Drafts coming to life
Tony suck up the air through his teeth with a quiet groan escaping his dry lips. Right now his chest hurt by any bearable limit. The worst thing was that there was still a lot of damn metal material between him and clearly unresponsive reactor inside his body.
“Is it supposed to do this?”
Tony opened his eyes to glance at Loki standing over him too close for his own liking and at the same time pointing at the middle of the deformed chest plate. He didn´t have to guess twice to know what the god was seeing there. Still the lack of the venom in the tone of the question surprised him.
“The light is weak, because your trick did something to the reactor.”
“I don´t remember telling you to grab onto me. You could have been killed in the process.” It almost sounded like Tony should be glad that he walked of this only with damaged device holding his heart together.
“It still can be,” he admitted dryly recognizing Loki´s look as an understanding of the reactor´s importance for his life even despite that he probably didn´t know why.
“In any other circumstances I would love to hear that, Stark. But right now I would prefer you to stay alive for some time.”
He seemed to be fascinated by the dim blue light so much that in any other non-life threating situation Tony would be worried that he was using some of his little stunts to scan what was inside of him. Loki was interested to the point, that he didn´t notice, when the door opened behind his back. Or he simply knew and choose to ignore it.
It was difficult to focus at the two incoming people at first. The one of them had a deep frown across his face and hand on a gun. The second one was approaching a little bit faster with work suitcase hanging of his shoulder in a way it had probably few good extra kilograms.
Tony lifted his head a little to look up at this man´s face because obviously he was an engineer or technician here and so also a man Tony needed.
There was a one single moment, when their eyes met and one brain impulse for both of them to recognize that those eyes are the same, just as their hair or strong jaw with sharp cheekbones.
“Dad?” he breathed the word out like a mix of curse and doubt, but too quietly for the reaction it caused. The man nearly jumped away like he was hit by a truck.
“Tony?” his own voice sounded even more terrified and he also looked more pale than was healthy for a shock. “How is this possible?”
Tony had literally no idea. But what he knew for certain was that he was going to pass out in next ten minutes and that was the information he had to work with.
“You are seven years old,” Howard was still captured in his own thoughts and despite the urge Tony felt to wake him up, Tony couldn´t resist but smile weakly, when he remembered Pepper sometimes thinking the same.
It was exactly this moment – when he said something about her aloud for all three of them to hear – that he knew he is slowly drifting away. Surprisingly Loki was the one who cut their little family speech and pointed at what was important.
“I´m not going to pretend I understand what is happening here or how is it even…” Tony groaned and Howard stopped in the middle of the sentence looking down at him with worried eyes – something what maybe Tony just imagined. “I got everything you need. Tell me what to do.”
The other guy by Howard side stepped in before Tony could respond in any way.
“Just for the record, we are still going to run some tests to confirm your story. Until then my men have both of you in their sight. Don´t do anything stupid because I´m not going to hesitate, are we clear?”
Loki´s smirk was pure contempt and rage.
“Oh, you pathetic stupid creature, how can you possibly think that your threats…”
Tony had to shut him up for their common good. “Remember what you wanted to say and come here, Hornhead. I may have use of your hand here.”
The next look god gave him explained how Loki was not the type for being ordered around. Still both men approached him from different sides waiting for instructions.
“Howard, use the screwdriver to get this and this out then twist it clockwise, Reindeer you will pull, when I tell you so, ok?”
He realized immediately what went wrong in the first place, but Howard was quick enough to hide any emotion which might appear on his face.
“I´m ready.”
“Go on, Stark.” Loki stole one last moment to watch him in the eye. “And don´t forget our deal.”
They started to work on the removal of the chest plate, which went slowly but good so far. Tony had been sure that he would never breathe again like a normal human being, but without that Eifel tower´s weight it was at least an idea to think about.
“Just be careful, it´s bent inside around my right side, I think it´s going to bleed, when the plate will be gone completely.”
He had to admit the two of them were amazing together. Without Loki being tech educated he didn´t expect him to move around with such an elegance and confidence. Everything he did – he did it to the perfection. Despite that Tony had to fight with the urge to jerk away every time god´s murderous fingers got too close.
“I need also one of my hands free.”
“Which one?”
Tony forced his eyes to move away from his newly bandaged side and blood on the floor. How much time had already passed?
“Right.”
Finally he had everything important – his hand was free, reactor exposed enough for the work and tools prepared next to him. The only problem was that he couldn´t make himself focus enough to do the job. His fingers were shaking; his hand too weak to be in the same position for a longer time and his vision became quickly hazy like he was looking at the world through the damn water.
“Jesus fucking Christ…”
Suddenly he felt Loki grabbing his hand to stop him before he would poke at something he should definitely not.
“Wait. I will help.”
It was true that he was scared to death when Loki´s hand touched his left temple sending chills all over his spine, but he was even more terrified, when he imagined some of Loki´s mind-control spells being freely and without any fight applying to his own head. God knows, if the reactor in this state would save him or not.
“Breathe, Stark. It´s going to be overwhelming.”
He wanted to ask what, but he didn´t get a chance as his mind all at once was cleared and then blown up with information and impulses from his surroundings – colors, sounds, feelings, knowledge, Howard´s hard breathing, other´s man nervousness, the way how Loki´s fingers were brushing against Tony´s hot skin… It was marvelous. It hurt.
“Concentrate on what you want to do. Fix.”
Fix. Fix. Fix. He was thinking the word all over again until it started to make sense to him. He found himself taking something from the ground, his movements steady, his sight sharp. In front of his eyes were data and numbers running, blueprints and scans, everything helping him to get to the source of the problem and fix, fix, fix…
And then suddenly the cold touch was gone just as his new ability. Tony wanted to scream and fight and kick to get back to that state, but somehow he knew the reactor was safe and sound again and Loki´s pale form without any more energy to supply his brain. He knew he should say something or maybe just open his mouth wide over the god´s magic, however Loki was already standing up and moving away from his view.
“Is it… Are you ok?”
Tony lifted his gaze to Howard kneeling beside him – hands all red from his blood.
“Good. Now it´s nothing what couldn´t a duct tape do…”
“…or two…” Howard ended the quote and only then Tony remembered who had thought him that.
The whole realization of him experiencing the time traveling hit him again now with the full force. He watched his father´s face with years growing hatred and happiness of seeing him alive fighting over his next words. But then he remembered something important.
“Is mom…” alive “here?”
Howard tried his best to collect himself and his effort was quite visible.
“I sent her away with Jarvis and…”
“Me?” He waited for a nod. “I swear to God, I´ve never had a crazier conversation in my whole life.”
“Howard.” The gunman appeared behind his father, looking from Tony to his father and back. “He needs a hospital.”
“No.”
“No.”
Both Loki and him reacted the same. “No hospital. No one else can know.” Tony was addressing this mostly to his father, because he knew he would understand.
“You know what the time traveling means. We have to try to do as little damage as possible, so we won´t change the future and us too, hell, maybe we are doing it right now…”
“He is right, Frank.”
The man – Frank, he had to get it too, because after a moment he wasn´t fighting anymore about the matter.
“We let you get well again first and then we will figure out what to do.”
Tony didn´t argue. He was dead with exhaustion.
“Can we lift you up?”
“Yes, but slowly, I don´t want to throw up the chicken I ate yesterday. His brother was cooking.”
His words had expected effect. He saw Loki glaring back at him with rage, but at least Tony was sure that whatever he was doing to him previously, it didn´t kill him. He found his father again and for few seconds he just stared at him. Then he shook his head and without any more talking he crawled back to his feet. His legs under the knee and left hand was still in armor – he didn´t plan to get rid of all of his defense against the mad god, but everything else was too much dead weight to carry around. His back plate stayed on the ground next to the rest of the suit.
He let Howard lead him and Loki to one of the rooms in the house. He didn´t want to look around much and remember anything, so it was clever to find a bed and close his eyes as soon as possible without too much thinking.
First energy then whatever necessary.
“If you would need anything just let me know. Please don´t move away from this room until I´ll come back. There are sensors around the place.”
He gave one last look to Tony like he couldn´t decide if he really wanted to exit the place or not. But Frank seemed to notice and with small gestures helped him retreat.
When Howard suddenly after half an hour of saving his son´s life appeared with only Frank in his workshop, he felt like everything he needed was just a cup of good coffee and a chair to sit down… and few shots of something stronger than coffee.
“I´m running DNA tests. We should know the results in few hours.”
Frank wasn´t directly looking at Howard at the moment maybe because they both already knew what those results would show them.
“Jesus, he looked exactly like you. Only more handsome.”
Howard smiled blankly.
“Maybe we both got crazy.”
His friend wasn´t really type for talking, but he didn´t always meet people from future either.
“Did you see…”
“The armor?”
“No, that… You know.”
Howard stayed quiet for a second, thinking. “Yes.”
“What was it?”
He didn´t know if he should know the answer, but he did. “It´s a reactor. My draft. But better. And actually working.”