The man looked at himself in the shape that the world would never see. Purple bags under his eyes because of the tiredness but he would never allow them to close.
Not with his world on the line.
With his hands firm on the sink, he searched for the courage to tell himself he had the strength: “I can…”
He couldn’t bring himself to do it, not after the years of events he could have prevented.
Then he remembered the things he made with his hands and thought it would have been fair to state a fact: “...I am… Iron Man… I am Iron Man.”
It was now or never. He couldn’t count on any of the new flimsy armours, he had to return to the ‘Old Faithful’.
Only then he could go to the lab, one heavy step at a time through a dark corridor with few lights. If anyone had unfortunately crossed him there, they would have ran away with their tails between their legs.
The lab he set his sight on was awfully silent, considering the danger the other scientists were concerned about. Tony thought the Incursions could screw themselves. As nonsensical as it sounds, they were far from his biggest concern.
There was only a single other man waiting in that lab, the only one that would understand. The only one left of that kind.
Sam was quiet at first, looking at him head to toe perplexed. Eventually he said: “I’m taking your fashion choices as your way of saying you’re leaving the FF.”
It was hard for Tony to show his emotions in that giant hunk of metal, more silver than red and gold, but he still promptly replied: “I’m still in the present. Don’t think I’m hopelessly latching onto the past as if nothing changed. But the point is, this isn’t a Future Foundation mission, it’s about the Ultimates.”
Sam looked at the suit’s feet for a while since he had almost forgotten how inhuman they looked, almost as if they had robotic hooves.
The original Iron Man armour looked like an alien, straight on. It took a lot of human interaction for Tony to understand he needed to look human.
“And how does that excuse using an outdated suit?” Falcon couldn’t help but wonder.
Despite how static the modulator made his voice, Sam could feel Tony smiling when he answered: “I never stopped upgrading it.”
There was another room next to the lab, completely empty and seemingly useless until Sam turned on a switch and one of the walls was covered by purple energy.
Tony stood in front of the wormhole, separated by the rest of the world by a line of pink sparkles. Only he could see his suit’s hud telling him his heart was going cooky.
Before he could walk in, Sam asked: “Tony, what are the chances of him still being alive?! He’s just a man!”
Tony never looked back and never stopped advancing. He just said: “He’s not ‘just a man’… He’s Thor.”
Straight into the portal he went without a doubt in his mind. For months until that point, the only person he was thinking about was Thor. His friend.
—————————————————————
Judging from the way the others talked about it, he expected the N-Zone to be dark, almost pitch black but it turned out to be far from it.
It was like a toddler munched on some crayons and puked it all out. He still didn’t like it but it was a step in the right direction.
He never did it before but for once he made his helmet mute the colours of what he saw.
After checking that his coordinates were right, he turned to his map and, wouldn’t you know, there was still a tiny blue dot.
He activated the repulsors on his boots and back and made his way to it.
Despite the lack of heat and the augmented distance between every single object, there was still much to see.
Like a star that grew larger and adopted a fiercer color as it got older and the planets around it slowly diverging out of their orbits.
The star’s density had diminished too much to hold them closer and, by Tony’s expectations, without a guide the planets would surely become cosmic dust.
As a member of the FF, he should have landed on each one of them in search of anything and anyone.
As an Ultimate though, he looked straight ahead as if something blocked his peripheral vision like a horse drawing a carriage.
The only thing that he took a peek at as the distance diminished was what looked like a carcass in the distance.
If he could see it that far away, that could only mean it was enormous, something that could have lived only without gravity holding it down and yet even it couldn’t survive the great dying.
Seeing the remains of the winged beast reminded him of how much Hank Pym had struggled to become only a tenth its size.
Perhaps what Sue said when she returned from her latest exploration was right, it was all because their world still made some sense.
A moment of reflection passed and although he didn’t change trajectory, Tony was somewhat repulsed realising that the thing that made him think of Hank was so similiar to the state he had last seen him in.
On that day fire raised itself against rain and an endless horde was blocked by an organic wall.
Remembering the gruesome scene as well as everything else that happened after the Wave hit, he reminded himself: “... I told him not to.”
That he did one too many times with Hank. It did them no good.
He snapped back to the present too late to notice the path ahead of him lighting up in orange.
His shields turned on quickly enough to defend him from a fire that didn’t need oxygen.
Only then his eyes noticed a creature that flapped his wings in nothingness.
Much like the corpse he saw before but by all means livelier and covered in green scales, it was another example of nonsense that wouldn’t stand in his world.
It was very similiar to a dragon, he remarked as it flew closer. It was like a mixture of european and asian dragons except for the limbs which seemed long like an ape’s.
“I guess that’s cool, Smaug wannabe, but I’m not St. George.” he said to himself and boosted upwards (wherever “up” was in space).
The dragon didn’t relent and did the same. When Tony evaded its pounce, he realised that he wouldn’t get rid of it that easily.
Still, he didn’t shoot at it, he only flailed his left arm at it and shouted: “Away, fido! Oh, hell. Why am I even talking? You can neither hear nor understand me.”
That is, he thought during the chase, unless the interplanetary reptile was a telepath.
A few seconds of mental silence passed and he concluded that it wasn’t. Still, even if it had been it wouldn’t have surprised him. Everyone seemed to be a telepath these days.
Not only did he not have time for the fairy tale creature, he didn’t have a simple way to deal with it.
Without Steve to plan half the strategy and improvise the other half he didn’t know where to start.
The beast slammed his fist on his back and all of a sudden his body was miles away and his mind was three years in the past.
He was back at the first dinner with Steve and Thor, the real beginning of their friendship outside of their suits.
Thor learned that day that not all men with ties were deplorable cowards.
Tony probably made Steve’s day by showing him the physical proof of how much the world missed him.
They were so happy that evening, feeling like the World’s Mightiest Heroes after taking care of a fiasco they caused, that the rest of the world became noise.
That was not the first time he made that mistake but it may have been the worst of all the times he thought he could rest.
They should have called Jan, to make sure she was alright. They should have ran to her house.
He should have gone with Steve the day after to teach Hank a lesson.
He didn’t do any of that. He didn’t even learn from his mistake.
He didn’t search for Jan when the wave hit. He couldn’t stop Steve from getting in that jet.
When Thor flew towards the enemy for the last time, he shouted his name. To this day, he wasn’t sure if he was encouraging him or begging him to stop.
He was a horrible friend and he knew that.
The only thing left to do was learning from the fallen.
Like Jan once stung Hulk in his weakest spot, he launched a rocket in between that thing’s fangs, causing an explosion.
The repulsors reactivated and he flew recklessly, almost stupidly, towards it with his glowing fists ahead and, after a noiseless crash, it was down.
Despite the pain, Thor was still on his mind. Unlike the others he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t have been dead.
He didn’t know what he would do if he were dead, too.
He rocketed back to his original destination, faster than before. If earlier he only had his eyes ahead, now the rest of the universe was entirely blocked out except for his compass.
He started wondering, as the number on his hud got smaller, how many times he took Janet for granted, how many times he wished Steve would shut up and how many times he made fun of Thor for his strange ways.
He took everything he said back long ago. He wanted Jan’s normality back, he wanted Steve’s trust and Thor’s bravery back.
Psychedelic images flashed before his eyes as he made the speed of sound look like a joke but his eyes weren’t tearing up because of the colours.
He wanted his friends back.
That couldn’t be done in his world. After all, as he thought before, it still made the tiniest bit of sense.
The number on his hud turned to a mere fifty. He finally looked in front of himself and saw him.
He was just like the day he left them. Covered in the armour that Tony himself forged, his motionless hair the same colour as wheat.
Tony never cared much for fields throughout his life. Thor was the one that gave him a reason to smile while looking at golden crops.
He promptly turned back to his helmet’s readings. There was a sign.
It was weak but he was alive. He didn’t know how alive he was but it was good enough for him.
There was a chance. He could save him.
He couldn’t save Jan, Steve and the countless ones that relied on him but he could hug Thor again, activate the teleporter and let the two of them be enwrapped in purple light.
He came all that way to save one of his friends. If only he could, he would save them all.