alexs_storybook (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexs_storybook) wrote2018-11-24 08:34 am
alexs_storybook) wrote2018-11-24 08:34 am
FIC: Cap-Iron Man Big Bang: Tie Your Heart to Mine, Part 4
Title: Tie Your Heart to Mine, Part 4
Author: alexcat
Artist: KakushiMiko
Universe: MCU
Rating (both fic and art): Fic - Explicit, Art - General
Word Count: 27804
Warnings: Heart attack, one violent but not too graphic death
Notes: This story began as a short story and bloomed into something else altogether. Like most fans, CW and IW left my heart broken so I decided to fix them. This is my fix (or one of them anyway).
I’d like to thank my hubby for letting me bounce ideas off of him and for putting up my frantic writing in the last days. I also want to thank him for reminding me that it was MY story to tell.
I also want to thank both of my betas. It was such a hot mess, that I needed two: athletiger and [personal profile] nuinzilien. It reads more like a story now, thanks to you two!
My artist is KakushiMiko and you’ll see her great stuff throughout the work and at her link! Thanks so much, Flo!
Fic Summary: Tony wants Steve Rogers and sets out to get him. The relationship they begin is more than either is ready for as the events play out from the aftermath of the attack on New York to the attack by Thanos and its fallout. Can their love survive? Can they survive?
~~
Part 4
Part Four
Wong and Steve left early the next day, traveling via Wong’s ring to Kamar-Taj. Steve loved the place. Even though the Ancient One was gone, there were still trainees and instructors there. Most of them knew Wong from his time there. The place was like another world and another time.
He skyped with Tony as soon as he was settled in his room.
“So how are you?” Tony was in Steve’s apartment in Wakanda, the apartment they shared.
“Good. This place is amazing. It’s sort of like a monastery, sort of like a fantasy movie.”
Tony laughed. “Um, you’re not exactly someone I want to be in a monastery with.”
Steve blushed. “Yeah, there is that. I miss you already.”
They chatted a bit longer then signed off, promising to chat again soon. “Think about me when you go to sleep!” Tony said as he signed off.
“Always, Tony, always.”
Training began in earnest the next morning, when Steve was introduced to astral projection and mirror dimensions. The instructors were surprised that this western man was so open to their teaching. He was much more open than Strange had been at first. They were also quite surprised to find that he was physically almost a hundred years old.
Steve proved himself much more adept at the concept of the mysticism of the unseen than Strange, perhaps because his life had not been one of a logic driven scientist. His mother had been a Catholic and he’d been raised in the church. His exposure to religion and the mystic aspects of that made him more accustomed to a belief in things he couldn’t physically see or touch. Much of what he had seen after he was given the serum had opened his eyes to the fact that there are things that science and logic could never explain.
Wong took him to the library. There were the books on time that Wong had read and shared with Steve, books that could only be read there in Kamar-Taj. They read over them again and again, making sure that Steve understood them as well as Wong did.
Then Steve learned to conjure, control his own power and use the multiverse. He was quite adept at it, perhaps because it meant so much to him to complete his mission. He was given a sling ring and taught its use. He visited Tony late one night, using his ring.
“What the hell?” Tony asked when Steve stepped in the bedroom one night about 2 am, waking him from a sound sleep.
Steve grinned. “Just visiting. A conjugal visit, if you’re game.” He was already pulling his shirt over his head.
Weeks apart left both of them hungry for one another. They didn’t waste a second of their stolen night, making love until the sun shone in around the curtains.
“I miss you,” Tony whispered as Steve dressed. “I think about you more than I do Iron Man suits.”
“Wow! You really do love me.” Steve laughed and pulled him close for one more kiss. The kiss turned into two then more until was finally an hour before Steve left to finish his training.
“So, am I as good as Strange?” Steve asked Wong after he was back into his training.
“I have never seen a sorcerer as good as Strange, except for the Ancient One. He was a master of time. I wish that I was more confident that I have taught you enough. You have learned much, though.”
“It’ll have to be enough, Wong.”
Learning enough to transcend time is not a chore for a week or two. It’s not really a chore for a year or two, but a couple of months was all they had. Steve worked long and hard before he and Wong dared to try small time jumps. They only moved about in minutes for a while, then they went back a few days and finally weeks.
“Are you sure we traveled at all?” Steve asked Wong as they were still in the library.
Wong smiled and nodded. “Come with me and be very quiet.”
Steve followed him out to the training yard. For the first time, Steve really understood what traveling in time meant, when he saw himself training with Wong and one of the other instructors.
Very quietly they returned to the library and moved forward to their own time.
Traveling this way was more complicated and more fraught with danger than using a device like the Time Stone. One had to travel through many dimensions in the multiverse to arrive at the correct time. Wong called this a time corridor. As was true when traveling from one place to the other, losing the sling ring would strand the traveler the time as well as the place he was.
Wong and Steve traveled in time and space hundreds of times over the next few weeks.
“Most people would ask to visit their lost loved ones,” Wong said to Steve one evening at dinner.
Steve shook his head. “I can’t. It would break my heart.” He thought about Peggy Carter and knew if he went back in time and had the chance, he’d never be able to leave her. “And it would break my heart to leave Tony for the past, too.”
“I think you are ready, my friend. I’ve taught you all I can.” Wong paused. “You have a wisdom that Strange is struggling with. Perhaps it come with age and time.”
They would travel to Wakanda and rejoin the others. Wong and Steve would then go back to the Sanctum in New York when Steve was ready to leave for the New York of six years ago.
*
While Steve was gone, Tony, Shuri and Bruce worked on Hank Pym’s notes and went over the machinery from the van. Shuri was able to make a new suit and Stark tested it. It was still a little buggy, but then Pym’s suits had always had a few bugs in them as well. They found the notes for the wasp suit as well. Shuri was working on it, too. She liked the idea that it flew.
Today, they were going to test the suit again.
Steve had contacted Tony last night and told him that he was ready to come back and begin the process of trying to fix the universe. Tony was afraid they’d bitten off more than they could chew, afraid they’d fail in a way that would leave things even worse than they were now.
He knew that it was possible for Steve’s trip back to change everything dramatically. He knew they needed Steve to place some info somewhere in the past to help them if the future was changed too much. He decided that the message should be placed in a cloud as well as sent to other physical places so he would find it. He didn’t want to lose Steve and it was very possible that he would no longer be with Steve if they changed the events in New York very much. It was also possible that Steve might not make it back at all.
He simply tried not to think of that possibility. Ever.
He put on the suit and hit the control button. Instant ant-sized man! It worked. He knew that Pym had worked with communication with ants and bugs, too, but they hadn’t cracked that part yet. He hit the other button and his suit became normal sized again.
“You know we need to make this fit the Captain,” Shuri said. “He’s a little bigger than you.” She giggled at her understatement.
“Maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe everything will change so much that we won’t know what to do,” Tony said. He was getting panicky.
“I have an idea. What if we store the suits in one of Wong’s mirror dimensions? What if we store you there, too? That way, Rogers will have what he needs when he returns to our time,” Bruce asked.
“That might work!” Tony was willing to grasp at straws.
“Or maybe we just do this. I think maybe the more straightforward we are, the better off we’ll be,” Bruce said after some more thought. “The more variables, the more can go wrong.”
Tony couldn’t argue with that, as much as he wanted to.
Steve and Wong arrived in Wakanda only a few minutes after Tony and Bruce’s conversation and suit test.
Steve looked different. He’d shaved off his beard in preparation for going back in time. Tony couldn’t stop himself from touching his smooth face.
“You look like a kid without the beard,” he told Steve. Tony stole a kiss when no one was looking. “I’ve missed you.”
Neither of them wanted to talk about what they were about to do, but plans needed to be made. Steve would take a message back and upload it somewhere before he tried to get the Tesseract. Everything would be for naught if they didn’t carry through with parts two and three of the plan.
Natasha came into the room with scissors, grinning wickedly at Steve. “Time to get those locks shorn, Cap.” She actually wasn’t too bad a barber and when she was done, his hair was short as it had been when Tony had first met him six years ago.
“I think we need some peroxide and some blond dye and we’ll have our old Cap back,” Natasha said when she was all done. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Welcome back. We missed you. Specially your sweetie. He’s a grumpy old fart with you gone.”
Steve laughed. “He’s a grumpy old fart with me here.”
Tony made a face. “Uh, you both can stop talking about me as if I wasn’t here.”
They made video files with instruction to their future selves in case they needed them. Tony had Steve try on the Ant Man suit. It fit, though it was a little tighter than on Tony. Steve even tried out the shrinking function and he was suddenly the size of an ant. He popped back to real size then.
“I like you a lot better this size,” Tony told him.
Steve ran a hand down Tony’s spine as they stood fairly close. He could feel Tony shiver. He grinned and leaned close. “Will we be done soon for today? I’m kinda tired and wanna rest.”
“That’s it, folks. Steve’s tired. We’ll knock off until tomorrow.” Everyone knew that it was just a lame excuse, but they were more than willing to go along with it. They all told Steve goodnight, and suddenly, he and Tony were alone in the lab.
Tony sat at the table and stared at Steve.
“What?” Steve wondered if he had something on his face.
“I was thinking about how it might feel to kiss you without your beard tickling me.” His focus was Steve’s mouth.
“We can go home and find out.” He stood and walked over to the door. “Coming?”
“God, I hope so!” Tony followed.
*
Back in Steve’s apartment, Steve pulled Tony close. “I’ve missed this so much. Wong didn’t want to kiss me. Imagine that.” He laughed as he kissed Tony’s lips.
“His loss,” Tony said between kisses. He started peeling Steve’s clothes off, starting with his t-shirt. Steve’s hands weren’t idle either. He cupped his hands on Tony’s ass and pulled him hard against his own body.
Tony could feel Steve’s erection rub against his own through their clothes and he groaned. He wanted to slow Steve down, but he wanted him right now as well. Tony finished pulling Steve’s T-shirt over his head and worked on his belt. He unbuttoned the top button and yanked his zipper down, shoving Steve’s jeans down. They fell to his ankles and he kicked them away. Tony yanked his own shirt over his head, followed by the rest of this clothes until they came back together naked and hungry.
The bedroom was only a few feet away, but suddenly, that was too far. They sank to the floor where they stood, amidst their discarded clothing. Steve pushed Tony to lie flat and began kissing his body, beginning with his neck and shoulders. Each nip, each kiss made Tony realize that he was going to beg and soon.
No one, no lover before Steve, had ever made him feel so needy and so hungry for every single touch or kiss.
“I don’t know if I can wait any longer,” Tony said Steve’s tongue traced his scar from the Arc Reactor. Steve glanced up at him and sucked on a flat nipple until Tony moaned. “Please,” he begged as the attempted to push Steve’s head lower. He needed that mouth on him, he wanted it on him.
Steve was as stubborn in love as he was in other ways. He grinned up at Tony and stuck his tongue in Tony’s bellybutton.
“Fuck!” Tony hissed and squirmed. The sensation was intense and so close to pain, yet not pain. Steve stopped just before Tony thought he’d explode. What he did next wasn’t any easier to withstand. He stuck his nose into Tony’s dark, wiry pubic hair, inhaling Tony’s scent as he ignored Tony’s cock, as it bobbed against his face.
“Damn you!” Tony grabbed his head and shoved him down a few more inches. Steve kissed his penis at the very base, but ignored it otherwise, but only for a few seconds. He looked up at Tony and stuck his tongue out, grazing it up the underside to the tiny little fold of tissue under the head. Tony had no words after that. Steve finally showed him some mercy and took him into his mouth.
Tony bucked beneath him, holding onto the floor as if he might take flight. Steve took him deep, his tongue doing things that Tony didn’t remember it doing before. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now, but the man kneeling over him.
He didn’t realize he was saying Steve’s name over and over like a prayer until he could no longer speak. He came in Steve’s throat, the pleasure consuming him to the point that nothing existed but this, now.
He wanted it to last forever.
He was nearly boneless when it was done. His heart was pounding and he couldn’t get enough air. Steve patiently watched him, smiling and licking his lips, looking as hungry as Tony had a few minutes before.
“Touch me, Tony,” Steve told him when it looked as if he might survive. “Now!”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Surely you…”
“No. I waited to be here with you,” Steve whispered as he kissed Tony once again. “I wanted it to be good, really good.”
“It might be quick, really quick!” Tony laughed as he ran a finger down the center of Steve’s chest.
“I’m a supersoldier. I can go all night,” Steve told him.
“I’m nearly fifty. I can’t. But I’m good for now.”
“Stop talking then and do something to me. Anything.”
Tony grinned a wolfish grin as he took Steve’s hand and sucked one of his fingers into his mouth. He sucked it exactly like he sucked Steve’s cock. Steve remembered doing the same to Tony at least a lifetime ago.
“You are a monster,” Steve growled.
Tony let his finger go. “You can’t say anything. You stuck your tongue in my navel.”
“Mm… it made you all squirmy. I liked that.” As soon as he said it, he knew what Tony was going to do.
But Tony made him wait.
“Let’s get off the floor.” He got up and reached for Steve’s hand. They moved to the sofa. Tony began to kiss Steve again as he ran one hand down Steve’s leg to his knee, then around behind his knee to the tender skin in the bend of his leg.
“You are an evil man, Tony Stark. Don’t do it!” Steve said between wiggling and smacking at Tony’s hands. He was extremely ticklish behind his knees and Tony knew it. Tony moved his other hand up Steve’s belly and wrapped his fingers around Steve’s erection. He stopped tickling Steve and leaned close enough to lap at him a few times with his tongue.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Tony finally said. He let go of Steve and began a serious exploration of his long legs, down the outside of his thigh, down to his knees, which weren’t ticklish and up the outside of the other thigh. Instead of journeying any lower, he began to nip and kiss the insides of Steve’s thigh, working his way very slowly up until he was close enough to kiss him at the juncture of his torso and his leg, then he started up the inside of the other thigh.
“You’re killing me.”
“I know,” was Tony’s answer then he went back to his kissing. He kissed his belly and chest, his neck, shoulders and finally his mouth.
“Either suck it or get down here on the floor and let me fuck you,” Steve said. The words sounded like a demand but they came out more like begging.
“You gonna make me?” Tony asked.
“Do I have to?” Steve pushed Tony’s head toward his abdomen. Tony did get on the floor but he was between Steve’s open legs. He looked at Steve watching him and gave Steve as good as he’d gotten, taking him deep and giving him no mercy until Steve came down his throat.
They showered and found food, but they didn’t leave the apartment until the next day.
*
The last discussions before they set their plan in motion were starting.
Nebula, Thor and Rocket, along with some of Rocket’s ideas in weaponry, left the planet in the ship Nebula and Tony arrived in. They decided that Thanos would have most likely gone to ground on Titan, and they figured he went back to the past when the planet was an agrarian paradise. They knew that once Steve took the Tesseract, the damage done by the gauntlet should be reversed. That would alert Thanos that something had gone wrong. He would come after them but without the Space Stone, he’d have to travel by ship.
All of these things were their hope.
They also hoped that the little ship would actually work and take them to Titan. The trip would take a few days. It had taken four to get to Earth so in four days’ time, Steve would use the sorcery he’d been taught, along with his sling ring, which he’d earned, and travel back in time to New York at the end of the battle with the Chitauri and bring the Tesseract back to the present time.
While this happened, hopefully the trio on Titan could kill Thanos and take the Gauntlet from him. They would bring it back to Earth.
When Rogers arrived back in the present, he would then take the Space Stone into the Quantum Realm, a dimension outside both space and time, and leave it there. They’d destroy both the inventions and notes of Hank Pym, when Rogers came out of that realm.
All of this depended on reality not changing very much after New York.
Steve would leave Tony a message in New York to explain what and why they’d done what they did in vague enough terms that it wouldn’t change the future too much, but definite enough to let Tony understand that what they were doing was the only solution.
If all went well, no one else in the past would even know that Steve had been there.
Shuri had made Steve a new Captain America suit in red, white and blue, along with a new vibranium shield. He would carry regular clothes in case he had to use them and a special pouch made to hold the Tesseract so he could safely touch it.
She had also modified his ant sizing suit for the Quantum Realm to look like his Captain America suit. “He might as well go in his own style” was her reasoning. She had developed a fondness for the supersoldier, perhaps because her brother had been fond of both him and their White Wolf, Bucky Barnes.
Tony was a nervous wreck, though he was acting quite self-confident and even cocky. Everything had to go off perfectly and he’d seldom seen perfection in his life. The cost was high if they failed, as it was possible to rain down even more death and destruction on Earth.
He mostly worried about losing Steve, but Steve himself seemed to be fine with it. Sometimes he thought that Steve really didn’t care very much if he lived or died. Perhaps this was the effect of living as long as he had. Maybe it was what happened to someone who had lost so much to death.
“Are we ready to kill some Titan bastard?” Rocket asked as they began to load the weaponry aboard the small ship Tony and Nebula had come to earth in.
“I will kill him,” Nebula told Rocket. “I owe him that for using me and killing my sister, and for all the torture. It is only fitting that one of his assassin children kill him.”
Thor laughed in his booming laugh. “He is large; there is plenty of him to go around.” He hefted his mighty ax. “This time, he will not get away from me. I owe him for taking my brother away, too.”
The others walked them to the tarmac. Steve hugged Thor and Nebula, while solemnly shaking hands with the diminutive Rocket. “Keep them in line, Rocket, and kill the bastard for me, too.”
Shuri hugged them all, even squatting down to eye level to hug Rocket. “You are truly one of a kind, my friend. Return to us soon!”
Tony nodded, which was about as demonstrative as he ever was to all except the few he was closest to. He did punch Thor on the shoulder. “Take care, Point Break, and get this thing done.”
Bruce hugged them all and gave them a motherly warning to take care of themselves, while Rhodey and Natasha hugged and patted Thor and were a bit more reserved with Rocket and Nebula.
They boarded the ship and began their journey to Titan.
As they lifted off, Rocket began humming and then singing a song from Peter Quill’s mix tape.
I can't stop this feeling
Deep inside of me
Girl, you just don't realize
What you do to me
“If you do not cease that awful noise, you will be the first to die!” Nebula hissed at him.
“Yes, Ma’am!” He grinned at her and started the song all over again. Nebula looked angry but she was pleased that Rocket and Thor were with her.
*
“Can you make a fake Tesseract? We need something to leave in its place,” Steve said to Tony and Shuri as they began last minute preparation in the lab.
Shuri nodded. “We are already working on it, Captain. I should have it for you in a few hours.”
They made a credible copy of the Space Stone and placed it in the little pouch they’d made for him to transport the real one in. He made a voice file to leave the past Tony. He had decided to take the Tesseract from the lab in order to meet fewer people. The fewer people he met, the less his chance of leaving an effect on the time line.
Four days passed and everyone was on edge. They had gotten a couple of messages from their Titan bound companions and all was well so far. Nebula had not killed anyone yet, as far as they could tell. That was a small victory, in Tony’s opinion.
On the fourth day, Steve said a private goodbye to Tony, a public one to the rest of his comrades, put his ring on, got his gear ready and traveled to New York to the Sanctum. He and Wong went together into the mirror dimension and from there, with an obscure ‘spell’ they’d found in Kamar-Taj, Steve used his ring to go back to New York on the day after the battle of New York. He positioned himself in Stark Tower and waited.
He saw Tony come to his lab and begin to prepare the Tesseract for traveling to Asgard with Thor. He was still angry that Loki was going to be sent back with his brother. He wanted the bastard jailed here.
Tony was still completely exhausted from the battle. His whole body hurt from the beating he’d taken putting that nuke through the portal at the last second. He was also surprised. He’d found out that Captain America was all his father had said and more, much to his own dismay. Before the battle, he’d hoped to make up with Pepper again and maybe marry her. Now he knew he was going to give something with Rogers a shot. Couldn’t blame a guy for trying, could you?
Rogers came into the lab, looking over his shoulder, as if he were checking for anyone watching him. Something was odd, but Tony couldn’t put his finger on it.
“What can I do you for, Cap?” Tony asked him.
“I have little time. I am not the Steve Rogers who fought the Chitauri with you yesterday.”
Tony just stared. What the hell?
“I’m from 2018. I have come for the Tesseract.”
Tony still said nothing, looking hard at Rogers. He moved closer, walking around him. He was Steve Rogers, but he wasn’t – somehow. He put a hand out to touch Rogers and Steve caught his hand.
“I don’t have time for this.”
“As far as I know, time travel is impossible. And believe me, I’d know if it were possible,” Tony shot back.
“You don’t know everything, Stark.” Steve had not thought that it would be so hard to convince Tony that he was telling the truth, obviously a mistake. “What can I do to prove I’m me?” He didn’t have a lot of time.
“Give me a sample of your blood.” Tony went right to it. “I’ll believe if the science says it’s you.”
“If that will convince you.” He rolled his sleeve up. He wasn’t wearing his suit since he’d decided to come to this day instead of to the battle itself. He wore khakis and a blue plaid shirt, standard Rogers’ civilian dress.
Tony cleaned his arm and drew out a small vial of blood. He ran it through a centrifuge and one other machine of some sort, then printed out a sheet of paper and looked up something on the computer. The data on both was the same.
“I don’t know what is going on but this says you are Steve Rogers, and I know he’s gone with Romanov to meetings with Fury in DC today. I saw them leave on a Quinjet a few minutes ago.”
“I told you where I came from.” Steve stood very still. He knew that Tony still had a working suit and would put it on in a second if he felt threatened.
Tony looked at him hard, clearly wanting to not believe him. “What is going on? If you’re telling me the truth, tell me why you’re here.”
Steve held his hands up and took a step closer to Tony and with one hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the flash drive.
“I can’t tell you much. As much as you need to know is in this file.” He stuck a drive into the computer and uploaded a file. This was something the 2012 Steve didn’t know how to do yet.
“The file is called ‘WakandaForever’. Look at it when I’m gone.”
“I still don’t want to give you the Tesseract.”
Steve took the replica out of the pouch and held it in his hand. It looked like the real thing. Tony touched it and it pulsated with light. He turned away, looking up then down, as if the answers would be written somewhere.
“We need it desperately, Tony.”
Steve walked to the counter where the Tesseract lay, its white light shining brightly. When he reached for it, Tony grabbed his wrist.
“Not yet. I’m not convinced.”
Steve thought of one thing that might convince Tony he was really Steve Rogers. “I thought fondue was something dirty.”
Tony’s eyes widened and he looked hard at Steve. “I’ll be damned. It is you. My dad actually told me about that once when Peggy was visiting. She said Dad was still an ass.”
“Howard was always an ass,” Steve said with a smile.
“Damn.” He nodded. “Let’s do this before my better judgment changes my mind.”
They traded the Tesseract for the sparkly stone.
“Thanks, Tony. Oh, and that thing you’re thinking about doing? Go for it.” And he was gone.
*
Titan was teetering on the edge of oblivion. t had been knocked off its axis and was near complete destruction. They had very little time.
Nevertheless, Nebula landed the ship.
“Are you sure we won’t be destroyed?” Rocket asked her. “This place is falling apart.”
It was then that they noticed something odd. The air began to swirl in small patterns all around them, like several tiny whirlwinds, sucking in the dust and debris. The little tornadoes seem to grow tighter and tighter as they expanded in size, which made no sense at all.
One by one they began to become - something. For a moment, they looked like some sort of solid blob then the blobs became people, Stephen Strange, Peter Quill, Mantiss, Drax and finally Peter Parker.
Of course, right after they materialized, Thanos did as well.
“Well, well, well. What have we got here? Ah, my daughter has come to see her old father.”
“I’ve come to kill you, you monster,” Nebula said with a sneer.
He laughed. The shriveled gauntlet was still on his hand but it no longer held six stones. The Space Stone was missing. “How did your weak friends travel in time, sorcerer?” he asked Strange.
“I guess they’re smarter than I knew,” Strange said with his natural arrogance.
“I guess we’ll have to do something about that then, won’t we?” Thanos said to them all.
*
Steve Rogers arrived back in 2018. He was in the New York Sanctum and it looked the same. Wong greeted him.
“You have the Stone?” he asked.
“Yes, has anything changed?” Steve was anxious that he’d come back to a totally different world.
“Yes, people are reappearing all over. You should take the Stone and head back to Wakanda.”
Steve thanked Wong. “What shall I do with this ring?”
“Use it to go home and keep it. You trained and earned it. It’s yours.”
He used the ring to open a portal into Wakanda.
*
In Wakanda, people were reappearing everywhere. Reports were coming in from all over the world that the same was happening everywhere. The dead, however, stayed dead. The battle field in Wakanda actually had more than a few of Thanos’ people returning as well. They were fairly quickly subdued and jailed by the Dora Milaje. There was no escape for them this time.
Suddenly Bucky, Sam, T’Challa, Wanda and scores of others appeared.
Steve appeared, too, but not from the reversal of the Stone’s affect. He stepped out of a ring of fire into the lab, where Tony and Shuri waited for him.
“I’m glad you said what you did or I might have chickened out,” Tony told Steve by way of greeting him. Things had not changed too much, then, Steve hoped.
“Are we ready for me to take the Stone into the Quantum Realm?”
“We are,” Shuri answered. “We have a small device for you to use to come out. It will work for one person for now, so all you need to do is leave the Space Stone and come back.”
“Is Bucky here?” Steve asked Tony.
“Yeah.” Tony answered tersely. He still couldn’t look at Barnes and probably never would be able to do so. “He’s in the other room, waiting for you.”
Steve went to the room next door, a small sitting room used as a breakroom for the techs who worked there when the world wasn’t falling apart.
Bucky smiled when he saw his old friend and hugged him. He was still dirty from combat. He hugged Steve.
“Welcome back! I was afraid I’d never see you again!”
“Here I am, still old and one armed!” Bucky grinned. “What’s happening?”
Steve gave him a quick rundown and told him he had to go finish his mission.
“I’ll see you when you get back!”
“Good deal! Take care of yourself. Watch out for Natasha, too. And I know he doesn’t want to see you, but if it’s ever possible, talk to Stark.”
Bucky was no fool. He knew that Steve was saying goodbye. He didn’t plan on coming out of that Quantum Realm. He wondered if Stark knew it. He would never quite understand what Steve saw in Stark, but he seemed to love him so who was he to judge? He wondered if he said something to Stark, he might change Steve’s mind, but he knew better. His friend was a stubborn SOB when he wanted to be.
Damn Steve Rogers!
*
Thanos acted as if nothing had happened, but he knew better. He knew that without all the Stones, his control was done. Whatever they had done, they had reversed the one thing he had spent a lifetime doing.
He would not let these puny little know nothings ruin his grand gesture. He had given his all to save the universe and was not going to let his life’s work be undone.
The other people on Titan with him disagreed with that premise and meant to stop him at all costs.
Without discussing it at all, they all converged on Thanos. Their weapons were still cast about on the planet and Rocket wasted no time grabbing them and tossing them to his companions. He had made himself a huge weapon that shot energy bolts in varying degrees of lethalness. He had it set on highest setting. Thor had his axe. Peter Quill and Drax caught what Rocket tossed to them. Mantis circled Thanos from behind. Peter Parker was flitting about, shooting webs. Stephen Strange began casting spells.
Mantis leaped on Thanos, grabbing his head and using her empathic abilities, stopping him from doing anything at all, just as she had before. Strange cast an immobility spell while Peter Parker began to spin a web all around him, to help subdue him if he woke. Thor and Nebula began to pull on the Gauntlet as Stark had before and it moved. The others stood, ready to shoot with all their firepower as soon as the Gauntlet was removed.
Thanos’ eyes were closed and he murmured Gamora’s name, as if talking in his sleep. He tried to move but could not. Suddenly, the Gauntlet let go, Thor and Nebula falling back on their asses, holding the Gauntlet between them. The others, Quill, Drax, and Rocket began firing their weapons all at once. Thor stuffed the Gauntlet into a container hanging from his waist, a container designed by Stark and Banner for that very purpose. Nebula pulled both of her weapons form their holsters and began shooting as well.
Thanos was well and truly subdued when Mantis let go of her mental hold on him. He roared and tried to move, but he found himself trapped by webs, energy beams, magic…
“You will regret this, you fools,” he shouted. Couldn’t they see he’d done this thing for them all?
“We only regret we did not kill you before,” Strange said to him.
“I want to kill you over and over,” Nebula said, “as you have me!”
“You are my favorite child, Nebula! Every failure made you a better assassin until even Gamora was not as ruthless and efficient as you. Can you not see how much I love you?”
“I am only your favorite because you killed Gamora! You killed my sister!” she screamed as she came closer and ramped up her fury.
Still not quite trusting Thanos not to pretend he was immobilized, they continued to shoot him as Parker kept adding layer and layer of web ropes. Thor grabbed his ax, Stormbreaker, which was forged in the fires of Nidavellir and strengthened by the tendrils of Groot as a handle. He swung the ax at Thanos’ head and severed it completely.
The Titan’s purple head rolled away from his body and his eyes flew open. His mouth opened as if to speak, then he just stopped. The head was dead, as was the body. None of them stopped firing. They fired until the corpse began to burn and kept firing until smoke and ash were all that was left of their enemy’s body. They turned to the head and did the same thing, reducing it to small pile of oily black debris on the ground.
“Ceasefire!” Rocket yelled, though no one stopped until he yelled again. “That’s enough, you morons!”
Thor turned to Doctor Strange. “Welcome back, Strange.”
Strange smiled and nodded.
They secured the Gauntlet from the bag on Thors’s belt into a locked vibranium case and boarded the ship.
*
Steve Rogers got into the suit they’d designed for him to wear into the Quantum Realm. He hit a button and he shrank to a tiny size, then another button shrank him further. He did this several times, then he was ready. Shuri and Stark had built a small tunnel to send him to his destination and suddenly he was flying along into something different from anything he’d ever seen before. It was like space and the ocean had merged into a beautiful mix with flashing lights and strange things and creatures floating by.
“Can you hear me?” He spoke into his headset.
“You’re breaking up a little but we can understand most of it,” Tony answered.
“I’m picking up Lang’s beacon. I’m going to find him.”
“Wait!” Tony wanted him to leave the Stone and come out immediately.
“I can’t hear you! You’re breaking up!” Steve lied to Tony. He was not leaving Scott Lang in here. Lang had helped him out and had served two years of house arrest as payment, so he owed him. Lang also had a young daughter out there who loved him. Steve had seen a picture of her in the contents of Luis’ van. He wasn’t about to leave the child without her father.
“Lang, is that you?” he broadcast over his com unit.
“It is. What happened? I’ve been in here for a very long time, though time doesn’t actually seem to pass here.” Lang sounded surprised that anyone came for him.
“The earth was attacked by another nasty alien and you were stranded here.”
“Did you come to rescue me?”
“Not exactly. Let me find you and I’ll tell you more.”
“Who are you, anyway?” Lang asked.
“You’ll see.”
Steve followed the beacon and there he was, Scott Lang, in his Ant Man suit. He waved at Steve.
“It’s you! And you even have a Captain America suit!”
“I have a device for you that will get you out of here. I am going to stay for a while. I have a mission to fulfill and I need to stay.”
“What is this Stone you’re talking about?”
Steve explained a little about what had happened, what Thanos had done. He also told Scott that Hank Pym, Janet and Hope Van Dyne had disappeared along with half of the galaxy.
“What about Cassie?” Lang was panicking at the thought of his daughter being frightened and alone.
“Tony said they checked on her and she and her mom and stepdad didn’t disappear. They told her you were away on a mission.”
“She’s too smart to buy that,” Scott said. “She’ll know something weird happened.”
“Thanks for helping us in Berlin and I’m so sorry about the house arrest,” Steve touched his shoulder.
“No problem. It’s not every day a guy like me gets to help Captain America out.”
“Here is the device. Just hit it and you’ll be drawn back to the tunnel and back home. You’ll come out in Wakanda in Africa, but Stark will send you home. Take care of that little girl and have a good life, Lang.”
Lang patted him on the back and took off. Moments later, he came through the tunnel into the lab in Wakanda. He hit the button on his suit that returned him to normal size.
“Where the hell is he?” Tony Stark demanded. “What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything. He gave me the device and insisted I leave. I left. Who am I to argue with Captain America?” Lang said nonchalantly, but in truth, he was a bit intimidated by Stark’s anger.
“Damn him to hell!” Tony turned and walked away, leaving Lang staring at Banner and Shuri.
Shuri smiled at him. “Hello, Mr. Lang. I’m Shuri and this is Dr. Banner. Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers are very close. He’s very worried. If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you where you can clean up and have some food, then you can call your daughter and we’ll make some arrangements to get you back home as soon as possible.”
Lang nodded and followed the young woman.
Shuri returned to find Bruce and Tony arguing a few minutes later. They were nose to nose.
“I’m not destroying it. I want him back!”
“Tony, we all agreed. Steve knows what he’s doing. Let him have this.”
“I would never have given him the damned Stone all those years ago if I’d known he was going to be stupid and do this!”
“We agreed, all of us, to do this.”
Tony ran a hand through his hair and looked around, as if help might come out of thin air. “I know, I know. All right, but you have to know I’m going to go after him someday.”
“Agreed.”
They had all the equipment they’d used to get into the Quantum Realm loaded up and hauled away to be destroyed, they burned all the paperwork involved and destroyed all the hard drives with Pym’s research on it.
The three scientists were in the lab the next day, wondering if their space ship companions accomplished their mission or would Thanos show up soon to end them all this time, when Bruce took something from his pocket.
It was a flash drive.
“I almost forgot. He said give this to you after the equipment was gone.” He handed it to Tony.
Tony popped it into the USB port of the closest computer and menu popped up. There was a video file titled, ‘I love you, you bastard’. He clicked on it and it opened.
Steve was sitting in that very room. He wore jeans and one of his Iron Man t-shirts. He still had long hair and a beard.
“I’m sure you’re mad at me right now. I understand. But this was something that needed to be done. Someone needs to stay with the Stone and I elected me. Tony, I love you and you know that.”
Bruce and Shuri made themselves scarce, leaving Tony alone with the video.
“I’m old – I was born a hundred years ago. I’m the one who needs to do this. You have a future and people need you. So do all the others. I’m the logical choice. I’m not sure that time and space exist there as we know it, so maybe someday I’ll see you again. I won’t forget you and I’ll always love you.”
“Take care of yourself and the others.”
Steve smiled that sad smile Tony had seen too many times over the last few months and he was gone.
Tony Stark felt odd, his knees weren’t working properly. His arm hurt and it felt like an elephant was sitting on his chest…
Shuri and Bruce found him unconscious minutes later.
Bruce shouted at him. Shuri dropped to her knees beside him. She called medical personnel on her comm and they were there in seconds, though it seemed like forever to Bruce and Shuri.
Bruce, being a medical doctor as well, recognized what happened to Stark and told Shuri they needed a cardiologist. Tony was taken to the hospital where he was stabilized. They did scans and determined that he required no surgery, only a medication and more rest and exercise.
He woke flat on his back with Shuri and Natasha Romanov staring down at him. He had all sorts of machines hooked up to him. He tried to sit up, but Natasha put her hand on his arm.
“Woah, there, Stark. You’re not going anywhere.”
“What happened? Did I bang my head?” he asked.
“You had a small myocardial infarction,” Shuri told him.
“I had a heart attack?” He tried to get up again and again, Natasha pushed him down.
“Stay! The doctor says you’re going to be fine, Mr. Stark. We’ve kept you sedated for a couple of days just to make sure you got some rest,” Shuri told him.
“And to keep you out of the way,” Natasha said with a grin. “There’s someone here from space who wants to see you.”
She left the room for a moment and returned with Peter Parker.
“Mr. Stark! I’m back!”
Tony smiled. A real happy smile. His little Spiderman was all right!
“Can I, uh, hug Mr. Stark?” he asked Natasha.
“Go ahead. We’ll leave you two.”
After the women had left, Peter hugged Tony, squeezing him.
“Not too hard, kid. I’m an old man now.”
“I’m so glad to be home, Mr. Stark, sir.”
“Tony, I’m Tony, and I’m so glad you’re back, Peter. I’m so sorry I got you into such a mess.”
“It’s all right, sir. Um, who was that girl with Miss Romanov? She’s been really nice to me and I like her.”
Tony laughed. “That girl’s Shuri and she is the sister to the King of Wakanda and a brilliant scientist.”
Peter grinned. “And she’s pretty, too.”
“I’ll introduce you when she comes back. She makes awesome suits. You remember her brother, Black Panther, from Berlin?”
“Yeah, the cool dude with the accent.”
“She designed his suit.”
“Maybe she could help with ours, um, mine, sir.”
“Tony! I’m Tony. Maybe she could. Have you talked to your Aunt May?”
“Yeah, she was disappeared, too, but she’s back and Dr. Banner says they’re flying her here today.”
“I guess she gets to know the whole truth then.”
“Looks like it. She may ground me for life.”
“I’ll see if I can help.”
Peter smiled then asked, “What happened to Captain Rogers? Dr. Banner said he’s gone.”
Tony told Peter about the Quantum Realm and Steve’s choice to stay there. He tried to keep the sorrow out of his face and voice.
“Mr. S – Tony. I know you and he were -” he blushed a little, “I know he was your boyfriend, sir, and I’m sorry.”
“It was his choice, kid. He’s noble like that. When he sets his mind on something, no one can stop him.”
“Like you, Tony.”
“I wish, Peter, I wish.”
Peter said goodbye and promised he’d be back soon to meet Shuri.
Author: alexcat
Artist: KakushiMiko
Universe: MCU
Rating (both fic and art): Fic - Explicit, Art - General
Word Count: 27804
Warnings: Heart attack, one violent but not too graphic death
Notes: This story began as a short story and bloomed into something else altogether. Like most fans, CW and IW left my heart broken so I decided to fix them. This is my fix (or one of them anyway).
I’d like to thank my hubby for letting me bounce ideas off of him and for putting up my frantic writing in the last days. I also want to thank him for reminding me that it was MY story to tell.
I also want to thank both of my betas. It was such a hot mess, that I needed two: athletiger and [personal profile] nuinzilien. It reads more like a story now, thanks to you two!
My artist is KakushiMiko and you’ll see her great stuff throughout the work and at her link! Thanks so much, Flo!
Fic Summary: Tony wants Steve Rogers and sets out to get him. The relationship they begin is more than either is ready for as the events play out from the aftermath of the attack on New York to the attack by Thanos and its fallout. Can their love survive? Can they survive?
~~
Part 4
Part Four
Wong and Steve left early the next day, traveling via Wong’s ring to Kamar-Taj. Steve loved the place. Even though the Ancient One was gone, there were still trainees and instructors there. Most of them knew Wong from his time there. The place was like another world and another time.
He skyped with Tony as soon as he was settled in his room.
“So how are you?” Tony was in Steve’s apartment in Wakanda, the apartment they shared.
“Good. This place is amazing. It’s sort of like a monastery, sort of like a fantasy movie.”
Tony laughed. “Um, you’re not exactly someone I want to be in a monastery with.”
Steve blushed. “Yeah, there is that. I miss you already.”
They chatted a bit longer then signed off, promising to chat again soon. “Think about me when you go to sleep!” Tony said as he signed off.
“Always, Tony, always.”
Training began in earnest the next morning, when Steve was introduced to astral projection and mirror dimensions. The instructors were surprised that this western man was so open to their teaching. He was much more open than Strange had been at first. They were also quite surprised to find that he was physically almost a hundred years old.
Steve proved himself much more adept at the concept of the mysticism of the unseen than Strange, perhaps because his life had not been one of a logic driven scientist. His mother had been a Catholic and he’d been raised in the church. His exposure to religion and the mystic aspects of that made him more accustomed to a belief in things he couldn’t physically see or touch. Much of what he had seen after he was given the serum had opened his eyes to the fact that there are things that science and logic could never explain.
Wong took him to the library. There were the books on time that Wong had read and shared with Steve, books that could only be read there in Kamar-Taj. They read over them again and again, making sure that Steve understood them as well as Wong did.
Then Steve learned to conjure, control his own power and use the multiverse. He was quite adept at it, perhaps because it meant so much to him to complete his mission. He was given a sling ring and taught its use. He visited Tony late one night, using his ring.
“What the hell?” Tony asked when Steve stepped in the bedroom one night about 2 am, waking him from a sound sleep.
Steve grinned. “Just visiting. A conjugal visit, if you’re game.” He was already pulling his shirt over his head.
Weeks apart left both of them hungry for one another. They didn’t waste a second of their stolen night, making love until the sun shone in around the curtains.
“I miss you,” Tony whispered as Steve dressed. “I think about you more than I do Iron Man suits.”
“Wow! You really do love me.” Steve laughed and pulled him close for one more kiss. The kiss turned into two then more until was finally an hour before Steve left to finish his training.
“So, am I as good as Strange?” Steve asked Wong after he was back into his training.
“I have never seen a sorcerer as good as Strange, except for the Ancient One. He was a master of time. I wish that I was more confident that I have taught you enough. You have learned much, though.”
“It’ll have to be enough, Wong.”
Learning enough to transcend time is not a chore for a week or two. It’s not really a chore for a year or two, but a couple of months was all they had. Steve worked long and hard before he and Wong dared to try small time jumps. They only moved about in minutes for a while, then they went back a few days and finally weeks.
“Are you sure we traveled at all?” Steve asked Wong as they were still in the library.
Wong smiled and nodded. “Come with me and be very quiet.”
Steve followed him out to the training yard. For the first time, Steve really understood what traveling in time meant, when he saw himself training with Wong and one of the other instructors.
Very quietly they returned to the library and moved forward to their own time.
Traveling this way was more complicated and more fraught with danger than using a device like the Time Stone. One had to travel through many dimensions in the multiverse to arrive at the correct time. Wong called this a time corridor. As was true when traveling from one place to the other, losing the sling ring would strand the traveler the time as well as the place he was.
Wong and Steve traveled in time and space hundreds of times over the next few weeks.
“Most people would ask to visit their lost loved ones,” Wong said to Steve one evening at dinner.
Steve shook his head. “I can’t. It would break my heart.” He thought about Peggy Carter and knew if he went back in time and had the chance, he’d never be able to leave her. “And it would break my heart to leave Tony for the past, too.”
“I think you are ready, my friend. I’ve taught you all I can.” Wong paused. “You have a wisdom that Strange is struggling with. Perhaps it come with age and time.”
They would travel to Wakanda and rejoin the others. Wong and Steve would then go back to the Sanctum in New York when Steve was ready to leave for the New York of six years ago.
*
While Steve was gone, Tony, Shuri and Bruce worked on Hank Pym’s notes and went over the machinery from the van. Shuri was able to make a new suit and Stark tested it. It was still a little buggy, but then Pym’s suits had always had a few bugs in them as well. They found the notes for the wasp suit as well. Shuri was working on it, too. She liked the idea that it flew.
Today, they were going to test the suit again.
Steve had contacted Tony last night and told him that he was ready to come back and begin the process of trying to fix the universe. Tony was afraid they’d bitten off more than they could chew, afraid they’d fail in a way that would leave things even worse than they were now.
He knew that it was possible for Steve’s trip back to change everything dramatically. He knew they needed Steve to place some info somewhere in the past to help them if the future was changed too much. He decided that the message should be placed in a cloud as well as sent to other physical places so he would find it. He didn’t want to lose Steve and it was very possible that he would no longer be with Steve if they changed the events in New York very much. It was also possible that Steve might not make it back at all.
He simply tried not to think of that possibility. Ever.
He put on the suit and hit the control button. Instant ant-sized man! It worked. He knew that Pym had worked with communication with ants and bugs, too, but they hadn’t cracked that part yet. He hit the other button and his suit became normal sized again.
“You know we need to make this fit the Captain,” Shuri said. “He’s a little bigger than you.” She giggled at her understatement.
“Maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe everything will change so much that we won’t know what to do,” Tony said. He was getting panicky.
“I have an idea. What if we store the suits in one of Wong’s mirror dimensions? What if we store you there, too? That way, Rogers will have what he needs when he returns to our time,” Bruce asked.
“That might work!” Tony was willing to grasp at straws.
“Or maybe we just do this. I think maybe the more straightforward we are, the better off we’ll be,” Bruce said after some more thought. “The more variables, the more can go wrong.”
Tony couldn’t argue with that, as much as he wanted to.
Steve and Wong arrived in Wakanda only a few minutes after Tony and Bruce’s conversation and suit test.
Steve looked different. He’d shaved off his beard in preparation for going back in time. Tony couldn’t stop himself from touching his smooth face.
“You look like a kid without the beard,” he told Steve. Tony stole a kiss when no one was looking. “I’ve missed you.”
Neither of them wanted to talk about what they were about to do, but plans needed to be made. Steve would take a message back and upload it somewhere before he tried to get the Tesseract. Everything would be for naught if they didn’t carry through with parts two and three of the plan.
Natasha came into the room with scissors, grinning wickedly at Steve. “Time to get those locks shorn, Cap.” She actually wasn’t too bad a barber and when she was done, his hair was short as it had been when Tony had first met him six years ago.
“I think we need some peroxide and some blond dye and we’ll have our old Cap back,” Natasha said when she was all done. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Welcome back. We missed you. Specially your sweetie. He’s a grumpy old fart with you gone.”
Steve laughed. “He’s a grumpy old fart with me here.”
Tony made a face. “Uh, you both can stop talking about me as if I wasn’t here.”
They made video files with instruction to their future selves in case they needed them. Tony had Steve try on the Ant Man suit. It fit, though it was a little tighter than on Tony. Steve even tried out the shrinking function and he was suddenly the size of an ant. He popped back to real size then.
“I like you a lot better this size,” Tony told him.
Steve ran a hand down Tony’s spine as they stood fairly close. He could feel Tony shiver. He grinned and leaned close. “Will we be done soon for today? I’m kinda tired and wanna rest.”
“That’s it, folks. Steve’s tired. We’ll knock off until tomorrow.” Everyone knew that it was just a lame excuse, but they were more than willing to go along with it. They all told Steve goodnight, and suddenly, he and Tony were alone in the lab.
Tony sat at the table and stared at Steve.
“What?” Steve wondered if he had something on his face.
“I was thinking about how it might feel to kiss you without your beard tickling me.” His focus was Steve’s mouth.
“We can go home and find out.” He stood and walked over to the door. “Coming?”
“God, I hope so!” Tony followed.
*
Back in Steve’s apartment, Steve pulled Tony close. “I’ve missed this so much. Wong didn’t want to kiss me. Imagine that.” He laughed as he kissed Tony’s lips.
“His loss,” Tony said between kisses. He started peeling Steve’s clothes off, starting with his t-shirt. Steve’s hands weren’t idle either. He cupped his hands on Tony’s ass and pulled him hard against his own body.
Tony could feel Steve’s erection rub against his own through their clothes and he groaned. He wanted to slow Steve down, but he wanted him right now as well. Tony finished pulling Steve’s T-shirt over his head and worked on his belt. He unbuttoned the top button and yanked his zipper down, shoving Steve’s jeans down. They fell to his ankles and he kicked them away. Tony yanked his own shirt over his head, followed by the rest of this clothes until they came back together naked and hungry.
The bedroom was only a few feet away, but suddenly, that was too far. They sank to the floor where they stood, amidst their discarded clothing. Steve pushed Tony to lie flat and began kissing his body, beginning with his neck and shoulders. Each nip, each kiss made Tony realize that he was going to beg and soon.
No one, no lover before Steve, had ever made him feel so needy and so hungry for every single touch or kiss.
“I don’t know if I can wait any longer,” Tony said Steve’s tongue traced his scar from the Arc Reactor. Steve glanced up at him and sucked on a flat nipple until Tony moaned. “Please,” he begged as the attempted to push Steve’s head lower. He needed that mouth on him, he wanted it on him.
Steve was as stubborn in love as he was in other ways. He grinned up at Tony and stuck his tongue in Tony’s bellybutton.
“Fuck!” Tony hissed and squirmed. The sensation was intense and so close to pain, yet not pain. Steve stopped just before Tony thought he’d explode. What he did next wasn’t any easier to withstand. He stuck his nose into Tony’s dark, wiry pubic hair, inhaling Tony’s scent as he ignored Tony’s cock, as it bobbed against his face.
“Damn you!” Tony grabbed his head and shoved him down a few more inches. Steve kissed his penis at the very base, but ignored it otherwise, but only for a few seconds. He looked up at Tony and stuck his tongue out, grazing it up the underside to the tiny little fold of tissue under the head. Tony had no words after that. Steve finally showed him some mercy and took him into his mouth.
Tony bucked beneath him, holding onto the floor as if he might take flight. Steve took him deep, his tongue doing things that Tony didn’t remember it doing before. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now, but the man kneeling over him.
He didn’t realize he was saying Steve’s name over and over like a prayer until he could no longer speak. He came in Steve’s throat, the pleasure consuming him to the point that nothing existed but this, now.
He wanted it to last forever.
He was nearly boneless when it was done. His heart was pounding and he couldn’t get enough air. Steve patiently watched him, smiling and licking his lips, looking as hungry as Tony had a few minutes before.
“Touch me, Tony,” Steve told him when it looked as if he might survive. “Now!”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Surely you…”
“No. I waited to be here with you,” Steve whispered as he kissed Tony once again. “I wanted it to be good, really good.”
“It might be quick, really quick!” Tony laughed as he ran a finger down the center of Steve’s chest.
“I’m a supersoldier. I can go all night,” Steve told him.
“I’m nearly fifty. I can’t. But I’m good for now.”
“Stop talking then and do something to me. Anything.”
Tony grinned a wolfish grin as he took Steve’s hand and sucked one of his fingers into his mouth. He sucked it exactly like he sucked Steve’s cock. Steve remembered doing the same to Tony at least a lifetime ago.
“You are a monster,” Steve growled.
Tony let his finger go. “You can’t say anything. You stuck your tongue in my navel.”
“Mm… it made you all squirmy. I liked that.” As soon as he said it, he knew what Tony was going to do.
But Tony made him wait.
“Let’s get off the floor.” He got up and reached for Steve’s hand. They moved to the sofa. Tony began to kiss Steve again as he ran one hand down Steve’s leg to his knee, then around behind his knee to the tender skin in the bend of his leg.
“You are an evil man, Tony Stark. Don’t do it!” Steve said between wiggling and smacking at Tony’s hands. He was extremely ticklish behind his knees and Tony knew it. Tony moved his other hand up Steve’s belly and wrapped his fingers around Steve’s erection. He stopped tickling Steve and leaned close enough to lap at him a few times with his tongue.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Tony finally said. He let go of Steve and began a serious exploration of his long legs, down the outside of his thigh, down to his knees, which weren’t ticklish and up the outside of the other thigh. Instead of journeying any lower, he began to nip and kiss the insides of Steve’s thigh, working his way very slowly up until he was close enough to kiss him at the juncture of his torso and his leg, then he started up the inside of the other thigh.
“You’re killing me.”
“I know,” was Tony’s answer then he went back to his kissing. He kissed his belly and chest, his neck, shoulders and finally his mouth.
“Either suck it or get down here on the floor and let me fuck you,” Steve said. The words sounded like a demand but they came out more like begging.
“You gonna make me?” Tony asked.
“Do I have to?” Steve pushed Tony’s head toward his abdomen. Tony did get on the floor but he was between Steve’s open legs. He looked at Steve watching him and gave Steve as good as he’d gotten, taking him deep and giving him no mercy until Steve came down his throat.
They showered and found food, but they didn’t leave the apartment until the next day.
*
The last discussions before they set their plan in motion were starting.
Nebula, Thor and Rocket, along with some of Rocket’s ideas in weaponry, left the planet in the ship Nebula and Tony arrived in. They decided that Thanos would have most likely gone to ground on Titan, and they figured he went back to the past when the planet was an agrarian paradise. They knew that once Steve took the Tesseract, the damage done by the gauntlet should be reversed. That would alert Thanos that something had gone wrong. He would come after them but without the Space Stone, he’d have to travel by ship.
All of these things were their hope.
They also hoped that the little ship would actually work and take them to Titan. The trip would take a few days. It had taken four to get to Earth so in four days’ time, Steve would use the sorcery he’d been taught, along with his sling ring, which he’d earned, and travel back in time to New York at the end of the battle with the Chitauri and bring the Tesseract back to the present time.
While this happened, hopefully the trio on Titan could kill Thanos and take the Gauntlet from him. They would bring it back to Earth.
When Rogers arrived back in the present, he would then take the Space Stone into the Quantum Realm, a dimension outside both space and time, and leave it there. They’d destroy both the inventions and notes of Hank Pym, when Rogers came out of that realm.
All of this depended on reality not changing very much after New York.
Steve would leave Tony a message in New York to explain what and why they’d done what they did in vague enough terms that it wouldn’t change the future too much, but definite enough to let Tony understand that what they were doing was the only solution.
If all went well, no one else in the past would even know that Steve had been there.
Shuri had made Steve a new Captain America suit in red, white and blue, along with a new vibranium shield. He would carry regular clothes in case he had to use them and a special pouch made to hold the Tesseract so he could safely touch it.
She had also modified his ant sizing suit for the Quantum Realm to look like his Captain America suit. “He might as well go in his own style” was her reasoning. She had developed a fondness for the supersoldier, perhaps because her brother had been fond of both him and their White Wolf, Bucky Barnes.
Tony was a nervous wreck, though he was acting quite self-confident and even cocky. Everything had to go off perfectly and he’d seldom seen perfection in his life. The cost was high if they failed, as it was possible to rain down even more death and destruction on Earth.
He mostly worried about losing Steve, but Steve himself seemed to be fine with it. Sometimes he thought that Steve really didn’t care very much if he lived or died. Perhaps this was the effect of living as long as he had. Maybe it was what happened to someone who had lost so much to death.
“Are we ready to kill some Titan bastard?” Rocket asked as they began to load the weaponry aboard the small ship Tony and Nebula had come to earth in.
“I will kill him,” Nebula told Rocket. “I owe him that for using me and killing my sister, and for all the torture. It is only fitting that one of his assassin children kill him.”
Thor laughed in his booming laugh. “He is large; there is plenty of him to go around.” He hefted his mighty ax. “This time, he will not get away from me. I owe him for taking my brother away, too.”
The others walked them to the tarmac. Steve hugged Thor and Nebula, while solemnly shaking hands with the diminutive Rocket. “Keep them in line, Rocket, and kill the bastard for me, too.”
Shuri hugged them all, even squatting down to eye level to hug Rocket. “You are truly one of a kind, my friend. Return to us soon!”
Tony nodded, which was about as demonstrative as he ever was to all except the few he was closest to. He did punch Thor on the shoulder. “Take care, Point Break, and get this thing done.”
Bruce hugged them all and gave them a motherly warning to take care of themselves, while Rhodey and Natasha hugged and patted Thor and were a bit more reserved with Rocket and Nebula.
They boarded the ship and began their journey to Titan.
As they lifted off, Rocket began humming and then singing a song from Peter Quill’s mix tape.
I can't stop this feeling
Deep inside of me
Girl, you just don't realize
What you do to me
“If you do not cease that awful noise, you will be the first to die!” Nebula hissed at him.
“Yes, Ma’am!” He grinned at her and started the song all over again. Nebula looked angry but she was pleased that Rocket and Thor were with her.
*
“Can you make a fake Tesseract? We need something to leave in its place,” Steve said to Tony and Shuri as they began last minute preparation in the lab.
Shuri nodded. “We are already working on it, Captain. I should have it for you in a few hours.”
They made a credible copy of the Space Stone and placed it in the little pouch they’d made for him to transport the real one in. He made a voice file to leave the past Tony. He had decided to take the Tesseract from the lab in order to meet fewer people. The fewer people he met, the less his chance of leaving an effect on the time line.
Four days passed and everyone was on edge. They had gotten a couple of messages from their Titan bound companions and all was well so far. Nebula had not killed anyone yet, as far as they could tell. That was a small victory, in Tony’s opinion.
On the fourth day, Steve said a private goodbye to Tony, a public one to the rest of his comrades, put his ring on, got his gear ready and traveled to New York to the Sanctum. He and Wong went together into the mirror dimension and from there, with an obscure ‘spell’ they’d found in Kamar-Taj, Steve used his ring to go back to New York on the day after the battle of New York. He positioned himself in Stark Tower and waited.
He saw Tony come to his lab and begin to prepare the Tesseract for traveling to Asgard with Thor. He was still angry that Loki was going to be sent back with his brother. He wanted the bastard jailed here.
Tony was still completely exhausted from the battle. His whole body hurt from the beating he’d taken putting that nuke through the portal at the last second. He was also surprised. He’d found out that Captain America was all his father had said and more, much to his own dismay. Before the battle, he’d hoped to make up with Pepper again and maybe marry her. Now he knew he was going to give something with Rogers a shot. Couldn’t blame a guy for trying, could you?
Rogers came into the lab, looking over his shoulder, as if he were checking for anyone watching him. Something was odd, but Tony couldn’t put his finger on it.
“What can I do you for, Cap?” Tony asked him.
“I have little time. I am not the Steve Rogers who fought the Chitauri with you yesterday.”
Tony just stared. What the hell?
“I’m from 2018. I have come for the Tesseract.”
Tony still said nothing, looking hard at Rogers. He moved closer, walking around him. He was Steve Rogers, but he wasn’t – somehow. He put a hand out to touch Rogers and Steve caught his hand.
“I don’t have time for this.”
“As far as I know, time travel is impossible. And believe me, I’d know if it were possible,” Tony shot back.
“You don’t know everything, Stark.” Steve had not thought that it would be so hard to convince Tony that he was telling the truth, obviously a mistake. “What can I do to prove I’m me?” He didn’t have a lot of time.
“Give me a sample of your blood.” Tony went right to it. “I’ll believe if the science says it’s you.”
“If that will convince you.” He rolled his sleeve up. He wasn’t wearing his suit since he’d decided to come to this day instead of to the battle itself. He wore khakis and a blue plaid shirt, standard Rogers’ civilian dress.
Tony cleaned his arm and drew out a small vial of blood. He ran it through a centrifuge and one other machine of some sort, then printed out a sheet of paper and looked up something on the computer. The data on both was the same.
“I don’t know what is going on but this says you are Steve Rogers, and I know he’s gone with Romanov to meetings with Fury in DC today. I saw them leave on a Quinjet a few minutes ago.”
“I told you where I came from.” Steve stood very still. He knew that Tony still had a working suit and would put it on in a second if he felt threatened.
Tony looked at him hard, clearly wanting to not believe him. “What is going on? If you’re telling me the truth, tell me why you’re here.”
Steve held his hands up and took a step closer to Tony and with one hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the flash drive.
“I can’t tell you much. As much as you need to know is in this file.” He stuck a drive into the computer and uploaded a file. This was something the 2012 Steve didn’t know how to do yet.
“The file is called ‘WakandaForever’. Look at it when I’m gone.”
“I still don’t want to give you the Tesseract.”
Steve took the replica out of the pouch and held it in his hand. It looked like the real thing. Tony touched it and it pulsated with light. He turned away, looking up then down, as if the answers would be written somewhere.
“We need it desperately, Tony.”
Steve walked to the counter where the Tesseract lay, its white light shining brightly. When he reached for it, Tony grabbed his wrist.
“Not yet. I’m not convinced.”
Steve thought of one thing that might convince Tony he was really Steve Rogers. “I thought fondue was something dirty.”
Tony’s eyes widened and he looked hard at Steve. “I’ll be damned. It is you. My dad actually told me about that once when Peggy was visiting. She said Dad was still an ass.”
“Howard was always an ass,” Steve said with a smile.
“Damn.” He nodded. “Let’s do this before my better judgment changes my mind.”
They traded the Tesseract for the sparkly stone.
“Thanks, Tony. Oh, and that thing you’re thinking about doing? Go for it.” And he was gone.
*
Titan was teetering on the edge of oblivion. t had been knocked off its axis and was near complete destruction. They had very little time.
Nevertheless, Nebula landed the ship.
“Are you sure we won’t be destroyed?” Rocket asked her. “This place is falling apart.”
It was then that they noticed something odd. The air began to swirl in small patterns all around them, like several tiny whirlwinds, sucking in the dust and debris. The little tornadoes seem to grow tighter and tighter as they expanded in size, which made no sense at all.
One by one they began to become - something. For a moment, they looked like some sort of solid blob then the blobs became people, Stephen Strange, Peter Quill, Mantiss, Drax and finally Peter Parker.
Of course, right after they materialized, Thanos did as well.
“Well, well, well. What have we got here? Ah, my daughter has come to see her old father.”
“I’ve come to kill you, you monster,” Nebula said with a sneer.
He laughed. The shriveled gauntlet was still on his hand but it no longer held six stones. The Space Stone was missing. “How did your weak friends travel in time, sorcerer?” he asked Strange.
“I guess they’re smarter than I knew,” Strange said with his natural arrogance.
“I guess we’ll have to do something about that then, won’t we?” Thanos said to them all.
*
Steve Rogers arrived back in 2018. He was in the New York Sanctum and it looked the same. Wong greeted him.
“You have the Stone?” he asked.
“Yes, has anything changed?” Steve was anxious that he’d come back to a totally different world.
“Yes, people are reappearing all over. You should take the Stone and head back to Wakanda.”
Steve thanked Wong. “What shall I do with this ring?”
“Use it to go home and keep it. You trained and earned it. It’s yours.”
He used the ring to open a portal into Wakanda.
*
In Wakanda, people were reappearing everywhere. Reports were coming in from all over the world that the same was happening everywhere. The dead, however, stayed dead. The battle field in Wakanda actually had more than a few of Thanos’ people returning as well. They were fairly quickly subdued and jailed by the Dora Milaje. There was no escape for them this time.
Suddenly Bucky, Sam, T’Challa, Wanda and scores of others appeared.
Steve appeared, too, but not from the reversal of the Stone’s affect. He stepped out of a ring of fire into the lab, where Tony and Shuri waited for him.
“I’m glad you said what you did or I might have chickened out,” Tony told Steve by way of greeting him. Things had not changed too much, then, Steve hoped.
“Are we ready for me to take the Stone into the Quantum Realm?”
“We are,” Shuri answered. “We have a small device for you to use to come out. It will work for one person for now, so all you need to do is leave the Space Stone and come back.”
“Is Bucky here?” Steve asked Tony.
“Yeah.” Tony answered tersely. He still couldn’t look at Barnes and probably never would be able to do so. “He’s in the other room, waiting for you.”
Steve went to the room next door, a small sitting room used as a breakroom for the techs who worked there when the world wasn’t falling apart.
Bucky smiled when he saw his old friend and hugged him. He was still dirty from combat. He hugged Steve.
“Welcome back! I was afraid I’d never see you again!”
“Here I am, still old and one armed!” Bucky grinned. “What’s happening?”
Steve gave him a quick rundown and told him he had to go finish his mission.
“I’ll see you when you get back!”
“Good deal! Take care of yourself. Watch out for Natasha, too. And I know he doesn’t want to see you, but if it’s ever possible, talk to Stark.”
Bucky was no fool. He knew that Steve was saying goodbye. He didn’t plan on coming out of that Quantum Realm. He wondered if Stark knew it. He would never quite understand what Steve saw in Stark, but he seemed to love him so who was he to judge? He wondered if he said something to Stark, he might change Steve’s mind, but he knew better. His friend was a stubborn SOB when he wanted to be.
Damn Steve Rogers!
*
Thanos acted as if nothing had happened, but he knew better. He knew that without all the Stones, his control was done. Whatever they had done, they had reversed the one thing he had spent a lifetime doing.
He would not let these puny little know nothings ruin his grand gesture. He had given his all to save the universe and was not going to let his life’s work be undone.
The other people on Titan with him disagreed with that premise and meant to stop him at all costs.
Without discussing it at all, they all converged on Thanos. Their weapons were still cast about on the planet and Rocket wasted no time grabbing them and tossing them to his companions. He had made himself a huge weapon that shot energy bolts in varying degrees of lethalness. He had it set on highest setting. Thor had his axe. Peter Quill and Drax caught what Rocket tossed to them. Mantis circled Thanos from behind. Peter Parker was flitting about, shooting webs. Stephen Strange began casting spells.
Mantis leaped on Thanos, grabbing his head and using her empathic abilities, stopping him from doing anything at all, just as she had before. Strange cast an immobility spell while Peter Parker began to spin a web all around him, to help subdue him if he woke. Thor and Nebula began to pull on the Gauntlet as Stark had before and it moved. The others stood, ready to shoot with all their firepower as soon as the Gauntlet was removed.
Thanos’ eyes were closed and he murmured Gamora’s name, as if talking in his sleep. He tried to move but could not. Suddenly, the Gauntlet let go, Thor and Nebula falling back on their asses, holding the Gauntlet between them. The others, Quill, Drax, and Rocket began firing their weapons all at once. Thor stuffed the Gauntlet into a container hanging from his waist, a container designed by Stark and Banner for that very purpose. Nebula pulled both of her weapons form their holsters and began shooting as well.
Thanos was well and truly subdued when Mantis let go of her mental hold on him. He roared and tried to move, but he found himself trapped by webs, energy beams, magic…
“You will regret this, you fools,” he shouted. Couldn’t they see he’d done this thing for them all?
“We only regret we did not kill you before,” Strange said to him.
“I want to kill you over and over,” Nebula said, “as you have me!”
“You are my favorite child, Nebula! Every failure made you a better assassin until even Gamora was not as ruthless and efficient as you. Can you not see how much I love you?”
“I am only your favorite because you killed Gamora! You killed my sister!” she screamed as she came closer and ramped up her fury.
Still not quite trusting Thanos not to pretend he was immobilized, they continued to shoot him as Parker kept adding layer and layer of web ropes. Thor grabbed his ax, Stormbreaker, which was forged in the fires of Nidavellir and strengthened by the tendrils of Groot as a handle. He swung the ax at Thanos’ head and severed it completely.
The Titan’s purple head rolled away from his body and his eyes flew open. His mouth opened as if to speak, then he just stopped. The head was dead, as was the body. None of them stopped firing. They fired until the corpse began to burn and kept firing until smoke and ash were all that was left of their enemy’s body. They turned to the head and did the same thing, reducing it to small pile of oily black debris on the ground.
“Ceasefire!” Rocket yelled, though no one stopped until he yelled again. “That’s enough, you morons!”
Thor turned to Doctor Strange. “Welcome back, Strange.”
Strange smiled and nodded.
They secured the Gauntlet from the bag on Thors’s belt into a locked vibranium case and boarded the ship.
*
Steve Rogers got into the suit they’d designed for him to wear into the Quantum Realm. He hit a button and he shrank to a tiny size, then another button shrank him further. He did this several times, then he was ready. Shuri and Stark had built a small tunnel to send him to his destination and suddenly he was flying along into something different from anything he’d ever seen before. It was like space and the ocean had merged into a beautiful mix with flashing lights and strange things and creatures floating by.
“Can you hear me?” He spoke into his headset.
“You’re breaking up a little but we can understand most of it,” Tony answered.
“I’m picking up Lang’s beacon. I’m going to find him.”
“Wait!” Tony wanted him to leave the Stone and come out immediately.
“I can’t hear you! You’re breaking up!” Steve lied to Tony. He was not leaving Scott Lang in here. Lang had helped him out and had served two years of house arrest as payment, so he owed him. Lang also had a young daughter out there who loved him. Steve had seen a picture of her in the contents of Luis’ van. He wasn’t about to leave the child without her father.
“Lang, is that you?” he broadcast over his com unit.
“It is. What happened? I’ve been in here for a very long time, though time doesn’t actually seem to pass here.” Lang sounded surprised that anyone came for him.
“The earth was attacked by another nasty alien and you were stranded here.”
“Did you come to rescue me?”
“Not exactly. Let me find you and I’ll tell you more.”
“Who are you, anyway?” Lang asked.
“You’ll see.”
Steve followed the beacon and there he was, Scott Lang, in his Ant Man suit. He waved at Steve.
“It’s you! And you even have a Captain America suit!”
“I have a device for you that will get you out of here. I am going to stay for a while. I have a mission to fulfill and I need to stay.”
“What is this Stone you’re talking about?”
Steve explained a little about what had happened, what Thanos had done. He also told Scott that Hank Pym, Janet and Hope Van Dyne had disappeared along with half of the galaxy.
“What about Cassie?” Lang was panicking at the thought of his daughter being frightened and alone.
“Tony said they checked on her and she and her mom and stepdad didn’t disappear. They told her you were away on a mission.”
“She’s too smart to buy that,” Scott said. “She’ll know something weird happened.”
“Thanks for helping us in Berlin and I’m so sorry about the house arrest,” Steve touched his shoulder.
“No problem. It’s not every day a guy like me gets to help Captain America out.”
“Here is the device. Just hit it and you’ll be drawn back to the tunnel and back home. You’ll come out in Wakanda in Africa, but Stark will send you home. Take care of that little girl and have a good life, Lang.”
Lang patted him on the back and took off. Moments later, he came through the tunnel into the lab in Wakanda. He hit the button on his suit that returned him to normal size.
“Where the hell is he?” Tony Stark demanded. “What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything. He gave me the device and insisted I leave. I left. Who am I to argue with Captain America?” Lang said nonchalantly, but in truth, he was a bit intimidated by Stark’s anger.
“Damn him to hell!” Tony turned and walked away, leaving Lang staring at Banner and Shuri.
Shuri smiled at him. “Hello, Mr. Lang. I’m Shuri and this is Dr. Banner. Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers are very close. He’s very worried. If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you where you can clean up and have some food, then you can call your daughter and we’ll make some arrangements to get you back home as soon as possible.”
Lang nodded and followed the young woman.
Shuri returned to find Bruce and Tony arguing a few minutes later. They were nose to nose.
“I’m not destroying it. I want him back!”
“Tony, we all agreed. Steve knows what he’s doing. Let him have this.”
“I would never have given him the damned Stone all those years ago if I’d known he was going to be stupid and do this!”
“We agreed, all of us, to do this.”
Tony ran a hand through his hair and looked around, as if help might come out of thin air. “I know, I know. All right, but you have to know I’m going to go after him someday.”
“Agreed.”
They had all the equipment they’d used to get into the Quantum Realm loaded up and hauled away to be destroyed, they burned all the paperwork involved and destroyed all the hard drives with Pym’s research on it.
The three scientists were in the lab the next day, wondering if their space ship companions accomplished their mission or would Thanos show up soon to end them all this time, when Bruce took something from his pocket.
It was a flash drive.
“I almost forgot. He said give this to you after the equipment was gone.” He handed it to Tony.
Tony popped it into the USB port of the closest computer and menu popped up. There was a video file titled, ‘I love you, you bastard’. He clicked on it and it opened.
Steve was sitting in that very room. He wore jeans and one of his Iron Man t-shirts. He still had long hair and a beard.
“I’m sure you’re mad at me right now. I understand. But this was something that needed to be done. Someone needs to stay with the Stone and I elected me. Tony, I love you and you know that.”
Bruce and Shuri made themselves scarce, leaving Tony alone with the video.
“I’m old – I was born a hundred years ago. I’m the one who needs to do this. You have a future and people need you. So do all the others. I’m the logical choice. I’m not sure that time and space exist there as we know it, so maybe someday I’ll see you again. I won’t forget you and I’ll always love you.”
“Take care of yourself and the others.”
Steve smiled that sad smile Tony had seen too many times over the last few months and he was gone.
Tony Stark felt odd, his knees weren’t working properly. His arm hurt and it felt like an elephant was sitting on his chest…
Shuri and Bruce found him unconscious minutes later.
Bruce shouted at him. Shuri dropped to her knees beside him. She called medical personnel on her comm and they were there in seconds, though it seemed like forever to Bruce and Shuri.
Bruce, being a medical doctor as well, recognized what happened to Stark and told Shuri they needed a cardiologist. Tony was taken to the hospital where he was stabilized. They did scans and determined that he required no surgery, only a medication and more rest and exercise.
He woke flat on his back with Shuri and Natasha Romanov staring down at him. He had all sorts of machines hooked up to him. He tried to sit up, but Natasha put her hand on his arm.
“Woah, there, Stark. You’re not going anywhere.”
“What happened? Did I bang my head?” he asked.
“You had a small myocardial infarction,” Shuri told him.
“I had a heart attack?” He tried to get up again and again, Natasha pushed him down.
“Stay! The doctor says you’re going to be fine, Mr. Stark. We’ve kept you sedated for a couple of days just to make sure you got some rest,” Shuri told him.
“And to keep you out of the way,” Natasha said with a grin. “There’s someone here from space who wants to see you.”
She left the room for a moment and returned with Peter Parker.
“Mr. Stark! I’m back!”
Tony smiled. A real happy smile. His little Spiderman was all right!
“Can I, uh, hug Mr. Stark?” he asked Natasha.
“Go ahead. We’ll leave you two.”
After the women had left, Peter hugged Tony, squeezing him.
“Not too hard, kid. I’m an old man now.”
“I’m so glad to be home, Mr. Stark, sir.”
“Tony, I’m Tony, and I’m so glad you’re back, Peter. I’m so sorry I got you into such a mess.”
“It’s all right, sir. Um, who was that girl with Miss Romanov? She’s been really nice to me and I like her.”
Tony laughed. “That girl’s Shuri and she is the sister to the King of Wakanda and a brilliant scientist.”
Peter grinned. “And she’s pretty, too.”
“I’ll introduce you when she comes back. She makes awesome suits. You remember her brother, Black Panther, from Berlin?”
“Yeah, the cool dude with the accent.”
“She designed his suit.”
“Maybe she could help with ours, um, mine, sir.”
“Tony! I’m Tony. Maybe she could. Have you talked to your Aunt May?”
“Yeah, she was disappeared, too, but she’s back and Dr. Banner says they’re flying her here today.”
“I guess she gets to know the whole truth then.”
“Looks like it. She may ground me for life.”
“I’ll see if I can help.”
Peter smiled then asked, “What happened to Captain Rogers? Dr. Banner said he’s gone.”
Tony told Peter about the Quantum Realm and Steve’s choice to stay there. He tried to keep the sorrow out of his face and voice.
“Mr. S – Tony. I know you and he were -” he blushed a little, “I know he was your boyfriend, sir, and I’m sorry.”
“It was his choice, kid. He’s noble like that. When he sets his mind on something, no one can stop him.”
“Like you, Tony.”
“I wish, Peter, I wish.”
Peter said goodbye and promised he’d be back soon to meet Shuri.