Chapter Text
The smell of yeasty sweetness filled Tony’s senses as he came to awareness, the plastic of the booths scraping against the metal and joints of his Iron Man suit as he shifted uncomfortably. A pair of basic shades covered his dry and aching eyes, the glare of the morning light reflecting off the numerous vehicles surrounding Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood, over thirty miles from the Malibu Mansion. Across from him in the booth was Agent Pirate Fury, wearing his usual bad disguise of black leather on black leather, a box of donuts, a cup of coffee, and a Mark II helmet on the table between them. Tony shifted again and ran his hand through his hair in an attempt to parse why he was in an old suit (the helmet wasn’t even attached, for Tesla’s sake) and why did he ache? Like he had been on a three-day inventing bender…
“…the little brother walked in there, kicked your ass, and took your suit,” Fury proclaimed with great amusement, drawing Tony’s attention to the Pirate. Unnerved that he had been distracted, Tony adjusted his sunglasses and squinted at the glare and the raging headache. He felt worse than he ever remembered, and that included when he was struggling to recover in the cave with Yinson.
“I told you I don’t wanna join your super-secret boy band…” Tony muttered petulantly, wondering why he felt like he was warming death’s door, the screaming of Tiny Tony in the back of his mind not helping matters.
“No, no, no… See, I remember you do everything yourself now, how’s that working out for you?” Fury asked sarcastically and way too smugly, the one eyed menace looked like he was enjoying his life a little too much.
Speaking of… Dread Pirate Fury was above Tony’s pay grade and had been since the first time he had met the head of SHIELDRA. Where was Maggie when he needed her? Oh, yeah, in New Mexico, dealing with drunken guys pretending to be Thor, according to JARVIS… Tony has his doubts and prayed that Maggie’s little vacation didn’t turn out to be a life-changing event such as a ‘Code Prince Charming’ after J had already declared ‘Stranger Danger’. Tony’s bad ticker couldn’t handle any more surprises until after his element was forged and he was on the safe side of heavy metal poisoning. Maybe he could bribe the indomitable Ms. Potts to come take a stab at this. Shifting back to the situation, Tony tried to focus on Fury despite the wrongness of the whole thing.
“I—I—I—“ Tony stuttered as he looked around for any clue on how he had gotten to his favorite donut shop, wondering if he had wanted to skip Pepper and Maggie’s food plan and take the suit for a quick jaunt for delicious carbs for him and his friends and blanked out the trip. No, it was something else. This was a lot like the last time he had ended up in Backwards Land with a Tiny Tony screaming in his mind.
Looking down at his shaking hands and the outdated gauntlet, Tony realized that this was most definitely Backwards Land because those types of rivets on his suit hadn’t been used since Mark II. Rhodey had gotten him an introduction to the contractor that did specialized fasteners for the Air Force meant for high velocity aircraft and drones after he and Peter had a specialized emergency kit for stranded soldiers.
Things were definitely not adding up.
Taking a deep breath, he looked Fury in his... not the patch, not the patch, the eye! “As you know, I have my whole family behind me, including my sister, who is more of a Scary Ass Bitch than you, Ms. Potts, who has no qualms about stabbing with office supplies, and my brother, who manipulated the United States Government into extending the search for me from three weeks to three months. Let’s not forget the Strange Doctor who is keeping me alive, along with my numerous spawn, both biological and mechanical… So when you say that I’m doing this alone, you must be delusional if you believe that to be true, and I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Fury’s brow crinkled at Tony’s statement, his eye narrowing on Tony’s face, the eye patch digging into his scalp as Fury’s emotions flickered from confusion to anger. “I—“
“—It’s—I’m sorry,” Tony interrupted, putting his hands up to stop Fury. “I don’t wanna get off on the wrong foot here, so do I look at the patch or the eye? Honestly, I’m struggling here—I’m not even sure if you’re real or if I’m having…” Tony trailed off as his concentration shifted with Tiny Tony laughing in his head, causing his headache to flare and pulse with his heartbeat.
“I am very real,” Fury stated with unrealistic confidence, because how else could a one-eyed pirate pull this type of shit off? “I’m the realest person you’re ever gonna meet.”
Now that was a straight up lie. The most honest and real person Tony had ever met was his kid. No one was more real than Peter Benjamin Edwin Parker Stark. That kid was going to change the world, and Tony was going to make sure that he had every advantage because that kid had all the moxie and the smarts to make the world a better place. Tony was just going to line everything up so when his amazing kid grew up, Peter could make that difference that Tony and the rest of their family believed he could do.
“Sure. Let’s go with that. So, where’s Mags? She’s the one who does these little meet and greets with you and your minions since she’s not afraid of anything but Peter when he’s overtired and overstimulated.” Which was true. She could even deal with an overtired, irate Doctor Stephen Strange in his outrageously flamboyant, egotistical, curmudgeonly best, and the old boy would just roll right over. She took no shit and took no prisoners, but if Peter was in his angry kitten mode with claws out and tears, she folded faster than an ice pop on Tatooine.
“I have no idea of who you are speaking of,” Fury growled as he motioned to a woman dressed in a black catsuit with curly red hair over to their booth. “I’m thinking this little road rash is causing more problems than we realized.” Fury reached towards Tony, forcing him to lean back out of reach.
“I have it handled. One or two more days, me, Statler, and Waldorf, should have our little solution synthesized. So I suggest you text Maggie and go bother her for whatever you need.” Tony finished firmly and started moving out of the booth as much as he could with the outdated suit.
“I want you to meet Agent Romanoff,” Fury said as the redhead moved to block his path, ignoring Tony’s request.
Tony squinted; she looked kind of like Maggie’s friend, Nat… but more… institutionalized. “By any chance are you’re best friends with a bird man with a bow?”
Startled, Agent Romanoff looked over to Fury before they both gave him a stern glare. “How do you know that?”
“Um… you’ve been hanging out with my sister for the past--- I don’t know—two or three years, maybe? Brought Barton around with you soon after. He taught her how to better shoot a bow and she taught him how to sword fight. Says he’s has potential if he’d stop screwing around like he’s in the circus again and just focus on his technique and stamina.”
“You don’t have a sister, Stark.”
“Umm, yeah, I do. It’s been all over the news since like last year—“ Tony looked at them in disbelief when they both looked at him like he was insane. Shaking his head, Tony kept going in an attempt to remind them. “We opened the Met Gala last month with Pepper and Oprah…? No? What about when Maggie made apple sharlotka for your birthday last year?” Tony asked Romanoff before turning to Fury. “Or when she found a rare, like-new tool kit for your Porsche 911 since your car was missing one when you purchased it?”
Silence, shock, and awe from the gallery.
Tony rolled his eyes and started looking at possible exit points. “As much as I love to chat, I gotta get home. So please go away and be useful somewhere else.”
“Stark! You can’t ignore this!” Fury shouted after finally recovering from Tony’s knowledge bomb, motioning towards Tony’s neck. “We also can’t ignore that you have a problem.”
Exasperated, Tony glared at Fury. “What do you want from me?”
“What do we want from you?” Fury nodded at Romanoff, who got up, went outside, and collected something from the Men in Black. While keeping the majority of his focus on Fury, Tony kept the rest of his attention on Romanoff and the item in her hand. “You have become a problem, a problem I have to deal with. Contrary to your belief, you are not the center of my universe. I have bigger problems than you in the southwest region to deal with.”
Southwest…? Tony mouthed to himself, causing Pirate Agent to get even more scowly at him.
“What do you know of the southwest, Stark?”
“Just that my sister and spawn are there for Friends and Science,” Tony replied and cheered internally with Tiny Tony when Fury’s teeth ground together. “JARVIS reported to me about a crater with an object that looks like an oversized hammer that drew all the locals. Something about not being able to move it?”
Oh, Fury didn’t like that. Not one bit!
The head agent’s fists clenched so hard that his knuckles whitened, similar to what Howard used to do before he would ‘Teach Tony a Lesson’. Nope. Tony was getting out of here.
“Hit him.”
Tony dodged and leaned away from whatever Maybe Nat had in her hand. The needle scraped against his shitty armor, breaking off when it hit one of the reinforced joints. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!?” Tony screamed at them as he scrambled further into the booth and raised his gauntleted hand to the window, sending a pulse through the glass, shattering it outwards. As he tumbled through, he snagged his helmet and attempted to jam it on his head, but missed.
“Why the fuck didn’t I make this attached?” Tony muttered, rolling to dodge some sort of projectile before the blasted helmet finally attached itself. The HUD activated, and JARVIS’s voice greeted him.
“Sir, I believe we have a problem.”
“I know, J!”
Tony held up his hands towards the swarm of agents that surrounded him, the repulsers whining as they armed. “What is SHIELDRA trying to do now? The super soldier program too difficult and they decided that cloning me was the better answer?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Fury shouted at him from inside the building, the glass still crumbling from the windowsill from Tony’s quick exit. “It’s just lithium dioxide, it’s gonna take the edge off so you can get back to work.”
“Yeah, no thanks. I’m not a chemist, but I can tell you already that would be worse than injecting pure hydrogen peroxide or pure sodium hypochlorite… for you ultracrepidarians or, as Han Solo would say, moof milkers, it would be like shooting up very concentrated bleach. No. Thank. You.” Tony immediately took to the sky and made the short flight back towards his home.
At this point, Tony could feel the otherness of the situation more vividly as the little voice that had been screaming in the back of his head since he had ‘awoken’ in the donut shop stopped as it quieted and then started to mutter to itself. It’s not a bad idea; the other voice finally spoke to him directly and calmly, using known ways to treat heavy metal poisoning that have been proven to help stave off the palladium poisoning. Tony nudged the tiny voice inside him and showed him the calculation for the element along with the structure that he had found when Maggie had Howard’s research released from SHIELD’s archives.
I don’t know if you know this, but they have Howard’s stuff, and you should demand it back. Get some treatments from Stephen Strange and create yourself a cure. Fuck these guys and make sure they can’t get in to mess with our stuff since they are riddled with HYDRA. The little voice somehow acknowledged that and then nudged him back. Who’s Peter? Tony showed him a memory of when he had first met Peter, the toddler all chubby cheeked and Bambi-eyed, a tiny clone of Tony at that age. Oh. The other voice sounded startled and pained. When you were last here, I had thought it was a hallucination… do we have a sister?
Maggie isn’t my sister. JARVIS decided that she was practically family and took advantage of it to make it legal. She worked in the coffee shop at SI in ’07, so if she’s here her name is Margaret Skold. Tony sent his first interaction with Maggie towards the little voice, her almond-shaped eyes, dark hair, and dark humor reminiscent of Aunt Peggie and his mom. He felt the little voice attempt to reply, but Tony could already feel things starting to shift as he felt himself start to wake. He was careful not to crash into the walls as he landed in the broken remnants of last night’s party. As he looked around him, not seeing the familiar signs of his family, Tony worried that this really wasn’t a dream but just a shared consciousness with an alternate self.
Look for Peter Parker, Tony sent as he felt his conscience loosen and the other ‘Tony’ come to the forefront as they went down to the workshop. You should tell Rhodey and Pepper everything, he told other Tony, and they can’t help you if you don’t ask for it.
And then he woke up.
Tony woke in a cold sweat, the blankets tossed over Rhodey, who took up more than half the bed, pushing Tony way too close to the edge. Moving to the edge of the mattress, he swung his feet to the floor and ran his hands over his face before dragging them down his neck to check for the black veins that had riddled ‘Dream Tony’s’ body.
“What the fuck…” he muttered under his breath.
“Whaada…?” The blanket burrito next to him mumbled before rolling onto their back and revealing a single eye and the top of their military-approved haircut.
“Go back to sleep, Rhodeybear,” Tony whispered.
“Meehh.”
“Yup, too early for hard-working Platypuses,” Tony teased in a whisper, the last edges of his anxiety wisping away at the sight of his best friend.
“Tones…?” Rhodey murmured sleepily from his blanket cocoon. “You ok?”
“Yeah, just a bad dream.”
“What time is it?”
“It is 04:32, Colonel,” JARVIS replied softly.
“Come back to bed, Tones.”
“I’ve been wanting you to ask me that—“
“It’s too early for that shit. Go to sleep,” Rhodey mumbled before rolling back over and shoving the extra blankets off of him towards Tony.
“Fine…” Tony whined as he tugged the blankets over himself. Feeling unsteady, he flipped so he was face to face with his best friend and Tony took Rhodey’s hand to ground himself. It was something they had both done for each other, to remind the other that they were safe and they would always be there to back each other up if they were needed. Having spent a few minutes basking in feeling loved and safe, Tony felt separated enough from his dream that his mind started to quiet down. He classified the nightmare of that other Tony's life as a reaction of the heavy metal poisoning and reiterated that it was all just a horrible, horrible dream with too much loneliness and SHIELD doing their best to kill him.
Relieved that he was in this life, he appreciated that Rhodey took up more than half the bed and snored like a mouse from a Disney movie. He celebrated that his Peter, his Tesoro, was given the childhood that Tony had deserved but never got. Loved, cherished, protected and encouraged to be himself. He celebrated that he had Maggie to give him the opportunity to have a sibling relationship that was equal with no lingering debts between them, despite JARVIS’s heavy handedness. He was grateful for his friends, his made family, which supported him and made sure that he could live, to prove to Howard, his drunken father—
Rhodey snuffled, interrupting Tony’s thoughts and refocusing on the fact that he was just a day or two away from curing himself with an element his drunken father had left as a 'legacy to his greatest creation'.
“Fuck you, old man…” Tony muttered, slipping back into sleep.
Several hours earlier…
Tony sat at the head of the table, Strange and Rhodey on either side as they worked their way through the lasagna that Maggie had prepped and frozen for one of their meals. Maggie knew Tony only cooked niche Italian dishes learned from his mother, despite him proclaiming otherwise. Rhodey lived off of sandwiches and scrambled eggs when not eating in the refectory on whatever base he was stationed at, and Strange lived off cafeteria food and his local deli.
As the silence dragged, broken by the occasional scrape of a fork and the appreciative humming over Maggie’s culinary skills, Tony finally broke the awkward atmosphere. “So…” Tony spoke, drawing both of their attention. They all sat in awkward silence as Tony struggled to think of something to say. “Um… thanks for coming…?” Good job, idiot, Tony told himself as he rolled his eyes at himself, watching the almost identical amused smirks appear on his friends’ faces. Tony knew the two would get along like a house on fire; he just needed to crack their outer hardass shells to get there.
“Stop it,” Rhodey scolded, “I was going to come whether you asked me or not, Tones. Having Doc here is just a benefit I am going to enjoy since I’m sure Strange will help me make sure you’re sick ass can’t over-do it.”
“Love you too, Sour Patch,” Tony muttered, emotional at his Rhodey Bear showing his soft, gooey center.
“I’m here for purely selfish reasons,” Strange stated pompously between bites. “I’ll need firsthand knowledge for my paper about heavy metal poisoning and how it affects the body and neurological functions.”
“Mmhhmm,” Rhodey hummed skeptically as he chewed.
“Don’t deny it, Doc, you love me,” Tony teased, “You want to make sure that I don’t mess it up when I insert the new reactor into my chest because Maggie will come after you with a battle ax. You know, I’m sure she’d be kind enough to spare you your arms and delicate hands and take a leg instead if you mess it up.”
Rhodey choked on his food as he laughed. Tony just grinned at his friends as they watched Strange stutter his denial. “I’m not afraid of Margaret Stark.”
“I think the lady doth protest too much, methinks,” Tony said behind his hand to Rhodey, who agreed with a nod and a fork pointed towards Strange.
“Don’t lie to yourself or us, Doc, because we aren’t,” Rhodey interjected. “Let’s be honest here, we’re all scared of her, too. And don’t get me started on Pepper…”
“Fine. I’m also here because of the fear of your overly competent sister and because having you healthy and amongst the living is something that I enjoy… in a wholly intellectual capacity,” Strange replied pompously, his gooey center showing a tiny bit before he corrected.
“Suuure, Doc, whatever helps you sleep at night,” Tony responded as he gathered up his plate and wandered back into the kitchen. “Now, who wants some warm brownies? Maggie left some in the freezer and I forgot to pull them out earlier, so it’s frozen or microwaved!”
Originally, when they had been fighting over the sleeping arrangements, Tony had suggested that Rhodey take Maggie's office. Rhodey had been understandably intimidated by Maggie’s “Office”. "It's Maggie's weapons room, Tones, with a biolock and antique weapons in bulletproof cases that should be in a museum, with a weapons rack that descends from the ceiling. It is NOT. AN. OFFICE."
Which… fair.
Maggie had been given quite a few of the varied weapons as gifts from a large selection of people who had either taught her, were friends (if you can call SHIELD agents friends) but the majority she had acquired when she had been researching the origins of the ones in her possession. Several had been restored, and a few were of rare materials or given to her in addition to her purchase due to her interest. It was something she didn’t speak much of, but Tony knew she enjoyed the artistry of historically forged blades and even had a few modernly forged mixed in with the antiques that had been made using historic forging techniques.
Despite the cases lining the walls and the drop-down weapons rack that he had designed off of The Fifth Element (one of Maggie’s favorite movies) it still functioned as an office. The desk on the far edge of the training room was equipped with an almost identical setup as his personal office, so technically it was her office, weapons room, artifact room, and training/workout room. There just happened to be an attached full bath behind pocket doors and a Murphy bed slotted seamlessly between the display of various swords from feudal Japan and a large number of intricately carved and decorated Turkish and Indian daggers.
"You have to be kidding me, how the hell did she come across this?" Strange asked, pointing to one of the cases full of odds and ends, including a Roman scallpellus.
"A few months ago, Maggie purchased one of her daggers through one of her regular sources, and they offered her this at a discount if she bought that too after she researched what it was. She thought that she would consult you about where she should gift it since she wasn’t sure whether a museum or a medical university would benefit more from having it.”
Stephen turned towards Tony, surprised that Maggie would want his opinion, but appeared to accept Tony’s answer when he nodded sharply and turned back to the case. "How much is she asking for it?”
"She probably wouldn’t ask anything for it," Tony replied as he stood closer to Strange, their shoulders bumping as they studied Maggie's unique collection of old, small, sharp things.
“Then I would suggest a university,” Stephen said after a moment of thought. “It most likely would be stored away if she donated it to a museum, but a university would most likely display it.”
"I think I’ll have nightmares if I sleep here," Rhodey stated with conviction, coming to stand on Tony’s other side. “I like weapons… but this is a little too…”
“Like the start of a horror movie?” Stephen teased Rhodey with a sly grin.
“Come on, guys, you are over exaggerating,” Tony said, bumping first Stephen and then Rhodey, bouncing back and forth between the two like a Newton’s Cradle. “Here are the options, there’s Maggie's office—“
“—You mean her dungeon of doom,” Rhodey muttered under his breath, causing Stephen to snort.
“-- Her bedroom, and the guest room. So, Rhodey Bear, you have the choice of sleeping in Maggie's room or with me," Tony told his oldest friend. “I don’t care how you two decide to fight it out, but we gotta make a decision.”
"What do you think, Strange? Can you stay in here, or will you have nightmares with the amount of weapons she has on the walls?" Rhodey asked, always the Hufflepuff in this relationship, by thinking of others first.
Tony side-eyed Stephen, who was now leaning closer to the case, having spotted another little dagger in the case that looked a little too much like a scalpel than a dagger.
"I have no problems sleeping in this room," Stephen murmured, "sharps do not frighten me since it is something that I use every day for my occupation."
"Sooooo, Rhodey Bear, choose your room!"
"What about Peter's room?" Rhodey squinted at his best friend, waiting for the punchline.
"Peter's room is the guest bedroom," Tony replied with confusion. "Pepper just had them put an actual bed in there in the meantime."
"What do you mean by an actual bed? Wasn't there one before?"
"There was a queen-sized bed, but it was replaced with a king when Sir needed a place to stay while the renovations were being done. Miss Maggie thought Sir would enjoy the race car lamp and be inspired by the framed science posters, so she left the rest of the decor alone." JARVIS just had to take that opportunity to tease his creator.
"Thanks for sharing that, J, I really feel the love you have for me," Tony sighed pathetically.
Rhodey and Strange just continued to laugh at him as he decided that the two of them were adults and they could figure out their beds, so in the meantime, Tony was going to take a shower and go to bed in the guest room. And sure, he did enjoy the vintage science posters and the antique Hubley cast iron race cars that Maggie had found when they went to a swap meet. They weren't race car lamps since the cars weren't attached; they just rested on the base of each lamp like a miniature circle track that Peter could push the cars around on. It was very tasteful and child-friendly… Tony had nothing to be ashamed of, and his friends were just being mean.
"Sir, we have a Stranger Danger alert,” JARVIS said, interrupting their bickering.
"How? She's in New Mexico with Peter; there shouldn't be anyone or anything capable of that for a six-hundred radius!" Tony shouted in surprise.
"Doctor Foster hit him with her vehicle, and the man claims to be..." JARVIS paused, the silence palatable as the AI didn’t continue.
Startled by JARVIS’s unexpected behavior, Tony found himself panicking. "Spit it out J!"
"He claims to be Thor, God of Thunder.”
Silence fell as the three men froze in shock before Rhodey broke it. "You have to be kidding me," the airman snorted. "Some dude just gets hit by a car and then claims to be a god?"
Three men spent a few minutes discussing the possibility of a real-life god, before it devolved into each telling a more exaggerated reason to claim to be one, knowing that Maggie would be able to handle it. Tony and Rhodey knew how well armed and skilled she was, and JARVIS would inform them if backup was needed.
"Oh!" JARVIS sounded genuinely surprised interrupting their banter. "Miss. Lewis just took the initiative and de-escalated the situation. Everything should be fine now since I predict with her altered taser, the man claiming to be Thor should be out of it for several hours."
"Only Maggie would collect dangerous and self-reliant friends."
"What does that say about us?"
"Nothing good, Rhodey Bear, nothing good."
The next morning, while ignoring Rhodey’s grumbles, Tony snuck out of Maggie’s guest bedroom and headed towards her kitchen to make himself a black eye to start the day. Turning the corner, he ran into Strange.
“Oomph!” They bounced off of each other, grasping at each other and the wall to keep from falling.
“Are you ok?” Strange asked, his rumpled appearance oddly endearing with his tousled bed hair and unbelted bathrobe over sleep pants and a ragged Columbia sweatshirt.
“Yeah, you?”
“Yes.”
“Sleep well?” Tony asked leadingly, wondering how Strange had slept in Maggie’s office/weapon storage/dojo, sometimes guest room. Tony was secretly glad that Strange had decided to take that room, and Rhodey had agreed to bunk with Tony rather than have one of them sleep in Maggie’s bed. There were just some boundaries that they all agreed should not be crossed, despite Maggie giving them approval to do so.
“The Murphy bed was surprisingly comfortable,” Strange said as he tiredly leaned against the counter. "Don’t tell Rhodes, but the weapons were a bit disconcerting in the darkness.”
Tony laughed at his friend, slapping Stephen on the shoulder as he passed to get to the espresso machine. “Yeah… I could see where that would be a little bit of a B-rated horror flick feeling.”
“A real scream fest,” Strange quipped dryly, settling at the kitchen table with his briefcase. Tony chuckled under his breath and started to tab through the settings on Maggie's Leonardo D'Espresso.
Tony was about ready to green-light his marketing team to start advertising them; they were just waiting for production to hit a thousand units before they started. Tony constantly told Maggie that selling Leo Jr. was not feasible, but in reality, he had already started on it and just kept telling her no, so the surprise would have the most impact. He knew how much she enjoyed being right and hoped that it would be a great birthday surprise.
The two spent the next hour drinking coffee and reviewing the testing they would have to do before Tony would be able to insert the reactor with the new element into his chest to replace the palladium core. After JARVIS let them know that Rhodey was up, Tony got up and started pulling ingredients out for pancakes.
“So what are you naming this element once we finish creating it?” Strange asked Tony while flipping the last batch of pancakes. The apron the doctor was wearing was one of the ones that Maggie had found while clearing out Ana’s cedar chest. Ana had sewn a whole collection of his and her aprons during her married life for herself and Mr. Jarvis. Having found them during the renovation of the Jarvis’ old apartment, Peter and Maggie had adopted the aprons for their baking days.
Tony wore Ana’s apron, a pinafore style in magenta pink with aquamarine ruffles and an embroidered flamingo on the chest. Stephen wore Mr. Jarvis’ apron, a butcher style apron in dark aquamarine with magenta trim, a small flamingo on the chest pocket.
“Love your apron, Doc,” Rhodey commented as he wandered out from the bedroom, having been drawn from bed by the smell of coffee, pancakes, and bacon.
“Thank you, it brings out my eyes,” Strange replied dryly as he turned off the gas hob and flipped the last pancake onto a plate. “I’ll have to get Maggie to send me the information on where she acquired it.”
Tony paused with his fork halfway to his mouth before setting it down and taking a deep breath. It still hurt, the loss of Ana and Jarvis, almost as much as losing his mother to Howard’s drunken—
“Hey, Tones, you ok?” Rhodey asked leaning towards Tony on the stool next to him, both him and Strange looking at him with concern.
Taking a shuddering breath, Tony nodded. “Yeah, it’s just that Ana made the aprons. Maggie and Peter found them when we were clearing out the rooms before we remodeled the apartment.”
“Oh.” Rhodey squeezed Tony’s arm before sitting back. “I forgot she designed clothes. I remember that awesome printed bottom-up that she made for you that first Christmas you came home with me.”
“Yeah,” Tony chuckled hoarsely, rubbing at his eyes. “I was the envy of everyone at that rave we went to for New Year’s.”
“Damn straight,” Rhodey declared, pointing his fork at Tony. “Didn’t it glow in the dark?”
“No, but the colors were bright enough to be affected by the black lights… I still say it had some radium in the dye,” Tony reminisced fondly.
“Knowing more things now, I wouldn’t put it past her,” Rhodey joked. “Please tell me you still have it.”
“Yup. I think I kept everything she ever made me,” Tony mussed fondly. “Maybe I should pull some stuff out and see if Pete would want to wear some of them. He likes Mr. Jarvis’ aprons; he might enjoy a few other things more in his size.”
Rhodey and Stephen gave Tony fond looks before Tony changed the subject to what they were there for. Getting Howard's element created so they could save Tony's life.
A few hours later, Tony and Rhodey were digging through wooden crates.
“Please tell me that this is our second-year final project!” Rhodey gasped as he dove into an open box.
“It is, JARVIS found it and won’t disclose where he found it.”
“It’s an early birthday present from me, Sir,” JARVIS said, “It would ruin the sentimental value of the gift if I told you.”
“Wow!” Rhodey stood there taking it in, “I never thought I’d see this again. It was the best grade I ever received, the biggest mark on my record.”
Tony and Rhodey had made when they were at MIT to show up Tiberius Stone. Tony still had no idea where JARVIS had found it. He thought that after MIT had confiscated it, they had it disassembled and destroyed… or so they had thought. Tony had remembered the rage that Howard had displayed after he had returned from school for summer break; it had been weeks before Tony had been able to leave the house after that beating. He still had aches from his shoulder that had been exacerbated after the crash with Mach I while escaping.
“Yup. And Howard beat me black and blue for it, but it was a piece of art. It was my first baby.”
Silence.
“Umm…” Tony swallowed, “I’m s—“
“Nope.” Strange interrupted, “If you finish that sentence, we'll call your sister to yell at you.”
“But—“
“Calling Ms. Stark…” JARVIS stated dryly, the sound of ringing filling the space of the warehouse lab, and Tony scrambled over to the workbench lined with computer screens where the voice call was going through.
“I do not know how to use this communication device!” A muffled, scathingly proper British voice shouted as the call was answered by JARVIS on Maggie's end. “Sigyn is currently asleep and is not to be disturbed till she has rested fully, JARVIS!”
“Who the hell are you?!” Tony exclaimed while bringing up the camera function of Maggie’s phone and refreshing her and Peter’s location trackers.
“I am Loki Friggasson,” the man stated pomposely off-screen, as the camera picked up first a blur of an empty room, a view of the New Mexican desert through some large windows, before landing on the face of a pale, dark-haired man around Maggie's age. "Who is speaking?"
"Tony Stark, and this is my sister's communication device," Tony replied with annoyance, "and I want to know where my sister and son are!”
“Ahh, the Midgardian brother, Father of Peter and JARVIS.”
"What the hell," Stephen muttered over Tony's right shoulder while Rhodey mouthed Midgardian brother at Tony from the other side.
“Tony…?” Maggie’s voice came from out of sight of the camera, a slight tinge of British and perhaps something else twisting her usual American accent. The video shifted again, and all Tony, Stephen, and Rhodey could see was a spinning ceiling fan and a white ceiling, and part of a thumb.
There was a scuffling, several grunts, and hissed words volleyed between Maggie and ‘Loki’ off camera before Maggie’s face filled the screen, blocking out the dark-haired, wiry man behind her.
“What the hell is going on, Maggie?!” Tony asked angrily, attempting to tamp down his panic and anger, despite 'Loki' being considered worthy enough to know about and communicate with JARVIS.
“Well… umm…” An overly pale Maggie shiffted uncomfortably, avoiding the camera. "I-"
“Just tell him already!” Loki blurted in the background, “I’m sure JARVIS will inform him on the first opportunity if you do not.”
“Fine!” Maggie spat at Loki, swore at him in a different language, and then focused back on her conversation with Tony. “Long story short, Thor and Loki are real, SHIELD is being a pain in my ass, magic is real, and I’m Sigyn.”
“Wait…” Rhodey muttered, "Didn't JARVIS tell us that Darcy ran over a Thor last night?"
Stephen nodded, and his two friends gave him a look.
“Who is Sigyn?” Tony asked, bewildered at the information dump. "And what do you mean, magic is real?"