Lost, Yet Found

Okay. So practically storming out of the conference room like a child throwing a tantrum may have not been the smartest move he’s ever made, but Tony had needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. He’d started to feel as if he couldn’t breathe, and he needed to breathe; survival and all that. Maybe he had an allergic aversion to conference rooms, because he’d always felt on edge within their walls. Or maybe he liked grand exits as well as grand entrances, though one could hardly call the prior act grand. Or maybe he was just really, really unsure how to properly react to current events and Clint’s remark had been the jab to make his brain short-circuit. Whatever it had been, it was done and over with now. Hands washed, he wasn’t going to dwell in it.

He had other things to dwell on….

Like how he was going to improve the durability of the suit without causing it to be weighed down by the reinforcements and rendering it impossible for flight. And hadn’t Rhodey called? He should probably call him back. Maybe…no. He’d call again if it was anything important (but what if it was important and he couldn’t call him back again?). But the meeting. He had a meeting with the mayor and the chief of police and every other ‘hello-I’m-important’ person in the state next week because those fucks on city council wanted him to pay for the damages done to Manhattan since the Chitauri invasion had centered around his tower, but he didn’t want to pay for it and felt that he shouldn’t have to, but then it looked bad on him if he told everyone to just fuck off (can you imagine that?). Maybe he should move back to California, it was nice there and warm and didn’t snow as much, and by ‘as much’ he thinks not at all unless you lived in the mountains, which maybe nobody does unless they’re a mountain goat – and do they even have those in California? He’d have to ask JARVIS later. But then there was the thing with Pepper and how is he supposed to say “I’m sorry” without saying it because every time he tries his throat cuts off his ability to speak. ‘We had something nice going on for a while, we should go back to that – can we go back to that?’ seems like it should work, but he remembers that he’s already tried that and Pepper had rolled her eyes, sighed, and left the room. He tells himself that despite the fact that his life is made up of nice things, this is why he can’t have nice things. Because his brain is often like a child juggling glass skulls and when he drops them he can’t put them back together without making himself bleed, and by now his hands are stained with the blood of thousands.

He thinks all of his from the time he slams the conference room door to the time he turns the corner of the hallway. Then he realizes that on top of everything else is now this. The problem of his alternate self, which he’s not wholly sure is actually a problem because he doesn’t know how to feel about it. So he latches onto the one emotion he can safely attach to himself; anger.

And just like that, Tony Stark makes up his mind.

***

The door closed behind him, locking automatically as he walked away. The tower was completely silent. Tony remembered that it used to always be like this. He’d been used to the silence back then, but over the past few months, he’d gotten accustomed to having so many people around at all hours. Even if his designated living floors were deserted and silent, he at least knew that the others were home. Now, however, he knew that none of the others had come home yet; he’d made sure of it, after all, had made sure to be the first one back at the tower. Where the silence never used to bother him, it now made him feel immensely, utterly alone.

But he wasn’t alone. The fact that JARVIS didn’t automatically greet him alerted him to that fact. His other self would be here by now, having been escorted by a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent or two while he was still in the damned conference room with the other Avengers. Yet the floor he was currently on was still completely silent, spare for the faint crackling of the fireplace. Okay. So she’d been here. Now where was she? He closed his eyes for a few seconds, trying to think of where he would go if he were in her shoes. The answer was obvious.

Tony could already hear the hum of music from within the workshop as he quickly descended the stairs. He placed his thumb flat against the security screen and with a beep the door unlocked. A few rapid numerical commands later, and the door slid open and the music died down to a faint volume.

“Hey, don’t turn that dow—oh, it’s you,” she said, tone dropping from snappy to disappointed in a matter of seconds as she spun around in her chair (which was technically his chair, in his lab, in front of his workbench) to face him. Her legs were crossed and there was a tumbler of whiskey in her hand, the other hovering above the keypad to the holographic interface system of JARVIS, many of Tony’s designs and press interviews digitally hanging in midair. Her face was no longer covered in ash and blood as it had been when he’d first set eyes on her – leading Tony to believe that she’d made use of one of the many showers in the house – but several cuts and scrapes were still visible on her face and arms. Most prominent out of all of this was the arc reactor glowing through the tank top she wore. Prominent, strange, and slightly unnerving.

After the initial moment of silence in which they eyed one another passed, they both began speaking at once.

“Okay, look,” Tony began, curt and stern. “I knew this was going to happen as soon as Fury told me he sent you back here but—”

“—If you’re upset about the alcohol, you have my deepest ‘apologies’—”

“—just because we share an…identity doesn’t mean you can walk in here as if you own the place—”

“—but I figured I’d make myself at home since it basically is, if you think about it – and in some sense, yes I do own the place – and you know sometimes a woman needs to unwind and with all things considered, unwinding was like, a DEFCON level one priority—”

“—You don’t own the place. I do because everything’s in my name. To use your analogy, the whiskey is like, a DEFCON level five concern to me, it’s more so the fact that you hacked into my security system and—”

“—Actually, I didn’t hack it. I’d hardly consider it hacking since we, apparently, share the same fingerprint, and while I’ll take that as a most gracious compliment—”

“—I wasn’t complimenting—”

“—you should know that Stark security systems are borderline impenetrable unless yours are sub-par compared to the ones I designed. If anyone could hack it, it would be me, but that would be kind of stupid since, you know, fingerprints. But yeah JARVIS let me in—”

“—That’s not the point – JARVIS, you’re a traitor.”

“Between the data presented and the images from internal security logs, my algorithms were most perturbed, sir,” JARVIS added, sounding as confused and guilty as an AI could possibly sound.

Yepp, Tony thought. Traitor.

“Anyway, I only wanted to admire my – that is to say, your – work. You know, to see if it was all it was cracked up to be,” Natasha added before Tony could get back into the swing of his argument. “Also needed access to a suitable computer because I wanted to see if your history was entirely like my own and – well, you know how it is; everything else is so slow compared to what you've created yourself – it’s almost like, why does everyone else even bother making technology? But yeah…curiosity kills cats and whatnot.” She downed the rest of her whiskey before refilling the glass, closing the articles and interviews she’d brought up with her free hand. “You were saying?” she asked, spinning the chair back around to face him.

He was saying? He’d lost his train of thought. Oh. That’s right. He’d come down here to threaten her into not abusing their shared identity. The words he’d planned to say on the drive there seemed pointless now. Apparently, the concept of an alternate self hadn’t fully been processed by his brain, which had been too preoccupied with other stresses. Had he really thought he’d be able to threaten her? She was him, despite obvious differences. He didn’t let anyone threaten or blackmail him.

“Nothing,” Tony finally sighed, moving to walk around the workshop simply to have something to do. His gaze landed onto one of the work tables, where a familiar (of course it was familiar) suit of armor lay. “This yours?” he asked.

“Huh? Oh. Yeah,” she said, finishing her second drink and placing the empty tumbler onto the desk before walking over to where her armor rested. “Had JARVIS remove it earlier. Didn’t know where else to put it, so….” She shrugged, picking up the helmet and staring at it. “Shame that it will just have to sit here, seeing as I’ve got to ‘lay low’, as Fury put it,” she scoffed. “You’d think – if Fury knows anything about you – that he’d have some sympathy as to how difficult it is for me to lay low, but no. Apparently, separate dimensions do nothing whatsoever for his completely non-sparkingly personality.”

Tony couldn’t stop the half-smile that turned the corner of his lips. “Yeah, we don’t see eye-to-eye on things, I mean—”

“—How could you?” Natasha asked, grinning slightly. “He only has one eye.”

“You know, I want to dislike you—”

“—Well, good, I’m glad the feeling is mutual,” Natasha interrupted, setting her helmet back onto the table.

Tony just stared. He’d never admit it aloud – he could barely admit it consciously – but he wasn’t used to being dismissed so easily. Not these days anyway. He wasn’t sure how to deal with it, just like he hadn’t known how to deal with it growing up as a child (which was why he generally refused to be dismissed nowadays; a childhood of feeling small and unappreciated grew into an ego that refused to allow his presence to be ignored). His brain, which he liked to think functioned like a gear (he was an engineer, not a biologist), temporarily jammed, screws threatening to pop loose, in desperate need of oil. So he did what he always did in these situations; withdrew.

His shoulders went a bit more rigid, head tilted back slightly, as he gaze her a patronizing stare. “So, Natasha—”

“—Does anyone call you Anthony?” she asked, cutting him off. Again.

“What?” he snapped, momentarily thrown off by her question. “No. No one calls me that, that’s just—”

“—That’s what I figured,” she nodded. “No one calls me Natasha. It’s just Tasha.”

“Right. So, Tasha.” Tony was sincerely trying to keep his composure, to keep his tone even, but despite his efforts he could clearly hear how clipped his voice sounded. “How’d you get here?”

“The front door. Same fingerprint—”

“No. Not the house,” Tony interrupted, unable to prevent the smirk he now wore from turning the corner of his mouth, smug that he’d finally cut her off. “Here, how did you get here? This dimension. This particular tower out of all the towers in New York – no, scratch that – out of all the towers in this country – in the world, even.”

Her gaze hardened slightly at his words, but she quickly went back to staring at her armor. “No offense, Tony, but I think that’s a question I should answer when my t—your team,” she corrected, shaking her head, “gets here. I’d rather only have to go through all the details once…. But I have to say, I…I’m not sure I have all the answers to that question.”

Tony nodded slowly. He knew that she was being honest simply by the fact that she was being open enough to let that kind of vulnerability show through, and he felt sort of guilty for firing away at her with his words. “Fine,” Tony said after a moment, already making his way to the door. “But if that’s the game plan, we should probably wait upstairs. I have a strict one-person-only rule as to how many people are allowed in my workshop and since you already broke that rule, I’d rather not give everyone else the impression that I’ve suddenly revoked it by them coming down here to see us having a humble chat.”

“Fair enough,” she shrugged, smiling in the way that Tony often did by trying to stop himself from smiling. “But I hope you know that you’re going to have to get used to me being in here. I’ll go crazy otherwise.”

He opened his mouth to object, but what could he say? He couldn’t exactly keep her out of the workshop even if he told her he didn’t want her to go near it; she wouldn’t listen to him. He wouldn’t listen to himself if he tried to keep himself from his only place of sanctuary and wow this was really starting to give him a headache.

He settled on a forced smile and a nod, holding the door open as she passed him by.

***

“So,” Clint began, prolonging the ‘o’ and twiddling an arrow between his fingers like a baton-twirler in the high school marching band. Tony thought about pointing this out. He bit his tongue to stop himself from doing so. Also to stop himself from laughing.

Night had fallen, the lights of the city shining outside the open view from the tower. They were all gathered in Tony’s living room. It had taken longer than expected for Rogers and the others to get there. Apparently on the way back to the tower Thor had spotted a man painted in blue and assumed it was a frost giant. Inevitable chaos ensued, followed by an angry Director Fury (an angry Fury; Tony tried not to snort in amusement) and a difficult and saint-level-of-patience explanation from Pepper and Original Natasha (which was what Tony was deciding to call Romanoff for now) that the man was, in fact, not a frost giant, but a performer of the Blue Man group who was in town the next few weeks. Tony wondered if he’d be receiving a lawsuit on Thor’s behalf some time soon (another thing to add to the 'dwell on' list).

“How did you come to be amongst us, maiden Stark?” Thor asked.

There was a very brief silence before Tasha choked back a laugh. Tony tried to play it off as if he didn’t give Thor an odd look in response to hearing his own name. Rogers faintly blushed after realizing why she was laughing at Thor’s words. Thor just looked confused. After a moment, Tasha cleared her throat. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just…funny – anyway…yeah, how I got here is…a bit complicated.”

“Believe me, we can handle complicated,” Tony said, absentmindedly flicking his shoestrings.

“I’m not doubting that…it’s just, the whole thing where I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be telling you things that don’t have to do with your…timeline, I guess – but what the hell, when have I ever – nevermind. Point being, now that I’m here it shouldn’t do any harm for me to tell you what I’m about to say since our lives are now intertwined.” She was pacing now, brows furrowed slightly as she thought. “Okay, so from what Fury told me you guys went through the Chitauri invasion and Loki and all that mess, correct?”

“Correct,” Rogers nodded.

“And that ended for you guys…when?” she asked.

“During the spring.”

“It lasted three days,” Tony added, a bit proudly.

“Right, well, you guys were able to pull it together and get everything under control before it got out of hand,” Tasha continued. “We…didn’t.”

“Didn’t?” Clint asked.

Tasha sighed. “Okay, so time isn’t thought to be exactly linear. Basically, it’s theorized that the past, the present, and the future are all happening at once, but we’re all scattered throughout it during different periods of time. This is comparable to trying to find the exact location of an atomic particle; it can’t be done. Particles, like electrons, have no single location, they exist in multiple places at once. And if people made up of such particles…why should we be any different?

“But back to the matter of time. So…okay…imagine that your lifetime is a straight line that just keeps going on and on until you die. However, think back to all the decisions you’ve made big or small. The choice you made sends you on one path, whereas the choice you could have made would have sent you on another. It’s thought – and apparently it’s true – that there are alternate realties and dimensions in which the essence that is ‘you’ made the opposite choice, goes on a divergent path, creating a completely separate experience from anything that you have personally gone through because you made the opposite choice.

“As for how we didn't get everything under control...I…found out from Fury that Coulson died in this dimension,” she continued tentatively, as if wary of bringing the topic up. “I was told that his death was what spurred you guys into setting aside your differences…. Where I come from, that didn’t happen. Coulson wasn’t killed. After the attack on the Hellicarrier, everyone grew further apart because of the verbal arguments that distracted us from what was going on. The attack on Manhattan happened, and we tried to stop Loki, tried to stop his army, but…we weren’t able to. Eric Selvig was killed. We couldn’t close the portal. We haven’t stopped fighting since the spring, and matters only got worse from there.”

“Worse?” asked Rogers quietly, his face expressing what he wouldn’t speak aloud; what could possibly be worse than that invasion being dragged on for months?

“Our situation attracted unwanted attention. Not from space, but from another timeline, another dimension. Have…any of you had any run-ins with a Nathaniel Richards?”

“I know a Reed Richards,” Tony answered. “Is that his son or something?”

Tasha gave a nervous sort of laugh. “Not…not exactly. Reed would be an ancestor though. A very old ancestor. Nathaniel's…from the thirty-first century.”

“Thirty-first?” Tony wasn’t sure if Rogers’ eyes could get any wider.

“Whoa, déjà vu,” Tasha snorted. “You said the same thing when I told you before – well, the other you – but anyway…. Richards goes by the name of Kang, and Tony, if you think Reed is interested in time travel, Kang makes him looks like a child with a fascination with collecting stamps. Kang has a thirst for conquest and somehow he got word of the vulnerable state we were in and made a serious effort to take over. The thing is, Kang does this a lot. He hops from timeline to timeline, to universe to universe, and while he does so with ease, he creates instability. So…today…he attacked us at our tower. We tried to face him off, he...attempted to kill one of you. I got in the way, and he…sent me away. The next thing I know, I’m practically in the exact same spot as I was moments before, only everything around me is much more bright and in-tact and there’s some stranger standing in front of me wearing my armor and my team isn’t doing anything about it. Aaaand here we are,” she finished, clapping her hands together, her tone even but oddly upbeat.

"Do you know anything about the means that this...Kang...sent you here by?" Bruce asked.

"No," Tasha said, lips forming into a small sort of pout. "I made contact with Reed two days ago, to try to get his help on the matter. His wife told me of his death the following day."

That made Tony feel a little sick to his stomach. Actually, everything she was saying made him feel sick to his stomach. Tony was a scientist, and while he specialized in a certain area of science in his work, he tried to take as much in as he could. Because of this, his brain worked in a logical manner. He believed to an extent that things happened for a reason, but he couldn't just openly believe in that saying without following it with the question 'why?'. He believed this is nearly every aspect of his life except when it came to the loss of life. From Tasha's words, he was having to take into consideration that even that was for a reason. Coulson's death, being one case of such. The past few months he'd been almost haunted with the senselessness of the agent's death. They hadn't been close, by any means, but he still...mattered. Now, he almost felt relieved that the agent had met his end, because from what Tasha was saying, the alternate of Coulson living was much, much worse. The thought made him feel nothing short of horrible.

"Reed is still alive in this dimension," Tony said, eyes focused on his shoes. "I can give him a call tomorrow and see what he has to say on the matter."

"Wait." Everyone turned to look at Bruce. Bruce only looked at Tasha. "Do you know who killed Reed in your dimension?"

"Kang," she replied flatly.

"From what you've told us, Kang has control and influence over time, space, and dimension by a pretty large scale. He was able to know that your dimension was vulnerable and weakened by the Chitauri without even being there, and he sought to conquer everyone based upon that knowledge. Now...he killed Reed for a reason, because he could help you. I'm all for helping you, but we can't involve the still-living Reed."

"Why not?" Clint asked. "You said he could help her. We can't keep her stranded here."

"Because if Kang could see what was going on in her dimension, he can see what's going on in ours. He cast her out for a reason, and if we make an effort to involve Reed into this, who's to say that he won't come here?"

Shit. Bruce was always thinking of things that Tony wasn't. It was almost enviable, and he would feel a bit jealous if he didn't feel so completely powerless right now. Judging from Tasha's expression, she felt similar. Tony vaguely wondered if he felt so helpless because she was feeling that way, but quickly shook the thought away. He didn't need more to dwell on at the moment.

"So how are we going to go about this?" Tony asked.

"We'll have to find some way to work under the radar. Something not entirely obvious," Bruce answered. "We may even want to wait a few days before giving it any serious thought."

"A few days?" Tasha and Tony said in unison, resulting in the two glaring at one another.

Tasha broke the silence first. "My world is burning because of Kang and his brother," she said, pointing a finger at Thor. "I have no idea what has happened today or what is happening right now. For all I know everyone is--" She shook her head, taking a deep steadying breath. "I just need to get back."

Bruce rubbed at his fingers against his temples. "I understand that. And I understand that your situation is dire--"

"Really? I don't think you do."

"Okay," Clint said, standing up with a stretch, walking over to Tasha and placing a hand on her shoulder as if to escort her from the room. She gave him a poisonous glare. "I think we should take five. And by take five, I think we should call it a night and sleep on it."

"You don't run the show here, pigeon-hawk," Tasha snapped, knocking his hand from her shoulder.

"Neither do you," he pointed out. "For a list of reasons."

"I agree with the Eye of the Hawk," Thor said calmly. "I know more than any present that rushing into the furor of any battle, even if it be of wits, can result in catastrophic repercussions."

No one could really argue with that (I mean, who were they to argue with a god?). Not even Tasha, though she seemed as if she wanted to.

This time, it wasn't Tony who stormed from the room.