Chapter Text
Tony isn’t sure how he got here. Ten years ago, that wouldn’t have been very surprising. Waking up in random houses or beaches or cars still tasting the drinks from the night before, half clothed and still tipsy. It was normal then. Practically routine. But he was better now. He drank less, he partied less. He didn’t black out anymore. He was past that.
So waking up in a strange theater with Steve (who was physically incapable of getting drunk off of anything Tony had at the compound) at his side was strange. It was scary. It took him back to waking up in the desert with a stabbing pain in his chest and collection of spare parts.
Steve groaned, reaching up to rub his hand down his face. “Wha…” he trails off, sitting up suddenly as he registers his surroundings. He stands and Tony follows him to his feet. “Do you remember-”
“Not a thing,” Tony cuts in. “But it’s a full house.”
They look around. Ned and MJ were a few rows down. Tony couldn’t remember how he knew them but he did. Ned had two moms and MJ was a social activist. They graduated last spring. May Parker sat in the row in front of them, he could see her rousing. He wasn’t exactly sure why he knew her either. She was a nurse. She was a widow. Eugene Thompson was sitting in the row below Steve and Tony, still passed out. He went by Flash. His parents were on the verge of divorce. The previous members of the academic decathlon team for Midtown Tech were gathered in a cluster near the other teenagers.
Bucky was in the row behind them, which Tony didn’t realize until he set his metal hand down on the back of his seat with a soft grunt. “Who the hell are these people?” he asks, quiet in the way he usually was. The Winter Soldier didn’t speak. James Barnes was relearning how.
“I’m…not sure,” Steve murmurs back.
Tony frowns. “I know them but I’m not sure why. Happy’s been keeping an eye on them. Mostly those four,” he gestures to Ned, MJ, May, and Eugene.
“Why are we the only ones here that aren’t civilians?” Bucky asks.
“I think the more important question is where are we?” Steve replies.
MJ stands up in the front of the room, turning to look at the inhabitants. She stopped upon spotting Steve and Tony, reaching over to tap Ned on the shoulder. He turns, eyebrows drawn together and questions posed on his tongue but stops short when he sees them as well. His jaw drops, face taking on an ashy sort of tone. He says something to MJ that Tony couldn’t hear. MJ shrugs, pushing her hair behind her ear and reaching behind her to tap on May’s shoulder.
She turns away from her hushed conversation with Betty Brant to follow MJ’s pointer finger. The girl wasn’t subtle in her pointing and May wasn’t subtle in her shock.
Tony was used to hero worship. He was used to shock and awe. He was also used to the stereotypes. The curled lips and disgust. The lidded eyes and flash of cleavage.
What he wasn’t used to was this. The look of grief and relief and hope. The look he’d seen on Steve and Pepper and Happy and Rhodey but never these people. These people he knew of but didn’t know. They shouldn’t be overwhelmingly happy to see him alive when they didn’t think he would be.
Tony hadn’t almost died recently. Not since he was found in Siberia with Steve’s shield wedged into his reactor. Not since his lips tinted blue and his hands shook with panic and anger. These people didn’t know him. They didn’t know about the desert or the cave or suffocating vacuum of space or the cold seeping through his armor and into his bones. They had no right to look at him like that.
“Okay, hello everyone!” May says, spreading her arms to get everyone’s attention. She spoke like she knew what was going on. Like she had everything under control. But Tony knew that look, the one she carried in her eyes. He saw it in the mirror. May was freaking the fuck out underneath it all.
One of the academic decathlon kids - Cindy Moon - stands up. “Mrs. Parker?” she asks, sounding confused and scared. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure, sweetheart,” May tells her plainly. She didn’t mince words or make things sound better than they were. She was sympathetic but straightforward. Tony decided that he liked this woman. “Does anyone remember how they got here?”
A lot of whispering erupts as the young adults consult one another. Comparing timelines and finding similarities. Tony didn’t bother to do the same with Steve and Bucky. They’d already done as much when they woke up. Eventually, the kids (Tony didn’t care that they were all between 19 and 20 years old, they looked like kids to him) report that they had no idea how they got here and couldn’t find a common link between them.
May clasps her hands under her chin thoughtfully. “That’s not ideal. Alright, then, would everyone split up and look for a way out? Thank you, kids.”
Tony stands, making his way to the other side of the room to where the young reporter was scanning the wall. “Hey, kid.” Calling her kid felt wrong. Like it was a term dedicated to someone else.
She turned, eyes wide. “Mr. Stark! Um, hi! Can I…help you?”
“I have a question for you,” he says, frowning up at the lights fixated on the wall. “How do you know May Parker?”
“She…” Betty starts to answer before frowning. “Oh. I’m…not sure, actually.”
Tony nods. “That’s what I thought.”
The girl frowns at him. “What do you mean? What’s happening?”
“In terms of the room? No clue. But we’re all missing something. Something big. Cap!”
Steve turns away from where he was poking around the corner with Bucky. “What? Did you find something?”
“In a way.”
Before he could share with the class, someone else spoke up. “That won’t be necessary. You can all sit down.”
Looking over, Tony saw who he was pretty sure was the wizard from Manhattan that Happy had notified him about. His red cape (because he had no respect for Edna Mode (who was it that had made him sit through that movie?)) billowed around him in the nonexistent wind.
“Who the fuck are you?” Eugene demands and Tony couldn’t help but agree with him. He was pretty sure that he didn’t like this kid. The bone deep kind of hatred elicited from love and protection. He wasn’t sure why.
The wizard frowns at him. “My name is Doctor Strange. I’m the one who brought you here. Don’t bother looking for an exit. This is an interdimensional theater, there isn’t one.”
Tony scowls. “Fantastic. Great kidnapping, you really thought out all the details. What do you want?”
If Strange was bothered by his attitude, he didn’t show it. “Do any of you recognize him?”
Behind him, a picture appears on the screen. It was a young man. He hadn’t lost all of his baby fat left and his cheeks squished up into his eyes as he grinned. He appeared to be talking to someone not pictured, his brown curls falling into his eyes and out of the hairstyle he’d attempted to sweep it back into. He wore a nerdy science pun t-shirt with a baggy gray jacket over it.
Tony’s eyebrows pulled together. The kid was familiar. Like he’d walked past him on the street or brushed elbows with him at a party. He couldn’t remember his name. Couldn’t remember anything about him, actually. But he got the feeling that he knew this kid. Kid. Was that what he called him?
“Never seen him before,” Eugene says bluntly, clearly irritated.
Strange visibly resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Exactly. There’s the issue.”
“The issue is that we don’t remember who this is?” Abraham “Abe” Brown asks. “You brought us here for that?”
Strange sighs and Tony feels a bit vindicated. “In a nutshell, yes. This is Peter Parker. You all know him. He’s your friend, brother, pseudo-son, nephew, and so on and so forth. He’s been erased from your memories, admittedly at my own doing. This has been deemed a misstep and, in accordance with the TVA, I’m here to rectify this.”
“So you screwed up and now we have to fix it for you,” Bucky says dryly. Strange gives him an annoyed look and Steve tries his hardest not to smile.
“If that’s how you need to frame it,” he says stiffly.
Tony raises his hand lazily. “How exactly are you planning to unfuck this situation?”
He takes a special kind of pleasure out of watching the wizard’s jaw clench. “You’re going to watch a few movies.”
“Movies,” MJ repeats. “You’re going to undue some kind of interdimensional mistake by making us watch movies.”
Strange doesn’t bother to answer her, simply flicks his wrist. As he exits, the movie starts behind him. The first scene opens in on someone holding what appeared to be a child’s drawing. Tony took a seat near May and settled in. It sounded like this was going to be a long ride. Hopefully the wizard had packed snacks.