Avengers (and Agents and Norse Gods and Civilians)... Assemble
The first to awake, surprisingly enough (or perhaps not so surprisingly), was the group with the red-skinned humanoid.
The red-skinned humanoid regained awareness quickly after he first started to wake up. As soon as he was fully conscious, he didn’t hesitate to make his way to his feet and start wandering around the room, eyes curious and intent. Much to the surprise of all of the Avengers and SHIELD spies, excluding perhaps Thor (and, of course, Loki) who was more used to otherworldly beings, the humanoid was floating as he made his way through the room.
Soon after, the metal-armed man leapt to his feet, an unmistakable haste to his movements that reminded Tony of his own initial panicked reaction to the situation. The man looked around frantically before his eyes landed on the dark-skinned man lying beside him. He turned away from the Avengers, scowled, and unceremoniously jabbed the man with the tip of his boot.
“Oi,” he barked, “wake up, birdbrain. We’ve got a situation.”
“Birdbrain?” Natasha echoed under her breath. She had a wide grin on her face. “Looks like you have competition, Barton.”
Clint shoved her lightly. “Shut up, Nat,” he whined, lips tugging into a pout that suited a child more than a fully-grown adult. “I’m the original bird-themed hero. Who even is this guy? He looks nothing like a bird!”
“Are you saying you look like a bird?” Bruce asked mildly, having quickly gotten over the confusion that he’d somehow transformed back into a man and been redressed after the battle.
Clint shot him an unamused look, while Natasha threw her head back and laughed. “Nice one, doctor,” she snickered, expertly avoiding the resulting blow Clint threw her.
“Hey, what’s with you, Capsicle?” Tony turned to Steve, who didn’t seem to be hearing their banter, instead still focused on the two strangers. “Are you too patriotic for a few good-natured jabs at a teammate?” he joked.
Steve blinked distractedly. “Sorry,” he muttered, eyebrows knitted in concern. “He just.... reminds me of someone.”
“Which one?” Tony asked, frowning. There was just something about the look in Steve's eyes that unnerved him. “‘Birdbrain’ or his metal friend?”
“His friend,” he answered absentmindedly, and then shook his head to clear the haze. “Never mind. I’m just fooling myself.”
Tony arched an eyebrow. “Sure,” he said doubtfully, unable to quite shake off the thought of Steve’s memory-lidded gaze. “Whatever you say.”
Back over on the other side, the dark-skinned man had finally awoken. He pushed himself up to his feet with a rough groan and cracked open one eye, squinting irritably at his acquaintance. “What the fuck, jerk?” he snapped. “Where are we?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out, dumbass,” ‘Jerk’ replied with a roll of his eyes.
“Then it appears as though we are all equally clueless,” the African man joined the conversation, sitting up and cocking a head sideways at them. Beside him, the African girl propped herself up on her elbows and smiled lazily as her companion addressed the other two men. He nodded cordially at the metal-armed man first, and then the dark-skinned man second, “Sergeant. Sam.”
The metal-armed man—'Sergeant'—grunted non-verbally in acknowledgement, while his dark-skinned friend waved halfheartedly in response. “Who else is here?” Sam asked.
“Uh, guys?” the other normal-looking man with them—the one without red skin—called out with a wince. He gave the three others a wave before asking, nervously, “How did we all get here? Because I really need to get home. Like, five minutes ago. I’m supposed to be on house arrest!”
Tony exchanged a grimace with Steve from where they were curiously observing the interaction. A criminal, then. This’ll be fun, Tony thought sarcastically.
“Lang, calm down,” Sam soothed, placing a placating hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. I mean, whoever took us really must not have thought this through. We may be Rogues, but we’re still badass. And sure, I may not have my wings with me right now, and I don’t see your suit either, but this dumbass with me”—he nodded at the Sergeant—“and our resident sleeping beauty here”—he pointed at the young woman with long auburn hair, ignoring the fact that she’d recently awoken and was currently staring at him with an expression of visible annoyance—“are a force to be reckoned with all on their own.”
“Wings?” Natasha repeated, sending Clint a pointed look. “He’s obviously more committed to the bird theme than you, Clint.”
“I still don’t know who he even is,” Clint replied in frustration, choosing to be the bigger man and ignore her baiting. Bigger man. Yeah, right. “And who are the others with him? He said something about a suit, and he clearly isn’t worried about being kidnapped so...”
“Sounds like a bunch of supers to me,” Tony announced. “I don’t recognize them, though. Maybe they’re new to the scene.”
“None of them were there to fight against Loki’s army,” Steve pointed out. “You’d think that a group of enhanced—or at least gifted—people would at least try to help out.”
“Maybe they had prior commitments,” Clint defended.
“During an alien invasion?” Steve asked skeptically.
Clint just huffed and folded his arms across his chest, eyes defiant as his mind briefly flashed to his family. Steve might not be able to imagine anything coming before the invasion of a city priority-wise, but Clint for one knew what it was like to love someone—someones—more than anything else in the world. He might be a SHIELD agent and a newly initiated Avenger, but his family came first, and they always would.
Tony was barely paying his new teammates any mind, too busy racking his brain trying to figure out who the newcomers could possibly be.
Speaking of the strangers, the red-haired woman was sighing heavily, exasperation rolling off her in waves. Regardless, even as she shot Sam a disgruntled eye-roll, she begrudgingly backed him up and gave the worried American a reassuring smile. “He’s right,” she supported his claims, an accent Tony couldn’t quite place thickening her speech. Someplace of Eastern European origin, maybe? “We’ll be out of here before you know it.” Without so much as breaking her gaze with the American, the woman offered her fist to the Sergeant, who reached out and bumped her knuckles with his own without missing a beat.
“I gotta agree,” the youngest amongst their group finally piped up, throwing a cheeky grin at her fellow African. “And not to worry. My brother here will step up as well if need be. He might look like an idiot doing it, but he’ll get the job done.”
“You think you’re insulting me, but you forget you’re the one who built my suit,” her brother said dryly. “If it looks stupid, that’s on you, not me.”
“Oh, but you’re misunderstanding, brother dear,” the girl countered, lips curling upwards at the corners of her grin to reveal teeth. “I didn’t say the suit looks idiotic, I said you look like an idiot. It has nothing to do with my suit.”
Her brother rolled his eyes and fell silent, turning away with a wordless scoff as if refusing to be baited into a senseless argument.
The American in flannel—Sam had called him ‘Lang’—hardly looked reassured. “You don’t understand,” he fretted, looking stressed as he ran a hand through his hair. “If they find out I’m not at home, either they’ll throw me back into the Raft or I’ll have to go on the run. Either way, I’ll never see Cassie again!”
“The Raft?” Tony whispered in shock.
“It’s an underwater prison,” Fury replied reluctantly. As much as he hated having to divulge that piece of confidential information, he knew now wasn’t the time for secrets. Especially not if they were trapped in an enclosed space with a prisoner of the aforementioned underwater prison. “It's a project the government came up with after Thor’s first appearance led us to realize that we aren’t as alone in the universe as we first believed.”
“Yeah, I know what it is,” Tony hissed. JARVIS had come across a report on the Raft during one of his sweeps of SHIELD’s database. “But I thought the Raft was created for the purpose of detaining enhanced individuals—and not just any enhanced individuals, but rather those who are considered dangerous and a threat to the goddamn country. Who is this guy to warrant incarceration in the Raft?”
Fury had no answer to that.
“Cassie?” Sam repeated inquisitively, drawing Tony and Fury’s focus back to the strangers as his voice echoed audibly in the roomy theatre.
Lang deflated. “My daughter,” he admitted, his voice a hushed whisper. His gaze was heavy with sorrow as he clutched one fist to his chest, a faraway look in his eyes.
Tony winced at the same time as the African male said, “I get that. I understand how important it is to come back to family. My sister and I may argue often—”
“—only because you’re a moron—”
“—but at the end of the day, I’d do anything to make it back home.”
His sister softened. “Who knew you were such a sap, brother,” she teased, but her voice was soft and lacked any real traces of mockery, and when she looked away, a small pleased smile touched her lips.
Tony was about to go and do something reckless like promise to help Lang with his situation in exchange for aid in escaping this room when, all of a sudden, Rhodey groaned awake.
“What the...?” Rhodey grumbled, lifting his head slightly as his eyelids fluttered open.
Tony immediately snapped to attention at the familiar sound of his best friend’s voice, as did everyone else with him. The group in the corner, too, fell silent in favor of observing Rhodey.
Before Tony could call out to his friend, Rhodey shifted into an upright position and stretched to make himself comfortable. Beside him, Pepper adjusted to the movement and gradually became more alert. Pepper had always been a light sleeper, Tony reflected as Pepper abruptly shot up, seeming to realize deep down in her subconscious that something was inexplicably wrong.
“What–– what happened?” she asked. Her voice cracked the way it did whenever she had just woken up. She craned her neck around and peered blearily up at Rhodey, confusion rampant in her expression. “Rhodey? What are you doing here? Where is here?”
“I’m afraid I know as much as you do—which is to say, I know nothing at all,” Rhodey shrugged. “I just woke up, like, a second ago––”
“What the hell!?” Happy’s voice thundered across the room, immediately drawing all eyes to his group.
Rhodey and Pepper both climbed to their feet in a flash and turned in Happy’s direction. As soon as they took in the sight of Happy with three kids next to him, they both gawked, unable to process the sight. “Uh,” Rhodey leaned in towards Pepper, “are you seeing what I’m seeing? Is that Happy with literal children?”
Pepper merely managed to nod silently, for once at a loss for words. The thought of Happy willingly surrounding himself with teenagers contradicted everything she knew about him.
The curly-haired girl stirred first, and as soon as she saw Happy she wrinkled her nose and demanded, “Why am I seeing you right now? What did you do this time?”
Happy gave her an offended look. “Nothing,” he snapped. “I woke up and we were here!”
The girl finally looked around herself and froze, as if only just now realizing she wasn’t home. “What the fuck,” she whispered. “What’s going on?”
“I’m in the same boat as you,” Happy said. All of a sudden, his eyes widened in panic. “Shit. I need to get back to the safe house. What if someone lured me here so they could get to May?”
Tony reared back in surprise. May? he wondered to himself. Who was May, and why would someone want to go after her? Why was Happy needed in a safe house?
Almost immediately, the girl looked concerned at the realization that May was alone in 'the safe house'. She scowled. “If Peter gets back and finds out his aunt is gone, he’ll never forgive us –– more importantly, he’ll never forgive you—”
“I know,” Happy groaned. “The last time I spoke to him, I promised him I’d protect her.”
The girl was about to reply when her eyes caught on to a sight somewhere over Happy’s shoulder. Oh my god, she mouthed silently to herself, before turning wide eyes to Happy and trying to get his attention, “Happy.”
“I swore I’d never so much as let her out of my sight!” Happy carried on, heedless of the girl’s call of his name and her suddenly pale expression. “God, I can’t believe I was so careless as to let myself get kidnapped. I can only imagine how many enemies Peter has that wouldn't hesitate to hurt the people he loves—”
“Happy.”
“He’s taken down so many people, and now all of those criminals are out to get him. Ever since the world found out who he is, the press has done everything in their power to uncover every single detail of his life. Hell, I saw a few criminals staking out his apartment the other day,” Happy recalled, fists clenched tightly. His face was pinched with anger and fear, worry lines stretching across his forehead. “We’d already moved May by then, but what if his enemies finally managed to find us? God, remember Toomes? What if he—”
“Happy!” the girl finally exploded, jabbing Happy’s chest with her pointer finger.
Happy startled immediately, blinking as he regained his composure and silenced his ranting. “W-What?” he bit out.
The girl rolled her eyes, but despite her irritated facade, there was an underlying hint of shock in her expression. Her eyes were wild and frenzied, and her shoulders shook minutely. “Happy,” she repeated, voice trembling. “Look. It’s Peter. He’s here.”
Happy choked, staggering backwards with the weight of her statement. “What are you talking about—”
But he’d already turned around to see for himself, and the second his eyes landed on the teenage boy with brown curls, his mouth fell open in disbelief. “Holy shit,” he managed to whisper. “Holy shit. It’s really him.”
“Yeah,” the girl breathed. “It’s been so long—”
“Wait, what is he even doing here?” Happy snapped out of his shocked reverie quickly, acute worry returning to replace awe. “Oh, my god. Someone really did get to him.”
The girl sighed and ignored him for a moment to lean over and shake the other boy—the one Tony suspected to be of Filipino descent—awake. “Loser,” she hissed, “you need to get the fuck up.”
“MJ...?” The boy’s eyes briefly creaked open, but the second he saw her—through his just-woke-up, bleary vision—hovering above him, eyes narrowed and already battle-ready, he rolled away from her with a loud groan. “It’s too early,” he bemoaned, eyes shutting again. “Leave me alone.”
The girl, ‘MJ’ apparently, huffed irately. “Jesus Christ,” she swore. “It’s gonna be a chore and a half to wake him up. Peter always said it takes Ned forever to wake up for school after sleepovers.”
“Wait,” Happy said, “I have an idea.” He strode forward until he was within mere feet of the Filipino boy and urged, “Leeds, come on. You’re going to be late for school, kid. I know for a fact that your homeroom teacher gives detention for that kind of thing. Is that what you want? Detention?”
(Tony had never before imagined that he’d get to see Happy Hogan, one of the most impatient and easily irritable men he knew, try to wake up a kid. An angsty teenage kid. And–– how could he be so sure that their school handed out detention for tardiness, anyway? Just how close was he to these teenagers?)
MJ’s face scrunched up. “That’s your great idea?” she said in annoyed disbelief. “With or without the threat of detention, didn’t I just say that he takes forever to wake up for school?”
Happy pinked in embarrassment, but was quick to shake off the failure. Instead of trying again with the school route, he decided to go for the big guns: mentioning Ned’s best friend was always a sure-fire way to get his attention. With that in mind, Happy dropped to a crouch, peered down at the boy, and snapped, “Get up, Ned. Peter’s back.”
Impressively, the news that ‘Peter was back’ was enough to make Ned open his eyes immediately. “What?” he asked, voice still rough with sleep. “I could have sworn I just heard you say—”
“Peter’s back,” Happy repeated.
Ned froze, and then immediately leapt into action, pushing off the floor onto his feet and regarding Happy with a mix of hope and apprehension. “Are you serious?” he demanded. “Wait, where even am I? Did you kidnap me? Never mind that, what were you saying about Peter?”
MJ groaned. “He’s right over there,” she called out, pointing at the last teenager still asleep. “I can’t believe you’re so calm at the thought of being kidnapped.”
Ned looked at her strangely. “You’re calm, and you’re here, too.”
MJ shrugged. “I’m always calm,” she reminded him.
“Right,” he conceded, and then scurried over towards the last teenager’s sleeping form. “Oh, my god,” he mumbled. “He’s really here. I’ve missed him so much—”
“Ned?” The boy of the hour himself—‘Peter’ if his friends were to be believed—finally woke up, slowly opening his eyes. “What – what are you doing here?”
Ned’s lips curved into a megawatt grin. “Peter!” he exclaimed gleefully, practically jumping up and down in giddy excitement. “You’re here!”
“I’m here,” Peter agreed, before frowning. “Wait, where’s here? How am I here?” He paled and jumped up, whirling around to quickly take in his surroundings. (Which–– his first reflex upon finding out he’s somewhere unfamiliar is to look around, possibly searching for an exit or for an enemy, Natasha noted shrewdly. If his current bloodstained condition weren’t proof enough, then this certainly confirms it: there’s no way he’s just any ordinary schoolkid.) “Fuck. Please don’t tell me we’ve been kidnapped—”
Except the second Peter had turned around, exposing his countenance to the rest of the room, Pepper and Rhodey had taken one look at his face and choked.
“P-Peter? Peter Parker?” The kid’s full name—Peter Parker, apparently—tore itself from Pepper’s jaws with a strangled gasp. Pepper’s hands flew to her mouth as she took Peter’s face in, eyes running over him in dazed disbelief. “W-What are you...–– what is going on? God, Peter, how are you here? How is this even possible?”
“Pep,” Tony cut in before he could stop himself, “how do you know this kid?” He hated to admit it, but ever since he’d woken up in this unfamiliar theatre, he’d felt blindsided at every turn, clueless firstly as to how Happy knew these kids, why they seemed so important to his bodyguard, and why a kid like Peter would have so many enemies –– and now, how Pepper seemed to know Peter, too. Simply put: since the second he came to, he’d felt lost.
Pepper turned to him in an instant as if yanked around by the invisible leash that was his voice, finally noticing that he was there with them, too. Her eyes drank him in for only a moment before she reared backwards in surprise. It was Peter’s reaction that took Tony off-guard the most, though—the second the boy caught a glimpse of him, his hand lifted as if to reach out to Tony, before he shook his head desperately and seemed to remember himself, staggering backwards as if physically struck.
The boy blinked back tears. He cast a fleeting glance at Happy before turning back to Tony, a dazed mumble of the name Mr. Stark and an awed litany of oh my god oh my god oh my god falling from his lips.
Tony swallowed. Something about the look on the boy’s face—something about the kid, period—stirred a feeling inside him that he could not quite place. Who is he?
“Tony, I...” Pep’s voice snapped him back to reality. She trailed off, her brows furrowing in confusion, before she looked back at Peter. “What do you mean? He’s Peter, I—” she froze, her eyes latching onto something—someone—behind him. She swallowed, and when she spoke again, her voice was tight with barely controlled anger, “What are you doing with him?”
Tony winced. “He won’t hurt you, don’t worry,” he was quick to assure her, assuming she’d finally taken notice of the leather-clad God of Mischief behind him. “Loki’s promised to restrain himself for now. We—the nine of us, that is—were all taken together.”
Pepper blinked, her nose wrinkling. “I’m not talking about Loki—although that’s definitely another cause for concern. But what I was asking about before was Steve.” There was a certain quality, a certain bitter edge, to her voice when she said Captain America’s name that stunned Tony. He’d only ever heard her this angry once before: when she’d discovered Stane’s true colors. “What are you two doing on the sameside?” she demanded.
“Pep, what...?” He frowned, unsure why she seemed so angry at Rogers. He hadn’t been aware that she held any resentment for the icon of patriotism in America. “What’s the problem? We just fought Loki together. He’s one of the Avengers. He’s Captain America and all that. And sure, I personally have a lot of mixed feelings about Mr. Good and Righteous here, but what can you do?” He smiled unconvincingly and shrugged as if it didn’t really matter, as if he hadn’t grown up under a father—a monster—who had compared him to Captain America at every turn.
But Pepper only snorted, audibly skeptical. “Good and righteous, sure,” she said doubtfully. “Are you sure everything’s okay–– wait.” She stopped abruptly, her eyes going wide as she came to a sudden realization. “You said you just fought Loki together—”
“Well, yeah—”
“How is that possible?” Pepper muttered, almost as if to herself. “I didn’t realize Loki was even back—”
“Wait, what do you mean ‘back’?” Tony followed up, eyes squinting at her. There was something off about this entire situation, and Tony hated it. He was usually the most informed person in the room—nobody dared to keep secrets from the Tony Stark, after all. He always made it his business to be holding all the cards, at all times. But now, in this movie theatre with his new teammates and an alien-who-recently-terrorized-New-York and his closest friends and a group of strangers, he felt, for once in his life, like he was left in the dark.
He decided he loathed feeling clueless.
Pepper’s face scrunched up in confusion. She opened her mouth as if to answer him, but then shook her head in disbelief. When she regarded him fully, her expression was filled with more concern than Tony was comfortable with.
Seconds ticked by, and it became increasingly clear that Pepper had lost her voice, words stolen from her by the shock of the situation. Rhodey was quick to step up in her place, resting a protective hand on her shoulder as he pressed urgently, “What’s going on with you today, Tones?”
Tony threw his hands up in the air in frustration. “Nothing’s ‘going on with me today’,” he snapped, adopting a mocking tone as he echoed Rhodey’s words back to him. “The real question is, what’s going on with you two? This entire situation is unbelievable!”
Rhodey opened his mouth as if to retort, but before he could, a young voice interrupted: “Mr. Stark, Loki hasn’t been seen in ages. Last I heard, Thor said that he...” Peter Parker paused, shook his head and seemed to reconsider his words. “Never mind. Anyway, like I said, it’s been years since anyone’s run into Loki. Also, you’re the one who introduced me to Ms. Potts in the first place.” You’re the one who mentored me, who took me under your wing and gave me someone to look up to. “So I guess what I’m trying to ask is–– according to your memory, what date is it today?”
Tony recoiled physically, taken aback both by the question in and of itself and by Peter’s voice. Tony hadn’t really paid attention to it before, but now that Peter was speaking to him, it was impossible not to realize that Peter sounded nothing like a kid. Sure, his voice was still relatively squeaky and high-pitched, more so than a fully matured voice would sound, but… it was too somber for a kid. Peter didn’t have the youthful innocence and cheer that all kids should have.
Peter sounded muted and broken, as if he was all at once a terrified little boy and a wise old man. It was the voice of someone who’d seen too much, experienced too much.
It was a voice born in tragedy.
In the end, it was that shaken tone of voice—and the sheer desperation in his question, as if Tony had the power to make or break him with a single sentence—that persuaded Tony to indulge the kid and answer him honestly:
“May 4th, 2012.”
Four things happened at once:
One, a strangled whimper tumbled out of Peter’s mouth. Peter looked like Tony had stabbed him in the gut and left him bleeding out for all the world to see. Beside Peter, Happy quickly stepped forward and reached up to squeeze his shoulder tightly in a comforting gesture that Tony had never expected would come from his all-work-no-play, no-nonsense bodyguard.
Two, the other teenaged boy whipped around to gape at Tony as though he’d grown two heads, his book bag slipping off his shoulder and falling onto the floor with a crash that seemed deafening in the ensuing silence. Peter’s female friend, the curly-haired girl, stared in shock, a whispered oh shit escaping her.
Three, Pepper’s knees buckled as if she could no longer hold her own weight, and her hands flew to her mouth. She gagged on air, doubling over to dry-heave. The only thing that left her was air and horror, but Rhodey was at her side in an instant, rubbing her back soothingly and murmuring incoherent words of reassurance into her ear.
Four, the remaining group in the corner immediately fell into chaos, with the metal-armed man, the dark-skinned man in a coat and the American in flannel all dissolving into a litany of curses. The African man lasted all of two seconds before he gave in and joined them in their foray into excessive swearing, while the African girl next to him burst into hysteric (read: nervous) laughter. The other young woman frowned beside her, her eyes glowing red (Red? With everything else that was going on, Tony wisely decided he wasn’t going to ask) for a moment before returning to their normal color.
“Well,” the red-skinned man was the first to interrupt the chaos a few moments later, immediately silencing the people near him, “that certainly clarifies a lot of things, such as why Loki seems to have returned to Earth.” He spared the God of Mischief himself a pointed look, a frown painted across his face.
Tony blinked when he traced the red-skinned humanoid back to his original group. He hid his surprise and simply assumed that the humanoid had quietly returned from exploring the theatre during the chaos that had erupted from Happy’s side of the room.
“Vision?” Rhodey gawked. (How the hell did Rhodey know this guy with red skin? What kind of a name was Vision, anyway?) “Man, oh man, is it good to see you, buddy.”
“What about you guys?” Pepper spoke up hesitantly, addressing “Vision’s” group. “What date... or year, I suppose, are you from?”
“Now, Pep,” Tony laughed nervously, unwilling to consider the implications of that question, “surely you can’t be suggesting time travel—”
“Actually, I am,” Pepper glared harshly at him, “because where I come from, Peter is supposed to be dead!”
Tony froze, wide eyes darting to the teenaged boy. God, Peter looked so young. What age had he been when he’d died in Pepper’s—dare he think it—timeline?
“Oh,” Peter whispered, breaking the all-consuming silence. His voice was small and quiet, but for some reason, he didn’t sound scared like he’d just found out he was about to die. He only sounded resigned. “You’re from...”
“Uh,” Fury finally stepped in, “perhaps it would be best if she didn’t share that with you... Peter, was it?” Fury looked concerned, but even Tony could tell that it had nothing to do with the fact that a kid was going to die. “Time is nothing to mess around with.”
His stare was completely devoid of sympathy, of empathy. He might as well have said it frankly: You need to die to preserve the balance of time.
“Hey,” Tony snapped, a spike of irritation flaring in his chest. “Have some common fucking decency, director. The kid was just told that he’s dead in Pep’s time.”
“Tony’s right,” Pepper agreed softly. “Peter, I – I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. You shouldn’t have to be burdened by the thought that—”
“You’re from the time of the Blip, aren’t you? That’s why you were so surprised to see me?” Peter cut in, his eyes fixed on Pepper. There was a grim sort of solemnity in the line of his mouth. “What year?”
“Peter—” Happy started from beside him.
Peter just shot Happy a pointed look. “I need to know how long I’ve been gone to her,” he said quietly, but still loud enough for them all to hear.
Tony saw Pepper and Rhodey exchange a stupefied glance and hid his own confusion. What did Peter mean by how long he’s been gone? Why did he need to know that, of all things? Tony would have expected him to ask how long he had left until he died—that’s what Tony would have wanted to know if he were in Peter’s shoes, at least—but...
“Was the Blip recent for you two?” Peter persisted. “Are you two from right after the Blip? Late 2018? 2019, maybe? Or has it been a little longer?”
Pepper’s jaw unhinged. “Wha–– Peter, I...” she faltered, glancing wide-eyed at Rhodey again, panic fringing her expression. “We’re from 2018,” she finally admitted, hesitation coloring her voice.
“But Peter, how do you know that?” Rhodey whispered, expression pinched. Something about the sheer devastation in his voice made Tony reconsider him, this time scrutinizing his best friend more thoroughly.
Rhodey looked wrecked. Physically, he had metal braces wrapped around his legs, clearly a functional tool to help him walk that made Tony shudder to think why he needed them. But beyond the physical, Rhodey just seemed more tired. His face was lined with worry and grief, and he looked exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with old age. His eyes were dark and hardened with a tragedy that would not leave him.
Now that Tony had noticed it in Rhodey, he could see the same grief and misery tainting Pepper, too. It stained her in a way Tony had never wanted to happen. He’d once promised himself that he’d make sure his girlfriend wouldn’t have to ever face the cruelties of war, but he could tell now that somewhere along the line, he would fail her.
Tony swallowed. Pepper had said they were from 2018. That was only six years away. Six. Six short years, and yet Pepper and Rhodey looked like they’d been through unspeakable horrors.
What had happened in the six years between his time and theirs?
Before he could dwell on it for much longer, though, Peter sighed heavily – a sigh weighed down by unfathomable loss – and answered: “Because, Rhodey, I’m from 2024.”