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The instant Tony Stark woke up, he knew he had been sleeping for a very long time. He was still in his suit, and nothing felt drastically different, so he wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did. Granted the mere fact that he was awake at all was a big clue that something was wrong. He had never expected to wake up after piloting a plane with a crazy alien super bomb on it into the arctic sea and yet here he was, eyes open and every muscle in his body aching so badly that he could not possibly be dead.
He tried opening his eyes a crack, not knowing exactly what he expected to see, but all was dark outside the slits in his faceplate. That reality basically left him with three reasonably conceivable options. One, he was somehow awake under water and the seals on his suit were a lot more water tight than previous trial scenarios had indicated. Two, he had been hauled out of the icy cold abyss and left to lie face upward towards a starless night sky. Three, he had been hauled out of the icy cold abyss and into an undisclosed location, left to lie in either a dark room or with a black cloth over his face. As two of the options involved him being safely out of the frigid death he had resigned himself to when he said his tearful goodbye to his best friend- “This thing’s moving too fast and it’s heading for New York, I gotta put her in the water!” “Tony! You know that’s a one way trip right?!” “I know, I’m an ass, but this time it’s for the good of the entire world Buck, I have to do this.”- and readied himself to save the world, he desperately hoped for one of them to be true.
Tony had survived being kidnapped by HYDRA because they believed the stupid suit of amour he had manufactured as an excuse to provide guns to the Allies behind enemy lines under the guise of a morale-boosting figurehead on tour, had actually been a functioning weapon. He had survived having his chest ripped open and a motor being put in it to keep the shrapnel away from his heart, and then having to create a whole new element to replace it with a smaller device of his own invention, a device that was years ahead of it’s time, untested and sure as heck never intended for use inside a human body. He had survived escaping the damn Nazi’s, ironically using the self-same heavily modified suit of armor they had wanted him to build for their own purposes. He had survived his revenge fueled inventing frenzy to build a better suit, with the help of his father’s friend and military contact Abe Erskine – “You’re a little shit Tony, but you’ve got a good heart. You are not a perfect solider, but you are a good man. Remember that.”- and Erskine’s subsequent murder. Hell, Tony had even survived being dropped into a war zone with his flimsy new flying suit, saving his best friend’s ass, becoming a super hero America called The Iron Man, and shooting the heck out of a bunch of Nazi’s, only to realize in the end that the only way to save the world was to sacrifice himself. He felt the least he was owed was the knowledge of where exactly that sacrifice had gotten him.
Just as he was gathering the strength to attempt to move something other than his eyelids, he heard an indistinct murmuring to his right. “Pearson pitches a curve ball, high and outside for ball one, so the Dodgers are tied four to four.” At first he felt relief at hearing a familiar voice talking about familiar things on the radio, an indication that he might not have been down for the count as long as he’d thought. But there was something achingly familiar about the commentary and it overshadowed his good feelings.
“Just an absolutely gorgeous day here at Ebbets Field.” Tony groaned. As soon as the fog cleared from his brain and his muscles started working again he would be able to figure out why this game was giving him such a strong sense of foreboding. “Pearson beaned Reiser in Philadelphia last month. Wouldn’t the youngster like a hit here to return the favor?”
Had he been out so long it was already next baseball season? When he’d piloted the plane it’d been late September and the Dodgers had already been out of the running for the Series. “Pete leans in. Here’s the pitch.”
That would mean he’d been asleep for at least six months. His head was starting to clear and he twitched his fingers experimentally, momentarily relieved when they responded. “And it get’s past Rizzo! Reiser heads to third!”
No. Wait.
There wasn’t just something familiar about how the game was going. He had heard this exact game before. Durocher was going to wave Reiser in. “Durocher’s gonna wave him in! Here comes the relay but they won’t get him!” Reiser was going to hit a game winning grand slam. “Pete Reiser with an inside park grand slam!”
Strength returning to him in a sudden flash of adrenaline, Tony shot upright and ripped his helmet off, throwing it to the floor and looking wildly around him. He appeared to be in some kind of hospital room, the noise from the open window seeming to indicate a bustling city, probably back home, which made sense if he’d been injured as badly as he felt he had but did nothing to calm the sudden panic rising in his gut. The door opened and a petite dame dressed in a US army uniform hurried into the room. Before she could say anything he stood up on shaky legs.
“Where am I?”
The brunette didn’t even flinch. “You’re in a recovery room, in Lower Manhattan. You’re father wanted you taken care of from home but the military insisted.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Where am I really?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“The game. It’s from May 1936. I know because my loving father was too occupied getting drunk with the dame he was using to cheat on my mother to take me. I listened to the whole thing sitting on the grand staircase of our mansion, getting ass-over-tit smashed while waiting for him to come home. Now I’m going to ask you again. Where am I?”
Visibly flustered, the brunette’s eye’s flicked to the highly advanced laser ray gun, the most advanced weapons technology in the world at the time he went under, on the palm of his armored hand. Before she could come up with another lie, a tall African American man with an eye patch and a long black trench coat burst through the door and came to a stop in front of Tony’s bed.
“Hello Mr. Stark. I can see we’re getting nowhere with this little show. We thought it best to break it to you slowly, but I see now it’s pretty hard to get anything past you.”
Break it to him slowly? That did not sound good. “Break what?”
“You’ve been transported by the Tesseract through time and space, Iron Man. Almost 70 years. Welcome to the future.”
Steve had lived a long time in his short 26 years. He’d been orphaned at an early age and survived living on the streets until his best friend’s family took him in. He’d put himself through art school. He had gone from being a scrawny little pipsqueak from the wrong side of the Hudson who was always getting into fight’s he couldn’t handle, to the super soldier symbol of American freedom. He had taken down the most dangerous terrorist threat to American soil since World War II almost single handedly. He had joined a shadow organization of the US government and become a super hero. He had defeated a giant green rage monster who was actually just a scientist trying to replicate the same super soldier formula that had given Steve his abilities. Just last week he had been the first to start making (slow, painstaking) headway in convincing said green rage monster to come out of hiding and join the good guys at SHEILD.
But this. This right here, was the highlight of his life. This was more exciting than all of his adventures put together. More than that, this was going to make his best friends Rhodey and Pepper so freaking jealous.
“Pep! Pep Pep Pep Pep Pepper Pep Pep you will never guess what just happened, you will never guess who Fury just told me I’ll be meeting today, you will never gue-“
“I’m guessing it’s The Iron Man? Who they discovered under the ice using sensors operated by my father’s company? Who just woke up and is currently being debriefed on how much he missed?”
“What… How…” Having known her since they were both in diapers, Steve was all too familiar with just how terrifyingly competent Pepper Barnes was. Still, he was massively bummed that he hadn’t been able to get the drop on her even this once.
“SHEILD just left a message on Dad’s private line and since I’m filling in for him until he get’s back from Budapest I was the one who received it.” It sounded like she was smiling smugly and he knew her too well to doubt her intel. “Don’t feel bad Steve, it’s not your fault Dad has a higher clearance level than you. He’s been around longer.”
“Yeah but you haven’t.” He knew he was whining but since Pepper was like a sister he wasn’t really concerned with maintaining his image around her.
“Don’t whine, it’s unbecoming of a national icon.” Her smugness had given way to affectionate teasing in her triumph. “Try Rhodey next, he probably doesn’t know yet. I’m sure they’d at least tell Captain America before they told an Air Force Academy cadet, even one at the top of his class. 75% sure of it at least.”
“You’re such a fart face sometimes, you know that Barnes?” Steve smiled and he knew she could hear it over the phone. “Did you know they want him to work with me on the Avenger’s Initiative? And they want me to help bring him up to speed on this century? It’s going to involve a lot of training together, a lot of one-on-one time. See if I ever snap a pic of him shirtless in the training room for you.”
Pepper just laughed his threats off. “Please Rodgers, as if you could keep me out of your phone if you tried.” She sniffed, “Your last passcode was 1234.”
“All the buttons are so tiny and that’s the easiest- you know what, I don’t have to explain myself to you, I’m going to go share my good news with James Rhodes, my only real friend.”
“Love you too Stevie. Say hi to Rhodey for me and remind him of exactly how many days it’s been since he came up to New York to see us.”
Chuckling softly, Steve ended the call and headed inside the Hellicarrier. He would skype James to gloat eventually, but it was going to have to wait. Right now, he was late to the most important meeting of his life.
It probably only proved he was as deranged as those yellow journalists had claimed he was, but Tony’s first thought upon learning that he’d lost 70 years of his life was excitement. He couldn’t wait to see how far technology had progressed in the 70 years he’d been in stasis while being transported to the future through alien-space-magic-curses (or something, they really weren’t sure yet.) Everything he had ever known being different and everyone he had ever loved being either deceased or seventy years older was a secondary thought he’d save for later when he could freak out without being observed by a dozen or so secret agents. Because yes, while he had been officially discovered in the artic by sensors designed by his father’s company (created by said father under duress and the guidance/fierce determination of his best friend Bucky) in the absence of his long since deceased father, his suit, and body with it, had been turned over to the custody of the secret government agency SHEILD. At least they had informed him that the Allies had won the war so SHEILD was a US controlled unit, which, hey, at this point any good news was music to his ears.
So excuse him if he was trying to see the bright side of things. “Let me get this straight. My father’s company survived the War, even with the loss of its chief executive officer and resident genius inventor, hello, yes, that’s me. And still survives today under the surprisingly excellent leadership of my best friend Bucky. Bucky who, when I… left was a spry 20 years old, and is now almost 90 but still alive and kicking due to some crazy super soldier formula invented by some quack named Yinsen to help with a war America had no business even being in. A super soldier formula that didn’t even work right until you put it in some scrappy kid from Brooklyn of all places named Steve, to help with yet another war America had no business being in. Steve, who is now prancing around in skintight clothes and saving the world under the alias “Captain America”. Captain America, who is a super hero, who you expect me to work with. That about the size of it?”
“Um, Iron Man?” Tony resisted the urge to startle as a small voice piped up from behind him. He turned from where he’d been speaking to this Director Fury character to face the newcomer, who had a hand extended in preemptive greeting. “Mr. Stark? Mr. The Iron Man? Yeah, Captain America, that’s me. Steve Rodgers, nice to honor- I mean honor to nice y- I mean, um. Nice to meet you sir, it’s an honor.”
Oh, he was going to have fun with this kid. Who knew people in the future would like him so much better than people from his own time? Tony took in the wide blue eyes of the muscular blonde before him and stifled the urge to chuckle at the earnest expression the handsome man had on his face as he reached out a hand to clasp Steve’s. “Nice to meet you son, call me Tony. Mr. Stark was my father and Mr. The Iron Man doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”
“Of course sir! I mean Tony. I was just…”
“Steve here is going to help you get adjusted, Mr. Stark.” Fury interjected before the kid could bumble over himself anymore. “As I’ve said, the Captain is our finest recruit. He can tell you more about the Avenger’s Initiative, and anything you need to know about this century. And whatever he can’t tell you, his best friend Pepper can. I’m sure you’ll find them both very accommodating. The good Captain here has been reading your comic books since he was a kid, even has a poster of you up in his barracks.”
At this Steve flushed a very interesting shade of red from the crown of his head to the collar of his button down shirt. Tony chose to have a bit of mercy on the kid. He had more pressing matters to attend to than the fact that he apparently had a comic book in this century. “Can he tell me where Bucky is?”
“Mr. Barnes? That’s right you two were really close back in the day right? He talks about you all the time, Pepper probably knows even more about you than I do, she always wanted The Iron Man stories at bedtime when she was little-”
“Barnes is in Budapest right now, on a business trip and gathering intel for us. A message has been sent to him through encrypted channels that you’ve been found and woken up but he probably won’t be within range to receive it until tomorrow. After that we expect him to be here within a few hours,” Fury scowled, “though he’ll probably want to check on the company and his daughter quickly before getting here.”
“His daughter.” And man wasn’t that a thought. His best friend was not only a near nonagenarian, but also had a daughter. The guy who once thought it would be fun to break into Howard Stark’s collection of expensive alcohol and sneak into the dime movies, even though Tony had enough dough to buy out the entire theater, was now a father. And responsible for a successful company that was now for all intents and purposes rightfully Tony’s. This century just kept getting weirder and weirder. “Ain’t that something.”
For lack of anything better to do, because his best friend was apparently some important hot shot who wouldn’t be here to greet him after his seventy year absence for another whole day, Tony turned toward the young man who was to become his Indian guide to this century. “Well alright Captain, let’s see how much trouble we can get into before my best friend arrives or Pirate Pete over here can stop us. You can show me some of those comic books I’ve heard so much about. Maybe if you’re really good I’ll let you touch the suit.”
This seemed to be the right thing to say. Never before in his life had Tony Stark seen a grown man so close to swooning.