Chapter 1
“…and that’s why you shouldn’t mess with time, instead of pushing yourself through time, you might push time through yourself. The EPR Paradox, and your mom has to change your diapers again.”
The camera pans out to the side, away from the holograms and zooming onto Tony’s face. “Okay, that’s it for unravelling time travel, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave some comments!” He gives one last smile into the camera and then, “DUM-E, cut. Good boy.”
As JARVIS starts processing the video to be uploaded, Tony grins at Peter’s latest message: Mr. Stark pls dont win another nobel thru youtube u make science class harder each year
Sorry, Tony texts back entirely unapologetic, i might have solved time travel. get off your phone & listen to the teacher
Thirty seconds later, his phone chimes again, a picture of a dark classroom with the projector showing Tony frozen in mid sentence.
U r the teacher.
“Those files are on your new teammates, Captain,” Sitwell points to the four thick manila folders on Steve’s right, “and these files are some which may interest you.”
Steve takes the stack of folders from Sitwell as graciously as he can, balancing them in one hand as he flips open the topmost folder, taken aback by the unfamiliar face and all too familiar name.
Anthony Edward Stark
DOB: 29/05/1975
Place of Birth: Manhattan, NY.
Family: Howard A. Stark, Father, DECEASED (12-17-1991); Maria Collins Carbonell Stark, Mother, DECEASED (12-17-1991)
Employment: Youtuber. Formerly CEO of Stark Industries and Head of R&D at Stark Industries.
It goes on and on, and Steve frowns, looking up at Sitwell and around at the small Brooklyn apartment he’d been given. “What’s a Youtuber?”
Sitwell clears his throat, “ah, that comes a little later in your lessons about the future. After you learn about the internet.”
Steve barely resists the urge to punch something.
A cursory glance at the room is enough to tell him that they’re still treating him as if he’s fragile – the radio in the corner looks painfully old, and from what Steve saw of Times Square, the telephone next to the door must be a relic fished out of an old nursing home, as are the miserably beige curtains covering the windows.
Frustrated doesn’t quite sum up what Steve feels. Yes, he’s still mourning for Bucky, for the Commandos and for Peggy and the life all the could have's. Yes, he’s been asleep for seventy years, and a small part of him is grateful for the familiarity of his surroundings.
But a larger part of him chafes at being belittled.
This is the world he’s living in now, and there’s no use hiding from it.
“If you don’t mind, Agent, could I use that cash you gave me for a hotel?” Steve asks, putting his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders slightly, the picture of contriteness that used to get Mama Barnes to do anything Steve wished for, “I don’t think I’ll get along with my neighbours – you see, we’ve sort of got workplace issues.”
Sitwell blanches, and it’s just about all Steve can to do stop himself from laughing. The future might be different, but Steve knows people, and he’d known as soon as he shook hands with Mr. 4A and Mrs. 4C that his neighbours were agents planted to babysit him.
“I’m sure we can rectify the situation, Captain,” Sitwell deflects, hands obviously itching to reaching into his jacket for that slim, black rectangle he’d tried to keep away from Steve’s eyes.
“Of course, Agent,” Steve smiles bright and polite and entirely too innocent, “I wouldn’t want to be a hassle.”
They had tried to explain inflation to Steve before Sitwell shoved a thousand dollars in Steve’s hand, promising that an agent would drop by and take him shopping for clothes.
Inflation existed in the 1920s, and as shocking as holding one thousand dollars felt, Steve knows that seventy years is a long time for prices to go up. He isn’t stupid.
He can go out by himself just fine.
First, though, Steve hadn’t been involved in a spy agency for nothing. He dumps his stack of folders into an armchair and begins taking the books off the shelf.
Time to hunt for all the hidden microphones.
He takes the fire escape and hails a cab, gratified that they’re still the same bright yellow.
“Where to, sir?” the cabbie greets.
Steve has a second to think up a story before his mouth blurts out, “what’s that glowing rectangle?”
Somewhere, Bucky is laughing at him, and elsewhere, Peggy would have smacked Steve's head. Luckily, the driver doesn't do much except make a face at Steve.
“Uhhh, my phone?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry, the nearest place I can get one of those, please, uh, Scott,” Steve quickly reads the driver’s name stuck on the visor, which seems to pacify the guy as he finally stops frowning at Steve and starts looking at the road.
“You’re not crazy, right?” Scott tentatively asks.
“A crazy person doesn’t know they’re crazy,” Steve quips back. No one is supposed to know that Captain America is alive. He respects and understands SHIELD’s decision. That doesn’t mean Steve Rogers can’t get a life.
Scott clears his throat, slowing the car down for a red light, “okay, so you looking for a StarkPhone, Apple or Android?”
Steve is definitely not looking for a fruit or a robot. He picks the safest option. “A StarkPhone. You have a recommendation?”
It turns out a cabdriver is more insightful than all of SHIELD.
The internet is a wonderful, wonderful thing. All StarkPhones are equipped with a mini artificial intelligence, Steve learns, and it saves Steve from having to ask a multitude of awkward questions to the storekeeper, who already spent long enough squinting at Steve for pulling out a wad of hundred dollar bills from his pocket.
Steve had nearly gotten a heart attack when the storekeeper had asked him to shell out five hundred dollars for such a small thing – but three minutes on the phone, and Steve thought the storekeeper was crazy for selling it so cheaply.
Maybe this was why SHIELD had wanted to introduce it slowly to Steve.
The boundlessness of the future: it leaves Steve feeling adrift, lost in the sea of people surrounding him. Flashing billboards and people glued to their little screens, nobody seems to care or notice who Steve is, and it doesn’t feel terrifying.
It feels right.
It feels like freedom.
Bucky would have loved the future, Steve wistfully thinks as he stares up from the sidewalk at the towering buildings. When Asimov’s book about robots had come out in the middle of the war, Bucky had talked about their three laws with Howard, debating the endless possibilities of science that bordered on fantasy.
For a moment, Steve closes his eyes, holding the memory crystal clear in the forefront of his thoughts.
“You would have loved this magic, Buck,” Steve whispers.
And then he lets his breath go.
And he lets his memories rest.
“Sir, you have twelve missed calls from MIT, a voicemail from Doctor Banner, a long-worded message from Ms Potts, and several unanswered invitations to conferences and talkshows.”
“Tell MIT I’m not teaching, curriculums are boring,” Tony scoffs, adjusting the lights and checking that the coils are level, “tell Bruce we need to make another Science Bros vlog and tell Pep I’ll be out in three hours tops.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Great, we’re naming this next video How to Make a New Element in Your Basement: DO NOT TRY AT HOME.”
Youtube, Steve learns quite quickly, is as informational as it is crazy, and it is far less boring than reading through mind numbing SHIELD briefings on the past seventy years.
In fact, there are very aptly named videos like The Past Seventy Years in Ten Minutes, through which Steve learns about the moon landing, the end of segregation, the Berlin Wall and the Gulf Wars, and how polio and smallpox aren’t a concern anymore.
Eventually, when Steve finds himself lying awake on his bed, alone and too keyed up and not daring to close his eyes, he finds himself typing Anthony Stark next to the little magnifying glass on top of the screen.
A round picture of a bearded man with a gaping mouth pops up, the words Tony Stark and Subscribe next to it, and Steve warily presses on the image. His screen morphs.
DO NOT TRY AT HOME the first video warns, and below it, Time Travel Babies | That Was Easy #57.
With a frown, Steve presses on the first video carefully, still unused to the ‘touchscreen’. The video starts out shaky, with Stark’s blurry face coming in and out of focus. “Hey, hey you wanna get donated to the library? Over here – eyes front, that’s it,” Stark waves in the screen, his voice filling the emptiness of the room.
Steve had seen Tony Stark’s formal picture in the SHIELD file, but this? The lights around him have been perfectly placed, hitting his eyes to bring out their brown – brighter than Howard’s, and softer – and those glasses. Behind him is a cluttered table with glowing blue screens, and even further in the background, if Steve squints into the screen of his phone, he can see a long metal cylinder stretching beyond the screen.
“First of all, if you haven’t noticed, the September Scholarship Applications are open, so go check the link in the description, and second, seriously, don’t try this at home.” Stark moves to stand up, and the camera follows him with a small beep-beep in the background, “I’ll be walking you through what a particle collider is and how you can use them to make fire, explosions, and chaos.”
If watching Howard work felt like watching a whirlwind, watching Tony work felt like understanding a whirlwind. The way he was mindful of using simple words – Steve found himself learning about orbitals and electron stability, holding his breath as the screen whites out, and swallowing when Tony strips out of his shirt down to his tank top.
Steve isn’t sure what Youtubers do outside of making videos, but they must be doing something because Tony’s arms are built, the muscles rippling as he pulls a long wrench, and –
“Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave some comments!”
His screen fades to black, the video ending all too soon, and suddenly Steve’s room feels too quiet.
A heartbeat passes.
Tony Stark, Steve’s mind fiddles with the name, getting used to the sound of it, and trying to piece together ‘Youtuber’ with ‘genius’, ‘rich’ and creating a new goddamned element in the basement.
It’s crazy and impossible and brilliant.
Steve clicks on the next video.