Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Earth-200207: March 1998

As far as kidnappings went, this one was particularly shitty.

Toni was sat in the middle chair, her hands tied up behind her with nothing more than string and her face completely uncovered. Her feet were not bound in any way, and she was free to observe the room in its entirety like she was some sort of guest and not a kidnapping victim. The only smart thing they had done was take off her watch and her high heels, but that was about it. 

Sure, she wasn’t carrying any visible weapons, but it was still disappointing. No effort whatsoever.

For them at least. For her, it was fine.

But Toni still took offense at how naïve these kidnappers were, if they had seriously thought their little intimidation tactic was in any way scaring her.

“Toni?” asked a voice at her side, slightly shaky and nervous. “Are you okay?”

Right. Toni winced slightly when she turned her head to the left and saw Bruce Banner sitting there, not calm or relaxed in the slightest. His face was white as chalk, and he was visibly sweating and squirming in his bonds. He hadn’t lost his shoes - he was wearing sneakers - but he looked like he had been roughed up a little.

Just for that, these wannabe kidnappers were on her shit list.

“Calm down, Bruce,” she told him, hoping her voice was soothing. “You’re okay. We’ll be okay.”

He gave her a slightly afraid look, and Toni turned to her right, where a much more collected Hope Van Dyne was sitting. She too had lost her shoes, but they had stupidly left her hair pins in her hair. They might as well just given her the keys to the place.

“You good?”

“I’m fine,” said Hope, dismissively. 

Because while she had not been in some of the horrific situations Toni had, Hope had had her fair share of kidnappings too - both in the original timeline and this. She was, after all, the daughter of Hank Pym. And Hank Pym had much more enemies than he had friends.

Toni turned back to Bruce, who looked both confused and horrified by how calm the two women looked. “Brucey, trust me when I say this is not my first rodeo. I’m Toni fucking Stark. The fact that they have not put anything over my head means that they do not want me dead. That means that whatever they want, whatever they might do, we will eventually be fine.”

“What if they kill us instead?” questioned Bruce, slightly panicked, and Toni forced herself not to roll her eyes.

It was at times like this that she missed the other Bruce.

He wouldn't have been this afraid over a silly little baseline kidnapping.

Then again, you had to have guts to kidnap the Hulk.

“They won’t.”

Maybe he didn’t know what to say to that, or maybe her steely conviction was enough for him. Nevertheless Bruce stared at her for a couple more seconds before slowly nodding and looking away once more, breathing shakily.

Toni grimaced slightly.

She truly had not expected for Bruce to be there. She had hoped Hope wouldn't be there either, but at least she knew she could work with Hope. Bruce was a civilian right now  - more civilian than them at least - as well as her friend. Her very untrained civilian friend; she did not like him being in danger.

“Toni Stark,” said a heavily accented voice, as a man with a basic balaclava mask appeared in front of them. “Hello, princess.”

Toni smiled back. “Hey, darlin. Was wondering when I’d finally meet whoever it was that invited me to the ball.”

Bruce made a small noise beside her which she ignored.

The smirk on the masked kidnapper's face was unmistakable, even covered as it was. “Just had to finish a couple of things before I could come and greet ya. Didn’t expect you to show up directly at the party.”

“What can I say?” she bared her teeth at him in a parody of a smile. “I do have an habit of showing up in the most unpleasant of places. Like a fungus.”

“Crass for a young lady such as yourself.”

She just smirked at him. “Now, are we going to continue with boring back and forth or are going to talk about why you decided to kidnap me? Is it money or weapons? It’s always one or both of those. Honestly, you kidnappers don’t seem to have a lot of creativity when it comes to motivations.”

The man opened his mouth to answer, but before he could another figure walked in. “Enough,” he said, and first goon immediately went silent, standing straighter.

Clearly, the newcomer was the leader.

Toni pretended not to realise that, remaining as irreverent and calm as before. “Why? We were having such a nice chat.”

“You can stay quiet, or I can gag you. Your choice, Stark.”

The girl winked at him. “I don’t do kink until at least the fifth date. You can ask my boyfriend.”

She wasn’t surprised when the man surged forward and grabbed her chin in a bruising hold, tilting her head upwards. “How about I cut your tongue, uh?”

“I’d safeword,” she said, ignoring the whimper that came from Bruce when the man snarled in her face.

Toni just blinked at him, ignoring the stray spit that managed to land over her face. But she didn’t speak, knowing she had pushed enough for now.

Man In Charge squeezed her chin once more for effect before letting go and taking a couple of steps backward. “What I want to know, Stark, is what you were doing in this part of town.” His eyes, through the holes in the mask, were narrowed. “Doesn’t seem like your typical hanging out place; and yet, we have been seeing you around way to often in the past few weeks.”

There was a slight ping in her ear and Toni straightened up subtly, hands working behind her back. “A cache of weapons belonging to me went missing a couple of days ago,” she explained, truthfully. “I tracked it down here.”

She did not miss the look goon #1 and Man In Charge shared at this. “You have been around much longer than the weapons have been missing. Long enough for us to set up this kidnapping.”

Toni did not answer, one eyebrow raised in a ‘so?’ expression that seemed to unnerve goon #1.

Man In Charge kept staring at her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you knew that the weapons were going to go missing.”

When Toni still did not answer, Man In Charge sat up, looking slightly alarmed. “Fuck, he set us up.” When Toni did not either deny nor confirm his conclusions, he climbed up on his feet, looking both enraged and afraid. “You! Clear the warehouse, get everybody out now!” he shouted at goon #1 as he stood and rushed towards the door.

Goon #1 looked afraid as his boss all but ran away. “What am I supposed to do with them?” he questioned, sounding tense.

Man In Charge did not answer and disappeared outside the door. Less than 20 seconds later, two more goons appeared in the doorway approaching goon #1. The one who was clearly goon #3 glared - goon #3 was always the violent one - at Toni in particular.

“Boss says we got set up?”

Goon #1 nodded, running a hand over his mask as if to make sure it still fully covered his face. “Yeah. Did he tell either of you what to do with them?” 

Goon #2 cracked his knuckles, spitting on the floor. “He said to teach them a lesson and then get rid of them.”

Goon #3 immediately smiled, but before he could take even one single step towards them, Toni heard another small ping coming from the earrings that the dumbasses had not bothered taking off her.

She didn’t need any other warning. 

“Now!” called out Toni, and both her and Hope leaped off their chairs chucking them at the two goons approaching them and sending them to the ground while Bruce screamed. 

What followed, from Bruce’s point of view was a flurry of brunette hair, kicks and fists that he could not make heads of tails of. Both Toni and Hope were quick and small, and none of the goons had expected them to be strong too.

It cost them, and in the end all three were knocked out on the ground and neither of the girls looked like they had a single hair out of place.

Bruce stared at them in wide eyed shock as Toni stepped over one of the bodies and came to free him of his ropes. “What? How? When-”

“Bruce, I love you and will explain everything to you in a couple of minutes. Just stay here, hidden, and me and Hope will deal with it. Keep an eye open, Sharon might come for you soon.”

“Sharon?” he started asking, but Toni did not pay him any mind. Instead she followed Hope’s lead and disarmed their would be captors - properly - before tying them up with the same ropes they had used on them.

By the time they met up with Sharon, they had acquired plenty more weapons and left a trail of blood and concussions behind them. 

The blonde grinned when she saw them, a floppy disk in her hands. “Got everything here. You?”

Toni shook the folder she had swiped from Man In Charge - Derek ‘Firecracker’ Holmes - with a superior grin. “Got everything I need and more. How far from here is the police?”

“No one actually shot a weapon, so SHIELD might be able to handle the clean up,” explained Sharon as they all returned to the room where Bruce was still hiding.

“Great,” said Hope, with a small sigh. “I really don’t want to have to argue with dad over SHIELD again.”

“Relax,” said Sharon, rolling her eyes slightly. “Other than Aunt Peg, no one will have any idea that you were here. Speaking of: what the hell was Banner doing here?”

Toni grimaced. “I did not expect him. He wanted to talk to me about something, I think he's getting a new PHD or something like that, and managed to track us down at the coffee house. Did not have a chance to get him to leave before we were ‘kidnapped’.”

Said genius immediately - and quite clumsily - came out of his hiding space when he saw them, still pale as a sheet. “Toni? Share? Hope?”

Toni gave Hope the papers and reached to wrap her friend in a hug. This was not 2013 Bruce Banner who had evaded Ross, the military and SHIELD for years. This was 20 something years old Bruce Banner, who, while he did have a bit of an explosive temper, tended to shy away from active fighting. And while he was not as reserved as his future counterpart, he was also much more innocent.

“You okay, big guy?” she asked, pulling him towards the doors and ignoring the jeering and complaints coming from the tied up goons in the room.

Bruce flinched at their words, and stuck himself closer to Toni as they were leaving the room. “Aren’t we going to wait for the police?”

“Nope,” said Hope quickly unlocking one of the doors with the code she had managed to get out of one of the goons (number 23 or something) before she had knocked him out. “Hurry now.”

He ran when they did, but it was clear that he was not appeased in the slightest. “Is this something you guys do usually?” he demanded, as they quickly found the car Peggy had left for them, with the keys already in the ignition. “Are you guys criminals?”

He got a flat glare from Hope at that. “She is the current CEO of Stark Industries, and I will be the future CEO of Pym Technologies. Also, we were not the ones who were doing the kidnapping.”

Toni started the car, unsurprised when Bruce sat at the front beside her, still looking behind them in apprehension. “We are rich socialites," she reminded him, "And Sharon is my cousin. We have learnt to get ourselves out of kidnappings by the time we were 10.”

“What about the papers you stole, then?” he questioned. “And where did Sharon even come from?”

Toni considered him for a second, wondering if she should tell him or not. This was not the Bruce she had known in the future past, of course. But in a way, she knew this Bruce even better than she knew the other one. Knew enough to know that she could trust him with most things. Knew him enough to know that he wouldn’t fall asleep as she told him said things.

“Someone in SI is selling under the table,” she explained, as they started driving. “They are being incredibly careful, though. Barely any paper trails. And the technology I used to find that out... it’s very new tech. I don’t think the world is ready for it.”

“Like your earrings, that are also some sort of communicator?” at her surprised look, he managed a small smile. “I’m not an idiot. And you never wear this sort of earrings if you can help it.”

Sharon messed up his hair from behind, laughing at his grumblings. “That’s our genius.”

“But yeah. So, I used the tracking GPS installed in my weapons to figure out the middle man that was being used and hung around long enough to make them nervous. And made them nervous enough that they kidnapped me and Hope to see how much I knew.” She shrugged. “The FBI might get suspicious, but Toni Stark and Hope Van Dyne fleeing a kidnapping and taking as much information from the kidnappers as possible is a plausible story. Everyone knows we’re badasses.”

“Damn right!”

Bruce couldn’t help a small smile as well. “Yeah, you were cool.”

“We can teach you if you want?” tried Sharon, and he put both hands up in immediate defeat.

“No thanks. But suddenly, our first meeting and every time you showed up and randomly started attacking Toni following that makes so much more sense,” he joked, and all three girls just laughed.

He did not know the half of it.

+++

Toni was sitting in her studio with her mamma when the call finally connected.

While she had been aware of exactly what Toni was doing, Maria Stark had not been particularly pleased by it. And Toni couldn’t really fault her for it.

Sometimes it was still weird waking up and knowing that she was alive in a completely different timeline, one in which she was a woman and her mamma was still alive.

She still had nightmares of waking back up on Titan and finding out that these six/seven years had been nothing other than an amazing dream, before she finally died. That Thanos was mocking her with a life she couldn't have.

It was terrifying.

Still, sometimes it was annoying how much she would nag at her over everything, from her tinkering at all times of the day and the fact that she was ‘still not married to that handsome Stephen Strange’.

Toni had no interest in settling down, especially not now. Sure they had known each other for over six years now, but they had been dating in earnest for only three years. And because of the fact that she was based in California and he was in New York most of the time, they didn’t see each other all that often - even with the fact that she had a whole ass private jet.

Plus, no matter how much she liked the doctor, she just did not think the two of them would mesh in the long run. She had long ago abandoned the idea of Pepper Potts as her future wife, but that did not mean she was eager to replace her. And with Stephen? She cared for him, sure, but...

“Toni,” came Peggy Carter’s voice, and the girl straightened up on her boss chair.

“Hey, Aunt Peggy. How are you? What’s the weather like?”

“Sunny,” she said, and Toni relaxed. “You?”

“Sunny too,” she said. Now that they had assured each other that they could speak freely, she was eager to find out what she had found out. “So?”

“Stane is many things: an asshole, a bastard and a traitor,” said Aunt Peggy, and Toni smiled slightly at her tone of voice, “but he’s not a Nazi sympathiser.”

Well. That was something at least.

For years, first after finding out that HYDRA was still alive, and then after finding out that HYDRA was behind her parent’s assassination, Toni had wondered. Questioned herself on whether or not Obadiah had been behind that too, selling to HYDRA in exchange for them ‘taking care’ of Howard.

To find out he was a greedy bastard but not a greedy Nazi bastard was... good.

“Okay. That’s...” she shook her head, and quickly changed the topic. “So none of the men in that room were tied up with you?”

“No,” agreed Peggy. “They are all convinced that Stane turned on them, though, and more than willing to testify against him.”

That seemed too good to be true. “All of them?”

A pause. “Don’t ask questions you won’t like the answers to, Antoinette,” finally said Peggy, and Toni bit down on her lip.

That was one of the reasons she had not wanted to involve Peggy and SHIELD into the whole situation. Her Aunt would do anything for her family, but the methods she used... those were not methods Toni agreed with.

These people were not exactly good, but all they had done was buy weapons under the table. They were criminals and robbers, sometimes mercenaries, but not what one would call the scum of the Earth. These were the sort of people Toni would have wanted in prison, not ‘disappeared’ because they wouldn’t say exactly what Aunt Peggy/SHIELD wanted or needed them to say to get rid of Stane. 

They had had plenty of arguments regarding this topic, but Peggy had not moved on her stance. On her ‘ends justify the means’ attitude that she had passed onto Fury who had then used it to fuck with Toni’s former future life for years.

She wouldn’t have called her in, but Sharon had gotten involved, and Sharon could not simply call the police without risking herself getting exposed. 

“You’re right, I don’t want to know,” she finally said, pushing her thoughts away from those amateur kidnappers. They had gotten in over their heads, but that didn’t mean they deserved to die. But you try telling Peggy that. “I’m assuming you got a copy of the floppy disk Share took?”

Peggy hummed. “And I’m assuming you blew up those weapons already?”

Toni was not going to make the same mistakes she had made in her past life. “No one is getting their hands on my weapons unless I allow it. And now I can start the investigations on-”

“Toni!”

Toni’s head snapped up in surprise at the sound of her name.

Stephen was standing in the doorway of her office, dressed like he had just come out of the hospital and scowling down at her. Her mother was nowhere to be seen, and Toni was already ready to bet that whatever Stephen was doing here had something to do with her.

“Toni?” called Peggy, and right. Phone.

“I’ll call you later, Aunt Peggy,” she said, waiting for a goodbye before clicking end on the call, not once looking away from Stephen. “Hey, Stephanie. What’s up?”

If anything, her words seemed to make him even more angry. “What’s up?” He repeated, voice incredulous. He pulled out the prototype phone she had gifted him, Hope and Bruce with (she couldn’t give it to Rhodey because military and Sharon and Maria because SHIELD would try to recreate it), and opened something on it. “‘Hey, Stephen’,” he read, in a terrible imitation of her voice. She sounded nothing like that. “‘can’t come to our date today, sorry. Me, Hope and Bruce got kidnapped, but we’re all right.’” He put down the phone and glared at her. “What the fuck?”

Toni blinked at him, a little confused. “Are you mad I did not write ‘Hope, Bruce and I’ or...”

“You got kidnapped and you tell me that over text message?!” he shouted, one hand going into his hair. “Do you have any idea how worried I was?”

Oh. Toni shrugged, feeling a little warmed inside at intensity of his emotions. He cared. “I said I was fine,” she pointed out and he muttered something under his breath, squeezing his eyes shut.

Then he took a deep breath and exhaled, before opening his arms. “Come here,” he said gruffly.

Still a little wary, Toni took a couple of steps forward. He huffed at her hesitance, and met her halfway, wrapping his arms around her. 

Toni found herself relaxing. While she would forever say that no one gave hugs like her Rhodey-bear did, there was something always incredibly comforting about hugging Stephen Strange. “You were worried?” she asked, after about a minute of him just hugging her and saying nothing, his face hidden in the crown of her hair.

His hold tightened. “I had no idea what had happened to you, why you were kidnapped, who took you and what they did to you. If your mother hadn’t called me and offered one of your jets to bring me here, I don’t know what I would have done.”

Ah-ha! Toni knew Maria Stark had had something to do with this. Her mamma meddled way too much. “To be fair, I get kidnapped a lot. Or at least, I used to get kidnapped a lot more when I was younger. I’m used to it.”

“That is so fucked up,” said Stephen and Toni laughed, because he had no idea.

“Well, I am quite fucked up, I thought we established that already.” He huffed a laugh at that, and she smiled too. “But yeah, I have been sending similar messages to Rhodey my entire adolescence, so I didn’t think how this would have sounded like to you.”

Stephen finally let go of her, and she went, if a little unwillingly. He critically eyed her from top to bottom. “And you're okay? 100% okay?”

Toni gave him a sarcastic little twirl. “Peachy,” she confirmed, and then sidled closer to him, putting a hand over his chest. “Of course, you can give me a more thorough examination, doctor.”

His lips twitched in slight amusement. “I suppose I could. Is there a sterile room we can conduct this examination in?”

Toni gave him a grin and interlocked their fingers together. “Follow me, Doctor Strange.”

“Not a doctor yet.”

“Stop ruining my fantasies, Stephen!”

Earth-200207: April 1998

Toni walked on the stage of the press conference with the confidence of someone who had been CEO of Stark Industries for far longer than three years.

Her mother’s family... contacts were scattered around the room, some of them SI’s security team and some of them fronting as random journalists. Happy was standing close enough to the stage to ‘protect her’ in case something went wrong, but Toni’s security was top notch. 

After what had happened with Ana and the accident they had managed to trace back to a disgruntled ex employee of Howard, Toni had upped her security in a way that made her look plenty paranoid. But like she had been forced to learn, it wasn’t paranoia if they were really out to get you.

She gave them her perfected red lipped shark smile, enjoying the way the room quietened immediately at it.

She hadn’t earned the nickname 'Merchant of Death' yet, but she had heard different whispers this time round. Bitch Stark, Devil's Bride, Praying Mantis, Black Widow... The last one was particularly hilarious, considering the whole Romanoff thing, but Toni did not allow herself to feel any particular way about the nicknames. They were just names.

“Hello, all,” she said, standing properly. Back straight, high heels, perfect suit and gently made up face: she had always had more armours than just the Iron Man suits. “I am sure by now you have all heard of the arrest of Obadiah Stane and the FBI investigations into Stark Industries,” she said, voice properly sombre. 

To say Stane had been surprised he had been caught so quickly would be an understatement. His face when Toni had walked in his office escorted by the FBI and told him that his double dealing had been found out had been hilarious.

He had assumed that since she kept her distance from him, she wasn’t checking his every action with a microscope. He had assumed wrong.

After the shock had faded, she had endured him calling her a ‘naïve bitch’ and telling her how he would ‘make her pay’ with half an ear, instead helping the FBI by copying everything he had on his computer that was not patented SI business for them.

Thanks to her mamma, by the time Stane had been pushed out of the building, plenty of journalists had been milling around. The FBI had been annoyed at that, but Toni did not care.

It was one of the things she regretted the most from the previous timeline. Because of his death and SHIELD’s subsequent cover up of it, Stane’s double dealings had been conflated with SI and Tony. It had taken months to spin the PR and marketing enough that SI’s stocks started rising again. And still there were many people who assumed Tony had paid for Stane to be killed and pushed the double dealing on him to fix his own image.

She was pretty sure the Maximoffs had believed that too.

“Neither I nor my mother had any idea that weapons were being sold under the table. Weapons made for American soldiers were being sold to the highest bidders against them. An investigation is taking place by the FBI to find out who was part of this and to make sure they are brought to justice for their actions.” This time with the full approval of the Board. “Because of this,” and Toni forced herself not to smile. “Effective immediately, SI will be temporarily closing the weapons manufacturing division.”

The room exploded. 

Chapter Text

Earth-200207: April 1998

Toni carefully inspected the the small key sitting innocently around her neck.

She wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

On the surface it was nothing big. Just a simple key put on a chain around her neck. The chain was thin and silver, while the key was slightly bigger with a small ornamental stone on it - a blue/green topaz. It was pretty, but nothing to write home about.

But it wasn’t just a key.

It was the key to Stephen Strange’s apartment, gifted to her by the man himself a couple of hours ago.

She ran white nails against the small token, brain running a mile.

Toni wouldn’t insult anyone’s intelligence by saying she had not seen this coming. 

When she had met Stephen Strange at a geniuses gala in 1992, she had disliked/hated the man. He was the splitting image of the man that had kept her alive to watch the destruction of her Universe, to watch Peter, Pepper and Rhodey die before her eyes.

If he hadn’t stopped Thanos, she might have still ended up here, but at the very least she wouldn’t have had to see what she had seen. And sure, she wouldn’t have the bracelet he had given her, but seen as she still wasn’t quite sure what to do with the object, maybe that would have been a good thing.

After that first meeting, Toni had been hoping to avoid the man indefinitely. To live her life parallel to his and not have to see his face again until he became a sorcerer and their life collided.

Instead, she had gone to NYU with Bruce, and here he was. Just existing, in the place Toni had claimed as her own.

Needless to say, she hadn’t been very happy. She had been even less happy when he had noticed her and Bruce and started hanging out around them too.

Toni had been very irritated at how, the longer they spent time together, the harder it was to hold onto her dislike for him. He was annoyingly charming in his own way, and kept up with both her and Bruce quite easily, even if neither of them were in the same field as he. He soaked up knowledge like a sponge, and too soon she went from being vaguely insulting every time she saw him to actually enjoying their snark infested discussions on all things science.

By the time Bruce had pointed out that maybe she should be nicer to him since it looked like his genius did not leave him much space for friends, she had come to accept Stephen’s place in her life.

It was not a big surprise when her acceptance of the man turned into a strange frenemies-with-benefits sort of relationship. The first time they had been bickering and she pressed their lips together to shut him the fuck up, he had not even had the decency to look surprised. No, he had grabbed her back and kissed her just as fiercely, both of them ignoring Bruce’s ‘finally’ and his later complaints about them ‘finding a room’. 

They didn’t spend more time than before together, but now more than half of the time they did was occupied by making outs and quick sex in dark corners when no one was around.

Toni wasn’t quite sure when that turned into something more. When Stephen stopped rushing away after they had sex; when he started hanging around her even when Bruce was busy; when he started ‘helping’ her study (she didn’t need help) and she him (he didn't need help either); when they started talking to each other.

She wasn’t sure when any of that happened, but it did. And by the time Ana and Edwin died, their relationship had... evolved, somewhat. Toni had not meant to call him when she had been injured in the crash, and yet, her almost unconscious body had called him right after calling JARVIS. Not Rhodey. Not Sharon. Not Peggy.

Him.

And even more surprisingly, he had dropped everything and came. 

After that, she had stopped being Stark and instead became Toni to him, and he became Stephen to her. She had expected the change to be jarring, but somehow it had been pretty natural for both of them.

Like for some reason them not calling each other by first name had been the last hurdle, their relationship had sailed after that. Even though Stephen was finishing getting his MD and PHD, and she was now CEO of SI, things became easier. 

They were in contact with each other most days, and saw each other at least once every two weeks - more often if Toni was in New York and not back home in Malibu. At least once a month, they went on a date somewhere that wasn’t too expensive (one of their worst arguments had been just because of that; Toni did not see anything wrong with her covering most of their lunch dates when they went out, and Stephen was pissy about Toni constantly choosing such expensive places to eat at, places he couldn’t afford as a student). The long distance was irritating at times, but mostly it just... worked for them.

And now Stephen had gone ahead and given her a key to his apartment.

No one had ever given her a key to their place. 

Tony Stark had had plenty of relationships before Pepper, more or less serious. None of them had lasted more than a year, though, and no one had ever offered him a key to their place. Pepper already lived with him, and the few times she moved out was for short period of times or they were on a break and she didn’t really wanna see him anyway.

Still, Toni knew that a key was a big deal.

It was basically saying ‘my place can be your place too, if you want’, without the whole moving-in-together mess. It was an ‘I care a lot about you, and I know/hope you’ll be sticking around for a while’ sort of thing.

Was she? The Ancient One had said that while some events would happen no matter what she did, this timeline was not the exactly same one as the timeline from the Universe she had left. Things were different here.

So perhaps she would be sticking around. Perhaps her and Stephen would stay together for while.

She had loved Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts. Had loved the woman with her whole heart. And while Toni and Tony were both bisexual, she did not know if Pepper was. She hadn’t been in the first timeline, but could it be possible for her to be in this one? Hell, did Pepper even exist in this timeline? For all Toni knew, she was a man here.

But could Toni push her in the life from before again? When she was already... happy with Stephen?

She knew she wasn’t in love with the man, but somehow, despite his snark and sarcasm, she had started to care for him. It was quite obvious he cared for her, and liked her. Maybe even loved her.

But did she love him back?

Her feelings for him were confusing. It was like standing in the eye of a hurricane, like everything was moving both at incredible speed and not at all.

It wasn't like that with Pepper. What did that mean?

“Boss,” called Happy, and Toni let go of the key, turning to her driver/bodyguard with a raised eyebrow.

It was incredible and gratifying how quickly they had fallen back into their dynamic. Her mamma adored him already and the rest of her family & friends seemed to like him too. Maria and Peggy had actually given him a tough time at the beginning, testing his ability of keeping her safe by sending Toni’s previous bodyguard against him.

But despite the fact that he was no Black Widow, Happy wasn’t a slouch. He used to be a goddamn boxer, and knew enough fighting techniques that he had managed to mostly succeed against them. He lost to quite a few, but he impressed them enough that Toni was 'allowed' to hire him.

Not that she would have let their opinion stop her. Happy was here to stay.

He unlocked her door, and only then she realised they had finally arrived. “Oh, right. Thank you, Happy.”

He scowled. “I still don’t understand where you got that nickname from,” he complained, as the door of her car was opened.

Toni gave him a sunny smile and doublechecked her make-up before accepting the hand offered and walking out of the car.

Her popularity was rapidly increasing, she couldn’t help but note as the flashes tried to blind her even through her signature sunglasses. She wasn’t the only one they were waiting for, of course, but she was one of the most notable people who would be at this event. 

“Miss Stark!” “Over here, Miss Stark!” “A smile, Miss Stark?” 

Toni ignored them all, not relaxing even when she walked inside the venue. A lot of people immediately noticed her arrival and started whispering to each other, but Toni ignored them all and the few valets trying to get her coat.

Toni had not expected to hate galas even more this time around. But being female in business was somehow a bigger sin than being a former weapons manufacturer or accidentally unleashing a genocidal AI on the world. Toni had grown used to the media always looking for something to blame on her in her first life, but as a woman, there was a myriad of new traps for her to fall into.

Her arrogance was apparently even more terrible, now. If she smiled too much, she was naïve and trying too hard, and if she didn't, she was a bitch. If she flirted with someone, she was a cheating loose woman, but if she told a man to get away from her, she was suddenly too uptight. It was impossible to win.

So Toni had stopped trying to win and did what she had advised Pepper to do long ago when she had voiced similar concerns (and Toni felt terrible at how Tony had mostly dismissed said concerns, thinking they weren’t as big of an issue as she made them to be): embrace it and ignore it.

Thankfully, her date to the party was already there, and he smiled as he approached her. “Hey, Miss Always Late.”

“Brucey,” said Toni as she pressed a kiss on his cheek, linking their arms together and allowing him to guide her. “And it’s Doctor Always Late.”

He rolled his eyes good naturally, steering her to one side. 

Toni was grateful that the small kidnapping attempt hadn’t injured their friendship. The man had been freaked out for a while, sure, but he had not blamed her for it, nor had he stopped hanging around her.

It was such a simple thing, but Toni would be able to count on one hand the number of people in the future past who would have done the same thing.

And the other Bruce would not have made the cut.

While Bruce was not intimidating at all - he was like a small sloth, or something like that - people were less inclined to approach her if Toni was already hanging around someone else. Plus Bruce could keep up with her and her science talk, even though he took an unholy amount of pleasure in acting like a gossip.

“I mean, you’re not exactly hiding the necklace, Toni,” he said, smirking at her annoyed expression. “Everyone who knows jackshit about you and Stephen being a couple will know what it means.”

She huffed, resisting the urge to play with it and draw further attention to it. “I should have worn a turtleneck dress,” she said, sipping at her champagne once more. 

“So?”

She rolled her eyes at his insistence, but finally spoke. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Bruce. Was I expecting some sort of gesture from him? Uh, yeah, I guess, that’s how relationships work. But I expected him to come and tell me he loved me, not him straight up giving a key to his apartment. And he didn’t even give it to me nicely or explain what it was, no! He threw it at me as he was leaving and I had to figure out what it was by myself.”

Bruce chuckled, shaking his head. “Your perfect match.” At her scowl, he just laughed again. 

She continued. “And I’m not even sure what he expects me to do next. Am I meant to text him a ‘thank you’? Should I give him a key to my place? Cause my mamma lives there. Sure she mostly stays in the West Wing of the mansion, but it’s not just my house. Wouldn’t that give the wrong idea? Plus, it’s not even like he’d need a key to my house. He already knows the code, and JARVIS can open any doors he is allowed to walk in. The gesture would be symbolic at best. Is that what I’m going for?”

“You’re overthinking it,” said Bruce, smiling softly at her.

“What?” she asked, eyes narrowed at the look on his face.

Bruce shrugged, still smiling. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious that you care. About Stephen, I mean. It’s clear to me that you aren’t in love with him because for some reason you aren’t letting yourself fall in love, but you still care plenty.”

Toni was flummoxed by his statement. “The hell do you mean with, ‘you’re not letting yourself fall in love’?”

A raised an eyebrow. “You know exactly what I mean.”

No, she did not. “Uh, no I don’t? I-”

“Doctor Stark,” called a deep voice at her side.

When Toni looked up at the man standing beside her, it took everything in her to not startle in surprise.

But then again, it wasn’t everyday that King T’Chaka of Wakanda approached her at some fancy gala.

+++

Once she had gotten the notes from Carol in regards to Mar-Vell’s research, Toni had gotten to work. She had compiled them on her own servers and compared them to what her father had, studying and correcting her father’s maths by incorporating any alien knowledge Mar-Vell had left.

It was easy, once she started to see how the research connected to Starkanium, but one thing bothered her slightly. 

The fact that Starkanium had often been called ‘synthetic vibranium’. She knew why, they shared similar properties after all. But why was one able to fight back the power of Infinity Stones and the other wasn’t? It was curious.

Unfortunately for her, the only chunk of vibranium she had ever owned was in the frozen hand of a frozen capsicle that Toni was currently pretending didn’t exist.

Fortunately for her, she knew how to find and recognise vibranium, so when her first satellite system was sent in orbit in 1996, she had included the ability of finding any piece of vibranium not currently in Wakanda’s hands with it.

And she had, of course. After all, what happened to a meteorite when it crash landed on a planet?

It broke off into pieces.

And while Wakanda could claim ownership of the pieces in their land - Toni was not gonna try that - they couldn’t lay claim over the material itself. And Toni was efficient in buying and retrieving the precious mineral so that she could study it further.

She knew Wakanda wouldn’t be happy, but while she was fascinated (and suspicious) of their technology, she didn’t particularly care about the country itself. She had been very impressed with T’Chaka and his role in the Accords, but his son had left a lot to be desired.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” told her the King, as they stood near one of the balconies. 

Toni couldn’t see the Dora Milaje’s anywhere, but she knew they were around, somewhere. She raised an eyebrow at the King. “And why’s that?”

He gave her a slightly patronising look. “Vibranium is very powerful. Using it to create weapons to best your enemies-”

“And who exactly told you I was gonna use it to make weapons?” she interrupted, not hiding her rising irritation at the monarch’s words.

“What else have you westerners done with it?” he posed right back and that.

That wasn’t okay. “I am not my father, King T’Chaka.” He did not scoff, but his opinion of her was very clear in his eyes. Even though she did not tower over him in her heels, she still straightened up, very annoyed now. “My father grew up in war, King T’Chaka. So when he got his hands on the rarest and most powerful metal on the planet, he studied and created a prototype shield with it. A weapon of protection, not attack.” Though Rogers had used it to attack aplenty. “I am not living in war.” Yet. “I’m a scientist, and as scientists do when they find a cool new thing, I’m tinkering. Finding the weak spots. And even if I wanted to make weapons out of it, who are you to come and stop me?”

She wasn't. She was mostly thinking about force shields, but it was the principle of the thing.

“The world isn’t ready for weapons made out of it,” he insisted.

Toni had a few choice of words on that particular topic, but that’s when another familiar face appeared in front of them. 

“Baba,” said T’Challa, giving his father a look. 

T’Chaka told him something in Wakandan that T’Challa quickly answered. They exchanged a couple more annoyed/angry words with each other, and then the King walked away from her, not even bothering to say goodbye.

“I am sorry for that,” told her T’Challa, a heavier accent on his tongue from the one she was used from him. “My father...”

Toni had gotten better at not letting the actions from og!timeline people colour her meetings with new!timeline people, so she just shrugged. “Fathers will be fathers. I’d be nervous too if a non ally started gathering pieces of the metal that I had jealously gathered around myself.”

Now T’Challa stiffened slightly, though his smile did not shift. “Wakanda does not have that much Vibranium,” he told her.

He was trying to get her to talk. Toni could very clearly see the kimono beads around his wrist. She pretended she didn’t. “I don’t particularly care about why Wakanda is sitting on a goldmine of Vibranium and lying about it,” she told him, with a shrug. “But since I never asked you guys for any of that or even implied that I was going to share the information recorded with anyone else, I would appreciate if you left me the hell alone.”

T’Challa’s eyes went a little calculating, more careful. “Is this you getting ready to blackmail us?”

Toni rolled her eyes. Apparently him being a stick in the butt was not a by-product of his father dying. “I just told you, I am ignoring it because honestly, I don’t care. I don’t need an arsenal of Vibranium because, believe it or not, I’m not building weapons. The chunks I’ve found in the sea and around the African continent are enough for me to study, I don’t need any more.”

He did not look like he believed her, but he did not push on that. Instead he looked more thoughtful. “How did you even manage to find a way to track Vibranium? What are you trying to achieve?”

There was scientific curiosity in him, but there was too much suspicion in his eyes for Toni to truly entertain it. “A scientist does not kiss and tell, and least not until they have found a conclusion for their hypothesis.”

“Perhaps Wakanda could help you with that,” he said, with a shrug. “We could have found the answer you’re looking for already.”

Toni gave him an innocent look. “How could a country famous for textile products be able to help me?”

T’Challa gave her a look, now more amused than anything. “You have satellites that were able to find out that Wakanda has more Vibranium than we let on. I will not insult your intelligence any further, no matter what Baba thinks.”

Toni decided to bite the bullet and pointedly looked at the kimono beads bracelet. T’Challa looked surprised for a second, and then laughed. “How?”

“Genius,” told him Toni, succinctly. “It’s what we do.” 

He gave her a little nod, and then tilted his head to the side. “Would you care for a dance?”

Toni was a little surprised at the sudden change in conversation, but forced herself to appear more neutral. She wasn’t stupid enough not to think that this was some other type of manipulation from the Prince - from what she knew of him, he was far too stubborn to give up on things.

She knew herself well enough to know she would give him squat even if she accepted the dance. But in the end she just shook her head, nodding in the direction of where Bruce was sitting, keeping his eyes on her with a slight frown.

After all, third world country or not, T’Challa was a prince. The media would go up in flames at the news of Toni Stark turning up to an event with a necklace she didn’t have before and could only be a gift of her beau, and then dancing around with a foreign genius prince who was younger than her.

She did not care about about the media’s opinion of her, but she was not gonna fan the flames and get herself in worse trouble.

T’Challa did not look very surprised - just a tad disappointed - and bid his goodbyes to her before Toni walked back towards Bruce, sidestepping any other attempt at intercepting her.

“You okay?” asked Bruce the second she stopped beside him. “Why did that man accost you and is he really a King?”

Right. The majority of the world did not even know where or who Wakanda was. The King was only here because T’Challa had been invited on accord of him graduating from Harvard.

“Yes. And he wanted to politely threaten me over some of my business decisions,” she said, just waving her hand impatiently when Bruce looked a little worried. “Not something to worry about. They wouldn’t actually hurt me, they’re just worried about what I could do.”

Toni had not told Bruce about the Vibranium. As much as she liked this Bruce and as much as she trusted him, he was now studying at Culver University. Which meant he was on the road to Hulk and Ross.

Toni wouldn’t let Ross hurt Bruce, not this time around, but she knew before becoming eternal enemies, those two had been... friendly-ish. Bruce was dating the man’s daughter, after all.

So if she got Bruce involved in her research into Vibranium, Starkanium and Infinity Stones, there was the risk of Ross getting a wind of it. And she knew good old Thunderbolt did not have qualms about doing whatever he could to get his hands on what he wanted.

Bruce looked worried. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she assured him, patting his shoulder.

T’Challa’s raise to power had been a little violent, and she knew T’Chaka’s hands were far from clean, but there was still a lot between that and them assassinating a woman for knowing too much and having Vibranium. So long as she didn’t target the Vibranium in their hands or attack them directly, they’d grumble and attempt to intimidate her, but wouldn’t actually maim her.

Honour was apparently very important to them (where was that honour when T'Challa had left her in Siberia with a broken suit, she had never had the chance to question, but whatever).

Bruce ended up ducking out about an hour later. Toni had offered to drive him home but the man had said something about a paper he didn’t finish - he was doing yet another PHD - so she had let him go.

She had a couple more rounds before she could actually leave (a stipulation she had with her mamma: Toni had to stay at the various galas up to a certain hour and she would make sure Toni had to attend as few of them as possible) but she was starting to get bored. 

She hadn’t seen the Wakandans leave, but they must have cause they weren’t anywhere around anymore. Many people had approached her for a dance or offering to get her a drink, but she had turned most of them down. She had danced with a couple of the girls - because why the fuck not - and shot down offers of drinks ever since she had noticed someone spiking her drink at one of these functions a few years back (being a woman was so fucking hard). 

But she was getting thirsty, so she headed towards the bar, smiling politely to the few people who tried to get her attention and not stopping. She was tired of the frilly little drinks the waiters kept serving, and of the champagne. She wanted something stronger until Happy finally came to get her, she wanted something like-

Everything she was thinking about just froze in her brain as Toni stopped several steps away from the bar.

Because (what the hell). Because (what the hell!).

Because,

There, sitting at the bar, nursing a scotch on the rocks was...

“Loki?!”

Chapter Text

Earth-200207: April 1998

The thing about nearly shouting the name of an Asgardian god/alien is that they tended to hear you.

Which meant that, despite how noisy the place was, and the fact that Toni had not even shouted that loudly - she had at most hissed - Loki’s head snapped up at the sound of her voice, and surprised green eyes pinned her with unerring precision.

Oh shit.

Before he could as much as move, Toni turned on her heels and proceeded to power walk away as fast as she dared without looking suspicious, turning and twisting in the crowd in the hope that she would lose him.

She knew this Loki was not the same Loki she had seen in the Invasion. And according to Bruce, that Loki, the bag of cats, had not been the 'real' Loki either.

But the last time Toni had seen the man was New York. She knew he had died during the London space invasion, but somehow was alive again and then died again (Tony hadn’t asked questions, too worried about, you know, Thanos). So the last memories she had of him included him murdering people, throwing Tony Stark out of a window and bringing an alien invasion at her doorstep. 

So yeah, seeing him? Nowhere near the top 10 things Toni wanted to deal with.

She twisted and avoided Justin Hammer who thankfully hadn’t noticed her, as thoughts rushed through her head. Had she somewhat changed the timeline? Had the Invasion already started?

She wasn’t ready for that!

Earth wasn’t ready for an Invasion. Carol was god knows where, and even if Fury paged her, who knew how long it’d take her to get back?

There was the Ancient One, but when she met him, Stephen Strange had made it clear that they battled demons and spirits from other dimensions, not aliens. After all, she hadn’t helped with the Invasion in Toni’s timeline, why would she help with this one?

She stopped once she was sure she had lost him in the crowd, and let out a deep breath. She needed to think. She had JARVIS, right now, but-

“It has been a long time since a mortal was able to recognise me,” said a voice, and Toni spun around with a gasp, pointing her naked palm at him.

Nothing happened, of course. Because this was a new body, a new timeline, and she did not own repulsor technology, let alone her wrist gauntlets.

Loki raised an eyebrow at her gesture. “What kind of spell do you suppose yourself able to cast, with such a stance?”

“It’s not a spell,” she managed, taking a couple steps away from him and double checking the crowd. No one seemed to be paying them any attention, and Toni tried to not jump to the worst conclusion. “What are you doing here?”

Loki was following every one of her movements with open intrigue, seeing far more than Toni wanted to allow him to. “I quite enjoy gatherings of minds, and while woefully primitive, Midgard does not lack in that aspect.” He explained. “Who are you, who’s seidr burns with the light of a thousand souls and forgotten words, and wears a soul catcher upon her wrist?”

Uh, what? “I thought only sorcerers had seidr,” she said, a little confused, but breathing and heart rate slowing down. When Loki did not reply, just kept staring expectantly, she huffed. “My name is Toni Stark.”

Come on, Toni, she thought to herself. You have managed to slow him down with your wit before. You can dazzle him again.

He gave her a little smirk. “Thank you. I thought it was clear we were playing the game you Midgardians call 'quid pro quo'. An answer for an answer. And to answer your question, what idiot told you that? Every living being in the Nines and beyond has the capability of magic. That’s called seidr. Not every being is able to access and utilise their seidr, however.” 

Thor had been the one to explain seidr to her, when she had questioned him regarding Loki’s magic and the fact that he had not used it all that much during the invasion. And either he did not know much about it after all, or a lot got lost in Asgardian to Earth translation.

She refocused on him. “What do you want?”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “Quid pro quo; it’s my turn to ask the questions. Toni Stark is not your name. What is your name?”

Toni frowned at him for a second, then realised. “Oh. Well, my name is Antoinette Stark, but I go by Toni.” Crap. Should she had told him that? She was pretty sure she had heard somewhere that names had powers, was that the case in real life too?

“Well met, Lady Antoinette,” he said, and, for a bizarre moment, Toni felt as if she was the Queen of France or something, when he gave her a bow and pressed a kiss on the back of her hand. “Your turn to ask your question.”

“What do you want?” she repeated, and then her eyes caught on his light sphere.

She had gotten pretty good at mostly ignoring the spheres over people’s hearts, nowadays. They were always there, and she was so used to them that sometimes she did not even pay attention to them anymore.

But some people’s spheres were a lot more noticeable than others’. Stephen’s sphere was green, which Toni suspected had something to do with the fact that he used the Time Stone in the future past and the fact that he was a sorcerer. The Ancient One's was a very dark orange, almost black - something that had freaked her out a lot, when she had noticed. From what she had managed to figure out ‘bad’ people had dark spheres and ‘good’ people had lighter ones (though she did not know what the parameters for good or bad where).

Loki’s sphere was not orange. It was a warm and dark yellow, shiny and new, almost gold. 

With his motif and general aesthetic, Toni would have expected him to be walking around with a green sphere, not a yellow one. Or at least a blue one, because of the Scepter.

“Nothing in particular. I was quite content with drinking your dreadfully weak ale as I was being propositioned by another scientist, but then you called my name. That was curious enough; and then on top of that you chose to flee.”

“There is a joke here, about prey and predators,” she muttered, and Loki snorted, but she was starting to calm down now. 

This Loki was very much different from the Loki she had met. 

For starters, his hair was shorter than the Loki from the future past. There was none of the craziness and ‘I am burdened with glorious purpose’ bullshit going on with him. He looked almost regal in his simple green and black suit, completely different from what he had been wearing in Stuttgart, but completely in accordance with the late 90s style.

He was clearly the same man, considering they had answered to the same name, but he also wasn’t the Loki that Barton had loved to hate for years.

“You haven’t asked me how I know you,” she finally said and Loki gave her a smug little look.

“I am not an idiot,” he drawled, before offering her his arm. “There are many eyes on us, right now. Would you like to head somewhere more private with me, Lady Antoinette?”

Just because he didn’t scream crazy and dangerous did not mean that Toni trusted him, though. “We can go near the balcony at the entrance,” she said, crossing her arms around her chest and refusing the offered arm. It was where she had agreed to wait for Happy to meet her at when it was time to go home. No one would be able to hear them without them noticing but everyone would be able to see them in case Loki tried something.

Loki looked even more amused at her defiance, but did drop his arm. 

Still, he stuck particularly close to her as they approached the balcony, both of them ignoring the few stares sent their way. 

It irritated her more than it should to have him basically loom over her even though she was currently in heels. Seriously, whoever made this Universe clearly hated her. Why else would they take inches off Tony Stark when making her? She was already one of the shortest in the Avengers lineup then, now she was basically pocket sized. And sure, 5’5 was average height, but the company she kept had a thing for being fucking giants.

Toni let out a breath at the feeling of cool air on her skin, relishing on the night air. She hadn’t even realised how hot the inside of the gala had been, but now she did and there was nothing that could convince her to return to that room again, deal with her mamma or not.

“There is ancient magic across your seidr,” told her Loki and right, she shouldn’t be so relaxed. The God of Lies was standing beside her (yes, she knew it was the God of Mischief not lies; no, she did not care). “And a sorcerer’s mark upon your soul.”

Toni frowned at him slightly, eyeing his sphere for a fraction of a second. “You can see people’s souls?”

Loki looked at her like she was being deliberately obtuse. “Of course not. I can still see the sorcerer’s mark upon you, though.”

Instead of the Ancient One, aka the only current sorceress she knew, her mind brought forth a long buried memory from the previous timeline.

Strange’s hand on her cheek, more gentle than it had the right to be. A whispered apology, and a muttered spell. The feeling of a butterfly fluttering in her chest before he handed her the bracelet.

She had no proof, but she also had no doubt that it was his mark upon her.

“What does that tell you?”

“That’s two question in a row, Lady Antoinette,” he told her, and she rolled her eyes.

“Can’t you just call me Toni? And that’s not a question, just phrased as one,” she rushed to say when he smirked. 

“I’m afraid I cannot do that. I can drop the Lady, however, if you so wish. Odd, most women I have met have been nothing but pleased by my manners,” he said and Toni suppressed a second eye roll. “And in answer to your question, it tells me that you are not from our Universe, Antoinette.”

Toni’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Loki immediately raised his hands. “Peace, Antoinette. Your seidr signature simply does not match the ones of anyone else from Midgard or anywhere in the Nine Realms. And yet, you are without a shadow of doubt, a full blooded Midgardian. Only one answer for a Midgardian woman who recognised me so soon despite not even being a century old and who's seidr does not match the one of everyone else in this universe: you are not of this Universe. Your soul travelled across the Multiverse and reached this sister reality. Am I correct?” 

“Yes, and I’m counting that as a question,” she rushed to say. Loki’s eyes narrowed at that, but his lips twitched in something akin a smile. “What do you mean sister reality?”

“The farther and more different the Universe you are pushed in is, the more complicated it is for your soul to acclimate to the new host’s body. A sister reality is a Universe that most similarly echoes your own. There are differences, of course, but they start small, easily ignored. They run parallel to each other until a choice is made differently in one of them; and then, they branch out. Whoever pushed you is both incredibly smart and incredibly powerful.” He didn’t add anything else, but his face said enough.

Toni winced. “It wasn’t you,” she said, and he honest to god pouted. What the fuck. “You and I... we did not really get along in my Universe. We met once, and it wasn’t in the best circumstances.”

Loki looked confused at the statement, and then frowned. “I see. That’s why you fled from me.”

He looked hurt at the realisation.

Toni shouldn’t really care about his feelings. Loki wasn’t crazy, and was just visiting Earth - which really made Thor’s statements that his brother was different during the Invasion ring much truer than she had previously thought - but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a threat.

He was still a powerful alien who could do magic.

And yet something in her heart ached at the sight of Loki being hurt. Something about the yellow sphere called to her, made her want to fix it. Sure, Loki was attractive in a Victorian gothic chic sort of way, but it wasn’t that that made her feel restless.

She didn’t understand it.

“Like I said,” she found herself saying, not touching him but moving closer to him. “We met once, and it didn’t happen quite like this. You haven’t become the man I met.”

Loki looked surprised for a second, then realisation washed over his features. “Not only you are from another Universe, you are also from the future of said Universe,” he realised.

Shit.

But surprisingly, instead of asking the question anyone would ask upon meeting a time traveller who knew them, Loki gave her a more assessing look. Then he offered her his hand once more. “I don’t know what the circumstances of our first meeting were, and I don’t know if they will repeat themselves in this timeline too, but...”

So far Toni had not approached any of her would be enemies to try and make amends before they went evil villain. Stane, she had removed the second she could, and Vanko and Killian she had no interest in meeting. Hammer she still saw every now and then, but she avoided him even more than she had done as Tony Stark.

It would stand to logic that she employed something similar while dealing with Loki.

And yet, her hand moved on its own accord, and something not quite electric ran through them both when their palms made contact. Loki looked at her with vaguely concealed intrigue, and then offered a smile that, on anyone else, she would have called shy.

“Well met, Loki,” she said, repeating his earlier words, and Loki's smile grew.

+++

Toni wasn’t that surprised when she returned home and found the Ancient One sitting on the small couch in her bedroom, sipping at her tea.

“You know, I could have been bringing someone back from the party,” she told the older woman, once she had locked the door behind her. “What would you have done then?”

“Doctor Strange is still busy with university work,” answered the sorceress, quite serenely.

Toni kicked off her heels and put them away before throwing herself on the bed, dress and all. She only turned slightly so she could face the Ancient One where she laid. “It’s kind of creepy how you are passively surveilling him and stuff, not going to lie.”

“I wouldn’t cast stones about surveilling people if I were you, Miss Stark,” she said, which. Fair.

“So... I’m guessing you’re here about Loki?” finally asked Toni, when the Ancient One offered no other comment and continued to idly drink her tea.

She looked up from her tea and studied Toni with her Phil Coulson level bland expression. “I am here because you have questions.”

That didn’t sound right. “I always have questions. You never answer them, though.”

“Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime,” she quoted. 

“Confucius,” huffed Toni, rolling her eyes slightly. “Please tell me this isn’t one of our philosophic debates.”

After the first visit while Toni was busy creating JARVIS, the Ancient One had showed up a couple of times. Never when Toni was looking for her, and mostly at random, with the glaring exceptions of when Ana and Edwin died.

Then Toni had expected her to come and when she did she had proceeded to shout at her for a good five minutes before bursting into tears. The Ancient One hadn’t coddled her or offered any platitudes, and once Toni had collected herself, she had simply given her a book on Infinity Stones to help with the research from Mar-Vell, and that was it.

Sometimes she showed up with random books for Toni regarding the Infinity Stones - with the most information she had pertaining the Time Stone and the least pertaining the Soul Stone - some times she came and insisted that Toni meditated with her, sometimes she just threw pearls of wisdom at her that made no fucking sense. And most importantly, all the time she refused to answer Toni’s question.

When Toni had told her about the spheres, the woman had looked surprised, said “interesting”, and proceeded to talk to her about Kant for half an hour.

Kant!

The Ancient One chuckled. “No, today is not the day for philosophy. Now ask.”

“What’s your name?” immediately asked Toni. 

She had been asking for like five years now, and the woman never answered. 

She raised a thin eyebrow at Toni. “That is your first question?” When Toni just stared back challengingly, the Ancient One shook her head, pouring herself a second cup of tea like the addict she was. “My name is Tao.”

The tree bore fruits, nice.

Toni raised an eyebrow at that. “Tao? Like Miss Tao? Or Mrs Tao? Or just Tao, like Adele?”

“Adele has yet to graduate school, Miss Stark, careful with your pop culture references,” chided the An- Tao. 

“You’re the only person I can use all my pop culture references on with and hope to get an actual reaction from, Galandriel,” she defended. Then she looked at her more seriously. “Why did you guys not help during the New York Invasion?”

Tao gave her a look. “Who told you we didn’t?”

Toni scowled, sitting up and crossing her legs under herself. “We were almost overwhelmed, and there was a wholeass nuke heading towards the city. Didn’t see you anywhere during that.”

“Just because you did not see us, it does not mean we didn’t help, Miss Stark,” answered Tao, calmly. “We helped where we needed to help, but it was the Avengers’ task, in the end, to finish the battle. Aliens are not exactly our jurisdiction.”

“Loki was magic, though.”

“And yet he did not use a single spell during the entirety of his Invasion,” she pointed out. Which Toni had of course noted. Other than the holograms when they had first attacked him in Stuttgart, Loki had not touched his magic. Very odd.

“Loki’s sphere was yellow,” she told her, after a few seconds of thinking.

There seemed to be genuine surprise in the Ancient One’s expression, at that. “Uh. Interesting, I would have thought...”

She didn’t finish the sentence, and while Toni would have loved to hear her theories, she had hers to share first. “Loki came to Earth on my timeline with the Scepter, a weaponised artefact used to house the Mind Stone aka the yellow Infinity Stone. Stephen’s sphere was green, and during the length of time I knew him for, he handled the Time Stone, aka the green stone. Obviously these factors are connected.”

Would Wanda become a witch after all, and also have a yellow sphere? After all her powers came from the Mind Stone. But for some reason her magic was red, just like the Reality Stone. What did that mean?

One other thing Toni had noticed was that the butterfly on her wrist changed colours depending on who she was around. At first it was always orange, so she had not really noticed the differences.

But ever since she had started seeing the spheres, she noticed that it became a jade green when she touched Stephen Strange, and earlier, when she shook hands with Loki, it turned into citrine yellow. It somehow reflected the colour of the spheres people had, even those of the standard orange people.

Tao nodded. “I know I might seem cryptic, but while I have plenty of reading materials, Infinity Stones are not my forte. I wield the Time Stone at times, but I do not understand it to the levels Agamotto did. Only one other sorcerer ever did.”

“Stephen,” guessed Toni, her hand going to the small key around her neck.

“Yes,” agreed Tao. “So, while I can agree with your thoughts regarding these windows into people's souls you can see, I cannot offer a concrete explanation on what it means.”

Toni huffed, laying back on the bed. “At least you’re answering me now.”

Still, she hated that she did not have enough data to properly draw more than a simple hypothesis. 

“I think the answer of it all lies on one specific questions you should answer for yourself, Miss Stark,” started Tao after a few seconds of silence. Toni turned her head to look at her in question, finding the woman once more on her feet. “What colour is your sphere?” Then, without waiting for an answer, she drew open a portal and stepped through it, tea set and all.

Toni stared at the spot she had vanished from, and glared. “Bitch,” she muttered, moving to take off her clothes.

What kind of question was that? Toni had told her that she was unable to see a sphere on herself when she looked. She had tried various things, but none of them seemed to work. She had tried looking at herself in the mirror, awkwardly bending her head and checking her own chest, both clothed and naked; tried taking a picture the old fashioned way; tried creating a small prototype Stark Phone and using the selfie function. And all her attempts came up with the same results: she didn’t have a sphere.

She didn’t know the reason, though she had plenty of speculations. Maybe because she was two people fused in one, maybe it was like a vampire thing where you couldn’t see your own reflection, who the fuck knew.

Once she was in her pyjamas, had taken off her make up and undid her hair, Toni threw herself back on the bed, brain still going miles an hour.

Her thoughts went back to Loki, and Stephen, and the key the last had given her.

She felt undoubtedly drawn to Loki. But she was almost 100% sure that it wasn’t romantic or sexual in the slightest. It was just... there. A strange connection that she had no idea how it had forged, and that she did not know how to cut.

Or if she wanted to cut.

Even before future!Bruce had told her, Toni had had her doubts about Loki’s motivations and the way he had gone about the Invasion. From a strategic point of view, it was a disaster, and the more and more that Toni learnt about the Trickster from Thor pointed to him being anything but a fool.

She didn’t think mind control had been involved, but there were other manners of coercion. And the more she thought about it, the more she realised that Loki had really not looked that good when he had arrived on Earth.

And then there was the matter of the not used magic. 

Why?

At the end of the day, none of the Avengers would have been able to fight back against magic considering they hadn't even known magic existed up until then. The mind control was handy, but Loki could have just sent an offensive spell against them and then they would have been toast.

Hell, why bother try and throw Tony Stark out of a window when he could have more easily snapped his neck? Toni was sure it would have been even more satisfactory. 

And before then, he had proved that bullets did not do shit to him; and yet he had immediately surrendered when Iron Man had shown up in Stuttgart, knowing jackshit about what type of weapons he had.

So Toni had been aware that there had been a lot more going on with the Invasion that she knew about.

But while she had let Thor know her suspicion - too late, considering Thor came back to Earth after Loki was already dead - she had not actually cared about the Trickster. It was mostly her scratching an itchy incongruent spot to try and figure out the truth.

So where did this strange feeling of kinship come from?

Chapter Text

Earth-200207: July 1998

“What’s a man got to do to get a hug around this place?” came a familiar voice over her shoulder.

Toni felt a huge grin blossoming on her face as she dropped the small engine she had been working on and turned around. And sure enough, there he was, standing in the doorway of her workshop in all his Air Force glory: her platypus himself.

Toni squealed, wiping the oil over her jeans before she rushed at him, jumping in his arms. “Rhodey!”

“Oof!” said the Airman as he caught her, but, as usual, he did not drop her. “Good to see you’ve missed me, ugh, stop kissing me!”

Toni did not stop, pressing million of kisses over his cheeks and forehead. Only when she was satisfied with her work did she let go of him, allowing herself to be put down. “Oh my god, when did you get back?” 

“Two days ago,” he explained, taking her hand in his and dragging her back upstairs towards the living room. Toni only half heartedly protested, way too happy at having Rhodey back to be actually annoyed at the interruption. “Spent the last two days with the family, then thought I’d come by and surprise my favourite genius.”

“I was gonna say, I’m the only genius you know and then thought better of it,” she said, then glared at one of the cameras once they were in the living room. “Speaking of: J, why didn’t you tell my platypus was in the house?”

“He wanted to surprise you, Miss,” told her the AI, voice just a tad too innocent.

It made something in her heart soar, to hear this familiar tone from JARVIS. He was growing in leaps and bounds, and watching him become more and more human as time passed made her feel so incredibly happy and satisfied.

Gods, she was so proud of him. “Little troublemaker,” she still said, because she had a reputation, goddamn it. Then she turned her attention on Rhodey. “You know, you could have called me or something. I worry every time you go overseas.”

That was a truth that had been real in the future past and was equally as real in this universe. Sure, Rhodey had survived until the end, in the original timeline, but after Loki, Toni had decided to do some research on sister realities, something the Ancient One had accepted to help with.

While no Universe was the same as another, a sister reality was the closest thing to a repetition of the same Universe there was. The starting lines tended to be almost the same, but there were small changes in them, little insignificant details that were altered; and more often than not, these small details compounded and completely changed the final outcomes.

So while in the original timeline Rhodey had survived all of his missions, no one could safely say that the same would happen in this one too. 

And that was enough to make her worry.

“I know,” agreed Rhodey, collapsing on the couch with her. “But I was busy. Speaking of calling: you could have called me too, you know?”

She frowned, slightly confused. “About what?”

Rhodey rolled his eyes, albeit fond. “Tones, seriously. Had my mom not told me, and had I not later checked my e-mails for my SI liaison duties, I wouldn’t have found out about Stane.”

Ah. Right. She gave him a sheepish look and then forced herself to turn serious once more. “What’s really there to say? Stane not only betrayed me and Howard, he betrayed SI and he betrayed America. He’s a traitor.”

“He’s still your godfather,” tried her best friend, but Toni shook her head. 

“He hasn’t been my godfather in a really long time. He’s rotten to the core, and I knew something was up with him ever since Howard died, both me and mamma did,” she admitted.

Rhodey looked alarmed at her words. “You don’t think-”

Toni quickly shook her head, catching onto his meaning immediately. “I had Aunt Peggy check. He wasn’t the one who ordered the hit, so that’s something.” When he grimaced at her words, she narrowed her eyes at him. “What?”

He sighed, and crossed his arms around his chest. “I, just... be careful, okay? You said your Aunt Peg is part of a shadow organisation, and it sounds like you’re getting involved in that, and Tones-”

“Nah, don’t worry about that. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I willingly hand my services over to the Strategic Homeland whatever of whatever,” she told him, waving her hand carelessly. She knew it seemed like she was getting cozy with SHIELD again, but she truly wasn’t. Just when part of her family was SHIELD, it was simply harder to avoid the organisation.

But Aunt Peg knew better than to even ask that Toni joined, and Sharon understood that Toni was a businesswoman, not a spy.

She loved Aunt Peggy, but she wasn't stupid enough to think that Fury's 'the ends justify the means' attitude existed in a vacuum. He was Aunt Peggy's successor, and after meeting 90s Fury, she could tell that those were learned traits. Which meant that Peggy - and others, but definitely Peggy - taught him all he knew.

It was a bitter pill to swallow.

“Good to know,” he said, looking a little bemused when a small robot appeared with a tray and two tall glasses on it. “New AI?”

Toni grinned, accepting the iced teas for them both. “No, just a bot. Thank you.” At the look he gave her, she pouted. “What? I was getting bored.”

Rhodey accepted his iced tea, then eyed her in interest. “Speaking of getting bored. Other than reading about Stane becoming enemy of the state, I couldn’t help also noticing that you’re suddenly no longer making weapons.”

Ah. Toni played with the straw of her glass, not making eye contact with Rhodey. “Well, I never said ‘no longer’. I actually said ‘temporarily halting’, especially while the big guns check my company top to bottom for Stane sympathizers, traitors and stuff.”

He gave her a look. “I’m not one of those silly generals, Toni. I’ve been your best friend for like 10 years now, and I know how to listen to what you say and look at what you do.” When she didn’t reply, he pressed on. “SI has been producing hell of a lot of defensive gear, ever since you stepped up, along with the weapons. And now, after the halting of the weapons manufacturing, the gear and body armour has like doubled. Someone who didn’t know you would think that you were making up for the no weapons sale, but someone who did know you would come and ask for further clarification before sharing their own hypothesis.”

She snorted a little at his words, and leant back on the couch once more, her head resting on his shoulder. She thought carefully about her words before she finally spoke. “When I joined SI, it was with a lot of people wondering if I’d ever be able to maintain what Howard was doing, if I'd ever compare to him, if I was as talented as him." This was true both times she became CEO, but much more so this time around. Because apparently girls couldn't make bombs.

“So when I joined, that was my goal. Show everyone that Howard had done the right decision in having me appointed as CEO the moment I was ready. That I was Toni fucking Stark and I was not ‘as talented’ as he was, that I was 10x times what he was on his best day.

“I made weapons he could only dream of, made his old ones better and made sure the world stopped thinking of me as ‘Howard and Maria Stark’s daughter’ or 'the Stark heir', and finally started to remember my name.

“But,” she said with a sigh, “That was never what I wanted. Do I like explosions? Yes. Do I like building efficient bombs and weapons? Also yes. Am I good at it? Hell fucking yes.” She shook her head. “But it’s not what I want to do. I always wanted something... more,  for me and SI. I want to open us for new and better venues. I want SI to go medical, to go energy, to go communication technology. We are no longer living in WWII. Sure, there will be wars no matter what I do, and I’ll help protect our troops, but I can do so much more than blow up a mountain. I can do so much more than murder random people. I can protect us. Protect you.” She turned to Rhodey, who was sipping on his drink while watching her carefully. “Do you understand me?”

He loudly slurped up the iced tea, and Toni worried, for a second, if this was the ‘post Afghanistan pre Iron Man’ argument they’d had in the future past. If they were gonna get mad at each other again.

But this Rhodey, while still military, was not as entangled with the mess of bureaucracy the original was, so he just smiled fondly at her. “Yeah... Yeah, I understand you. You’re Toni Stark,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “You're gonna piss off a lot of the big wigs when they finally understand that you're no longer putting out weapons, but... you're you. You were always meant to take over the world and improve it as you saw fit. I’m not that surprised that you finally started your Empire.”

Toni relaxed, letting out a slight sigh of relief, and cuddled on his side, almost knocking down the teas in her scramble. 

"I love you very much, sugar pop."

"Mhm, you better," he told her, knocking his head against hers affectionately. They stayed like that for a while, until both their drinks were finished, and then Rhodey was speaking again. “Oh by the way: when were you going to tell me that Stephen gave you a key to his place?”

Toni rolled her eyes at him, even as her fingers went to touch at the necklace. She had already used it three times since she had first received it four months ago, but whenever she wasn't using it, it was back around her neck. “It’s no biggie.”

“Oh, my bad,” said Rhodey, voice all sarcasm. “For a second I thought it was a relationship milestone to hand over your key to your significant other. Come on! Are you guys at the ‘here, I cleared out a drawer for you’ stage or not?”

Uh. Toni hadn’t realised that was another relationship milestone. She did, in fact have a drawer at his place filled with several of her things and make up, and he did have one at her place too. They hadn’t spoken about it, so Toni hadn’t really thought about it.

Rhodey read the answer in her face, and looked immediately delighted. “Oh my god. Look at you, who’d have thought little miss MIT partygirl Toni Stark would get herself a man right out of college and get all domestic with him and stuff.”

Toni swatted his arm, finding herself blushing slightly. “It’s not domestic. It’s just... you know.”

“I know,” agreed Rhodey, with a superior look on his face. “I know the two of you met five years ago and have gone from disliking each other to being one step away from moving in with each other now. True love.”

“I wouldn’t move in with him,” promptly said Toni, nose scrunched up. “He lives in New York and I live in Cali. I’m not moving for him, my company is here now, and he’s not moving for me, he has a career to worry about. And he wants to do his residency at a hospital in New York. Wouldn’t work.”

The levity left Rhodey’s face and he focused on Toni with a strange expression on his face. “Are you saying that because you truly don’t care or are you saying that because you care too much?” She didn’t know the answer to that question, so she kept her mouth shut. Rhodey, however, pressed. “Toni, are you in love with him?”

And wasn’t that a nice little question?

Truth was, Toni had no idea. 

She knew what love was. She had felt love before. Love for Rhodey, love for Pepper, love for Happy, for Harley, for Peter, 

For Vision, JARVIS, FRIDAY,

For the original Avengers

But she didn’t truly understand her feelings for Stephen, because they felt different. She had been in love with Pepper Potts for years, but her feelings for Stephen did not seem to be the same. 

The idea of him being hurt frightened her, but she knew he could - or would, in the future - be able to take care of himself. She didn’t worry about him half as much as she had used to do about Pepper; did that mean she didn’t love him as much as she did her? Or that she loved him and trusted him more?

And did she simply love him or was she in love with him?

She knew she liked him. Her mamma liked him. Her friends liked him, and Bruce in particular had become good friends with him.

She didn’t really think much about the future, let alone picture one with him. Wouldn’t it be a risk, to fall in love with him? There was a chance of them falling out with each other, and what if that messed up the timeline?

Then again, they could still fall out with each other even though neither of them had said the magic words yet.

And did he even love her?

Rhodey smiled at her with a strangely knowing glint in his eyes before he wrapped her into another smothering Rhodey hug (trademark pending), and didn’t press further on the subject.

Earth-200207: July 1998

Toni groaned loudly as she dragged her feet towards the kitchen of the mansion, much to her mamma's immense amusement.

Her mamma threw a cold bottle of water at her, which Toni took gratefully. “Thanks, mamma. You have no idea how fucking hot it is, outside.”

“Language,” chided the older woman, watching as Toni threw back half of the bottle in one single go. “And careful not to choke.”

Toni swallowed the cold water and wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Are you still going to your yoga class?”

Her mother hummed, looking between the digital thermometer and the air conditioner blowing at full force over her head. “Still not sure. What are your plans for today?”

Toni finished the bottle of water before speaking once more. “Not too sure either. Depending on what I have to do in the workshop I might show up and play with the R&D ducklings. I’ve left them alone for over three weeks now, who knows how much they’ve broken.”

She had spent the past four months investigating the Vibranium she had collected against the information gathered by Howard and Mar-Vell on Starkanium and the Tesseract. It seemed like the future element was synthetic vibranium but also not at the same time. Vibranium could be used to help deflect attacks from Infinity Stones but because of the natural impurities in the element no one had realised. Starkanium did not have those impurities, as it was created in a lab.

She didn't know how good either element could be if it were to be used offensively - considering she had no Infinity Stones lying around and Tao had just chuckled and walked away when Toni had asked to borrow the Time Stone - but she was 87% sure she could create a compound element based on Vibranium and Starkanium for her secret global defence system project.

Her mother smiled, a fond light in her eyes at the thoughtful expression on Toni's face. Then, before Toni could question the look, her expression turned mischievous. “Now, what about dearest Stephen? He hasn’t been here in-”

“Bye, mamma!” called out Toni, quickly walking back to her bedroom after snatching a second water bottle, ignoring her mother complaining and laughter. 

Once the door was closed behind her, she dropped the bottle on her desk and closed her eyes as she felt JARVIS automatically activating the air conditioner for her. Her mamma was so nosy-

“Oh, that is much better,” came a voice, and Toni literally jumped, startled and slightly panicked.

The owner of the voice just smiled smugly at her from where he had apparently been laying on her bed, and Toni’s panic turned in outrage and annoyance. “JARVIS?!”

“He was not in the room seconds ago, Miss,” said the AI, sounding very confused and worried. “According to my sensors he just appeared.”

Toni glared at Loki, who just put up both hands in surrender, though he looked around in confusion at the sound of JARVIS’ voice. “Peace, Antoinette. I just wanted to see you.”

“And you couldn’t make an appointment or something?!”

He looked genuinely confused at her words. “Whatever for? I am a prince.”

“And I’m the princess of this castle,” she snapped back, dropping in her chair once more. “What are you doing here?”

“Miss, do you know this man?” interrupted JARVIS, still sounding uncertain.

“Yes. Jar, this is Prince Loki of Asgard, yes, like the myths. Loki, this is JARVIS, my AI,” she said, succinctly. “Now, again: what are you doing here?”

Loki got more comfortable on her bed - thankfully he had taken off his boots - and gave her a look. “Ever since our meeting at the the ball, I find that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” he told her, truthfully. “It is not often that I find such an interesting puzzle, and to find it on Midgard of all places! You have succeeded in making me curious, and I do not make a habit of allowing curious things to escape me.”

Toni’s eyes narrowed a little at his words. Was she reading into what he was saying correctly or? “Uh, I don’t know if I gave you the wrong impression the last time we saw each other, but I’m kind of taken.” At his blank expression, she explained. “I have a boyfriend.”

Now Loki’s face scrunched in distaste. “Oh, Antoinette. You are a beautiful woman, sure, but that is not what I was talking about. You are not my type.”

Toni felt both thankful and offended. “Rude. First of all, I’m everyone’s type. Second: what do you mean, then?”

Loki seemingly pulled out a book out of nothing, which made every part of Toni’s scientific brain stand up like a dog who had scented treats. He seemed to know what she was curious about, considering his smile, but he didn’t allow her to ask, instead floating the book to the desk in front of her. 

“The butterfly on your wrist, the cradelaide. I researched a bit about it, and that was one of the best books on the subject I could find.” Toni made to grab at it, and Loki levitated it out of her reach. He gave her a smug look. “I am willing to share the contents with you if you tell me more of the sorcerer who pushed you across time and space and into a new reality.”

Toni thought about it for a second. On one hand, it was dangerous allowing anyone else to know just exactly what sort of future she came from, especially Loki who, while Toni did not fully know the circumstances behind him turning evil, she knew ended up in Thanos’ clutches.

On the other hand, this was a chance for her to get information that hadn’t been carefully vetted by the Ancient One before hand. Sure, the sorceress shared interesting information with Toni, but Toni was not stupid enough to think that the information she got was not heavily edited and classified. Tao gave what she wanted Toni to know, which meant there was a certain level of bias in the information she received from the old woman.

In the end, Toni was a scientist. “Okay. But,” she quickly said, when Loki’s eyes lit up immediately. “I cannot tell you everything. I reserve the right to veto certain information - like the name of the sorcerer, for example.”

The Trickster narrowed his eyes at her, seemingly thinking about it for a second. Then nodded, dropping the book on her table. “Very well. You shall have your answers, and I shall have mine.”

Toni caressed the top of the book, but instead of starting to read it, she focused on Loki with a slight frown. “This is not a deal that benefits you,” she said, a little confused. She should simply take it and go, but she was a little curious about his motivations, sue her. “Why did you accept?”

Loki just shrugged, laying back down on the bed. Her bed. “Whoever sent you here, sent you here for a reason. There is power buried in you, and souls laying dormant around you; whatever you were sent here for is important. And I’ve never shied away from getting myself involved in important stuff,” he said, earnestly. 

Not a lie. 

Toni rolled her eyes. “Yes, that’s the politically correct answer. Now, what is your real motivation?”

Instead of looking offended, he looked delighted. “That is very interesting,” he said, eyes glinting and then he shrugged. “I know not. I feel a bond of kinship for you, for some reason. I don’t know why, but I wish to help you.”

So she wasn’t the only one feeling that odd little link between the two of them. Like two similar energies trying to loop together into one. 

She made to open the book, but then another idea came into her mind. “Say, Asgard has like a really big library, right?”

Loki nodded. “The second biggest library in the Nine Realms,” he proudly stated.

"Where is the biggest?"

"Vanaheim."

“Nice. So, by any chance, could you like get me more books from there?”

The mage shrugged. “I don’t see why not. You wouldn’t be able to keep them for long bouts of time, but everyone is used to me ransacking the Royal Libraries more often than not.”

“Right, Asgard is not big on mages and studying,” she recalled. At his curious look, she explained. “Like I said, I wasn’t really familiar with you where I came from, but I... worked, I guess, with Thor for a while.”

Once upon a time Toni might have said she had been friends with Thor, but after the choking incident... she was wary of the blond.

Loki grimaced at that, looking perplexed. “Odd. Of the two of us, I was always more interested in Midgard and its culture, and visited more often. I don’t think Thor has been here since that visit back when we were mere babes.” He shook his head. “But what sort of books are you interested in?”

Toni chewed her lip and pretended she was all calm and collected. “I don’t know... maybe some books on the Infinity Stones?”

She had a front row of the way Loki’s eyes widened in surprise and then concern. “The Infinity Stones? Yes, I’ve heard of them. Borne at the dawn of the Universe with powers beyond what a normal mind can comprehend. People have sought them for centuries, but no one has ever been able to find them.”

He gave her a questioning look that Toni found herself understanding without more words needed. “Yeah, I’ve seen some of them.” She thought of the Mind Stone and Vision, and Wanda, the Tesseract opening that wormhole in space, the Time Stone and Stephen’s seizure-vision... she shuddered. “Very destructive.”

“Indeed,” agreed Loki, still concerned. “I have never heard of someone not only finding them, let alone surviving them.” Without prompting, he continued. “The biggest legend I have heard of regarding the stones was the one of the Mad Titan Thanos. A Titan driven mad by the loss of his world, infatuated with Death herself. He goes by world and world, decimating them-”

Loki was still talking, Toni could see his mouth moving, but she no longer could hear him. Her ears felt like static, white noise and a high pitched thrill piercing through it and her breath was becoming laboured.

She had not forgotten Thanos. She could never forget the man that took everything from her (“Mr Stark? Mr Stark, I don’t wanna go”).

“How many did you see?” “14.000.605.” “How many did we win?” “One.”

But she had not thought of his name in six long years, had not recalled the gleaming purple skin of the man behind her nightmares, the shine of his golden gauntlet, had not dared utter his name after that one time with Stephen.

Barren wasteland of a planet, and everyone in front of her turning into dust, forever gone to her.

Her heart was beating erratically and there were arms on hers but Toni couldn’t think, locked in her memories.

We are in the Endgame now.

The monster she was trying to protect the world from.

Tony... there was no other way.

The whole Universe... gone.

I watched my friends die. You'd think that'd be as bad as it gets, right? Nope. Wasn't the worst part.

The worst part is that you didn't.

She felt a cool touch on her forehead and Toni gasped, her vision focusing back on the person crouched in front of her, worried green eyes boring into hers.

She was sitting on the floor (when had she moved?), with her back against the wall, and Loki was sitting before her, looking perturbed and worried. “Antoinette? You’re with me again?”

“Miss?” came JARVIS’ worried voice and Toni forced herself to calm down, to breathe normally despite the pain in her chest.

“W-water,” she croaked, and Loki did not move, seemingly summoning it directly in her hands. “Thanks.”

Loki did not answer, giving her slightly more space but not moving away, watching her with wary attention as she drank and breathed more normally.

“Miss?” asked JARVIS again, and Toni focused on him first.

“Panic attack, JARVIS,” she explained, closing her eyes and breathing in slowly. 

A slight pause from the AI. “I wasn’t aware you experienced those, Miss.”

“Neither was I,” she answered. She hadn’t had one ever since the breakdown on the first day she returned to this body and had assumed the new body meant she didn’t suffer from her old anxiety and panic anymore. Turns out, she had just done a damn good job at avoiding her triggers. “Fuck.”

“Are you well now?” asked Loki, and Toni opened her eyes to find him still hovering close by, looking worried. “You appeared stuck in your memories for a while there.”

She recalled the cold touch on her forehead, and frowned. “How did you snap me out?”

“It’s mindfulness spell,” he explained. “It is usually used on people experiencing nightmares, as it clears their psyche of the terrifying thoughts and allows them to shift into a dreamless sleep. You seemed to be having a waking nightmare.”

Waking nightmare. What an apt description.

For like every year after 2012

“I apologise for using magic on you without your permission, Antoinette,” he continued, voice earnest. “I wouldn’t normally have, but you were not responding to either me or your spirit, so I asked he for permission.”

Definitely a different Loki. She found herself smiling at his words. “JARVIS is not a spirit,” she huffed, feeling more and more like herself. “He’s a consciousness. Artificial Intelligence.”

Loki’s eyes were wide as saucers. “Truly? You have created a soul?”

A soul? Before Toni could question him more on his words, her phone buzzed in her pocket, and, thankful for the distraction, she picked it up, thumbing at the new message.

stephie: what are you doing tomorrow and for the rest of the weekend?

stephie: want to come up?

Toni looked at Loki. “How long are you staying here, and how many books have you brought with you?”

“On Midgard? Just another day or two, and I have several more books,” he said, looking at her curiously. “Why?”

“Do you have a place to stay?” she questioned, typing on her phone once more. “I have a couple of spare rooms, if not, you can take one of those.”

toni: a friend of mine came to visit, so i'm spending some time with him. you can come down and join us, though

“I’d like that. Many thanks, Antoinette.”

“No biggie,” she waved off.

stephie: bruce?

toni: nah, u don’t know him. his name’s loki; his father and mine were two peas in a pod.

Aka assholes, but Toni wouldn’t say that out loud, of course.

stephie: Loki?

toni: he’s Scandinavian, old money

“Very old money,” agreed Loki, reading from over her shoulders.

stephie: european royalty, fancy ~

toni: how did you guess that

stephie: I was... joking...

toni: oh...

stephie: Are you serious?! You’re hanging out with like a duke or something?!

Toni did not think specifying Loki was a prince would help anyone, so she just sent a smile emoji in reply and tucked her phone away, ignoring Loki’s very amused expression.

“Anyway. Let’s start reading!”

Chapter Text

Earth-200207: December 1999

The second they stepped out of the car, cameras were flashing all around and Toni thanked her lucky stars for the fact that she chose to wear sunglasses at the event, even though it was pretty late at night already.

“Toni Stark, over here!”

“Miss Stark, smile for the camera please!”

“Toni, how does it feel to be a self made billionaire?”

“Toni Stark looking phenomenal in a gorgeous designer dress-”

“Toni, I love you!”

"Miss Stark has recently been on the news for the new land purchases all over the globe-"

“Toni Stark just arrived at the annual Bern Technical Conference with two handsome men at her arms-”

The last one made her lips twitch in a smile as she looked at said handsome men at her arms. “Can’t believe you two just became glorified arm candy,” she teased, immensely amused.

Stephen and Bruce regarded her with the same flat stare, though she could tell they were both a little bit amused. Well, Bruce more so than Stephen.

While he accepted that she was richer and therefore more popular than him, she knew at times he found it irritating how all the attention went on her first whenever they went somewhere in public.

Especially since she wasn’t even a speaker at the event - though she had been asked - and had made a last minute decision to come as his plus one.

As they walked inside, Toni felt a certain sense of adrenaline raising in her, giddiness and anxiety mixing together to make a terrible cocktail.

But she couldn’t help it. So much of her future had been shaped from what happened at this very event. So much of what happened next was because of how drunk she had gotten, and because of the people she had ended up meeting and speaking to.

For a while, she had actually considered not attending to the damn thing at all - hence why she hadn’t accepted a speaking engagement. She had met some of the worst people in her life by coming to this place last time, and she was not looking forward to meeting them again. If she stayed at home or went somewhere else to celebrate, then at least she wasn’t tempting fate.

But she had also met some of the most important people in her life too, people who had impacted her view of the world deeply. The prospect of not getting that chance once again was not one she cared for.

“What time are your speeches?” she asked Stephen and Bruce, keeping herself attached to the newly appointed Doctor Strange.

Stephen checked his watch, an Emporio Armani piece she had gotten him a few months ago to celebrate his graduation. “Mine is in like half an hour. You?”

“I think about an hour after yours?” questioned Bruce checking a piece of paper they had been handed at the entrance. “Yeah, looks that way.”

“Okay! Let’s mingle then, my little squishy scientists,” she said, taking Stephen’s hand in hers and dragging him towards the general centre of the conference, knowing Bruce was following them.

“But I don’t want to socialise with idiots double my age with half my talent,” whined the doctor, making Toni laugh.

“The doctor world is awfully similar to the business world, my dear Padawan,” she joked, patting his arm. “Sometimes all it takes is for you to be charming to the right person and bam! Instant success.”

Stephen looked at Bruce in protest, but the other genius shrugged. “She’s kind of right. You have no idea how many people even at Culver try to be my friends just for the street cred that that bring them.” He winked at them. “You guys are very lucky; I’m like a science rockstar!” Both Toni and Stephen rolled their eyes in sync at his antics, which made the physicist pout. “Betty wouldn’t stand for this.”

“Ah yes,” said Stephen, eyes gleaming with interest. “Betty Ross, the delightful doctor you have not shut up about since you started Culver. What was it he described her as again, Toni?”

“A radiation of delight and kindness framed by beauty and topped by a brain that would make a neurologist salivate,” she quoted, laughing at his expression even as she felt something twitching in her stomach.

Bruce blushed and bickered with Stephen over their words, but Toni felt a sense of slight anxiety raising in her chest. Betty Ross, the daughter of Thaddeus Ross, aka the man that ruined Bruce’s life for more than seven years and was the biggest catalyst behind the birth of the Hulk.

Three years more and then the Hulk would be born.

Three more years before Bruce's life was ruined forever.

She had long ago decided that it was probably one of those things she shouldn’t interfere with: the Hulk was too important. 

She hadn’t known that much about Bruce’s life pre-incident, in the future past. All she had known of him was that he hadn’t had the greatest childhood and that he was slightly suicidal. So she couldn’t say if his life was better, this time around, with her in it.

It hadn't seemed like he had many friends other than Betty Ross, but she couldn’t know for sure. She would like to say that now he had a bigger support system than before, but what did she know? Perhaps he had more friends in the future past, but had ended up alienating them following the transformation. Perhaps they had been afraid of the Hulk, and had been part of the reason Bruce had been the way he was when she had first met him.

And Toni was currently planning on letting the same events happen again (well, mostly. This time around, she planned on keeping a keen eye on Ross' records and his actions). Was planning on letting someone she considered a close friend - her science bro - suffer once more, when she had the chance to stop it.

“Toni?” called Stephen, and she focused back on the two men in front of her, forcing a quick smile on her face to appease their worries.

“Sorry, zoned out. What did you say?”

“Do you want a drink?” repeated Stephen and she nodded, gratefully focusing on something else.

“Sure. Lead the way!”

+++

Maya Hansen was there.

Toni had noticed her just as Stephen was going on stage, and quickly moved backstage with him, ignoring his confused expression. “I don’t want people to distract me from listening to you on your first official conference,” she said sweetly.

Stephen did not look like he truly believed her, but he still smiled, accepting the kiss she gave him before walking up on stage.

Hansen wasn’t a bad person, Toni knew that. She was actually a pretty decent scientist and a genius in her own right - she had come up with Extremis herself, after all.

But Maya’s morals were really screwed up, and Toni wouldn’t say she was a better person than her, but she sure as hell would have never allowed for the unstable Extremis to be injected in living organisms.

And sure, in the end she had tried to rebel against Killian - and died for her efforts - but someone who was willing to go that far was not someone Toni wanted to associate with.

There was still the chance of her and Killian meeting and the whole Mandarin soldiers mess to restart, but this time Toni was not going to be anywhere near either of them, thank you very much.

Who knew: maybe without Toni present, Killian would blow up himself when he tried Extremis for the first time and she never had to deal with enhanced fire breathing super soldiers.

Fat chance.

Toni kept her eyes between Stephen on stage and Hansen, grimacing slightly when she saw her approach Bruce and striking a conversation with him. That might make avoiding her a little harder, but Toni was a natural in the art of avoidance. If there was a way, she'd find a way.

When Stephen finally stepped off the stage with a flushed face but a very smug smile to a round of heavy applause, she gave him a huge smile. “I don’t know what half of the things you said were about, but everyone else seems to like them so I think you won.”

He laughed at her words, pressing a kiss on her lips. “Why thank you, Doctor Stark. Your approval means everything to me.” He spotted Bruce and Hansen talking and raised an eyebrow. “Who’s Bruce talking to?”

Toni shrugged. “No idea, but I figured I’d let them convers among themselves for a while. Want me to get you another drink?”

Stephen shrugged. “Happy is driving us to the jet afterwards anyway, right? Speaking of, where is he?”

Toni pointed at where the bodyguard was standing not too far from them but blending in pretty well. “He’s in incognito because he’s a ‘professional’,” she explained, all wide eyed and mischievous.

The doctor snorted, as they walked towards the bar once more, avoiding Hansen and Bruce, and with Happy trailing behind them.

However, before they could reach the bar, someone stepped in their way, and Toni’s breath caught in her throat.

“Doctor Strange, Miss Stark,” greeted the bespectacled man before them, a gamely smile on his face. “Nice to meet you. I’m-”

“It’s Doctor Stark, actually,” ‘politely’ said Stephen, eyes narrowing slightly at the doctor in front of them.

Doctor Yinsen looked a little flustered for a second. “Of course. My apologies, Doctor Stark-”

“No problem,” she said, hoping she sounded normal and not like she was on the verge of tears. “Doctor Yinsen, is it?” she said, making a show of reading his name on his shirt.

“Professor, actually,” he said, smiling. 

God, Toni was not sure she had seen him smile the entire time they had been in that cave. Except for maybe at the very end, but that hadn’t been a true smile. That had been acceptance masquerading as such.

This man was the reason Toni had become who she was. He was the one who had lit the flame of the phoenix that was Iron Man, the one who had handed her a future, a chance.

“Don’t waste your life, Stark,” he had told her, and she liked to think she had listened to him.

Seeing him again, in the flesh, alive... Toni had expected it, coming here. But it still made her heart beat faster in her chest, still made the sting of tears appear in her eyes and made her throat all prickly.

“Both of you are incredible in your respective fields,” continued Yinsen, unaware of her inner turmoil. “Doctor Strange, your speech earlier was incredibly fascinating. Very avant-garde, but also fascinating. And Doctor Stark, your new ideas and proposals for the newly opened Stark Medical? Your prosthetics,” He shook his head, eyes admiring. “Yes, the two of you will revolutionise the world of medicine as we know it.”

Stephen did not do humble very well. “Of course we will,” he agreed, to which Toni snorted and Yinsen looked amused.

“But please, I’d like you to meet another one of my colleagues. He was just as fascinated with the two of you,” he said, presenting them to Doctor Wu.

Another dear and familiar face, for Toni. While their first meeting had left a lot to be desired, he had been a phenomenal doctor, in the future past. He had been the one behind Tony’s operation to remove the shrapnel post Mandarin, and he was among the physicians that had looked after him following the Siberia incident.

They had never been friends, but Toni held him dear too.

She accepted Doctor Wu’s hand and the compliments he levelled them both regarding Stephen’s speech and Toni’s medical division, and as she listened to Stephen and them discussing some surgical thing or the other, an idea started shaping up in her head.

Changing what she knew was risky: knowledge prompted change yet change negated knowledge. But from what Loki had told her, this was not the same universe she had left. There were similarities of course - sister universes - but in the end, they were different.

So what was one more difference?

“Tell you what,” she said, pulling out two custom cards from her bag and handing them to the doctor and the professor in front of them. “Stark Medical is a brand new baby, and everyone says it takes a village to raise a child. How about you guys give me a call? I’d love to have you as part of my newly formed team.”

Both doctors looked surprised and grateful for the card, and Toni could only smile, knowing she already had them, hook line and sinker.

+++

They arrived to the Isle de Eterea a few hours later, having escaped the second Bruce had been done with his speech. Isle de Eterea was a small island in the Pacific ocean, and also one of the last places on the planet to enter the New Year’s.

It wasn’t fully owned by the Stark’s family, but Howard had a house on the island. And while Toni didn’t really visit it that often  anymore, she had gone there plenty of times as a child, with her mother and Jarvis. Howard never stayed for long, whenever he showed up.

This was how she had decided to spend the last night before the beginning of the new Millennium, the beginning of the ‘Modern Era’: with all of her friends in the small warm island, enjoying a night of happiness, warmth and love. She wasn't about the get sappy, but had it not been for them, Toni really did not know if she would have survived everything.

Once it came to a stop, they stepped out of the car, Stephen whistling in appreciation at the sight of the private beach. “Wow. Nice place, Toni.”

“Thanks,” she said, giving Bruce space to climb out. Then she went over to the drivers seat, leaning down towards Happy. “You sure you don’t want to join us?”

Happy snorted. “God no. I’m gonna go home and celebrate it the way the Hogans do.” He met her eyes flatly. “With a beer and a television.”

She'd have felt bad if this wasn't a fight she always lost with Happy. Instead, Toni snickered, then waved as the bodyguard drove away, leaving them on the beach. Then they moved towards the house.

It didn’t take the three of them long to find that the majority of the others who had been invited were already there. Sharon grinned at them from the grill as they approached, waving. “You made it!”

Loki smiled too, standing up from where he had been laying on a towel close to the blonde. While Sharon was wearing a pretty daring two piece swimsuit, Loki was wearing a simple white shirt and a pair of shorts.

Toni gave his outfit a pointed look, as he approached her. “You know, the way you insist of keeping yourself covered from head to toe all the time is why you’re always looking like an anaemic Victorian youth.”

“Why, Antoinette,” answered Loki, a mocking leer on his face. “If you wished to see me naked you need just to ask.” Then he laughed at her disgusted expression, pressing a kiss on her cheek. “Thank you for the invitation. Hello, Stephen and Bruce.”

“No problem,” answered Toni, while Bruce waved at him and Stephen grunted a reply back, a slight glare on his face.

That was one of the things she didn’t think she’d ever understand: Loki and Stephen’s animosity towards one another. Correction: Loki did not seem to particularly care about Stephen one way or the other, but the doctor seem to really hate him. Always looking at him with suspicion, or talking to him with a slight mocking tone, trying to wind him up any way he could. Toni could not really figure out why, Loki had never been anything but cordial with a hint of superiority when interacting with him. Sure, he was a little pretentious, but after all, so was Stephen. So why?

“What you got on the grill?” asked Bruce, moving towards Sharon with a hungry expression. “I’m starving already.”

"Aht, aht!" The blonde batted his hands away, pointing towards the house. “You three get your costumes on before coming back her, your clothes look too pretty for the sand. And tell Hope and Rhodey to hurry up, they’ve been gone for like ten minutes already.”

“Sir, yes sir,” joked Toni, avoiding being swatted by her spatula, before hitching her skirts and trotting towards the house with the other two.

It wasn’t as big as her mansion, or her house in New York, but it wasn’t small either. All white and creamy, it looked like an odd blend of modern and old-fashioned that had always been her father's taste.

“That’s your room,” indicated Toni to Bruce once they had stepped through the doorway. “And ours is upstairs. Come on, I want to go on a night time swim before the clock strikes midnight.”

Stephen chuckled and followed her, both of them ignoring Bruce’s muttered “disgustingly lovelorn idiots” as they walked into Toni’s room.

The second the door was closed, Stephen’s mouth was on hers, body pressing hard against hers. Toni kissed back just as enthusiastically, her hand drowning in his hair and teeth pressing on his lower lip before he let go, grinning and looking a little flushed.

She smiled back automatically, pressing another kiss on his lips. “Why are you smiling like that?”

He shrugged, undoing the belt of his trousers. “Been dying to ravish you since I saw you in that dress earlier. You look hot as fuck.”

“Stop it you,” she joked, undoing her complicated hairdo before shimmying out of her dress. “Also, no ravishing until after the grill. I’m fucking starving. Why don’t they bring food to these conference places?”

"Because they know otherwise that the nerds would never leave," he answered and well. Point.

Had it not been for Bruce being done and Happy half dragging them out, they might have spent the rest of the evening just chatting to Yinsen and Wu, after all.

They quickly changed into the swimwear Toni had stashed at the house prior to their arrival, a white two piece suit for her and a pair of blue swim shorts for him. As she stood in front of the mirror, pulling her hair up in a small ponytail, Stephen appeared at her side, a heated look on his face.

She shivered slightly as she watched him press a couple kisses on her naked shoulder, the other hand going on the key tied around her neck. “You wear it all the time,” he observed, voice quite low.

Toni shrugged, keeping her eyes on his through the mirror. “You gave it to me.”

Stephen had many smiles. But the sincere, small one he gave to her in response to her statement was one of her favourites. 

She turned around at that, and pulled him down in a sweeter kiss than the one from before, soft and gentle and louder than a thousands words. When she pulled back, the smile was still in place.

“You know I adore you, right?”

She did not blush, thank you very much. The mirror was broken. “As you should,” then, when his expression turned more amused than soft, she rolled her eyes, and grabbed his hand. “Come on, Casanova.”

“Casanova!”

They climbed back down the stairs, ready to get back to Sharon, but then another very interesting image stopped them in their tracks. Stephen covered his mouth in surprise, while Toni gasped loud enough that the two in front of her jumped away from each other, one blushing profoundly and the other looking mortified.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” she said, crossing her arms around her chest. “James Rupert Rhodes and Hope Nadia Van Dyne, what is the meaning of this? Why are you two canoodling in the middle of the hallway? Since when are the two of you canoodling at all?!”

“Shut up, Toni,” said Rhodey, while Hope just shrugged like it was no big deal, though her blush betrayed her.

Because it was a big deal! “Nu-uh. I want details! How long has this been going on? Who made the first move? When did- Hey!” she complained, as Hope snatched her out of Stephen’s hold and put a hand over her mouth, dragging her forward, her face burning.

“Come on. Grilled food awaits us,” said the brunette, ignoring Toni’s noises of complaints next to her.

In her defence, Toni had not seen this coming at all.

She didn’t really mind, she liked Hope and Rhodey individually, but she had not expected this development.

After all, they had kind of known each other in the future past too, and nothing had ever happened (or had it, and she had never known?).

The second Hope let go of her mouth, she was speaking up again. “I’m just realising that I don’t know who to give the shovel talk to,” she said, and Hope groaned again, still pulling her along. “I mean, Rhodey is my bestie forever, but I’ve known you since we were in nappies.”

“It’s not what you think,” huffed Hope, as they approached Loki, Sharon and Bruce. “It’s not like, a thing. I mean, that wasn’t our first kiss-”

“Gasp! Do tell!”

“- but we aren’t like in a relationship. I like him and he likes me, and we like making out with each other. That’s it,” she huffed.

“That’s not details,” she whined, but she didn’t press further, once they arrived at the grill, knowing better than to make either of her friends uncomfortable.

Rhodey and Stephen were a few steps behind them, but Rhodey gave her a grateful smile when she dropped it in front of the rest. Toni gave him a look in answer, basically telling him that they’d totally talk about this at a later date.

“Here,” said Loki, a smirk on his face as he passed her a plate with well done hot dogs. “Also, your lipstick is ruined.”

“Oh,” she said, just wiping the remaining traces of lipstick from her lips. “Thank you.”

“Hot dogs, Stephen?” offered Loki and Stephen nodded, coming to sit down next to Toni and throwing an arm around her neck.

“Thank you, Loki,” he said, accepting the plate offered to him.

Sharon rolled her eyes at that for some reason, but didn’t say anything.

“End of the Millennium,” said Rhodey, once everyone had been served. “Can you believe it? We are going to the future!”

Because of the fact that he was a military man, often people seemed to just forget what a giant nerd Rhodey could be. He was a genius, and Toni had it in good authority that every genius was a secret nerd at heart. He was just better than most at hiding it.

“We don’t really celebrate such things where I’m from,” told them Loki, with a shrug.

Bruce looked puzzled. “In the UK?”

Toni snorted, amused. “He just talks like he has just come back from a tea party at the Queen’s house. He’s actually from this small place in Scandinavia. They-”

“God, these are so good,” groaned Stephen, smiling at Sharon. “You are good, where did you learn?”

The blonde shrugged, but she looked very pleased with herself. “My aunt - Toni’s godmother - taught me how to grill properly when I was a teenager.”

“The mysterious godmother who has you trained like you’re superspies,” joked Bruce, and Toni, Sharon and Hope all laughed at how close to the truth he was without even knowing.

“How long are you staying, this time?” then asked Stephen, looking at Loki with something Toni couldn’t quite read in his eyes.

Loki smiled, still seemingly incredibly amused. “I don’t know. Toni has offered for me to stay as long as I need, and my brother dearest has been a pain in my arse lately.”

“Arse,” snorted Sharon.

Stephen looked at Toni in question, and she shrugged. “His brother is kind of a dick,” she explained. While she didn’t know this Thor, she remembered very clearly the Thor who had shown up as they transported Loki to the Helicarrier and had attacked first and asked questions later. And if, according to Thor himself, he had been worse before... She could just imagine what Loki was having to suffer through.

A nerd in a land of jocks while your brother was the King of the Jocks.

“Siblings are the worst,” agreed Rhodey, as Stephen let go of her shoulder to grab a beer from the cooler that they had brought with them.

Toni slapped his shoulder. “You take that back. Jeanette is the best!”

“You only say that because she thinks you are some sort of superstar or something,” he huffed and Toni shrugged, unrepentant.

“I am some sort of superstar,” she sniffed, giving them all a smile. “And that makes all of you my groupies.”

“BOOO!” complained the group, even Loki, as she cackled.

“Thank you, by the way, Toni,” said Bruce a few minutes later, as Sharon pulled out some more burgers out of nowhere. At her questioning look, he explained. “For inviting us. For inviting me.” He gave a little awkward smile. “I don’t even remember the last time I had such a fancy vacation.”

“Yeah,” agreed Rhodey, fist bumping her shoulder. “That was nice. You could have had a romantic getaway with Stephen only but you invited us all too.”

Stephen raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Wait, there was a chance of a romantic getaway with just the two of us? Why wasn’t I informed of this? I don’t like these people that much.”

“Asshole,” fondly said Bruce, and Toni jumped on that train, deflecting with humour.

It was... odd. Toni was not really used to being thanked for the things she did.

Maybe at the very beginning of all her relationships she got thanked. But after a while, the people she spent time and money on started to just... expect it of her. It had happened with basically everyone except for Rhodey, Pepper and Happy, in the end. The Avengers had gotten used to her gifts very quickly, and had stopped thanking her way before the Ultron debacle.

She didn't really care, as she had not done what she did for the thanks, but it was strange, after being taken for granted, being faced by this appreciation.

It was... weird.

Loki gave her a look, like he knew exactly what she was thinking - which at this point, he might as well - and she offered him a small smile. Then she recalled. “Oh, thank you for this, by the way,” she said, waving the small charm bracelet he had left for her when he had left last time, before she had managed to invite him to come with them to the beach.

It was simple in its design, but the small runes attached to it offered a great deal of protection and it was almost indestructible, if what he wrote was true. Even the Ancient One had commented on it when Toni had shown it to her, looking very impressed.

It was meant to protect against any sort of mental magic attack, and after her experiences with Wanda and the Mind Stone, she might have teared up a little when she had read the message.

Loki shrugged. “Considering what we spoke about, it seemed apt.”

Stephen took her arm, inspecting the bracelet on her wrist. He seemed to have tensed up a little. “What is this?”

“A protection bracelet,” explained Loki. 

Stephen made a face at her. “Seriously? Like to protect you from the evil eye and stuff?”

Considering what she knew of his future activities, his clear distaste was pretty ironic. “Kind of. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

But Stephen wasn’t looking at the bracelet, instead looking at Loki now, a little pitiful expression on his face. “You believe in magic?”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “You don’t?”

“Of course I don’t,” scoffed Stephen. “Why would I believe in something that doesn’t exist?”

Toni wished she had brought her phone out with her and was recording this. Just so she could throw it in 2016 Stephen Strange's face.

“There are more things in heaven and Earth / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” quoted Loki.

“Hamlet, Shakespeare, 1609,” stated Stephen, still looking unimpressed.

Before it could devolve into more of an argument, Toni punched his shoulder, giving him a look. “It’s not like you’re the one wearing it,” she pointed out.

Stephen relaxed a little, but he still made a face. “I would just prefer if my girlfriend didn’t believe in hocus pocus and chakras and stuff. What’s next, horoscopes?”

“You know, my horoscope is always unerringly accurate,” offered Sharon, obviously wanting to fan the flames even more because she was a little shit.

Toni intervened before Stephen could rip her a new one, pressing a kiss on his lips. “You love me anyway,” she said, the words escaping her lips before she could even think about it.

She froze once she realised what she said, feeling a flush creeping on her cheeks at her own words. Oh gods, did she have to say that? Did she have to say it in front of the present company? She should have kept her mouth shut, now she-

“Yeah,” said Stephen, and Toni turned to face him so fast that she could have snapped her neck. He was also a little red around the ears, but his expression was sort of soft, sincere. “I love you anyway.”

Toni felt her own lips twisting in a smile at his words, and she surged forwards, throwing him back against the sandy beach as she pressed her mouth against his, kissing him harder than she had the entire night.

She was vaguely aware of the rest of their friends whistling (Hope, Bruce), catcalling (Sharon, Loki) and complaining that they get a room (Rhodey), but she didn’t stop kissing him with all she got until she needed to stop in order to, you know, breathe.

Stephen looked a little wide eyed from where he was laying on the ground, but he smiled when she let go, grinning a little dumbly.

Toni sat back on his legs, and smiled, hoping her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. “In case that wasn’t clear,” she said. “I love you too.”

Because she did.

She wasn’t sure when or how, and it was nothing like what she felt for Pepper (a river growing stronger and stronger everyday), but she did feel something for him (a hurricane of emotions that was too strong for her, that ripped her apart before she could do anything about it).

She loved him.

And it was terrifying, and it changed everything, and it meant everything and nothing and

And he loved her.

“Wasn’t very clear. Wanna try again?” asked Stephen and Toni was more than willing.

Later, she'd have more time to freak out. More time to try and parse the meaning of this, what it meant for the future, what it meant for them both.

But for now, kissing.

Kissing, under the moonlight on a warm Pacific December night, surrounded by their friends and grilled meat, without the weight of the world on their shoulders.

Chapter Text

Earth-200207: November 2000

“My point is, the possible reward outweighs the risk,” said Toni, keeping herself calm and professional in the face of the annoying Board of Directors breathing down her neck. “There is not-”

“With all due respect, Miss Stark,” interrupted her one of the old geezers in the room, one of the few that had survived the post-Stane purge. Ugly white misogynistic old man who, unfortunately, was a damn good businessman and hard to manoeuvre out of the way. He seemed to have made it his business to inconvenience Toni at any possible venture, and Toni did not care for that shit at all. “But you cannot guarantee-”

“In all the years I’ve worked for Stark Industries, please tell me one instance in which my decisions regarding my company have steered us towards trouble,” she challenged, the eyeliner around her eyes making them appear bigger and darker.

The man’s jaw clenched, and then he gave her a false smile. “Nevertheless, we cannot just take your word on it. Stark Medical is still quite young, after all, and the progresses are slow coming. If you were to reinstate the weapons production-”

“Slow coming but still bringing in a lot of money, am I incorrect?” asked Toni, looking away from the man and basically dismissing him from the conversation. The majority of the board nodded slowly, clearly in favour of her proposal. “Stark Industries has gone from a multimillion national company focused solely on weapons production to a billion-dollars company that is finally branching out. Medical, clean energy, communication technologies - I can make Stark Industry a global phenomena, I can take us bigger. Make us better.” She stood up fluidly, putting both hands on the table. “What Stark Industries was in the past, it doesn’t matter. The past is the past. We... I am the future. Stark Industries is the future.” She gave him a gamely smile, lips blood red and mentally clapped herself in the back at the clear interest in many’s faces. Old Geezer still looked annoyed, but he was unlikely to find any allies here. “I am selling you the future. Gentlemen, ladies. I will give you till tomorrow to think about it.”

And then will do it whether you guys want it or not because I own the controlling interest in my company, this time around.

With that, she gave an almost regal nod and powerwalked out of the room, directly towards her office upstairs, bypassing the elevators.

She clicked on the small headset she had made for herself as she walked. “Talk to me, JARVIS. What else do I have on docket?”

“You have been sent an invitation by Time’s Magazine for their Person of the Year that you should answer as soon as possible, you have a call scheduled for a Powerful Women piece, Dr Wu had sent you a review of their last work regarding a cure for dementia, Mrs Stark is in the building dealing with the latest security SNAFU and said she has finalised plans for your new PA,” informed her JARVIS and Toni sighed.

She had already told her mamma that she didn't want or need a PA, but with the amount of work she had lately...

Being a CEO the second time around was not any more relaxing than it had been the first time. Maybe even worse, considering how much faster she was achieving results this time around, which, combined with the fact that she was a woman in power had every middle aged man in a hissy fit.

It was a little complicated still, thinking about her gender. She didn’t necessarily feel like a man anymore - had never really felt like Tony Stark - but there were times where she was complimented for what she was doing for the feminist movement in which she felt like an impostor.

In which she felt like she was not a real woman, even though she didn’t feel like anything but a woman.

It was trippy, but it wasn’t like she could really talk to anyone about it. The only people she’d maybe be able to explain this to were Loki and the Ancient One, and while Tao was nice enough telling her anything about her feelings seemed to be crossing some sort of invisible boundary.

Loki she probably could try and speak to, but he had his own issues regarding his gender. The first time she had seen him in the body of a woman she had been a little confused. But it was still Loki, so she had just continued like everything was normal. Loki had looked relieved at that, so Toni counted it as a win.

She’d have never expected to say this when she had first arrived in this new universe, but she truly was glad for Loki. He was like Rhodey and Bruce mixed together in one very tall, very pale body. He had no problem calling her out when he felt she was being too stubborn on something, but he wasn’t outright cruel either. He shared information with her in a way the Ancient One never did, and when she had shown him her tentative defensive ideas for protective shields to be placed all around the world he had been very interested in helping.

When Toni walked into her office she was not even surprised to see said Trickster sitting at her desk, sipping at a McDonalds cup. 

“I was just thinking about you,” she said, shooing him until he huffed and moved off her boss chair. “Oh, you brought me lunch. Thank you.”

Loki just shrugged, picking up a cheeseburger for himself before pointing at a book that had been placed beside her computer. “The translation we were looking for last time I came by? It’s in there.”

Toni grabbed a burger with one hand, attention immediately on the book. It had been in a language Loki's All-Speak couldn't translate, so he had gone back home and looked for a different translation spell over four months ago.

Her and Loki had spent a lot of time researching the tomes he had brought her for information regarding Titans, Infinity Stones and cradelaide. There was a lot of information on the last one, moderate on the Titans and barely anything regarding the Infinity Stones.

However, even with the cradelaide, nothing was sure. Most of the tomes they had studied were filled with vague ideas and legends and thoughts and nothing to explain what they truly were or why that was the mark Past!Strange had casted upon her.

She was sure Loki had something of an idea, but he had said he wasn’t too sure of it, and thus refused to share for the time being.

Toni studied the page carefully, thankful for the small translation charm Loki had added on her bracelet and that allowed her to read most known languages on Earth, considering the tome was translated in Latin. He had wanted to just add the All-Speak spell, but Toni was not in a rush to confuse the world when she accidentally answered someone in fluent Japanese during a meeting.

The Infinity Stones share an almost emphatic link among themselves, something that protects them from one another’s power or boosts it. While all Infinity Stones share a base energy, the way they shaped themselves to become pillars of the Universe makes their energies different.

This both attracts the stones and repels them at the same time, so that they are never congregated in the same spot once more.

It is unclear what stones share this particular bond, but it is known that Time and Space have a way of linking themselves to one another. You cannot move across Space without Time and you cannot alter Time without Space.

Nothing is known for the other Infinity Stones, who have been for long lost...

Toni looked up from the page, frowning. “That’s... confusing.”

Loki looked up from his burger, one eyebrow raised. “How so?”

“In the universe I’m from we used the Mind Stone to find the Space Stone,” she explained. “The basic radiation they emitted was similar enough that we managed to track it. How is that possible, if they are not... linked?”

Toni was not even gonna touch the ‘so that they could never be bound in the same place ever again’ delusion with a fifty feet pole.

“Perhaps it wanted you to find them,” pointed out Loki, making her frown become more pointed. “These stones have been around since the beginning of Creation and many authors and scholars agree that they have some sort of sentience. Perhaps what you believed to be their ‘similar energy reading’,” he made a face at the Midgardian terms, “Was a way of your tools to interpret the sentience behind the stones forming a link for you to follow.”

Toni knew a lot of the sentience in the Mind Stone and how malevolent it was. Before Thor and Vision purified it, the Scepter had sought out destruction and subjugation, corrupted Ultron until it too wanted the death of humanity.

Toni had foolishly thought that it was HYDRA and Wanda’s behaviour that had bled through the stone and made it behave that way, at the time, but the Mind Stone had been with Thanos for a prolonged stretch of time. Within minutes of being in the same room with it, the Original Avengers and Fury’s minions had all been at each other’s throats.

What if it had sought out the Space Stone for them, so that it could bring more death and destruction? Do what Thanos wanted to do, by raining the Titan’s armada on them?

From what they had read Titans did not have an affinity to magic, but somehow Thanos had had an affinity to the Infinity Stones. He was able to wield them with the gauntlet, and also able to touch them with his bare hands. Could he be also able to make them do as he wanted?

He had done it with the snap, after all.

If the Mind stone had been with him for a lot longer than the two years Thor claimed Loki disappeared for...

Toni put down the burger, appetite gone. God, how was she meant to prepare the world for Thanos when the Avengers as they had been did not even exist and people would not believe her if she claimed aliens and magic existed?

She had several ideas for protection to be implemented all around the globe, ideas she planned on going through with as soon as she could do so without appearing suspicious, but there wasn’t anything other than that that she could do.

She had been writing and creating plans for her future armours, but had not even attempted fabricating any, lest she made things worse in the current timeline. Even her repulsor technology she had yet to start up on.

Perhaps she should try and start up the Expo earlier. It would allow her to ‘discover’ Starkanium quicker, and with the veritable amount of Vibranium she had amassed and been testing, she’d able to do much more than she was currently doing.

If she used Starkanium for the force fields and shields-

“Miss,” came JARVIS’ voice from her earpiece. “You’ve asked me to alert you of this of when one Miss Virginia Potts would be hired. She has now started her first day at Stark Industries.”

Toni’s breathing stopped.

+++

Toni hadn’t looked for Pepper when she had arrived in this Universe.

At the beginning, it had hurt too much. To arrive in a completely new reality without the woman who had become something of Tony Stark's anchor? To be stuck living in a world she didn’t recognise, a world in which Pepper did not even know him?

It was hard; it had looked impossible.

She hadn’t had a choice when it came to Rhodey. He was her best friend, and before she could even sort through the mess that were her emotions regarding the time travelling, she was suddenly hugging him and he was telling her that he was there for her and would always be there for her. What could she do but hold him equally as tight?

With Bruce, their relationship was simpler. Easier. Toni had managed to become his friend again, because she knew him but she didn’t know him.

With Maria Rambeau it was even simpler because Toni did not truly know her that well at the beginning. Their relationship was different.

And then it was 1995, and Toni had ended up going to look for Happy, for the man who had been one of her best friends in the future past. It wasn’t easy, but the guilt was less thick by then. It had been almost natural becoming his friend again; a homecoming.

But he wasn’t Pepper, none of them had been Pepper. She had loved Pepper. She had been ready to make Pepper her wife.

And now here she was, once more an employee at Stark Industries, and employee that did not know Toni, who probably didn’t even care much about Toni. 

Toni knew everything about her, knew every inch of her body intimately and to Pepper, she was a complete stranger.

The Pepper Toni knew was dead, and she knew this Pepper would never become her. This Pepper would treat her differently, because she was a woman. Because she wasn’t an alcoholic playboy. Because while eccentric and dangerous, she wasn’t as crazy as Tony Stark had been.

It had taken months after she showed up for Toni to make her his new PA, but it had taken years for them to become friends. 

How long would it take this time? She knew as much about Pepper as she knew about Happy and Rhodey - if not more - but would the bridge from ‘I work for her’ to ‘I am her friend’ still happen in this timeline?

“Antoinette?” called Loki and Toni blinked up at the trickster, who was watching her with open worry. “Are you okay?”

Was she okay?

Could she be okay?

Toni shook her head, and when he opened his arms for her, she didn’t hesitate to borrow in his embrace, hiding her face in his chest. 

He didn’t ask her to explain who Pepper was or her importance in Toni’s life. He didn’t need to; he simply understood that Toni needed him at the moment and he was willing to continue to hold her for as long as she needed.

Despite how much she wanted to, Toni didn’t cry. She just allowed herself a moment to mourn Pepper, to mourn what they could have been, to mourn a relationship she had been as comfortable with as her suits of armour.

She had mourned so much when she had arrived in this new timeline, made her peace with the fact that no matter what she tried, it would be different from the one she came for. But there was still grief in her heart.

Loki was a steady rock under her, not letting go and allowing her feelings to wash away against him without shaking him.

Toni was still catching her breathing and dealing with the blow when the door of her office opened.

She turned her head around without letting go of Loki, expecting her mother to walk inside just to be surprised when she noticed Stephen at the door, holding a bag in his hand.

Stephen’s expression went from happy/cheery to dark immediately when he spotted them, though there was a little concern in his eyes too. “What’s going on here?”

Loki turned around to face him and then let go of Toni, his usual smarmy little smile on his face. “Hello, Stephen.”

“Hey, babe. What are you doing here?” questioned Toni looking at him in slight confusion and trying to keep her emotions at bay.

Because she loved Stephen, but he didn't know, and Tao had said-

Sure, she was at the office in New York today, but she had been with Stephen just that morning and he had said he’d be busy with his residency.

“Though I’d surprise you with lunch,” he told her, voice light but his expression still unhappy. “I thought you said you were gonna be working all day?”

Toni looked at him, puzzled. “I am?”

“Then why is he,” he said, pointing a finger at Loki, “here? Your desk secretary seemed to be under the impression that you were alone in here.”

Toni shot Loki a quick glare at that. He seriously needed to stop simply teleporting where she was, because then she was the one who had to explain things like why his mother had been sitting on the veranda the whole day and yet had not seen him walk inside, or how did he leave so fast without anyone noticing him.

“He just brought me lunch,” she said, waving at the burger wrappers still on her desk.

If anything, that seemed to annoy Stephen even more. “Oh, great. Guess I'll just throw this out, then.”

Toni stopped in the middle of putting all the wrappers in a bag, and frowned at him. “What.”

“I wanted to surprise you at work today and I made you your favourite lunch,” he told her, voice bitter. “But you've already had lunch, because Loki just happened to show up and bring you lunch. Honestly, why do you even keep me around when he can take care of you so much better?

Toni straightened up, feeling a little bit of irritation seeping in her. Stephen was not making much sense. “What on Earth are you even talking about? Of course Loki takes care of me. We’re friends. And I can just reheat the lunch you made and eat it later for dinner, what’s the big deal?”

“Friends,” snorted Stephen, an ugly expression on his face. “Right.”

She felt her eyes narrowing. “What are you implying, Stephen.”

“You and Hope are friends. You and Rhodey are friends. You and Bruce are friends,” he said, counting on his fingers. “But you drop everything the second Loki calls. He shows up and you guys spend hours if not days all over each other. You talk about shit together that no one else understands. You cancel on everyone just to spend time with him.”

A punch in the gut would have hurt less. Stephen thought that what... Toni was cheating on him? With Loki? Even if the idea of Loki in a sexual environment didn’t make her want to physically gag, they had done absolutely nothing to imply to a romantic or sexual relationship between the two of them. She was just as affectionate with everyone else as she was with him. “First of all, Loki shows up here between 2 to 4 times a year and never stays longer than a week. Of course I’m gonna do my best to see him when he gets a break and comes to visit! But I did the same with Maria Rambeau when she came up to California on holiday, and I do the same to Rhodey all the time, even if he shows up more often than Loki does, depending on the year. And I don’t cancel anything, I always reschedule. I always come up to see you if I miss a date or something, so how can you accuse me of-”

“Out of guilt, maybe-”

“Maybe I should go,” said Loki, standing up and looking generally uncomfortable.

“Perfect, see you never,” said Stephen as Toni spoke too.

“No. Sit down, Loki.”

Stephen looked at her, outraged and hurt. And what did he have to be hurt about? He wasn't the one whose boyfriend just accused of cheating. “This is between you and me, Toni.”

“And Loki is my friend, and I don’t care what you-”

“See? This is exactly it!” loudly said Stephen, throwing up his hands in annoyance. “You never keep secrets from him regarding what you and someone else are doing, but you keep secrets from everyone regarding what you and him are doing. How can I not be suspicious of that?!”

And when he put it like that... Toni could see it.

Loki was the only person in their group of friends who understood who and what she was, and who knew the importance of keeping this secret. He understood why she felt like she was stepping on a dead person's grave when she met a friend who didn’t know her yet. He understood the crushing sadness that grabbed onto her every now and then.

He understood why hearing the name Virginia Potts from JARVIS had felt like a sucker punch.

Her other friends didn’t. They could, maybe, if Toni told them the whole truth. But the whole truth involved too much of their futures and Toni couldn’t do it.

She wanted to. She wanted to tell Stephen so badly, but Tao said that he could never reach his potential if she did. That his life's trajectory changed if she tried to tell him about the future she was from and Kamar Taj. And Toni wasn't sure if she believed her, but she also wasn't sure she didn't believe her.

So while she could talk theories of Infinity Stones with Loki, and relax in his arms when things got too much, as well as talk to him about Hope and Rhodey trying to bullshit her regarding their romantic status, the reverse wasn’t true.

On the other side, “I am your girlfriend. Your girlfriend who you love and who’s in love with you.” She glared at him. “Aren’t you supposed to trust me?”

“I trust you just fine,” scoffed Stephen. “It’s him I don’t trust. And the fact that you are keeping things from me. Like, why was he hugging you just now?”

Again, that was true. Toni was keeping hell of a lot of things from him, the amount of which he did not even know. She was still wondering about how she could, in good faith, allow him to crash his car and lose his hands, and that didn’t happen for another 16 years.

She also wondered how she would be able to face Loki in 12 years, and she still did not know the answer for that.

“What’s important is that there is nothing going on between Loki and I. He’s a friend and that’s it, Stephen. You have no reason to be jealous of him,” she tried, keeping her voice light.

The omitted answer did not go overlooked, and he shook his head. “You ask me to not be jealous, you demand that I trust you and you can’t even tell me what drove you in his arms just now?”

Now Toni too felt a little bit of irritation raising in her. “What’s even the point of telling you? You wouldn’t trust me anyway.”

“I would if you started talking to me. Or maybe if you started spending less time alone with him.”

Toni’s eyes narrowed dangerously at that. “Do not presume that just because we are dating you have the right to dictate who I spend or don’t spend time with, Strange.”

“Is it really such a hardship to ask you to avoid someone who makes me uncomfortable? I don’t like him, and I don’t like him around you especially,” said Stephen, face open and hopeful despite his words.

There was something in the way he looked at her right now that reminded her of Steve Rogers when he had first started campaigning for the witch to join the Avengers, and she felt sick to her stomach.

“Well, tough luck because I’ve known him for longer than I’ve known you,” technically not a lie, “And I’m not just gonna stop hanging out with him because you don’t like your girlfriend having friends.”

Stephen’s eyes narrowed too. “I’ve never had a problem with Rhodes or Banner. Never cared about Van Dyne or Carter. Doesn’t it tell you something that the only person I have a problem with is Loki?”

“You know, I’m right here...”

They both ignored the man, glaring at each other. “No, it tells me absolutely nothing because I care as much about those other four as I do for Loki. Do not ask me to choose between you and Loki, Stephen.”

He stiffened. “Because I won’t like your answer?”

“No, because I love you, but I care for him too. So don’t ask me to do that,” she answered, maintaining eye contact.

Because truth was, she wasn’t sure what she would pick. She couldn’t imagine a life without either of them. They were both dear to her, though in very different ways.

She loved Stephen. It was terrifying, overwhelming, and unexpected, but she did.

But Loki... he understood her in a way no one else did. She could talk to him in a way she could talk to no one else around.

She didn't want to have to choose.

She didn't know who she would choose

Stephen stared at her for a couple more seconds, then turned on his heels and made for the door.

“Where are you going?” she demanded, taking a half step towards him but stopping before she could actively start following him.

“Home. Do whatever you want,” he said, walking out.

“I don’t need your permission for that either!” she shouted back, as the door slammed close behind him. She stared at it for a couple of seconds, willing for him to come back and apologise. Willing for him to open the door again. To return.

When it didn't happen, she sighed, leaning back against her desk.

Loki did not say anything for about the two minutes it took for Toni to regain her composure, and then spoke up. “I am not sure I am worth this, Antoinette.”

“You’re my friend,” she answered, running a hand through her hair. If things from the other Universe remained the same here, she'd have to fight him. “You deserve good things. And Stephen will realise he was acting way too possessive and jealous and come back and apologise.”

“You are my friend too,” said Loki, his expression surprisingly soft from where he remained perched on one of her chairs. “In fact you are more than that.” He stood up and came to stand directly in front of her.

He bent down to get his face closer to hers, putting a hand on her neck, and for a second Toni thought that perhaps Stephen was right. Perhaps Loki was in love with her and she hadn’t realised and-

Their foreheads touched, and Loki’s hand remained on the back of her neck. “You are my sister in arms. My shield and soul sister.”

Something warm seemed to settle on her chest at his words.

Soul sister... it made something like a small sun power up in her heart. She had hugged Loki plenty of times before, but it was almost like the yellow sphere inside his chest was linking with something inside her chest. Her sphere?

“Hey,” she said, once Loki freed her, mind rushing with thoughts. “In the book, it says that Time and Space are linked.”

Loki looked curious at the change in conversation but nodded. “Yes. There are different myths everywhere but from what my mother told me as a babe the stones are linked among themselves. Time and Space are linked, one cannot exist without the other. Reality and Power both attract and repel one another, only they can destroy one another. And Mind and Soul simply know one another, sister energies across the cosmos.”

Mind and Soul.

Mind and Soul.

If Stephen’s green was linked to the Time Stone, then Loki’s yellow was linked to the Mind Stone. And Toni being able to see ‘orange spheres’ after Ana’s death - seeing souls after witnessing death - orange spheres for an orange stone, it meant that perhaps, Toni was-

There was a knock at the door and Toni actually jumped in surprise at the noise. There were so many thoughts running through her mind at the moment, but she needed to focus right now. “J?”

“The PA Mrs Stark has hired for you has arrived, Miss,” explained the AI, and Toni nodded.

Theories later.

“Right, let her in.”

The door opened, and for the second time that day, Toni couldn’t breathe.

“Good afternoon, Miss Stark,” said the woman in front of her, looking unsure at Loki’s presence but still maintaining a polite and professional smile on her face. “I’m Mary Fitzpatrick, your new PA.”

Chapter Text

Earth-199999: November 2000

Tony looked up from where he was laying face down on the desk at the sound of the door opening. 

He had totally forgotten that he had to you know, CEO it up that morning, and had ended up drinking a little more than strictly necessary the night before. And while he wasn’t as hungover as he could have been, he still felt pretty awful; hence the sunglasses plastered on his face and the fact that he had been nursing the same cup of coffee for an hour now.

“Good morning, Mr Stark,” said the woman who had walked into the room.

Tony looked up at the voice, frowning slightly when he came face to face with the owner.

There was a short haired brunette in front of him, dressed quite smartly in a red blouse and black skirt. Her hair was tied in a ponytail behind her and her eyes were carefully made up, pretty red lips tilted in a smile as she stopped in front of his desk.

For all intents and purposes she looked like every other averagely attractive woman in the business world. But there was something familiar about her.

“Do I know you?” he asked, sitting up properly on his chair and squinting at her from behind his sunglasses.

The woman raised an eyebrow at him. “I’d think so, considering we just saw each other last night?”

Oh, now Tony remembered. There had been a woman at that party (several women, in fact, but only one he had took interest in). She had approached him first, and Tony did like it a lot when women approached him first. They had not made it back to his hotel together, instead finding a dark corner in the club just for the two of them.

“Ah, yes. Private room sex, 10/10 would bang again,” he said, which made her roll her eyes slightly. She did not get offended; Tony liked her already. “Though it does not explain what you’re doing in my office. You are aware that it was just a one night stand, right?”

This time her eye roll was much more obvious. “Yes, I am aware. I also am aware that I made a point of telling you I had been hired to work under you when we interacted.”

Tony let out a childish giggle. “Under you,” he repeated, very amused. “Funny choice of words. And, what? I thought it was a pick up line!”

“That’d be a pretty stupid pick up line,” pointed out the woman - he did not remember her name - before dropping a stack of papers on his desk. “Anyway, Mr Stane hired me, and I have a three months minimum contract. Can you be an adult about this? I kind of need the money.”

Sure, Tony could simply transfer her somewhere else within the company but where would the fun in that be? “Sure, I can be an adult when necessary,” he finally said, making no move to touch the papers she had handed him. “Can you manage to keep yourself from falling into bed with me, er...?”

“Mary,” she said, more amused than offended. “Mary Fitzpatrick.”

“Mary, right. Are you sure you can last three months around me? I know I’m irresistible.”

She shook her head, walking towards the door once more. “You have to sign those by the end of the day. And, Mr Stark?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m an 11,” she said with a wink, before closing the door behind them.

Earth-200207: November 2000

This hadn't been in any of Toni’s plans regarding her arrival in this timeline. It was something that had seemed so small back then, that she had automatically forgotten about it, something that she had managed to convince herself wouldn’t matter at all.

She could tell Loki wanted to ask questions about this, because her reaction to Mary Fitzpatrick and her reaction to Virginia Potts had been drastically different.

After her new PA had introduced herself, Toni had manage to somehow shake some of the shock off herself and interact more or less normally with the other woman, but her mind had been spinning as she returned home.

Not even her argument with Stephen phased her anymore, not after what she had just figured out.

She was hit over the head with one of her pillows and turned to glare at Loki. The trickster was laying on her bed with a book in his hands and a raised eyebrow, expression a little mocking and slightly concerned. “You do realise I will be leaving early on the morrow? If you have any questions, you should ask them now.”

Toni had questions. Toni had tons of questions, and possible hypothesis, but she couldn’t focus. She had tried to read the books Loki had handed her several times over, and all she had managed to do was stare at nothing and try to not freak herself out further.

Loki seemed to read all of this on her face - further supporting her hypothesis - and he looked confused. “Meeting this woman has you frazzled. What importance is she of?”

What importance did Mary Fitzpatrick have?

“The first time we met,” she explained, “we were in a nightclub. A classy kind of nightclub, with private rooms for paying folk, and I am the paying folk. Was. I don’t know tenses.” She shook her head. “She was pretty, and charming, and one thing led to another and we slept together.”

The mage nodded slowly, indicating for her to continue.

“The next day, she showed up at my workplace. Turns out that what I thought was a pick up line was the actual truth, and she actually did work for me. She was my new PA, personal assistant.” 

Loki cringed. “Yikes.”

“Nah,” said Toni, with a simple hand wave. “It was mostly all right. She was professional, and it’s not like it was the first time I had slept with one of my assistants. Don’t judge me, I was young and a very different person from who I am today." Lost, alone and with absolutely no support group.

“But anyway, she worked for me for about three months. We slept together about five more times following that first time in the club, but she was professional about it, not looking for a relationship with me or anything. When she decided to leave, it was amicable. She went her way and I never looked for her ever again cause she wasn’t something particularly special, not for me.”

The green eyed man took her hands in his, stopping her from wringing them painfully. “There is more to the story?”

Toni let out a breath. “Yeah. So, fast forward like 15 years or something, I meet this boy. Another enhanced, super smart, pretty young, way too fucking good for this world. I recruited him for something I really shouldn’t have recruited him for, and he ended up in my life as a result of it. His name was Peter.” 

Even now, nine years since the snap, Toni struggled to think of Peter. The first couple of years had been the worst, but even now her heart squeezed painfully. She was doing better with dealing with her own guilt, and she knew there was an equal chance that Peter would have been snapped even if he had been on Earth. 

It did not make it any easier, and some nights she still dreamt of him becoming dust in her hands.

“He lived with his aunt and uncle, up until his uncle died. Then it was just him and her, May.” She smiled slightly in memory of the woman. Toni had never found out if she had been snapped or not. “He went to live with them because his parents died when he was two years old. He never really knew them, so he didn’t really speak of them.

“Until one day, I was at his place because me and May started sort of co-parenting him by that point. And I found a picture of his parents. A picture of his mother,” she said, and shook her head with a small laugh. “Mary.”

Earth-199999: August 2017

“Has anyone ever told you you’re nosy, Mr Stark?” complained Peter Parker, walking into his bedroom to find the man already there, sitting at his desk and messing around with his things.

“I’m not nosy,” complained Tony, offended, “It’s called being inquisitive.”

Peter did not look at all impressed. “Right. Why are you going through my stuff?”

Tony managed to hide a little smile. He liked that the boy was now able to sass him and complain about him without immediately panicking. He still did not think he was the best role model for kids or teenagers, but he liked working with Harley and Peter both, and they liked him.

He picked at the horrifying Frankenstein type computer on the table with distaste. “Didn’t I give you a new laptop as part of your internship? Why is this monstrosity still at your table?”

“Mr Stark that’s an Acer laptop,” tried Peter, which made Tony hiss in displeasure.

“Didn’t hot aunt May teach you better than to use such horrible words?” he harrumphed. “Where’s your new laptop?”

Peter rolled his eyes at him, but opened one of his desk drawers, pulling out a beautiful and sleek StarkBook. “I prefer to keep it safe considering the amount of dangerous stuff I search on it on a day to day basis. I don’t want Ned or MJ to pick it up and read stuff like ‘how do you get blood out of superhero suit’ even if they know I’m Spider Man.”

Tony had to admit that made a certain level of sense, though it hurt his pride to have his baby hidden away while the Acer... thing was in the seat of honour. Instead of worrying about that he looked at Peter’s open drawer with a little curiosity.

While he was naturally inquisitive - not nosy - he hadn’t gone around and opened the boy’s drawers or wardrobe. Peter was a teenage boy, after all, and Tony wanted to know as little as possible in regards to that.

A frame quickly caught his attention and Tony frowned, pulling out of the drawer.

There was a familiar woman standing in the picture, hands wrapped around the waist of an unknown man. “Pete,” he said, staring at the picture in confusion. “How do you know this woman?”

Peter looked up from where he had been doing god knows what, and let a little ‘ah’ of surprise. “Oh, those are my parents,” he explained. “The man is Richard Parker and the woman is-”

“Mary Fitzpatrick,” he finished, staring at the face of his former PA with a strange sense of foreboding drumming in his head. 

The younger boy looked curious. “That was her surname before she married my dad, yes. How did you know that?”

“She worked for me,” explained Tony, his heart beating irrationally fast. “In like 2000. She was my PA.”

Peter seemed to have stilled at his side, and when Tony looked up at him, he found an odd expression on the boy’s face.

Richard Parker looked absolutely nothing like Peter. His eyes were blue and his hair was a much lighter brown, almost blond. With his complexion and his brown eyes, Peter was more similar to Mary than anything.

Peter’s birthday was in a few days, 12th August, Tony knew that. And he and Mary had-

No. No, Tony couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think about the possibility - was there a possibility? - couldn’t allow himself to entertain that notion.

A stupid notion.

There was no notion.

“She was hired around the end of 1999,” he lied, looking back down at the picture, because it did not matter anyway. Right? Right. “Left during the spring of 2000 and I never saw after. She was a firecracker, though. Funny little lady.”

Mary had worked with him for three months, from November 2000 to January of 2001. But Tony knew Peter and it was... better this way. Better to not have doubts, to not have thoughts and hopes.

Better to exist in the status quo.

Peter first looked a little disappointed and then horrified at his own disappointment. Tony could relate, but he didn't look at the teen. “Right. I uh, don’t remember them like at all. They worked a lot and I’m pretty sure my first memory was of Uncle Ben and Aunt May anyway-” Peter continued talking and Tony let it wash over him, forcing himself to not think about it.

Because there was nothing to think about.

Earth-200207: November 2000

“His father looked nothing like him, but I never checked,” admitted Toni, feeling as if there was not enough air in the room. “I should have checked, but I never did. I was too afraid of what the answer was, too afraid of how everything would change once I knew the truth. Afraid to either be disappointed or... worse. So I refused to know the truth.”

Loki stared at her, and there was confusion on his face. 

“What?”

“Forgive me for my question, but how exactly do Midgardians procreate?” he asked her, a slight flush on his quite perturbed face.

Toni stared right back at him, and then let out a snort that was a little hysterical. “Oh. I didn’t even clock that I never told you. I was a man in that universe.”

“Oh,” said Loki, blushing but also looking relieved. “Apologies. But now I see...” his expression went soft. “There is a chance that you were the father of the babe.”

She nodded, feeling slightly horrified at the fact that there were tears in her eyes. “It checks out. I lied to him when he asked me how and when did I know his mother. I knew her from October 2000 to January 2001. And god knows how many times the gossip magazines thought that Peter was my child because we had very similar features. His father looks nothing like him, and his mother could very easily pass for this version of me with the right make up and clothes.” She gave up on wiping her eyes, biting back a sob. “But if that’s true, if he really was my son, then he’s dead here too. Then he’ll never exist because we are both women in this universe. Then Peter will never be born. He’ll never exist.”

She had never realised how much she had looked forward to meeting Peter again, once the timeline caught up. She remembered him telling Tony Stark the tale of meeting him for the first time at the Expo. She had been looking forward to seeing him - alive, whole - again, even if she decided not to involve him as much.

And now she never would, because she wasn’t a man, and therefore couldn’t get Mary Parker nee’ Fitzpatrick pregnant. Unless Richard Parker was truly Peter’s dad (but he wasn’t. Toni knew, and Tony had known and perhaps Peter himself had entertained the thought).

Strange of the past had told her that this was the only way. That they needed time, so he had sent her in an alternate universe to give them time. She was trying to find a way to protect Earth and understand what the green and yellow spheres of Stephen and Loki's soul meant (because if she was right and her ‘sight’ had something to do with the Soul Stone, then it meant that it wasn’t simply a ‘trace’ of touching/using an Infinity Stone). Trying to understand why she had been sent so far back, why had Strange given her this chance, considering it would have worked as well - better even - if she had arrived in the early 2000s instead.

But was this universe worth even living if Peter didn’t exist?

Had she lost him forever on Titan?

How could a Universe exist without Peter Parker?

“I’m sorry,” told her Loki, gathering her up in his arms. “I’m sorry, Antoinette.”

“What the fuck do you have to be sorry for?” she asked, pretending that her voice was unwavering and strong and not like she was losing it.

She wanted Peter. She needed Peter to exist, needed him to be alive.

It wasn’t worth it, otherwise.

This second chance, this chance of doing things the right way; of having someone to love in Stephen, someone to understand her in Loki, someone to be there for her in Maria Stark, a family in Rhodey, Sharon and Hope, a friend in Bruce, Maria Rambeau and Monica, a new chance with JARVIS.

It wasn’t worth it.

+++

“Toni!” called Maria’s voice from the door of her bedroom, and the brunette startled awake.

When did I even fall asleep, she wondered as she groggily took in the room and the chest she was laying on. Since when did Stephen have a yellow light-

“Lokes?” she asked, looking up to a pale face cradled by dark hair.

The mage’s eyes were open and he was studying a book in his hands, but they immediately found Toni's when she spoke.

He gave her a smile. “I see you’ve awoken,” he said, gently.

Why was he being gentle? He wouldn’t-

Oh. Right.

Toni pulled back the grief and grimaced at the tear tracks on her cheeks. “Yuck. How long was I asleep for?”

“Merely half a Midgardian hour,” he answered, which normally would beg the question ‘what the fuck do Asgardians measure time in’ but she couldn’t bother right now.

“Toni!” shouted her mother again and Toni groaned, sitting up.

“Dammi un secondo!” she shouted back, running a hand through her hair. Then she realised she did not care about her appearance enough to make an effort, and sighed before walking out. “Hey, tell me what you found about the Soul Stone and the cradelaides, when you’re done.”

Loki just showed her a thumbs up, and Toni gave him a little smile before walking out of the room.

Her mother was, of course, nowhere to be seen. “JARVIS, where is the illustrious Maria Stark?”

“Mrs has just retreated to her room,” answered the AI. “However, the reason she has called for you is sitting in the living room.”

Toni narrowed her eyes at the cameras, as she started towards the stairs. “JARVIS are you being cheeky, sneaky and all plan-y with my mamma again? I raised you better than that.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Miss,” answered the AI, and Toni felt a small smile on her face as she walked into the living room.

A smile that froze when she saw the person standing there, a few feet from her, holding the biggest bouquet of flowers in his hands.

She blinked.

Blinked again.

Stared. 

“What?” she finally managed, a small smile finding its place on her face again.

Stephen gave her a big smile back. “This is my personal ‘I’m sorry I acted like a possessive dick’ apology bouquet.”

Tony Stark had never received flowers, and Toni Stark had only ever received them at Howard Stark’s funeral. She took the glamorous white flower bouquet, allowing herself to smell the fragrance. It would die in days and she had no clue what flowers she was looking at but she had never loved a gift more.

“Stephen, these are gorgeous,” she said, tracing the petals with her fingers.

He smiled, and then looked worried. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve been crying.”

Toni shook her head, not looking at him. “It’s nothing,” she assured him. “Don’t worry.”

She didn’t miss the way his jaw clenched at the omission, but he visibly reigned himself back. “I will always worry about you, Toni, I love you. But I’m not gonna force you to share something you are not comfortable with.”

This time the girl couldn’t help a slightly amused look. “Did you read that in a book?”

“How to apologise for dummies,” quipped Stephen and she let out a huff of laughter at this. 

Then she went a little more serious. “I’m sorry too, for what’s it worth. I don’t mean to make you feel like I trust Loki more than I trust you. And one day, I promise I’ll tell you everything. As soon as I can. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s simply that I can’t.”

Trust her, she had tried to make Tao reconsider. But the Ancient One insisted that telling him would stop him from becoming the Sorcerer Supreme, and Toni couldn't risk it. Couldn't risk the Universe because of one man.

Stephen ran a hand through her hair, coming closer. “I don’t think I truly understand, but I will do my best to do so.” She gave him a grateful nod, and he pointed at the card. “You should read that now.”

Now that Toni was paying attention, he looked a little... giddy? Agitated? Excited? A mix of all three. She took the card from the bouquet and put the flowers down, opening the small envelope.

It read ‘For Antoinette’ in a neat script very unlike his at the top.

Toni quirked an eyebrow at him. “Should I read this aloud?” Once he nodded - still looking that mix of confusing emotions - she opened the envelope, pulling out a handwritten note, and started reading. “Dear Toni,

I'm sorry.

The second I walked out of that room I regretted it. I wanted to go back and apologise, to say that I didn’t mean it, but I didn’t and I’m sorry. I should have.

I hate having you mad at me. We drive each other up the wall half of the time, but I feel like this was the first time we were actually mad at each other. And I know a relationship with two stubborn bastards like us two means that it probably won’t be our last fight, but I hated it anyway.

I hated it, and I realised that what I hated more was the uncertainty that followed. The fact that I wasn’t sure you would still be there waiting for me when I pulled my head out of my ass and apologised. The fact that I could have potentially walked away from one of the best things that has ever happened in my life over a goddamn stupid argument over lunch.

I hope I didn’t. I don’t want to walk away from you. I never want to walk away from you. I love you, and I truly want to be at your side for as long as you’ll have me, through joy, and sadness, and arguments and everything.

Because you are one of the best things that happened in my life, Toni.

I always had a plan for how to live my life. What to do in order to become the biggest neurosurgeon in the world (you've seen it and called me a nerd about it).

Nowhere in my plans did I account for your presence in my life. I didn't expect you, and, at the beginning, I did not want you.

But soon enough, I couldn't be without you.

And the most incredible thing? I never expected you, and yet you fit in my plans like a puzzle piece I never knew I missed.

Never expected, and now, don't think I can live without.

Because... because I love you, Toni. I love you more than you can imagine, more than I ever thought possible for a person to love.

And with that, I just have one question for you.

7 simple words.

Antoinette Evelyn Stark: will you marry me?” 

Toni’s voice had gone more watery the more she read on, but at the last four words it finally cracked. She looked away from the paper and found Stephen on his knees in front of her, a beautiful diamond ring sitting on a box in his hands and a smile on his face.

“Will you marry me?” he repeated, and Toni could only stare, a thousands emotions going through her.

Had he asked the day before, she would have said yes. Had he asked her before she met Mary Fitzpatrick, she would have said yes. Had he asked her directly after she found out Pepper was now working at SI, she still would have said yes.

Had he asked on that beach in Isle de Eterea, even though they hadn’t said their ‘I love yous’ yet, she would have said yes. 

But he hadn’t asked then.

He was asking now.

Stephen’s smile looked a little strained the longer Toni stared at the ring with her mouth open and didn’t answer.

Finally, she forced herself down to her knees beside him, grabbing his wrists in her hands but not touching the ring. “Stephen,” she started, and the light dimmed from her boyfriend’s eyes immediately. “Wait, listen to me.”

“It’s a no,” he surmised, letting the box close with a final ‘thud’ between the two of them. “Why?”

“It’s not a no,” she quickly said, and he frowned at her.

“But it’s not a yes.”

She gave a sigh, trying to find the right words. “It’s just... the timing isn’t the best, Steph.”

“When has the timing of anything ever been the best? Especially with the two of us?” he asked back, his sadness and disappointment almost tangible.

They tasted bitter.

“Stephen, just yesterday you implied that I slept with Loki,” she pointed out, giving him a look. Even without the mess of emotions thinking of Peter had brought up, that was a glaring detail. “And in your letter you’re basically saying that the guilt of that made you realise that you want to marry me.”

“Not the guilt of it,” immediately protested Stephen. “I’ve wanted to marry you for a while, Toni.”

“When did you get the ring?” she asked. “Did you even get it fitted? Do you know my ring size?”

He glared at her. “I know your ring size, I’ve asked JARVIS,” he answered, but he did not answer the first part of the question. “So you’re not agreeing to marry me because you don’t think I’m genuine?”

“I do believe you love me,” she said, shaking her head. “And I love you too. But Stephen, I can’t, in good conscience, say yes right now. You shouldn’t be asking me right now. Why are you asking me right now?”

Stephen shrugged slightly. “You were alone, and your mother and you are staying here for a while longer...” he explained.

But there was something about the way he said. Something about what he didn’t say that made Toni’s heart clench painfully in her chest.

She let go of his wrists and stared at him as if she could read his soul - and considering her running theory that she was, somehow, touched by/connected to the Soul Stone and the fact that she could tell when someone was lying, it was quite apt - feeling herself shake ever so slightly. “Stephen... did you ask me now because you wanted me to be engaged to you by the time Loki came back?” 

“... No. Of course not. I love you, Toni,” he said, earnestly.

He had hesitated. He had hesitated and then he had lied.

Toni didn’t know if he was lying to her or lying to himself, but she still stood back up, staring at him with pain filled eyed. “Stephen.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, also standing back up, the box with the ring still in his hands. “I’m sorry, okay. I didn’t even realise that’s what I was doing. I just... fuck, Toni, I hate him, okay? I get it, he’s your friend, but I can’t fucking stand him. Is it so bad that I want him to see your ring and stay away from you?”

“And I keep telling you,” she answered back, just as aggressively. “That there is nothing between Loki and I. We are friends, he’s one of my closest friends, but he’s like a brother to me! There is nothing romantic between the two of us.”

“Maybe not from your side,” he stubbornly retorted. “But he’s always all over you, Toni. In your room, in your office, on the beach. He just shows up and you bend over to his every whim. I just, I can’t trust him with you.”

“Can you trust me with him?” asked Toni, begging him with her eyes to understand. To trust her. She loved him; even if by some weird coincidence Loki did love her, what did it matter in the end? When she was in love with him?

It took too long for him to answer. Too long for his expression to clear, too long for him to agree with her.

And then he didn’t.

“No,” answered Stephen, and Toni felt like everything crashed around her.

Because he was telling the truth. He was telling the truth, just as clearly as earlier he had lied. He loved her, sure, but he did not trust her.

And what sort of relationship could come from no trust? What did they have, if they didn’t trust each other?

“Then what are we doing here, Stephen?” she asked, begging him to do something, to change his answer, to realise-

He looked at her sadly and angry at once, a maelstrom of conflicting emotions, of love and disappointment and sadness and grief. “I don’t know.”