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ROUND FOUR
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Anyways, I want all the team to individually have a really bad day and they end up blaming it on Tony even if it really wasn't his fault but he had pressured them into the situation. In the end, before they all go to sleep, they all wish Tony was never born and someone (don't care who) decides to grant them their wish. A world without Tony Stark.
The next day, the team wake up in a world they are not familiar with. A world where Stark Industries (which has been renamed to Stane Industries after Howard's death) never stopped building weapons. Where the Ten Rings dominate the middle east and Justin Hammer works as the President of Stane Industries with Pepper as his overworked and underappreciated secretary.
I want to see how the Avengers react to see how much Tony actually contributed to society even though he appears to be a screwup. He might have been in the weapons business for years, but people forget that most inventions and discoveries that modernize and help the world were first developed for miliary reasons. However, when the Avengers realize what a big help Tony is, things just don't go back to normal. They have to go back in time and fix Tony not being there.
+100 Tony was actually born, he just died trying to save someone else
+10,000 Steve and Tony weren't in a relationship, but seeing how much Tony means to the world (and to him, although he is in denial), he kisses Tony when the Avengers arive back in the future
+100,000 The 11th Doctor takes them back to the past to correct the temporal distortion (And he's a Steve/Tony fan)
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Seconded!
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Someone write this!
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In retrospect, Bruce thought, he should have seen this coming. He should be above it, even. He knew that Tony wasn’t to blame, but there he was, and he was too easy a target to resist. In the heat of the moment, he was so angry that he was shocked he wasn’t green yet. They were all furious, and Tony just stood there and took it.
“Guys, relax. It was just a party! You all had fun. No one got hurt. Minimal property damage, even. Apart from the hangovers, where’s the harm?”
“It’s about lack of respect,” Steve said. “I thought I couldn’t get drunk.”
“Were you born without an off button?” Clint demanded.
“If those photos aren’t off the internet by the end of the day, you won’t even see me coming,” Natasha promised.
“What if I hurt someone?” Bruce asked.
Tony looked genuinely confused, and maybe a little hurt, but he took it like he never expected anything different. But he muttered his apologies, and slunk off to his workshop to leave the rest of them nursing their epic hangovers.
“I thought you and he were all buddy-buddy, anyway,” Clint muttered.
Bruce tried to remember that technique he learned in Nepal to avoid throwing up all over the breakfast bar. “He just… I know the Hulk doesn’t scare him, but he shouldn’t have risked it. I could have hurt someone.”
Natasha looked up from her orange juice. “I haven’t been drunk since 2005.”
“I’ll see that and raise you 1941,” Steve countered, his gaze dark and murderous.
Clint groans and buries his head in his arms. “Can we just stop talking until the Advil kicks in? I wish Stark had never been fucking born.”
---
Steve spent most of his day after trying to piece the night before back together. His memory was patchy, spotted with black outs and alarming periods of whirling colour and sound.
He really hadn’t expected Tony to take his challenge seriously. When he’d met Steve’s “I can’t get drunk” with “That just means you’ve never really tried”, the last thing Steve had wanted was this horrible feeling of nausea, pain and creeping dread that, apparently, was tequila’s parting gift. So maybe he had met Tony’s eyes with a defiant look and said, “Give it your best shot.” That hadn’t meant that Tony should listen.
Steve and Natasha lounged on the daybeds beside the Tower’s pool, the floor to ceiling windows tinted thanks to JARVIS. Natasha had made them some kind of traditional Russian hangover cure, and Steve punctuated wallowing in misery with tentative sips.
“I’m going to kill him,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact.
“No you’re not.”
“No, I’m not. But only because it would make Pepper cry,” Natasha replied. “What Clint said was harsh, but sometimes I think my job would be so much easer if he had never been born.”
Steve chuckled, despite the twinge that thought gave him. “I might actually be the one in charge.”
“Bruce would stop eyeing chopsticks with suspicion.”
“Clint would come in off the roof.”
“Fury would stop glaring.”
“Hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here,” Steve said, and she smiled. It was moments like this, moments of quiet downtime with one or more of his team, that Steve felt like he was finally home.
A memory flashed through his aching brain and he winced. “Did we… did I do something called a motorboat to you last night?” he asked.
Natasha smiled again, and this time it was terrifying. “Let’s just pretend you still can’t remember, shall we?”
Steve’s hangover slunk off in defeat somewhere around early afternoon, and he left Natasha to spend the rest of the day taking out his rage on one of the reinforced punching bags in the Tower’s gym. By dinner, he felt almost normal, although the dark expressions of his team-mates told him he was the only one. Tony was missing, sequestered in his lab until everyone decided that he was welcome again.
Despite feeling better than everyone else, Steve still cast a dark thought or two Tony’s way before he fell asleep. Maybe the world would be better off without Tony Stark.
---
And somewhere, something smiled, a glint in its eye, and power unfurled.
As you wish.
---
CONT
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Steve’s first thought was that his alarm hadn’t gone off. The sun was streaming through his untinted window and Steve felt muggy and strange. “JARVIS, you didn’t wake me. Why not?”
Silence. Steve scrubbed a hand through his hair and sat up.
And then flew to his feet.
This was not his room in the Tower. The window had flowy curtains shifting in the breeze, and the door was in the wrong place, and there was no gramophone resting on his bureau, a 'Happy Defrosting-versary' gift from Tony.
Steve grabbed his shield, still at its usual place by his bed, thank God, and started to creep towards the door, ears straining for any noise out of place.
Something started chirping shrilly, and he nearly smashed it before he recognised a cell phone vibrating its way along a bedside table. It wasn’t his Starkphone, so it took him a moment to figure out how to answer.
“Rogers.”
“Steve! Uhh, I mean, Captain Rogers, this is… uhh, this may seem strange, but…”
“Bruce, what is it?” Steve snapped, trying to calm down but the tension in Bruce’s voice was just racketing up his own.
“You remember me?” Bruce blurted.
“What? Of course I do. What’s going on?”
There was silence on the other end of the line before Bruce sighed heavily. “I think something really, really bad is happening.”
“Where are you?” Steve asked, stalking out of the bedroom into the rest of the tiny apartment, looking for some paper and pen.
“I think… I think I’m back in India,” Bruce replied, and Steve paused.
“India?”
“Yeah. I’m on a payphone in Kolkata, okay, this is really fucking weird, and I don’t know what the hell is going on.”
Bruce swearing was about as rare as Steve, and Steve felt his combat instincts kick into gear. “Okay, okay, relax, you have this number, and I’ll come get you as soon as I can.” He didn’t know when that would be, but even if he had to hijack the Helicarrier itself he wouldn’t leave a team-member stranded and scared.
“Yeah, I… yeah, okay, Cap. I just have this really bad feeling. I tried to call Tony but I got a not-in-service message. Not even JARVIS.”
Steve had that feeling, too. They needed more information. “Do you have a number I can contact you on?”
Bruce laughed, a brittle sound. “I’m in the slums in India, Cap, but one thing they do have is phones. I’ll get one and contact you with it ASAP, okay?”
“Okay. Just… keep your head down and stay calm. I’m going to try and contact the rest of the team. I’ll keep you in the loop.”
“Yeah. I’m… I’m glad you remember me, Cap.”
Steve sighed. “You, too, Bruce.”
---
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Steve started by tearing it apart for a clue, a hint, a lead, anything. He figured out early into his day that he was in Brooklyn, and the apartment that was apparently his, thanks to the mail on his kitchen table. If the guns in the couch - his couch, seriously, that couldn’t be safe - were any indication, he hadn’t become a civilian overnight.
His StarkTablet, like his StarkPhone anywhere, and the laptop on the desk in his living room presented a problem: he couldn’t remember his password. He didn’t usually need one; JARVIS responded to his voice and his phone scanned his thumbprint.
He found an address book, an honest to God paper address book, the kind that would send Tony into fits of hysterical laughter if he were to see Steve with it, but he didn’t recognise a single name. His phone was hard to navigate, all buttons and clumsy screens, none of the sleek touch navigation and voice control that his Starkphone had.
He finally managed to find the contacts list, and frowned as he scrolled. There were fewer than ten numbers listed, and none of them were familiar, same as the address book.
He didn’t have many options at this point, so with a mental shrug, he dialled the first one.
“Captain.”
Steve’s stomach dropped. “Agent Coulson?”
“You’re on stand-down status, Captain, is there anything you need?”
Steve couldn’t quite piece together his thoughts, not with a dead man talking down the phone. “No, no, I… I hit the wrong button.”
“Fine. Call if you need anything.” And just like that, Coulson hung up on him.
Steve couldn’t stop his hand shaking for ten minutes, and it took him another ten to dial the next number on the list.
“Steve? Is that you?”
Relief swamped him and he unclenched his jaw. “Clint, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, but something weird is going on.”
Steve laughed hoarsely. “Yeah, I got that. Where are you?”
Clint hummed, and there was the sound of traffic in the background. “Somewhere in Brooklyn, I think. I woke up in this tiny fucking room, man, and it’s some kind of SHIELD facility, but I mentioned the helicarrier and all I got were blank looks.”
“I’m in Brooklyn, too, think you can get out and find me?”
Clint scoffed. “Captain, I am insulted. Where are you?”
Steve gave him the address from the envelopes. “Be careful, Hawkeye. Until we know what the situation is, treat everyone with suspicion.”
“That actually hurt to say, didn’t it?”
“I mean it, Clint.”
“Yeah, I get it. I’ll be there in forty.”
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Clint’s first words when Steve opened the door were: “Heard from the Widow?”
Steve shook his head. “No. I tried all the numbers in my phone, they all lead to SHIELD, except yours.”
Clint nodded. “Mine, too. I nearly shat myself looking at the outdated tech in the SHIELD building. Tony would have kittens.”
“I know, check that thing out,” Steve said, waving a hand at his laptop. “I’ve been in this century for less than two years and even I know that’s outdated.”
Clint froze. “You think we’ve gone back in time?”
Steve managed not to roll his eyes. “No, check the date on your phone. It’s just… things are wrong. Lots of things.”
Clint nodded, and his face went dark. “So what do we do, Cap?”
Steve’s jaw tightened. “Assemble the team.”
Bruce was in India, Widow was MIA, but Tony should have been fairly easy to locate. When Clint found a post-it with Steve’s password behind the desk, he managed to get into his computer.
It was different. Of course it was, but Steve found himself staring helplessly at the screen and its strange little symbols. “Clint?”
Clint wandered over, sandwich in hand. “What’s up, Cap?”
“I don’t know how to get to the internet.”
Clint blinked. “You’re running Windows Vista? Jesus. Tony would actually kill you.”
“Just help me, please.”
“Fine, fine. Click that little fox there.”
Google, luckily, was the same. Steve knew Google. Steve had relied on it to the extent that it was almost like finding an old friend alive and well.
He typed in ‘Tony Stark’.
The results it spat back at him were enough to send a chill through his blood.
Links to Stane Industries. Some other person’s LinkedIn profile.
An obituary.
“Shit,” Clint breathed, hand tightening on Steve’s shoulder.
Steve couldn’t agree more. Trying to ignore the fact that his hand was shaking, he clicked on a news article.
‘Anthony Edward Stark, born March 3rd 1970, died today, October 26th 1989, just over two years after the deaths of his parents. President of Stark Industries, Obadiah Stane, released this statement:
‘“Today, we’ve lost not only one of the greatest minds our time has seen, but a boy on the brink of becoming a man. Most people didn’t understand Tony, but he died doing what was right, trying to make a difference, and I know that’s all he ever really wanted. Those of us who knew him will never forget him, and for those of you who didn’t, I am truly sorry. We’re all the lesser for his loss.”
‘Stark was shot in an alley in Manhattan in the early hours of this morning. Witnesses say he was attempting to stop an assault in progress, when the attacker turned his gun on Stark and fired three close-range shots to the chest. The suspect is still at large and police welcome any information.
‘Paramedics responded around 4:30 am, but Stark was pronounced dead at the scene.’
Steve felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. The computer screen before him swam, and he realised his eyes had begun to tear up.
“What the fuck is going on?” Clint whispered, and all Steve could do was shake his head and try not to cry.
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