own. Bruce would make sure that his loved ones knew how appreciative he was of them. Both Bruce Banner and the Hulk would.

Chapter Text

Stephen Strange / Wanda Maximoff

Stephen had once been a very bitter man, angry at the world at large. His hands were broken. The tentative repairs were doing him no good. Surgeons were telling him not to do more surgery, not to do more damage. What was an artist without his hands? He had been a great surgeon, the best one! Each time he was operating, it had been like painting a masterpiece only even more delicate than the most intricate wonder. The doctor had been saving people who were condemned by every other practician on the planet. He felt like a god because what he was doing was nothing short of miracles. Was he arrogant? Yes. But he had so many reasons to be. Stephen wanted his hands back. At any cost. So much so that he ended up in the middle of nowhere, Nepal.

The ancient one had taught him so much. Things that his old self would have never thought possible. He didn’t believe her at first actually. Jonathan Pangborn, who gave him the way to Kamar-Taj, used this knowledge to walk again after being diagnosed paraplegic. With his newfound magic, he could have had his hands back. Stephen could simply have done the same as Pangborn and restarted his life where he left it before that car accident. Sometimes he couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like. Some truths of the universe would have never been revealed to him, he would never have died time and time again fighting Dormammu. Despite all that, if he could do it again, he would take exactly the same path. He had no regrets now, especially not that car accident.

Stephen had been taught very well. It was his turn to teach someone. No arrogance now. Wanda would be difficult to manage. As a sorcerer of Kamar-Taj, it was his duty to train her. She had been helpful during the war. Stephen couldn’t help but think about the recordings that had been released. Her training under Hydra. He couldn’t forget how gleeful she was while torturing the minds of people that the shadow agency had scooped off the streets. Psychiatry wasn’t his field of expertise. The little he knew about was sending chills down his spine. Time would tell.

Wanda was lost. Vision didn’t want to be with her anymore. They would still be friends he had promised. He was spending his time away on the campus for his studies and even more so now living with Bucky. Steve wasn’t too pleased about that either. More than pulling away for them, it was more like they weren’t needed anymore. She had thought that choosing her hatred toward Stark would be enough for her to carry on. A reason to live for. She had made that decision in good conscience. Why was she missing the android so much? 

Everything was his fault! Tony Stark! He should be dead already. When he was away, she had been happy with Vision. They fought sometimes but every couple did. They had a good relationship going. She didn’t understand how and why it ended that way. After the battle, Vision had vanished to where Stark had been hiding. He wasn’t the same when he came back. Stark had, at best, talked to him against her. Wanda suspected that the android had simply been reprogrammed. Stark was the kind of guy who would do such a thing. No respect for anyone or anything. Stark had always been against her. He didn’t want her to be an Avenger, to be happy. Her dark thoughts were making her magic seep between her fingers. Too bad that Stark was out of her range.

Her anger grew even more when she thought how Stark had revived her. She owed him her life. Vision’s existence too. Steve should have won. Would have if Stark had not taken his opportunity away, even though all the hard work had been done by Captain America. Typical Stark. The man had never done a day of work in his life. He wouldn’t start even during such a crucial event. Some people really had everything, stealing every opportunity to get higher than everyone else. She couldn’t let that happen anymore. Especially not to Steve, who had always been so nice to her.

The U.N. was obviously keeping the Avengers. They had seen how useful they were first-hand. They wanted the accords to be implemented even more than ever. They wanted training scheduled, psych evaluation, reports after missions and what not. As if they still had to prove their values. The only one with mental problems was Stark. Steve made him step down from the team because of that. He had built a homicidal bot. Who does that? She wanted for him to destroy himself. Of course, he had to take the rest of the world down with him. Talking about an ego. Stark had been responsible for so many deaths, including all of her family.

The U.N. wanted her to train with that Strange guy. As if she needed any training. Wanda was in perfect control of her powers. She was the most powerful witch in the universe. She had made Thanos move back while fighting her. That wizard could not teach her anything she didn’t already know. She most probably would teach HIM a thing or two. Those wizards needed artefacts for them to do anything remotely magical. The sling rings for example. The portals were handy, she had to admit. Maybe she would manage to get one for her personal use. To find Stark wherever he was hiding and finally finish her lifetime mission of getting her revenge.

Wanda hated Kamar-Taj with a passion. She didn’t have access to anything. The library was closed to her when other students could go and take books as they pleased. Nobody but Dr Strange and Wong were talking to her. It wasn’t her fault if they were scared of her. She couldn’t control their fear. Only her own. She wasn’t permitted to go outside the grounds of the temple. She didn’t think that she would have found a lot of interesting things to do in the middle of Nepal anyway. She was yet in another prison. Time was on her side. She could play nice, the good misguided little girl. That little routine did wonders on Steve and his team. Surely it would work here too. 

Stephen was taking Wanda in the mirror dimension almost every day. The woman was easily frustrated and her only answer in those moments was rageful attacks, no precision, no finesse. She wasn’t listening to him at all. The Ancient One had been, in her own way, very patient with him. Even when she left him stranded on top of Mount Everest. Back then, he had difficulties to get past everything that he thought were universal truths. Inner peace was not easily achieved. Especially after life changing events. Choosing to put everything behind, to let go of his pain and frustration hadn’t been easy for him. His arrogance and fear kept him from learning that it was not about him. 

Wanda had built her whole personality around her animosity towards Stark. Growing up in a country broken by a civil war, she had needed something to focus on. The war consumed everything. Basic things were hard to find. Stephen understood the psychological impact of the Stark name on the side of that shell. But now she was an adult. It had been proven that the bomb was a fake one. S.I. had a reputation of excellency with less than 0.01% of failing. In any way, you did not kill the CEO of a car marker industry when your parents died in a traffic accident. Worst case scenario, Obadiah Stane would have been the one responsible. He had been the active CEO back then, Tony being more of the head of Research and Development. Wanda actively refuted any proof he would show her, any logic he would try to explain to her. 

Stephen was worried. Teaching Wanda the mystic arts wasn’t maybe the right thing to do. Her sense of right and wrong was very biassed. She stayed with people as long as they were useful to her in some ways. While Hydra was giving her power, she worked for them willingly. Then it was Ultron and then the Avengers. Stephen knew that she was staying in the sanctum because she wanted something from them. But once she would have it, she would go. Simple as that. Her loyalties were to herself. Wanda was already dangerous as she was. Teaching more wasn’t the solution.

Her mental state seemed to be fragile at best. Students would often report how she was talking to herself, always about Stark, always with her magic around her like a red halo. The pupils were protected of course but still it didn’t bode well. Stephen was trying his best to talk to her, to make her see that in order to grow in her magic and in her life, she needed to let go of the past. He shared his history trying to make a comparison between their lives. Of course, her life had been worse than his on many levels, he never thought otherwise. He wasn’t a psychologist. 

When he asked her if she wanted to see an impartial person, to whom she could explain all her feelings and thoughts, she exploded. She wasn’t a crazy person! She didn’t need that! A lot of people were going to a psychologist, he explained, not because of mental health issues but to be able to understand events in their lives and such. And even if the person had a mental illness of any kind, there was no shame in that. That wasn’t their fault. Even less to blame because they were actually taking steps to be better, to feel better. Wanda didn’t want to hear that. 

Stephen tried a new approach. The mind stone had been maybe affecting her in some ways. He asked her how she felt while that stone was in her mind, in her body, giving her powers and changing her forever. Vision could actually feel inside the mind stone if he concentrated. But of course, it was embedded in the middle of his forehead. Could she still feel it? Stephen even asked the android to come and maybe try to scan her somehow with the infinity stone. Wanda had thought that Vision was coming to see her, that he missed her very much just like she did. She didn’t take it very well when the examination started.

Vision said that he could feel a pull toward her. The stone was interested in her creation so to speak. As much as the experiment had changed her, it had worked because she had something in her DNA that made her the right candidate. It allowed her to survive. But Vision didn’t think that it had changed anything in her mind per say. It didn’t alter the brain chemistry. Hydra never really cared about the mental state of their members as long as they were getting what they needed out of them.

Time went by. Slowly but surely, Wanda fell into madness. Everybody was against her, even when they were just bringing her food. She wasn’t getting out of her bedroom anymore. Some days, Stephen could talk to her, others she was unreachable. She had wrecked everything inside her chamber. Her eyes would look at the same point for hours without seeing it. Talking to herself, it seemed that she was living another life on the inside. They needed to make sure what was really happening. So, Stephen looked inside using one of the spells he had found in one of the numerous books of the library. 

Wanda and Vision were a couple living different lives in different times. They all had in common something somewhat idealistic.  A bit like in all those TV shows he had been watching while growing up. A wife and a husband, children. Twins actually. The day to day family life really. Sometimes, they had little fights, little problems but all would be resolved during a family hug. Nothing really bad ever happened to them. No civil war, no invasion, nothing of the like. Wanda was resurfacing less and less, lost in her happiness. The rare times she was back to herself, she had trouble understanding where she was. She wasn’t staying aware for very long. Stephen just had to make sure that her power would be restricted just in case. Kamar-Taj would take very good care of her. As a sorcerer supreme, it was part of his duties after all.

Chapter Text

Thor / Guardians of the Galaxy / Carol Danvers

Being a king was absolutely not what he had thought back then when he was the prince who thought that glory came with battles won. He had wanted the position so much, thinking that he would lead his people towards new horizons. Now, Asgard had been destroyed and they were living on Midgard. Not what he expected. Meetings were a thing of Midgard no doubt. Thor had to go to many every day. They were repeating the same things again and again, to make sure that all parties were happy with the results. Odin always made it look so easy, even glamorous.  When his father was standing all regal, his sceptre in his hand, his eye on you, nobody would have dared to say a word. Odin was the conqueror, born to be king. Thor wasn’t any of that. Loki had been right during his first coronation. Now, he didn't want to be king anymore. The nine realms were certainly doing better on their own. The elves, the dwarves or even the frost giants didn’t need someone to tell them what was best for their people. The years Thor had spent on Midgard had taught him a lot about autonomy and liberty. Midgard’s ways were not perfect in everything but the days of colonialism appeared to be a thing of the past. So, it seemed anyway.

New Asgard was doing very well. The Aesir had constructed, rapidly, anything that they would need. Some were even working on rebuilding here on Midgard, another Bifrost. They didn’t hesitate to share their technology with the rest of their new world. Some of his people were even going to work outside of New Asgard. Everything was going smoothly. They didn’t really need his input. Loki would have been a better king. He was a better player at the political game. Carol Danvers and the guardians of the galaxy had come to spend some time in New Asgard before their departure from the planet. Thor liked them. Especially Quill and his team. They were really a family like the Avengers should have been but never really managed to be. The god was looking more and more at Valkyrie thinking that she would make a great queen. And he would be able to carry on doing what he was really made to do. Maybe he wasn’t being fair to her. 

Carol Danvers thought she had been doing a better job in the Kree side of the universe. Earth already had enough protectors and that wasn’t the case of every planet in the galaxy. She might as well go where she was needed. Captain Marvel would come back regularly just to see some people in particular. Her best friend and her daughter, some people in New Asgard also. Earth was now on the map as a big player inside the entire galaxy. For now, it would be relatively protected. Others would rapidly know about Earth’s victory against Thanos. But there would come a time when it would be all but forgotten or when yet another warlord would want to test that strength. Then she would have to come back.

Until then, Carol would travel the universe, make allies maybe along the way, and meet the guardians regularly. She didn’t think at first that they were that important. Now, they had been proving her wrong. It wasn’t a bad thing to be reminded that you weren’t the only one with abilities, that you weren’t the only one in the universe capable of saving it. Or the smartest tool in the shed. Tony Stark came to meet them really quick a couple of days after the battle. Mainly because Colonel Rhodes had asked him to. The man was a hero but didn’t want the title and was not comfortable with people, especially not with his ex-team.  Seeing him like that, she surprised herself with a rush of protectiveness towards the man. He could defend himself though and much more than that. The other Captain was having that all righteous attitude again when Tony avoided talking to them all together. She hoped suddenly that her own attitude had nothing to do with Captain America’s.

Rocket immediately bonded with Stark. All that technology was unbelievable. The man knew what he was talking about. He wanted to borrow – steal – everything. Even the pieces who were for him out of date, had a logic that was rather interesting to study. People on Earth didn’t always have the knowledge but they certainly had a lot of ingenuity. They had spent hours talking about engineering. Peter and Gamora had to come get him. Groot had been playing his new video game. Stark had just given him a whole bunch. The teenager was happy. As much as teenagers could be anyway.

Peter’s team knew that he liked being on Earth again but that it was making him uneasy as well. He had few memories attached to this planet, some not so happy. So much so that he wanted to go back doing guardians stuff. Of course, they would come back once in a while. Peter would want to go on his mother’s grave to tell her about all his adventures. Rocket wanted to come back and bring Tony technology that would be worth a good science binge between the two of them. With Tony’s kids as well. Rocket would never admit that he liked to banter with Tony, that he liked the man really. He didn’t have feelings. The others were not opposed of course. But for now, they would go back to Xandar, see if they could help there and let the galaxy know about Thanos’ demise. Someone needed to check if all of the mad titan's so -called children were down or unable to form another army to fulfil their father’s goal. They should be dead. One couldn’t be sure enough. 

Thor took Valkyrie on the hill overlooking their village. The sight was very different from the golden splendour of Asgard. It had been built to look like a little Norwegian fishing town, to honour their shared history. Things had changed drastically though. He was a bit nervous. Maybe she wouldn’t want the responsibility that he was going to put on her shoulders. Heavy duties he didn’t even want for himself. Thor couldn’t be the one to lead the Aesir further. It wasn’t in him. Valkyrie, even if really surprised, was actually really proud to have been chosen. She needed to be part of something again. She didn’t want to forget anymore. She didn’t want to turn away anymore. Her self-imposed exile was finally over. It was time to turn a new page for the both of them. In the end, Valkyrie was happy and full of hope. Thor was relieved. His people would be in good hands. 

So, they all left the earth. Carol would be tagging along until a certain point where she would go her own way. They spent their time arguing about who was in charge, to everybody’s fun. It was Peter Quill’s ship so he was the captain. But Thor was a god and clearly the smartest, so he should be the captain. The argument would never be settled. It didn’t need to be. 

Carol left them for Hala.  She would bring the news and carry on protecting the people there. The Skrulls were still in danger. She had warned the Supreme Intelligence and the Kree. They weren’t exactly listening to her. Nothing out in the open of course. She wasn’t so stupid not to understand that when the guardians defeated Ronan it was again the Kree trying to impose their views on their side of the galaxy. Ronan was a radical, unlike most of them but the people that would force an alliance with Thanos needed to be dealt with rapidly. The mad titan’s ideas needed to disappear altogether. If she could even erase the knowledge of the infinity stones, the better. To think that she had been working for them. At least, she knew from the inside out how they were operating. Things would be easier.

Peter was playing that same music all the time, singing badly along. Thor had never taken the time to appreciate that part of the Midgardian culture. It was really pleasing. Really. But the repetition was getting on his nerves. Why did he need to put the same ten ones again and again? Surely, people from Midgard had made a lot more than just ten. They were a young race but still. Thor remembered that Darcy was always thumbing with something she called an iPod. The device was meant to contain at least ten thousand songs! Tony would always have what he called ‘classic rock’ blasting in his workshop. If only Thor had asked for one when they were still on Earth. 

Peter liked those songs obviously because they were the ones his mother chose especially for him. She had taken the time to make him a tape. It was his new little treasure. Especially considering the first one had been destroyed. If Thor were annoyed with it, Peter would absolutely deny that he was putting them on repeat on purpose. Of course, that was part of the fun. Tony had given him a device compatible with the rest of his tech with a lot of songs. Stark had told him he needed to catch up a little with the culture of his birth world. Peter would put them on at some point. Not now though. He was having too much fun driving Thor crazy. 

Xandar just had its population back. Thanos had killed half of them when he came to retrieve the power stone. They were struggling to say the least. Being a hero wasn’t always about fighting the bad guys. At first, the guardians just worked on reopening trade routes, on bringing necessities where it was dearly needed. They made many round trips. Thor was actually really good at all the diplomatic things, especially the drinking part. The good side of being a literal god was the difficulty in getting drunk. Even the strongest alien meads weren’t enough. Sometimes Thor wished to get drunk and to forget many unpleasant things.

They were flying everywhere. Once their cargo hold was full they would just go back to Earth. Sometimes before that. Thanks to Rocket and Tony’s cooperation, a lot of technology actually became a lot more advanced than the natural evolution of things. Engines capable of taking people from Earth way further than the milky way. Very long length communication to go with. Tony made clean energy a reality for all, saving the planet once more. Rocket helped him quite a lot with that. As if Tony and the guardians wanted to save them all again and again. The Aesir, under Valkyrie’s guidance, managed to build another Bifrost. Earth was making new allies with all of the other realms known to the Asgardians. Their technology combined with the one Rocket was bringing back and the one on Earth opened new doors for everyone. A new way of living.

Thor would often hear stories about a trickster god while travelling. Loki had really been to so many places. Thor had no idea of his brother’s life before everything went down. Thor had always been ignorant to things he didn’t wish to see really. The god regretted deeply all those years he had taken for granted. Loki’s ways weren’t as bad as Odin made them to be. After all, his little brother had saved his people by sacrificing his own life. A lot of those stories seemed to be from a time when Loki was quite young, learning all he could about magic. Others not so far away. Without realising, Thor was following his brother’s trail around the galaxy. Always a little late to catch the guy. Thor couldn’t help but wonder if that person was actually his brother. Loki had faked his death quite a lot in the past. Hope was a dangerous feeling. Thor just needed to catch on that man and make sure. The longer it was taking him, the more he hoped that he would see his brother again.

Chapter Text

Peter Parker / Friday / Happy Hogan / Laura Barton

Peter and Harley got along like a house on fire. Like brothers from the very start. When Cooper was around it would be even worse than that. When Tony would let them go to the lab, it would either be inventing crazy stuff and upgrading their armours or they would make everything explode. And to be real, the second option was happening more often than not. Tony did like everything that would go boom so he was not complaining. When they were actually inventing, it was something beautiful to watch. Harley was good at making weapons, like his potato gun and Peter would be good at any bioengineering. Cooper was the glue to make both into something incredible. Peter was still Spiderman, working principally in New York. He was also an Avenger but he has asked to be called out only in case of a planet threatening kind of problem. He had seen too much considering his young age and participated in too many battles already. Harley was to take the Iron Man’s mantle in the future. In the meantime, he was known under the name of Iron Lad for training purposes and also because there was no saying no to the teenager. Tony had tried. Harley had just built his own armour in the family barn. He had been more than ready to use it. Tony had learnt with Spiderman already that the teenagers wouldn’t be stopped. So, he settled on giving them the best protective suit of armour he could build. 

Cooper was more of a behind the scene kind of guy. He was kind of their Jarvis and more. With Ned, Peter’s best friend, they were simply the best at what they were doing. They could help repairs on the fly, hack into almost anything and anywhere, make plans and analyse a situation like anyone’s business. That kind of thing. Cooper already knew that his sister, Lila, would be the next superhero with a bow. That would suit her a lot better than it would have done him. She was already better than him at archery anyway. She loved to train with both their mother and their father. Cooper was still mad at Clint. He knew that he needed to get past that. If not for his relationship with Clint, at least for himself. That was easier said than done. He couldn’t even call the man father without getting incredibly angry. Cooper was making an effort each time they would meet. Things weren’t easy and wouldn’t be for quite a while.

Friday had had her own issues with her big brother. They had talked it out very openly and logically. She was pleased to see him go to university and open himself to the world at large. He was moving on from Wanda as well. Sometimes she envied his body. If she had one she would be maybe more helpful to her Boss. If she had one she would have gone straight away to find him in Siberia. She could take her father in her arms. Boss had asked her if she wanted him to build her one. Friday asked for some time to think about it. The decision was not an easy one, her father understood that. She needed time to think about it logically. But really it was more of an emotional need. Her father gave her the perfect alternative. Both. A body she could take and leave as she pleased. Just like uploading and downloading herself. Once ready, Tony taught her everything like a child. Her balance, walking, writing with her hands. He made sure to make her taste buds so she could really enjoy the food, something Vision didn’t have at first. Until Tony created an equivalent for her. So, he gave some to his first son. Vision’s cooking really improved after that. Tony would often take her to Earth to show her everything the world could bring her. He was also there for her when she was feeling overwhelmed. Friday was able to learn all those human things at her own pace. She understood her brother a little bit more after that. Feelings were very complicated.

Happy Hogan and May Parker got married a year after the invasion. Tony was so excited by the whole prospect that he promised to pay for everything and then some. Typical Tony but they wanted something intimate. May chose Laura and Jodie to be her bridesmaids. The three women had become really close since they had all been beamed up in Tony’s living room. They had a lot in common, life experiences and bright children. Happy thought it was very obvious that he would choose Tony to stand next to him at the altar. Apparently not that obvious because Tony looked really surprised, almost shocked when he was asked. Happy couldn’t help feeling sad seeing that. Tony had really been mistreated by people. He really looked like the kid that was never picked to play with others. Tony accepted of course, with one of the brightest smiles Happy had ever seen on him.

Peter would walk his aunt down the aisle. When May asked him to, her nephew cried. They meant the world to each other. They only had each other for so long. Now, May would have Happy. Peter had found himself a father and a brother of his own. Plus, the Barton’s children were like very close cousins. The Parkers weren’t alone anymore. Their special link wouldn’t change despite everything, just increasing welcoming everybody that mattered. 

They married in Queens. That was their friendly neighbourhood after all. The reception was held in the Parkers' house. Nothing fancy. Just good friends and nice food. Everybody was there. All the ones who had been beamed up. The kids wouldn’t let Tony alone talk about their schools, science and having food related weird experiments. Were blueberries good on pizza? The unanimous answer was no. Who would put fruit on a pizza anyway? They all laughed at Peter when he mentioned how he liked the Hawaiian kind. Tony was really good with children. Maybe one day it would be his turn. All things considered he already had twelve children. Three bots: Dum-E, U and Butterfingers. Three A.I.s he raised: Jarvis, Veronica who he was talking to once a day at the very least so she wouldn’t feel lonely orbiting the Earth and Friday. And six adopted human children: Harley, Peter, Kat, Cooper, Lila and Nathaniel. That was enough for now.

Harley, Cooper and Peter all went to MIT. Tony couldn’t be prouder even though he made sure to stay in the background. The boys wanted to succeed by themselves. They weren’t exactly in the same field but they always had each other back. Lila and Kat would be going to the University of New York in medicine. They wanted to help after what they witnessed during the invasion. Even if Lila were to be the next Hawkeye, she thought that knowledge in medicine would still be more than useful during and after battles. Lila just thought that being a nurse or a doctor was really being heroic on its own and that was just the kind of person she wanted to be. Nathaniel still had time to choose his future.

Friday never wanted to go too far away from her father. If an A.I. could be traumatised by an event, Siberia had been it for her. She was too young back then to handle that properly. She had panicked. Now maybe she could have coped with such an event but she wasn’t about to try that theory out. Tony would always encourage her to make her own experiences. The baby bird needed to leave the nest at some point in order to fly. She was worried that maybe Tony wanted her to go away. He reassured her quickly that it would never be the case. Tony just wanted her to live her life the way she wanted. He didn’t want to be an obstacle. She just really wanted to stay with him. Friday would go back to being the resident A.I. if she had to. That was their first argument. They didn’t shout or scream. They just had different opinions. Tony would always let his children do what they thought was right for them. He would always be there for them.

Tony never went back to live on Earth. Of course, he would go regularly for supplies and more often than not he would spend a day or more with his family and friends. He would never have asked them to come and live with him on the moon. They were already spending most of their vacations up there. He felt really lucky as it was. The man would not be involved in Earth’s affairs like he used to. He had always tried to be on the people’s side but the people had turned their back to him. He was tired of not being enough. For his own mental state, he needed to stay away from all that mess. Now, they were changing their minds, praising him for everything he had ever done. But it felt hollow to him. How long would it last? Tony didn’t need their approval anymore. If they felt like they were losing someone important, that wasn’t his problem anymore. He still loved inventing and tinkering. Now that the Aesir and Rocket were bringing cool science stuff regularly, he couldn't help but build things to make Earth a better place for his family. If the world at large would benefit from it, he wasn’t really bothered.

Harley and Tony were training together at least twice a week. Peter would often tag along. The kids had ideas that Tony wouldn’t have thought about, ever. They really were the next generation, the future he had always wanted. Harley was also a very good pilot, very intuitive. Peter and Harley were real friends, almost brothers in everything that mattered but blood. They didn’t always agree but they knew how to solve that in a peaceful manner. Something the Captain and he never managed to do. Sometimes, he would talk about them with Rhodey. The reinstated Colonel was in charge of the Avengers now. A very difficult task indeed. Tony wanted his friend to show his children the way. The civil war should be a thing of the past and never happen ever again.  

Harley and Peter were living proof that superheroes were not only adults. Tony and Rhodey and more were there for them. The world was maybe full of youngsters struggling with powers of any kind or with a mind that could change the future or both even. Very discreetly, Tony opened a school where children with powers could learn how to deal with that side of their life in a secure environment all the while getting a good education. A sort of Hogwarts for enhanced children. Tony almost wanted to sort them out into houses, especially considering they were sleeping in dormitories. But Rhodey thought it was going a little bit too far. The man was no fun. Vision was a teacher in the school, in philosophy and mind power. The program was really thorough.

The Avengers also put up a kind of summer camp for all the little geniuses of the world. By ‘Avengers’ it was really Tony and Rhodes. Everybody tended to forget that the colonel was a graduate from MIT, a literal rocket scientist. He knew a thing or two outside of being an army man.  The children would be chosen thanks to a program written by Tony, taking into consideration their application essays, their results in school but also any outside accomplishments. After all, Harley’s potato gun was a piece of art that couldn’t be noted. It would be a shame not to have an ingenious mind like that in their ranks.

Peter, Harley, Cooper, Lila and the others had all a bright future in front of them. Thanks to their own capacities, thanks to members of their families. Also, thanks to Tony Stark. Because they were still alive thanks to him to actually have a future ahead of them. Because someone like him, a genius, billionaire, philanthropist had had faith in them, giving them opportunities that maybe they wouldn’t have been able to have without him. Not for his money. For the open mind who would give them the tools to build the best of themselves. Tony had always looked toward the future, thinking way ahead contrary to most people around him. He wanted to build a better future and protect it despite everybody who didn’t believe him or in him. They would do just the same or like he always told them, they would do even better.

Chapter Text

James Rhodes / Steve Rogers

“What can I do for you Mr. Rogers?” asked Rhodes, already tired at the prospect of the conversation to come.

Steve didn’t appreciate the tone or the lack of title. The Avengers, especially the new ones, had stopped calling him Captain on a technicality. So, what if he didn’t go through the proper channel, he had proved his values more often than not. He was an excellent leader and an even better tactician. It was common knowledge. Even the Smithsonian said so. But he would be the better man once again and let it slide. He didn’t come to start a fight. Quite the contrary. After all that happened, things needed to go back to the way they were before. The Avengers needed to be a family again. Steve had come to get the wayward son back into the fold.

Tony was being difficult as per usual. That was in his nature. There was no way to contact him directly. Rhodes was taking his job as a glorified secretary a little too seriously. The colonel wanted to earn forgiveness but he had done nothing wrong in the first place. A real friend shouldn’t let the engineer have his little tantrums. Especially when they tended to tear the world apart. Again, Steve had decided to keep his feelings to himself for now. They would indulge Tony for a while. Once the smaller man would be back in the family, they would get him on the right track once again. Steve would even let Tony have his moment of glory. An ego like that needed to be stroked regularly after all.

For now, he just wanted to talk to the man. Steve was persuaded that after a good conversation, Tony would understand why things went this way. Tony had made the mistake to follow General Ross because he felt guilty after Ultron. It wasn’t the right choice to make but the misstep was understandable. Steve was willing to overlook a lot of things.  The least Tony could do was to actually listen to him.

But that was it. Rhodes made it abundantly clear. Tony didn’t want to talk to any of them. ‘He didn’t have to,’ said the colonel. Anger was filling him but he was trying to keep it cool. You didn’t catch flies with vinegar. Steve pleaded with Rhodes for the future of the Avengers. He tried every argument he could think about but nothing was working.

“How am I supposed to apologise if Tony refuses to talk to me?” he finally blurted out, not that he actually planned to say sorry anytime soon. He would never regret what he had to do in order to save Bucky.

“Tony had already forgiven you.”

Wait, what? Tony had forgiven him. For what exactly? Steve wished they agreed on the accords, he really did. He knew that Tony had been doing what he believed in and that was all any of them could do, should do really. If Tony had needed him, Steve would have been there for him. Even in families, sometimes, members could have arguments. Tony should have talked to them, should have warned them about the accords and everything that was happening on the political scene. The only regret Steve had was that things went this far. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone with T’Challa, leaving Tony behind. At that moment, he just wanted to take Bucky to a safe place. He wasn’t thinking properly.

“You still think you have done nothing to be forgiven for.” Said Rhodey quietly, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. He didn’t do it for you.”

Rhodes was not as forgiving as Tony but he understood why he felt that way. Tony didn’t want to live in bitterness. Resentment was corrosive and he hated it. Those dark feelings were eating at him, taking all the space when he could have been thinking about so many other things. Tony had a family now. He had done a lot of work on himself while he was staying on the moon with only Friday and the bots for company. Since Tony had decided to forgive people, it allowed him to move forward with his life. The Rogue’s actions were not weighing on him anymore. The Rogues' acts were their responsibilities. They couldn’t influence him anymore. They couldn’t use his emotions against him. He was free.

Tony was a lot stronger than Rhodey on that. The colonel could be civil enough when he had to. He didn’t need to like the people to be able to work with them. He wouldn’t have gone very far within the army otherwise. Half his job meant dealing with stupid, selfish or despicable people. General Ross had been the one to bring the accords to them. Not the one to write them. The man was definitely in the three categories. That didn’t mean that everything was wrong in the U.N. document. Ross was the secretary of state back then. They couldn’t exactly work against him that easily. If only Steve, Sam and the others had actually read the document maybe things would have been a lot different.

Steve was still there frowning as if he was trying hard to understand what was happening. Tony had few words with Natasha but Rhodes was pretty sure that she had understood where Tony was standing. He had forgiven them but he did not forget. Tony had this habit to learn from his mistakes. He wouldn’t let the Rogues anywhere near him or his family if he could avoid that. They actually talked very openly about the Avengers. Rhodey, Vision and Peter. The three of them were to be part of the team once again and wanted to carry on the good work. Tony would never tell them what to do with their lives but he did worry. Enough to give them the possibility to be beamed up somewhere else at their will without him activating the process. They all knew what had happened between the Rogues and Tony and in all honesty weren’t too sure that they would have other people’s back. Harley was just training for now but the kid actually hated anybody who had hurt the man who was like a father to him. Rhodey and Vision were not completely in his good books yet but they were working on it.

Steve was only a name among many heroes now. He wasn’t in a leading position and enhanced people seemed to appear all over the place. He wasn’t a special cookie anymore. His family was scattered away. Bucky was studying thanks to Tony. The billionaire wanted something on them. His friend was acclimating to his new world a way that Steve had never been able to. He was a hero out of time. Everything was so fast, so loud, too much for him. Once Bucky had asked him why he didn’t embrace that second chance at life. He could try to go to college himself. Or just try what the world has to offer. They had a fantastic art course and Steve had always been so good at drawing. He could have even used that gift to do some good. He could draw faces to help apprehend criminals. Steve didn’t want that. He had been around on his motorbike before, to find himself. He would carry on being a hero. That was his calling.

Natasha wasn’t in his team anymore but that wouldn’t have changed a lot between them. She wasn’t talking to any of them anymore. Not even Clint. The woman was always on edge it seemed and wanted to disappear in the crowd most of the time. The Black Widow needed to disappear completely. Steve suspected it was due to her conversation with Tony but he didn’t know what it had been about. Natasha didn’t want to talk about it. She had told him that she had been playing the game. Her judgement of character had been all wrong and she had made the wrong choice following Captain America. Shield made her believe that she was changing for the better. Steve made her feel like she was doing some good work, wiping the red in her ledger. In the end,Natasha was still the girl from the red room. The people who gave her orders might have changed, the method had stayed the same. She was still the same. Steve tried to convince her otherwise. Natasha looked at him with a small smile and left him behind.

Clint was an instructor for the new Avengers but not on active duty anymore. He should have stayed retired the first time around. He had not found more glory following Captain America. Things could have turned a lot worse. His family was alive and kicking. Tony had given them a new life. Steve couldn’t help but wonder if the animosity they felt towards Clint was because of the billionaire. The smaller man probably had talked against the Rogues and especially Clint. When Tony started babbling, he couldn’t be stopped so easily. He had been saying that he had forgiven them. Steve still believed that Tony would be the kind of person to influence others without even thinking of the repercussions. He had this need to prove constantly that he was right. Clint was happy as he was now. He had thought his family dead for so long. He didn’t feel he was in a position to ask anything of them when he had abandoned them in the first place. His Ronin days were not a good example to give to his children. It felt like a second chance that he wasn’t about to destroy. Not this time. Whatever Steve would say about it. 

Sam was still an Avenger but in the rescue team. The wings were built just for that, to help in case of natural disaster. Sam and his partner Riley had been the best pararescue airmen there was. His wingman demise had put a stop to that. Sam was feeling the calling once again. Falcon wanted to go back to his roots. He simply wanted to help. On the right side of the law. That was all he ever wanted. Sam had told Steve how he had been blinded by his aura, by his reputation. The man was disappointed in himself. He had not seen the signs even when right in front of him. As a counsellor he should have realised what was happening. Sam had gone back to school then because he really had to review the basics of his profession at the very least. With Bucky and even Vision, they were going forward. Without Steve.

The Avengers had always been difficult to deal with. The amount of paperwork for a mission only was difficult to even fathom. Rhodey was spending more time in his office than on the ground. The U.N. personnel were very helpful and everything was going smoothly. Tony had decided to stay away from all that, preferring his role of defender from the moon. He wasn’t comfortable with the public still, a little bit wary of their reaction. He wasn’t mad at them anymore but then again he wasn’t about to give them ammunition so they could shoot him down once more. Steve could understand that even if he thought it was a bit cowardly. 

Steve would try again to approach Tony. The man was well known for his stubbornness but so was Rhodey. He was determined to be the friend he should have been all along. The colonel was protecting his friend from everyone. No, the army couldn’t take the technology just because they wanted it. No, the Avengers couldn’t live off Tony’s money anymore.  People were not allowed to attack him because he didn’t want to meet them or help them in their endeavour. Finally, Tony wasn’t the rogue’s father and he shouldn’t have to suffer from their mistakes. 

The New Avengers seemed to be on the same page. Very protective of Tony as soon as they had met him. They didn’t like the Rogues all that much. They weren’t what heroes should be. The world had learnt its lesson the hard way. Life had changed. Priorities too. They all saw what was really important now. Tony would live a long time, longer than Rhodey. Probably longer than Steve. Extremis had that kind of side effect. He was determined to be the man on the moon, the one to keep an eye on the Earth even when the population would have even forgotten his name or his existence all together. When he wouldn’t be there anymore, Rhodey felt a lot more confident in the future but somehow even sadder. Earth never deserved a man like Tony Stark.

Steve would disappear from people’s minds way before that. Nobody cared what Captain America had to say these days. He was only a voice among many and most of the times his views on life were considered too old fashioned, or downright wrong. A lot of them all around the world were demanding that he would give the shield to someone else, someone worthy. The legend of Captain America could stay alive. Steve thought it was a joke at first but the movement got bigger and bigger. So much so that one year after Thanos, Rhodey summoned him to the Avengers building. 

Bucky was there. Steve was ready to fight for him once again. After all that time, he would have thought that they had understood that his friend was innocent. But it wasn't about that at all. Steve was ripped off his title of Captain America there and then. Steve was too stunned to even say anything. And then the colonel made James Buchanan Barnes the new Captain America just in front of him. Steve couldn’t even understand the betrayal. After all he had done for him, Bucky could not do that to him. It was happening nonetheless. 

Bucky didn’t really explain himself. The world was thrilled with Bucky as the new Captain. A good redemption arc they called it, whatever that meant. Steve wouldn’t go back to the avengers. He decided on travelling the world, helping when he could. People started to call him Nomad. He liked that well enough. He didn’t have any other choice. Even the Simsonian had changed their expo showing Bucky as Captain America. 

Tony Stark was on the moon but he had a larger family than Steve. The genius had money, fame, recognition when he had nothing. But he had been right for the accords. He wasn’t helping the world to get his face on the front page of the newspapers. He had won their Civil War because at the end of the day he was right. At least, the accords had changed thanks to him planting himself like a tree and saying no.

Right?

Chapter Text

Loki

When Tony Stark had snapped his fingers, he probably had asked something along the lines of all the people killed by Thanos to be returned to their loved ones. Or everything destroyed by Thanos to be returned. Something approaching. That was why Loki found himself in the middle of New York, disoriented, as were everyone around him. Thor was, whether Loki liked it or not, the last member of his family. Thinking fast, Loki immediately put a glamour on, making him look like anybody but himself. The last time he was here, things weren’t actually going in his favour. Not that he had a choice in the matter. He did what he could considering the circumstances. Something that Odin didn’t even want to listen to. Something that Thor didn’t explain to the Midgardians. 

The buildings were being reconstructed by the magic of the gauntlet but everybody had their eyes on Stark. He was giving back the green stone to the sorcerer. That man would need to be taught a lesson at some point. Falling for thirty minutes was a little too close to that time when Loki had let go, plunging from the Bifrost. So what if Strange didn’t know about that. That sorcerer was way too arrogant. But the vengeance would have to wait. Loki didn’t want anybody to know that he was alive again, especially not Thor. Not yet anyway. Too many things had happened. They weren’t the same anymore.

Loki wondered how his life would have been if Odin would have told him the truth from the start. If Odin wanted him on the throne of Jotunheim, maybe he shouldn’t have raised him in the hatred of his ancestors. The old man wasn’t very logical all things considered. Loki would have wanted to know everything about his birth realm. He would have studied the Jotuns, maybe understood them more. The colour of his skin, his form or even his magic wouldn’t have felt so wrong, so shameful. The Aesir were warriors not prone to seek peace with the other realms. They wanted to dominate. Loki on the throne of Jotunheim would have been an easy solution, maybe too easy. More important than anything, he would have known from the start that the throne of Asgard was never for him to sit on. His relationship with Thor would have been a lot different then. 

Being a Jotun, knowingly or not, always meant not to be trusted. No wonder, he had been given the title of God of lies. Even if back then, he had never lied in his life. His mother, Frigga, was really strict on that and he wanted to please her more than anything. On the contrary, he tended to tell the harsh truth to people who didn’t want to believe in it. Some truths were hard to hear. Loki knew that first-hand now. He should have then understood how in high esteem his so-called father was holding him. How his brother was only defending him when it would help himself somehow. How his strong mother, all powerful she was, couldn’t say anything against Odin’s will. As if Loki had been set to fail whatever he would do from the very beginning.

Loki stayed on Earth for a while. Curiosity killed the cat, they said but he wanted to see what would happen in the aftermath. A country called Norway had accepted the refugees from Asgard on their land. They respected the history they had in common. Loki went there, not that he cared about the Aesir. That invisibility spell was very useful. Thor was finally being the king he should have always been. Loki knew his brother. He could see the signs. Thor was about to bail. Ironic, was it not. The blond god had been so sure of his capacities not so long ago, arrogant even, so eager to take the throne. He had it now. The reality was never as good as the idea, the dream of what it was to reign over a nation.

Loki also went into the compound. He remembered his initial fight against the Avengers. Captain America was not really a threat, until the man of Iron came into the picture with his loud music and jokes. Every U.N. personnel was talking about Tony Stark appearing when all hopes were lost and saving them all. Steve Rogers had made promises to the world that he couldn’t keep. Without the intervention of the man of Iron, Thanos would have won. Loki had thought during his own invasion that the Hulk was the one to be feared. The green monster beating him had been kind of proof of that. When he had been unable to use the sceptre with the mind stone inside on Stark, his opinions had changed.

Loki and Tony had a lot of things in common. Betrayals and death. Sarcasm and wit. In another timeline, they might have been friends. Loki visited the other man’s house on the planet’s moon. Calling that a house was maybe too restrictive. The god loved the technology. After all, magic was only undiscovered science. The smaller man had just managed to build his own Bifrost. An achievement few people could boast about even within the Aesir. Surely, they would have had a wonderful conversation comparing the science of the Midgardian to his magic. It wasn’t meant to be, like a lot of things in his life. No point in staying around anymore.

The Nine Realms would not be welcoming to him. Especially not the dwarves. They shared too much history even when it was not really his fault. Loki had always loved travelling for his studies or just for pleasure. Who knew what he could find in the vastness of the universe. His confrontation with the Midgardian sorcerer made it clear that he had been complacent with his powers. His mother always told him that magic needed to be studied very regularly, used with care, nurtured like the most precious and fragile of flowers. He had fallen into Thanos’ hands after falling for so long. No amount of explaining had swayed Odin in his decision. Everything was always Loki’s fault whatever the circumstances were. Torture and mind control weren’t good enough of an excuse. Loki had not hoped to be heard by his “father” and he knew that Frigga would do everything in her power to make his sentence bearable. Thor disappointed him.

Thor was the golden big brother. Blond when Loki had black hair. Odin’s favourite when Loki was Frigga’s. For a long time, it didn’t bother him the slightest. He loved his mother more than anybody in all the realms. She was the only one to understand him. He was a bit of a loner anyway. Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg were Thor’s friends and a little too on the warrior side. Sif had too much to prove to be his friend. As soon as he showed a talent for magic, the Aesir started looking at him like a lesser being. A man shouldn’t use these kinds of combat techniques. Magic should only be used for healing by women. Because rushing into battle without even the start of a plan was so much more efficient. Odin and then Thor were using magic to wield both Gungnir and Mjölnir. Hypocrites. 

Thor could make you believe that you were the most important person in the world. If he needed you. He wasn’t even doing it in a mean way. His attention was all on you but it wouldn’t stay that way for a very long time. Especially if he had a goal that meant glory for him. Thor never meant to do his brother’s harm. The bad jokes were just that, jokes. Loki was always too sensible or too bad tempered. His big brother never realised how hurtful he could be just saying those words. Loki would have just wanted for him to take his defence just once instead of dismissing him like that. Thor’s heart was too easily swayed. He wanted too much to be loved by all.

The sun would shine on them again. That much was true. Loki had promised that. One day, when everything would truly be in the past, Loki would seek Thor and he would call him brother once more. Maybe they would both have grown enough to be an actual family. The universe was vast enough to live without stepping on each other's toes but not enough for them not to be together once more one day. Loki wasn’t too hurried though.

The god appreciated his newfound anonymity. Asgard had never been the centre of the universe contrary to what the Aesir thought. He met so many other species, different ways of life. It was humbling. He was not the prince anymore. Just a wanderer, wanting to learn any kind of magic he was coming upon. It felt like when he was younger and his mother had convinced Odin to let him go studying on Vanaheim. He had never felt happier than away from Asgard. Happy meant less god of lies, tricks and chaos and more openness, friendly behaviours and overall good-natured pranks and jokes. Happy meant connecting with people. 

It took him a while to realise that Thor was on his tracks. His brother couldn’t be sure it was him but the description matched enough for him to follow. He was travelling with a group called Guardians of the Galaxy. He really didn’t stay King all that long. That little chase was most funny. Loki wasn’t actually changing his plan but Thor would always be too late to catch him. Loki was actually proud of the work his brother and his team were accomplishing. They had been helping a lot of people all along their journeys. Thor had always been a people person, easy to approach, easy to be friends with. Maybe this time, Loki could be friends with Thor’s allies. 

Often, he hesitated. Maybe he should let Thor catch up. He was worried. Concerned that Thor would freak out. Loki didn’t fake his death this time. He didn’t even ask to be revived. His brother surely would have gone directly to Loki if the roles were reversed. Odin’s lies had driven the wedge between the two men a lot further than it already was. Thor was too much like his father. It made Loki uncomfortable and unable to trust him fully. Connecting with Thor reminded him constantly that they weren’t brothers, they weren’t even from the same race. Frigga would have been the link that was missing between them. But their mother wasn’t there anymore. Yet another bad memory they shared. On some level, Loki knew that he was hurting Thor. 

Loki was slowing down his travels since he had found that particular planet. He would never confess that he was doing it on purpose. He couldn’t make things too easy for his brother. Even if he always ended up coming back to that place. Loki would fake the surprise even. Thor would take the lead and decide what their future would hold. He was tired not knowing how to stand with his brother. He just wanted for things to be clear so they could both move on with their lives. The planet Loki was on had little population. The nature was very luxurious. The inhabitants were all about the magic of the plants and flowers around them. It was very enlightening. They were quite powerful but also very quiet and respectful. Loki thought that if Thor was mad at him, he might want to use the thunder against him. He had done so in the past. But those people had the power to stop that magic burst from even happening. 

The god still had a lot to learn. Or so the chief of the tribe was telling him. And he wanted to stay. It was so quiet and beautiful here. His mind was healing. Thor didn’t make him wait. They saw the ship coming down slowly. The tribe had no fear and it greatly helped Loki to contain his. Whoever was piloting the ship was looking for somewhere to land safely, nature so overgrown everywhere. Thor’s team would need to walk to them. Maybe an hour left. The chief put a hand on his shoulder as if to say that everything would be alright and then left. Loki this time would wait. No more tricks, no more lies. This was the first day of the rest of his life.