Chapter 2
“Boss?” FRIDAY’s voice chirps warningly in her ear, and she forces herself not to flinch at the moniker, at the harsh, soul-wrenching feeling of how wrong, wrong, wrong it is.
It’s been months since Tony disappeared, the crackled whisper of his apology fading in her phone’s speaker as the spaceship took him father and father away beyond her reach. Months since The Snap, when half of all living things turned to dust, plunging cities into chaos and hearts into despair. Months since she donned the suit Tony had made for her – back when he was with her, back when they were happy, back when they … were – and began helping with the daunting and seemingly unending recovery effort.
Search, rescue, assist.
Rescue. If only….
She helps secure the wall of a building, while workers pull another body from the wreckage. A young man, practically a kid, whole life ahead of him. She flies away when they’re done, moves on to the next task. She can’t cry. Not anymore. She’s run out of tears.
She wants to go home.
“Boss,” FRIDAY repeats, pulling her out of the misery of her thoughts. “There’s an… intruder at the Compound workshop.”
The odd hesitation in the AI’s voice puts her on edge as much as the warning itself. The Compound is empty, has been for years now save for the maintenance crew that Tony’s kept on staff there to keep the place in shape. “Just in case,” he had told her once when she asked why he bothered. And there was so much pain in his eyes when he said it, that she never brought it up again.
And then Rogers called her out of the blue a few days ago to ask if they could return (apparently, the clean-up effort in whatever hellhole they had been hiding until now has finally been brought under control and they were ready to come offer their services in New York). And she thought about that haunted look in Tony’s eyes that had never quite gone away after Siberia, about the fading crescent-shaped scar on his chest that had disappeared eventually under the imposing new reactor, about the defeated droop of his shoulders and the pronounced tremble of his hands when he sat outside fiddling with the flip phone as he waited for her to join him on their afternoon jog….
She told him to drop dead and hung up the phone.
Two days later, tired, cried out and slightly drunk, she called him back and told him the Compound was there for them to return to. It was what Tony had wanted, even hoped for, all along, after all. The least she could do was honor his wish.
Still, the workshop, Tony’s workshop, has always remained off limits and would remain so even after their return. Especially after their return. She made it clear to them. So whoever it is that had broken the rule, they were gonna pay dearly for their trespass.
She takes off toward the Compound at full speed. Makes her way down to the workshop, the repulsor aimed and ready.
And freezes at the sight of a raccoon-like creature huddled in front of the holoscreen, a partially disassembled mess of wires and circuitry spread out over Tony’s table before him. What the hell…?
“Get out of here, whoever the hell you are,” she demands sharply, the whine of the repulsor punctuating her words. Because, raccoon or not, no one has any business being here. No one but Tony.
The creature turns toward her, furry face scrunched up in an odd mix of curiosity and frustration. “No can do, lady,” it responds with a shrug, and, holy mother of god, that thing actually talks. “I got a ship to find and I hear this place might just have what I need to find it.”
She frowns inside the helmet, her gauntleted fingers twitching in indecision. She had heard reports of alien sightings across the globe, of savage beasts descending from the sky like locust on unsuspecting towns. The reports were disturbing, the pictures – the stuff of nightmares. The raccoon-like creature sitting at Tony’s desk, on Tony’s chair, fiddling with Tony’s computer looked nothing like them, didn’t look threatening at all, in fact. But he is sitting at Tony’s desk….
“Get out.”
The raccoon sighs, dropping a tool he was fiddling with onto the desk. Clenches his little paw into a fist.
“Look, lady,” he begins, his voice strained and shaky in a way that only the voice of someone who feels raw, bottomless grief can be, “I had to watch someone I love like a son turn to dust right in front of me and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. I spent the last few months helping the morons that lost the battle with the purple asshole clean up the mess he left behind. And now those same morons want me helping them here. I don’t like helping humans. I don’t even like humans!” His voice rises, anger momentarily pushing out the grief.
Then it drops once more, tired, frustrated. “The only reason I agreed to come was because the rest of my crew is still up there in space and I heard that this Stark fellow was obsessed with monsters from space and been tracking the skies for years. Guess he was one of the smarter ones on this backwards planet.”
The raccoon huffs in disdain, unaware of the way she flinches at his words. Because Tony knew, he knew. He tried to tell them, all of them, and they wouldn’t listen!
“Look,” the creature starts again, his dark beady eyes startlingly intense, sincere, “I’m sorry I broke in, but I figured Stark might just have the technology I need to find my ship. And I really, really need to find them. I got my pod here. As soon as I find them, I’ll be out of this room and off this planet, I swear. So, please, just… just let me try.” The last part is a barely audible whisper, a cracked plea.
She lowers her gauntleted arm, lets her helmet fold away – a small show of trust. “How?”
“I hacked into his tracking program,” the raccoon explains, already turning back toward the monitor, his clawed fingers clacking frantically on the smooth surface of the keyboard. “All I need to do is modify the program to track for a specific signal and … voilà!”
The holoscreen comes alive with images of stars and strings and strings of data, rushing past faster than she can register them. They mean nothing to her, but the raccoon stares at them intently, paws gripping the edges of the desk, his little body virtually vibrating with tension. She wonders dimly if any of those stars are where Tony is now, where he was when The Snap happened, where he…
“I’m picking up an SOS message at the targeted frequency,” FRIDAY pipes up suddenly, startling them both.
The raccoon swivels back toward her, dark eyes pleading. “It might be them. My team.”
She nods, acquiescing. “Play it, FRIDAY.”
The speakers crackle obediently, the room filling with static. And then a voice breaks through, faint and distorted and so, so familiar that she has to suck in a panicked, convulsive breath because she suddenly finds herself without air.
Tony
“…’ship The Benatar… we’re… ‘randed about… years from Earth….”
Tony
“…’nd water … oxygen… ‘ning out…”
Tony…
“…we need… ‘stance… ‘ship The Benatar… we’re…”
Her knees wobble and she is suddenly absurdly glad that she’s got the suit on, because without it she’d have already been on the floor. As it is, she takes a heavy, mechanical step forward, closer to the monitor where a single blue dot is now flashing in the middle of the screen – the ship, Tony. Grips the edge of the desk, feeling the metal bend under the impossible pressure.
“You… you said you have a pod,” she manages, turning sharply to the raccoon who finishes writing down the coordinates and scrambles to hop off the chair.
The creature blinks up at her, eyes wide with grim understanding. “That your man?”
She nods, grips the desk harder. “The pod?” she demands again.
The raccoon considers her a beat longer, shrugs, imitating her earlier show of reluctant permission. “Fine, Suit Lady. Let’s go save us some castaways.”
“Pepper,” she corrects him as they rush toward the exit.
“Rocket,” he grumbles back.