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Crossing the threshold of the portal is like passing through a cloud of gnats at Mach 2 in Iron Man’s arms.
Maybe crossing is too light a word, Steve thinks. The portal crossed them, really. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say it crashed into them.
And now they’re in—a very stylish cruise liner? The room is huge and there are no windows, but it has the sleek, efficient curves Steve associates with boats and submarines. Not that there would be any reason for such a big, mostly empty room like this on a submarine.
“Well,” Tony says, tilting his helmeted head as he looks around the room, “if this is a supervillain lair, it’s much nicer than our usual fare.”
“And better lit,” Steve agrees.
“I’m getting—weird readings,” Tony says after a moment.
Steve frowns. “Weird how?”
A wall panel—apparently a door—slides open. Just, disappears into the wall behind the person who has just walked through. She’s wearing a strange jumpsuit, not quite a superhero outfit, or not one Steve’s familiar with. Insignia and pins in neat lines suggest it’s a uniform, though Steve doesn’t recognize any of the symbols or markings.
“Welcome, Avengers,” she says. She sounds calm, friendly, not overly bright or gloating or surprised. She is, as far as Steve can tell, unarmed. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”
“Uh, yeah,” Tony says. “Who are you, and where are we?”
She nods, looking thoughtful. “I’m Lieutenant Gonzales, you’re on the exploration vessel United Space Ship Turing, and by the Gregorian calendar it’s the year 2491.”
The ship is—well, it’s something, all right.
It’s huge. There are windows that are two storeys high, looking out on stars dotting a black sky like captured fireflies. It’s beautiful, too, the breadth of it wrought in sweeping Art Nouveau curves. Even the hum of the ship’s engines is pleasant, a low thrum like the lapping of ocean waves. Panels, sconces, moldings, and what Steve first takes for framed paintings and photographs turn out to be fixtures, screens, and projectors for computer interfaces, appliances, and holograms. It’s overwhelming in its scale, intimidating in its beauty, and uncanny in its almost-familiarity.
And Tony is smiling like he’s being shown the secrets to eternal bliss. And maybe he is, Steve thinks. Lieutenant Gonzales will mention some amazing breakthrough that happened in the 23rd century, or explain how the windows are really forcefields, or let Tony look at the circuitry for the artificial gravity array, and Tony will grin and grin, sometimes even laugh out loud with delight, and then—as if just noticing that Steve is in the room—glance back at him as if to say, Isn’t this awesome?
It is. It really is. There’s no reason for Steve to be upset. Of course Tony is enjoying this more than he is; Tony’s the futurist, after all. Steve’s the one who’s already woken up decades in the future.
That part of it doesn’t seem to have sunk in for Tony, yet. To him this is still a wonderland, a dream come true. Literally, probably. Steve’s dreams—well, Tony’s here, and there the similarity ends to the most recent and vivid dream he can remember. At any rate, Steve is going to let Tony live his dream, try to enjoy how much Tony is enjoying it, and put off reminding him what this means for them.
That’s what a friend should do, right? Enjoy seeing his teammate so thrilled, so awestruck. There will be plenty of time, later, to deal with the consequences. Too much time, really.
They’re sitting at a table—a simple, wooden table, as far as Steve can tell, so that’s familiar at least—in a vast recreation room filled with tables, chairs, couches, and screens. There are crew members spread all over, in singles, couples, and groups, mostly a table or two apart from other parties. Surveying them, Steve can see why Lieutenant Gonzales was the one sent to meet them; as far as he can tell, she appears more human than anyone else in the crew. Early in the tour she’d listed all the different peoples who are part of United Space: mutants, mutates, Inhumans, Asgardians, Atlanteans, and plenty of alien species Steve’s never heard of. A few yards away, a pale green, scaled person with a face like an iguana is playing what looks to Steve like some form of holographic basketball with a woman glowing like burning coals, several humanoid people with green or fuchsia skin, someone with stretching powers like Reed’s, a gynoid with visible circuitry, and what looks to Steve like a four-foot-tall tropical bird.
Steve is getting more out of people-watching—alien-watching, he corrects himself, then corrects himself back to people-watching all over again—than trying to track everything Lieutenant Gonzales is saying. He glances back to meet Tony’s beaming gaze every now and then, when he catches it landing on himself. So Steve is only half-listening until—
“So time travel has been mastered, then, I take it?”
Steve swivels back to the table all at once.
“Oh yes, some centuries ago. It’s all regulated, of course, but your arrival was scheduled—lucky thing records of your trip survived, actually, sometimes when—well, that’s a few years ahead of you yet, you’ll find out,” Lieutenant Gonzales replies. Tony nods along like this is all exactly as expected and perfectly comprehensible. “So all the bureaucratic pieces are in place to send one or both of you wherever you like. We’re on course now to Frontier Outpost 12. Our expected—”
“Wait,” Steve says, then immediately scolds himself for interrupting. Lieutenant Gonzales gives him a friendly smile, urging him on. “‘One or both of us’?”
“Oh, yes,” she says, as if agreeing to something rather than replying. “You’re both welcome to stay here. Or, as I was going to say, we can return you to just a second after you left, or anywhere and anywhen you like.”
The radiant expression drops off Tony’s face. He hadn’t realized how precious Tony’s joy had been until seeing it vanish.
This seems like commentary on Steve’s entire life.
He feels like an idiot. Of course they’ve mastered time travel. And of course, Tony’s going to stay here. And more than that, even if they both stayed—well, Tony wouldn’t have any reason to stick around Steve any more. Tony could do great things here. Of that, Steve has no doubt: the idea that Tony couldn’t catch up with several hundred years of technology if he put his mind to it is absurd. Not Steve, though. No, he would be even more out of place than he was when he first came out of the ice.
Because then, Tony was there to show him around. The thought creeps into Steve’s thoughts without words, jealous and cruel. But when Tony stays here, he’ll be learning what this century has to offer on his own. Or maybe someone else will be there to help him. Someone clever, someone who can keep up with him, with this.
And in what Steve’s come to regard as his present—his home —there’s a use for Captain America. Out here, where everyone’s needs are easily met, where all of the planets and species of the galaxy are at peace or working toward it, where the only ships being sent out are research and exploration vessels, where superhumans are accepted and celebrated, there’s no need for Captain America at all.
“Any time in history?” Tony says.
He’s worried about his company, Steve thinks. He has so many responsibilities back home. Too many, really. He could stay here and have everything he wants, but he’s thinking about his employees. About the Avengers. “You thinking about visiting King Arthur’s court, Shellhead?” he teases, hoping to bring back a sliver of that smile.
“Certainly. Whenever you like,” Lieutenant Gonzales replies before Tony can respond.
“That won’t disrupt the timeline? Change history?” Tony asks.
Lieutenant Gonzales shakes her head. “It could. That sort of thing has the potential to, that is. But it hasn’t.”
“What do you mean, it hasn’t?”
“Well, the Department of Time is in touch with its future divisions, of course,” she begins.
Future divisions, Steve repeats to himself. What a way to run a—whatever it is. Organization or branch of government or bureaucracy.
“And,” Lieutenant Gonzales continues, “if whatever you choose has altered the timeline, they wouldn’t have given you blanket permission.”
“Right,” Tony says, his gaze dropping down to his hands.
He’s still wearing his armor, Steve realizes, as he, too, stares at Tony’s cherry-red gauntlets. Steve’s still in his uniform as well. No one has bothered to inquire about their weapons or any of their gear, either because they’re being implicitly trusted, or because the technology here so surpasses their own that they’re of no danger whatsoever.
May if he stayed here, where there’s no need for Captain America, Steve could just—rest. Be. Find out what’s important to him, what he wants to be, without the shield.
It doesn’t sound attainable, even in his own head.
“Well,” Lieutenant Gonzales says, glancing between them and getting to her feet, “I think you two have a lot to think about. I’ll leave you to it. We’ll reach Frontier Outpost 12 in just over ten hours. You have quarters on the passenger deck. If you need anything, the ship’s computer can direct you anywhere you’d like to go, answer your questions, or get you in contact with me, if you prefer. Enjoy your evening.”
After Lieutenant Gonzales leaves, Tony suggests an early dinner. He leads Steve to a wall panel he assures Steve is called an NMAT (Nutritional Molecule Assembly Tech). Apparently Lieutenant Gonzales explained it, but Steve missed it. Tony says that it’s basically a “molecular 3D printer,” which makes sense, but then starts talking about Minkowski transponders and paraphased singularity inhibitors and Steve loses track.
This is what every conversation would be like if Steve stayed. Tony, with his vivacious excitement, trying to share the wonders of the 25th century. Steve, unable to follow along, increasingly lost. Tony would keep visiting for a while, coming by Steve’s inevitably old-fashioned and planet-side apartment, trying to find topics they still have in common, but more and more he’ll work with the engineers and inventors and geniuses of this time, until he’s an officer on a United Space ship just like this one, out on the galaxy’s frontier. Out of Steve’s reach entirely.
For now, they tell the NMAT their favorite foods and what they’re in the mood for, and after providing lists that include fettuccine alfredo, chanterelle mushrooms, Chinese steamed pork dumplings, lemon meringue pie, smoked gouda, eggs over easy, Caesar salad, matzo ball soup, millefeuille pastries, and kalamata olives—generates a five-course meal with flavors from all over United Space.
“I think this one is like a cheeseboard,” Tony says, spreading a creamy violet something onto a something-else that looks like steamed flatbread. “See, this stuff is fermented, this is some kind of jam or chutney, I think these are the fruits from that ocean moon the computer was saying are kind of like apples, and this is a little charcuterie section.”
Steve combines a slice of the delicate pink fruit with a more tame-looking golden-brown spread and what might be a thin slice of meat—or possibly a flower petal of some kind. “It’s good,” he reports. He frowns at a plate of wide, translucent green spirals. “Is that a vegetable?”
“Animal, vegetable, mineral?” Tony teases.
They try seaweeds from a binary star system ten light-years away, the fried breast of an animal whose similarity to any creature on earth ends at the word “feathers,” the antler of a grazing animal bred to live on space stations. There’s a soup containing an ingredient from every species in United Space, pastries folded like origami, and saffron-yellow insects they eat whole. Dessert is some kind of egg custard, served in corresponding molecularly-3D-printed eggshells a quarter-inch thick and swirled with color like marbled paper.
Next Tony pulls Steve to a smaller room—only a little larger than what Steve thinks of as a generously spacious studio apartment in Williamsburg—with no windows, nor any screens Steve can recognize.
“What’s this?” Steve asks.
Tony grins, puts on his helmet, jets into the air and calls, “Watch this!”
Steve does. He watches Tony soar and dive and fly loop-de-loops like he was rained out of the sky instead of born.
Watching Tony like that, it feels like Steve could float up to meet him.
Tony’s voice rings out across the room. “Hey computer: drop gravity levels to zero.”
Then Steve is floating, a flex of a toe toppling him slowly upward.
“C’mere!” Tony yells over one shoulder, zooming toward the opposite wall.
Steve grins and kicks off, catching briefly on a vertical wall to launch himself off it. In moments he’s close enough to grab Tony by the ankle—which he does, or moves to do, but then repulsors flare and Tony is soaring away, calling, “Catch me if you can, old man!”
They chase each other and dart away from each other like a pair of blue jays going after the same grasshopper. Steve tosses himself through the room like he’s his own shield, finding angles and arcs to intercept Tony’s flightpath. Tony twirls and flips like an acrobat somersaulting from one tightrope only to land on and ride a unicycle across another.
Steve takes his shield out and starts using it to change directions or momentum mid-trajectory. Tony retaliates by shooting his repulsors off the shield and the walls to the same purpose. “Computer: drop gravity levels to half of Earth’s,” Steve says, grinning as Tony’s flight lags just enough for Steve to tap him on one shoulder. “Got you!”
Tony laughs and sputters and then altering gravity is part of the game, too. They start pointing to which wall they want gravity to be oriented to as well as indicating how strong it should be. Sometime after Steve has completely lost track of which wall was the floor when they first came in, Tony has caught him three times, Steve has caught Tony twice, and now Tony says, “One more?” So they move to opposite walls, count to three, and then push off into the air again.
They move in tandem for a moment, a perfect mirror, and then Tony darts to the side and doubles the gravity, just as Steve bounces his shield off the wall above him and curves down in a nautilus-shell spiral and calls for the computer to quarter it. In the end, he grabs Tony by the knee, ending the game in a draw—though Steve suspects Tony let him win intentionally.
They’re still laughing and smiling as they waft down and land simultaneously on what is apparently the floor, the gravity returned to normal. Tony’s pulled his helmet off, further mussing his already tousled hair. He pushes it out of his eyes. The wrist and thumb of his metal hand graze the skin of his forehead, and Steve wonders what it feels like—not Iron Man against his skin, he knows that, knows it from handshakes and flying together and crowded news conferences—but to understand oneself through the barrier of a metal shell. The question is joined by memories of reaching for Tony with gloved hands, and he wants nothing more in this moment than to run his bare fingers through Tony’s hair. To hold him close and breathe in the joy and glee sparking in his eyes, the bow of his smile, the crinkles of his crow’s feet.
Steve catches Tony’s eye, then, or maybe it would be more accurate to say he snags it, like a half-healed papercut against a bramble bush. Tony catches his right back and holds it, his gaze a knife against a whetstone as he searches Steve’s face. Steve takes a breath to speak, but before he can, Tony says, “Let’s check out the rooms they’ve got us in. I wanna get out of this armor and see what showering is like in outer space.”
So Steve agrees and the computer pulls up a map showing them to their quarters, and they board something like a large elevator with half-a-dozen crew members, including an eight-foot-tall one with six legs and a pair of wheels. People get on and off, chatting, and it seems strange to start a conversation with Tony halfway through getting inside the elevator car, so Steve doesn’t, and they stand together in silence until a display indicates that the doors are about to open on the corridor containing their temporary living space.
They step out to a pair of doors, side-by-side in a long, curved hallway. Tony offers a brief smile before stepping into one, the door sliding shut behind him. Steve stands there, staring blankly ahead, wondering how many hours they have until they part ways forever.
Once he realizes he’s doing this, he snaps his head up and goes inside.
Steve’s showered and shaved and changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt the computer provided via NMAT. He’s lying on a wide bed in what feels like a big, curved hotel room, swiping through a holographic screen in hopes of finding something compelling enough to distract him from his thoughts. Just when he’s about to give it up as a lost cause and simply lie in bed and brood, there’s a knock on his door.
“Come in,” Steve calls, dragging a hand over the holograms to close them.
“That shower thing was amazing,” Tony says by way of greeting, striding in and pulling an armchair up to Steve. He’s wearing silk pajamas and wool slippers, and is carrying a half-empty mug of what smells like mocha.
Steve’s heart soars at the way Tony picks up and settles in like their last words to each other were only seconds ago. Picking up where they left off. Some things, like this, have always come so easily to them.
“The computer has a bunch of holographic games in it,” Tony continues. “Tabletop games, like, chess, except, you know, alien chess, and in 3D. And regular chess too probably. And stuff that’s basically just two-person video games, building sims, racing, strategy, all that stuff. Wanna play?”
They play a game involving translucent puzzle-piece chunks of holographic architecture—flying buttresses, mansard roofs, crenellated towers, drawbridges, gabled dormers, air bridges, spires, pinnacles—and stacking them into the tallest, most structurally sound tower of the two before the pieces run out. Steve assumes that Tony will have a huge advantage in this, except it’s not just about engineering. There’s strategy, too: a whole ecosystem of plants, animals, flying construction robots, mining, and manufacturing, all affected by the weather and the size of the tower and what it’s made out of and where plants grow and how animals nest and how well the robots are treated. It’s beautiful and wild and addictive.
After a dozen rounds of that, vivid, solid-looking holograms fill the entire room, the gravity falls, and they’re swimming in an alien ocean. There are shipwrecks with quartzes growing out of their prows, pods of almost-whales trailing tresses of tails like seadragons, glittering fish that dart between and nip at their fingers, treasure chests containing bioluminescent jellyfish-esque creatures that spiral around them like synchronized swimmers. They swim through forests of seaweed that rise taller than redwoods, ride on the back of a chartreuse half-frog half-alligator, wind through labyrinthine caves with walls of undulating coral and budding geodes.
When they want a less open-ended game, they pull a piloting simulation for a spaceship the shape of a pineapple. Then a collaborative murder-mystery-solving game, followed by a game of scrabble played on the surface of a holographic moon. Tony insists they try the oil-painting simulator, even though it just ends up being him watching and praising Steve as he makes messy underpaintings on a holographic canvas. The NMAT provides hot drinks and sweet sticky rice buns, and they play and explore until they can’t lift their arms and fall asleep piled together on Steve’s bed, surrounded by the calls and flights and fiery breaths of dragons the size of songbirds.
Steve can almost imagine staying, with this kind of resource and entertainment at his fingertips. But it wouldn’t be the same without Tony.
Of course, neither would the twenty-first century.
When Steve wakes, the dragon program has shut off, the lights have dimmed, and Tony is breathing softly beside him. It’s peaceful. It feels like a moment divorced entirely from linear time. There’s no yesterday, no tomorrow, just this.
Tony, as if noticing Steve watching him, blinks himself awake. He smiles like a lightning flash, just as brief and just as bright, before pushing himself up. Steve realizes he doesn’t know how long he’s been staring, and pulls his gaze away. “Computer, how long until we dock at Frontier Outpost 12?”
“31 minutes, 45 seconds,” the digital voice replies.
Steve lifts his eyes back to Tony’s face and finds Tony gazing back at him, wearing the same expression of weariness and resignation that he feels on his own face.
“Look, I hope this isn’t weird,” Tony says, looking down at his hands, “but after today I may never see you again. So, I wanted to say, I’m going to miss you so much. The day we found you in the ice, it was—that will always be the best day of my life.” He meets Steve’s eyes once more. “I’m so glad I met you.”
And then Tony’s arms are around his neck, his head resting on Steve’s shoulder and Steve wraps his arms around Tony before he’s fully processed the situation. Tony’s in his arms. They’ve slept side by side, in this bed, and now they’re holding each other. Steve’s had dreams like this.
“Me too,” Steve says, whispering so as not to shatter this fragile moment. “I feel the same way,” he says, then realizes this isn’t entirely true. Steve feels that, and plenty more he’ll never have the chance to tell Tony.
Tony lets go first. He turns away and gets to his feet, his face flushed. It’s adorable, and Steve doesn’t think he’s ever seen Tony embarrassed before. “I’m gonna go get dressed. I guess I’ll see you in the shuttlebay in a bit?” It’s a question, but Tony walks to the door without waiting for an answer.
Well, Steve thinks, at least Tony is coming to see him off.
After he changes into his uniform and downing breakfast from the NMAT, the computer directs Steve toward the shuttlebay and informs him that Tony’s gotten permission to fly the shuttle himself, having mastered it through the simulation games they’d played the night before. Of course he has. God, Steve’s going to miss him so much.
The shuttlebay is huge and impressive and dazzling, and yesterday Steve might have taken the time to be awed or overwhelmed, but now he just thinks how this is the last time he’ll see Tony. Ever.
Tony is back in his armor. His helmet is tucked under one arm when he walks up, smiling like it’s a regular morning and they’re standing at the coffeemaker, Steve back from his morning run, Tony either still awake after a long night or getting up for an early meeting. Which will never happen again.
It turns out there’s nothing for Tony to do to fly the shuttle; the shuttle’s computer does all the work. Tony’s only in the pilot’s seat in case of an emergency requiring manual operation, which seems so unlikely as to be functionally impossible.
They say little on the flight to the space station. Steve doesn’t bother to ask why Tony’s in the armor. Maybe he’s going to fly back to the Turing on his own power. Whatever the reason, it feels fitting. Iron Man and Captain America, just like they were when they met.
Tony spends the flight reading about the development of faster-than-light travel. Steve spends it watching Tony.
He’s already immersing himself in this century. He’s already moving on without Steve.
Steve should really be used people doing that by now.
They’re greeted by an ensign named Sindrison, who has a battle-ax hanging from a belt buckled over his uniform. The ensign leads them to a small room, done in much the same style as the room they slept in on the Turing. Except that one entire wall is clear—it looks like glass but it’s probably another one of those forcefields. On the other side is a larger room, about the size of the Avengers’ gymnasium, an assemblage of computers and metal arms in the center. The time machine, then.
“I’ll just be a moment getting everything set up. I’ll come fetch you when it’s ready,” Ensign Sindrison says. “Make yourselves comfortable.” He indicates the couch, armchairs, and screens around the room. Then he’s gone.
Tony sits at the very edge of the couch, elbows on his knees, one leg bouncing up and down, looking decidedly at the floor. Steve pokes at a screen for a bit, but can’t even pretend it’s holding his interest and ends up pacing.
He has to say something. Nothing that might make Tony feel guilty, that could inspire him to pity. Steve stops pacing and turns to Tony, who is sitting up straight and staring back.
Steve realizes he’s frowning. He smooths out his face and starts, “I hope you have a life here that’s as brilliant as you are,” and in the same moment, Tony gets to his feet and says, “I hope you’re happy back in the 40’s.”
Tony’s eyes are huge and locked on Steve’s face. All Steve can do is stare back.
“That’s not my home any more,” Steve says after a moment. Tony’s his home. If he can’t have that, he can go where he’s useful.
“Oh my god,” Tony breathes, “that’s why sending us wherever we want doesn’t alter the timeline!”
“You’re going back too?” Steve can barely let himself hope.
If Tony’s smile on waking up was a lightning flash, this one is a storm blowing away to reveal a noonday sun. “Well of course,” Tony replies, and Steve grins back so wide his cheeks are already sore. “Someone has to help make sure all this happens on track,” Tony adds, arms in an expansive gesture to encompass the room, the space station, the whole of United Space. He bites his lip, eyes darting to one side, says, “Especially now that I know that’s where you’ll be.”
Steve gathers Tony in his arms. Tony comes easily, tucking himself against Steve’s front, resting their foreheads together.
That’s how Ensign Sindrison finds them. He doesn’t seem surprised that they’re both going right back to when and where they left. In fact, when they step into the room containing the device, there’s already a portal already formed. A dozen or more mechanical arms with funnel-shaped metal at the ends are pointed at the center of the room, beams of light and energy shooting out, the portal forming where they all intersect.
Steve takes Tony’s hand as they step, together, toward it, and thinks that this time, they really do feel the same way about things.