Chapter Text
The portal opened up one twilight at the start of summer, noticed by none but the super secret government agency titled SHIELD, and Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, titled JARVIS.
The second portal, smaller and lasting far longer, came exactly six hours and thirty five minutes later, noticed by none except the aforementioned two.
The titled SHIELD were able to catch someone for the latter, to pin a face to the strangeness that had occurred – except, not really. For the face that they had wanted to pin to the strangeness was a face they’d already known, dressed strangely, yes, but not threateningly strangely.
“I’m Captain America,” James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes told them sternly, expression grim and serious, “And I’m here chasing the villain Red Skull. I’m not here to cause harm.”
“Cut the crap, Rhodes,” Fury growled back, pinching the bridge of his nose, chair creaking underneath him. “What is this? Some sort of fucking punishment for the Mandarin thing? If we hadn’t been underground we would have helped. You handled that anyway, the hell do you want from us?”
Rhodes, for it was Rhodes, both SHIELD (and JARVIS, watching from their network) noted, frowned at the Director, confusion obvious for a moment before he shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t know who this Mandarin is. You need to listen to me when I say that Red Skull is dangerous, and the last thing you want is him having free reign in your universe for any longer than he already has. I need to find him right now and take him down before he causes more damage than he probably already has.”
“Didn’t think you were into cosplay,” Fury huffed, completely ignoring him. “And I sure as shit didn’t peg you for the type who’d fuck around like this, Rhodes. Guess I should’ve known, what with you hanging ‘round that batshit Stark for as long as you ha-”
The table flipped, and Fury skittered backwards with it, away from the suddenly furious man. The table lay against the far wall, legs that had previously been bolted to the ground free and pointing skywards, metal warped with fingerprints where Rhodes had grabbed it to launch it in a fit of anger. The shackles – the top grade shackles, Coulson mentally corrected – that should have been too overboard and more for drama than anything else were lying in complete tatters on the ground, ripped apart when Rhodes had suddenly decided he very much did not like the table any more.
Huh, Coulson thought, eyebrows raised. Rhodes, their Rhodes, couldn’t do that.
At least, he mentally corrected once more, he didn’t think Rhodes could.
(He wouldn’t put it past Stark to play with Extremis for shits and giggles. And, just as Fury had been implying, Rhodes was known for occasionally getting pulled in to Stark’s insane plans – exhibit A: War Machine.)
“Don’t…” Rhodes growled, body deathly still, teeth bared. “… you dare talk about Tony like that.”
Fury, quite wisely, if Coulson thought so himself, raised both palms up, not making any move whatsoever to get closer to the tightly coiled danger that was Rhodes. The suit he was wearing – the darker blue of the familiar suit that Coulson had had a hand in redesigning – was almost plastered on like a second skin, showing a physique that was the peak of human excellence. He wasn’t sure if Rhodes’ shoulders looked broader, or if Rhodes’ himself as a whole just looked bigger, because the only times he’d seen Rhodes in actual person had been when he’d been in War Machine, or in his military blues.
He hadn’t realised that was an oversight till this instant.
“Right,” Fury finally replied, biting the word out with obvious displeasure. “I didn’t think I’d ever find myself saying this, but here I go: what the fuck is going on?”
Rhodes, this strange version of Rhodes that wore a stranger version of the Captain America suit, that had given up a darker coloured Captain America shield when he’d been surrounded by a super secret government agency with a far too long a name, crossed his (impressive) arms over his (equally impressive) chest, and glowered at Fury.
Silently.
Well then, Coulson sighed, pulling out a sleek phone from his pocket and flipping it over. He supposed it was time for him to do damage control.
He pressed it to his ears, eyes trained on the mulish Rhodes and the visible bulging vein on Fury’s forehead, and sighed again.
The phone clicked.
“Romanoff,” he greeted, voice crisp and professional. “You’re being deployed.”
#
“So what you’re telling me,” Tony said slowly, fingers hovering just shy of touching the hologram. “That you think I should absolutely hack into SHIELD and have a look at interrogation room number 6 right this very moment?”
JARVIS, a title for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, beeped an agreeable beep. “I believe you should indeed, Sir, aid SHIELD in their cyber security by pointing out their flaws and possibly giving them pointers on how better to protect themselves. Sir.”
Tony’s eyebrows rose. Very high. Up on his forehead.
They also bunched together in suspicious confusion.
“You’ve never told me to hack SHIELD before,” Tony noted, fingers wiggling a little for something to do, something that wasn’t touching the screen of the hologram. Not yet at least. “In fact, if I remember correctly, you’ve told me to do the complete opposite, and were very verbose about how I should absolutely not hack a government agency because of something dumb like the law.”
“Yes,” JARVIS replied, having the nerve to sound long-suffering. “Indeed I have. But, Sir, if I may quote you; that was before, and this is now. Perhaps you’d care to follow my suggestion? While it remains relevant? Any time soon?”
The sass. The sass. Tony made an offended noise in the back of his throat and threw a nearby camera a quelling look. “Should I be worried about this- this secrecy?” He irritably replied, knowing full well that he was stalling but not really able to come up with a reason why. Maybe because JARVIS had never done this before. Maybe because this was strange and unusual and it felt almost like JARVIS was trying to tell him something serious but padding it with a request for Tony to sit down first, please.
Was somebody dying?
“Is somebody dying?”
JARVIS, the little shit, replied, “Tap the screen and find out.”
So Tony tapped it.
And tapped it some more.
And hacked SHIELD a little bit more.
And then-
-“What.”
Just that. Nothing more. His brain had frozen.
“Indeed.” JARVIS replied agreeably, voice tempered.
And before him, on the hologram – and the other hologram he’d pulled up, and the third one that was springing to life that very moment – played a live feed of interrogation room number 6.
A live feed of Rhodey. His Rhodey. In SHIELD’s sixth interrogation room.
“JARVIS,” Tony heard himself say, voice distant, coming from somewhere beyond the heavy fog that had descended over the frozen wasteland of his mind. “JARVIS.”
And being the Just A Rather Very Intelligent System that he was, JARVIS replied, “Indeed,” to the first entreaty of his name, and “Indeed,” to the second.
“Get me the suit,” he finally replied, knowing JARVIS had already gotten it, could feel it at his back like a live wire about to go off. “Get me the-”
He never got to finish, cut off by an explosion that blew the windows out, that nearly blew him out if JARVIS hadn’t caught him with the very suit he’d prepared.
“Great,” Tony snarled, the ice cold of his anger burning hot into an inferno. “Just great. What fuckstick thought now was a good time? JARVIS, keep an eye on that interrogation room. Let’s wrap this up double time. We got a naughty little SHIELD to discipline.”
#
“I know you.” Rhodes greeted her with, eyes dark, lips tugged down, expression grim. “And you know me.”
Natasha swayed in, putting an emphasis on the movement of her hips, and sat down on the chair Fury had occupied moments ago. The metal table continued to lay crumpled against the wall, but the two chairs were upright once more – returned to order by Rhodes after Fury had stormed out.
She’d expected a lot of things, but this was not one of them.
“I do know you,” she replied agreeably, keeping her body loose and relaxed, open to whatever play Rhodes’ would be going for. “How have you been, Rhodey?”
The dark eyes went darker. The lips tugged further down, into a sneer. The grim expression became tight with anger. “That’s Rhodes to you, Natasha.” He bit out, catching himself immediately afterwards and looking away, almost guiltily. “Or James. Just not… not that.”
Interesting, Natasha thought distantly. She filed it away.
“Alright then, James,” she said instead, crossing a leg over the other, placing both hands on the knee demurely, calm as you please. “But I don’t think we know each other the way we think we do. So why don’t you tell me what’s going on, James.”
Another interesting thing, she noted, was that Rhodes- no, James- seemed to consider her more close in relations to himself than the Rhodes she knew did. The Rhodes she knew of, at the very least. She’d had very little dealings with War Machine, and yet it seemed that this one knew her well enough to call her Natasha, to feel guilty over snapping at her.
Guilty enough to tell her his story straight up, at least.
“Look,” James said, threading his fingers together, leaning his elbows on his knees, looking her dead in the eye. “I come from an alternate universe, a parallel reality, whatever you want to call it. We’re a team back there, you and I and a bunch of others, but that doesn’t mean much to you. What should mean something is the fact that one of the villains in my world – one of the nastiest villains in my world – somehow found a way to portal himself here with a dangerous weapon. I have to get him, have to stop him before he causes chaos here, and take him back to our world. As soon as I’ve got a hand on him, the anomaly should correct itself and we should bounce right back to our world. No muss no fuss, as simple as.”
“The Red Skull,” Natasha hummed, taking the words in, eyeing his body language, his word choices. “Why should we believe you’re from an alternate reality? What proof do you have?”
James pulled a face, and looked a bit lost. “I was, uh, hoping you’d be familiar with the multiverse already?” At Natasha’s look, he pulled a different face, rubbed a hand across the back of his head, almost sheepishly. “I guess not? Then maybe you have another Rhodes’ here? That way, it would be pretty obvious that I’m telling the truth, right? Can’t be two James Rhodes’ all of a sudden.”
He wasn’t wrong. But Natasha wasn’t an idiot. Also…
James sighed, eyes tipping down to his feet. “But then I could be just using some high tech camouflage thing. You did say no one would believe me if I got caught.”
There. That was what she was looking for.
She waited, breathing perfectly under control, and continued to stare at the man. If he was truthful, if he was honest, if he truly knew her from an alternate reality, if-
-James looked up. Looked her in the eye. And said-
#
So the story went like so:
James ‘Rhodey’ (don’t call him that) Rhodes was born in 1918, on the fourth of July, the exact same day Steve Rogers was. He was born to a tiny, poor as all hell, black family, had no education to speak off, suffered through the depression and through racism and enforced listing. Suffered through government experimentation when he and dozens, if not more, black soldiers were injected and radiated with unknown chemicals in the bid to create the perfect soldier.
And they’d finally succeeded. And then tried to bury Rhodes deep in the ground.
Rhodes had known they would, he told them easily, dark eyes drinking their reactions in, knew they’d have taken the successful sample batch number and radiation levels and used it on the first white boy that was pretty enough to be the face of their army. No need for a damn negro to lead them, right? They were good for nothing but fodder, right?
But they’d-
He paused here, grief flashing over his face before disappearing just as quickly.
They’d pissed him off, he settled on finally. There was a war going on and good people dying. So Rhodes broke free and went off to join the war. Made a couple of good friends – and here, he name dropped a few, so casually he must have thought they wouldn’t recognise them – Hogan, Parker, Jarvis and Potts. Eyes went distant when he said another name after a moment, that grief returning like a punch to the gut. Tony.
Fought for his country, he continued again, shaking off the emotion with practice. Thought he was just fighting Nazi’s until Stane came into the picture, until the damn cube and the serum turned Stane into the hideous Red Skull, and he’d crashed a plane into the Arctic to save the damn world, and died doing so.
Until he’d woken up seventy years in the future at least.
And then he’d joined a team of crazy people, he said with a fond smile, eyes tracking away from them and into memories that were pleasant. A Norse god who couldn’t take no for an answer, an archer with a horrible obsession with purple, a black widow with a secret of being absolutely terrible with IKEA furniture, and a green rage monster who loved cookies.
And they saved the world together. Again and again and again.
Just like they were doing now – sending Rhodes through a portal after Stane, the Red Skull, who apparently wasn’t as dead as they’d thought.
Natasha carefully noted what wasn’t said, and made a story of her own:
Rhodes was born in the place of Steve Rogers, and had essentially taken his role. Tony- Stark- and the circle Stark and Rhodes’ lived in seemed to have replaced that of Steve’s. Harold Hogan, Virginia Potts, JARVIS and someone named Parker, seemed to have replaced the Howling Commandoes. Stark was apparently dead, or separated from Rhodes for whatever reason. She was betting on dead.
And Rhodes was Captain America, leading the Avengers, where every member existed except Iron Man.
If any of this was true (which she was, to her own surprised, inclined to think it was), she found that tad bit of information fascinating.
But it made one thing abundantly clear:
Stark – their Stark, rash and impulsive and dangerous – could not know about this Rhodes, this James.
Clint agreed with her. Fury agreed with her. She could see it in the slant of their shoulders.
Coulson – Coulson who wasn’t dead, who’d been in hiding during the whole fiasco with the fall of SHIELD and the subsequent return of it – was absolutely not with her. But it was three to one. He’d deal.
And now to figure out how to proceed.
“Right.” Fury finally said, speaking up in the silence that followed Rhodes’ – ah, she should continue to refer to him as James – story. “So. Stane. You think he’s here. Any idea what his next steps might be?”
James nodded, shoulders straightening as his face went serious.
Natasha found herself thinking that of all the options out there, of all the people that could have possibly taken that mantle, if any of them had to be Captain America, the universe had decided well in making it him.
But then again, he was friends with Stark. Genuinely friends.
So maybe not.
#
Steve had not expected this when Clint and Natasha had asked for his help.
They’d told him there was a new threat, a dangerous one, someone with the cosmic cube he’d hoped he’d never see again.
Stane, they said, a name he only vaguely remembered but not much more. Apparently this guy had the cube and was going to activate it over the building with the largest amount of electricity. Three guesses as to which building that was, and two didn’t count.
Stark Tower.
Frowning, Steve read over the briefing packet, idly making plans for how best to place the team with what he knew. Clint was manning the car, the low-profile transportation needed after the whole fiasco with the fall of HYDRA infiltration. It would be just the three of them for now, Coulson remaining in another van to back them up, Fury on the lines back in the new base.
It was good to be out again, even like this, back with his team, with people he trusted to watch his back. Too bad they couldn’t get Tony in on this, especially since this was his tower being targeted again. But apparently the source of the information on the new threat came from someone Tony was on the outs with, which would just be bad for the mission focus. Speaking of which-
“Who did the info come from?” Steve asked, looking up from the package to Natasha, the closest to him.
“Someone who doesn’t want to be named.” Natasha replied smoothly, not looking up from tying her boots. “An old employee of Stark Industries. Low grade. Only was around for a couple months.”
Huh. “What happened between him and Tony?”
Natasha slid an eight inch knife into her boot, the silver glint disappearing entirely until Steve found himself wondering if he’d even seen it at all. “Nothing. It was between him and another employee. He was just the one let loose.”
Oh. That was… Unfair.
Steve clenched his jaw, leaving it at that, but thought to himself that whoever this source was, they were brave for still feeling the need to do the right thing, even if it meant saving/protecting the source of unfairness like that.
He’d talk to Tony about it. After the mission.
#
By the time they got to Stark Tower, it was already pandemonium.
“Damn,” Clint whistled, drifting the car to a stop in front of the building’s entrance. “This guy works fast.”
“No time for chatter,” Steve gritted out, pulling his cowl down over his face. “Natasha, to the roof. Clint, eye on the prize. Coulson, you and the agents get the civilians to safety. Avengers, assemble!”
The van doors opened up, letting them spill out, and-
“Hi.”
Steve ground to a halt. Behind him, Natasha inhaled sharply.
And from below, crawling out from beneath the van, James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes, ‘War Machine’, gave a grim smile and waved.
“I thought you might ditch me,” he said calmly, pulling himself up to his feet, dusting himself off. “So I hitched a ride. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Wha-” Steve spluttered, confusion heavy as he looked to Natasha and back. “Rhodes, what are you doing here- wait, what are you wearing?”
Rhodes, dressed like Captain America, gave him a once over, eyebrow quirking up as he gave Steve an unfamiliar look. “So you must be the Cap of this ‘verse. The pretty white boy, huh? Guess they got what they wanted here.” And before Steve could make sense of that, Rhodes was turning around, completely unbothered by the screaming civilians, by the bright blue light that was beginning to glow atop Stark Tower’s, and instead turned to Natasha and Clint. “Natasha, you and I to the roof. Clint, to the opposite roof, snipe him if you get the shot. Coulson, I need you to create a perimeter around the area, set a squad on civ’ duty, and get more eyes on surrounding rooftops. I want live satellite imaging – track this guy if he so much as sneezes in a different direction.”
An explosion crackled through the air, a high whine preceding the red and gold armour that suddenly shot into existence, swerving and ducking through the broken windows of Stark Tower towards the roof.
Rhodes stared at it, wide eyed for a split moment, eyebrows rising, before he gave a little shrug and said into comms he absolutely should not have had, “And oh, get me that guy. I want him on Stane like yesterday.”
“Now hang on just one minu-”
A boom hit the sky, a beam of blue light shooting upwards, reminiscent of a similar beam years ago, one that led to a stream of aliens and the burning knowledge that they were losing.
“No time to chat,” Natasha gripped his shoulder, shaking her head at him. “We have to go. Come on, Cap.”
Both he and Rhodes nodded at that, moved to follow her, stuttered to a stop when they almost hit into each other and stared. Rhodes cleared his threat, leaned backwards just ever so slightly, and waved a hand after Natasha, indicating Steve follow, giving him the way.
This was strange. This was bizarre. And Steve was absolutely missing something.
But he could ask questions later, after the mission. For now, he needed to focus.
Mission first.
#
“Ah, Rhodes!” The man greeted them proudly, arms spread wide dramatically. “Such a pleasure to see you here, m’boy!”
“Stane!” Rhodes shouted back, whipping out a- a shield- the red, white and blue of it a muted colour scheme, but still the same shield Steve held in his hand. What the heck- “I’m going to give you one chance to stop this and give yourself in quietly!”
The man, Stane, laughed, throwing his head (his red head, Steve shuddered at the image, at the frank horror he was seeing again) back in mirth, then suddenly cut off with a snarl. “I should have known they’d send you. The man out of time, now out of space too! Tell me, Captain, do you know what this world has?”
Rhodes hefted the shield threateningly, eyes fixed on Stane, on the gleeful red skull opposite them – and Stane’s eyes were fixed right on Rhodes back. Meaning neither would notice Natasha skirting the edges, moving to flank the man, moving to get closer to the Tesseract from another reality, one that wasn’t the Tesseract they knew at all.
“The unfortunate luck to have you darkening its door?” Rhodes shot back, taking a threatening step forward, shoulders thrown back and bold in a way Steve thought was unusual from what he knew of War Machine. “Don’t you think it’s bad enough you’re a stain on one world’s life?”
Stane laughed, the sound horrible in the clear insanity in it, and said, “You didn’t notice the name on this building, did you?”
That brought Rhodes up short. “The A?” He frowned, clearly wondering what Stane was talking about.
“It’s not just an A, though,” the villain announced, beginning to pace sideways, almost catching Natasha out when he spun to walk sideways. “The A is all that’s left after the Battle of New York. Before that, it was a whole name. A whole, familiar, name.”
Steve frowned at Rhodes’ blank look, at the glee Stane was exhibiting over something so minor. So what if the building had had Tony’s name on it beforehand? What was so wild about that? Tony had his name on everything.
“You know I hate it when you dawdle,” Rhodes drawled, taking another threatening step forward, stopping when Stane skittered backwards, hand stroking the cosmic cube adoringly. “Stane, get the hell away from that cube.”
“Oh no,” Stane cooed, hunching over the cube, ignoring the blue light that almost touched his face. “I would never. My greatest life’s work, this cube. We’ve gone through so much together, it and I. You know, don’t you, Rhodes? This cube… has shown me so much. And this building-” a laugh, high and reedy and so self satisfied it made Steve’s teeth ache, “-oh, this building. What it means, what it signifies!”
And then silence. Stane, standing still, like a puppet who’s strings had been cut. Then a slow rise, a slow straightening, a slow curl of a smile.
“Stark Tower,” the red skull announced, sweeping a hand across the rooftop, across the building they stood upon. “Headquarters of Stark Industries. CEO: Anthony Edward Stark.”
And Rhodes fell to his knees.
Steve snapped his head to him, eyes widening at the response, but kept his focus on Stane. Rhodes looked pale, like death warmed over, and disbelieving.
“No,” he was saying, quietly, almost too low to be heard. “No, that’s impossible. You- You didn’t-”
Stane laughed, high and reedy, back to that insanity Steve remembered with horrible clarity from Schmidt’s own demise, and shouted, “I enjoyed murdering this Stark just as I had the other!”
And that’s when Iron Man swooped from out of nowhere and punched Stane straight up unconscious.
“Right.” Iron Man said into the sudden silence following Natasha bursting into action and slapping the device Rhodes’ had provided onto the active Tesseract, rendering it dead. “That was fun. And absolutely traumatising. But fun. Let’s not ever do that again.”
Rhodes staggered up to his feet, still looking shell shocked, and turned to Natasha, panic and fear and absolute grief in his eyes as he choked, “Is it true? Is Tony- was he here? Did Stane kill him?”
Clearly surprised and uncomfortable with the sudden attention, Natasha opened her mouth to say something, what Steve would never know, because then the Iron Man’s faceplate snapped open and Tony – the Tony that was absolutely not dead, Steve noted with a little relief – stared at Rhodey and said, “What? No! I’m right here, honeybunch. I don’t know what the hell is going on or why Stane but Red Skull Stane is even a thing and frankly I am both terrified and deeply concerned with my own mental state for possibly coming up with that but why would I be dead? He had his chance years ago and blew it, pfft.”
Steve, equally as surprised and uncomfortable as Natasha, found himself absolutely bewildered as Rhodes – this strange, taller, broader, weirder, Rhodes – raised a hand to Tony’s face, face drawn as if seeing an actual angel, then threw himself at Tony, hands scrabbling across the armour’s back to grip him achingly tight.
“You’re-” Rhodes choked, voice thick and disbelieving. “You’re actually- you’re actually here. Holy shit, Tony, you’re here.”
Tony equally looked bewildered, equally looked surprised, but not at all uncomfortably as he hugged Rhodes back, actually hunching down a little as the armour always made him just a bit taller. “Not sure where else I’d be considering I own this building and live here,” he glibly replied, though his hands were surprisingly gentle and soothing, stroking Rhodes’ back, “But yes, yeah, okay, absolutely, I’m right here platypus, hey, hey, come on now, don’t cry, please, god now I’m really concerned. Should I be concerned? I was a little concerned when I saw you in SHIELD’s interrogation room dressed up like a more strategically dressed Captain America but now I’m really concerned. Rhodey? Rhodey. Rhodey breathe. Come on, hold on to me properly, I’m gonna walk us into the penthouse, don’t freak out-”
Slowly, carefully, lifting Rhodes just a little so his feet were on Tony’s armoured boots, Tony walked them back towards the roof elevator, absolutely ignoring Steve and Natasha.
Steve watched them go, utterly confused as to what in the world was going on, and finally turned to Natasha.
“Is it time to chat now? Because I have so many questions.”