Tony blinks himself awake and Steve is standing over him looking concerned. “Tony?” he asks softly, a little unsure.
It takes a moment for the memories to come back to him, hazy in the mist of what he’s sure is a head injury to add to the rest of his problems. “Fuck off,” he snaps, curling onto his side so he can push himself up in a way that mostly doesn’t aggravate his ribs. It doesn’t work whatsoever and he lets out an annoyed, pained noise in response.
“Tony, you’re clearly hurt and-” Steve starts and Tony whips his head around to glare at him.
“And who’s fault is that?” he snaps. Steve looks utterly bewildered and that’s when Tony notices the differences. His hair is a little longer, a shade or two darker, and the uniform he’s wearing is a hell of a lot brighter. Like Coulson’s early designs of Steve’s suit, not his more modernized designs. Its looks fucking awful.
“I... don’t know,” Steve says in response to his question he should know the answer to considering it was him that crushed Tony’s chest. The reactor was fucked, no hope in saving that, and a good portion of his suit was out even if he managed to fix it into something new. Though he’s starting to wonder what his invention did because Steve isn’t the only thing that’s different. “Where’e the bunker?” he asks. “Did you like... come get me? Because, and I want this to be perfectly clear, I fucking hate you.”
Steve reals back like he’s been slapped, “I... Tony, what happened?” he asks, sounding at a loss. He looks devastated too, like it was Tony who hurt him and that pisses him off even if he’s somewhere new. He thinks. Maybe. Or those injuries have finally made him crack, who the hell knows?
They stare at each other for a long moment before a chime goes off that Tony recognizes as Steve’s ring tone. He watches Steve consider not answering it but he does eventually, frowning when he sees the caller ID.
*
Tony doesn’t know what the fuck a scrull is but he does know he’s not one. Okay he’s gathered that a scrull is some kind of alien but that’s it, and he’s still not one of those. Steve and, he swears to god, another version of himself stand in front of him. It hadn’t been all that difficult to capture an injured man and Tony is pissed off about it.
“Scrulls change back when injured,” Other Him point out.
“Not a scrull,” Tony supplies for the millionth time.
“Maybe he’s not injured enough,” Steve says.
“Pretty sure you cracked multiple ribs, asshole,” Tony says.
Other Tony frowns and its so weird how much they look alike. Sure, they’re the same person technically but Steve is the same person too and he isn’t identical to the Steve of Tony’s world. His version of himself is a much closer match, but this one is taller. Fuck him, Tony wanted the extra inches. He’s almost as tall as Steve.
“Steve cracked your ribs?” Other Tony asks and Tony rolls his eyes.
“Am I speaking Japanese or something? Yeah, that’s what I said,” he snaps.
Other Him grins in a way that is way too familiar and also creepy. “I speak Japanese so if you were I’d still know what you were saying,” he says.
Tony tells himself to fuck off in Dutch and it looks like this version of himself didn’t try to impress that Dutch girl by learning her language because he looks confused. Maybe she was Japanese in this universe or something.
“How and why would I ever do something like that?” Steve asks, obviously having a hard time believing that.
Well, that makes one of them. “Your parents die in a car crash?” he asks the other version of himself. He frowns but nods. “It wasn’t an accident, the Winter Soldier killed them assuming the events played out the same here. Steve here found out about it, lied to my face for two years, and then our Villain Of The Week found the footage of Bucky Barnes- that’s who the Winter Soldier is by the way and why Steve kept his cakehole shut despite riding my ass about secrets- and showed me. I didn’t react well,” he says.
“And I hurt you for that?” Steve asks and Tony frowns.
“Is Bucky not dead here?” he asks.
“Yes Bucky is dead- maybe not I suppose- here. I don’t understand why- its not that I didn’t care about the kid, I felt horrible when he died, he was my responsibility but I don’t know why my own lies would drive me to hurt you. You were the victim,” he says, confused by his counter part’s actions. Other Him looks pretty confused too. “And why would I ever lie about something like that? That’s horrible, it doesn’t sound like me at all.”
Other Him must agree because Tony watches something occur to himself. Likely, if he knows himself well, that Tony may very well be lying about who he is and where he comes from since the way he’s described Steve is so out of character. “When’s Steve’s birthday?” he asks and Tony frowns.
“That’s a stupid verification question, its the fourth of July. Literally everyone and their dog knows that Steve shares his birthday with America, it makes him more patriotic that way,” he says, rolling his eyes.
Steve, ever the strategist, catches on to what Other Tony is attempting to do. “Who were my parents? I know the comics didn’t get it right,” he says.
Didn’t in Tony’s universe either, not that he ever needed to read them. Or had an interest. “Text books don’t get it right either. Your parents were Joseph and Sarah Rogers, they were Irish immigrants that settled in Brooklyn. Unsurprisingly you gravitated to the queer section of the neighborhood considering you’re bisexual with a slight preference for me. I’m ninety percent sure you and Bucky were fucking,” he says, throwing as many details as he can remember off the top of his head in.
Something he says has both himself and Steve recoiling in disgust. “Other you is fucking disgusting, no offense,” Other Tony says to Steve, who looks quite like he agrees.
“What the hell kind of universe did you come from?” he asks.
Other Him frowns, “wait, he got all that right?” he asks.
“Minus Bucky, yes. Was I HYDRA?” he asks basically out of the blue and Tony frowns.
“Hell no, you hated those assholes so much you decided any and all regulation was obviously HYDRA and decided you didn’t need any. Regulation,” he clarifies.
Steve and Other Tony share a look. “That’s not what he decided here. That was my stance... sort of...” Other Tony says.
Tony rolls his eyes, “idiot,” he mumbles back. Sure he plays fast and loose with rules, always has, but they have their place. So does breaking them. But having them isn’t always a bad thing.
“I seriously had... Bucky and I... that... happened?” Steve asks, looking especially disgusted and Tony has zero idea why.
“Pretty sure, yeah. Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.
Steve and Other Tony exchange another look. “To be clear,” Other Him says, “Steve slept with a thirteen year old boy?”
“Fourteen,” Steve corrects and Other Him wrinkles his nose.
“Are we going to fight semantics?” he asks and Steve sighs.
“Good point, but- what... I don’t... what kind of person am I in your universe?” he asks, at a loss but Tony is too.
“What the hell do you mean fourteen? Bucky isn’t a kid,” he says.
Steve and Other Him share another look and that is really getting on Tony’s nerves. “He is in this universe,” Steve says. “He’s not in yours?”
Tony shakes his head, “he’s your age, a little younger I think, but born in the same year. Guess you were just with Peggy in the war, then,” he says and Steve frowns again.
“Peggy is a lesbian, we were only together to hide that fact. Must have been difficult for her when I went into the ice,” he murmurs, looking, for the first time since Tony has met him, nostalgic. Its a look his Steve basically wears like a uniform but on this Steve the feeling passes fast when Other Him places his hand on Steve’s arm. He looks up and Tony knows that look, knows the look on Steve’s face too and holy shit.
“Are you two... together?” he asks, floored by the idea that this could ever happen in any universe.
Other Him nods slowly after a few moments. “I suppose it’s safe to say you and your Steve aren’t together, then?” he asks.
Tony lets out a loud snort, “I’d rather marry into HYDRA.”
*
He and Tony, his Tony, have joked about it plenty of times, that they’d be married in every universe but that isn’t at all true. Its not information Steve wanted all things considered, the person he is in the other Tony’s universe is someone he finds revolting. So its strange, he supposes, to see the other Tony defend him.
“Look, you went through some shit ok?” he says despite having claimed to hate Steve, his Steve, when they first met. His Tony stands off to the side, entirely unconvinced of the other Tony’s defense.
“We’ve established that most of the big things are the same- I still lost Bucky and went into the ice. That’s no reason to end up how I did. How could I let me get like that?” he asks, shocked at his own behavior. But its not really his behavior, he supposes.
“The big things happened, but in totally different ways,” other Tony says. “He became Iron Man at seventeen? That’s nuts. Didn’t happen for me until I was thirty five. And scrulls? Not a thing where I am, we had an invasion of other aliens in New York. Fucked me up pretty bad, I have PTSD bad enough that no one listens when I tell them that aliens are coming back. And they are, its not the PTSD talking,” he says, quick to defend himself in a way his Tony doesn’t do.
This Tony is on the defensive all the time, eyes darting around suspiciously like he’s prepared for an attack at any moment. Steve hasn’t seen people do that since war. Even Natasha, who is more paranoid than most, doesn’t act this squirrely. “Aliens are reoccurring here too,” Steve tells him gently and Tony relaxes some. Steve suspects he’s relieved that someone has believed him and if this were his Tony he’d hug him. But he suspects this one would not react well to the touch. “And I still don’t think that anything that happened to the other me is a justification for my actions,” he says honestly, softly.
The other Tony doesn’t respond right away. “Look, I don’t know how the Avengers became a thing here, but in my world you don’t adjust well. Or at all. You keep your distance, long for the past you lost, miss the people you’ll never see again. Then fucking Bucky came back and you got obsessed with that, probably because you wanted some kind of connection to what you lost, I don’t know. Point is that was a thing, and finding out it was a thing involved finding out a bunch of high level officials worldwide were HYDRA- it was a mess. SHIELD fell, the Accords happened, you and Bucky almost killed me after I almost killed him. You dropped your shield, I mean the whole fucking mantle, when I told you you didn’t deserve it. I might hate Howard’s guts but he did make it and you were friends with the guy. Seemed pretty shitty to me that you’d disrespect his memory like that, keeping his murder from his kid because you were sad about your fuck buddy from war being back,” he says, taking a bitter turn towards the end that indicates another layer of feeling to his words.
So he doesn’t forgive the other Steve, he supposes, even as he defends him. But Steve still doesn’t understand how things could have gotten to that point, even with a change in Bucky’s age and maybe their relationship. There’s nothing in this world that would be able to make him understand that- in this universe Bucky was far more his son than his lover, obviously considering his age. He can at least thank god that Bucky hadn’t been a child in Tony’s universe too. That would have made his actions more disgusting than despicable.
“‘Spending all your time missing what you had means you miss out on what you can build in the future’,” he says. “You told me that. Its how I... got past things, I guess. Missing what I had is no excuse to ignore what I have here.” Had Tony not told his version of Steve that?
He guesses no because Tony looks confused. “I never told you that, not to my Steve anyways. I told you everything special about you came from a bottle and you told me I was selfish and unworthy of being called a hero. We hated each other from day one. I mean I thought we got past that but then it turned out that you lied to me for years about my parents’ deaths so I guess not,” he mumbles.
“You hated dad?” Tony, his Tony, asks and other Tony frowns.
“Yeah, guy was a fucking piece of shit. Mom did her best, but...” he shakes his head, looking away. Maybe he hates Howard, but Steve can tell the loss still hurts bone deep. He knows that kind of loss, apparently his counterpart knows it better, and he still chose to hide information about that loss from his Tony? Steve can’t wrap his head around it.
“What did he do to you?” his Tony asks, confused. “Did you have Jarvis?”
Other Tony smiles fondly, looking nostalgic for the first time since Steve has met him but it passes fast. “Yeah, we had Jarvis. He did his best too, but Howard still got mean when he got drunk.”
His Tony frowns, “dad quit drinking before I was born. Said it made him do things he wasn’t proud of,” he says softly. “What about Obadiah?” he asks and Steve winces for him, knowing the man was a sore spot for his Tony.
Other Tony looks irritated more than anything though. “Turns out he was selling weapons to terrorists. Tried to get a few to kill me too, its how I made the arc reactor. There was shrapnel in my chest from one of my own weapons. Poetic justice, that,” he murmurs softly. He looks ashamed of this but Steve is sure he’s missing something given that what he described was another story in which he suffered a great loss.
His Tony must pick out a different detail though because he frowns. “What do you mean you had shrapnel in your chest so you built the reactor? How are those even related?” he asks.
Other Tony looks confused. “I... used it as a power source to keep the shrapnel from tearing at my heart. It was implanted in my chest,” he says, confusion leaking into his tone.
His Tony looks horrified. “Jesus, I was fucking around in an MIT lab when I figured out the math and then came the suit mostly because Rhodey and I made a bet and- how the hell did you get that thing in your chest?” he asks.
“Surgery. Not sure how it went totally, but Yinsen- the guy that operated on me- did a pretty good job all things considered. I probably wasn’t cooperative,” he says.
Steve’s eyebrows draw together, “not cooperative? You were unconscious,” he says, hoping to prove his own theory wrong.
He doesn’t. “I passed out several times but I wasn’t unconscious,” he says and Steve can feel the bile rising in the back of his throat. Tony, his Tony, has a similar reaction.
*
They don’t know what to do and Other Tony had been barely conscious and functioning when he made the invention that got him here. Tony doesn’t know what to do about that, has no idea how to react to his own damn sob story either. The universe his counterpart is from sounds awful- Steve is a shell of himself, and Tony thinks the Other Tony is also a shell of him. God, if that’s what a universe where he and Steve don’t get along looks like he wants nothing to do with it...
“Hey,” Steve murmurs, sneaking up behind Tony and wrapping his arms around his waist. He leans back into it, grateful for the steadying touch it looks like his counterpart really needs.
“We should call Rhodey. He always knows what to do,” he says for lack of anything better.
Steve sighs softly, knowing that if he wants to call Rhodey things have really gone wrong. Most of the time he deals with things on his own or with Steve.
*
Tony finds it to be a relief that at least Rhodey is the same, mostly, as his Rhodey. Thor has lighter hair though and its weird. “I’m sure I can figure out how you landed here and send you home,” Thor tells him. Rhodey nods too but Tony lacks faith. Thor, who seems to be a shred more emotionally competent than Tony’s Thor, recognizes this.
“What am I like in your universe?” he asks and Tony sighs.
“Alright I guess, you love Loki way too much, you still do that old speech pattern thing, you’re a little less playful, I don’t know, its been years. Last time we talked you nearly choked me out,” he says, remembering Thor lifting him off the ground by his neck. Granted he gets why Thor was pissed off, but its not like Bruce got strangled. Technically they both ran the tests and neither of them should have gotten strangled. Bruce probably should have gotten therapy though.
Thor looks alarmed at this but Rhodey speaks before he does. “What the hell? Where was I?” he asks.
“Standing three feet away?” he says, voice going up a little at the end because that’s not relevant to this Rhodey.
“What!” Other Rhodey yells. “Where am I right now? I need to go kick my own ass,” he says, ready to fight in a way that makes Tony laugh.
“Relax, I think the mind stone was messing with us all. None of us were acting the way we normally do,” he says. It had been like everyone’s worst traits were amplified. Bruce’s intristic desire to learn more and maybe press science in ways its not ready to be pressed in yet, Tony’s fear, desire to help people, and scientific curiosity gone wrong, Natasha’s being overly suspicious, Steve’s cool aloofness and general being a sanctimonious prick, Thor’s first instincts to jump to a physical confrontation, Clint. None of them had been acting quite right and Tony thinks it was residual effects from the stone. He supposes for Rhodey it had been his tendency to sometimes be complacent in situations he shouldn’t be that had been amplified.
No one in the room buys this though. “That’s no reason to harm a teammate,” Thor says, frowning.
“I’m still ready to kick my own ass,” Rhodey says. “That would never happen here.”
Tony gets the feelings that a lot of things wouldn’t happen here. “In other you’s defense I did accidentally create a murder bot that wanted to end the world,” he says to Thor. That’s pretty relevant but Thor still looks confused.
“Than I should have strangled the bot,” he says like the solution was that easy.
*
Steve watches the two Tonys work and its funny to see them try and one up what are essentially their own ideas. Both of them constructed their suits differently and now they’re both pointing out all the problems in the other’s designs and trying to solve them. Its cute to watch, Tony versus himself.
“You have to send him back,” Natasha tells him softly.
He looks down at her and wonders how she changed in the other Tony’s universe. “Has he told you about that universe. We’re all awful, especially to him,” he says.
Natasha purses her lips and Steve knows exactly what’s coming next because its Natasha. “He probably isn’t perfect himself,” she says but Steve has never gotten the impression that he was. He’s casually mentioned a bunch of things he thinks he’s done wrong. He owned up to his rude comment to the other Steve when they first met, defended the other Thor strangling him due to his accidental murder bot, shown a great shame for his involvement in weapons dealing, and defended the other Steve’s behavior several times despite claiming to hate him in the same breath. His involvement in mistakes is not something Tony seems to lack clarity in.
“Has he told you about who you are in his universe?” he asks and she looks a little guilty. Then she’s done something too, he guesses.
“I don’t have the full context for my actions, just what he’s told me,” she says rationally. Steve isn’t entirely sure they need the full context for some of these things. There is no reason to hide how a person’s parents died from them- got murdered actually and Tony had mentioned a search for Bucky. If the Avengers there runs like they do here Tony funded that search. Other him forced Tony, unknowingly, to fund the search for his own parent’s murderer for only his own benefit. No amount of context makes that okay. The same goes for Thor strangling Tony and Rhodey doing nothing about it. Tony blames the stone but he isn’t sure that’s the problem.
There are plenty of other things, like the Accords, that he’s sure would make sense in proper context. Politics is always nuanced. But strangling people and lying to them is wrong no matter which way you slice it and Tony is so used to this treatment he defends it. That doesn’t make Steve feel particularly warm and fuzzy about sending him back.
“Natasha, you’re not a stupid woman. I’m sure he’s told you at least one thing that has made you raise an eyebrow at your other self’s actions,” he says.
She sighs and looks away. “I... he told me about this incident I had with T’Challa. I don’t agree with what I did there, and right after his father’s death...” she shakes her head. “And I called him a narcissist. Its not really a moral incorrectness, but anyone with a half a bran cell can tell he’s not a narcissist. He has his moments, probably more so in the right universe, but that’s a wildly inaccurate statement. I don’t know how I would ever be able to come to that conclusion,” she says.
They go back to watching Tony work with himself and Steve realizes that he should have been able to tell them apart instantly. The other Tony is much shorter and he wonders how and why that happened. But then he mentioned abuse, so maybe that had something to do with it. He doesn’t want to think about it if he’s honest because it makes him physically sick to do so.
Instead he watches the Tonys try to out do each other only to get annoyed with the way the other keeps the lab. As it turns out his Tony is much more stringent on where he keeps his tools- which isn’t a trait that’s native to him either. Steve smiles, pleased to know his organization has rubbed off on Tony a little while the other Tony gets irritated at his disorganizes mess being disrupted. The end result is them both tearing apart an Iron Man suit while deciding which parts of the design need to change based on how the other fixed various problems.
“I’ve got this new idea for a suit. Its nanotech,” the other Tony says after they decide the project is mostly a lost cause due to blending the designs leading to more problems than its solving and Steve’s Tony’s eyes light up.
“Show me!”
*
He knows Steve means nothing by it, he does. But its... he’s not sure how to describe it. Hurtful, he guesses, to watch how Steve gravitates towards his other self. He knows that the other Tony needs Steve’s support more than he does, but it still stings to watch their soft interactions, note how they get along almost as well as he and Steve do. Its hard not to consider what would have happened if the other Tony had been in this universe and he’d been in the other Tony’s. God knows he doesn’t want any of that, especially the part where Steve isn’t anything like himself.
His counterpart is more perceptive than he is though because he notices Tony’s discomfort in a way he knows he wouldn’t have noticed if it was the other Tony who was uncomfortable. “I’m not you,” he says and Tony frowns.
“I know that. I’m you, but taller,” he says, poking fun at a sore spot with the other Tony.
The other Tony flips him off casually but laughs. “Eat it, Stark. Seriously though, I’m not you, and I’ll never be anything like you. You shouldn’t be jealous. Also being jealous of yourself is ridiculous,” he adds.
Yeah, its not something he doesn’t know. “But he likes you, he’s basically pulled towards you like a gravitational force,” he says, thinking of how protective Steve has gotten over the other version of himself.
Tony shakes his head, “he’s not protective of me, he’s protective of you. I’m nothing more than the person you could have been to him, and I’m not saying that as a disparaging thing its just the truth, and he doesn’t want to see what happened to me happen to you. And he has some misplaced guilt over the other version of himself. He’s attached to me out of love for you,” he murmurs.
He wonders if maybe this Tony just doesn’t understand how much Steve will care about pretty much anyone regardless of personal connection. But then he remembers how selfish his version of Steve is and decides not to say anything. His Steve wouldn’t drop his shield for anything, not even him, because he knows he helps people and at his core he could never give up that piece of himself. He doesn’t understand the other Tony’s Steve any more than his Steve does.
*
When he finally manages to figure out how to get home he has to hold Rhodey back from kicking himself in the ass, Steve back from talking to himself in what he claims will be a stern way, and the other Tony back from pestering the shit out of Shuri and Peter. Turns out he has a thing for kids here too, but it’d been more latent a trait. The good news is that his version of Steve clearly has an interest in kids too.
The plus side to this visit is that he learns that this universe’s Pepper married Happy and never got with him so he has a plan once he gets back home to set them up. She’s happy here, and she deserves happiness at home too so he’ll try and get that for her. And really, no one will be more dedicated to her than Happy. The man is like a dog with a bone when it comes to the people he loves, Tony knows because Happy has always gone above and beyond for him.
And he’ll get his bed back. He misses his bed and the Tony here is a freak who prefers a hard bed to a soft bed. He’s excited to get home and sink into his mattress before calling Rhodey to tell him he’s not dead. Despite this universe’s Rhodey’s worries he knows Rhodey will always have his back and he’s definitely worried so he should get home to him soon.
*
Rhodey is tutting around behind him, asking a million questions while Tony sinks into the foam on his mattress. “This is the greatest moment of my life,” he mumbles and Rhodey makes an annoyed noise.
“Tony, get your ass out of that bed and explain to me how this happened and why Pepper is on a date with Happy. What kind of messed up world would put Happy and Pepper together?” he asks.
He grins as he flips over, “the other universe. Also, also. You were married to Hope van Dyne,” he says excitedly. He watches Rhodey feel about fifty different emotions before he settles on shocked.
“I slept with the enemy?” he finally squeezes out.
“Actually Hank and Howard didn’t have a rivalry there because Howard never had a drinking problem and was apparently a very loving father. Hence you and Hope being married. Sure as hell beats out her current Cruise Ling or whatever the hell his name is,” he says.
Rhodey squints, “you mean Scott Lang? Whatever, doesn’t matter. Sorry about Howard,” he says softly.
Tony shrugs, “I was the one who ended up telling them that Bucky was maybe alive and that he could have killed the other me’s parents. The situations were basically identical so its possible that Bucky still killed them.” Other him had reacted much better to the news partially, he suspects, because when he first got it he hadn’t been sure if Tony was lying. Then when he looked into it it’d been obvious he grieved better than Tony had. And he also has the Avengers around for support so there’s that. They’re currently trying to see if there are any traces of Bucky throughout history with Tony’s knowledge of what his MO was here.
“Still. So, what I like?” he asks, bright and happy. Tony doesn’t tell him he wanted to kick his own ass and instead tells him about all the accomplishments he’d made in the other universe. He’d been a CEO there of a tech company- his, Hope’s, and Tony’s companies basically had a monopoly of technology across basically every board so that was cool. And they all did a lot of charity work so that had been nice to know too.
Rhodey had been enthused to learn that in another live he had a bunch of really cool labs.