Archive of Our Own

While it is not the common practice or purpose of the author to align himself politically for or against any one wing or party, it happened that in the year of our Lord 2016 a great red pestilence did sweep more hideously than usual across the nation, bringing with it fuel to the ancient fires of racism, misogyny, economic and scientific oblivion, and otherwise general irritation and hopelessness in the face of a trashfire American political landscape. Donald Trump was its avatar and its seal, this creeping anxiety and hateful racist shitstorm. It was a scary time.

Yet for some, it was mere vexation, a minor speed bump on a privileged road. For what earthly pleasures cannot be bought from a position of power and safety? To ask the teeming coffers of an illustrious Stark would be an exercise in futility, for their bounties only exceed the limits of imagination. As such it should effect no great pause to learn that chief among the lavish expenses of a broken and wealthy man is precious Escape and the pursuit thereof. A Halloween masquerade was ordered and an invitation of one thousand proud and pompous names of undecided or unsavory ballot did attend, all in service of sweet fleeting diversion safe from the political horrors and red absurdities beyond Tony Stark’s walls.

But first let me tell you of the tower in which it was held, and what great care was taken in its ghastly preparations, for that shit was ridiculous beyond extra.

Stark Tower was a stronghold, a symbol of the great and noble American defense. Security was paramount to its reputation and condition, overseen by the countless eyes and neural networks of JARVIS, an unsleeping artificial intelligence that permitted neither ingress nor egress without a thorough background check and at least a vague sense of humor, as Tony’s passwords were never without pun or parody. With these precautionary measures they might bid defiance to the harsh realities and physical threats without; the guests were relieved to think so. It was a charity ball not to be missed, a social suicide to decline.

As for the enclosure of the masquerade proper, there were seven distinctly accommodated rooms. Each bedecked in a style its own, the parlors each fell in accordance with a particularly gruesome period of American history leading to the present time, a “Fourth of July haunted house,” as was eagerly described by the billionaire to the roundtable of cohabitants who thought (oh, they thought, and they regretted having thought,) that an innocuous family dinner weeks prior had no ulterior motive. In particular, the oldest and most patriotically-inclined tower resident was less than keen on the theme, but forward it went and as a matter of course they spared no expense. The rooms were not, as one might expect of a traditional imperial suite masquerade, arranged as a linear corridor, but in fact encompassed the entirety of a grand ballroom demarcated in such a style as to lead the guest in a spiral through the country’s history, ending at a center focal space. The scenes were curated not unlike a museum, and each distinct phase had its own underlying horror. The first began in revolutionary splendor, blue velvet and gold brocade throughout. Flickering candles lit a lavish colonial suite on whose threadbare carpets drafts and drafts of fledgling legislature were strewn about as confetti. Bloodied bayonets and unstitched flags found an easy home, and a discerning guest would without trouble find several artifacts of brutal and unjust conflict with the native residents of the colonized land. The rooms followed in such a suit: American history at its dirtiest, darkest, and most haunting. The second room was a Civil War field hospital, once slave quarters. The third hearkened to a dustbowl Midwest, and so on and so forth until it wound inward to the present moment, a simple, dim corridor of lighted portraits of the presidential nominees, haunting in its simplicity. Few ventured this far, and scarcely a guest went further.

The center space was simply ghastly: as the perceived time swirled to the present, it swiftly plunged into darkness. The final room was shrouded in lush dark velvets and tapestries and the lighting was such that the effects of shadows playing on the faces of those who might dare to enter was enough to deter the even most audacious guest. This was the nebulous, unknown future. It was also where the sound system lived, and would have been make-out central come party o’clock if it weren’t for the inherent dread of the spectacle and darkness.

“So edgy, Tony.” To sit through another explanation of the 'casual brilliance' of this year’s theme was more than Steve Rogers had the patience to stomach. The golden morning blessed him with a brisk and bright morning run through perfectly crunchy leaves. He lit a sweet spice candle and poured himself a cup of coffee, determined nothing would spoil his mood. He had intended to ignore the growing dread, that looming specter of another goddamn gala in his own home.

“America was only ever great for some folks,” Tony repeated through a mouthful of Lucky Charms. Steve shut his eyes behind his coffee mug. On that point he didn’t disagree in the slightest but it felt disingenuous all the same.

“Says the 1% from his million-dollar breakfast nook,” Steve added. Tony shrugged. He didn’t have time to run through the 800 charities and funds he fed with his guilt money. He didn’t have a different “I’m With Her” t-shirt for every day of the week for nothing.

“JARVIS, how many undecided fat cats we got on the RSVP?”

“Of your guest list,” the voice of the ever-mindful household AI replied, “the current ‘fat cat’ attendance is estimated at five-hundred and ninety-three, a handful of campaign managers, and an even eighty-two vocally undecided voters, sir.” Steve winced.

“And you think your Night Gallery is going to tie down their vote, is that it?”

“Or scare up some donations,” Tony grinned. “It’s a charity event, Rogers. A carefully disguised, very biased charity event. Pepper’s the happiest I’ve seen her in probably three months, and that last time was a baby in a little raincoat,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “You’re awfully salty. You worried about your costume?”

“I’m worried this will attract violence, Tony,” Steve admitted. “You’re inviting every political troublemaker in the city.”

“It’s Halloween. Nobody takes anything seriously. This is like a holiday truce. There will be bowls of fun-size candy and theme drinks and everything.” Steve scoffed. If he weren’t obligated to attend, he’d call the whole gala a set-up. It was the sort of situation powerful people knew to avoid if they had seen even one Batman film.

“I have run projections on guest volatility and temperament, Captain Rogers,” JARVIS assured him. “I shall send them to your room along with personal histories and pertinent political affiliations.”

“Thanks, JARVIS.” Tony rolled his eyes and pretended his AI wasn’t being a better friend than he was.

“By all means, do your homework as if I hadn’t done it already if it’ll make you feel better. As long as you show up in costume and smile at some wives you have done your civic duty and can have all the fun-size you--- you do have a costume, don’t you?” The gravity of the room changed subtly.

“Not yet.” Steve assumed they would wear their uniforms. In this moment he realized Tony was as ever not fucking around.

“JARVIS, show him mine, s'il vous plaît.” Projected on the kitchen table was a mock-up of two outfits: one, a recognizable woman’s ensemble in sweet spring pink with accompanying blood spatter and pillbox hat, and a smart black 1960’s-era suit with a gnarled red half-mask for the left side of the face and back of the head. Undeniably, it was a couples costume of the Kennedy assassination. Tony beamed. “Straight out of Phantom of the Opera. Get it? Because Masquerade? Nobody better show up in the same costume. I’m sending home anybody who out-tasteless-es me.” Tony tapped the table twice and the projection disappeared. Dr. Banner had, in the meantime, sat down with his tea and the newspaper, blithely unaware of the tension growing in the room.

“Andrew Lloyd Webber,” Steve grumbled. Tony had showered him in Broadway tickets one Christmas after expressing passing interest and Steve developed strong feelings (as ever he did.)

“Yes, Opinion Man? What was that?” Tony asked, rinsing his bowl in the sink. “Something else amiss?”

“Nothing.”

“Ah, that was your ‘nothing’ grumble, my mistake. Because it sounded like---”

“It’s just---” Steve couldn’t contain it. Tony grinned and leaned against the granite, waiting.

“Yes?”

“But Sondheim!” Tony’s laugh echoed in the kitchen.

“I knew it. Give it up, Cap. Webber wrote an entire musical about trains! Trains!”

“Random doesn’t equate to creative, Mr. Brilliant!”

“You loved Cats! You were delighted!”

“I was laughing!”

“If only Mr. Brilliant and Opinion Man could overcome their differences and become a real crime-fighting duo,” Dr. Banner muttered behind his newspaper. Steve whipped to face him.

“You can’t tell me Into the Woods was not leagues better than Phantom of the Opera, Bruce.”

“Dad doesn’t take sides,” Tony sneered. The doctor nodded.

“I am definitely not part of this argument.” Tony looked satisfied, as usual, and it only burned Steve further.

“You’ve got plenty of time,” Tony pouted his lips, grotesque and mean, as he left the room. “Don’t take your costume frustrations out on Sir Andy. Next year, the theme will be the Jellicle Ball.” He disappeared but Steve could feel the echo of his smirk all around him. He fumed in silence for several straight minutes and Bruce looked on, worried. The cinnamon bun candle burned obliviously on.  

So it happened that Steve Rogers called in a favor with Janet Van Dyne, and as a nod to his Sondheim loyalties (thanks to her talents as a seamstress) a Wolf was present at the most garish and ghastly event of the season, an American Werewolf more precisely so as to stay on theme. Some smoking orange cocktail in paw, he wandered warily about. The revellers were costumed to the nines, expensive rented ensembles all around, including an excellent number of velvet-coated founding fathers present in every room at every corner thanks in no small part to Lin-Manuel Miranda. Steve shook hands with no less than five Lady Liberties and several iterations of Uncle Sam. The night wore on. The American Werewolf scratched behind his dog ears restlessly.

“Steve?” Startled, he turned to the woman who tapped him on the shoulder. She was draped dramatically in white toga folds, a long sword hilted at her waist that seemed, to Steve, not a prop so much as a warning. Beneath a shear blindfold her hair flashed red under the lights and he was relieved by its familiarity.

“Last time I checked, I was,” he huffed. Natasha smiled, batting at his lupine tail. “Can you even see me through that?”

“I’m Justice,” she said. “Get it?”

“Everybody gets it, Nat.” A slouching gentleman trailed closely behind her. A golden retriever wearing a Soviet flag like a cape panted at his side, overstimulated by the lights and sounds but obliviously pleased to be here.

“Clint’s a rave,” Natasha smirked.

“I’m the space race!” He exclaimed, exasperated by a joke that wouldn’t die. He had splattered an old black suit with glow paint and one might see wherein the ambiguity lay. His sour countenance did nothing for the spirit of his garb. “C’mon, I got the dog and everything. JEsus, who the hell is requesting Mariah Carey every hour?”

“Is that who this is?” Steve asked blankly. The air was pierced with a shrill whistle-tone before launching into a dance beat. He vaguely recognized it from earlier.

“At 8 it was Fantasy. At 9, it was Fantasy. 10, Fantasy. And this makes the fifth time I’ve heard Fantasy tonight and it’s not in Tony’s DJ-JARVIS queue because I fucking checked,” Clint huffed. It wasn’t a bad song by any means, but it did feel out of place.

“I didn’t know you felt so strongly about Mariah Carey,” Nat marveled. Clint fumed.

“Who sabotages a party this way?!”

“You would,” Nat pointed out.

“But I didn’t!” Mariah blithely continued to seep out of the central apartment.

“Maybe it’s the speaker system in the middle?” Steve offered. Clint shook his head.

“Not how that tech works, Cap. It’s all in the computer,” he said sympathetically. “If you want to investigate, be my guest. I’m not going in that abyss. There’s probably a Republican orgy happening in there. GOD, THIS SONG IS LONGER EVERY TIME!” Nat put her arm around his shoulder.

“Boy, why you so obsessed with her?” She trolled, peeking under her blindfold.

“I’m about thirty seconds away from turning all of you off,” he said, gesturing succinctly to his hearing aides. Natasha pulled him closer.

“You need some candy.”

“I need some candy,” he relented. She winked at Steve and shuttled Clint to the bar set up in the Civil War room, a lavish display of moonshines and dark whiskeys. Steve nervously scanned the room. Revellers left and right were eyeing him through masks and marvelous disguise. His discomfort was nowhere matched; all about him were gluttonous laughs and drunken joviality. But Clint Barton was not the only guest to notice the uncanny tolling of Mariah Carey as an ornament on the death of each passing hour. The first time time it caused no great alarm. The second time, perhaps a mistake. But to hear the third, lacking new moves to test on the over-familiar refrain the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions and shared an uncomfortable laugh. The fourth could be no coincidence, and it was accepted most generally that the presumed DJ, cloaked in the shadow of that central terminal no guest had dared explore, was making some statement about the American Nightmare as ever this party seemed to follow. It would perhaps not have seemed so odd a choice had the rest of the playlist not faithfully clung to the Halloween theme, with its various dance mixes of horror themes and monster mash-ups. And then, like clockwork, Mariah Carey. Wandering forward through the Great Depression, Steve noticed that Tony had not given it a second thought; he continued to bob and weave through guests, schmoozing a storm. Pepper directed him diligently throughout, a clipboard record of donations carefully tended. But Tony had noticed a man across the room and his party host decorum was suddenly spent.

“Who dares to come to a public event dressed as the KKK? I mean who fucking dares out-Herod Herod at tasteless costumes, buddy?” Tony called out to him. Steve turned to take in the spectacle. Many guests had become, in the passing of this latest hour, aware of this new masked figure among them. His intention was unmistakable: about him were the habiliments of a Klan member, head to toe, and a single stripe of blood spatter from waist to hem crossing him like a great sash. He stood still, silent and staunch even as Tony approached him, Steve protectively close to his side. “I think you’re crossing a line here, pal.”

It was then that Tony ripped the white hood from the man only to reveal a hideous rubber Trump mask beneath, and no identity to the reveller within. Guests awkwardly chuckled at the spectacular reveal and Tony, in an exasperated huff, turned heel. Steve remained.

In the rotation of a colored party light the eyes of the masked reveller flashed a familiar blue. He turned, deliberate and slow, and drifted to the next era, leaving Steve rooted and frozen.

His logic centers refused the recognition; it could not be those eyes. But pursue he did. The phantom stalked through the corridors and Steve followed, time rushing past in phases and styles until the wraith slipped into the future, that bellowing darkness at the center of the space. Occasionally a beam of light from an adjacent time broke through the dense black, falling in hideous streak upon some cornered couple or other finding the darkness too eagerly with hands and mouths and Steve felt a creeping blush overtake him. He searched for his quarry, frantic to confirm his fear. It was then that the harbinger of passing hours rang out again, that constant diva, and for just a moment bathed in the light of a phone connected to the speaker system, Steve caught sight of the ghost. He was manually overriding the playlist with an AUX cord, a lollipop carelessly punctuating quirked lips. The mask was gone. As he turned, the illumination ceased and Steve found himself drawn into the room, now surrounded by darkness, the heady sick aroma of some blue candy or another, and mid-90’s dance vibe. He called out against the din. 

“Where are you? Please, just---” Steve tripped over the velvet draperies and found himself on his knees, genuflecting to an unknown figure that he could only feel intuitively. Someone pulled him to his feet and released him suddenly. “Wait---” Steve caught the specter by his arm and found himself shoved back further into shadow, all at once drowned for sensation in the swallowing dark as warm sugared lips crushed his and an otherworldly grip found the back of his neck, icy and desperate. In that black velvet room overwhelmed by sound, disoriented, they suspended an hour’s moments. Steve felt himself alone, again, and as suddenly as the embrace had found him it vanished in the vapor, leaving electricity and blue raspberry in its wake. A chorus of screams was soon to follow.

And now was widely acknowledged the presence of the Winter Soldier. He had slipped through the tower crowds, in and out of Steve’s arms, and back into the autumn night without a trace. And one by one, the fat cat count as JARVIS and Tony Stark knew it fell. Precisely three powerful throats were effectively unzipped with no singular breath wasted on ceremony. The phantom was gone, and three bodies dropped where they stood.

Chaos followed and held illimitable dominion while the evening’s hosts clambered to regain control of the crowds. It took remarkable doing. It was quickly determined the assassin was not among the remaining guests. The white cloak lay conspicuously empty among the black draperies. 

“Tony,” Steve asked as Stark opened a new bottle of whiskey following the mass exodus, “are any of the security cameras equipped with night vision?” Tony pulled straight from the bottle.

“All of them. Why?”

“Just curious,” Steve replied. "Thought I saw a ghost earlier." Tony exhaled, grateful not a soul in the tower had dared point out his hubris just yet. He pinched the bridge of his nose, as if to hold the whole of his person together.

“Your mouth is bright blue, man,” he managed. “Lay off the Ring Pops.”

“Good advice.” 

At 1 am, when the clock struck one lonely toll, it was not Fantasy but the sweet and lilting opening Casio riff of Always Be My Baby that mysteriously greeted what remained of Tony Stark’s infamous and deadly Halloween Masquerade, and in spite of the body count and the bustle of police intercession, amid shrieking of varying degrees and the blood of the previously self-important mixing unceremoniously on the floor, carefully minding his tail Steve Rogers sat down with an entire bowl of Fun Size kit-kats and smiled.