Chapter Text
An Alliance of Frost and Fireflies
He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t hear the voices.
They were an intrinsic part of him, just as his hair was brown and his name was Anthony Stark.
He hated the name Anthony.
His father used it with such derision that it made him flinch whenever anyone used it. His mother, when she was present and not glassy-eyed from escaping into her wine, used it as a sharp exhale, as if his existence was tedious.
The boy learnt quickly that his achievements went unnoticed, that he couldn’t compete with the name Steve Rogers. He wasn’t sure if Steve had been the child his father wanted, a brother, a friend, but his earliest memories were of his father shouting that he needed to look for Steve, that his company was worthless if it couldn’t find him.
It was one of the ladies who looked after him who told him, handing him a plastic red and blue doll, saying it was Steve Rogers, Captain America. Excited, he had presented it to his father, convinced he had found who he was looking for.
That was the first time his father had hit him.
Curling up under his bed, he had imagined the darkness pressing around him, that it was a living, tangible thing, enveloping him in an embrace. Lifting a hand to his cheek, he winced at the pain his fingertips evoked.
‘Tony, sweetheart, it’s okay,’ a voice had crooned, and he felt it then, a shaking caress over his head.
‘In his simple-mindedness, he does not understand your brilliance. It is not your failing, it is his,’ another voice hissed.
Two distinct voices.
The first time he’d felt cared for.
From that moment on, he called himself Tony Stark.
***
‘Do you hear voices in your head too?’ Tony asked Jarvis as he peered over his elbow, praying the apple he was cutting wasn’t his snack.
Jarvis was the only person he trusted enough to ask. Mentioning it at school had made the other kids laugh, and Tony had been the victim of relentless bullying for weeks. Jarvis was the only safe person he could talk to, the only adult who didn’t call him Anthony, or ask him things about his father instead of listening to him.
‘Voices?’ Jarvis asked, reaching down to ruffle his hair, laughing as Tony pulled a face at the apple juice now staining it.
‘In your head, telling you things,’ Tony explained, opening his mouth obediently as Jarvis offered an apple slice, shifting from foot to foot in excitement as he bypassed him to stick it in the peanut butter jar.
‘Does it sound like your own voice? Like when you’re thinking about what to do next?’ Jarvis asked, and Tony thought about it as he chewed, swaying in happiness.
‘No, they’re different.’
‘They? As in…more than one?
‘Uh-huh,’ Tony nodded, lifting onto his tiptoes to peer at the kitchen counter. ‘One sounds rumbly and grumpy, but he’s not, he’s always nice to me. One sounds like you, Jarvis.’
‘Like me? Is it when you’re about to do something naughty and you rethink your decision because you hear my voice?’ Jarvis asked as he continued slicing up the apple.
They froze as they heard Howard’s enraged howl from a distant part of the house.
Tony clutched Jarvis’s hand, already knowing that wouldn’t be enough to stop his father, not if he was truly angry.
After long minutes of waiting, he didn’t appear, and they shared a long exhale.
‘No, not like when I’m naughty,’ Tony continued, keeping his voice down. ‘Like the way you speak differently to me, say words differently.’ He kept hold of Jarvis’s hand, loving the feeling of it closed over his, his warmth. Aside from when he spoke to the voices, this was when he felt safe.
‘An accent?’
This was one of the things Tony loved most about Jarvis. His parents wouldn’t have listened to his initial question, but Jarvis always asked more, always made him think.
‘The other kids at school…they say that if I have imaginary friends I have to go to a mental hospital. They think I’m weird.’
‘Imbeciles,’ one voice spat, and Tony had to stifle his smile. That was the voice which had been the angriest at the bullies, the one who suggested Tony glue their backpacks shut, who told him what to say with adult words that made the others speechless.
Tony still didn’t know what some of the bad words meant.
The other voice, the one Tony had dubbed the rumbly one, hadn’t given him instructions about the bullies, but he knew the voice had been angry, could feel it alongside his own sadness, and the voice had whispered to Tony late at night when he’d been upset, told stories while he fell asleep.
Tony had heard him laughing when the bullies fell on their faces though.
‘No, Tony, you’re not weird.’ Jarvis crouched down and placed his hands on his shoulders. ‘You are you, Tony Stark. A gifted, intelligent, kind little boy, and if the friends in your mind offer you comfort then they can’t be bad, can they?’
Looking back, Tony could now see it for the comfort it was, a caregiver in charge of a neglected child, who didn’t want to take away his small comforts, the few things that brought him happiness in a sterile life of expectations.
Imaginary friends, that might have been how they started.
But it wasn’t how they ended.
***
‘You’ve made a mistake with that equation.’
‘All these things they make him learn, it seems nonsensical, inconsequential.’
‘Yes, you’ve mentioned a few times. Now shut up and let him concentrate.’
Tony laughed as he chewed the end of his pen. Even though he was fond of them both equally, at times like this, where they spoke directly to each other with sarcasm and insults, this was when he felt happiest.
They’d definitely influenced his sense of humor.
It was hard to explain, even to himself, how he knew the differences between them, how he understood their feelings and emotions alongside his own. The one with the British accent evoked blue diamonds of frost, glimmers of crimson. The rumbly one made him think of darkness and fireflies, sparks of amber illuminating the night.
That made no sense.
‘Why the hell have I never asked you what your names are?’
They fell silent, contemplating.
‘I suppose because you have never felt the need, little one.’
‘Wouldn’t you prefer I call you something, rather than some metaphorical nonsense that a girl would scribble in her diary?’
‘I am grateful for any name you bestow on me. Crimson diamonds shall suffice.’
Sometimes, Tony hated him.
‘What are your actual names?’ he asked through gritted teeth, shutting his math textbook and adding it to the pile on his desk. A few more weeks and he’d be at MIT, no longer forced to hide in his bedroom.
If only Jarvis was still here to see what he’d achieved.
They went silent for a moment, something they did sometimes, giving Tony the impression they were talking to each other alone.
‘Loki,’ the frost answered first, amused.
‘Stephen.’
Tony knew him well enough to know he was uncomfortable.
‘Did you not want me to know?’
‘Astute, even at such a young age,’ Loki chuckled.
‘Fuck you, I’m fifteen.’
‘I do apologize, mighty one.’
‘It’s not…it’s not that I don’t want you to know,’ Stephen conceded, and Tony got the weird sense he was pinching the bridge of his nose the same way Mother did when she had one of her headaches.
The few times he saw her out of her bedroom.
‘Are you imaginary?’ Tony asked, giving up on studying so he could flop backwards on his bed, glaring at the car posters he’d stuck on his ceiling. He’d long given up caring if he was crazy, if he had some sort of schizophrenia. He’d done the psychiatric tests online, and aside from hearing them…no, hearing Loki and Stephen, he had no other concerning symptoms.
Wait, what if he hadn’t developed them yet?
‘No,’ Stephen was quick to answer.
‘Think of us as…Think of us as your guardians, little one. Guardians from another lifetime.’
‘Guardians? Of what?’
‘Your future. Your happiness,’ they spoke at the same time.
‘You know that we would never harm you?’ Loki asked.
Tony did know that. He didn’t know how, but it was one of the few things he’d always been certain of.
‘It is our intention to guide you towards the ones who will care for you the most.’
‘I don’t think anyone can love me.’
Not since Jarvis had left.
Tony had the sense of hands on his face, cool and clawed, shaking and dipped in shadow.
‘You just haven’t found them yet.’
***
He should’ve made Rhodey sit with him. There was too much hero worship from the soldiers in the Humvee, and while Tony was used to keeping everyone happy, he was exhausted from the fundraising event last night.
During a lull in conversation, he looked outside the window at the monotonous Afghanistan desert, the rocks, the shrubs, the shimmering heat over the sand. This hadn’t been his decision, but he could feel the shackles of Stark Industries, and he ran his finger between his skin and shirt collar.
He’d never wanted this. Wanted the resources, the money to invent, yes, but he’d thought he’d be able to run Stark Industries the way he wanted after his father died.
It was juvenile naivety.
Tony couldn’t change the world without the revenue from weapons, keeping his country safe… maybe that had to be enough for him.
Tony would never be free from his father, his legacy.
‘You’re both being awfully quiet, something on your minds?’ he asked his hitchhikers in an attempt to distract himself. His parents had been dead for years now, and here he was, still letting his father shape his life. It wasn’t as if they didn’t go quiet at times, and Tony had found himself thinking of all sorts of weird and wonderful ways they kept themselves occupied within his mind when they went quiet.
‘You know, Loki, maybe Stephen was right and-’
He slammed into the metal of the door.
His brain collided with the walls of his skull. With his ears ringing and vision blurry, Tony clawed his way back onto his chair, trying to focus on the soldiers leaping from the car.
‘Rhodey’s going to kill me.’
Tony wasn’t entirely sure if he said that out loud or thought it, but he tried to pry his seatbelt off, needing to get out if all the soldiers were escaping. He flinched at a young soldier slamming his gun on the hood, screaming instructions.
‘Wait…wasn’t it just a-’
Tony recoiled as blood splattered the windscreen, the soldier sprawled forward over his gun.
He was dead.
He was dead.
The sound of a gun cocking was barely audible over his heart that had scrambled up his throat to cower behind his ear.
‘Wait! Wait!’ Tony shouted, lurching forward as if he could somehow stop the soldier beside him from leaving.
‘Stephen! Loki!’ Tony cried out mentally, reaching out for them, needing them, his heart swelling to engulf his throat, cutting off oxygen to his brain, leaving him dumb and vulnerable.
Holes exploded in the metal.
Tiny ones, no bigger than pennies.
‘Loki! Stephen!’ he screamed as he fell from the car, sand scorching his hands, heat from explosions singeing his skin. He’d been trained for this, how to stay safe in dangerous situations, being a hostage, tortured, attacks to the company.
It hadn’t included agonized screams of his convoy, charred flesh and burnt rocks.
Flinging himself towards anything resembling cover, Tony frantically tried to call Rhodey, his mind still reaching for Loki and Stephen, knowing they would help, that they had always-
He’d recognize that sound anywhere.
Fuck.
If he didn’t look, then it wasn’t real.
‘Where are you?’ he managed to ask, glancing at the rocket.
Stark Industries.
The explosion sent him flying, the air crushed from his lungs and starbursts of pain carving across his chest. The sunlight stung his eyes as he gazed up, blood soaking his shirt.
‘Where are you?’ he weakly reached out. He had to talk to them before, had to tell them-
‘Try and breathe, little one.’
‘We’re here with you, Tony. You won’t be alone, I promise, sweetheart.’
Wait.
‘You knew?’
Even as he saw the dark shadows swarming over him, the shouts and the gestures, Tony kept asking.
‘You knew!’
His pain was brushed aside for the moment, enveloped and hidden away from him as guilt took its place. That emotion wasn’t his, it had been thrust into his mind by the two who shared it.
‘You are not alone, Tony.’
‘We’re here with you, sweetheart.’
***
Yinsen had done the best he could, had saved his life with his limited resources, but Tony tasted the crackling electricity with every breath he took, felt corrosive acid sitting at the back of his throat. Even if he survived this, if he somehow got home…
Right now, when reality blurred under the haze of agony and torture sessions, his survival instinct was nonexistent. What if he just yanked the wires free of the battery? Allowed the shrapnel to shred his heart and free him.
Who would even notice?
‘Little one, we are here, we are your strength. You are fierce, you are strong, you can survive this.’
Tony tuned them out, his mind drifting as he listened to the wind snarling through the cave, voices murmuring. Stephen and Loki were imaginary anyway. They couldn’t shield him from his father’s hate, couldn’t stop the demands for the Jericho missiles.
‘I do not understand your insistence that he survive this trial, Strange!’
Tony wrenched his attention back, trying to focus on their words rather than the anger flowing between them.
‘His experiences make him who he is! Surviving Afghanistan is a pivotal-’
Experiences. Not only had they known this was going to happen, they’d wanted it to. Wanted to shape him into something.
Just like his father had.
Just like society wanted.
Anthony Stark, heir to Stark Industries, key weapon provider to the military.
Not Tony, not the boy Jarvis had loved, or the man he’d believed Loki and Stephen cared about.
If he hadn’t been captured, tortured, forced to build Jericho missiles, would they have left him?
Fear crept around the shrapnel slicing into his muscles, building and swelling until his breathing hitched, his bandaged hand clawing at his throat.
Had they ever cared about him?
‘I never meant anything to you, did I?’
‘No! No, sweetheart, we care about you.’
Lifting his head, he tried to focus his gaze on the cave floor where the bandages stained with his blood were littered.
‘Darling one, you are not alone in your suffering.’
‘You could’ve stopped this?’ Tony gasped, flinching when someone loomed over him. He calmed as he felt familiar fingers press into his neck, sweeping his bangs out of his face to check his temperature.
Yinsen.
‘Calm yourself, Stark. There’s no one here but me, you’re safe for the moment,’ Yinsen soothed, frowning to himself. ‘He has a fever.’
‘You were supposed to be my guardians, or whatever bullshit you fed me!’ Tony raged. He wanted to gouge them from his mind, to scrape out their betrayal, his hurt.
But that meant he’d be alone.
That fear washed over his anger, snuffing it. He’d never been able to do what they did, couldn’t project his feelings to them, his touch. It had always been one way, but he tried now in desperation, imagining his hand stretching towards them, pushing his fear, his hurt to them.
‘Please. I can’t do this alone.’
Tony felt a nudge in return, a phantom touch, the sensation of being wrapped up, his hand clasped between two others.
***
Even after he’d incinerated every one of his captors, after he’d felt the gust created by the helicopter, heard Rhodey scream his name across the desert, Tony hadn’t believed himself safe. When Pepper bundled him up in her arms, when she laced their fingers together while a doctor poked him with needles, he hadn’t been safe.
In the press conference with the heckling vultures, who ripped apart every part of his story, he had squirmed, his lungs spasming as if he were still breathing in sand.
He hadn’t been safe.
Rhodey was asleep beside him, his hand never leaving Tony’s forearm, clutching him close even though exhaustion had taken him. His bed was a caress of comfort, the blankets warm and snug, yet his mind was still in Afghanistan. In the silence of the night, he could hear the shrapnel burrowing further into his skin. When he closed his eyes, it was Yinsen’s dying face he could see.
Gently prying the hand on his arm free, Tony sat, waiting as Rhodey shifted on the bed, holding his breath until he settled again. He swayed on his feet as he stood, the room spinning. Waiting until it subsided, Tony stumbled towards the bedroom window, bracing his hands on it for balance.
This was his bedroom, one of the safest places on the planet. It still had the book he had been reading on the side table, his Starkpad and stylus ready for him to use, yet it was jarring, like he was misplaced. Nothing felt familiar.
A part of him was still broken.
And he didn’t know how to fix it.
Tony had been so focused on Afghanistan that he hadn’t looked at the betrayal strangling him.
There were no distractions now.
That fury he’d ignored out of survival was festering.
‘Are you there?’
They hadn’t spoken to him since that delirious escape in the desert, their voices receding when Rhodey had sobbed into his hair.
‘Could you have stopped it?’
‘Honestly, I don’t know,’ Stephen answered. ‘But even if we could, I wouldn’t interfere with your path in life.’
He wasn’t sure if the truth hurt more. He was used to pretty lies, being told what he wanted to hear for handouts, sponsorships, a foot up the societal ladder.
To his knowledge, Stephen and Loki had never lied to him.
Now he wished they had.
‘Little one, we know that-’
‘Shut up,’ Tony snapped out loud, hands going to his hair, tearing out strands. ‘You knew what was going to happen to me and you just let it happen?’
‘If you hadn’t undergone what happened in Afghanistan, you wouldn’t fulfill your destiny. We’d be depriving you of a life you love.’
What the fuck?
He flung open his window, trying to gulp down the cold night air, his hand going to the base of his throat.
‘Tony, breathe,’ Loki whispered, a phantom caress soothing his throat, and Tony lashed out, not wanting the contact.
Guardians from another lifetime? They knew what was going to happen, could somehow tell the future.
And they’d let him be hurt.
Worse of all, he’d believed them when they said they cared about him.
He never learnt.
‘Don’t fucking talk to me again.’
‘Tones.’
‘Darling one.’
It hurt him to say the words, their regret trying to overcome the betrayal, but the hurt burnt too bright, leaving him trembling in its wake. It wasn’t love they felt. He was…he was a pet to them, something to toy with.
‘Cease. You know that not to be-’
‘I thought I was important to you.’ Tony tried to force them from his mind, imagining he was pushing against them, building a wall around himself, but he couldn’t, they were tangled with him.
He couldn’t protect himself from them, just like he couldn’t protect himself in Afghanistan.
‘I can’t even get rid of you!’ Tony shouted, slamming his hand on the window frame, looking out into the night, hearing the Malibu waves crashing below.
‘What if I crushed you out?’ he murmured.
‘Tony, sweetheart, I understand why you are angry-’
‘Get out of my head or you won’t have a head to live in,’ Tony snapped, holding onto the window frame and lifting a foot to balance on the windowsill.
‘He cannot. Strange! Do something!’
Loki’s panicked scream made him hesitate, his heart thumping into the underside of the arc reactor
Whatever was left of it.
‘Step back, sweetheart, please. Let me explain. I know you feel betrayed-’
‘Don’t tell me how I feel! You weren’t there! You don’t…’ Tony placed his hand on the arc reactor. Never had he heard Stephen beg, experienced his confidence shaken. Their cockiness, their strength, was a fundamental part of their personality.
Hearing them like this was kindling to his rage.
‘You didn’t save Yinsen. You didn’t stop the torture, didn’t stop this from happening to me!’ Tony ripped open his shirt, clawing at the edge of the reactor. The pain cut through his anger, leaving behind a clear focus. ‘You’re telling me that this…this butchery was part of some grand plan?’
‘Don't waste it. Don't waste your life.’
Yinsen.
What life?
He dangled his foot over the edge.
Tony had been snatched from death once. He didn’t think he would be lucky a second time.
‘Stephen!’ Loki cried.
Maybe he’d finally be at peace.
‘Tony! Step back!’ Stephen thundered. ‘We won’t talk to you again. I swear it.’
He felt the mental block between them, heard silence in his mind for the first time in his life.
Leaving him utterly bereft.
No.
That wasn’t better.
‘Tones!’ Arms wrapped around his middle, wrenching him back. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Rhodey demanded, holding him down against the floor.
‘I can’t do this alone,’ Tony gasped, punching against the mental wall.
‘You’re not alone. Tones, you’re not alone.’
***
Sex was easy.
Uncomplicated.
It soothed the pain, the loneliness for a few hours. He could lose himself in the sensations, the warmth of another body, the illusion that his life wasn’t crumbling around him.
Yet.
No matter how enticing the person was, or people, in some cases, Tony was always plagued with guilt after. While his skin cooled, his heart slowed, the panting breaths of his partner began to ebb, hatred for himself to seep in.
He loathed the validation he craved, the thrill he needed to imprison his demons. He wasn’t lonely, he wasn’t scared, not when chasing his latest conquest, erotic passion eradicating the silence in his mind.
Tony had become a ninja at how stealthily he could sneak out in the morning, unable to look at himself in the mirror. He couldn’t even face JARVIS, so he did what he always had when confronted with something painful.
He invented.
Tony wouldn’t allow himself to be hurt again. That was his mantra as he improved on the suit he’d used to escape that cave. Enhancing the schematics over and over, altering measurements by millimeters, drowning in minutia.
Pepper and Rhodey were worried.
He saw their shared looks, recoiled from the cold shoulder he got in the mornings after Pepper had dealt with his distractions. Numerous times they’d tried to talk to him, separately, together over pizza, one time in an intervention type of setting, and both of them still stuck around even after he’d lashed out verbally in cruelty.
He didn’t deserve them. They were his family, his unconditional loves.
So, why weren’t they enough?
***
‘I am Iron Man.’ Four small words, but they meant more to him than the Stark name ever had, more than his birth name of Anthony. He could create his own legacy, had a way to help people, to heal the hurt the Stark name had spread.
He was more than weapons and destruction.
The shrieks of the paparazzi made his pride swell, and he preened in the flashlights of cameras, grinned at Pepper’s and Rhodey’s eye-roll. He could create, he could innovate, he could change the world in the way he’d always wanted to.
Everything he’d ever dreamed of was suddenly at his fingertips, without the shadow of his father stifling him, the expectations of Stark Industries.
And he never would’ve reached that understanding, this potential, without Afghanistan.
His jubilation was choked, understanding making the room fade around him, and the only thing that kept him grounded was his hands on the podium.
‘Tones? You okay?’
That was what they had meant.
‘No more questions,’ Rhodey barked out, taking him by the shoulder and leading him away.
If he hadn’t gone through the torture, the escape, making the suit, the arc reactor.
He never would have discovered this part of himself. Stephen was right, it had defined him. It had torn through the shackles of Stark Industries, his bullshit persona he’d needed to create after his parents had died. Through the crucible of Afghanistan, the person he’d always wanted to be had been forged.
Loki and Stephen had known.
‘Hey, you alright? Never seen your face drain of color like that. Was it too much for you? Are your injuries hurting? I told Pep it was too soon. I swear, if Stane was still alive I-’
‘I’m alright.’
He wasn’t alright.
‘Bullshit. What’s going on?’ Rhodey’s eyes narrowed, and he lifted his head, searching the small side room he tugged Tony into for threats, as if they were going to be hiding behind the stacked chairs and used whiteboards.
‘My life isn’t going to be the same, is it?’
‘Since when have you ever given a shit about-’ Rhodey trailed off as he looked down at him. ‘Tones? What’s going on?’
‘I’m not the hero type. Why did they think I could do this?’
‘Who Tony? Yinsen?’
All the mistakes he’d made, the raging against society, his eccentric behavior after he’d cut Loki and Stephen off.
What if this was bigger than himself?
In his naivety, he had believed that Stephen and Loki were there for just him, that they were guardians of a sort. Now though…
He needed to talk to them.
‘Sorry, yeah, I need some water.’ Tony made his voice raspy, knowing it would pull on Rhodey’s gooey heartstrings. He didn’t need to fake the shake in his voice, and sure enough, he got a squeeze to his shoulder, a concerned glance and a wavering.
‘I’m alright, honey bear,’ Tony pushed again.
He waited a few minutes after the door closed behind Rhodey before he lifted his fingers to the cold light of the arc reactor, a mark of his power, responsibility, a strange sort of freedom.
Tony had avoided looking too closely at the iron wall he imagined in his mind, the barrier Stephen had created, and he had learned to maintain. His way of shutting the other two out, ignoring it even during his darkest hours.
When he’d been dying from Stane tearing his heart out.
He brushed his mental fingers against the block, wondering what he would even say, if they would even answer.
‘Are you there?’ he said out loud.
‘Always,’ Stephen reassured.
‘Have you just…been waiting for me?’
‘Tony?’ Loki asked, and his voice sounded breathless, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Stephen didn’t answer his question.
‘Oh, little one. Norns, I had hoped.’
‘You both knew, didn’t you, that I would become Iron Man.’ He went straight to the point, even if his heart sang after hearing from them both, his body sagging in relief.
He felt complete.
‘Yes,’ Stephen finally answered.
‘Is that why you’re here? Some sort of cosmic fate to keep me on my chosen path?’
Silence.
‘Did you ever care about me?’ Tony whispered, hating that even after all these years, his achievements, finding his chosen family, that he still cared about what the voices in his head thought of him.
Maybe it was time he sought psychiatric help.
‘It is because of our affection for you that we-’
‘Loki,’ Stephen warned.
‘No, I held my tongue years prior, agreed with you despite my reservations. Tony, I believe a conversation is in order, if you will listen to my words?’
‘I believe you owe me,’ Tony agreed, mimicking his words.
‘We are more than mere guardians we led you to believe-’
‘We didn’t want to overwhelm you when you were a child,’ Stephen interrupted, and Tony didn’t know how, but he could sense his frown.
Fuck he’d missed them.
‘Do you care about me, or what I could become?’
That was the crux, the true question that had haunted him.
Had it ever been about him?
‘It’s because we care about you that we didn’t want to limit your potential. Being Iron Man…it’s a part of you, an essential part.’ Stephen breathed out deeply, and Tony could sense it then, his pain, his guilt. ‘Tony, never think that watching you suffer in Afghanistan was anything less than torture for me.’
‘I think I had the worst deal there.’ Tony tapped the outside casing of his arc reactor.
‘If I could reach across to your universe, I would slaughter any who harmed you,’ Loki snarled.
Universe?
‘Loki!’ Stephen shouted.
‘We have done things your way long enough, Strange.’ There was no repentance in Loki’s tone.
‘I think you two have some explaining to do.’
‘I believe we shall start with your understanding of the multiverse.’
***
Tony knew what the basic principles of love were, or what they were supposed to be, knew the societal expectations, how you were supposed to act, but he’d never really felt it.
Rather, what he felt for those he cared about was something more intense than what was acceptable by society’s standards. Rhodey and Pepper, he couldn’t stand seeing them upset, hurt, he felt their joy as if it were his own, gave grand elaborate presents just to see them smile.
He would tear the world apart to ensure their safety.
Would he reach across universes, or worlds, or the cosmos, or whatever the fuck it was Loki and Stephen had done?
Tony didn’t know
‘In my universe, in both our universes, you were the greatest love of our lives.’
Multiverse theory wasn’t something he had explored, not beyond his drunk MIT days where they’d guessed what their lives might have been like if they’d made different decisions, if they’d picked different majors, chosen not to sleep with crazy ex-girlfriends.
There was no evidence for the existence of a multiverse…
Except for the two voices in his head telling him it was.
‘Where are my MRI scans for Mr. Benson in room two?’
The sound of that voice weighed on his chest, crushing his lungs, his heart, his spine.
Strange.
Stephen. Strange.
‘The greatest pain of my life was losing you, little one. I believe Stephen and I are united in this harrowing experience.’
In their universes, they had both loved him, or a version of him, and had lost their Tony Stark. Instead of grieving or moving on, they had reached out across the multiverse to find…him.
And there were versions of themselves in his world.
Never in his wildest dreams had he thought he might be able to meet with them. He had imagined it, undertaking many thought exercises about what he would say if he met them, what they would look like, what he would show them.
The reality, however.
Getting to his feet, Tony crept towards the voice, the hospital waiting room blurring as he struggled to breathe. This wasn’t the first Stephen Strange he’d investigated, his little hitchhikers had gone conveniently silent as he asked them to prove there were versions of themselves in this world.
Thankfully, JARVIS had been more accommodating.
He could only see the back of the man, a doctor if his white coat was an indication, and Tony knew, somewhere in his memory, that this Stephen Strange was a doctor, which was why he was here.
Tony’s thoughts were all running together, nothing made sense.
How did you process the idea that two people loved you enough to reach across the multiverse to find you? That instead of grieving or moving on, they had found him to ensure their love could begin again, in Tony’s universe.
They were just as insane with their understanding of love as he was.
The man, this Stephen Strange, was tall with a slim build, long fingers, Tony noted, and streaks of grey at his temples. Stress? From being a doctor? He’d only glanced at the profile JARVIS had pulled up, having already gone through at least forty other Stephen Stranges.
No one had come up for Loki, oddly enough.
He turned to look down the corridor, and Tony saw his side profile, the strong jaw, pursed full lips as Strange waited for an answer to his question.
Rumbly and grumpy, came to Tony’s mind. He needed to make sure, that what he’d heard earlier wasn’t his heart’s desperate attempt at-
‘Have you seen Christine this morning?’
Tony knew that voice anywhere.
It was his Stephen Strange.
It was as if thinking his name made him hear, and he turned to see Tony standing there in shock. Stephen’s blue eyes were spellbinding, his entire being hypnotic.
Years Tony had imagined this, and this was nothing like the mental picture he had of him.
The fireflies, shadows, amber sparks.
He couldn’t breathe, his body swaying on the spot. He’d been jealous initially that a version of himself had been in a relationship with Stephen and Loki, that two separate versions of himself had found love in people he’d come to cherish, while he still longed for that connection.
No. Tony actually couldn’t breathe.
‘Wait…is that? Oh, shit. Mr. Stark? Can you hear me?’
‘Found you.’
Crashing to his knees, Tony was barely able to keep himself from falling forward.
He existed. Stephen existed, and Tony had found him.
‘Mary, help me get him into one of the rooms.’ Fingers pressed into the side of his neck, and Tony was helpless against the sensation, the physical feeling of him potent after years of nothing more than ghostly touches.
This was his version of Stephen Strange.
Tony collapsed onto him, hands clutching at his coat.
The Stephen Strange he could be with.
TBC
You can find me here Twitter and also here Tumblr Come have a chat with me!