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ladygrendelTitle: The Lion-Hearted Girl
Fandom: Marvel Earth-616 and Earth-3490
Characters/Pairings: Steve Rogers, Natasha Stark, Nick Fury, Donald Blake (Steve/Tony preslash, established Steve/Natasha)
Spoilers: set post-Siege
Warnings: bodyswap (Tony to Natasha and vice-versa), alien invasion, survivor guilt, loss of spouse and child, mentions of depression and alcoholism, language, sexual content
A/N: This story begins two months after Norman Osborn's defeat at the hands of the Avengers and co. in Oklahoma. The Superhuman Registration Act is out and Steve Rogers is in, having been appointed as America's "top cop" by the president. He is currently working to recreate the Avengers, but SHIELD unofficially still exists since the transition has not yet been complete. The mansion hasn't been rebuilt yet either. Johnny Storm is already dead.
>>>>>
Chapter One
Steve finds himself looking out of a window at a garden that seems vaguely familiar. It is the statue that gives him a hint – there are no other Avenger memorials like it. Sitting on a bench in the middle of the garden is a woman with long, dark hair and a tender smile on her face as she watches a little boy with similar dark hair draw something in the dirt. Someone clears their throat next to him, catching him off guard. Beast’s lips quirk into a wry smile before he too glances out the window.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes they are.” That isn’t what Steve meant to say, but it is as if he is reading from a script, an actor in the middle of a scene and unable to break character. “What did the tests find?”
“You were right. He has it.”
He reaches out and lays a hand on the glass, the other clenched tightly by his side. The woman ruffles the boy’s hair and laughs when he scowls and tries to pat it back down. Steve honestly thinks that the effort is a waste considering it had already been a spiky mess.
“How? Hansen’s been dead for years and-”
“Genetics,” Beast says gently. “He won’t be as powerful as his mother, but it’s still not as if any child can communicate with computers using his mind.”
“I know. I’d just been hoping that he’d be able to have a normal childhood, or something close to it.”
“With a super soldier for a father and an eccentric genius for a mother?” Beast shakes his head. “I’m afraid that normal was never a possibility.”
As if hearing the mention, she looks up and meets Steve’s gaze. The question is plain on her face, as is a certain amount of apprehension. Without saying a word to Beast he exits the mansion to join them outside. The woman tracks his approach while the small child still crouched at her feet pays Steve no mind.
“What did Hank say?”
Her voice is surprisingly deep for a woman, whiskey-soaked instead of silky like Steve had been anticipating. It is still soothing in a strange, almost familiar way.
“The tests confirmed it.”
With a moan she buries her face in her hands, finally drawing the boy’s attention away from whatever he had been scribbling in the dirt. He abandons the stick he has been using and places his hands on her knees, pale soil standing out against the woman’s black slacks.
“Mommy?”
“It's alright, sweetheart.” Her smile is strained but he seems not to notice. “Why don’t you go inside and see if Aunt Wanda needs any help baking in the kitchen. I’m sure Billy is too busy trying to keep Tommy out of trouble, so she might need an extra hand.”
The boy brightens immediately at the prospect, eyes burning an incredible shade of blue that nearly takes Steve’s breath away. He runs into the mansion with all the enthusiasm of his youth and Steve glances down to see what he had been writing, only to find himself surprised yet again. The last time he saw equations this complicated looking had to have been in Reed Richards’s lab.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Yeah, well that doesn’t keep me from feeling guilty,” she mutters.
“I mean it,” Steve says firmly. “If you hadn’t taken that dose he wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be here.”
He sits down beside her on the bench and wraps an arm around her, tucking her head under his chin. She smells like she has spent most of the day inside a garage. Steve feels her arms go around him as she starts to cry against her will, and he just wishes that he could-
>>>
"...tain? Sir?"
Steve groggily lifted his head, momentarily at a complete loss as to where he was until the sound of the ventilator near his head brutally reminded him. A nurse wearing standard issue SHIELD scrubs smiled kindly down at him, and she had to be new, because Steve knew everyone who worked in the infirmary by now.
“Morning.” He frowned and thought for a moment. “It’s morning, right?”
“Yes,” she replied, taking in his five o’clock shadow and the stack of paperwork by his side. “Colonel Fury has requested your presence on the upper deck. I think he wants to discuss something with you.”
And now Steve was wishing that he had woken up sooner as to avoid this very thing by returning to Avengers Tower. He knew exactly what Fury wanted to talk about and wasn’t the least bit interested. With a sigh he got up and started to gather his paperwork. He must have fallen asleep while reading a report, because papers had been scattered everywhere. The nurse helped him pick them all up but left the organizing to Steve.
“Dr. Blake called and said that he would come by sometime today to check on Mr. Stark,” she added.
Great, this meant that he would be getting the same lecture twice in one day. He stood there for a moment and watched her examine the life support machine, or whatever it was you did when your patient was brain-dead. Just thinking about it made Steve’s stomach churn. The nurse cocked an eyebrow at him, doubtlessly wondering why Captain America of all people was procrastinating. He wasn’t, really, and he wasn’t even Captain America anymore – that was Bucky’s job now. He wasn’t sure who he was most days.
Unable to put off the unavoidable any longer, Steve forced himself to turn away from the hospital bed and leave the infirmary. Maybe if he got lucky Fury wouldn’t be interested in discussing Steve’s feelings.
>>>
He had been a lot of places – other planets, different eras, alternate universes – but he would always consider New York City his home. He found Nick Fury surveying it like a king admiring his kingdom after coming home from a long crusade.
“You wanted to see me?” said Steve, joining Fury by the railing. It seemed like a million years had past since the time he and Tony had talked here about restarting the Avengers over bagels.
“You can’t keep doing this, Rogers. It’s not healthy.”
He bristled at Fury’s tone but was careful to keep his posture as relaxed as possible. Fury would attack any sign of defensiveness. It seemed that business was the furthest thing he had in mind.
“I don’t know what you mean, Nick.”
“Cut the bullshit, Captain. We both know exactly what I’m talking about: you living at Stark’s bedside like a clinging wife.” Fury took a deep breath to calm himself, and when he spoke again his voice was as gentle as Steve had ever heard it. “I know he was your best friend, but he’s gone now. You take away that life support and Stark won’t survive on his own.”
“That’s what the life support is for,” he said, playing dumb. “Getting rid of it just defeats the purpose.”
Fury’s eye narrowed, all his sympathy spent. “You aren’t his health care proxy. Stark gave Donald Blake power of attorney, and the only reason he hasn’t pulled the plug is because he feels sorry for you. Or maybe he’s holding out for a miracle, too. All I know is that Blake doesn’t legally need your permission to end Stark’s life, so you had better give it to him before he makes the decision on his own.”
His words were painful, but just the idea of a world without Tony Stark in it at any capacity was agonizing. Steve knew he was – for lack of a better word – clinging, but it was all he could do now. Tony’s beautiful, clever mind was gone but as long as his body continued to function he wasn’t dead. It was a very sick perspective but Steve couldn’t help it.
Before they could carry on with this delightful conversation, Fury’s communicator crackled into life.
“Fury, sir! We have a situation in the-”
Fury snatched it off his belt and roared, “Agent, say again! Situation where?”
Adrenaline was instantly racing through Steve’s veins and he could tell that Fury was experiencing the same rush. The time they spent waiting for a reply seemed to drag on forever, but when the agent finally answered, Steve could have sworn his heart either stopped or at least skipped a few beats.
“The infirmary, sir! There’s an intruder who’s already taken out…oh my god…I don’t believe it…”
It hurt to breathe as panic took hold of him, its claws tearing into his chest. Tony was in that infirmary and completely unable to defend himself. Steve was running before he even realized it, Fury hot on his heels as he yelled into his communicator for somebody, anybody to respond. The sound of a fight grew louder as they drew closer to the infirmary, until they finally made it around the corner and came face-to-face with the threat itself.
For a split second Steve couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. His eyes kept insisting but his brain refused to listen, determined that they were wrong. A figure – a man – wearing a hospital gown was using an IV stand as a weapon, and was successfully beating SHIELD agents with it like it was an art he had been trained in. But Steve knew otherwise, because he had helped teach that man hand-to-hand combat, only for him to always go right back to tinkering with his damn armor.
“…Tony?”
>>>
She didn’t wake with a jolt, but slowly rose from the depths of a deep slumber to float on the surface of consciousness. Something was in her throat forcing her to breath, and she struggled to resist the temptation to just yank it out. The last thing she wanted to do was somehow make herself a mute. With a great deal of patience she worked the tube out and took a deep breath on her own, throat uncomfortably sore.
It wasn’t necessary for her to open her eyes to know that her surrounding had changed. The room felt more spacious than the bunker she and the others had been forced into years ago, and the bed sheets actually smelled and felt clean. Genuine sunlight burned through her eyelids and she forced them open, unable to believe it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually seen the sun, and bit back a curse as the light ruthlessly seared her eyes. She’d forgotten how bright it could be.
She was in an infirmary of some sort and, after casting her gaze towards a window that made up most of the far wall, realized that it was hovering over New York City. There was only one aircraft that she could think of that did that, but the helicarrier had been destroyed almost a year ago, along with Nick Fury who had gone down like a captain on a sinking ship. If she really was on the SHIELD helicarrier…
“He did it. Reed really did it.” Her voice sounded foreign and oddly rough to her ears, and she frowned in concern. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to sit up in the bed, feeling weak as a kitten. That feeling quickly gave way to shock and horror when she finally figured out why her body felt so weird. “I’ll kill him. I’ll castrate him and then I’ll fucking kill him.”
Turning her attention to the machines around her, she tried to turn them off with Extremis to no avail. It was like trying to use a phantom limb or telepathy when you weren’t telepathic. Being confined in her own mind with no way to investigate the outside world without leaving the safety of her bed was frightening, but she’d learn long ago how useless fear was. Extremis was something she could worry about later.
After shutting down the monitors manually she pulled out her IVs and used the stand to get out of bed. She tried not to think about what might have caused this body to end up in such a bad shape before her arrival. While she had no memories from the time Ultron had possessed her and turned her into Hank, she wondered if this was how it might have felt like.
Her balance was completely off and she narrowly avoided collapsing into a heap on the floor. Her legs were unsteady, and it took her awhile before she felt stable enough to try walking. She clung desperately to the IV stand as she cautiously made her way across the room, and when she reached the door of the infirmary it slid open silently.
The longer she walked, the stronger she felt herself become although she kept the stand. It was best to trick any potential enemies into underestimating her, especially since she wasn’t at the top of her game.
“Hey! Stop right there,” called a voice from behind. She turned halfway towards it, tightening her grip on the stand. There were four SHIELD agents judging by their uniforms, and they all looked dumbfounded to see her. “Mr. Stark? You’re awake?”
Stark, huh? So this guy was her alternate self. She briefly wondered what she – he – looked like and if they had the same background. The agent who had spoken took a tentative step forward and her eyes narrowed.
“Mr. Stark, please come-”
The look on his face when she slammed the IV stand against his head, knocking him out cold, was priceless. The other agents just gaped at her before scrambling to recover by going for their guns. They were quick, but she was quicker, wielding the IV stand like she’d been born to do it. She hadn’t realized until now how much she missed sparring with someone, as Reed wasn’t really a fan of it.
By the time the last of the four agents had fallen, reinforcements had arrived. She saw a flash of white from the corner of her eye and locked in on it. Everyone froze when she caught the doctor around the neck at the perfect angle to snap it if required. There was silence, and then someone from outside the crowd started to clap.
“Color me impressed, Stark. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do this well in a fight without your shiny suit.”
The mass parted like the Red Sea and stood at attention as Nick Fury himself entered the ring. He looked just as she remembered him, all smug and mocking. She had to remind herself to loosen her grip on the doctor’s neck as she had unconsciously begun to squeeze.
“I need to speak with Reed Richards,” she said calmly. “It’s important.”
“Or what? You’ll snap Dr. Blake’s neck? Not very friendly.”
She had no idea what the hell that meant. Reed had told her a great deal about his universe, but even she hadn’t been able to absorb every scrap of information that had been thrown at her. This Nick Fury was either a friend or a foe, she just didn’t know which.
“I need to talk to Reed, please.”
“No,” Fury said sharply. “You need to tell me how you’ve managed to cause this much of a ruckus after being brain-dead for two months.”
Brain-dead? Oh, god, she hadn’t even considered that. She was in a dead man’s body, and that had to be the most disturbing thing ever. It even topped the time her armor had come to life and molested her.
“I don’t know, I swear I don’t. But if anyone can explain what’s going on it’s Reed. He’s the one who brought me here in the first place.”
“Tony, what on earth are you talking about?”
Most mornings when she woke up, she could pretend everything – the deaths, the abductions, the invasion – had never happened. She could almost convince herself that when she rolled over, she would see her husband lying in bed beside her where he belonged. And then her memories would come back and crush her, knocking the air out of her lungs like a physical blow, nearly breaking her heart and ribs in the process.
The sensation she was experiencing now was completely different and yet exactly the same. Instead of feeling crippled, she could feel herself finally mending. It didn’t matter at the moment that he wasn’t her Steve, because just seeing Steve alive and well was enough to make her feel like she could conquer the world.
>>>
Tony released Don’s neck and stepped away from him and towards Steve with the strangest look on his face. It was like he was seeing a ghost, but not in a bad way. It still made absolutely no sense because Tony knew that Steve had come back to life. They had fought side-by-side against Norman Osborn while defending Asgard in Oklahoma. Tony was the one who had died then, not him.
“Steve?” he breathed, sounding in awe. “I…you’re…”
Steve was a super soldier, the peak of human perfection, but even he had no idea how Tony managed to close the gap between them so quickly. His arms were suddenly around Steve’s neck and Tony was kissing him with all his might, quite skillfully a detached voice in Steve’s mind noted. Then he inexplicably went limp, leaving Steve with an armful of six-foot-one dead weight.
Don was standing there with a syringe in his hand, looking just as bewildered as Steve felt. Fury on the other hand was down right furious.
“What,” he growled, “in the hell was that all about?”
>>>>>
Chapter Two
Fandom: Marvel Earth-616 and Earth-3490
Characters/Pairings: Steve Rogers, Natasha Stark, Nick Fury, Donald Blake (Steve/Tony preslash, established Steve/Natasha)
Spoilers: set post-Siege
Warnings: bodyswap (Tony to Natasha and vice-versa), alien invasion, survivor guilt, loss of spouse and child, mentions of depression and alcoholism, language, sexual content
A/N: This story begins two months after Norman Osborn's defeat at the hands of the Avengers and co. in Oklahoma. The Superhuman Registration Act is out and Steve Rogers is in, having been appointed as America's "top cop" by the president. He is currently working to recreate the Avengers, but SHIELD unofficially still exists since the transition has not yet been complete. The mansion hasn't been rebuilt yet either. Johnny Storm is already dead.
>>>>>
Chapter One
Steve finds himself looking out of a window at a garden that seems vaguely familiar. It is the statue that gives him a hint – there are no other Avenger memorials like it. Sitting on a bench in the middle of the garden is a woman with long, dark hair and a tender smile on her face as she watches a little boy with similar dark hair draw something in the dirt. Someone clears their throat next to him, catching him off guard. Beast’s lips quirk into a wry smile before he too glances out the window.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes they are.” That isn’t what Steve meant to say, but it is as if he is reading from a script, an actor in the middle of a scene and unable to break character. “What did the tests find?”
“You were right. He has it.”
He reaches out and lays a hand on the glass, the other clenched tightly by his side. The woman ruffles the boy’s hair and laughs when he scowls and tries to pat it back down. Steve honestly thinks that the effort is a waste considering it had already been a spiky mess.
“How? Hansen’s been dead for years and-”
“Genetics,” Beast says gently. “He won’t be as powerful as his mother, but it’s still not as if any child can communicate with computers using his mind.”
“I know. I’d just been hoping that he’d be able to have a normal childhood, or something close to it.”
“With a super soldier for a father and an eccentric genius for a mother?” Beast shakes his head. “I’m afraid that normal was never a possibility.”
As if hearing the mention, she looks up and meets Steve’s gaze. The question is plain on her face, as is a certain amount of apprehension. Without saying a word to Beast he exits the mansion to join them outside. The woman tracks his approach while the small child still crouched at her feet pays Steve no mind.
“What did Hank say?”
Her voice is surprisingly deep for a woman, whiskey-soaked instead of silky like Steve had been anticipating. It is still soothing in a strange, almost familiar way.
“The tests confirmed it.”
With a moan she buries her face in her hands, finally drawing the boy’s attention away from whatever he had been scribbling in the dirt. He abandons the stick he has been using and places his hands on her knees, pale soil standing out against the woman’s black slacks.
“Mommy?”
“It's alright, sweetheart.” Her smile is strained but he seems not to notice. “Why don’t you go inside and see if Aunt Wanda needs any help baking in the kitchen. I’m sure Billy is too busy trying to keep Tommy out of trouble, so she might need an extra hand.”
The boy brightens immediately at the prospect, eyes burning an incredible shade of blue that nearly takes Steve’s breath away. He runs into the mansion with all the enthusiasm of his youth and Steve glances down to see what he had been writing, only to find himself surprised yet again. The last time he saw equations this complicated looking had to have been in Reed Richards’s lab.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Yeah, well that doesn’t keep me from feeling guilty,” she mutters.
“I mean it,” Steve says firmly. “If you hadn’t taken that dose he wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be here.”
He sits down beside her on the bench and wraps an arm around her, tucking her head under his chin. She smells like she has spent most of the day inside a garage. Steve feels her arms go around him as she starts to cry against her will, and he just wishes that he could-
>>>
"...tain? Sir?"
Steve groggily lifted his head, momentarily at a complete loss as to where he was until the sound of the ventilator near his head brutally reminded him. A nurse wearing standard issue SHIELD scrubs smiled kindly down at him, and she had to be new, because Steve knew everyone who worked in the infirmary by now.
“Morning.” He frowned and thought for a moment. “It’s morning, right?”
“Yes,” she replied, taking in his five o’clock shadow and the stack of paperwork by his side. “Colonel Fury has requested your presence on the upper deck. I think he wants to discuss something with you.”
And now Steve was wishing that he had woken up sooner as to avoid this very thing by returning to Avengers Tower. He knew exactly what Fury wanted to talk about and wasn’t the least bit interested. With a sigh he got up and started to gather his paperwork. He must have fallen asleep while reading a report, because papers had been scattered everywhere. The nurse helped him pick them all up but left the organizing to Steve.
“Dr. Blake called and said that he would come by sometime today to check on Mr. Stark,” she added.
Great, this meant that he would be getting the same lecture twice in one day. He stood there for a moment and watched her examine the life support machine, or whatever it was you did when your patient was brain-dead. Just thinking about it made Steve’s stomach churn. The nurse cocked an eyebrow at him, doubtlessly wondering why Captain America of all people was procrastinating. He wasn’t, really, and he wasn’t even Captain America anymore – that was Bucky’s job now. He wasn’t sure who he was most days.
Unable to put off the unavoidable any longer, Steve forced himself to turn away from the hospital bed and leave the infirmary. Maybe if he got lucky Fury wouldn’t be interested in discussing Steve’s feelings.
>>>
He had been a lot of places – other planets, different eras, alternate universes – but he would always consider New York City his home. He found Nick Fury surveying it like a king admiring his kingdom after coming home from a long crusade.
“You wanted to see me?” said Steve, joining Fury by the railing. It seemed like a million years had past since the time he and Tony had talked here about restarting the Avengers over bagels.
“You can’t keep doing this, Rogers. It’s not healthy.”
He bristled at Fury’s tone but was careful to keep his posture as relaxed as possible. Fury would attack any sign of defensiveness. It seemed that business was the furthest thing he had in mind.
“I don’t know what you mean, Nick.”
“Cut the bullshit, Captain. We both know exactly what I’m talking about: you living at Stark’s bedside like a clinging wife.” Fury took a deep breath to calm himself, and when he spoke again his voice was as gentle as Steve had ever heard it. “I know he was your best friend, but he’s gone now. You take away that life support and Stark won’t survive on his own.”
“That’s what the life support is for,” he said, playing dumb. “Getting rid of it just defeats the purpose.”
Fury’s eye narrowed, all his sympathy spent. “You aren’t his health care proxy. Stark gave Donald Blake power of attorney, and the only reason he hasn’t pulled the plug is because he feels sorry for you. Or maybe he’s holding out for a miracle, too. All I know is that Blake doesn’t legally need your permission to end Stark’s life, so you had better give it to him before he makes the decision on his own.”
His words were painful, but just the idea of a world without Tony Stark in it at any capacity was agonizing. Steve knew he was – for lack of a better word – clinging, but it was all he could do now. Tony’s beautiful, clever mind was gone but as long as his body continued to function he wasn’t dead. It was a very sick perspective but Steve couldn’t help it.
Before they could carry on with this delightful conversation, Fury’s communicator crackled into life.
“Fury, sir! We have a situation in the-”
Fury snatched it off his belt and roared, “Agent, say again! Situation where?”
Adrenaline was instantly racing through Steve’s veins and he could tell that Fury was experiencing the same rush. The time they spent waiting for a reply seemed to drag on forever, but when the agent finally answered, Steve could have sworn his heart either stopped or at least skipped a few beats.
“The infirmary, sir! There’s an intruder who’s already taken out…oh my god…I don’t believe it…”
It hurt to breathe as panic took hold of him, its claws tearing into his chest. Tony was in that infirmary and completely unable to defend himself. Steve was running before he even realized it, Fury hot on his heels as he yelled into his communicator for somebody, anybody to respond. The sound of a fight grew louder as they drew closer to the infirmary, until they finally made it around the corner and came face-to-face with the threat itself.
For a split second Steve couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. His eyes kept insisting but his brain refused to listen, determined that they were wrong. A figure – a man – wearing a hospital gown was using an IV stand as a weapon, and was successfully beating SHIELD agents with it like it was an art he had been trained in. But Steve knew otherwise, because he had helped teach that man hand-to-hand combat, only for him to always go right back to tinkering with his damn armor.
“…Tony?”
>>>
She didn’t wake with a jolt, but slowly rose from the depths of a deep slumber to float on the surface of consciousness. Something was in her throat forcing her to breath, and she struggled to resist the temptation to just yank it out. The last thing she wanted to do was somehow make herself a mute. With a great deal of patience she worked the tube out and took a deep breath on her own, throat uncomfortably sore.
It wasn’t necessary for her to open her eyes to know that her surrounding had changed. The room felt more spacious than the bunker she and the others had been forced into years ago, and the bed sheets actually smelled and felt clean. Genuine sunlight burned through her eyelids and she forced them open, unable to believe it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually seen the sun, and bit back a curse as the light ruthlessly seared her eyes. She’d forgotten how bright it could be.
She was in an infirmary of some sort and, after casting her gaze towards a window that made up most of the far wall, realized that it was hovering over New York City. There was only one aircraft that she could think of that did that, but the helicarrier had been destroyed almost a year ago, along with Nick Fury who had gone down like a captain on a sinking ship. If she really was on the SHIELD helicarrier…
“He did it. Reed really did it.” Her voice sounded foreign and oddly rough to her ears, and she frowned in concern. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to sit up in the bed, feeling weak as a kitten. That feeling quickly gave way to shock and horror when she finally figured out why her body felt so weird. “I’ll kill him. I’ll castrate him and then I’ll fucking kill him.”
Turning her attention to the machines around her, she tried to turn them off with Extremis to no avail. It was like trying to use a phantom limb or telepathy when you weren’t telepathic. Being confined in her own mind with no way to investigate the outside world without leaving the safety of her bed was frightening, but she’d learn long ago how useless fear was. Extremis was something she could worry about later.
After shutting down the monitors manually she pulled out her IVs and used the stand to get out of bed. She tried not to think about what might have caused this body to end up in such a bad shape before her arrival. While she had no memories from the time Ultron had possessed her and turned her into Hank, she wondered if this was how it might have felt like.
Her balance was completely off and she narrowly avoided collapsing into a heap on the floor. Her legs were unsteady, and it took her awhile before she felt stable enough to try walking. She clung desperately to the IV stand as she cautiously made her way across the room, and when she reached the door of the infirmary it slid open silently.
The longer she walked, the stronger she felt herself become although she kept the stand. It was best to trick any potential enemies into underestimating her, especially since she wasn’t at the top of her game.
“Hey! Stop right there,” called a voice from behind. She turned halfway towards it, tightening her grip on the stand. There were four SHIELD agents judging by their uniforms, and they all looked dumbfounded to see her. “Mr. Stark? You’re awake?”
Stark, huh? So this guy was her alternate self. She briefly wondered what she – he – looked like and if they had the same background. The agent who had spoken took a tentative step forward and her eyes narrowed.
“Mr. Stark, please come-”
The look on his face when she slammed the IV stand against his head, knocking him out cold, was priceless. The other agents just gaped at her before scrambling to recover by going for their guns. They were quick, but she was quicker, wielding the IV stand like she’d been born to do it. She hadn’t realized until now how much she missed sparring with someone, as Reed wasn’t really a fan of it.
By the time the last of the four agents had fallen, reinforcements had arrived. She saw a flash of white from the corner of her eye and locked in on it. Everyone froze when she caught the doctor around the neck at the perfect angle to snap it if required. There was silence, and then someone from outside the crowd started to clap.
“Color me impressed, Stark. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do this well in a fight without your shiny suit.”
The mass parted like the Red Sea and stood at attention as Nick Fury himself entered the ring. He looked just as she remembered him, all smug and mocking. She had to remind herself to loosen her grip on the doctor’s neck as she had unconsciously begun to squeeze.
“I need to speak with Reed Richards,” she said calmly. “It’s important.”
“Or what? You’ll snap Dr. Blake’s neck? Not very friendly.”
She had no idea what the hell that meant. Reed had told her a great deal about his universe, but even she hadn’t been able to absorb every scrap of information that had been thrown at her. This Nick Fury was either a friend or a foe, she just didn’t know which.
“I need to talk to Reed, please.”
“No,” Fury said sharply. “You need to tell me how you’ve managed to cause this much of a ruckus after being brain-dead for two months.”
Brain-dead? Oh, god, she hadn’t even considered that. She was in a dead man’s body, and that had to be the most disturbing thing ever. It even topped the time her armor had come to life and molested her.
“I don’t know, I swear I don’t. But if anyone can explain what’s going on it’s Reed. He’s the one who brought me here in the first place.”
“Tony, what on earth are you talking about?”
Most mornings when she woke up, she could pretend everything – the deaths, the abductions, the invasion – had never happened. She could almost convince herself that when she rolled over, she would see her husband lying in bed beside her where he belonged. And then her memories would come back and crush her, knocking the air out of her lungs like a physical blow, nearly breaking her heart and ribs in the process.
The sensation she was experiencing now was completely different and yet exactly the same. Instead of feeling crippled, she could feel herself finally mending. It didn’t matter at the moment that he wasn’t her Steve, because just seeing Steve alive and well was enough to make her feel like she could conquer the world.
>>>
Tony released Don’s neck and stepped away from him and towards Steve with the strangest look on his face. It was like he was seeing a ghost, but not in a bad way. It still made absolutely no sense because Tony knew that Steve had come back to life. They had fought side-by-side against Norman Osborn while defending Asgard in Oklahoma. Tony was the one who had died then, not him.
“Steve?” he breathed, sounding in awe. “I…you’re…”
Steve was a super soldier, the peak of human perfection, but even he had no idea how Tony managed to close the gap between them so quickly. His arms were suddenly around Steve’s neck and Tony was kissing him with all his might, quite skillfully a detached voice in Steve’s mind noted. Then he inexplicably went limp, leaving Steve with an armful of six-foot-one dead weight.
Don was standing there with a syringe in his hand, looking just as bewildered as Steve felt. Fury on the other hand was down right furious.
“What,” he growled, “in the hell was that all about?”
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Chapter Two