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While Tony fought, while he flew, while Obie struck and punched and clawed his way close to killing him, there was only adrenaline. It's not until he walks toward the podium at Stark Enterprises, Coulson's notecards in his hand, that the sheer magnitude of the past twenty-four hours sinks in. Tony sees it all again – Obie's monstrosity of a suit; the Mark III pushed beyond its limits; ordering Pepper to flip the switch – which is inconvenient, because it's hard to have a small but well-earned breakdown in front of the press. Tony's saved, if not the world, a small but vital part of it, and yet there's no victory here. To view things cynically, which Tony can't help but admit he's top-notch at doing, the only people Tony now trusts are his employee, an Air Force liaison, and the AI he created from lines of code. The realization stuns him, like the impact of landing in the first version of the suit.
Tony stands at the podium and looks at the press and he can still smell Pepper's perfume on the lapels of his jacket. Rhodey's waiting for him, looking firm but kind; Happy's . . . he has no idea where Happy is, and truthfully, he could use Happy's face in the crowd right now, because it's no big deal, he'll just keep breathing, but he just came far too close to being blown out of the sky with a jeremiad about disappointing his father ringing in his ears.
Tony hangs his sanity on Coulson's notes, if only for a moment – blue cardstock, solid, Coulson's handwriting reassuringly clear. He smiles into the faces of a hundred reporters, makes a crack about the tragic lack of catering, reads Coulson's story just as he promised. For one wild second it occurs to him he could just tell the world he's Iron Man – how much worse could things get? But he glances at Coulson and decides he doesn't want to know, that more than anything he wants to get out of the line of fire as quickly as possible, so he delivers the lie as convincingly as he can.
"I'm thinking I should get away," he tells Coulson as they hustle back toward his office, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents surrounding them on every side.
"Away. " Coulson repeats the word without inflection.
"Just – away. You know, not here, someplace else, lie low, regroup, maybe heal up the – " Tony waves a hand at his ribs, his shoulder, tries not to point at his head. "Prudent, don't you think? You look like you like prudence. Oh, wow, is prudence your middle name? I bet it is. Wait, what's your first?"
"Agent," Coulson says dryly. He holds up his hand and the entire entourage of SHIELD agents stops on a dime. "You want a time out."
"A time – no, I do not want a time out, I just want a minute or two to straighten out my thoughts, maybe work on this – " Tony raps the arc reactor through his shirt, aiming for bravado. "I don't expect you to understand the science of what I'm doing here, but I could use some –"
"I can offer you a chalet in the Alps. 450 square feet. We have three rooms in a third-rate hotel in Buenos Aires. There's also Iceland."
Tony blinks.
"Your only other option is Iowa."
Tony goggles. "Iowa?"
"Farmhouse. Northeast quadrant. 640 acres, fields rented out for corn. Basement we can outfit with a lab given four hours notice. Neighbors who'll bring you pot roast."
Tony loosens his tie and glances at the agents around him, mutely appealing for a little help. "Iowa," he says. "Do you know the last time a Stark lived in Iowa? I'll give you a clue, it was never."
Coulson almost smiles. "So no one will be looking for you there."
The man has a point.
Tony sends Pepper on a wild, improbable errand, packs two duffels of clothes, a case of electronics, and makes Coulson promise to ship four crates of high-quality liquor across country. Coulson, for his part, has a jet on standby and meets Tony at the runway with a dog on a leash.
"Seriously, what the hell," Tony says as the dog pants at him happily.
"Thought you could stand a little company," Coulson tells him, and Tony's strapped into a seat with the dog in his lap before he can think of a comeback.
The farmhouse is fine, Tony supposes, if you're into retro, rural chic, which he's not, but it's fine, it's a temporary thing, a couple of weeks to get his thinking back on track, whatever, he's totally not thinking about Buenos Aires. Besides, it takes nearly a whole day to retrofit the place so that Jarvis can upload and start running things, and Tony has a little project he likes to call figuring out how the fuck to stop the ARC reactor from killing him, so it's fine. It's great, it's totally a vacation, fuck the Alps, who needs skiing and scotch and Pepper?
He calls Pepper exactly three hours after he gets off the plane.
Tony's stuck with the dog, so he calls it Pluto, which stands for Plutonium, because he's fairly sure the dog's got destructive capabilities. And if it's a shout out to his dad and the Manhattan Project, well, that's just crazy talk, because it's a dog, and they're in Iowa, and why would he? He wouldn't.
Thinking might have been the point of getting away, but Tony discovers he likes not thinking a great deal. He works on the new suit, makes tiny and unnecessary modifications to the left knee plate that require the painstaking hyper-calibration of fourteen very small screws and no thinking about his father or his life span or how he misses something he can't even name. At night he reviews his daily consulting updates from S.H.I.E.L.D., goes to bed strategizing the New Mexico problem, fingers tracing the palladium poisoning just beneath his skin while he considers all the angles of old Norse legends and doesn't think about death or dying or loneliness at all. He experiments with sandwiches, with the proper ratio of mustard to mayo, the bite of capers, the merits of fresh oregano and dried. Eventually he's properly satisfied that he's eating the best turkey sandwich that any human can create, and he doesn't give a moment's thought to why a parent would give their child caviar when they were five.
Pepper visits and eyes him disapprovingly; Happy sends him emails full of ASCII art, because Happy is shot through with evil; Rhodey calls and always has to go before Tony's done talking, and once or twice before he's done listening, which perhaps means he's experiencing personal growth. Mostly Tony works, and he drinks, and he plays fetch with the dog, because dogs play fetch, and there's something oddly soothing about the back and forth.
And that's what he's doing when he hears the Voice.
*****
"If you build it, he will come."
Tony's first thought is not particularly pure, because his mind is puerile, but the Voice clears its throat (or at least Tony imagines as much; he's around Pepper a lot; he borrows from her reactions when he's at a loss) and says, again:
"If you build it, he will come."
"Build what?" Tony asks.
Pluto runs out of the corn and drops his stick at Tony's feet. It's the same stick they've been playing with for twenty minutes, dirty and covered in saliva and chewed at the end.
"Build what?" Tony asks again.
Pluto wriggles back a couple of feet, goes down on his front paws, and barks happily. Tony spreads his hands as if to plead his case, stoops to pick up the stick and throws it back out into the corn. The Voice is suddenly, conveniently quiet, which he thinks is probably how it goes with voices – here one minute, gone the . . .
"If you build it, he will come."
And Tony suddenly sees how he can fix the arc reactor and power a Mark IV suit. The schematics are hanging out in the evening sky, six feet above the cornfield, every last calculation glowing an eerie pale blue. Tony glances over everything, goes back, left to right, and studies it again. A new element – if he makes a new element he can save his own heart and perhaps the world, too. It's ridiculous – he laughs a little wildly as the vision starts to fade, scrubs a hand over his face and jogs back to the house.
"Sensor readings," he asks Jarvis, the moment he's inside.
"Corn in all directions, sir."
"You're funny. No breaches, no – "
"Everything is within acceptable parameters, sir."
Tony squints at the corn beyond the dining room window, paces through the house and looks out at the fields beyond the porch and the yard and the fence and the dirt. "No voices?"
"I'm sorry, sir?"
"Voices. Messages. Radio signals, infrared, technology we're not supposed to know about, communications from another dimension."
"Nothing, sir." A pause. "Are you feeling quite well?"
Tony blows out a breath and heads to the kitchen, mind working feverishly over the remembered plans. "Jury's been out on that for a long time," he replies, off hand. "I'm going to need a drink."
*****
There's a new problem. It isn't the Voice, which falls silent, for which Tony gives thanks, and it isn't the design, which Tony renders in a more accessible format than 'floating above the corn' within three hours. It's power. A new arc reactor – one that won't kill him, which is such a nice idea – requires a new element, and a new element requires a certain amount of custom-made machinery to bring it into being. Machinery is easily done – pipes, brackets, screws; he can scatter his purchases at a dozen construction outlets, even scavenge from his father's leftover junk if it comes to that – but power is harder to arrange. It isn't as though he's in New York or California and can just tap into the grid; the kind of power he needs would bring down the lights in the entire state, and he knows how his neighbors get about things like working fences and a well-maintained yard. He can't imagine a broken power grid would go over well.
Tony puzzles over the power issue for two solid weeks. He considers building an arc reactor for the purposes of upgrading his arc reactor, and gets dizzily lost in the circular logic for nearly four hours. He jury-rigs a conductor to the turbine on the well-pump and hopes for a storm. A small burst of nuclear energy would do the trick, but it's hard to get that kind of material without blowing his cover. Someone, somewhere, would join the dots, and that's if S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't nix the very idea from the start.
In the absence of a solution – and really, it's worrying, exactly how much he cares that no one find him, and how slowly his brain seems to function these days – he drinks and sulks more than could be reasonably called attractive.
Which is when the Voice says, "Ease his pain."
"Oh, come on," Tony says to an empty kitchen, setting down his glass beside the vermouth. "Jarvis, is this your idea of a joke?"
"I don't follow, sir."
"I'm pretty sure I didn't program the ability to prank me into your code."
"Prank you," Jarvis repeats.
"I'll admit, I don't know how you figured out the reactor thing without me, much less how you projected it onto a field of corn but –"
"Sir," Jarvis interrupts. "Should I contact Ms. Potts?"
"Sure! By all means!" Tony says blithely. "Let's have a party. You want to call Rhodey, too?"
"Should I?"
Tony pulls at his drink – a little bitter, but if that isn't a metaphor for his life he isn't sure what is. "No, no I don't. I want you to tell me how you're projecting an arc reactor beyond the limits of the – you plain don't have the – you'd need hardware that – " He sighs and rubs a finger between his eyebrows where a headache's building. "Sure. Call Pepper, what the hell. I'll be on the porch."
The screen doors on the house come with a snap-back mechanism as a feature, not a bug, and some adolescent part of Tony's psyche enjoys the sound, however short-lived the satisfaction. Out on the porch it's quiet, the kind of quiet that's never silent, not here out in the middle of nowhere with bugs and critters and creatures down in the damp hollow beyond the barn (he has a barn; he's not trying to leave; he is utterly fucked.)
He drinks.
The porch swing creaks satisfyingly whenever Tony settles into it, when he comes out in the middle of the night and stares at a universe spread bright and clean across the sky. He's known since he was a child what made up the stars – gas and gravity and heat and time – and now he knows what lurks beyond them, thanks to his consulting gig with S.H.I.E.L.D. But here, on a porch swing that sighs when he pushes it into motion, there's more out there than chemistry and risk – there's beauty, and mystery, and maybe this is why he's not back in Malibu. Tony bends forward, rests his elbows on his knees, closes his eyes to breathe around the ache in his chest.
"Ease his pain," says the Voice.
Tony pointedly doesn't react, because god, this Voice is pushy and demanding.
"Ease his pain," the Voice says again.
"Whose pain?" Tony asks irritably. "What pain?"
Perhaps it's because he's tired; perhaps it was because it's Iowa; perhaps it's because he knows Jarvis isn't capable of managing house-to-field projection without someone to do the hardware installation – but Tony looks up. And hovering six feet above the cornfield is an image of Fenway Park from behind the third base line, and the man sitting at his elbow is Thor.
"Ease his pain," says the Voice.
"You are beyond annoying," he snaps, and goes inside to lose himself in doing something else.
*****
He holds out for twenty-four hours.
"You're going to Boston," Pepper says flatly. She has her arms folded, and she's spoiling for a fight. It's no less intimidating a posture in Tony's small, messy kitchen than in the offices of Stark Enterprises, which seems unfair. Rural life ought to have some advantages
"It has . . . Boston things," Tony offers, smiling brightly, mostly because he knows it irritates the hell out of her. "And I am very much in need of some – "
"Boston things," she offers, over-enunciating every word. So they're evenly matching on irritating the hell out of each other, Tony concedes.
"Pepper – "
"Don't you 'Pepper' me," she says, unfolding her arms to gesture appropriately. "You've been hiding out here for months – "
" – temporarily eschewing – "
"Hiding, while I do damage control on Obie's mysterious – "
Tony pours her some coffee. "I thought Coulson had damage control – "
"—and don't think I haven't noticed the smoothies, Tony. It's not like you even like spinach – "
No point in bemoaning the conversational whiplash, it isn't like he can't play that game. "Right, well, speaking of that, I think I've – "
"And now Boston? Why? Why are you doing this, why are you going to Boston of all places, why?"
Tony looks at her for a long moment, assessing the situation before he goes for broke. "I have to take Thor to a baseball game."
Pepper blinks.
"Which – okay, I know that sounds at least a little crazy, but there's this Voice, and it keeps telling me to . . . wait, no,– Pepper. Pepper. This is not a moment for the concerned face, or the sad face, no, no, I am not losing my mind Pepper, stop that."
Pepper sighs, flattening her hand over her heart. "Oh, Tony."
"Wait, no, look, it's not – I am fine."
She touches his arm gently. "It's okay, I'll call Dr. Rollins and – "
"I do not need a shrink," Tony said, circling the island to put it between them. "I'm just dealing with an . . . unorthodox situation which will probably be revealed to be mind-control and everything will be business as usual. In the meantime, I need to go to Boston."
"To take Thor to a baseball game."
"Exactly."
"Thor hasn't stepped outside his apartment in months! His brother's still missing, Jane's on assignment to who even knows what corner of the world – "
"I think, from what the Voice said, that might be the point. And he could fix the power problem I've been trying to solve with his pinky finger – "
" – and that's if she's even on-world, which isn't a safe bet these days, not with – you read the briefing materials from Tuesday, right?"
"Pepper."
She blows out a breath. "This is ridiculous."
"I know, okay, but I need to do this." He tries for levity. "Pepper, come on, you've been telling me I need to get back in the game, and there's no better game to get back into than baseball, right? And Fenway – "
Pepper blanches. "Fenway?"
Tony eyes her for signs that he'd missed her saying something important. It happens more than he like to admit. "The large baseball stadium in Boston?" he says slowly. "Where I will be taking Thor?"
"Is that the one with the big green wall?"
"Yes?"
Pepper presses her lips together and straightens her posture. "I had a dream last night that you took Thor to a game at Fenway."
"Were we sitting on the third base line –"
"Keeping score and eating a hot dog. I'll help you pack."
*****
Tony takes the VW van because no one would imagine him driving a VW van, much less an orange VW van with red gingham curtains separating the back from the front. It's slow and smells a little bit of mothballs, a lot of weed, but once he's tinkered under the hood it runs like a dream and gets sixty-four miles to the gallon. He installs a GPS/Jarvis interface and mutes Jarvis the moment they're outside Dyersville, cranks up the classic rock and tries not to speed. It's twenty hours to Boston, and Tony spends almost three hours of that listening to the Allman Brothers' "Jessica" on repeat, and another six hours sleeping in a motel just outside Erie, Pennsylvania. By the time he gets to Boston he's jacked up on bad coffee, hoarse from singing along to The Guess Who and AC/DC, and pretty well convinced he's out of his mind. The usual.
"He won't see you," Pepper tells him over the phone as Tony meanders toward the address S.H.I.E.L.D. has on file for Thor.
"Always so negative," Tony replies, trying to find the first window that doesn't have a dead chicken in it. Only Coulson would record an address in a butcher's district with such precision.
"Tony, I'm serious. He's a demi-god. He could crush you."
"I've read his file. If he were into crushing mortals he wouldn't have his hammer back." This is a truth Tony promptly files away under 'our conversations are not like other people's conversations.'
"Just be careful. And don't taunt the other fans. And don't drink Pabst, it's a shitty excuse for beer."
"Yes, Pepper. Will do, Pepper." Tony spots an empty window and crows delightedly. "I have an absence of chicken, I repeat, absence of chicken. Perfect, you're perfect, I gotta go."
Thor's building is full of apartments that were once storage and office space. The doors are tall and wide, perfect for dollies and rolling carts of boxes – or the bulk of a God of Thunder, Tony supposes – and though everything's freshly painted, there's still an industrial feel. He bounces on the balls of his feet outside Thor's apartment, wipes his hands on his jeans, licks his lips and squares his shoulders before he yanks on the pull at Thor's door.
"LEAVE ME," booms a voice.
Tony almost does, but he has a point to prove, to Pepper, to Jarvis, to himself, to the Voice, and he's nowhere better to be, and this is not how his vision went down. He pulls the bell again.
"WHAT MORTAL DISTURBS MY REST?" Thor bellows as he yanks open the door.
Tony says the first thing that comes to mind. "God, you really are built," he blurts.
Thor slams the door in his face.
"This is going well," Tony mutters, and yanks on the door pull again.
When Thor opens the door a second time it's to glower at him from beneath a tousled mane of bright blond hair. He's not wearing a shirt, which Tony feels is a great self-defense mechanism, since there can be few people of any gender who could remain focused in the face of so much naked, naked, naked skin. "Um," Tony manages.
"Good day," Thor says, more kindly this time – perhaps a corollary to the disarming power of his abs. When he shuts the door this time it's with less force, allowing Tony to snatch his opportunity from the jaws of inadvertent lust, and push his way inside.
"I have a gun," he says, and he extends his fingers inside his jacket pocket as if he's six and holding up the groundskeeper. He can't quite believe this is his play, except he absolutely can, because this is how far he's sunk – he really wants that hot dog. "I have a gun, and – okay, that's my whole sell, actually. I have a gun."
"And I have a hammer," Thor offers.
"Do you hammer in a morning?" Tony asks. "Oh shit, that was really bad – actually, you probably don't even know – I'm just gonna . . . let's go back to how I have a gun."
"I am Thor, Son of Odin, God of Thunder," Thor says, narrowing his eyes. "You believe your fingers to be a mortal weapon. We are most heartily unmatched."
"Okay," Tony says. "Fair point." He pulls his hand out of his pocket, waves cheerfully. "But before you throw me out – and if you could not do that bodily, I'd appreciate it, I bruise easily – I just . . . I have a story to tell you and I really think you're supposed to hear it."
Thor quirks an eyebrow. "A tale of valor?"
"Not exactly."
"Of daring, then. Of courting and bravery."
Tony's not entirely sure how to connect the dots between daring, courting, and bravery, much less package his story to fit the bill. "There's . . . an omniscient voice," he manages.
"Most interesting," Thor says, eyeing Tony warily. "Come. You will sit and tell me your tale. I will judge your pleasure or penalty once you are done."
"Oh, boy," Tony mutters, sinking onto the overstuffed ottoman Thor indicates.
"Would mead improve the quality of your performance?" Thor asks, apparently sincerely.
"Without a shadow of a doubt," Tony says, and it's the most honest thing he's ever said in his life.
*****
Thor thinks the story's top notch, doesn't even question why a disembodied voice would want to share the secrets of a palladium replacement. "In my world," Thor says, clapping Tony on the shoulder and shaking him with what Tony thinks is bonhomie, "there is much that cannot be captured by word or look or law or rite. This Voice of which you speak – it is of the ages. A sage, perhaps; wisdom distilled and given –"
"Absolutely, wisdom, I'm with you, big guy, but if we could –" Tony taps his watch. "Game starts at 7."
Thor straightens to his usual impressive height and beams. "I am most interested to see this game of balls," he offers happily.
They make it to the vicinity of the ballpark, find parking that's both inconvenient and extortionate, and walk the rest of the way. "Don't you miss this?" Tony asks. "Being out and about, seeing people, doing stuff?"
Thor shakes his head. "I wrecked havoc upon innocents with my foolishness," he says. "You cannot imagine –"
"Oh, I read the file," Tony offers breezily.
Thor nods. "Then you know the destruction my brother wrought, the sad end he met."
Tony's not sure it's sad, exactly, but he gets that the Thor's feeing low. He'd feel low too if his brother was a manipulative megalomaniac with a thing for pressed powder, gratuitous headgear, and evil fiery robots. "So why come back at all? To earth, I mean."
Thor gets an expression on his face that Tony can only call wistful. "Jane."
"Your girl?"
"She is full woman," Thor says, seeming mildly offended. "Her intelligence is great; she is watchful, has care for others, shows kindness. She has the figure of – " He narrows his eyes. "But perhaps that is more than I should say."
Tony pats his arm – it's like petting a boulder. "Hey, sounds fantastic, can't wait to meet her. Explain again how you being a hermit works in your relationship?"
"I am here as penance," Thor says, looking resolute. "I must make amends for my actions before I am worthy to pledge suit to Jane."
"Right. And you're making amends by . . . "
Thor may actually be blushing. "I am uncertain of how best to conduct myself. I have had much advice. Mr. Fury suggests – "
"Fury," Tony sighs.
" – that I have nothing for which to apologize, and should, if I would make my home here, serve his S.H.I.E.L.D. Yet I do not fully trust him, or his motivation. I suspect there is much he does not reveal."
Tony buys them tickets, pushes through the turnstiles, prays to the general benevolent truth of relativity and dark matter that Thor won't damage the structure of the stadium as he does the same. He's lucky – the guy seems to understand his own strength, and he's easy to direct up toward their seats.
"So what do you want?" Tony asks.
"I wish peace in the kingdoms of Yggdrasil. I wish wisdom enough to mend what I have wrought. I wish for Jane's hand in blessed –"
"No," Tony says, waving his hands as interruption before gesturing toward the concession stand. "I mean – what do you want?"
Thor eyes the men waiting on their order. "Five hotdogs and ale," he says at last.
_____
The game's mildly entertaining, if predictable. Tony's sure he'd be more interested if he weren't constantly scanning the crowd for a clue as to why he's here. He's not sure what he's looking for – someone with a homemade sign that says "Go to Poughkeepsie" instead of "Erin loves Matt"? A mysterious looking beer vendor? His saving grace, he supposes, is that the trip has visibly eased Thor's pain – the man is sitting beside him, entirely entranced by the game, cheering indiscriminately for whomever shows courage and daring (his words) regardless of what team they're on.
"Did you observe," Thor asks as the teams switch over at the bottom of the eighth, "the young man who swung hard and true to launch the small ball over the heads of others?"
"A home run," Tony says. He's taken to sketching an arc reactor in the back of his program instead of keeping score, but looks up for a second in the interests of not being the worst baseball companion in history. Which is when he sees it – a dimming of the scoreboard, game stats and a pixilated hotdog fading to be replaced by the military record of one Captain Steven Rogers. He scans everything – photographs, medals awarded, commendations earned, sites of action – and gets to "MIA" just as the Voice says, "Go the Distance."
Tony sets his jaw and looks around furtively to see if anyone else seems conscious of something being amiss.
"Go the Distance."
"Son of a bitch," he mutters to himself.
Thor turns to him, concerned. "Are you well?" he asks.
"You, uh, hear anything?" Tony asks. "Just then. Anything . . . unusual?"
Thor knits his brow. "Unusual."
"Yeah, never mind, probably just . . ." Tony makes a circling motion with one finger near his ear, hopes it translates. "But now you mention it, I'm not feeling all that great, you think we could – "
Thor smiles. "Of course," he says gallantly, and Tony has no idea how it's come to this, being escorted from the Sox game by a demi-god, walking to the van in companionable silence, driving through the dark to Thor's apartment and saying their goodbyes with cheer (Thor) and vaguely petulant sarcasm (Tony).
Thor lingers outside the van, arms folded on the rolled down window, stooping a little to look Tony in the eye. He almost says something, then hesitates before he says "You are sure you would not rather slumber upon my couch?" for the fourth time.
"Real sure, Hunksville. Go on in, get some godly rest. And call Jane tomorrow. No more of this woe, but mine heart is not worthy crap, okay?"
Thor nods and gives a small smile, straightens up and pats the van as his leave-taking. The dents he's no doubt left behind give Tony something to think about as he guns the van and pulls a sharp U-turn, something other than how crushingly lonely the journey home will be – and then he slams on the brakes since Thor's standing in the middle of the road, hand outstretched.
"What the hell?" Tony asks, sticking his head out of the window. "Is this some god thing? Did I break with etiquette by refusing to sleep over?"
"Go the Distance," says Thor.
Tony gapes at him for a second then fumbles with the driver's side door, spills out onto the street and marches toward Thor, vaguely aware he's waving a finger. "You heard it!"
"What did I hear?" Thor asks.
"The Voice! You heard it! At the ballpark! You heard it and you lied to me. Did you see –"
"Captain Steven Rogers of Brooklyn, New York," Thor answers before Tony's finished the question.
"Goddamnit, you let me think this was just some wild, hair-brained mental breakdown when this whole time – just get in the van. Get in the van right now."
Thor quirks an eyebrow but ambles toward the passenger side as he's told. "I have been starved of adventure. This trip will be most pleasant."
"Oh, yeah?" Tony fumbles for his keys again, running on adrenaline and some kind of wild joy he'd rather not acknowledge. "You know where we're going?"
"Brooklyn," Thor says. "To the Captain's home."
*****
Tony argues with Thor for the first hour of the road trip, or tries to at least. He needles him about his choice in radio stations, questions his choice in plaid shirts and work boots, tells him he's Fury's favorite, and takes the last twizzler from the pack. Everything just glances off Thor's beaming good grace.
"It is good to go forth," he says when Tony asks him point blank if he's out of his mind for making the trip. "Tell me of this Captain Rogers. Does he rest in your folklore?"
Tony jams an elbow against the window and leans his head against his hand. "My dad knew him."
"Oh?"
"Rogers – the Rogers you saw on that screen – was the result of an experiment undertaken by the army in '43. They were trying to create a super soldier. Enhance his metabolism, give him greater muscle strength, accelerate healing, a bunch of stuff."
"He did not always appear to such effect?"
"He was a 95lb weakling," Tony says. "Turned down for service five times."
Thor nods, lets a thoughtful silence open up between them. "And the experiment?"
"A serum. Worked like a charm, but then Erskine, the guy who made it, was shot by a Nazi who'd infiltrated the state department, and Rogers went on tour with a gaggle of dancing girls. Wound up in Europe where he saved a bunch of lives and took out the particularly evil Nazis before steering a plane into an iceberg. We think."
Thor frowns, no doubt trying to parse the half-picture Tony just painted. "Where does your father fit in this tale?"
Tony sighs. "Spent most of his life looking for Rogers. Long before I was born. Long after, too."
"A quest," Thor suggests.
"Yeah, of the obsessive, desperately unhealthy kind." Tony offers a thin smile. "My dad held Rogers up in front of me as the man I was never going to be."
"You have much unfinished business with your father," Thor observes.
"Yeah, well, your dad spies on you with ravens," Tony shoots back.
Thor inclines his head. "You play well," he offers, and grins so widely that Tony finds himself begrudgingly charmed. "Once we reach this Brooklyn, what should be our course of action?"
"I have no clue," Tony replies as they pass a sign that says they have 136 miles to go. "This is all on you, Lumberjack. You'd better come up with a plan."
_____
Thor, at some point between them eating pie at an all-night diner and parking the van on Brooklyn side street so that they can rest, comes up with a plan.
"I have a plan," he offers and Tony startles awake.
"Jesus," he says. "Give a man some warning. A cocktail. Something."
Thor remains impassive. "We will talk to Rogers' compatriots," he declares, and clambers out of the van and shuts the door with vigor.
Tony blinks at the spot where Thor was sitting a moment ago and groans pitifully at the prospect of talking to anyone. Which is when Thor pulls his door open again and says, "That was perhaps ill mannered; I apologize. Good morning, and–"
"Fine, fine." Tony eases himself out onto the street, pulling his shirt down with one hand, combing his fingers through his hair with the other. "How is it even morning?" he asks.
"I see a place of libation," Thor says, gesturing to the intersection. "The place called Starbucks will sell us the coffee you drink in vast quantities."
"Oh, sweet heaven," Tony says. "Large. Venti," he manages. "One for each hand."
"We shall quaff," says Thor, clapping Tony firmly on the shoulder while Tony blinks and fumbles his shades into place
It's easy to follow Thor around. He's one hundred percent awake, for one, while Tony's maybe pushing twenty, and he's an imposing presence, which keeps away the couple of people who seem to recognize Tony's face. He orders coffee with gusto – "I would purchase two coffees in your largest size. A bucket would not be amiss" – and pays for everything, which is straight up adorable. Tony's not sure when someone last paid for his anything; perhaps they never have.
"I have purchased muffins," Thor tells him as they step back outside, as if Tony didn't see the whole thing happen. "They will fuel our search."
"Search for what?" Tony asks, taking a muffin from the bag Thor offers, vaguely unsettled by Thor's air of confidence. Thor's a god out of time on a road trip with a frayed and patched version of Tony's best self, yet he acts as if the world is turning exactly as it should. "Search where?" But Thor's already striding down the sidewalk and Tony can barely walk fast enough to keep up, much less walk and drink his coffee. He will not run. He won't do it. There are places a man has to draw the line.
"Here," says Thor, stopping at a newsstand, and Tony wonders what the hell Thor sees amid the Times and the Post and the magazines with models on the front, several of whom Tony thinks he might have slept with. But it's not the stand Thor's interested in; it's the three old guys sitting on folding chairs beside it, trash-talking each other as they probably have for sixty years. Thor lifts a crate from a truck parked at the curb, upends it and sits down with the old guys as if he does this every day. "We would know of Steve Rogers," he says with grace.
Tony rolls his eyes. This is the plan? Accost anyone who looks old enough to have read Life Magazine in the '40s? It's a terrible plan.
One of the old guys extends a hand to Thor; Thor shakes it solemnly. "I'm Jerry. What exactly did you want to know, kid?"
So, maybe it's not such a terrible plan after all.
_____
"Nothing," Tony says as he starts pulls three parking tickets from under the windshield of the van and climbs inside. "No tawdry love triangles, no half-brothers or sisters, no turncoat secret identity . . . " He starts the ignition.
"He was a good man," Thor says, winding down his window a little as Tony pulls away from the curb. "And much loved."
Tony blows out a breath. "Yeah, well, we didn't need to come to Brooklyn to find out that Steve Rogers is some kind of saint," he mutters.
"Perhaps we did," Thor says peaceably. "Perhaps the quest was in the asking, in showing deference to memory, in honoring the elders."
Tony pulls a face. "So, a Voice tells us to Go The Distance, drive all the way to Brooklyn, just so that a bunch of really seriously old people have a little company?"
"I have no experience with the sages on this planet," Thor offers, "but in my realm such acts were lauded, and honor paid to those who had lived long. Perhaps your sage would have you – "
"My sage is a pain in the ass, and that Voice was probably brought on by mid-level neurological frequency interference and something in the water," Tony replies. "Maybe you're right; maybe there's a sage trying to give me the secret of life from the great beyond. Or maybe we're both nuts, maybe this is some giant S.H.I.E.L.D. experiment and we're both the suckers on the receiving end. Whatever it is, I have thrown myself into this quantifiably, completely insane quest at the direction a fucking disembodied voice, and what do I have to show for it, huh? What?"
Thor turns toward him, an eyebrow raised. "A friend," he offers.
Tony blinks really fast because wow, his allergies came on all of a sudden. He clears his throat in what feels like the most awkward comeback to a gesture of friendship ever. "I'll have you back in Boston before 11."
"No," says Thor. "I do not wish to return to Boston. I would see this Iowa of which you speak."
"You can't just – " Tony glances at Thor and struggles to find the words for the numerous and creative endings Fury would find for him if he and Thor teamed up for a road trip across America. "It's a corn field."
"I would be the judge," Thor says. "Drive us there. I will pay for more pies."
"Okay," says Tony, signaling a turn. "Sure. What else can possibly happen?" he asks, deadpan, half-expecting tentacles and drunken sprites to erupt from the nearest Con-Ed grate on request.
_____
But nothing much does happen. Thor charms the patrons of three diners in three separate states, is a considerate roommate, pays for pie as he promised, and learns the virtue of a bacon-stacked waffle. He takes it upon himself to play license-plate bingo – and where they hell did he learn that, Tony wonders – getting Alaska and Hawaii almost right away, which is just plain deranged. The weather holds its peace – no tornadoes, thunderstorms, or freak patches of fog from another dimension, and though Tony figures they'll lose a couple of days in Chicago as his apology for the fact that he really is driving Thor to a two-bit farm, Thor insists they keep going, cheerfully pointing out roadkill and wind turbines as they pick up highway twenty and head out west.
It's almost three in the afternoon when Tony sees a guy standing by the side of the road, a duffel at his feet, jacket thrown over his bag, thumbing for a ride. "I can use all the karma I can get right now," he says by way of explanation as he slows the van, pulling onto the shoulder in a cloud of gravel and dust. "You do the talking."
Thor raises and eyebrow, but lowers his window. "Where does your journey lead?" he asks, leaning out of the van, blocking Tony's view with his overwhelming bulk.
"West," the guy tells Thor, and there's a hint of New York folded into the spaces between his words. "Need to find some work, something useful to do while I figure some things out."
Thor nods thoughtfully. "Does the law pursue you?"
Tony almost laughs.
"Not the law, exactly," the guy says slowly. It's like he's weighing his words, trying to be honest while holding back some of his story for himself. "Some folks who have ideas about what I'm supposed to do with my life are looking for me. I'm not sure I agree with their plans."
"Oh, well in that case, come on in," says Tony, eyes on the road. "We're exactly that kind of ride."
Thor snorts, amused.
"I appreciate it," says the guy, opening the side door on the van. There's a thud as his duffel hits the deck, then the guy's leaning between the seats and clearing his throat. "Can I shake your hand, sir?"
Tony pulls off his shades, turns his head, and feels the world slow as he struggles to find words for what he's seeing. "Um – what's your name, soldier?" he manages at last.
The guy's smile is big and honest and open. "Steve Rogers. How'd you know I served?"
"Oh," says Tony, glancing at Thor, who looks appropriately stunned. "It's a long story." He shakes Steve's hand before he turns in his seat and shakily pulls back out onto the blacktop again.
"But," Thor says, clearly regaining his equilibrium about a thousand-fold faster than Tony plans to, "we have time. I am the most accomplished spinner of tales, and have a ready ear for the stories of others."
"Great!" Steve says, settling back to sit on his duffel, resting his elbows on the seats. "I'm glad you guys came along. There's barely been traffic at all today."
"Go figure," is all Tony can manage before he realizes he's going to have to meet the guy revelation for revelation. "Introductions? This is , uh, Thor, and I'm – well, I'm Tony Stark," he says. He glances in the rear-view mirror to see Rogers' face.
Rogers looks thoughtful, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. "You wouldn't be related to –"
Tony can't help but jut his chin as if he's preparing to meet a blow. "Howard was my dad."
Rogers' eyebrows rise and he nods his head slowly as he turns toward Thor. "And you just go by . . . ?"
"I am considered a god in your world," Thor says simply. "I have discovered my first name is enough to communicate my standing."
Rogers tilts his head a little. "Well," he says as if firming his resolve. "This is new."
"Not to make things awkward or anything, but aren't you 92 years old?" asks Tony.
"How old was Howard when he had you?" Rogers asks.
"Do you by chance hear voices?" Thor puts in.
There's a long, pregnant pause.
"I froze when I was – "
"I guess his sperm still worked fine – "
"For we have heard much that is – "
Silence again.
"Can I suggest that we take this chronologically?" Tony asks, looking in the mirror again. "Say, start in '43 and work our way forward?"
They each exchange glances.
"Sure," says Steve at last.
"A proposition of much worth," Thor offers with a warm grin.
"Fabulous," Tony says. "You're up flyboy."
Steve rolls his eyes, and Tony grins.
_____
Tony calls Pepper when they stop at a diner about thirty miles from the farm. Thor's capacity for consuming pie knows no bounds, and Steve needs a strong cup of coffee after recounting everything that happened since he woke.
"Where are you?" Pepper hisses – at least Tony's pretty sure she's the one doing the hissing, and it's not a result of JARVIS bouncing his call through several international networks so that it's hard to trace.
"Um, Pigeonville?" he says blithely. "Almost all the way back, actually, and – "
"Tony, I'm at the farm. Fury's here. The place is crawling with agents. Did you kidnap Thor?"
Tony blinks, then laughs, then laughs even longer at the sheer ridiculousness of anyone imagining he could overpower a god. "Oh, that is priceless. Really, truly, what a demonstrably paranoid expression of – "
"He's disappeared – slipped the agents who were checking in on him, missed two phone calls scheduled with Coulson. They had you on the security cameras at Fenway, know you were with him. They think you took him."
"Took him where, exactly?" Tony asks. "Under what circumstances? I mean, sure, he's with me, but –"
"You have him? How many times are we going to have the conversation about putting things back after you've – "
"He came of his own free will! No wrangling, conniving, hypnosis, or chloroform was involved, and I certainly –"
"And now there's someone permanently stationed on top of the west barn from what I can tell, armed with a bow and arrows, and no one will tell me exactly what Natalie Rushman does, and –"
"Rushman?" Tony asks. "Don't we have someone called Rushman who works in legal?"
"Tony!" Pepper's voice has now reached DEFCON 2. "You are coming home right now!"
It feels good to be sparring with her again. "Didn't I just say we were on our way home? Is our attention slipping, Ms. Potts?"
"If you Ms. Potts me one more time in the entirety of our working relationship, Tony, I will personally – "
"Look, everything's okay! No one is injured! No one is hurt! We'll be home in the hour, there probably won't be many tractors, and I can introduce you to Steve, who, would you believe, is kind of heartbreakingly earnest. Did you know he was frozen this whole time? God, can you imagine, waking up decades later in this crapshoot of a world, and everyone you know gone? He had a girl, you know – Peggy Carter. I knew her, sort of, she and my dad helped design and run the prototype of . . . hey, are you still there?"
Pepper clears her throat. " . . . Steve?"
"Rogers. He was hitchhiking."
Tony's pretty sure Pepper covers her phone and lets out an incoherent yell before she comes back on the line. "Tony."
DEFCON 1, then. "I'll hurry, shall I?"
"Yes. Yes I think you should."
______
Pepper isn't kidding about the number of agents at the farm. There are two at the south end of the driveway, two at the north, and at least eight vehicles of various sizes parked in the yard. A whole gaggle of agents is out in the corn with various pieces of unrecognizable equipment, and there's a food van dispensing what Tony thinks are donuts. The lights are on at every window in the house, and sure enough, there's a shadowy figure on top of the west barn. Tony gives him a wave.
"Stark," Fury says, striding down from the farmhouse porch, somehow managing not to look incongruous even in rural Iowa. Pepper follows close behind, looking angry and worried in equal parts, while Pluto runs ahead, panting a happy welcome. "We've been looking for you."
"Well, and now you found me," Tony says, bending to scritch Pluto behind the ears, "so thanks, everyone, for playing, but . . ."
"Rogers. Thor." Fury nods at each of them as they get out of the van. Thor looks wary; Rogers looks resolute and determined and Tony realizes that after knowing him for all ninety minutes, the guy would probably punch Fury in the face on Tony's behalf. He doesn't know what to do with that information.
Coulson walks up to Fury's right side, hands him a tablet. "Disturbance is getting more powerful." He's accompanied by a formidable young woman with fiery red hair – Tony's gut tells him not to get on her bad side.
"You see, Stark," Fury says, as if continuing a conversation already begun, "we sent you out here because it suited you, but it also suited us. There were reports of a disturbance – temporal, interdimensional, hard to say – in this field. We figured, put you out here, you'd figure out what was what. Instead you take off for parts east, for reasons yet to be determined, and return with a important ally and S.H.I.E.L.D. property in the form of – "
"He's not your property," says Tony, and realizes after an hour and a half's acquaintance, he'd probably punch Fury in the face on Steve's behalf, too.
Fury smiles, slow and unamused. "While you were gone, things started getting interesting around here. Distortions. Inexplicable power blips. And our best scientist was off on a joy ride."
Tony turns to look toward the agents in the corn, sees a vague shift and blur of the sky, the trees, as if someone were trying to bring the world into focus.
"We brought in Banner to do what he could, but we're going to need you to pull it together, put your mind to work," Fury continues. "It would suck a whole lot for the world to end because you were too busy to notice a crack in the universe was opening in your front yard."
Tony waves a hand; he's done listening. "If you build it," he mutters to himself, taking a couple of steps toward the corn.
"Tony?" Pepper asks.
"If you build it, he will come," Tony says, and turns back around to look at Thor, to look at Steve.
"Go the distance," says Thor.
"Ease his pain," finishes Tony.
Thor nods at him, looking pleased.
"It's not the end of the world," he says, snapping his attention back to Fury. "Whatever that is it wanted all of us right here, right now – you, me, Pepper, Barn Guy, Rogers, Thor, even Banner, I'd imagine. This one – wait, you must be Rushman. Did you work in legal? Yes? No? Okay, moving on – all of us. It wants us here. And I think it has to do with him." He points a finger at Steve.
"Me?" Steve says, looking around as if Tony might be pointing at someone else.
"The timeline matches up. The disturbance, your goons finding him in the north, the time it took to warm him back to life. His transport, the days he spent in New York City . . . "
Fury looks unimpressed.
From the corn there's a shout, the sound of static, then the tinny echo of a swing band.
"It's him. I was supposed to find him, we were all supposed to find him. Piece him together again, make it possible for – who the fuck knows what. But this isn't coincidence."
Tony's vaguely aware that it's getting lighter, which is counter-intuitive – it's closing in on 8pm; there are first stars on the eastern horizon. Around him there are agents running information back and forth to Coulson, others pulling more equipment from the back of trucks, activity that makes Fury glance over his shoulder.
"What if this wasn't about the end of the world, but about saving it?" Tony asks. "What if the world needs Cap again, and what Cap needs is all of us?"
"Tony," Pepper says, sounding breathless. "Look behind you."
It's hard to distinguish the light in the corn from the blazing beauty of the dying sunset, but there's something about it that makes it hard to look away. There's music coming from the waves of distortion above the field, clearer now; there's light falling into the yard like lamplight through an open door.
"Steve," says Tony. "I think this is meant for you."
There's a noise like something cracking, then the sharp absence of sound and the disappearance of all the light, and standing at the edge of the corn field, limned by the sunset's last breath, stands Peggy Carter. She's younger than Tony ever knew her. Behind him, Tony hears a gasp, the shifting of gravel, and then Steve's brushing past him, running toward Peggy, slowing when he's five feet away from where she stands.
"Is it . . . are you really . . . " His hands are loose at his sides as if he doesn't know what to do with them.
"I don't understand," Peggy manages – her voice is thick with tears. "I was just – you've been gone since . . ."
Steve covers that last five feet, pulls her close, and whatever they have to say becomes a quiet murmur as Peggy's fists her hands in the back of Steve's shirt.
"If you build it," Tony says, pleased as punch, feeling suddenly vindicated, turning around to the rest of the people gathered in his yard and grinning wildly. "I knew what I was doing."
Fury rolls his one good eye; Coulson sighs and says something into his comm. link; Pepper walks over and punches Tony hard in the arm before she hugs him. "The least you can do is text the next time you go off on some wild chase," she whispers, and he turns his head to press his nose against her hair, clean full to bursting with some joy he doesn't know how to name.
"So, what?" Fury asks placidly, "do you propose we do now?"
"I'm gonna need Thor for at least a few days – you can rustle up lightning, right, big guy? Enough to power a generator I need to build – nothing big, just creating a new element in my basement, the usual."
"Mmmmhmmm," Fury offers.
"And if I'm not mistaken, what you have here are people who could staff your hypothetical Avengers initiative – oh, please, don't look shocked, like there was ever a chance I wouldn't hack into your mainframe – maybe it's time to dust that off, see if we can't all work together, get me back in the game, as soon as I'm not dying, of course – "
"Dying?" says Pepper. "You're dying?"
"Well, technically, yes, but no, not really, because – "
"And you didn't tell me?"
"I was going to, but I had to go to Fenway to – "
"Tony!"
"I can fix it! Now that Thor's here – it was all part of the plan . . ."
"Whose plan? What plan?" Pepper asks.
"That's what we still don't know," Coulson throws in. "Sir, if I may, I'd suggest leaving Barton and Romanov here as security. I'll work the local angle; Banner can continue to work with the gamma radiation. If we can – "
And just like that Tony ceases to be the center of everyone's attention – the agents turn back to their work; Thor strikes up conversation with Rushman or Romanov or whatever her name is; Coulson and Fury walk back toward the house. But what's new – even staggering, Tony would venture to say – is that Tony really doesn't care. He slips an arm around Pepper's waist, turns to where Steve and Peggy are sharing a soft, second kiss.
"Go the distance," he murmurs. "Ease his pain. It was you." It's a mindfuck, to have found Steve Rogers when his father couldn't, to have had a hand in healing something long ago broken.
Steve pulls back from Peggy just a little, smiles at her before he looks Tony's way. "No, Tony," he says. "It was you." And he nods toward the edge of the cornfield where Howard Stark, barely thirty years old, is standing with his hands in his pockets looking directly at his son.
"Oh my god," Tony whispers, stunned, arm tightening around Pepper's waist.
"What?"
"It's my father. I only ever saw him so young in photographs."
"Your father?"
Tony looks at Pepper, panicked. "What do I do?"
She shakes her head in sympathy. "Say hello?" she suggests, and smiles before she gives him a little push.
Tony's hands are sweating; he wipes them on his jeans as he walks toward the corn, which Pluto, trotting at his side, takes as invitation to be petted. "Quit it," Tony says out of the corner of his mouth. "Wanna find your stick? Find your stick, boy." Anything to have one less distraction. "Go on, shoo now."
Howard's taking in the scene before him – the farmhouse, the yard, the picket fence, the agents, the all-black vans – but he stands up a little straighter as Tony nears.
"Hi," Tony says, and it feels so inadequate. His father, young, not soured by loss, looking almost kind, looking interested. "I'm Tony."
"Nice to meet you, Tony." Howard extends a hand and they shake. "Howard Stark." He nods toward the house. "Nice house. Not my kind of place, but nice."
"It's not usually my kind of place either," Tony says, mouth dry. "I'm just . . . renting. For a while."
Howard nods, looks back toward the technology the agents are freely using all over the yard. "Hey, this might sound strange, but . . . this isn't 19 . . ." He pauses.
Tony shakes his head. "There was a rift. There might still be a rift. There's something in the corn we were just beginning to understand, and then Peggy came through, and you followed – I'm guessing you can go back. We can get you back. I probably know, theoretically, how to get you back, it's just . . . we're not sure what, or how, or when we can . . . we didn't make it. It's a long story."
Howard nods slowly. "The best ones always are."
Pluto runs out of the corn and drops a stick at Tony's feet, ruffs cheerfully as he wriggles down on his front paws. Tony looks at the stick and back at his father.
"Hey, dad," he offers, and he'd be embarrassed that his voice is breaking, but he's not the version of himself he'd been the week before. Maybe his father isn't the guy he knew either. "You wanna play a game of fetch?" he asks.
The relief and happiness that sweeps over Howard's face is astonishing. "I'd like that very much," he says, his voice unsteady.
And Tony bends to pick up the stick, throws it out into the corn, grins at his father as Pluto barks his joy into the night.
"If you build it," says the Voice, "he will come."