Author's notes: This is the final story in this series. If you haven't read the previous stories, it probably won't make much sense. Also, this fic uses special formatting not allowed by FFN; I've approximated it using alternate formatting to make it readable, but if you want to read it in the original format then you should check it out on AO3 (there's a link on my profile).

Thank you to everyone who has read these fics, and especially my betas—Cy, V, and for this story in particular, Subjunctive and Laura.

I hope you enjoy this final installment.

An eternity ago: the Early Universe

Fifteen years of using the Time and Space Gems wasn't enough to figure out all their tricks. Essential universal concepts were a pain in the ass like that. But it was enough to get the hang of using them to travel, and Tony had gotten used to having his brain flipped inside out and then pieced back together. He didn't stumble on the landings anymore.

This time, however, he wasn't the one in the driver's seat—sort of—and the sharp fall through Time and Space was nauseating. Tony hit the ground and had to wheel his arms sharply to regain his balance, small repulsors forming on the palms of his hands and firing to keep him from landing on his ass.

Christ, that was a stronger push than I really needed.

...not like I didn't give him adequate reason.

He was lucky he'd gotten to the right destination at all; he remembered that frame of mind. There was no mistaking this place, though. Grey mist hid what he knew from experience was a barren grey landscape. It wasn't actually mist, and the temperature was a perfect 298, human room temperature, but some phantasmal chill seemed to sink into his bones nonetheless—or maybe that was just weariness. It had been a long time since he'd first fallen into this dead realm, beat up and bruised and convinced he was dead. A lifetime ago in one direction, an eternity from now in the other... and if he'd taken Hel, the first one, up on her offer all those years ago...

Then I wouldn't be here now, and that wouldn't actually be a good thing.

Tony breathed out tiredness and some small portion of giddy relief, and turned to face the throne. The girl upon it looked at him with a child's curiosity and no alarm, and he gave her a small bow. "Care to exchange favours, lady?"

Her dead eyes didn't brighten, but she sat up straight from her half-drowsing slouch. "Favours? I've never gotten to! Oh, I want—I want—" She paused, as indecisive as a kid confronted with a full bar at Baskin-Robbins.

"A death," he said, watching her for those signs of other. "A real, complete death, all the dying over and done with, The End. There's not gonna be anything else around to die properly for another couple eons, so it's a special opportunity you've got here."

She regarded him mistrustfully, and sulked. "I can't just do that," she whined. "It's gotta be asked for."

"I'm asking."

"Oh!" She brightened again, then looked doubtful. "Really?"

"Really really. All I want in return is—put in a good word for me, with your Goddess, huh?" Favour he'd already enjoyed, Hel's and Hers, paid for retroactively and in advance, here and now.

"Done," she said promptly, greedily. "Now?"

For a moment he hesitated, survival instinct kicking in belatedly. I'm really going to do this. He had to. He already knew how it worked out if he did. If he hadn't sent the Gems away already then he could have run despite that—the Time Gem could support paradoxes, it wouldn't implode the multiverse if he ran away now. But it would change things, as cause-and-effect rippled back and forth until the Time Gem could smooth them out, and after everything... this was exactly where he wanted to be.

In more ways than one.

Is this selfishness? It was a nagging thought, but unimportant. It didn't really matter anymore if it was or wasn't.

"Now," Tony agreed, and felt more then saw the grey nothingness to his left deepen. Lighten? Darkness, the lack of light, was fading away just as much as the light itself. Less reality, less unreality, less everything, in a way that human brains—no matter how strange his was, now—weren't designed to comprehend. This wasn't the Ginnungagap, wasn't the flip side of anything. It just wasn't.

"The beginning of the end," said Hel with her slight child's lisp, and there it was, that alien knowing—no. Not alien.

Godly, maybe.

"Say a prayer for me," Tony told her. It was a struggle to keep his voice even in the face of that absolute end, that death, that erasure from everything.

I win, and the relief was staggering, but he had to focus. It took effort, but he managed, forcing his own prayer—might as well call it what it was—uppermost in his mind. He'd only get one shot at this, after all.

If he screwed it up, the Time Gem would smooth that over too, and then they'd all be fucked.

Hide what I will-am-have do-doing-done. Keep it secret. Please.

Tony closed his eyes, praying, and took the last step left.

Five Minutes After An Eternity Ago

Tony stumbled on the landing, managing to trip over nothing at all. Extremis-given grace let him catch his balance before he fell to the hard-packed, boring-boring-boring grey ground, so familiar—even if he'd flubbed the landing, at least he'd gotten the right place. Had he gotten the right time? Possibly he should have done a bit of practice with the Space and Time Gems first, rather than attempting to throw himself across the entire length of reality on his first real try.

He turned around, shaking off the lingering overawed feeling that came from using two lynchpins of creation to traverse the breadth and depth of the multiverse. What he saw was... not quite what he was expecting.

"Oh, I haven't met you yet," said Hel from where she was curled up in her throne. Both of her arms, still pudgy with baby-fat, were curled over one armrest, and now she smushed her chin into them, right on top of the skull embedded as part of the throne's decoration. Her feet dangled above the ground. He didn't have the best idea how fast young children aged, but if she'd been human, he'd have been surprised to hear she was older than five. Maybe six.

"That's relative," Tony told her.

"You want another fa-vour," she sing-songed in her child's voice.

He winced, fighting down the first beginnings of panic. Here was a child-god, queen of Helheim, and her father and uncle were two of the most vindictive bastards he'd ever had the misfortune of meeting—but for all that she'd tried to trick him into obliterating himself, once, at least she'd have made it painless. Right. He could deal with that. "Just to clarify, first favour. You haven't done me any before."

She smiled, a movement of the muscles around her mouth only.

Moving on, moving on—"You said—will say—that death keeps all secrets." He watched her carefully, but she just hummed tonelessly, kicking her dangling feet back against her throne, a bored little girl. "I need to hide something, from... everything. Inside this cluster, and outside it. Everywhere. You're the goddess of death. Can you do it?"

If this didn't work—

He'd have to come up with something else. Failure wasn't an option. But she was his best shot. She wasn't limited to the bounds of the local cluster of multiverses, like the other Asgardians—"Death. Eternity. Infinity. Inevitability." She might be able to do it. If not—

For something this big, technology wasn't going to cut it. It was a galling, bitter thought, but true.

"Nooo," she sighed, drawing it out and looking disappointed. His heart sank. "That's too big. You'll have to ask Her yourself."

Hope rose again. "Your goddess."

"Goddess," she corrected, and he could hear the capital 'G'. Her whole face lip up as she pronounced this word, and her smile stretched from ear to ear. There was satisfaction there to the deepest hunger, like when the edges lined up or dice rolled a pair or paving stones were just long enough that he could continuously alternate which foot stepped across the cracks he walked over. Balance.

"Oh," he said. He remembered looking back through time, and hearing what Loki had said about gods who worshipped other gods in turn—"All beings respect those with more power, except the very stupid. The merely stupid sometimes take it to ridiculous extremes — even among gods."

From what he was seeing in Hel's eyes, maybe Loki was the very stupid one.

...and that makes me...

"I can send you to her," Hel said coyly, leaning forward. She was toying with him; there was something he couldn't read, in that look. "If you ask."

"I can send myself, thanks," said Tony, trying to think. He had the Time and Space Gems; no need to incur a favour over that. "Though directions would be handy."

"'s not a place," she said, with a child's slight lisp. "She is the End."

Oh.

"A long time ago... from now—you tried to trick me into obliterating myself. Oblivion, you called it."

"The end," she said, her head bobbing up and down on her skinny neck, a child's enthusiastic nod. "This's all—" Hel shrugged, and indicated her throne and all of the mist surrounding them with a big wheel of both arms. That was wrong, a hands that skeletal on the arms of a child. When he didn't look quite at her, she looked right, still a bit pudgy with baby-fat; when her gesture drew his focus to her limbs, he could see where the bones were ready to break through tightly-drawn skin.

"Here 's'all dying," said Hel. "Decaying, ending. Body, then soul, then mind. We work toward Her. I do. I'll never see Her, not directly." She looked forlorn at this. "Not until the very last End. Everybody else has to go first, that's what I do, the ones like me. So I could... send you there."

By obliterating him—body, soul, and mind. Right. He had a good start, he was already missing one of those. Or maybe that would be a problem instead: hard to destroy it when it was elsewhere...

"The soul's kind of a problem."

She looked at him, big eyes protruding from her wasted skull of a head. He carefully refocused his gaze to the probably-not-actually-air about a centimetre in front of her face. "Everything ends. Connections, too. I can break it."

"Great, next question," said Tony, holding up a hand and trying to make it seem like it was due to the question, and not because he really wanted to back away from the enthusiasm giving life to those dead eyes. "How do I ask Her after I've stopped existing?"

"She knows already," said Hel, sounding proud of her Goddess' omniscience. "Thoughts end and words end and moments end. But you have to ask."

"And if I just let you—obliterate me—"

"Ask," she insisted.

Right. The Norns had told him, so long ago: there were restrictions on death gods. Maybe there were restrictions on Death Herself, too.

"If I ask you, to let me see Her, will She agree?"

Again, that nauseating head-bobble, so emphatic that he expected her skull to fall off her neck. Somehow, it stayed on. "She likes hiding things and secrets and stuff. Thanos keeps trying to find Her and She doesn't like him at all." Surely no eye-roll should show so much of the sclera. "And she likes you—"

"Really?"

"Yes," Hel said firmly. "And I'll say please, too, and you'll be my very first real End."

"Right," said Tony. He coughed to clear his throat, and give himself time to think. Was he doing this? Trusting to the whims of a... what? A God? A concept?

Only two constants, death and taxes.

Everything dies in the end.

A different version of Hel, from a different cluster of multiverses, had tried to trick him into this exact thing, once. And here he was, thinking of asking her to do it. But that Hel had been trying to save her cluster; she'd been the only one, apparently, able to figure out Loki was up to something. If she'd succeeded in tricking him, her cluster might not now be spiraling down into the endless abyss—neither able to reach a final End, nor burn to ash and be reborn.

And he wouldn't be here now, to bargain for this cluster's salvation.

Hel looked at him, waiting with more patience than any tiny child should have. Her eyes were fathomless pits in her face.

Alright. I'm going to do this. How?

Implementation was going to be tricky. It wasn't that he was scared of total obliteration. Far to the contrary: god knew he'd considered it often enough for way more selfish reasons, and when the time came it might even be a relief—he shut down that line of thinking and considered the problem at hand. He already had one date with annihilation. With the Time Gem, being in two places at once was easy, but dying in two different places was still going to be a trick. Couldn't exactly loop back on himself after the fact.

I'll need someone else.

Tricky. Loki was still waiting for him, no doubt, to return to his own present—when looking back along the Time Gem he'd caught glimpses of what might be waiting for him there. Trying to unravel Loki's traps would put him too close to springing them. It was what had sent him running to the start of the universe.

Can't be Steve. Can't be one of the others. Someone else.

He ran through scenarios. The spread of information needed to be contained, first of all. Even if he could bargain for Death to pull Her cloak over any plan he could come up with, he doubted that would help if someone simply blurted it out loud. Loose lips sank ships. So. That could be limited. But no matter which way he turned it around, there was no escaping the fact that he was going to have to set any plan in motion before coming back to beg secrecy. He had to toss the dice and hope that Death really did like him.

If it all falls apart, I'll just have to redo it.

He'd go forward, and set things in motion—then return here. No, before here: better to hide everything from the very beginning. He eyed Hel, and she stared guilelessly back. Maybe he already had.

"I'll be right back," he told her, and then took a deep breath and focused on the Gems. If he was going to do this... he'd need resources.

Two decades ago: May 4th, 1991

The laws of reality snapped back around him, bending into a different perspective and rendering the other one near-incomprehensible. Tony didn't stumble, but that was mostly because he'd landed midair and the jetboots kicked in on autonomic reflex. He did manage to land gracefully, though.

Nanites reformed around him, switching from the armour to a suit more fitting of the times. The ones beneath his skin adjusted as well, giving him a sallow, hung-over look—a minor modification to the eyes, a wildness and pin-point pupils—he'd gotten up to some really stupid things when he was actually in his twenties.

Phone and power lines buzzed around him, tickling extremis' awareness, but although it was a jolt at first—so abrupt a change from the silent wastes of Helheim—they were all too rudimentary to be a real distraction. Almost quaint, really. Here humanity was, still riding the first wave of a technological revolution, all of them just barely dreaming of the sort of processing power that he had in the tip of his little finger.

The car-park level he'd landed in was empty. No secret cameras watched obsessively, not in this time, where SHIELD was yet made of shadows and other interests were focused abroad, watching with disbelief as the Soviet Union peacefully collapsed. That would change, soon enough, and eyes would remember to look back home. Before then, he could count on being unobserved as he made some investments. His plan might not be entirely complete yet, still rough around the edges, but everything he could come up with required time and money, and if he wasn't going back to SHIELD—and he couldn't, he couldn't, not before he figured out what Loki might have done—then he needed to take steps to ensure he had an alternate cash flow. His self in this time was currently sleeping off the effects of the really dumb things he'd been doing for the last few days, safe in his Manhattan penthouse; Stane was halfway around the world and wouldn't expect him—

Tony felt himself freeze in the process of adjusting his cuff links. He'd known, sure, when he'd decided to make this stop—but somehow, standing here was different. All his promises to himself teetered in the presence of that first betrayal. If he'd never gone to the desert—

If he'd never built the suit...

The sharp edges of the Gems, still in his hand, bit into his skin. He was wrinkling his cuff, squeezing his hands into fists too hard. He forced himself to relax, forced his finger to uncurl, and fabric made from nanites smoothed out as though it had never been crushed. But the pain was a reminder—he couldn't afford to start thinking this way.

Steve had been right all along. He couldn't play God. Hadn't he seen what it had come to, the last time?

Damn him, anyway. He couldn't put any real heat into the thought.

But here he was, going off on his own again. He could excuse it—Loki was undoubtedly waiting and prepared for him to come back, he needed to get all his ducks lined up in a row before he did—but at the end of the day, he was still going off solo, breaking his promise to Steve.

"Shut up, shut up," Tony muttered aloud. This was ridiculous. He was standing in a smelly parking garage in New York talking to himself, when what he needed to be doing was setting up funds. And trying to do it this way, pretending to be his younger self, was a stupid idea. It presented far too much temptation, and god and the entire public knew that Tony Stark was terrible at resisting temptation. No. He'd do this the less straight-forward way, and if the funds weren't where he needed them to be in two decades then—well, hell, he'd just rob a bank: extremis made doing so a matter of a moment's thought.

The ICG engaged around him as his suit dissolved back into armour. He engaged the Silencer before he the repulsors, and his rise into the air was in dead quiet. If he was going to do it this way, in this primitive time, then he needed to be a little closer to the stock exchange: the Twin Towers.

God, how naive they'd all been back then.

One decade ago: September 2nd, 2003

Tony kept hold of Dyson's hand as world became ordinary once more around them, but to her credit, she didn't wobble too much—military exercise plan paying off, he guessed. When he was sure that she had her balance he stepped back, dropping her hand and giving her some space as she looked around. It also let him sync into the complex's servers. Somebody had been by while he'd been away, and left one brain-damaged soldier behind. He made a note to remember to do that later.

"Where is this?" she asked, taking in the wide windows (fake; they were screens, but very realistic)—the potted plants (real; apparently they were beneficial to mental health, and god knew after four years down here he was running low on that)—and the industrial-grade computer banks. It was all heavily shielded, and underground to boot—Steve would have been so disappointed—

Stop thinking about it.

All of time and space his to run through, and still Steve managed to

stop

"Your home for the next few years, until we crack this thing—and, after that, it's yours outright," Tony shrugged, including the sound of moving clothes to match the image he was wearing. "Whether you want to stay or not at that point will be up to you. Colonel Savin's in a room just down that hall," he added helpfully.

Dyson didn't take the bait. Not love-struck or regretful enough to become stupid, then. Good for her. "How did we get here?"

"I would've thought that'd be your first question," Tony remarked, and then immediately held up his hands as she glared at him. "Good grief, you're jumpy."

"You just broke me out of prison by—by teleportation! I think I'm entitled to be jumpy!"

"You agreed to it."

"You can do all this, why do you even need my help?"

"Well, you know what they say about scientists and specializations," he muttered. "Personality, Dr. Dyson. I know what you've been studying in your permitted time, trying to fix Colonel Savin. I looked into you very closely. See, I can get the memories copied just fine, but the personality—building one entirely digital, quantum, from the start, that I can do fine, but copying something with neurons? Something changes every time, something I'm missing, and it falls to bits." He waved his hands in frustration.

She stared at him. "I thought you wanted my help with the tissue growth."

"I said I needed your help with the details," Tony said, and took another few steps back for prudence. "Tissue growth I've got down."

"Are you sure about that, or are you working on theory? Because I can tell you that technology's at least ten years out," Dyson said flatly, and with utter certainty.

Funny, she's about dead on with that one...

He grouped up a bunch of nanites onto his hand instead, pulling the ICG's cloak away carefully to reveal them as they balled up—a gleaming silver mass that he set on the nearest workbench. "I'm sure."

Dyson looked between him and the extremis particles—and, oh, she was good: "You got to Hansen."

"Yup."

Dyson shook her head. "ULTRA-Tech got funding because extremis was deemed too pie-in-the-sky. They thought it was too far out to be viable this side of 2050. But if you've got that working, you don't need me." She had her chin lifted—oh, there was pride, there.

"I do need you," Tony said, "I've just told you why I need you. I need you to figure out how to clone—transplant, whatever—a personality whole. It's not my field. Frankly, I'm a genius, but I don't have the intuition for this field, I never have. You do. You"—he waved a hand at her—"get it. I need your help."

"You have Hansen working for you."

"I have Hansen working against me, is what I have. Hansen isn't like you, Doctor. She doesn't have your morals." He looked away. "I learned that the hard way."

"Yeah?" she challenged: jaw set, eyes narrowed, feet planted in combat-ready stance—she'd been slowly shifting into it the entire time. "And how'd that go? This is the last time I'm gonna ask: who are you?"

"Well, not a super-villain," Tony muttered, and dropped the illusion he'd been wearing.

He was probably going to be stuck here with her for the next few years, after all. Might as well try to get off to a good start.

Eight months ago: Five weeks after the Chitauri Invasion of New York

"Dr. Dyson, it is an honour to meet you," Tony said, standing to offer her his hand. He had to stand to the side of the chair, rather than shoving it back, since the chair was bolted to the floor. Prison security left a lot to be desired in the amenities.

The MPs guarding her ignored the gesture; Dyson stared at him suspiciously. Tony shrugged, dropped his hand, and re-took his seat while they let Dyson shuffle to the chair. The MPs ensured the door was shut, and took up positions on either side of it, watching Dyson warily—and him, too.

Not that they really saw him. They saw a middle-aged man in a business suit.

With a thought, Tony cut their communications and set the security cameras to view a suspicious-seeming but completely nonsensical conversation about whales. He set the Silencer to give them a bubble of privacy, just in case Dyson was feeling more patriotic than he'd predicted. Then he brought his hand up, and fired mini-taser darts at both guards from the cloaked gauntlet he was wearing. They fell, twitching—still breathing, he made certain. But thoroughly disabled. He tightened the inner radius of the Silencer, including the guards in the dead zone where they wouldn't hear anything even if they regained consciousness, and turned his full attention to Dyson.

She wore an expression of disbelief. But, to give her credit, there was nothing hesitant about her as she demanded, "What the hell is this?"

"A jail break, if you want it," he told her. "Sort of. You'd be in my custody instead."

"Somehow I doubt that you're approved by the Army Corrections Command. Give me one reason why I shouldn't start screaming."

"I'll give you two." He held up two fingers. "One, no one would hear you. Two, I plan to collect Colonel Savin as well. I'm sure you have concerns over how he's been treated during your stay here—justified concerns. But, you come work for me... I can't promise you much free time. But whatever you have, you can use it to try to repair the damage he suffered, with unlimited funding and materials. And I won't do a damn thing to him, except provide room and board."

Her jaw clenched. "Who the hell are you?"

"Someone who needs your help."

"What the fuck for? Are you some—" she looked at the guards, faint signs of panic beginning to appear, "—some super-villain?"

Super-villain? Not this month, but soon enough. "No," he said firmly. "This is a private interest. I'm not interested in your work on enhancements. It's more your side-work that interests me. The nitty-gritty details," he explained.

Project ULTRA-tech had been focused on grafting cybernetic enhancements onto—or into—a human body. Unlike so many other failed super-soldier projects before it, they'd been very careful not to leap too quickly to human testing, instead snapping up two smaller projects working on cloning. Under the direction of Lieutenant Dyson—and it was a criminally stupid oversight that she hadn't been promoted way beyond Lieutenant for her groundbreaking work—the team had advanced cloning techniques to such a point that they could grow incredibly complex systems.

Not as complex as a human being, of course. Nowhere near that complex.

But he didn't need her help for that.

"That doesn't tell me who the fuck you are," Dyson said. Good catch.

"That, you're not going to learn unless you say yes," Tony said, grimacing. "I want a human clone, Doctor. Of me. No one else. Not one to do experiments on, or harvest organs from—I want a twin. An equal."

She stared at him. "You've gotta be kidding."

"It's harder than you'd think to find researchers of your quality who are willing to be locked in a secret facility for—eh, five years, let's say." Tony shrugged. "Given how much difficulty I've encountered working on my own, I don't expect quick results. But when you're done, you can keep working in my facilities, and I guarantee a lifetime of unlimited funding for getting Colonel Savin fixed. Or you can take a millionaire's pension and a new identity and... go anywhere. I don't care. I just want a twin. Come on, Dyson—work with me, here."

"You walked in here and downed two USDB guards and are talking treason at me. And you think I'll think you'd just let me go?"

"Well"—Tony drew out the word slowly—"they certainly won't."

"My sentence is fifty years."

"New York was invaded by aliens last month. It's a brand new world. Let me put it to you this way—your friend is currently in cold storage. Tomorrow, he won't be. Super-soldier programs have got real fashionable again, and this time—hoo boy. You haven't been outside, Dyson. You haven't seen the panic." Tony leaned back in his chair, as much as the prison furniture would allow, which wasn't much. "You have something I want, and I'm asking you for it, because Project ULTRA-Tech was probably the most ethically-run super-soldier project in the last fifty years, and that's down to you. Your superiors won't ask, and you won't like what they order you to do."

She stared at him, thinking. He didn't rush her. This was good, really. For all that she was in prison, she'd gotten there through naiveté rather than malevolence, and he needed someone with ethics, someone he could trust this time, damn it. Not that he could trust her, yet—but maybe eventually.

In the security room, the guard-on-duty had paused over their camera for the last minute, baffled by their conversation. Maybe he should have picked a different topic.

"How do you think you'll get me out of here?" Dyson asked finally. "You just tased two guards. You'll never be able to smooth that over."

"On paper, you're getting transferred to a civilian prison," Tony said. "The records will be in order, although everybody with a signature on them will swear it's forged. Unofficially..." he stood, and tucked his left hand into a pocket, picking out the Space Gem by feel. "Take my hand." He held out his right, as if to shake, again. Technically, he didn't need her to actually take it—but technically, she hadn't yet agreed.

She eyed him distrustfully.

"The first time was just a handshake, a greeting," he placated. "I'm really not interested in trying to get an unwilling scientist to clone me a twin. That'd just end badly."

"This is going to end badly anyway," she said, but she did take his hand. "Fine."

"Bargain struck." He felt like grinning, but managed to refrain. "Here we go." He pictured their destination, and let the Gems do the rest.

Five hours ago: 11:31 PM (EST)

Wrapped in layers of cloaking tech helped by the twin powers of Space and Time, Tony eavesdropped on his own thoughts. Years of research into every fundamental aspect of the brain and its interaction with extremis made it easy to read data off himself without being detected in return, although, admittedly, that was helped along by the hash his past self had made of his own firewalls.

Stupid, stupid, stupid of him to have run the upgrade just like that. He should have held off on it at least until he'd gotten out of Maklu. What had he been thinking, starting it like that? He'd been rushing—and he'd paid the price for it. He hadn't understood why at the time. It had taken him years to figure that out—years of tweaking, of the Time Gem self-correcting for everything he did, everything he stuck into place to try to trip up Loki. Years of watching everything balance on a knife edge and realizing that no matter how many excuses he told himself, it wasn't about avoiding Loki's traps at all, it was just that he'd seen another way and if it required breaking his promise to Steve, so be it—

Christ, he was tired.

Time to make the ends of the circle meet. Tony slipped past—hah, past—his past self's currently up-turned firewalls with laughable ease; later, he wouldn't even remember any foreign system interaction. Of course... the system baselines were identical. Sloppy work all around. He'd been a moron.

Can't say you don't deserve this, Tony thought darkly, and made one... key... tweak.

Three hours ago: 01:40 AM (EST)

"This," said Fury, flipping Steve's hastily-scrawled report closed and tapping the cover with his index finger, "is a fucking mess."

"Sir."

"I thought aliens were bad, and now you're adding in fucking time-travel." Fury grunted and leaned forward to set his elbows on the desk. He clasped his hands together. "You brought back Stark, Captain—I was ready to sing your praises and let the President pin medals on you—but this?"

Well, there was some silver lining to it if he'd managed to duck a medal ceremony. "The 'new' threat's been there since our Asgardian ally vanished, Director. We just didn't know about it."

"And according to this, that threat's gone. One power to wipe out another. Although having seen power vacuums before, I'm sure we'll be plenty busy for the next few years." Fury shook his head. "So. Interstellar politics just got even messier. You're right, at least we know what happened now. But what you want to do about our other Asgardian problem? Captain, are you out of your goddamn mind?"

"No," said Steve, "but Tony was. He's cured of it, but he's still not well. He needs help—"

"That is not my problem here," barked Fury. Beneath the irritation, he actually looked... offended? "The problem is you trying to play goddamn politics with it!"

"What? I'm not—"

"You want him to work for SHIELD. That's a problem."

Of all the things Steve had expected Fury to say, that hadn't been one of them. He stared at Fury, arguments deserting him.

"Stark threatened the Council that he'd go public about the nuke," said Hill, from her position over on the wall. She had a tablet in front of her, and was scrolling through paperwork even as she spoke, but her eyes flicked up to meet Steve's briefly. "We'd been using that threat to sort out some internal flaws. Two of the Councillors who gave that order have been replaced. The other three might've been gone within a year, if we hadn't been interrupted by Stark's death and extremis. Instead they still hold a majority on the Council. Worse, China's now set a precedent for nuking civilian targets in the interests of national preservation of life, and the global response has been a long way from total condemnation."

"The hysteria over extremis was everything they could have wanted," said Fury. He sounded disgusted. "So. We have a radicalized Council, and you want to hand them Tony Stark as a prisoner, a Tony Stark who for once is actually willing to build them weapons. You're right: we need to do something about our Asgardian problem. And if you hadn't had him broadcast himself to the damn Helicarrier bridge, Captain, it would be a hell of a lot easier to do it without risking the Council gunning for a goddamn global takeover!"

Steve flushed. Okay, so that had been a mistake on his part. "Sir," he said, staring straight ahead.

"Uh," said Bruce, speaking up for the first time in an hour—he'd gone cold and quiet while reading over Fury's shoulder, and eventually wandered over to a corner to tap at a tablet of his own—"Actually. What you're saying about him being willing to build weapons... are you sure you got that right?"

Steve turned to look at him. "He was pretty explicit about wanting to kill the guy."

"Yeah, but, considering the record of the phenomena you have there..." Bruce waved two fingers vaguely at the notebook report that Steve had written up, "—weapons, uh, that's not going to do it. Something to detect, search for the guy in more than three dimensions—that's going to be more astrophysics than nuclear. We're talking... portal tech, how to get around whatever 'wall' they've got up, and something to destabilize copies of the guy across realities. Conventional weaponry wouldn't—I don't think you're getting the limitations of it, here."

"A weapon you could use to assassinate people from other realities with is certainly something the Council would want," said Fury.

"Yeah, but I'd bet it'll work differently on a being that's 'connected' across realities instead of 'discrete'. Look, I'm not any kind of a weapons engineer, Tony could have other ideas. But I'm pretty experienced with how it works when conventional weaponry goes up against the... unconventional." One corner of Bruce's mouth picked up in a crooked smile. "Tony's seen that. He knows how it goes. He won't make that mistake."

"Can we put him into Avengers' custody?" asked Steve.

"The Avengers have no legal authority to take custody, Captain, except under the auspices of SHIELD."

"Then US federal custody. Represented by the Avengers. If we can get the President to sign off on it then I'll take personal responsibility. SHIELD provides space and materials in exchange for access to what he's working on, but the legal custody is ours."

Maria paused in tapping at her tablet. "You go that route, you'll have a hard sell not getting the US military involved."

"Oh, yeah," said Bruce. "That'd just be perfect. We'll be beating them off with a stick."

"I've got a pretty handy shield for that," said Steve. He looked back at Fury, trying to guess the direction of his thoughts. "Director?"

Fury's expression was only half-skeptical, which was nearly his default anyway. Steve felt a bloom of hope rise.

Fury leaned back in his chair. "That might be a solution. But you seem to have forgotten how that nuke got in the air last spring. If SHIELD has physical custody, that'll still give the Council a lot of opportunities."

"SHIELD facilities have internal cameras. So long as Tony's on Earth and not stuck down a hole, cut off, he can catch whatever the Council tries."

"Big Brother 2.0," said Bruce. Steve shot him a look, but he was staring at the ceiling. "Oh, god, he would, wouldn't he."

Fury snorted. "Catch and stop, huh? Not tossing him down a hole opens up a whole other can of worms. There's no other way to hold him. I'm willing to give the idea that he was mentally compromised a fair shot, and in that case, he may not be responsible for all the actions he's taken. But until we can clear that he was and that he definitely no longer is, keeping him contained is a responsibility that I have to a higher ideal than just the Council." He fixed his eye on Steve. "Which should be your first concern as well, Captain."

"He surrendered to me. If I tell him to he'll stay put," said Steve, trying to keep his face as blank as possible.

"This," Fury held up the notebook containing Steve's report, "does not provide evidence to back up that claim."

Of course it didn't. Steve had glossed over—or flat omitted—anything that might have hinted at the existence of the headband Tripitaka had stuck on Tony; he'd put down stopping Tony from using the Window to Makluan technology being able to disable extremis. He couldn't tell Fury the truth of it. Tony would never forgive him. Tony would be right to never forgive him.

Ten million people died in Shenzhen.

Steve planted his hands on Fury's desk and leaned forward, keeping eye contact. "Stopping another Shenzhen is my biggest concern. It won't happen again. I—"

If Tripitaka hadn't...If a lot of things hadn't happened... but they had, locked into place when the Window of Time had shattered. Time-travel solved nothing, no matter what Tony thought. But keeping Tony from doing something stupid... was he seriously considering actually using the headband? Even as something to bluff Tony with?

Fury looked almost disappointed, almost gentle. "Your word's a hell of a thing, Captain, but you're asking me to trust a lot of lives to your gut feeling."

Could he—?

He'd halfway done it already, ordering Tony to call SHIELD. If he did this—

Steve looked down at the desk, then up at the others. They were silent, letting him think; Fury didn't drop his gaze, but Maria was still tapping away on her tablet. Bruce was worrying at the cuffs of his sleeves, fiddling like he did whenever he got nervous. The very first time Steve had seen him do that, he'd been shying away from the guards on the bridge of the Helicarrier. Because Bruce had been considered a threat, too—had fucked up, had made mistakes that resulted in the Hulk, that resulted in deaths...

I broke once, Tony had said. I'll break again. And in the shadows of his mine-laboratory, he'd looked exhausted.

I cannot possibly do that to him. God, what is wrong with me that I'd even consider it? Steve's gut cramped with phantom nausea, the dizzying feeling of stopping only to realize that one step further and he would have fallen into an unseen chasm; he reeled back from it, horrified. I can't do that to him. I can't, and I won't. I shouldn't have ever thought of it. I wish I'd never thought of it.

He didn't know how much of this panic made it easy to meet Fury's eyes squarely. "I'm not asking you to trust my gut feeling, sir. I'm asking you to trust me. If he goes off the rails—I'll stop him."

God be my witness, I will find another way. Failure isn't an option, and neither is that.

Fury tilted his head, considering—his eye searching Steve's face, possibly trying to x-ray through to the brain beneath—and, at length, slowly nodded. "Alright, Cap. Looks like you need to go see the President... and we need to dust off Operation: Alexander."

Now

Loki's grin contained too many teeth. It wasn't nerves or fear, confusing Tony's senses; extremis let Tony count exactly how many he was showing, and they should not have all fit in that space without seriously stretching out his jaw.

"Subtle," said Tony.

The grin shifted to a more genuinely amused expression, which of course meant fuck all. "Work for a god and you're bound to see some wonders."

"Me working for you would be one all by itself—look, okay, I'm not even gonna try and lie to you, because I think you know damn well how much I hate you." Tony crossed his arms and leaned back, as much as was possible in the steel chair. "Give it to me." What did Loki think he had that would convince him?

He preferred his universe's version of Loki. That one was a lot easier to rattle. Of course, that was a lesser version—a filtered reflection, watered down. This Loki that he was talking to was also a reflection—but Tony didn't think as much was filtered. There was a mind behind this Loki that was greater than a single reality.

"You're a pragmatist, Stark."

Enemy of my enemy. That was it? That was all Loki was going with to try to convince him? Colour him disappointed... and suspicious. "Right, so on the impossible day when Hammer has a bright idea and I agree to work with you, you know I'm going to be waiting for a chance to stab you in the back."

He'd really appreciate it if Loki would stop smiling. It wasn't a good look on him, any version of him. "You speak as though that's not part of the fun."

If he did this—

I'm not that fucking crazy

shit

think

He had questions to ask, but they were all meaningless. He couldn't trust the answers; worse, trying to figure out the truth might itself sabotage him. This was Loki's game, and if Tony played, he wouldn't win.

And he'd promised to give Steve a chance.

Tony met Loki's gaze, not quite squarely. He remembered what had happened the last time he'd been tricked into that. "No deal." He nodded to the door. "You can fuck off, now."

Loki looked slightly baffled, much as the other one had, when he'd tried to take over Tony's mind with that alien spear and found the way to his heart blocked by his arc reactor. Good. It was a much better look on him than that grin, or any sort of amusement.

"You think you have a choice?"

"You're just full of clichés today, aren't you?" Tony could hear the bravado even as he said it. The thing was—it wasn't a cliché, the way Loki had asked. It wasn't a threat. It was like Loki was watching a crazy guy jump off a bridge with nothing but the faith that gravity did not exist.

And from anyone else, Tony still would have brushed it off, but from him—

Loki grabbed him before Tony had even managed to stand, yanking him forward over the table with limbs that were too long to fit into the space that they did. Tony grabbed the table edge and levered himself upward, all the nanites he'd been harvesting during the conversation coming together to form the most pitiful repulsor he'd ever fired—and Loki pinned his hand to the table with enough force to break bones. He was still too slow—too slow to break the hold before Loki slammed the rest of him down onto the table, too, dislocating his shoulder—damnit not again—and leaving him wheezing for breath around Loki's hand pressing down on his throat.

Nanites immediately began diverting away from his broken hand, to reform elsewhere, but that was slow. His combat module highlighted pressure points; Tony grabbed Loki's wrist with his working hand and squeezed in, but of course Asgardians didn't have the same nerve clusters as humans. Sensors probably could have found weak spots, if he'd had sensors on him, if he'd had the armour—right now he was running almost on basic, senses sharper than human but still too limited to see beneath skin.

Something else slammed into him, then, flattening him to the table. Status reports showed further dislocations and a few strains in the arm he had twisted beneath him. He grunted, trying to move, but it was like the shitty prison clothes had turned to heavy lead plating. Or worse: he'd still have been able to move lead plating.

"So predictable," said Loki, rolling his eyes—and removing his hand from Tony's neck, thankfully.

Tony sucked in air. "Back at you," he gasped.

This time, Loki clamped his hand over Tony's mouth. "I could silence you with a spell, you know," he said, smiling wickedly. "But this way I get to entertain fantasies of crushing your head like a melon. Don't tempt me, Stark—you're not in a good position right now."

Most of his neural network and processing power was still physically located in his body. The part of him out on the internet wouldn't be able to recombine without it, would be... less. Not a consciousness: just a set of instructions. If he died here, he was dead.

On the other hand, if he was going to die here he was going to go down kicking and screaming. Tony bit into Loki's palm with as much force as he could muster.

Loki growled, ripping his hand away, and to his surprise, Tony tasted blood. He hadn't been able to mark Loki's skin scrabbling at it with his fingernails; had he actually broken skin? It couldn't have done much damage, though. The nanites were beginning to form into a repulsor node beneath his head. He needed just a few more seconds, and his head free, so he could move his head to the side and fire it before Loki saw. A repulsor-blast to the face might disrupt his spell.

"Has even your intelligence deserted you now?" Loki asked incredulously—but he was cradling his hand. "You continue to provoke me when you've no hope of winning. It would cost you nothing to hear me out, Stark."

Yeah it would

"Or..." Loki tilted his head curiously. "Have you been damaged?" he murmured, laying one finger alongside Tony's temple, and tapping—

—fingernail hitting metal with a click—

no

"Or something beyond that..."

He couldn't have seen it.

no

Tony had hidden it, reshaped his own flesh around it.

"...can recognize a leash when I see one..."

no

Buried it. Made sure.

no

no

no

"...is truly ingenious work," said Loki, and panic whited out Tony's brain.