Chapter Text
The airfield had become a battlefield. There was barely anything left that resembled the quiet Leipzig airport they had arrived at. Broken glass glittered across the concrete, vehicles lay overturned, and smoke drifted lazily through the air.
Tony didn't want it to come to this.
He had tried to talk Steve down. He had tried to make him understand. Ross had given him thirty-six hours to bring Steve and the others in, and twenty-four of those hours were already gone. Tony was running out of time.
He was trying to tie two ends together, to keep the Avengers from completely tearing themselves apart.
Why couldn't Steve understand that?
Steve Rogers stood at the edge of the runway, his shield hanging at his side. It wasn't raised yet, but Tony knew better than to mistake that for surrender. Steve was ready to use it.
Across from him, Vision hovered a few feet above the ground. The android looked almost painfully calm compared to the chaos surrounding them.
"Captain Rogers," Vision said, his voice carrying clearly across the battlefield. "I know you believe what you're doing is right. But for the collective good, you must surrender now."
Steve's jaw tightened.
Behind him, Bucky shifted his weight, his metal hand curling slowly into a fist. Sam stood beside him, wings folded behind his back. Clint had his bow ready. Wanda's hands glowed faintly red.
They were all standing in a line, ready to strike. Tony's eyes moved over them before settling on Steve. He knew that look. There was no stopping this now.
Sam's voice crackled through the comms.
"What do we do, Cap?"
Tony watched Steve tighten his grip around the shield. Of course.
Steve wasn't going to hand his best friend over.
Tony had known that from the beginning. Steve would always choose Bucky. He would always do what he believed was right, no matter how many people stood in his way.
And there were five more Winter Soldiers somewhere out there. Tony understood why Steve was so desperate. He just couldn't agree with him. There was too much at stake.
Steve looked toward Tony.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
They were standing on opposite sides of the runway, looking at each other as if everything that had happened between them had led to this one moment.
Tony had once considered Steve one of the few people he could truly count on and now they were about to fight.
"We fight." The words had barely left Steve's mouth when hell broke loose.
Both sides charged.
"This is gonna end well," Natasha muttered sarcastically.
"They're not stopping," the kid said.
He sounded nervous, but there was excitement underneath it too. He had to focus on the fight now, yet Tony couldn't help noticing the kid's potential. For someone his age, Parker was surprisingly capable.
And, admittedly, intriguing.
"Neither are we," Tony replied. His repulsors fired, lifting him into the air.
Peter shot a web toward Steve.
And then the entire battlefield fell silent. Tony's repulsors were still glowing, but there was no roar coming from them. Steve was frozen mid-stride. Wanda's hands remained raised, her crimson energy suspended in the air. A car Wanda had just hurled toward Tony hung motionless several feet above the ground. Even Peter's web seemed to have stopped in midair.
Tony stared at it.
"What the… Friday?" Nothing.
Tony frowned.
"Friday?"
Still nothing. His suit was functioning. He could see the systems running, but there was no response from his AI.
"What the hell?" Sam's voice came from somewhere nearby.
Tony barely heard him.
A strange sensation passed through the air. For one impossible second, it felt as though the entire world had been pulled sideways.
Tony turned his head toward Steve and their eyes met. Steve looked just as confused as he felt. Then the light disappeared and the darkness swallowed everything.
Tony woke up to silence.
There was no more smoke in the air. No explosions. No screaming. No sound of metal colliding with metal.
He opened his eyes and saw red. Rows and rows of dark red seats stretched out before him, disappearing into the enormous darkness of the room. A massive screen covered the wall at the front, completely black. Small lights glowed along the edges of the aisles, giving the place an eerie, almost theatrical atmosphere.
Tony blinked and for a long second, he simply laid there.
But when the instincts took over, he pushed himself upright and immediately reached for his comm.
"FRIDAY?" Tony's expression hardened when he heard nothing. "FRIDAY."
He looked around. Steve was already on his feet. The moment their eyes met, the tension returned as if the airport had followed them into the room. The conflict between them flickered once more.
Steve stood several rows away, shield still in his hand, his team beside him. He saw it in his friend’s eyes that he was trying to figure out what happened, and maybe starting to blame him for it.
On the other side of the room stood Rhodey, Vision, Natasha, T'Challa, Scott and him.
Everyone looked confused, except for T’C|halla whose head was locked in the direction that Bucky was standing. The metal hand curled into a fist. Steve moved half a step in front of him.
"Don't."
"You are still protecting him." T’Challa spoke. Steve nodded. "He murdered my father."
Bucky's jaw tightened.
"I didn't."
T'Challa took a step forward, clearly not believing him. Steve’s shield raised into the air, forming a protective wall between them. The king of Wakanda stopped, but didn’t quit looking straight into Barnes’ soul. Steve shook his head around.
“Where are we? Did you do this, Tony?” Steve asked with a slightly angry tone. Tony raised his brows.
"I didn’t do anything, Rogers."
"Well, but it’s surely really convenient for you, isn’t it?" Steve asked, as his eyes narrowed.
"I did not bring us here. Friday’s down, I don’t know what’s happening." Tony scanned the room. Just then he noticed that it looked like a small private cinema room, but there were no doors anywhere in sight. Something wasn’t looking right.
"Is it a cinema?” Natasha asked, with surprise on her face.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Sam whistled.
“Maybe it was Wanda?” Tony suggested. He locked eyes with the woman, who slightly tilted her head to the side. “She’s the only one here who can do magic, voo-doo shit, huh?”
“I also did nothing, Stark.” She spoke with an accent. He saw her fists clenching. “My powers don’t seem to work here.” She faltered.
“I can’t phase through objects… It appears that something is blocking our abilities…” Vision added. Wanda looked at him surprised.
“Maybe we should look for any clues before we start blaming each other?” Clint replied. Tony didn’t miss how protective he was to Wanda.
“W-what happened? Have we just been kidnapped or whatever?” Scott asked from the corner, but nobody paid attention to him. On the other side, Tony saw T’Challa easing for now. Probably for the best, as they had to figure out what happened to them.
Tony looked around the room again. Something bothered him. Something he couldn't immediately identify. He counted everyone.
His heart started beating faster when he finally noticed that one person was missing.
“Kid?” he called, hoping that he was still lying somewhere there, just didn’t get up. His eyes moved across the seats again. There was no movement. Everyone in the room looked at Tony with questioning looks.
“Have you seen Spider-man?” Tony asked everyone. They looked around the room but nobody said anything.
His stomach dropped.
He looked toward the place where he remembered the kid standing back at the airport. There was no red-and-blue suit. No nervous voice nor no stupid jokes.
"Where is he?"
Steve looked at Tony carefully.
"The kid who was fighting with you?"
"Yes."
“You mean the guy who kicked Bucky’s ass?” Sam snickered with faint humor. Former Winter Soldier looked up and down at him.
“The one that also kicked yours too?” He replied.
“Yes him!” Tony stressed, he had no patience to deal with these two idiots now.
"He isn't here." Steve said calmly.
"I can see that." Tony's voice was sharper than he intended, but he didn’t care. He brought the kid into their fight and if anything happened to him on his watch, it would all be on him.
He looked at the black screen.
"Maybe he got separated." Steve suggested.
"During whatever happened to us?" Vision asked.
"How was that guy anyway, he sounded like he was twelve." Sam asked.
“I don’t know, I didn’t carbon-date him, he’s on the young side,” Tony answered again with annoyance. He just met the kid and he was giving him grey hairs already.
Then the screen flickered. Everyone's head turned towards it. A single line of white text appeared against the black.
THE KID IS SAFE.
Tony stared at it.
“Well, that explains a lot,” Rhodey spoke. The text disappeared.
“Maybe if we ask a question, it will answer?” Scott wondered outload. “Hey, what are we doing here?”
Once again, Scott was ignored. Tony's shoulders loosened slightly. He squinted at the screen.
“That’s some magic shit right there,” Sam mumbled, more to himself.
Before anyone could answer, the entire room filled with light. Two figures flew down from the ceiling, landing in the middle of the staircase, tumbling down them. It was… the kid, but he was more muscular and the costume looked slightly different. Another person was a black teen or man, Tony wasn’t sure, dressed in jeans, white tee and black jacket. After them there was a spider web.
They landed at the end, just in front of the screen.
“The hell?” Peter asked, but Tony was taken aback. The voice was deeper and more adult-like than the one he remembered. Something was definitely wrong.
“Yo, what happened?” the black guy asked with surprise.
The spider eyes blinked several times, before Peter stumbled into a standing position. He seemed to pay no mind to his surroundings as he just clenched his head with his hands.
"Okay..." he whispered.
“Is that your guy?” Clint asked with hesitation.
“Kid?” he asked, unsure himself.
This time Peter’s head snapped upwards and he looked at them, wide eyed. He looked like a deer stuck in the headlights. But the moment of him being frozen in time passed quickly, as he stumbled back and hit the screen behind him.
“Whoa, hey! What the fuck?!” He yelled, pointing his wrists at them. Tony noticed that there were no webshooters on them. He made them imperceptible, but he knew that they were absent.
“Easy, same side, right?” Tony raised his hands in an innocent manner. He saw the rest of people looking with confusion at the scene. Steve was looking at the figure with uncertainty. He must have also noticed that the suit looked slightly different.
“Tony, are you sure it’s him? He sounds… different.” Rhodey asked.
“Who are you?” Peter asked, his voice strong. “What is this– are they inside my head?” He asked, frantically looking around. Natasha frowned, and Steve narrowed his eyes. Wanda felt like these words were pointed at her.
“Who’s inside your head, kid? Wanda here can’t use her powers now, nobody’s messing with you.” Tony stepped closer.
“Whoa, stay where you are.” Peter reached his hand out. The guy next to him looked at Clint, and he was staring intensively. After a couple seconds, he signed and ran a hand through his hair. He looked slightly panicked.
“Is this an illusion? I know it’s you, Beck. Stop hiding.” He demanded. Who the hell was Beck? Did Peter get hit in the head and had no amnesia or something, because it wasn’t making any sense.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, you’ve got a clue all us in.”
“Stop hiding, Beck.” Peter demanded again, this time with more misery in his voice. The man behind him was watching everything curiously. He tried to shoot a web at Tony, but nothing came out. He looked dumbly at his wrist and clenched his fists, changing into a more battle stance. Tony couldn’t help but roll his eyes.
“Come on kid, stop playing around.”
“Yeah, we are in this together right now and there’s nothing we can do about it,” Clint added.
“I’m not playing around,” the voice was sharp and aggressive. “I don’t know what’s happening or where I am, and I’m sure as hell you can’t be real because some of you are dead, so either it’s an illusion or they got into my head.” Peter said and the guy next to him side eyed him.
Nobody moved. Tony stared at him and Steve's expression hardened. Rhodey glanced toward Tony, mouthing to him what the hell. Even T'Challa seemed to forget about Bucky for a moment.
There was a beat of silence. Nobody expected something like that to come from a teen's mouth. Tony felt like he was stuck in his spot. He eyes Spider-man once more. He couldn’t help but wonder… He looked and sounded older, and they have just been magically transported into a magic cinema room. None of this made sense. It was crazy, but possible.
“What year is it?” Tony asked. Steve looked at him with confusion.
“What?” The question was sharp.
“What year?”
“2028!” Peter answered quickly, before his eyes went big. “Oh. Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. I’m pretty sure it was 2016 last time I checked.”
“Tony?” Natasha questioned him.
“I think we have a time traveller here.” Tony pointed his hand at Spider-man, who just stood there frozen in shock.
“Is that even possible?” Bucky asked.
“We just got teleported into a mysterious room, where no powers are working, I think it shouldn’t be such a surprise now,” Sam answered.
"Who?" Steve asked quietly, ignoring everyone’s chattering.
Peter looked at him.
"What?"
"Who is dead?"
Peter's head unintentionally moved across the room. He looked at Tony and Natasha.
"Oh." Peter whispered like he knew he did too much. Natasha looked down and Tony’s heart beat faster.
“You’ve looked at me.” Tony stated, feeling panic crawl up his throat. Hearing that he most likely was dead in the next 12 years wasn’t some news that a man could take on calmly.
“No I didn’t.” Peter lied and shook his head, looking down at the floor.
“You did.”
“You’re imagining things.” Peter swallowed. When Tony took a step closer, the kid took one back. “Stop! tell me something only you would know.” The kid said, his voice broke at the request.
“Something only I would know… I don’t know, remember your aunt’s loaf– the one that I praised when you walked in and then when we went to your room I–”
“Okay, okay. Stop, it’s you.” Peter said as he went in his direction on his own. Rhodey looked with a scrunched nose at Tony’s words. What Tony didn’t expect was the big and crushing hug that came next. He stood there with his hands raised, not giving the hug back. It wasn’t that he was rude, but he was taken by surprise.
“Jesus, Tony. I can’t believe it.” The kid's voice was broken now, like he was about to cry. Everyone observed the scene with confusion. Tony himself was confused that Peter called him Tony and not Mr. Stark like before.
“Emm, will someone clue us in on what's going on?” Sam asked.
“I missed– I– Ugh!” the kid groaned and broke free from one sided hug. He clenched his head again and lifted his mask up. Tony noticed as he ripped a small device from the back of his neck. What was that now?
“Yo, you okay, Spidey?” The guy asked from the side. Tony looked at the figure, still not knowing who that was.
“Yeah, yeah… I was just… ugh, trying some new tech.” Peter replied, not sparing a second glance at him. Peter was about to say something to Tony, but he was stopped in his tracks by the next words.
“Oh, yeah. To get rid of that monster inside of you?”
Everyone looked with confusion at the new guy. He saw that Natasha prepared her hand to be close to her gun and he himself flexed his fingers around. Steve shuffled next to him. The atmosphere in the room became even worse than before.
After a long beat of silence when nobody said anything, Peter finally looked at the other guy. The moving eyes in his suit were completely still.
“Still can’t sense me, huh?”
“You know him?” Tony asked, stepping closer to Peter, who didn’t move a bit.
“What the hell?” Bucky asked.
“Your technology isn’t working.”
“Who are you?” Steve asked.
“You see, I didn’t want to stop your… heartfelt moment that you were having right now, especially considering the situation we all got into… but I just couldn’t stop myself.”
“Did you do this?” Peter asked, much more seriously than before. The question went unnoticed and the guy continued speaking.
“You know you’re the only person I met that I can’t… hop into.”
Bucky's expression changed. It was subtle enough that most of them wouldn't have noticed. The Winter Soldier knew what it meant to have someone else inside your head. To have your own mind turned against you. His metal hand slowly tightened, and just as it did, T’Challa cast a glance at him.
“What’s he talking about?” Tony's posture changed almost imperceptibly. The moment the stranger mentioned a monster inside Peter, his attention sharpened. He didn't know what any of this meant, but he knew one thing. The man was threatening the kid.
He saw Wanda piercing the stranger with her eyes. What was he talking about? Hop into somebody… Was this about mind control? Peter asked earlier if they were inside his head, then this must be it.
Steve noticed that Tony took a small step closer before anyone else.
“I’m sure that must be frustrating for you. Did you set this up? Start talking.” Peter said calmly.
“Oh, I’ll get in there one day. And no, as much as you would like to blame it on me… it is not my doing.” The stranger replied. If he had the ability to hop into somebody’s mind, all the Avengers here would be endangered.
“What do you want?”
“I wanna know why a half-human, half-spider would decide to work for an organization whose sworn mission is to hunt anybody who is different.”
Tony frowned and Wanda raised her brows. She must have seen some kind of resemblance between them, because her face softened. Sam scrunched his nose.
“So that stuff was coming out of him?” he whispered to Bucky.
“The damage control isn’t after you because you’re different, they’re after you because you’re dangerous. NOW, WHAT DO YOU WANT?” Peter asked with such authority that could rival Steve 's. The man signed and started walking closer to the kid, and circling him around like a predator would its prey.
“Since you're a very simple Spider, let me spell it out for you. Damage Control has something that I need.”
“Oh, you mean V-Max?” Peter said. V-Max… this sounded like some weapon or another version of Super soldier serum.
“I was planning to use Scorpion to get it, but you keep getting in my way.”
“I will always be in your way.”
“Oh, you sure about that, Peter Parker?”
The silence around the room spread fast. Peter looked like he had just seen a ghost, even though mask covered his expression. His head slightly tilted. Tony was also taken by surprise, maybe the telepath had already glimpsed the kid’s head.
“You know, your apartment is kinda like a parody of where you think a sad, single guy in his twenties might live. Take out containers, free weights, protein powder. Hahahaha…” The man’s laugh sent shivers down their spines. Peter must have been living on his own now, because just the day before when he visited the kid's house, his room was full of Star Wars posters, Legos and books.
“Okay, it’s starting to creep me out.” Scott commented.
“You’re bluffing.”
“You know, you’re not hard to track down, Peter. At least… not for someone like me.”
“And you are…?” Steve stepped up, like he wanted to protect Peter as well.
“I have no interest in telling you who I am. Back on track, I did find one interesting thing, though. And of all places… In a coffee cup.”
“EV, display homework station… EV?” Peter turned his back on the stranger. He must have been trying to contact his AI.
“It’s not working here, Friday’s down too.”
“You’ve spent 4 years erasing Peter Parker from existence, no wonder the spider swallowed up the man. I wonder if MJ would even recognize you anymore…” At these, Peter snapped and webbed the guy to the wall. What surprised Tony was the fact that he wasn’t wearing any webshooters.
Clint watched Peter carefully. The kid was trying to hide it, but he knew that he was terrified. He spent too much time studying people to not know that.
“Okay, I have officially lost track of what's happening.” Sam blinked.
“You’re not the only one.” Rhodey answered.
“You’re not getting near her.”
“No? I think I will go and see how she's doing, her roommate was nice enough to post her new address online.”
Tony saw Peter's shoulders tense. The kid had been confused since the moment he'd appeared in the theater. He'd been frightened, disoriented and clearly convinced that half of the people around him weren't real. But now he saw the fear and terror that he was hiding.
Natasha's eyes narrowed. He wasn't bluffing. Or, at least, he wanted Peter to believe he wasn't. Either way, mentioning an address was deliberate.
Peter stared at the stranger for a couple seconds, breathing heavily. But in one moment his head snapped upwards and his eyes went big.
“You’re stuck in him, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“You had a room full of Avengers around you, I don’t believe you wouldn’t try hopping into them, so… you’re stuck. You’ve been to my apartment and… Now you’re stuck here in his body with us.” Peter said and the stranger’s expression hardened.
“Very clever.”