Chapter Text
Vision came back to Tony in fragments- the plaster-white walls, the steel table when his head bobbed downwards, the concrete floors, a door, a camera tucked in the corner, and most importantly, his arc reactor.
Or more aptly, the lack of his arc reactor, though not physically- trust me, you would know if the only thing keeping your heart beating was ripped from your body- visually, the absence of light emanating from his chest was still frightening. Admittedly, the light was the first thing to snuff out if the reactor was compromised, and his heart still seemed to be beating well and truly, so he wasn’t too worried, but still. The reactor only emitted the light itself as a way to dispose of excess energy, so all it meant was that he was using most- if not all of- the energy the reactor created after the teleporter stole some of it.
All in all, not the worst situation he’d been in, he ruminated slightly as his hearing came back to him, the ringing coming to a quiet stop in his ears, but there was still a daze across his eyes like he’d gotten a very mild concussion.
He’d been tied to a steel chair, the uncomfortable sort that he’d sat in when watching Peter secure the win for Midtown’s decathlon team a couple months before- his wrists were connected to handcuffed which were bolted- and then welded, jesus christ who were these guys interrogating? The hulk?- to the table. The room was dank and humid and ever so slightly blurry- though that might’ve been because of his head- so he was somewhere subtropical, probably, certainly still in America if the make of the light outlets were to tell him anything. Okay, so the teleporter worked and probably just threw him somewhere south of New England, hell, maybe he was still in New York. Maybe they were still in New York. God damn it, he might’ve been the one who touched and powered the teleporter, but Steve and Peter were clinging onto him as he did it and while he passed out. Were they here too? Christ, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he accidentally got Peter hurt by teleporting him here, and his own guilt would be nothing compared to what May would do to him.
The sound of the door creaking open made him frown, eyes flitting up from where they were settled, zoned out, looking down at the steel table.
The man who walked in was tall, maybe 6’2, with muscular arms and a toothbrush mustache, hair slicked back in a decidedly old-fashioned form in spite of the man hardly being thirty. He was wearing a vomit-green military coat over a cream colored button down with tan pants and calf-tall boots. He looked like he was straight out of a propaganda poster from the 1940’s, making Tony have to put genuine effort into masking a laugh. Was this HYDRA? Some kind of neo-nazi regime obsessed with the olden-times? The outfit nor the man seemed particularly German.
“Stranger,” Tony greeted, the usual lilt of sarcasm gracing his tone. “Mind telling me where I am?” It was a sort of extended olive branch- if these guys weren’t evil then they sure as hell thought Tony was, he figured asking where he was would let them in on the know-how that he wasn’t there to kill them.
Unless they were HYDRA, then he was going to kill them- so long as Steve didn’t get to them first.
“Oh can the twit.” the man huffed. ‘Can the twit’? What the hell? “You were found passed out in the jurisdiction of government property with two others, you’ll tell us why you’re trespassing in an American military training facility.”
Oh fucking wonderful, a military training facility. It was a wonder they didn’t recognize him and call Fury to chew him out at this point.
“The two others, where are they?” He asked, “Are they alright?” He could show his concern now that he knew these guys were on their side. Well, he could sort of show his concern, until he got Fury here in person or evidence that this was actually the US government he’d stay cautious.
“The kid and the blondie are fine, they’re getting their own interrogations right now.”
Tony nodded, “Good. Look, I know this looks bad-” the man raised a brow, “-but we didn’t mean to trespass on government jurisdiction.” Not that he hadn’t done that before, but this time he actually didn’t mean too.
The man snorted, looking only more displeased, “Oh awgwan, that’s what they all say,”
Tony rolled his eyes, ignoring the piercing look the man gave him, “Look, call director Fury if you don’t believe me, I was messing with some tech from last invasion and it teleported us over here.”
The man quirked a brow, lips flitting upwards in bemusement even though his brows stayed completely serious, “Teleportation, really? Next thing you’ll be telling me is that cars can fly,”
Tony groaned, “Jesus fucks just call Director Fury from SHIELD and he’ll tell you to let me go.”
“Right, well we don’t have a branch called SHIELD and there is no director Fury so far as I’m aware.” The man said, starting to sound annoyed.
“Jesus christ, the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division? You don’t know SHIELD?” Tony said, exasperated. The guy must’ve just been messing with him, even HYDRA knew SHIELD.
The man's face only hardened further, “Look, I don’t know where you get off with-” but was interrupted by the door creaking open. Steve, with one hand on Peter's shoulder and two nervous looking men in full military uniform behind them.
The man interrogating him stopped, looked to Peter and Steve, looked back behind them and paled, “Lieutenant Allen, Captain Moore, what are you-”
“Uncuff the man.” The Captain- Tony could tell based on his patches- murmured gruffly, sounding almost sick, “Now, uncuff him now, Sergeant.”
The man stood up so fast his chair scraped against the floor. He could clearly tell the urgency in his Captain’s voice because he instantly brought out a key, rounded the table, and uncuffed Tony. He rubbed his wrists,
“Steve, Kid,” he greeted, a worried frown on his face, “You two alright?”
“Peachy,”
“Oh terrible, I have a chem test that I think I’m missing right now and Miss Petrik already thinks I’m cheating so she’s totally gonna bitch me out for this,” Peter chuffed, looking grim. The Lieutenant opened his mouth ever so slightly, as if about to chastise Peter, before Tony beat him to it,
“Langauge, young man, you know the Capsicle hates that,” he teased
“Come on, that was one time,” Steve sighed, somehow suddenly looking even grimmer than Peter.
“How did you get them to let you out? I tried telling broombrush over here-” A jab at the man's mustache which no one in the room seemed to catch except Steve himself, who shot him a chastening look, “-that we knew Fury and SHIELD and all that, he says he doesn’t know who they are.”
“He doesn’t, none of them do,” Steve sighed again, running a hand through his hair
“Beg your pardon Nostradamus but if you’d clue me in instead of giving me half-baked answers I’d appreciate it, pretty sure I hit my head on the way down,”
Peter jerked his head over to give pleading eyes at Steve, who snorted and waved a hand to give him the go-ahead to explain. Of course Peter figured it out already, his intern was such a little genius.
“Well, we knew that the teleporter worked based on reader-technology where it analyzes DNA, and of course we’re all from Earth so it shouldn’t have done anything but transport us to a different part of Earth at worst, but we failed to think about what the teleporter was supposed to actually do. Essentially, we thought it teleported people through space, but it actually teleports people through space and time. It’s basically time-machine plus teleporter tech that just uses the same prospect as general teleportation tech.” He explained, “Of course we didn’t exactly account for that because it looks and functions exactly the same as teleportation tech, but I think what happened was that it was supposed to just be teleportation tech but it pricked Captain Rogers, who’s obviously displaced from his own time. So when it tried to teleport Cap back it didn’t just teleport him to Earth, but to Earth circa 1944. Since Steve and I were both holding you- are you sure you’re okay? I figure the teleporter siphoned energy from the arc reactor to power it- well, anyways, it teleported all three of us,” Peter explained, gesticulating slightly alongside his words.
Tony preened like a proud father, which everyone in the room clearly noticed barring Peter himself, “Good job, Roo- how did you figure it out?”
“Well, the camera in the corner was outdated in design but their cuffs were made of Carbon Steel, which made me wonder how the camera could be so outdated when they clearly had funding and prioritized interrogations, plus Lieutenant Allen- who was interrogating me- has a super outdated hairstyle by 2025’s terms, not to mention the fact that his uniform is a style that was deemed obsolete after 1948, plus the officers uniform I passed was pink and green, which was phased out in 2015. After that it wasn’t too hard to guess what had happened seeing as we’re still in the same general area based off the fact that Lieutenant Allen’s accent is pretty Jersey and it was Captain Rogers who got his finger pricked and we were dealing with teleportation, so it was feasible that we could’ve teleported through time.” He took a deep breath before starting back up again, talking quickly so no one would interrupt him,
“Of course it was all conjecture and I wasn’t certain about anything, but I asked for you and then Captain Rogers and then Director Fury and then the whole of SHIELD, and then I remembered what Matt told me and I asked to call my lawyer and Lieutenant Allen was like ‘what makes you think we’ll give you a phone call and why do you have an attorney’ and I was like ‘uh you have to let me call my lawyer’ and he was like ‘no I don’t?’- but he didn’t say it in like a police-officer-powerplay-way because he was genuinely confused and by then I knew for a fact I was in the early to mid 1900’s, but then Captain Rogers came barging in and he was followed by Captain Moore and he was all ‘untie the kid’-” Peter took another deep breath. He had a habit of talking fast so no one would interrupt him, but that also meant that he needed moments to gasp for air in between tangents.
“-And then he told me for certain that we were definitely in the 1940’s.” he finished, eyes focusing on Tony and noticing something missing. He furrowed a brow, squinted his eyes, and-
“Holy shit Mr. Stark are you going into cardiac arrest!” Peter took a step forwards, voice pitched up in worry.
“What, no- what, no!?” Tony repeated, sounding incredulous before he looked down at his chest- suspiciously absent of light. Steve seemed to realize at the same time he looked down, paling dramatically before Tony quickly shook his head and explained,
“It’s fine, I'm fine, the reactor only emits light to dispose of excess energy, the teleporter must’ve siphoned out enough power that the excess energy is no longer in excess, but everything's still working just fine and my heart is perfectly stable.”
Peter and Steve breathed a sigh of relief, before an already green-faced Captain Moore asked, “...Did he just call you Mr. Stark?”
A moment, two, and Sargent Broombrush rushed to the trash can to throw up his breakfast.