Verisimilitude

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Memory ½

My prompt for this week was “Finding something that has been lost.” It ended up being 11.5k words long, so I will post it in two parts. 

This one got me so excited! Please let me know what you think. :D

This is a bit of psychological memory/dream fun for Tony. 

Please look for the cut!


Sometime after Howard died, Tony had started dreaming of Captain America. In his dreams, Tony called him Steve, and Steve called him Iron Man. They fought side-by-side, Steve in his familiar patriotic uniform, Tony in a suit of armor that let him fly. At the end of the fight, Steve would put a hand on his shoulder and call him Shellhead. He would smile, even covered in dirt, and sweat, and blood, and Tony would feel like he was flying with his feet firmly on the ground.

When the grizzled captain of Howard’s survey vessel had shown up asking where his grant had gone, Tony had considered throwing him out. Instead, he’d put on two layers of long underwear, bought a parka, and gotten on a creaky boat to go explore glaciers. Just like the old man had year-after-miserable-year.

The water rocked him to sleep, and he dreamed of Captain America in Tony’s mansion home. Tony saw the mansion through the eyeslits of a helmet, with Steve ahead of him on the stairs. They moved together through the house, and Tony had the strangest feeling that they were having a conversation he couldn’t quite hear. It seemed like his ears weren’t working exactly right.

Steve stopped him as they crossed into the kitchen, and turned to face him. Tony was aware of Steve’s hand on his arm, but he couldn’t feel it through the armor. He imagined he could, though, the warm expanse of his palm pressed into Tony’s skin, long artist’s fingers curled around his bicep.

“I miss you, Shellhead,” Steve said. He set his forehead against Tony’s helmet. “I miss you. Come back.”

“Back?” Tony asked, but his voice wouldn’t carry through the helmet. “I’m right here.”

“Come back,” Steve repeated, and pressed a kiss to Tony’s helmet. “I’m waiting for you.”

Tony woke shivering and coated in a slick layer of sweat. He ducked further into his sleeping bag and wiped clammy hands across his face. His lips were chapped and salty with sweat and his feet were both cold and sweaty. He struggled out of the sleeping bag and cursed at the cold floor even through two pairs of socks, and squeezed himself into the tiny head. He tried to be grateful that he had a private bathroom and shower, but it was hard to do when he was hung over, freezing, soaked in sweat, and barely had room to turn around between the toilet and the shower stall.

He shucked off his sweaty long underwear and stepped under the spray as soon as it was warm enough not to give him frostbite. The first touch of the warm water made him convulse with shudders, and he danced in a quick circle around the chilly tile. Fog rose up against the glass door to obscure the rest of the head, and for a second Tony could believe that he was back in his dream, showering after a battle. For some reason, even looking at Steve –Captain America, Christ, his subconscious was on a (kind of) first name basis with Captain America – Tony was sure that he had to keep his identity a secret. Captain America was Steve and Tony was Iron Man.

How fucked up was that? He invented a dream world where his childhood hero was not only alive, but called him by affectionate pet names, and for some reason he didn’t want Steve to know his actual identity. Maybe it made sense. Maybe Steve wouldn’t call him by affectionate nicknames if he knew it was Tony under the suit, Tony with a heart problem (he didn’t have a heart problem, what a strange thing to make up), Tony who wasn’t even a good man while Iron Man was a hero.

And in typical Stark fashion, Tony was turning his strange dream into a living obsession, out on the high seas just like the old man, searching for a corpse. Tony had no idea what he expected to find, or what he thought would happen once he did. So maybe he found The Valkyrie. Maybe he brought Captain America home in a block of ice. What then? Display his shield at the Smithsonian? Send his body on tour like an Egyptian mummy? Maybe pick through Hydra’s allegedly magical weapons and find some new terror to unleash on the world?

Tony felt the ghost of Steve’s hand on his shoulder, a voice whispering I miss you from the depths of his dreams. Breathing in the steam, Tony set his forehead against the shower stall door and let the water beat down on his back.

Come back, Steve kept saying somewhere in his head.

“I don’t understand,” Tony told the glass door.

He reached out almost unwillingly and flipped the lever off. Cool air rushed in the moment the water turned off, and his skin pebbled up instantly. Slapping one arm across his chest, he snaked the other out of the shower and snagged his towel off the hook. As soon as he got home, he was installing heated floors – hell maybe heated walls, and heated toilet seats while he was at it – in every bathroom he owned. Theoretically, it was 72 degrees in the berths.

“Seventy-two degrees my ass,” he muttered as he pushed back into his cabin for clean clothing.

~*~

On deck, the captain stood in a rainslicker with a dented tin mug in one hand and a pair of binoculars held up to his eyes with the other. Tony clutched the handrail and tucked his face closer to his shoulder. The ship reared up and came down tilted to one side, somehow at the exact angle to spray freezing water right into his hood. It soaked into his thick sweater, and wet wool smelled like piss. He would vow to burn every piece of wool-anything he owned when he got home, except that it would probably smell even worse on fire.

“What are we going to do today?” Tony shouted over the crashing surf. He more than half expected one day the captain would catch on (and/or spontaneously grow a sense of humor) and respond, what we do every day – try and take over the world.

“We’re going to drop a submersible mid-day and start a spiral while they’re checking the glaciers,” the captain explained. It was obvious from his tone that he didn’t like explaining anything to Tony, but he was aware of who signed his paychecks and resented the obligation even more for it. “You should go down below with Dr. Banner in the echo lab.”

Tony reeled and the ship seemed to drop out from under his feet. When he landed, the deck of the ship had vanished and he was in some kind of science fiction lab. The displays around him where soft blue and floating in the air, a design for an Iron Man suit, but far more advanced than the one he saw in his dream-mirror. There was a man at one of the workstations on the opposite side of the room with rumpled clothes and mussed hair, and glasses sitting crooked on the bridge of his nose. He was staring at a magnified cell displayed on a transparent screen, one hand carefully adjusting a dial on a microscope and the other pushing his glasses up his nose every few seconds.

“I think I might have found the problem,” he said.

“What problem?” Tony asked, and then heard himself tack on Bruciebear. More pet names for people he didn’t know, except he did know them. This was Bruce Banner, and also the Hulk, and Green Bean, and Meangreen, and Bruciebear, and Rage Monster.

At his desk, Bruce sighed and reached under his glasses to rub at the inside corners of his eyes. “Were you doing that thing where you nod and make appropriate noises while you ignore me when I explained this last week?” he asked tiredly.

“Probably?” Tony ventured.

Bruce made an exasperated noise, but he didn’t sound surprised, or even all that annoyed. In fact, he sounded almost fond. Tony couldn’t figure out why Rage Monster was one of the nicknames he had for this unassuming, harmless-looking man, except that he had an abrupt thought that Bruce had once broken Harlem.

“Where are you, Tony?” Bruce asked, his voice suddenly soft and sad.

“I’m right here,” Tony said. He took a step around the table he’d been working at – Iron Man components spread out on the surface, not actually iron, his head supplied nonsensically, but gold titanium alloy, 1:3 ratio. He slipped on a puddle of spilled water and hit the floor hard.

When he opened his eyes, the captain was leaning over him, familiar weathered face pulled into an exasperated frown. “Mr. Stark?”

“Who’s Dr. Banner?” Tony asked, blinking rapidly against the spray of salt water. The captain’s expression turned from exasperated to confused. “You said I should go down below with Dr. Banner in the echo lab.”

Eyes narrowed, the captain said, “Dr. Winslow is in the echo lab. Do you need to see the physician?”

Tony shook his head, growing annoyed and frightened at his day-time dreaming. Maybe he’d hit his head when he fell. “No, I’m fine. Just misheard.”

Not convinced, the captain helped him to his feet. “Get below decks,” he suggested, “It’s slick up here.”

“Can’t have your paycheck falling overboard?” Tony tried to joke as the captain firmly sealed Tony’s hand to the rail, holding it there until he felt Tony grip it.

Giving him a scarily big grin under his bushy beard, the captain took a swallow of his coffee and reminded him, “You already invested us a grant that will keep the operation going for another five years.”

“Right,” Tony said, and then decided, “Maybe I’ll go below deck.”

“Good idea,” the captain said sagely and watched Tony half-climb and half-slide down the stairs.

When Tony looked back up, the captain had his binoculars up again, legs spread and rocking with the motion of the boat so perfectly that he could have been fused to it. Tony shook his head, asked himself again what had possessed him to think that an arctic sea voyage was a good idea, and shouldered the door open. A heave of the boat on the waves nearly tumbled him down the short set of stairs, but he managed to catch onto the door and ended up being flung into the wall instead. He shoved the door against the wind, sealed it shut and sagged back to rest his weight on the bulkhead with his eyes closed. He was sweating again, and still freezing cold even in the comparatively toasty interior of the vessel.

“Stop the engines, Iron Man!” an unfamiliar-but-familiar voice shouted. “There’s something out there!”

Tony opened his eyes and found his vision closed in by the eyeslits of Iron Man’s armor once more, an even older version of the armor than he’d been walking around in with Steve at his side in the mansion. It was heavier and there wasn’t even a cursory display on the inside. He looked down and found that he was standing at a helm, his hands on a wheel, dozens of controls and levers and buttons at his elbows. He looked toward the voice and found a giant of a man in a red cape and a bewinged helmet standing at a porthole. They were obviously deep under water.

Thor, his dream-memory supplied, a god – not a god, an alien with the name of a god. A hammer no one else could lift. They were on an Avenger’s mission in a submarine off the coast of Alaska. The particulars of the mission are fuzzy except for the notion of a man who swam like a fish and refused to wear anything other than underwear.

“Looks like a human, but how it possible?” Another familiar-not-familiar voice said. Hank Pym in the red and blue skin-tight costume of Ant Man… or Giant Man, though it didn’t make sense that he could be both when they were contradictory monikers. High Pockets, Tony’s dream memory offered, and Blue Eyes, though the pet names aren’t his own. He remembered Jan van Dyne’s voice supplying them all, and why would it be Jan of all people? Tony liked her – they’d more-or-less grown up together, but he couldn’t imagine her on a submarine.

Tony shook his head and looked out the porthole again. A figure drifted slowly past the window, and Tony’s heart seized in his chest. Low on power? He thought, one gauntleted hand pressing to the chestplate. He’d grown accustomed to the strange idea that his heart needed a battery over weeks of weird dreams, but this felt different. For some reason he couldn’t quite pin down, he knew that the person floating by their underwater craft was Steve.

Steve. He’d found him. After weeks (months? Years?) of searching, he’d found him. But it wasn’t… he couldn’t know who it was, didn’t know who it was, this was an accident. They hadn’t been searching for anyone except Mr. Speedo. He watched Hank seal himself into the airlock and heard the outer hatch open to pour freezing water in with him. Half of Hank’s body appeared in view of the porthole, far too large, maybe distorted by the water? Except Tony also knew that he could grow to nearly ten-feet in height, or shrink to the size of an insect (Physics didn’t work that way). He reached out of the porthole to grab the floating figure – Steve – by his ankle and pull him inside.

It doesn’t work that way, Tony thought, annoyed. Never mind the temperature of the water, or physics, or the ridiculous notion that Hank could change the size of his body (The Hulk, Tony’s dream-memory reminded him in a nauseating explosion of images: himself in a giant suit of armor begging the Hulk to go to sleep (what?) and Bruciebear tearing through his clothing as he turned green, and the Hulk leap-frogging over buildings, punching a giant sky-worm (what the fuck?)).

He felt dizzy and sick to his stomach, like being rocked on the surface instead of insulated below the waves. Tony shook his head hard enough to make the helmet rattle, but he was suffocating inside of it, it was too close, and too small, and smelled like iron (really iron, not gold-titanium alloy 1:3). He gagged and tried to take it off, but his hands stayed firmly by his sides.

When he turned around, he was in some kind of lab with the other Avengers (who was driving the boat?), staring down at the body (Steve) laid out on a bunk. He was dressed in familiar red, blue, and white, with the shield on his chest, face relaxed in sleep, hands at his sides. His uniform was sparingly covered in scraps of tan cloth (he’d been frozen, nothing should have disintegrated) Tony also remembered an image of him incased in a block of ice, thawing slowly on a table, surrounded by SHIELD techs in biohazard gear (What was SHIELD? – Except he did remember Director, no Colonel Fury, a doughnut shop, a hostile takeover, a woman with red hair infiltrating his life, Iron Man yes, Tony Stark no.). Tony hadn’t been there for that one, had only seen the images in the aftermath, but how could they both be real?

Thor and Hank examined the man like they didn’t immediately recognize him (neither of them had been there the other time, but they’d both been in the house with Steve in Tony’s other dreams, they should know him), and Tony just watched, trapped in his own body, head spinning agonizingly fast. His memories jumped from a sparkling tower, to a sprawling mansion, from a file projected above him in glowing blue, to the submarine, and back.

Thor plucked at the scraps of Steve’s clothing and pointed out his ‘colorful costume’ – congratulations, Captain Obvious, maybe you should give your mom back her drapes and stop playing dress-up, Tony thought snidely. (Forest somewhere in Germany, the trees shattering around them, watching Thor on a digital display with data flickering in the corners of his eyes. Suit charged to 400% “Doth mother know’th that thou wear’th her drapes?”)

“Wait!” Wasp said, voice tiny and high-pitched and fast, “Don’t you recognize it? It’s the famous red, white, and blue garb of Captain America!”

No shit? Tony meant to shout, but instead heard himself exclaim in shock, “The Wasp is right!”

Steve’s eyes opened and somehow went right to Tony, as if he’d expected him to be there, as if he’d been waiting for Tony all along. “I’m sorry I haven’t been there as much as I would like, Tony,” he said softly. No one else seemed to hear him. “Please come back to me.”

“I’m right here,” Tony screamed in frustration. “I’m right here!”

His voice echoed inside his helmet, and Steve just looked at him sadly.

“Mr. Stark?” A hand landed on his shoulder. Tony felt it, but he shouldn’t have because the armor – “Mr. Stark?”

Tony opened his eyes and found himself staring up at a woman. She had long, straight brown hair, and she was tiny, with delicate bone structure and intelligent eyes. “Jane?” he asked, confused. She was Thor’s girlfriend. Except Thor wasn’t real, he was a construct of Tony’s seriously fucked up and obviously over-indulged imagination.

“It’s Dr. Winslow,” she reminded him slowly, and then added, “Emily.”

Tony shook his head to clear out the last of the dream, and blinked at her. She wasn’t that tiny – actually she was probably 5’8” and her hair was a dishwater blond pulled back in a tail. She had hazel eyes and Jolie-lips, and a decidedly Scandinavian cast to her features. He looked around suspiciously, but he was back on the boat, standing in the echo lab. The ocean crashed against the portholes and slid away, very close to the waterline, but not under the surface.

“Sorry,” Tony said. He flashed a winning smile at her. From her expression, he’d missed winning and ended up somewhere around worrying.

“Do you need to go see the physician?” she asked.

“No!” Tony roared. “I need you to find Steve!

Dr. Winslow flinched back from him and then squared her shoulders and glared. “It’s Steve now is it?”

For a second, she looked like Natasha (who was Natasha?) and Tony pressed his hands to his eyes until she reverted back to Emily Winslow. “Sorry,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just go… lay down.”

“That might be a good idea, Mr. Stark,” she said somewhat frostily.

~*~

Tony woke in a bed that was at least twice as wide as he was – which was an obvious lie since his bunk onboard the ship was barely wide enough for him to lay on his back, and he’d rolled out of it more than once. He stretched his hands out looking for the wall, but he found only mattress and smooth sheets as far as he could reach on either side.

He pulled his head out of the pillow and looked around blurrily. He was in an unfamiliar bedroom – but it was his bedroom, at the tower in Manhattan. King-sized bed, because ‘comfortably sleeps three’ had been a plus at one point, tastefully decorated because Pepper (Pepper? PA – no, CEO – no, girlfriend – no, ex-girlfriend) had done it for him.

“Mr. Stark,” Jarvis called into the room.

Tony jumped, ready to remind Jarvis that he didn’t like people sneaking up on him while he was sleeping, but the room was empty when he rolled over.

“Mr. Stark,” Jarvis repeated from somewhere in the vicinity of the ceiling. Speakers, Tony thought, an intercom system (except that Jarvis was dead and this was JARVIS, who was not speaking through a computer, he was a computer. Tony clearly remembered hundreds of hours of coding, and putting together composites of dozens of voices, tweaking and pushing, and dissolving into sobs when he finally got it right).

Breathing past the sudden heat behind his eyes, Tony called out, “Yes?”

“Captain Rogers is looking for you. Shall I tell him you are indisposed?”

Tony checked the bed to make sure he was alone and then said, “No, that’s fine. Let him in.”

There was a brief pause and then Jarvis said, “As you like, sir.”

The door opened and Steve blustered in, mostly in uniform (different than the uniform on the submarine, different than the uniform in the mansion house, different again than the uniform on the helicarrier (Helicarrier?)), and carrying an armful of paper.

“Tony, can you please –” Steve stopped abruptly and stared at Tony in the bed. His Captain America Mode face faltered and color rose up on his cheeks. He shuffled his feet and Tony was surprisingly turned on by his missing shoes. The red toes on his navy blue socks were somehow adorable.

Tony pulled up a smile from somewhere and said, “Can I please…?”

“Uh. Clothes?” Steve fumbled. When Tony’s smile grew wider, Captain America Mode re-engaged and he continued forward like Tony wasn’t sitting up in bed wearing nothing but a pair of tight red boxer briefs (“I feel a little foolish about keeping that secret from you till now,” he remembered saying, standing in nothing but a thong with his armor stripped away, Steve’s shocked expression as he realized that his friend Iron Man was Tony Stark, and Tony terrified that shock was bordering on anger).

He shivered and reached for a pillow to pull across his lap, tapping the space next to him. Steve sat down with one knee tucked up on the bed. He spread the paperwork over Tony’s pillow – mission reports, and why did Steve still print them out? – and handed Tony a pen and a clipboard to write on.

Tony made a put-upon noise and heard himself babbling, reading through the pages even though they were meaningless and he wanted to talk to Steve, but he couldn’t shut himself up long enough to say anything that mattered.

Steve reached over suddenly and caught his hand, and Tony had the conflicting impressions that he was still writing and that his hand was immobile (and cold) under Steve’s grip. He wanted to turn his hand over and lace their fingers together, he wanted to pull his hand away, he wanted to see how the hell words were still appearing on the page when he wasn’t writing them.

“Tony, please. I’d do anything for you to just come back. I miss you, Shellhead. I miss you.”

GODAMMNIT!” Tony howled somewhere in his head, while his hand filled out mission reports (and I told Legolas Katniss Hawkeye not to jump off the building, but he did it anyway, and sidenote please someone make Clint check his hearing because I am starting to doubt that he’s really just that annoying and suspect he might have some hearing loss…) “I am right here, Steve. I am trying to find you, I swear. I am… I am tearing up half the planet looking for you. Just tell me where you are, and I will come to you, please.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Iron Man,” Steve said, patting his hand.

Fuck fuck fucking goddamn fuck!” Tony shouted after him in frustration and tossed himself sideways. He landed on the cold floor in his cabin, tangled up in his sleeping bag, shivering and drenched in sweat once again. It was even worse than being trapped in the Iron Man suit, smothered by the fabric and trapped with his own heat, the sick scent of his sweat.

Poundpoundpound! “Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark are you alright?”

“Jarvis?” Tony croaked, and then stopped because Jarvis was at home with the Avengers – no, dead – no, an AI – no, Vision (Vision?). Tony was starting to unravel, he couldn’t keep anything straight. “I’m fine!” he called out breathlessly. “I’m fine.”

“Mr. Stark, do you need to go to the infirmary?”

“No!” he yelled, suddenly panicking and not sure why. “No. I’ll be right out.” He didn’t even know who was on the other side of the door and suddenly couldn’t remember who else was on the ship, except the captain… captain … he had a name, Tony was sure. Dr. Banner – no, Foster – NO, Winslow. There were… there was a cook. At least one? And… other people, who did things?

Was he that much of an asshole that he really hadn’t noticed anyone else? No, one of Tony’s talents had always been in recognizing people, remembering names. He knew the names of most his employees at Stark Industries – Stark International – Stark… Jesus Christ, he couldn’t even remember the name of his own company. He made a desperate, trapped animal noise, and finally managed to struggle out of his sleeping bag, worming across the floor, and his legs suddenly didn’t work right, he needed the reactor in the workshop (Reactor?).

Tony shoved himself up to his feet (he wasn’t paralyzed, not by Obadiah (what the fuck?) or the suit damaging his nervous system) and stumbled into the head like he was drunk (No, he’d been sober for a decade – no, he’d just been drinking the night before, he’d woken up hung over, hadn’t he?). He didn’t even recognize his own face in the mirror and smashed a fist against it, but it wasn’t actually glass and all it did was hurt his hand. He cursed, tripped over the toilet, bashed his elbow against the shower stall, and finally managed to get himself under the showerhead.

The cold water made him shout, and his entire body seemed to convulse all at once. For several seconds, his lungs were frozen, and then he sucked in a breath. He was on a deep sea survey vessel that his father had commissioned a decade before. The captain had shown up at his mansion in Upstate New York to ask where his grant money had gone (he hadn’t even known that Dad was dead), and Tony had suited up and gone with him. They were ostensibly searching for the wreckage of The Valkyrie and Captain America’s presumably frozen corpse, though Tony knew that the captain and crew mostly used it for their own studies.

They would find Captain America, and Tony’s dreams would be banished along with the madness. Shivering violently, he reached up and turned the lever over to hot, only gradually becoming aware that he was still in his clothing.

~*~

“We may have found something worth exploring,” the captain said when Tony finally made it to the mess for dinner. The food was so heavy and carb-rich, and Tony should weigh 300 pounds with mashed potatoes and bread and pasta every night, but he was losing weight faster than his belt could keep up.

Tony looked up at the captain, afraid to realize that he’d been hearing things again. “Oh?” he ventured cautiously.

The captain nodded his grizzled head. “Out on the ice. We’ll take a submersible out tomorrow if you want to go.”

Tony frowned, remembered Steve’s body drifting past the porthole, and asked, “Why are we taking a submersible if it’s on the ice?”

Setting down his fork, the captain stared at him hard. “I said we’re taking an expedition out tomorrow. Do you want to go?”

Tony stuffed a forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth to stop the frustrated scream clawing at his throat. “Right, sorry. Yes, I would like to go.”

“Mr. Stark,” the captain said (why couldn’t Tony remember his name?) “I really think you should see the physician.”

“No,” Tony said, keeping his voice to a low grumble, “I’m fine. I’m just distracted and can’t seem to get my… sea legs, or whatever. I’m fine.” He shoveled the rest of the potatoes into his mouth and stuffed half of his meatloaf in after. His mouth was too full to even chew, but it was all off the tray, so he gathered up the dishes and hurried out of the mess.

Alone in the corridor, he leaned against the bulkhead and struggled to swallow the last of his dinner. They were going to find Steve tomorrow, The Valkyrie half-buried in the snow (did that make sense after seventy odd years? No, not seventy-odd, it hadn’t been that long. Just fifty? Maybe only twenty-four? He couldn’t keep it straight.) He finally managed to choke down the mouthful and hit himself hard in the chest to clear his airway (the reactor, Jesus – except, it wasn’t there. He didn’t have a heart problem, he’d never been to Afghanistan – no, Vietnam).

Stop, he commanded himself. He would find Steve tomorrow and it would all be over.

“Mr. Stark? Are you feeling –”

“I’m fine!” Tony interrupted the crewmen who’d just stepped around the corner. “Just… went down the wrong tube. Fine.” He pushed past the man (he had a name, Tony was sure), and hurried back to his cabin. It was probably a better idea if he just stayed there until the expedition left in the morning.

~*~

The boat pitched sharply and Tony jerked awake. He was slumped forward on the bench of a motorboat. For several panicky seconds he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. He remembered going to bed the night before, his dinner sitting heavy in stomach. He thought he remembered throwing up in the night. He definitely remembered fighting, fighting, fighting, endlessly. He remembered being in a wheelchair at one point, and in a HUMVEE the next, driving a race car, dancing with Pepper, fighting with Pepper, fighting with Steve.

He remembered falling to his knees in the sand and Rhodey’s arms closing over his shoulders, and being so tired and so relieved that all he could do was laugh, except his throat was too dry to make the noise and it sounded like sobbing. He remembered pulling the collar of his shirt aside to see lines like microcircuits creeping up his neck. He remembered building his own particle accelerator. He remembered Steve’s eyes following him with disappointment as Tony broke into a secure facility to retrieve his stolen technology, and going through Steve to do it.

He didn’t remember getting up in the morning, or getting dressed, or getting on the boat, but he must have done because he was squished on a bench between the captain and a lump of a person obscured by heavy cold-weather gear.

“STARK!” the captain shouted over the crash of the surf. “If you’re going to be sick, do it over the side!”

Tony just shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“You should see the physician when we get back on board!”

Tony just barely restrained the urge to shove the captain over the side. “I’M FINE!” he screamed, his voice going shrill in an effort to rise over the hum of the engine, the whip of the wind, and the splash of the icy water against the boat. They were racing over water the color of a cold corpse, arrowing toward a landscape of ice and snow. The sun hit the ice and turned it a shade of white-gold that he couldn’t quite describe. Even through the tinted goggles, it made his eyes sting.

The boat slowed as they approached the beach, and two figures in the front jumped out to pull the boat up the shore. Tony lurched again as the hull scraped over the black sand. They anchored it to the ice and two of the puffy winter-gear figures stayed behind with the boat while Tony was jostled into the center of the rest of the group. Tony’s thighs trembled and his stomach hallowed out. He felt weak and cold through the core.

“Come on, Tones,” Rhodey said from behind the thick balaclava. His voice was muffled and his breath fogged the air in front of him.

Tony turned to look at him, and Rhodey stared back from the slit of the woven mask. “Rhodey, I don’t understand what’s happening,” Tony pleaded.

“You’ve pulled through worse, Tony,” Rhodey said. His voice was too soft for Tony to hear over the shriek of the wind, but he heard it as if they were alone in a silent room. “You can do this.”

“I don’t understand!”

“Come back to us. We’re all waiting. Steve’s waiting. If you can’t come back for me, you can come back for him.”

“I’m trying,” Tony gritted out. “I’m looking for him. Jesus fucking Christ, just tell me where he is!”

Rhodey reached over and grabbed Tony by both arms. He shook him hard enough to make Tony’s head swim. His vision went white-blue-black-blue-white-gray-white-blue. He moaned, as his stomach turned over and squeezed hard.

Mr. Stark!”

It was the captain, not Rhodey (Of course not Rhodey, James Rhodes was a classmate at MIT, and they were friends, they were best friends, but Rhodey wasn’t War Machine, wasn’t a colonel, wasn’t on the expedition, didn’t know Steve (yes, of course he did, he was a fucking Avenger, he’d been Iron Man and Iron Patriot, and he’d rescued Tony in Vietnam – no, Afghanistan. He’d been employee, friend, ally, adversary. They’d fought together and against each other, and rescued the president, momma hen and papa bear.)

“Just the snow,” Tony gasped out. “It’s just the glare of the sun on the snow.”

“Open your eyes, man!” the captain shouted. “The sun isn’t even out!”

Tony cracked his eyes open and the captain was right, of course he was. The sun was just barely above the horizon, one larger star among a sea of them. The sky was dark. Snow ghosted across a barren landscape of ice fields. He was wearing snowshoes. When he looked over his shoulder, the shore wasn’t even visible. They could have been walking for days. He remembered taking the boat in, taking a helicopter in, riding in on snowmobiles, a sled and a team of dogs.

Tony curled over and put a thickly mittened hand to his head. He might as well have been naked for all the good the winter clothing was doing him – he was chilled and soaked in sweat under his parka, and probably smelled like piss (goddamn wet wool), and his stomach was hugging his spine.

“We’re going back,” the captain decided. “You’re going to medbay!”

NO!” Tony howled. The wind howled with him. “No. He’s here. He’s here, he’s waiting.”

“He’s waited this long, he can wait a little longer,” the captain argued.

He’s waited long enough!” Tony screamed into the wind. He pushed away from the captain, hard enough to send the bigger man stumbling back in the snow. Before the captain could recover, Tony hurried off as fast the snowshoes would allow. There was a hill on the horizon, somehow familiar, not quite natural. It was Steve, it had to be. Tony needed it to be Steve, needed the madness to stop.

The Valkyrie should have been buried under decades of snow and ice, but it was completely exposed, debris from the crash littered all around it, streaks of soot turning the blue ice black. Tony struggled out of his snowshoes and ignored the shouts of the crew coming after him. The plane was surprisingly intact. If it had just hit, Steve could have still been alive. Tony scrambled on the ice and broke through the crust to plunge waist-deep into the snow, feet from the plane.

Shouting in frustration, Tony kicked and screamed his way out of the snow, slithered out on his belly, and crawled to the plane. The windows had been shattered out, and Tony could just see the shadow of the pilot’s chair beyond. The nose was buried several feet in the ice so the bottom lip of the window was only seven or eight feet off the ground. He jumped, missed the first time, and jumped again. He just managed to catch the edge of the window – he knew that the shards of glass were cutting through the gloves, but he couldn’t feel it. He heaved himself into the plane and spilled down a ramp of ice to the floor, which rattled under his weight. Shitty Hydra construction, bullshit cheap flooring panels.

“Where are you?” he called into the darkness. “Steve! Steve, please!”

“Mr. Stark!” the captain called from outside the plane. “It’s not safe!”

“Fuck you and your safe!” Tony screamed back. He tried to get up, but his knees just gave out. He was weak, and cold, and cold. He couldn’t stand, fine, so he would crawl. The nose of the plane had crashed into the water, frozen, and then been pushed out. There was thick coating of ice that extended from front console to the base of the pilot’s chair.

Tony fumbled a flashlight out of his pocket and swung it around the interior of the plane. Steve would have been in the pilot’s chair when he’d crashed. The impact would have thrown him forward. He could have been thrown out of the windows. He could be anywhere. Drifting under the water where only the submarines could find him, encased in a glacier and lost for another century or twenty.

“No,” Tony said. “No, you’re… You’re here.”

He scraped snow off of the icy console, the beam of his flashlight flickering over the solid ice. It lit up a shadow in the depths, a smudge of irregular darkness against the deeper darkness of the console. An unmistakably human-shaped shadow.

“Steve,” Tony gasped, “Steve. I found you. I found you. I came back for you. Can we stop now? Can we just go home?” He slumped against the ice, pawing at the snow. He could just barely see the glint of light off a silver star. “Please, I want to come home.”

Part Two

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