Chapter Text
“Time is what keeps everything from happening at once." — Ray Cummings
The machine shouldn’t have made that sound.
That wet, metallic clunk - like a wrench dropped into a turbine - was not on the schematic. Nor was the sudden tremor that passed through the floor like a pulled muscle, or the brief flash of violet light that lanced out like a cracked whip before folding in on itself and vanishing.
Tony’s first thought - because of course he was thinking, even as physics decided to improvise - was: Huh. That’s new.
His second thought, less elegant, was oh, shit.
Across the lab, Bruce looked up from his monitor, frowning. “Tony? What was that?”
“I don’t know yet,” Tony said. He was already reaching for the override panel when the stabiliser core emitted a high-pitched whine - not mechanical, not even electronic - something deeper. The kind of sound that made your bones want to leave your body.
“Kill the power,” Bruce snapped, already moving.
“I’m trying,” Tony muttered. But the interface had frozen, and the circuit was still drawing current - no, not drawing it, cycling it. A feedback loop. Contained energy with nowhere to go.
Then came the falling sensation.
The floor shivered, then buckled. The room inverted. The ceiling did something profoundly disrespectful to gravity. Tony’s boots left the ground.
He had just enough time to regret not running a closed-environment test, to glance sideways and see Bruce’s hand outstretched in alarm - and then the floor vanished entirely and the world snapped to black.
There was a flicker - not light, but memory.
Bruce’s voice echoing, warped and distant: “Tony-”
Then silence.
Then-
-dirt.
No - gravel. Warm, sunbaked gravel biting into his palms and through the torn knees of his jeans. He rolled over and squinted up into a sky so blue it looked artificial. A hawk wheeled overhead.
No HUD. No suit. Just a familiar ache in his chest and the sudden, gut-level certainty that he wasn’t in Kansas (or Midtown) anymore.
He sat up slowly. The air smelled like sun on motor oil. Pine sap. Something sharp and metallic. He turned his head and saw a long, two-lane road cutting through open country. A low ridge of mountains loomed in the near distance, softened by haze.
To his left, a battered sign creaked in the breeze: FROST CREEK AUTO & AGRI REPAIR – EST. 1963.
The letters were faded. The building behind it was a squat garage with an open bay door and a peeling Coke machine beside it. A radio played from somewhere inside, scratchy with static.
Tony stood, brushing off his hands. His mouth was dry. The sun was too bright. He turned in a slow circle, but there were no other buildings. No towers. No skyline.
No cell signal, either. His watch was dark. JARVIS was silent.
He exhaled through his nose. "Okay. Diagnostic: not dead. Possibly stranded in a retro-themed tourist trap. Worst-case scenario: I’ve invented a time machine. Again."
He started toward the garage.
The interior of the workshop was dim and cooler than the road, but only just. The heavy scent of gasoline, and scorched metal hung in the air like a second skin. A box fan whined in the corner, clicking faintly with every lazy rotation. Tools hung in neat rows on pegboards - oil-darkened, worn smooth from years of calloused hands. An old ashtray shaped like a gear rested on a workbench, full of lipstick-smudged butts and a few bent matchsticks.
Somewhere on a shelf, a battered radio murmured a half-tuned classic rock station. The vocals came in garbled and warping through static.
She was half-swallowed by the engine of a pickup when he saw her. Just legs at first - long, tanned, dappled in oil and sun, muscles tensed as she reached into the truck’s guts. Scuffed cowboy boots. Denim cutoffs frayed at the edge. When she straightened, she moved like someone born around machines - fast, unafraid, efficient.
Dark hair was twisted up in a tortoiseshell clip, loose strands sticking to the sweat at her temple. Her T-shirt was faded, clinging, smeared with grease down the side. She had a cigarette tucked into the corner of her mouth and a wrench still clutched in one hand.
She didn’t smile. She didn’t even flinch.
“You lost?” she asked, voice rough, like she hadn’t spoken today.
“That’s complicated,” Tony said, brushing off the front of his shirt like it might make him look less like he’d just fallen through time.
She stared at him with flat curiosity, the kind of look that weighed you before you’d said a word. He felt absurdly exposed - no armor, no HUD, just dust and yesterday’s ego. She was younger than him by at least a decade, though technically, she was also older than him, too.
“You one of the MIT boys looking for the commune? They’re down the ridge, past the loggin’ road. Tell ‘em to stop calling here.”
He squinted. “That’s… not the worst assumption you could’ve made.”
“Right,” she muttered. “You’ve got that look.”
“Which look?”
“The one where your brain’s movin’ three times faster than your mouth, but your mouth still wants to win.”
Tony gave a crooked grin. “Guilty. You must be fun at parties.”
“I’m not,” she said. “And you’re bleedin’, by the way.”
He looked down. A shallow cut tracked across the outside of his right hand - probably from the gravel. Dried blood was already cracking near his thumb. He hadn’t even noticed.
“Ah. That explains the tingling. Not radioactive, though, if that’s your concern.”
“It wasn’t,” she replied, unimpressed.
He stepped further inside, taking in the clatter and hum of the garage like it might settle his nerves. The heat hung heavy in the air, thick with motor oil and rubber. His arc reactor flickered faintly beneath his shirt - unreadable without diagnostics. The temporal stabiliser was currently a handful of scrap metal in his pocket and felt heavier than it should, like a useless hunk of metal.
“I was hoping for directions,” he said. “And possibly a glass of water. And maybe a crash course in the local breakdown of electromagnetic coherence.”
She blinked once. “You talk like someone who’s been awake for three days straight.”
“More like thirty years.”
She tilted her head slightly, cataloguing him like a broken part. “You a fed?”
Tony let out a dry laugh. “Not unless the feds have started integrating arc reactors into their field kits.”
She stared.
“Kidding. Mostly. Listen - can I just sit for a minute? I’ve had a weird day.”
After a long pause, she jerked her chin toward the back door.
“Water’s in the kitchen. Don’t touch the radio.”
The kitchen was small, sun-warmed, and quietly alive with the faint creak of cooling pipes and the hum of an old fridge. The linoleum floor was patterned in daisy-yellow, its edges faded by sunlight and years of boots tracing the same easy paths. Avocado-green cabinets framed the room, their chrome handles catching the late afternoon light like tiny mirrors. It smelled faintly of lemon soap, and something toasty that lingered in the air like memory.
A stack of neatly written recipe cards sat in a ceramic holder shaped like an ear of corn. A row of spice tins lined the windowsill, labels handwritten in tidy script: paprika, cinnamon, sage . The curtains were gingham - red and white - pulled back with twine.
A wall-mounted rotary phone hung beside the fridge, its coiled cord stretched and tangled from long-ago conversations. Just beneath it, a calendar fluttered slightly in the breeze from the open window.
Tony stepped closer.
June 1975. The page was marked in pencil with tidy block letters: oil change, seed order, Ma’s birthday.
He stared at the date for a long beat, something cold blooming in the pit of his stomach despite the heat. For a second, the room felt too quiet - like the moment before a machine fails.
His mind did the math without permission. June ‘75 meant Howard was alive. So was Maria. Somewhere, in upstate New York or Malibu or whatever house they were trying to make a home at that point, his parents were drinking cocktails and talking over each other. Somewhere, there was a five-year-old version of him - messy, sharp, small and fast.
He braced his hands on the counter. The Formica was smooth and cool under his palms.
This wasn’t theoretical anymore. He’d broken time and landed in the middle of a family photo he hadn’t been invited to.
He couldn’t interact. Mustn't leave a footprint. Shouldn’t let anyone see him - not anyone who mattered.
Tony closed his eyes and took a breath through his nose. In, hold… out. Compartmentalise. He could have a breakdown later - maybe once he’d survived this.
Seventy-five. Right. Deep breath. No tech. No backup. No butterfly effects. Just fix the machine and stay out of history’s way.
He looked back at the calendar. Ma’s birthday, scrawled in pencil.
“Happy birthday, Ma,” he muttered, under his breath. “Sorry about the temporal incursion.”
Then he turned away, trying to steady his thoughts.
Next to the calendar was a wall of photographs. Dozens of them - Polaroids and Kodachrome prints, curling slightly at the edges but bright, vivid and retro. He scanned them with a strange mix of dread and curiosity. Kids on tricycles. A woman in a swimsuit, laughing at something off-camera. A man on a tractor, mid-wave. a dog in the back of a car.
And then - one that made his stomach jolt. At first glance, he thought it was his mother.
A young woman stood at the centre of the frame, hip cocked, a wrench tucked into her waistband. Her dark hair was pinned back, flyaways curling around her temples, and her expression was caught somewhere between a squint and a challenge. She wasn’t smiling.
He stepped closer. It wasn’t Maria. The nose was narrower. The jaw sharper. It was the woman from the garage, but the tilt of her head, the stubborn set of her shoulders - had hit him like déjà vu.
Tony stood still for a beat too long, eyes tracing the curve of her face, the grease-stained cuff of her coverall. Then he exhaled through his nose, turned to the sink, and filled a thick-lipped glass from the tap.
The water tasted like copper and mountain air. Not bad, just old-fashioned.
He drank it in three long gulps, then rested the glass on the counter beside a bowl of plums and a tin labeled string etc.
A little later, as the sun lowered and the heat drained out of the walls, Tony found her out back, perched on the porch steps with a beer and a cigarette. She didn’t invite him to sit, but she didn’t tell him to leave either. He took the spot beside her with careful distance and even more careful silence.
They watched the dusk roll in without speaking, fireflies blinking between the tall grass and rusted-out farm equipment.
“I looked through your kitchen,” he said after a while. “Hope that’s not a federal offense.”
She took a drag. “You touch anythin’?”
“Just your tap.”
The woman let the silence hang for another beat, then said, “You’re not from around here.”
“Nope.”
“East Coast?”
“Technically.”
She gave him a side glance.
“You gonna give me an actual story, or are you just plannin’ to loiter til I call the sheriff?”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Sheriff, huh. Very quaint. Does he ride a horse and have a moral code?”
“I’m not joking.”
He hesitated. Then, with deliberate care, gave her the safest sliver of truth he could find.
“I’m someone who screwed up a project badly enough that it stranded me somewhere I can’t explain, in a time that isn’t mine, with nothing but what I was carrying and a slightly bruised... ego.”
That earned a huff - either disbelief or the beginning of a laugh. It was hard to tell.
“You sayin’ you… time-traveled?”
“I’m saying I’m not here on purpose. I came to in a ditch with no equipment, no phone, and no idea what zip code I’d landed in.”
She took another swig from her bottle, then gave him a long look, letting the silence stretch a little. “You military?”
“No.”
“Government?”
“God, no.”
She squinted at him. “You a spy?”
Tony barked a short laugh. “Do I look like I have the patience for espionage?”
Her gaze lingered. Then she shook her head, muttering something under her breath.
“That’s the weirdest version of ‘I don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight’ I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard some tall tales.”
He didn’t look at her. Admitting you needed help always sounded worse when you had to say it out loud. “I’m not looking for pity. Just a roof till sunrise. I’ll figure out the rest.”
“What’s your name?”
He hesitated. The truth was technically harmless… probably. Still.
“Tony.”
“Tony what?”
He smiled without showing teeth. “Just Tony.”
She exhaled. “Right. And I’m Queen of the Smoky Mountains.”
“I was going to guess ‘Clara,’ but that works too.”
She froze for half a beat, then snorted. “You read it off the toolbox.”
“I read it off the excellent organisational system. Pegboards. Labelled drawers. A woman after my own heart.”
She gave him a sidelong look. “You’re weird.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
She was quiet for a while, then finally stood, stretched, and flicked the remains of her cigarette into a rusted coffee can by the steps.
“You touch my tools, you’re out. Try anythin’ and I’ve got a socket wrench that doesn’t miss."
He raised his glass in salute. "Understood.”
She pointed to the narrow ladder at the back of the garage. “Up there. You can sleep in the loft - there’s a blanket. It’s probably got motor oil on it though.”
He stood slowly, feeling the ache in his back from the gravel and the not-quite panic that had lived in his chest since waking up here.
“Clara,” he said, and she looked back from just inside the doorway.
“Thanks.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t make it weird.”
Then she disappeared, and he was left with the sound of frogs starting up in the ditch and the faint, staticky hum of her workshop radio drifting through the open door.
It was June 1975.
Somewhere not too far away, 5-year-old Tony Stark was probably tucked up in bed, while future Tony Stark was sitting on a strange woman’s porch wondering how the hell he was going to get back to the future.