Chapter Text
When asked by the press, Tony Stark’s favorite teacher at MIT is Dr. Webster, the engineering professor who oversaw his doctoral thesis and never looked down on him for being a fifteen-year-old in a 300-level course. She’s moved on from teaching, now retired and enjoying the life of a humble mechanic in a small beach town but Tony keeps a photo of the two of them on the wall of his office at SI and always sends her a card at Christmas.
But when asked by anyone who truly knows him, Tony Stark’s favorite teacher at MIT is Professor Rivia, who taught the humanities course Tony was forced to take as part of MIT’s undergrad program. Fond of the Arthurian legends as he was from years of Jarvis’s bedtime stories, Tony had chosen to take an intro to Medieval literature course which promised a multi-discipline, multi-media approach to the topic. On day one, Professor Rivia had strolled in wearing a large, feathered beret and a billowing cravat with a lute case slung over one shoulder.
Tony had been hooked ever since, and Professor Rivia was the only teacher from MIT that he truly kept in contact with beyond professional curiosity or obligation. He’d always had a strange relationship with professors and authority figures in general given how smart and how young he was, but Professor Rivia never baulked at Tony’s genius or his youth, and seemed to know just what to say to make Tony feel better no matter what the situation was.
And while the need for his guidance had dwindled when Tony met Rhodey, Tony hoped he wouldn’t mind being called upon to once more bail Tony out of some spectacular nonsense.
It had started as a normal HYDRA raid and though the Avengers had been down a Norse God, they’d had the benefit of some witty, bird-winged backup to make up for the missing air-support. Tony had hemmed and hawed about Steve being able to bring his Air Force Buddy while Rhodey was too tied up elsewhere dealing with whatever the USAF needed his honeybear’s beautiful brain for.
Nevertheless, a nefarious plot was stopped, a handful of HYDRA agents had been ferreted back to SHIELD for questioning and an interesting stream of data had been downloaded for Tony’s later perusal.
Or, as it were, Tony’s current perusal.
Except it’s all very, very boring.
Page after page of plots they already stopped, plots that never got beyond the ‘oh shit, this blew up in our faces and took a whole base with it’ stage, or plots so ridiculous there’s no way it’s even close to an imminent threat.
“Jay,” Tony groaned as he sat up from his sprawl across the workshop’s beat-up and oh-so-comfy couch. “Is there any way that this nonsense is code for something interesting, or did we really raid the least interesting HYDRA base in the history of crazy Nazi psychopaths?”
“My decryption software isn’t picking up any patterns,” JARVIS hummed in consolation, “perhaps the ‘fun stuff’ – as you’ve called it in the past, Sir – was kept off of their digital files in preparation for this very scenario.”
Tony grumbled but had to agree, shifting his attention from the data pad to the beat-up box of random scavenged goodies the others had passed on to him once they’d realized it was mostly techy doodads and, to quote the captain, ‘at risk of being accidentally detonated if left with Clint for more than ten minutes’ which sounded like an exaggeration to anyone who hadn’t been there for the Incident a few years back.
Sam had raised an eyebrow at Steve when he’d said it. Sam would soon learn better.
Nevertheless, Tony must admit the box is tempting, and it’s the work of a good hour or so to divide it into groups. Tony immediately sets aside the self-dubbed ‘useless and uninteresting until proven otherwise’ pile in favor of the more extreme ‘not a bomb, could be a toaster oven’ pile which includes a half-constructed ray gun of some sort, a mechanical apparatus that’s leaking oil and what may be blood, and what he can only describe as a glowing purple egg.
After a moment of consideration, Tony moves the egg from the ‘not a bomb, could be a toaster oven’ pile into the ‘definitely a bomb’ pile. Though it’s less of a pile and more of a very carefully arranged spattering of items. Given, of course, that they’re definitely bombs, it seems prudent to keep them separate in case of boom.
After a while the ‘not a bomb, could be a toaster oven’ pile is sorted, labelled, and catalogued according to appearance, place of origin, and assumed (though Tony’s assumptions are practically guaranteed) purpose. The ‘definitely a bomb’ group is a tempting follow up, but Tony can’t deny the allure of the only object in the pile labeled ‘shiny’.
The ‘shiny’ pile usually ends up full of magical artefacts or charms and Tony’s gotten pretty good at telling them apart even though they usually get handed off to Natasha for inspection as she’s the one with the most magical knowledge on the team.
The medallion is a simple silver, hanging from a long leather cord that looks to have been snapped in half. The medallion itself is spotless, not a touch of oxidation or discoloration to be seen, and the sparkling simplicity is probably why it was sorted into his box rather than Nat’s. But sure enough when Tony lifts it, rubbing his thumb over the beautifully crafted wolf head design, the metal hums with a depth of magic Tony’s never quite felt before. The image, though, is familiar, and though he can’t quite figure out where from the slight spark he feels in the arc reactor is definitely familiar.
He flips the medallion, eyes skirting across the unfamiliar script.
Oh yeah, Tony thinks, flipping it back around, feeling the warm weight of it in his palm. This is old magic. Dangerous magic.
“Jay,” Tony says, eyes never leaving that of the wolf, “assemble the Avengers.”
It doesn’t take Natasha long to pull the medallion from his hand when he steps into the conference room, and the small jolt of her shoulders is the only outward show of her surprise at the low thrumming intensity of the medallion’s magic. “How did this slip past me,” she says to herself, tapping her fingers against the medallion and lifting it up to get a better look at it.
“Do you know what it is?” Steve asks from further in the room, seated just left of the head of the table. Bruce is across the table from him, trying to hold keep hold of Clint long enough to plaster a final row of butterfly bandages across his brow. The injury isn’t even from the HYRDA raid, and there’s genuinely no way to know how he got it unless Tony cares to ask, but Clint seems to be in once piece and – not for the first time – Tony’s curiosity outweighs his concern.
Natasha’s negative answer is expected. Despite her wells of magical knowledge, she was no sorceress, and though her… training at the Red Room made her strong and fast and hard-to-kill it still didn’t quite prepare the Black Widows for every possibility.
“It’s a Witcher’s medallion,” Tony says.
Natasha blinks.
“A Witcher’s medallion,” she echoes, one-part question and one-part sanity-questioning bafflement. In the modern era, Witchers are myths. Like King Arthur or the Lioness of Cintra.
“That’s some real knights-and-dragons bullshit, right there, my friend,” Clint says, finally free of Bruce and his First Aid Kit From Hell. “I don’t know how long you’ve been staring at screens but Witchers don’t exist, man. They’re like… the stories your parents tell you to make you behave. ‘Clean your room or I’ll send you to the Witchery Place’ or whatever the hell people say. They’re not real.”
Tony makes a pointed look at the superheroes gathered in the room, and points one finger at Steven Grant Rogers. “Where do you think the serum came from?”
The resulting squabble is childish, immature, and entirely unworthy of being noted in any way shape or form. It is full of finger-pointing, ‘you take that back’s, and a frankly unhealthy amount of ‘yo mama’ jokes from a group of adult orphans. Ultimately, Bruce has the final word when he silently stands from his chair and slams his fist against the table.
The following silence is tense and anticipatory, but Bruce calmly retakes his seat, clears his throat, and speaks. “So, you’re saying we need an expert in Medieval History?”
Tony coughs, Steve shifts his weight, and everyone calmly regains their seats, though Natasha had not so much as raised her voice during the entire thing and is somewhat insulted to be grouped together with her unruly teammates. “That would be a starting point, sure,” she says. “Though it would have to be someone we trust. This is old magic, dangerous magic, and I get the feeling it shouldn’t be… acting out like this.”
Tony nods slowly, leaning forward. “I may know a guy who can help,” he finally says, “an old professor at MIT who specializes in medieval literature, I could give him a call and see if he’s willing to meet with us.”
Natasha frowns, lip pulled into her mouth just slightly. “HYDRA had this for a reason,” she says, “I’m not sure I trust it going outside the tower and – no offense, Tony – I’m not sure I feel comfortable trusting a stranger with it on your word alone. Last time we let an artifact out of our sight, Loki’s scepter ended up halfway across the world in our enemy’s hands.”
“Justifiable paranoia seconded,” Clint volunteers, hand raised diligently despite his easy sprawl across the conference room seats. “But I’m cool with the nerd coming to the tower if we all meet him and hang around for the inevitable nerd-gasm that all you nerds tend to have over your nerdom of choice.”
Tony frowns. “I could call him now, see if he’s willing to come by,” he leans over to tap at the table’s central control panel, pulling up a keyboard and a holo-screen, “but you have to promise not to use the word nerd-gasm ever again.”
Clint’s raised hand becomes a thumbs up before dropping back down. A few moments later and there’s a ringing in the room followed by a slightly accented voice saying, “Why hello, Tony, darling, it’s been ages since last we spoke is everything alright?”
“Yeah, buttercup, I’m good. Just been busy with the Avengers business and whatnot.”
Professor Rivia makes suitably sympathetic sounds, but Tony continues before he can say anything more. “I’m actually calling for Avengers business right now, can I switch the call to video?”
They have to wait a moment for Professor Rivia to get his computer up and running before switching to a video call, but Tony and he spend the time on small talk and generally catching up because it has been a few months since Tony last had a chance to get in touch.
When Professor Rivia finally appears on the holo-screen he smiles, and the lines around his eyes are the only mark of age on an otherwise youthful face, framed by a pair of vibrantly colored reading glasses and a single streak of silver above his left eyebrow. “There you are, darling,” he says with a slight laugh, “looking as dashingly mature as always though I’ll never understand why you dye your grays,” he runs a hand through his own strands as if to demonstrate.
Tony laughs at the ongoing joke as the professor leans out of frame and comes back with a beautifully crafted lute in his hands, strumming the strings and humming to himself.
“How else do you expect me to keep up with these young things,” he says, gesturing to the Avengers who have gathered at his sides.
“Ah, I understand,” the professor says, chuckling, “though I’ve always had a thing for a silver fox, or a White Wolf as the case may be.” The Avengers trade glances but don’t comment on the instrument, or the notebook the professor pulls out and scribbles on a moment later.
“Anyway, jay bird,” Tony says once the professor has put the pencil down again, “these are the Avengers.”
Introductions are made with grace and dignity, and Professor Rivia insists on being called Jaskier in lieu of his formal title. “Titles aren’t meant for use between friends,” he says with a jaunty wink, “and I do believe we’ve become quite friendly with each other, haven’t we?”
The name is accepted, and after a brief explanation of the HYDRA raid for context, Tony lifts a handful of the charms liberated from the base into the camera’s field of view, just as a baseline to prove his friend’s legitimacy and trustworthiness. “Looks like charms and amulets, my dears, nothing too flamboyant or dangerous beyond a charm for sunny weather or safe childbirth,” he reports, leaning forward slightly in his chair and adjusting his glasses to get a better look, though his neat eyebrows are furrowed with something more than concentration. “It’s a rather odd mix of styles, age, and purpose if I’m honest. Not sure what type of person needs a cooling charm and three different room-warming amulets.
“Although that one on the left with the purple writing – no, not the – yes, that one darling,” he smiles when Clint points out the correct amulet. “I’d be careful with that one, the enchantment is chipped and though I doubt the charm itself is of any danger to you since it’s a ward against minor illness, the magic might break through the binding if it isn’t handled with care.”
Clint holds the necklace a bit further from himself and gently sets it down on the table, sliding it to the far end away from where they’re gathered around the holo-screen. “Thanks, Jask,” he says, flicking his fingers as if to dispel lingering threads of errant magic and sharing a quick glance with Nat to confirm or deny the professor’s claims and therefore his legitimacy. “Although I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting you to know quite so much about minor charms if you’re a knights-and-dragons kind of poetry guy.”
Jaskier strums a jaunty tune on his lute, clearly an unconscious expression of his glee, before smiling broadly at the Avengers. “I have my ways, darling, don’t you worry,” he says brightly, before the slight crease between his brows returns, “but I do believe you’ve called me for a little more than simple trinkets. There’s a number of minor mages in New York who would have been more than fit to the task. I don’t mind a test of trustworthiness, Melitele knows the world gets stranger every day, but I do wish you’d tell me what it is you need.”
Tony nods, glancing quickly over at Natasha to subtly ask permission and receiving a subtle nod in return. “There is one thing, Jay Bird,” he says, lifting the medallion into the camera’s view. “We think this is a Witcher’s medallion, but we don’t know if it’s… legitimate.”
Jaskier blinks at the screen for a few long moments, hands stilled and slightly shaking on the lute strings before he leans even further forward, glasses sliding down his nose. He swallows once, twice, before visibly steeling himself. “That is indeed a Witcher’s medallion, my dears,” he says gravely, “wherever did you come across a Witcher? Was he… was he with HYDRA? A HYDRA agent?”
Tony looks down at the medallion, shaking his head. “No, we didn’t actually come across a Witcher, per say, just the medallion,” he looks up in thought. “Although I’m not sure we would’ve known if we’d come across a Witcher, though, given that we didn’t know to be on the lookout for one.”
Jaskier chuckles, bone-white fingers clumsily resting against the lute and picking out a tune. “Oh, darling, if you had met a Witcher you would know it. Bear not your eyes upon him, lest steel or silver draw…” Jaskier’s voice fades out, a strong tenor suddenly brought low by an emotion Tony knows in his soul but can’t quite understand. “The Wolf School always did beget absolutely monstrous brutes, but they were capable of kindness beyond belief. Rather like a rescued hound, the poor beasties.”
Natasha coughs, bumping Tony’s shoulder in a manner that is far more conspicuous than her usual. “The engraving,” she says under her breath, and Tony nods to himself, swallowing around the torrent of grief that crashes over him out of nowhere.
“There’s also this,” he says, flipping the medallion and holding the buzzing disk closer to the screen so that Jaskier can see the engraving. He opens his mouth to ask if the script is familiar to Jaskier but is cut of by what can only be described as a scream cracking across the connection. He looks up to see Jaskier’s hand clutched at his face, fingers covering his mouth as heaving sobs rip from his throat in bloody, heaving gasps.
Tony blinks, glancing at the uncomfortable, concerned faces of the Avengers, hoping that they’ve seen whatever he missed in the seconds he was looking away from the screen. A crash sounds from the screen and for a second Tony thinks the professor has collapsed, but instead a dark-haired woman rushes into the frame, hands flitting across Jaskier’s shoulders as a younger, blonde woman darts to his other side, kneeling next to him and gently trying to pry his hands away from his face.
“Jaskier,” the dark-haired woman murmurs frantically, “Jaskier, what’s happened, is it a curse, is it the glamour, where does it hurt?”
The young blonde is murmuring in another language, something Slavic, but she’s the first to notice the video call still taking place. When her eyes set on the medallion still held in Tony’s outstretched palm her fingers grip tighter to Jaskier’s shoulder, and her chest heaves with the force of her ragged gasp. “Geralt,” she whispers, and the dark-haired woman’s face whips to her, eyes wide and near manic.
And then the dark-haired woman sees the screen too, sees the medallion, sees the script that sent one of Tony’s favorite people into near hysterics. It must be a curse, Tony thinks dully, it has to be a curse.
Because right as the dark-haired woman’s mouth curls in a cornered snarl, the young woman opens her mouth and wails, balls up her fists and screams.
The connection cuts out right as the piercing note clips the holoscreen’s speakers. The Avengers sit in stunned silence for a few moments.
Then the lights go out.