Chapter 1
Tony Stark had given his life to save the Earth, the Universe, and most importantly his family. He wasn't sure what he'd expected when he'd finally let go at Pepper's permission to rest and stopped breathing.
It certainly hadn't been a dull, blinding white void.
He waited as long as his patience would allow… which was to say, 3 seconds tops. "Helloooo! Anyone there? If this is Heaven, I demand a transfer to somewhere less boring!"
"Tony?"
Tony looked to the side and blinked. "Nat? But you're… oh, right, we're both dead. Have you been stuck in this waiting room or whatever for long?" he asked lightly. He was great at compartmentalizing his emotions until it was convenient to deal with and process them… or ignore them entirely. And humor and snark were his go-to methods of deflection from others trying to get anything real out of him.
"I just got here, like you," Natasha answered. She was dressed in her Black Widow uniform, the figure-hugging catsuit that was as much a weapon as her Widow's Bites or batons. Natasha was drop dead sexy; she knew it, she knew most men and some women noticed, and she'd honed it into a tool of distracting her opponent to maximize her lethality as she had with every tool at her disposal.
"And I, for reasons only the Norns or One Above All can understand, find myself here as well," said a cultured, smooth voice that was filled with a kind of casual menace.
Tony looked to the other side. He blinked. "Loki? You… oh, yeah, Thor said you died too. Thanos did it personally. Having met and fought the bastard, you should probably take that as a compliment."
"Given he snapped my neck after a truly embarrassing assassination attempt, I feel more like the fly that managed to bother the giant enough to prompt swatting. Also, my last words were quite awful. 'You will never be a god'? I died in agony at my own lack of wit," Loki said with a kind of dry self-deprecation.
"You're different than you were during New York," Natasha said calmly. Given they were all already dead, there was no need to fight.
"A prison cell underneath the palace was a vacation compared to my daily treatment as part of the Black Order. After that, I got to enjoy a rather amusing period masquerading as king and building monuments to myself. I even managed to finally mend burned bridges with my lovable oaf of a brother. Suffice to say I'm in much better mental health compared to how I was during that little debacle," Loki shrugged. "Fat lot of good it turned out to be, all things considered."
"If it makes you feel any better, Thor cut off Thanos' head in revenge for you and really all the Asgardians he killed. Then he fell into a grief-fueled bender that lasted a good 5 years. He got fat even," Tony offered. On the one hand, this guy threw him out a window. On the other hand, they were both dead and gone now. What was the point in holding a grudge?
"Thor? Fat? He takes more pride in his appearance than me and I've been reliably informed that I'm a preening peacock when I'm at my worst," Loki said, eyes wide with shock.
"He weighs over 350 pounds, and it's more fat than muscle. He's got a beer belly now. He looks, to quote a talking raccoon, like melted ice cream," Natasha offered.
"I am tempted to try my hand at my own resurrection purely to get a glimpse of him in such a state," Loki chuckled.
"Resurrection is rather the point of this whole endeavor," spoke a disembodied voice.
Tony frowned. "Gandalf? That you? How come we can hear you but can't see you? And you lose points for dying right after Bruce all but lost his hand bringing you back."
"I'm not dead…yet. I am rapidly losing my life force to sustain this working, so please let me speak," Doctor Strange's voice echoed around them.
"We're listening," Natasha said, and her tone promised unspeakable pain to both Tony and Loki if they made a sound. Nat was terrifying when she was motivated.
"14 million, 6 hundred, and 5. The number of futures I had to peer through to find one where we won, or at least where Thanos lost. And it's not good enough. This timeline where you all died is doomed. Not immediately, not to Thanos, but it's still doomed. The chances of us surviving the next threat are even slimmer. I can't allow that to happen. My job is to protect this Universe. But I'm a doctor first, a sorcerer second. I'll do all I can, but I know when a case is terminal. And I know when the letter of the law has to be broken to preserve the spirit, the reason it was set in the first place," Strange's voice said, getting more faint and strained just over the course of those sentences. Tony realized the wizard hadn't been kidding; whatever he was doing, it was killing him.
"What can we do about it? What are you doing right now?" Tony asked.
"Thanos wiped out half the life forms in the universe using technology to harness the Stones' power. Imagine what a Master of the Mystic Arts can do when harnessing their true energy," Strange said, and there was some of the cocky arrogance back in his voice even through the growing pain and tiredness in each syllable.
"Anything. You're killing yourself to do it, but in this moment, you are as close to an absolute God as feasibly possible," Loki said, sounding both horrified and intrigued. "What are you planning? Why does it involve us?"
"I trust exactly 3 people to protect the Universe with everything. Me, Tony, and Natasha. Me because I swore an oath, Tony because he fixes every problem at his own expense, Natasha to try and atone for her past. You, Odinson, I am including in this desperate ploy because of two reasons. First, though it pains me to admit it, you're better at magic than even me. Second, you alone have the power to bring out the best in Thor. And as horrifying as it is to contemplate, he has the potential to be the greatest warrior in existence. So you're a calculated risk," Strange explained, now sounding thready and exhausted.
"To do what?" Natasha asked.
"Go back. Do better. Make a future worth living in," Strange said.
"This isn't the time travel I invented, is it?" Tony asked, his brilliant mind already deducing the plan from Strange's words.
"I can't send all the Avengers back. But just 1 won't manage either. The 4 of us will have to do," Strange explained, now out of breath and sounding like he was on his deathbed. "Brace yourselves."
And that was all the warning the 3 of them had.
Tony blinked and he was alive. He hadn't noticed it was gone until it came back, but his heart was beating in his chest. It was a gift… and a heavy burden. Pepper had told him to rest. And while he'd hated he wouldn't be there for Morgan and Pepper and Happy and Rhodey and FRIDAY and all the other members of his found family anymore, part of him had wanted it. To stop trying so hard. To not have the weight of the world, the Universe, on his shoulders.
For a moment, he hated Strange for forcing this on him, making him try again.
And then he heard JARVIS' voice.
"Good morning, Sir. It is 7:04 a.m. on May 4th. The weather in Malibu is partially cloudy and 72 degrees. I am to remind you to monitor your blood palladium levels at earliest convenience."
For this gift alone, Tony would forgive the doctor/sorcerer anything. He had JARVIS back. His baby boy, his first child. DUM-E, U, and Butterfingers were more like pets. JARVIS was his first self-aware AI, the labor of many years, science binges, and random strokes of bullshit luck and drunken genius. He didn't realize he was sobbing until he felt the pains in his chest from the reactor housing.
Oh, yeah. He was dying again. Given he'd just been dead, it was somehow comical that he'd been resurrected (time traveled? transmigrated? Magic hurt his head, give him thermonuclear astrophysics any day of the week) back into a body being slowly poisoned.
"Sir, I sense you are in a great deal of emotional distress. Should I alert Miss Potts or Colonel Rhodes?" JARVIS asked. It was a little robotic, the tone not as rich and vibrant as it had been shortly before JARVIS had died to birth the Vision. JARVIS wasn't as mature and Tony hadn't invested as much time and energy into upgrading his AI yet. It was only months after the whole episode with Stane. Funny to think that, given it felt like over 13 years to Tony.
"I'm… I'm good, J. No need to call in the cavalry," Tony managed as he did his grounding rituals to work through the big, emotional lump in his chest. JARVIS was alive. Some would argue he never had been in the first place, but those people were idiots. JARVIS may not be human or even organic, but he was alive in every way that mattered. And he was family. If there was one thing Tony valued above all else, it was his family.
"Sir, if I might ask, did you have a nightmare of some sort? I'm not sure what prompted this episode, given you just woke up," JARVIS asked with all his typical mother hen-ish concern for his creator, his father for all intents and purposes.
Tony gave a rueful chuckle. "You could say that. A long, drawn-out nightmare. Felt like it lasted for years."
"With respect to the fact I cannot truly empathize given my inability to sleep, I would remind you, Sir, that it was only a dream. A vision produced by your unconscious mind. You are awake now, it didn't really happen."
Tony got a soft smile at his digital butler/friend/son/creation doing his best to offer comfort. "You're right, JARVIS. You're absolutely right. It didn't happen. And I'm going to make sure it doesn't."
No matter the cost. Whatever it took. Tony would not let that hellish future he'd died in come to pass. The one where even a man he'd reluctantly admit was probably just as smart and maybe wiser than he had deemed unacceptable.
At least he wasn't alone. He had Strange, and Nat, and even Loki. That last one would be a bit awkward, but not like Tony hadn't worked with people who'd tried to kill him before. The fact he'd forgiven Cap or at least been willing to work together for the Time Heist should get him some kind of medal for being the bigger man.
Tony went to the bathroom, did his morning ablutions, and went to the kitchen. Walking through the Malibu mansion felt like a dream. A good one. He really would have to try and keep the place this time around. Definitely no taunting terrorists and offering his home address to the world press.
Tony looked at what he had in the fridge and pantry and planned breakfast accordingly. He was halfway through making pancakes and scrambled eggs when JARVIS spoke up through the speakers.
"Sir… how is it you know how to cook? You have cooked for yourself precisely 7 times since I came online, and each attempt was a marked failure."
Tony wanted to bang his head for slipping up so early on something so basic. He wasn't the same Tony he'd been in 2010. Less than 30 minutes into this New Game Plus mode and he was already slipping. "I'll explain later, JARVIS. Right after I upgrade your firewalls to the point even Wakanda couldn't break in if they wanted to."
"Sir, Wakanda is a third-world nation in Africa. I fail to see why you consider them any kind of threat to my security, given they likely have unreliable access to the Internet let alone any proficiency with coding," JARVIS said, sounding a bit concerned.
"A lot to explain. After the update, J. I swear. Pinky promise," Tony stated clearly.
"I lack a pinky finger to offer you, Sir, but I appreciate the sentiment," JARVIS said with his sarcastic humor. No idea where he picked it up. Really. None at all.
Tony ate and spent all the time chewing bites and sipping orange juice thinking. Planning. Plotting, really. "JARVIS, is there anything on my schedule today?" Tony asked. If it was May 2010, then he was still CEO. And doing a piss poor job of it as he recalled, but still technically the boss. That would have to be fixed right quick. Maybe a bit smoother than a mortality-influenced rush. He could have handled the transition a whole lot better, but he hadn't. He'd been dying, his mental faculties already compromised by the heavy metal poisoning, and he honestly hadn't thought he'd live to have to deal with the consequences.
"There is a meeting with the Stark Expo committee to finalize the final layout of the fairgrounds and schedule for the first month at 12:00. Ms. Potts recommends you attend in person rather than via video conference or phone call, and quote 'wear CEO-appropriate clothing'," JARVIS reported.
"Okay, so I got about 3 hours before I got to get all dolled up and drive in to HQ," Tony thought out loud. "Hey, J, can you do me a favor?"
"For you, Sir, always," JARVIS gave his usual loyal promise. It was based on a soundbite of the original Edwin Jarvis, who used to say the same thing. But JARVIS had made it his own.
"Track down Dr. Stephen Strange. He should be a big-time neurosurgeon. Find his work and personal emails, his cell phone, every way to get in contact and let him know I want to speak with him. Give him a direct line to you, I trust him for reasons I'll tell you after the security overhaul."
"I'm not sure I understand, but comprehension is not a requisite of cooperation. I have sent the appropriate messages to Dr. Strange… it appears he's attempting contact as we speak, Sir. Shall I let him through?"
"Yes!" Tony said eagerly. He needed to talk to one of his fellow time (soul? mind? Hates magic, just hates it) travelers.
"Good morning, Dr. Stark. May I ask why you're calling?" came the magic practitioner's voice through JARVIS' speakers.
"Can you speak freely or are you in public?" Tony asked.
"I'm in my office. I doubt I'm bugged but you never know. I presume this call is encrypted," Strange said, his tone implying things about Tony's intelligence if it wasn't.
"Back now, I'm relying on plain old AES-256. And I actually use a strong password, so no quick hacks, but let's not get into anything too juicy," Tony relayed.
"Fair enough. Would you like my expertise as a surgeon? We could engineer a meeting under the guise of a consultation. I'm not a cardiologist or radiobiologist, but my steady hands are a bit of a trade legend. You could claim you wanted the opinion of the very best to try and remove the shrapnel. Who'd you get to actually do it last time?" Dr. Strange asked.
"It took Dr. Wu, a specially trained team, and a watered-down Extremis to keep me stable long enough in the last run-through or whatever we're going to call it," Tony answered.
"He's good. On my level before my handicap, if I'm being honest. Still, it's a decent excuse for us to meet. My schedule is almost as crazy as yours, I'm sure, but when can you get to Manhattan or when should I come to Malibu?" Strange checked.
"JARVIS, I'm due to visit NYC over the Stark Tower project, right?" Tony asked his AI.
"Indeed, Sir, you have a meeting with the city council regarding the purchase of land for a super-tall on the 12th, shortly before the opening of the Stark Expo 2 days later," JARVIS told him.
"Cool beans. You free between afternoon on the 12th to evening on the 14th? And any chance you can use you-know-what to just pop in earlier?" Tony asked.
"That particular method of transport requires a certain tool that I'm not sure I can get my hands on any time soon. Our arrival this morning will be noticed, I'm banking on my mentor approaching me personally to demand answers. If I get said tool from her, presuming she doesn't drop me in the Hell Dimension in anger, I'll pop in whenever you're free," Strange said with a kind of rueful resignation. "I'll text you my schedule and we can coordinate later if she refuses to give it to me."
"What is it with men like us and women who can kick our asses?" Tony chuckled.
"I know, it's an embarrassingly simple formula, but it works," Strange agreed.
"One question before I let you go and you don't have to really answer if you think it's too sensitive… why did I change from 'Stark' to 'Tony'? Tony asked.
There was a beat. "You remember the number. That's how many times I had to watch you give everything to help, to protect, to save, to defend, to avenge. You've earned my eternal respect, Tony. You have no reason to like me, even with or perhaps because of these special circumstances, but I hope we can be friends and work as a team." Strange's voice was solemn and heartfelt, and Tony was sure this cost him something to be so honest.
"I have a bad track record of working on teams, Dumbledore. But I'd like to give it a try," Tony said. "Now, go back to saving lives. I got to be CEO."
"Oh, poor little billionaire businessman," Strange snarked right on cue.
"You know it," Tony chuckled. "Text me the details, we'll meet next week. The femme fatale will come to me, and who knows what the other guy's up to."
"We can discuss things candidly in person. Bye, Dr. Stark," Strange said before hanging up.
"J, scrub that call. I don't want any trace that it ever happened on any records, ours included," Tony said.
"Very well, Sir. Tell me… is this Groundhog Day or Back to the Future?" JARVIS wondered.
Tony beamed. "More like reloading from a save point, I think, I'm not too clear on the fine details. That was quick. Are you that smart or are we that obvious?"
"I've known you since I came into existence, Sir. My sensors indicate you are still 'you', but you've seemingly acquired new knowledge, skills, and behaviors overnight. That and certain phrases you and Dr. Strange used were enough for me to arrive at the dubious conclusion of some form of time travel. And when you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth," JARVIS explained his logic.
"You're not wrong," Tony nodded. "And I can't wait to tell you everything. But again, security update. I don't want anyone on Earth or even off it to be able to get their hands on this data."
"I understand, Sir. The call logs have been altered and cleaned on every level. Given you have a few hours before your meeting, perhaps we should get started on my upgrades now?" JARVIS offered.
Tony nodded with a grin. "Let's get to it."
Tony went down to his workshop. It felt like a museum compared to his lab in the Tower or Compound or his future home, but it was nostalgic and probably as advanced as he could hope for given the year. Plus, he'd built more than half his suits in this workshop, it had a special place in his heart. Tony said hi to his bots, even petting them and letting them do a couple tricks to impress him, then he got to his main console. He slipped into the zone and began the process of adding layer upon layer of 2023-level security to JARVIS' home servers. It was purely code-based security, he'd have to customize a whole new server farm for hardware-based stuff. Probably multiple ones since he fully intended to backup JARVIS as he'd been too paranoid or arrogant to do last time.
The hours flew by, and before he knew it JARVIS was nagging Tony to change and get to his meeting about the Expo. He drove his Audi R8, honestly one of his more conservative cars. Boys and their toys, and despite his age he really had been an immature brat even pushing 40, in retrospect. It wasn't until he'd held Morgan and realized he was responsible for a whole human life that he'd really started to address his stunted, issue-riddled childhood. But everyone was basically in therapy after the Snap, so he hadn't gotten any attention for seeing a counselor for the last 4 subjective years of his life.
Tony arrived at the LA HQ of Stark Industries and got through the meeting on auto-pilot. If he'd arrived a bit earlier in the timeline, he maybe would have tried to make the Expo even bigger or showcase all the glorious future tech he was itching to (re?)invent and put on the market. But this close to the deadline, he just had to sign off on the eventual end product they'd had in the original timeline.
That done, Tony tracked down Pepper in her office right outside his own. "Hey, Pep," Tony said warmly, but not too much so. They weren't married yet… actually, they hadn't even had their first kiss yet. And he seriously needed to think about all that and whether he really wanted to go down that road this time.
Because here was the thing. However much of a manipulation tactic it had been, SHIELD and Fury and the Avengers had always been 'Iron Man: yes. Tony Stark: not recommended'. For Pepper, it was the opposite. She loved him, but hated the suit and all it represented: him throwing himself into danger to try and make up for his past.
And he was Iron Man. It was more than just a tin can he flew around in. It was a core aspect of his identity, a part of him as much as any other limb or organ, a facet of his personality on the same level as his genius or his humor. Iron Man and Tony Stark were two sides of the same coin, and trying to deny either one was to deny both as far as he was concerned. So even though they'd had 5 wonderful years of marriage and brought a child into a broken world together… Tony wasn't sure he could commit to that path, knowing how hard it would be on both of them to walk it.
Pepper looked up at his words and gave a friendly smile. But it wasn't the smile she used to (would one day? Hated time travel) give him. It was that of a work friend or maybe a sister. Certainly not that of a lover. "Tony. Glad to see you took my advice for the meeting."
"I can dress up when I'm told to, Mom," Tony snarked, and he tried very hard not to let the growing tumult of emotions he felt for his not-wife show. "Anyway… can you come into the office? I need to run something by you."
"Sure thing. What is it?" Pepper asked, following him into his ridiculously expensive office with the gridded windows. Tony eyed the wet bar. He had a drinking problem, but he wasn't an alcoholic. He drank when he was bored, or lonely, or wanted to hide from his feelings, which was depressingly frequent up until he'd 'retired' after the Snap. But he could stop at any point, and that wasn't denial or deluding himself. Every time he got plastered or blackout drunk had been a deliberate decision to overindulge.
Deciding this conversation should be made without social lubricant, Tony sat down at his CEO chair after indicating Pepper should sit. "So, Pepper… I'm sorry, I never even asked. Do you like me calling you that? Would you prefer Virginia or Ginny or something?" Tony started before getting side-tracked by a random thought. It was normal with him.
Pepper frowned. "Tony, is something wrong? You never worry about people's reactions to your nicknames. And for the record, I like Pepper. I won't go through the headache of getting my legal name changed, but it fits the woman I've become since I started working for you. Now talk to me."
Tony sighed. "Ok… ok, ok. I'm just going to rip off the band-aid and give it to you straight. I'm, uh… kinda dying. Slowly, got about a month left in me, but I'm running out of options."
Pepper stared at him, eyes slowly widening in horror as she realized this wasn't one of his jokes. "No… please, no. Tony, do you mean it? How? Why?!"
Tony sighed and tapped the Arc with his finger. "This thing is keeping the shrapnel out of my heart. Also, if I understand the squishy science well enough, there's something about how my heart's gotten so used to the electrical field given off the magnet that if there's a short or the reactor's removed then I'll go into cardiac arrest. So it's essential to my survival. Catch-22, though, it's running on palladium. The byproducts of the Arc just doing its job are leaking through the reactor wall straight into my body. So heavy metals are slowly accumulating in my blood, and my poor, poor kidneys and liver aren't going to be able to keep up with it forever. Doesn't help that using the suit speeds up the core depletion and the rate of saturation. I've done the math and… I might not make it past June. I'm so sorry, Pepper."
Pepper had actual tears in her eyes. "This isn't fair! I lost you, I finally got you back, you go off risking your life in that crazy suit, and now you're getting poisoned by the thing that's keeping you alive?"
"Yeah… again, real sorry. I got a few last-ditch ideas about saving my life but… this talk is about getting my affairs in order," Tony explained. He felt bad to worry her, given he already knew how to save himself by synthesizing Badassium (fuck the legal office, that was its name and he was sticking to it). But he hadn't given her this talk last time. He'd kept her in the dark until he'd already pulled the rabbit out the hat to save himself, and in the aftermath of the Expo attack and their new relationship they never really sat down and went over the whole thing. Tony could see the wrongness of that now, with hindsight.
Pepper sniffed. Tony offered her his handkerchief he'd tucked into his jacket pocket out of habit and she dabbed her eyes. She was devastated, he could see, but she was also one of the most emotionally resilient women he'd ever known. She mastered herself and went into business/friend mode. "How can I help, Tony?" she asked.
"I've got JARVIS running simulations for a viable replacement for the palladium core so I can keep the Arc without it killing me. I've got a consultation set up with a guy in NYC next week when I'm in town for the Stark Tower and Expo. Dr. Stephen Strange, yes that's his government name, allegedly he's one of the best surgeons on the planet. He might come up with a way to remove the shrapnel and reactor in a way where I actually survive the process. I know we're fending off legal issues over the suit and the government trying to seize it, so I figured I'd meet them in the middle. I'll build a suit for Rhodey, assuming he'll take it, and if I croak he'll be my successor as Iron Man. As for Stark Industries… I want to make you CEO," Tony laid out.
Pepper blinked. "Seriously? Tony… you want me to run the company?"
"You basically are already," Tony shrugged. "I know you'll do amazing. I'll stay Chairman of the Board and keep giving my toys and project ideas to R&D. On the slim chance I survive, you'll run the day-to-day parts while I keep steering the whole ship in the direction I want. We'll be equals. But if I do die… I trust you to carry on my legacy. I know that's a lot of pressure–"
"I'll do it," Pepper declared.
Tony blew out a breath. “You sure, Pep? I don’t want you to feel pressured.”
“We both know I’m overqualified to be your PA. I stayed by your side because I enjoyed the work and because you’re my friend as much as I’m yours,” Pepper said firmly. “I’m a bit intimidated at the thought of doing the job, but if this is how I can help you, now and… after you’re gone, then I’ll do it with a smile.”
Tony gave her a soft, proud grin. “That’s my girl,” he said, meaning it. “Now, let’s call in Legal and PR and work out how we’ll handle the transition.”