Chapter Text
Tony woke up in the floor, specifically a home office. He had a splitting headache akin to the hangovers of his party days.
The second thing he noticed after the splitting headache was he had been face down in a now dried puddle of vomit.
The third thing he noticed was that he was alone. Alone in his home office and smelling like vomit and liquor.
"What..." he started, his mouth dry and tasting worse than that time he lost a bet to Steve and had to eat Natasha's cooking. If one could call it that... "What time is it?"
"It is 7:18AM, Boss," a familiar Irish woman's voice chirped from nearby. He frowned to himself as he tried to think. Things came back to him slowly.
He had expected the voice to come from above, but instead it came from the nearby desk. He frowned as he took in his surroundings. This wasn't his home office at the tower. This wasn't his office at the Compound. And it certainly wasn't his lab in Malibu...
It wasn't even HIS home office. Technically it was but he'd never changed the decor from its previous occupant. He'd never used it except for a few rare times... rare times he wanted to get plastered.
The fact that it was FRIDAY who had responded to him, from his phone, could only mean one thing.
This was after Ultron. It was after Ultron and he was in Stark Manor. Thinking back over the long years since this time, he sighed and stripped off his puke stained shirt, then used a clean part of it to scrape what he could off his face.
He remembered the last time he was here.
He had just given Steve the keys to the kingdom and walked away from the Avengers for, what he had hoped, would be the last time.
Tony need a shower, badly, but he also needed to know... he needed to be certain exactly when he had landed. "Friday, baby girl, what's the date?"
"The date is August 16th, 2015, Boss."
He dropped into the chair at the desk and stared at the nearly empty bottle of his favorite scotch. Well, what used to be his favorite before he quit drinking after Siberia...
It had worked. The crazy wizard idea had worked. He was back in the past, in his younger body. With a splitting headache but...
He was alone.
James wasn't with him. They didn't expect to land in the same location, sure but...
He closed his eyes and rubbed the heels of his hands against them to prevent the tears from coming. He couldn't - wouldn't - think about that. He had to be out there, somewhere. And if it was indeed After Ultron then that meant he was on the run. James wasn't being held by HYDRA. He wouldn't be subjected to the chair again. He was free, at the very least.
Tony held onto this as he let his mind work through the problems of the here and now. Let his mind settle in this younger body and try to figure out where to go from here.
Tony had hoped for an earlier time, even if it meant James was still prisoner, because there would have been time to clean out SHIELD... who would have been useful for oversight. They weren't perfect, by far, but it could have staved off the Accords or something like it for a time. Would have given resources for the Avengers so he didn't have to foot the bill the whole time. So he wouldn't be the sole provider of everything...
"FRIDAY, screen any calls that come through for me. I'm taking a shower and getting cleaned up."
"On it, Boss," she chirped back as he swiped his phone up from the desk before standing back to his feet and looking around. First, he needed to get clean. Then he needed to get the cleaners in to deal with his mess on the carpet... and to help empty the liquor cabinets in the house.
o0o
James came to in a room in a warehouse, his face covered in blood and his head aching so bad he'd swear he'd been put in the Chair again.
Awareness came quickly and he made a mental assessment of his physical self. Head hurt, arms not restrained, room... vaguely familiar and safe for the moment. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and pressed his back against the wall.
Leg 1, present.
Leg 2...
Leg 2.... not a prosthetic.
He sat in the floor and stared down at his leg. Then, he reached down to touch it, frowning at the silvery hand that felt below where he last knew his stump ended.
He poked at the leg with a finger.
He felt it.
Yep. Definitely his own leg.
He laughed, uncaring at the tightness of his skin from the dried blood that covered his face. He laughed and he laughed.
"It worked!" he exclaimed to the empty room. "It actually worked!"
He sat back and closed his eyes, still laughing.
When finally he settled down, he took a closer look at his surroundings. He knew this room.
It was in Bucharest, Romania. It wasn't his apartment there... but it was the room he was allowed to use at the warehouse where he'd gotten a job. He stayed there overnights to keep an eye on the place in return for the room.
Soon he was on his feet, moving towards the small bathroom that was attached to the room and inspected his face. The blood had come from his nose, and on closer inspection his ears, too. It was all in his hair. Hair he hadn't been used to being this long in years.
James made quick work of the blood on his face and checked himself in the mirror over the sink to make sure he got it all from his face and neck. His shirt was ruined but there wasn't anything he could do about that now.
He needed to know when, exactly, he was. He knew he was safe - for the moment - because he'd been in Bucharest for a good long time before anyone found him. Long enough to have been lulled into a false sense of security and get himself an apartment. Once he knew a date, he could work on contacting Tony. See if he made the trip or if he was here, alone.
But first thing was first... he needed to find something to dull that damn headache.
o0o
Tony scowled at his phone. He'd cleaned himself up, re-familiarized himself with the manor, and ordered Chinese. Because it had been so long since he had good Chinese food.
Then he sat down with a StarkPad - and oh he was annoyed with how old this model was to him - and began making a list. Everything he needed to change. Everything he needed to get done. A timetable for preparing the world for Thanos. Another list of things to do in order to search for James if he didn't hear anything after the 1 week they had agreed beforehand.
He wanted to hunt him down now, but Tony knew he needed to give it time for James - if he made it - to get to a safe location if he didn't have one yet. Time to acclimate to the new time. And if he didn't hear from him... then he'd hunt him down himself.
And if James didn't make it... if he got lost in that weird astral time tunnel...
Well...
Tony's had his heart broken before. The least he could do is help the Barnes of this time get the help he needed.
So, with the beginnings of plans forming in his mind, Tony called the cleaners to finally come deal with the vomit on the floor.
He couldn't work on this project from the Tower. He couldn't risk someone finding out before he - they he told himself - were ready. The Manor would be retrofitted to become Iron Man's new base of operations. While he would like to live in the tower full time, and it would be oh so convenient for so many things... He found he much preferred the distance between himself and work. While the isolation of the forest by the lake at first wasn't exactly healthy as he lost himself in his projects and grief and barely took care of himself until James started visiting him...
He found after a while he started to thrive. Especially after James had started saying over for longer and longer until he had moved in the rest of the way. He wasn't under the constant pressure to jump through hoops. Even though he'd been forced to take the CEO role again as well as owner of SI, there wasn't the pressure of always being available at all times for any little thing - emergency or not. Not like there was in the Tower.
There was also the other problem...
Tony looked down at his phone. The wallpaper was of himself and Pepper.
Thinking back to this time, they were on a break. They hadn't told anyone they were on a break. The intent was to take some time, especially after Ultron happened, to see what they really wanted. And as much as he loved her still after all this time... as much as he loved the woman he was going to marry...
This Pepper Potts wasn't her.
This Pepper Potts wasn't the one who came running to his bedside after Siberia, waiting for news that he might live or die after having his chest and the artificial sternum caved in by Steve's shield. This Pepper Potts didn't help put him back together after the Avengers broke up. This wasn't the woman who sat through his rants and brought him coffee on long nights as he worked to try and rework the Accords into something useful. Something better in his attempt to fix what he broke so he could bring the others back home.
She wasn't His Pepper Potts, not yet. Maybe by changing the past, she might never be.
He sighed, knowing what he had to do in regards to Pepper. It wouldn't be fair to be with her now. Even if he wasn't already spoken for by James, it didn't sit right to be with a woman who didn't even remember what never happened to her yet. And she deserved to finally be able to move on. He didn't WANT to be Iron Man again, but he needed to be. And Pepper... Even when she resigned herself to the fact he would give up the suit only when he died... she was never really happy with him over it. She deserved better. He knew it then, he knew it now.
He had mourned her years ago. This... Tony told himself... This was just letting go of her ghost at last.
Rather than go back to the home office for the rest of the bottle of scotch, Tony went to the kitchen to check for ginger ale. He wanted a drink, but didn't need the alcohol. Finding nothing he instead got himself a glass of water and went back to the bedroom he'd been using back then - back now - and sat down on the bed. He set the water on the nightstand and took another look down at his phone in his hand. His lifeline in a house without an AI built in.
"FRIDAY?" he said.
"Yes Boss?"
"Can you check if Pepper's accepting calls right now? She might be in a meeting. If she is, have her call me when she's got enough time to talk for more than 5 minutes."
"Is everything okay Boss? You sound... sad."
"I'm not okay, baby girl. But I will be," he said as he set the phone next to the glass of water and waited.
o0o
James hated this arm.
He hated it so damn much.
He'd never been so relieved than he was in Wakanda and realized Tony had done him a favor blasting it off. The weight pulled on his muscles and what was left of his shoulder uncomfortably. He'd been numb to it before, knowing little else as he was coming out from under HYDRA's haze... but now years later, being stuck in his body the way it used to be... the pain was aggravating at best and almost disabling at worst. How he lived with it for so long...
Well, he had to do it again.
James threw out the bloody shirt, knowing there wasn't much hope in saving it anyway. Then he gave himself the best bath he could with sink water since he didn't have a tub or a shower. "You got soft, Barnes," he said to himself in the mirror as he inspected his face again for any other signs of injury.
The blood from his ears and nose worried him, and he knew he'd have to get that checked out. But where he was now, he didn't trust the hospitals. Didn't trust that he wouldn't be found by either Steve or HYDRA.
And while he did wish to see his old friend again... he couldn't afford to let himself be found yet. Not when there were some loose ends he needed to tie up first before crossing the Atlantic.
By the time he finished in the bathroom, James had made up his mind on a plan of action. He had one week to contact Tony to let him know he made it. And he was going to need a few days to acclimate to his old body again. He was so used to the prosthetics that Tony had made him that having two working legs and his old HYDRA arm were both disorienting and affected his gait when he walked.
The weight of the arm pulled on him something awful, that he hadn't realized until now that it, too, had affected the way he walked. He needed to get used to it, and to running, again.
Knowing he likely wasn't going to be needed in the warehouse any time soon, otherwise someone would have come to fetch him by now, he grabbed his backpack and fished around for a pen and the notebook he remembered he used to keep. Scribbling down snatches of memory, drawing out faces he remembered, that kind of thing.
Instead of fractured memories and drawings of Steve as Captain America, he turned to a fresh page, sat down on the cot he used as a bed, and started to write out everything he needed to do. He didn't know, still, the date. But he knew roughly when he had landed.
He knew there were some HYDRA cells in the region, and if he could get rid of them before crossing the Atlantic, all the better. It took 2 pages to write out his plan of action. With SIBERIA written at the bottom and underlined four times for emphasis. He couldn't deal with Siberia on his own, if only because it was too far to travel with all the people looking for him, but it needed doing soon. They couldn't risk having those 5 Winter Soldiers still on the playing field. Who's to say they didn't change so much that Zemo skips his grand plan and goes straight to activating them?
Or someone else finds them through those damn files Natasha and Steve dumped in the open.
James sat back and looked down at his notes. It wasn't perfect, but it was a start.
o0o
Tony was a genius, but even he couldn't remember the day to day things from 9 years ago. Part of him wanted to call up Pepper, meet with her and get that part out of the way now. But the other part of him, the part that knew he couldn't just jump straight into the deep end without a flotation device, informed him that he needed to get caught up on current events outside those he immediately remembered.
Such as... Where in the world was the CEO of Stark Industries this week?
Turns out... Beijing. And no she wouldn't appreciate a call at this hour.
So Tony instead turned to looking through his things. He needed to know what he had to work with at the Manor first before deciding if he needed to get back to the tower sooner rather than later.
He found a laptop, a second stark pad, and breath mints among some hastily packed clothes.
Deciding to look around the rest of the Manor to re-familiarize himself with the place, Tony went exploring. He was uncertain what, if anything, he might find in the old place since he usually only used it to crash in private once in a while. Except for that stint with Bruce while the tower was being fixed after Loki’s failed invasion, he hasn't really had anyone else over either.
So Tony was quite surprised to find an old computer in one of the rooms, remembering it had been his own room growing up. It was so old that it was offensive to his futuristic sensibilities, but he turned it on anyway, curious what the even younger version of himself might have been up to.
Of course, when he turned it on the damn thing was encrypted. Not beyond his genius to figure out, but he'd forgotten how damn paranoid his younger self had been, too. It didn't take long before he was in the system and looking around. Nothing that important really. And it had been disconnected from the Internet years ago.
As Tony sat perusing his old computer and it's files, he was quite glad he was sitting down because he found something he was most certainly NOT expecting… a helpful little file, nothing too important. At least not outwardly.
Just the humble beginnings of what had later become one of the most important people in his life… J.A.R.V.I.S.
It felt like a punch to the gut, the realization of what the file was. What it ultimately became. And it had started here, in this room…
Tony realized something then, in that moment. Something… he could have easily overlooked in his grief after losing one of his children. Tony took out his phone and got up from the computer, intending to transfer the files on it to the laptop later. “FRIDAY, I need you to contact a kid named Harley Keener for me. He's in Rose Hill, Tennessee. Can't believe I never thought of this. But I may have a way of saving your older brother and bringing him back online.”
“You're not going to replace me Boss, Are you?”
“Absolutely not! JARVIS, if I can get him back, will be our little secret. I've got something coming up that I'll need help with. But you already have so much responsibility I don't want to put even more on you if I don't have to baby girl.”
“Good. Because I don't want to be taken offline. I like it here.”
“And I love that. And you… so about that kid in Tennessee. I think I need to fill you in first. He should be about 12 or 13 by now…”
o0o
James decided to take this first week to earn a little more money at the warehouse. He was going to need it. At the end of the week he'd call the number Tony had drilled into him in the months leading up to the time travel ritual. They hadn't agreed on a specific message, but James knew what he wanted to say. If Tony made it with him, he'd understand it. If not, then some crazed lunatic from Romania was calling him talking nonsense.
For the next week he spent his mornings working the morning shift in the warehouse and sleeping or planning during the evening before doing a few patrols during the night.
Then, the last night came. He picked up the phone in the warehouse and made a long distance call. He was not surprised to hear FRIDAY’S voice inquiring who he was and why he was calling and how he knew that number.
“I don't need to talk to your creator directly Doll. I just have a message for him…”
With that done he finished his last patrol of the night before the morning crews came in. At the end of the morning shift he found his boss and let the man know he was moving on after collecting his last day's pay. James handed over his key to the room the man had let him live in, thanked him for the work and for the temporary housing, then left to tackle a few things before he crossed an ocean to get back home