Mystic

Rhodey was laughing way too hard and it was irritating Tony and, from the looks of it, Stephen. “A prophet? Man I want what you guys are smoking, that’s some good shit,” he says, clapping his hands together.

“You’re a shitty prophet if you didn’t see like, most of your life happen,” Hope tells him.

“Well he was a shitty enough prophet to see that you two were in trouble last night so maybe you should count yourselves lucky you weren’t jammed in that Iron Man suit longer,” Stephen tells them in a clipped tone, clearly annoyed. “You should be grateful.” He stalks off, earning a raised eyebrow from Rhodey in particular.

“I still think you’re a shit prophet,” Hope tells him.

“No offense but I don’t really buy it either. I mean if you can see the future how is it possible for you to have made so many um… catastrophic mistakes? No offense,” Rhodey says again.

Tony squints at them, “thanks for the support guys, I really appreciate it,” he says sarcastically. “And apparently prophets only see what’s relevant to them. Don’t ask how me accidentally almost ending the world a couple times wasn’t relevant to me but there you have it.” He waves an arm around and shakes his head. A prophet. It wasn’t hard to see why Hope and Rhodey found that so ridiculous even if he could do without the mocking.

Hope and Rhodey exchange a look, “you actually believe that? The prophet thing I mean,” Rhodey says.

Not until Rhodey decided to mock it no, he hadn’t. Or he hadn’t allowed himself to feel convinced of it anyways. “I don’t know what I believe, but my feelings lately have had an eerily weird way of coming back to haunt me later so who the hell knows anymore?” He sure as hell didn’t and truthfully he was more concerned with the new problem of whoever kept trying to fucking kill him and everyone he cared about. Minus Stephen, he didn’t really care about Stephen.

“So uh, what would that mean? The prophet thing I mean?” Rhodey asks, serious now.

Tony looks over to the three doors he noticed almost as soon as they walked into the Sanctum here. Each door led to a different location that could be changed with a dial, Stephen told him. All three areas started in one place and ended in totally different spots. He shakes his head because now he was thinking like some kind of inspirational saying machine too and he’s had enough of that. “I don’t know but I’m pretty sure if the prophet thing is true I’m broken or something. Seriously, Hope makes a point in saying I should have seen basically my whole life coming.” Most everything he did cast a wide affect on the world’s population, it stood to reason that he should have known when things would go bad and when they wouldn’t. Hell, some stuff like his making weapons should have been obvious to anyone with a shred of morality from the start.

He jumps a little when he feels a hand on his lower back. “You’ll figure it out Tony, you always do,” Rhodey tells him softly. He could hear the faith in Rhodey’s voice but Rhodey was willing to put up with a lot from him so it doesn’t really count for much.

“I’m inclined to side with him. I have yet to see you stay down long and to be honest I’m kind of jealous of your ability to problem solve just about anything,” Hope says, folding her arms across her chest and looking at the doors leading to three locations. Tony sure as hell hoped they were right because he had serious doubts.

*

Stephen is surprised when Tony comes to him but rather unsurprised that he chose to hide in the attic. He considers saying something to Tony but he realizes that Tony likely hadn’t sought Stephen out purposefully so he leaves it be and looks out the Sanctum window. The view was much different than the one in Nepal, which they were set to go back to in the morning. There were others there Stephen was supposed to consider, after all. Wong has already headed back to deal with the students. Stephen missed New York terribly, he missed everywhere he used to frequent in America terribly, but for now Nepal was his home.

“Why didn’t you travel back here?” Tony asks after a few long moments. Stephen looks over to find Tony standing beside him at the window and he shrugs.

“New York didn’t feel right at the time, I had no idea why. Now I suspect it had something to do with you,” he says honestly.

“You know I live in New York, right? Seems stupid to travel halfway across the world to meet the soul mate that lives in the same city as you,” Tony points out.

He snorts, “the famous soul mate who is surrounded by guards, military personal, media, fans, Avengers, and sometimes aliens at all times? I never would have gotten close to you and I knew it so I never tried.”

“Most people think their soul mate is the most important person in their lives and you didn’t think to try talking to me?” Tony asks, clearly not buying that. Stephen wasn’t an idiot either- Tony’s disbelief likely wasn’t out of arrogance so much as being used to people faking being his soul mate only to be surprised that the real thing didn’t bother to try. Or maybe there was an underlying hurt there. He couldn’t blame Tony for not knowing who he was, famous doctors weren’t usually well known outside the medical community so he doubted Tony knew of him.

“I had my own life and I was satisfied with it. I loved medicine- still do- and for a while I even thought I loved Christine too, but ultimately that was never the life I was meant to live. I was always supposed to end up here, presumably with you,” he says though he had doubts on that last bit. Christine had been a much better fit at least until recent events. He, like most men he assumed, thought his romantic soul mate would be a woman. When he met Christine that made sense but they quickly figured out that wasn’t working, but they did work as friends not that Stephen didn’t press it. He was convinced he was right and she was wrong for what seem like such stupid reasons now. Christine, he was sure, would agree. But that didn’t mean he had an abundance of faith in Tony.

Tony lets out a soft laugh. “I thought I loved Pepper too but I think she was just convenient. We’ve known each other for years, she’s seen me at my worst, my best, and my even worse than my worst. It made sense to be with her but I think she could feel that I made a safe choice, not a practical one so she left.” Stephen laughs unintentionally, drawing a dirty look from Tony but he shakes his head.

“Sorry- that’s not funny, its just that the safe choice thing- that’s so not your style. I’m surprised by it, I guess,” he says.

“You shouldn’t be,” Tony tells him, “not when you consider almost everyone I’ve ever loved has beat me, lied to me, betrayed me, left me, tried to kill me, or some combination of the above. The exceptions beyond Rhodey and technically Hope? Pepper and my mother. That’s still true, might I add.”

He winces even though Tony isn’t exactly wrong. Stephen wondered what it was like to live a life where everyone loved him but no one knew him, and those that did chose to treat him like shit mostly. Not that, at least according to the media, Tony didn’t dish out his own fair share of bad treatment. Though now Stephen wondered how much of that might have been deserved.

“Wong is my only friend. Not just right now- I mean he’s my only friend ever. I don’t know if you noticed but I’m unpleasant to be around,” he says and Tony bursts out laughing. Stephen laughs a little too but Tony doubles over wheezing. He rolls his eyes after Tony continues laughing hard enough to grow abs but lets Tony have the moment, clutching at his ribs as he wheezes away. He could count Christine but she did abandon him, rightfully so though she had been nice enough to not let him die the last time they interacted. She didn’t keep in contact though, which left Wong as his only friend.

When Tony finally regains control of himself he straightens. “Any reason why?” he asks, still smiling with a hand covering his ribs.

“Fear of letting anyone close to me, I think, because I’ve seen what kind of consequences emotional wreckage can have. I’ve never been fond of failure and if I got too close to someone and it ended… well, I didn’t want to deal with the fallout.” He wasn’t sure he’s ever told anyone that before and it doesn’t feel nice. People said feeling vulnerable was some kind of treat provided you knew the other person would be there for you but all Stephen felt was the need to crawl under a rock.

“Better to be an asshole to everyone before they’re an asshole to you,” Tony says and Stephen nods.

“Exactly. That and I like medicine more than people. Human bodies are easy, human beings? Absolute disasters,” he says.

Tony laughs, “well, you’re not wrong about that. And for the record I’ve done both- care and not care about people. I’d chose to care, but I should probably be more choosy about who I care for. But I prefer machines over people any day.”

“One allows for perfect control, the other isn’t yours to attempt to control,” Stephen says and Tony nods.

“Exactly,” he says. They sit in silence for some time before Tony speaks again. “Sorry about the fortune cookie thing.”

Stephen raises an eyebrow, “do you still think I sound like a fortune cookie?” he asks.

“Yeah, kind of,” Tony admits though he at least has the decency to look somewhat ashamed of this.

“Then you’re really sorry,” Stephen tells him.

“Okay, in my defense I don’t know of any other kind of cookie that tells bad fortunes and fortune cookie has fortune and cookie in the name,” he says and Stephen laughs despite his annoyance at the comment. “It didn’t really occur to me that you’re… you know, Asian. From Nepal, I’m guessing?”

He nods, “my grandparents immigrated here, and I chose to go to Nepal specifically thanks to that ancestry. Not that it worked out in my favor- white Americans will never let me forget where I’m from, but god knows that’s not Nepal. I have no connection to the people there. And for the record you don’t need to actively be thinking ‘he’s Asian, make a bad joke about an Asian cookie’. Looking at my face would have been enough of a connection. Trust me- I know. I get all kinds of stupid questions up to and including ‘is your penis tiny’?” Of all the stereotypes he had to encounter that and the one where he was good at math irritated him the most. First- he was horrible at math outside of its use in pharmaceuticals and he had to work to be any good at that, and suggesting an entire continent of people had tiny penises made no logical sense.

Tony frowns, “why are people so obsessed with dicks?” he asks.

“What do you mean?” Stephen asks.

“Rhodey gets weird dick comments too, except people have the opposite concern. Just saying that’s really weird, and no one seems concerned with my penis so that makes things extra weird,” he says and Stephen snorts.

“Probably because you have like eight sex tapes- we’ve all seen it. Plus there was that headline in the late nineties, that ‘Stark Naked’ one. You seem to really like your birthday suit,” he says and Tony throws back his head and laughs.

“Yeah I guess. And people filming you having sex and not telling you about it and releasing it on the internet sounds better than racism anyways,” he says.

Stephen wrinkles his nose, “I think that’s relative. Racism is awful obviously, but I don’t think that counts as… better.” That sounded rather violating to him, though the way Tony talks about it- like this was something normal- was what made it more disgusting.

He shrugs, “whatever, people wanted their fifteen minutes of fame and got it. Point is I still think you sound like a bad inspirational speaker, but I’m sorry about the unintentional racism.”

He can’t help but snicker, “sorry, that sounds so absurd to me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone phrase it like that. But to be fair I think I owe you an apology more I was owed one. I thought… I thought telling you about being my soul mate would distract you from learning, that it would add one more thing for you to worry about. To be honest I think that it would have been more of a distraction to me than you.” And there was the fact that his last soul mate walked out on him however deserved that was. He’s never been good with people and as per his usual he avoided something that could have resulted in his failing.

They sit in silence with that for some time before Tony breaks it- a habit of his apparently. “What did you think when ‘Merchant of Death’ appeared on you?” he asks.

Stephen lifts an eyebrow because Tony looks troubled, haunted actually. “I didn’t think much of it- you make weapons and some people were bound to disagree with that. It was a natural extension of you life,” he says.

His response seems to shake Tony, and surprise him. “That’s… that’s it? You weren’t… I don’t know, disgusted?”

Like he was with his past self, Stephen would bet. He shakes his head, “no Tony, I wasn’t. It never occurred to me to think less of you for it either- like I said, it was just a natural progression from your position.” It didn’t help that Stephen didn’t care for politics and rarely looked into them outside the scope of medicine. Of course he only cared about what directly impacted him, probably much the same way Tony had in his youth.

“Seriously? You thought nothing of that?” he asks in disbelief. “Didn’t you even consider what I did for a living?”

“Of course I did, but I had already decided that anyone who used the name ‘Iron Man’ was an idiot and not worth my time. I didn’t give thought to your business or you because I had written you off,” he says.

For a long moment Tony just stares before he bursts out laughing. “Oh my god, seriously?” he asks Stephen frowns at his reaction but Tony continues laughing. “I… I had written you off too because anyone who calls themselves sorcerer supreme had to be a fucking lunatic,” he squeezes out when he finally regains control over himself.

Stephen starts laughing at the absurdity of this whole thing and Tony joins back in. This was how Hope found them some time later, still laughing about how weirdly similar their situations were.