King of Infinite Space, part V

[elspethdixon]

Title: King of Infinite Space 5/7
Authors: seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony.
Warnings: Things are getting dark, and there's probably some language.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: A villain from Tony's past comes back to cause trouble for the Avengers. Maybe it wouldn't have been so easy, if thing weren't already so awkward over the events of Execute Program.

X-posted to marvel_slash.

And of course, thanks to tavella for the great beta job.


King of Infinite Space



Chapter Five


Hank's lab was in the basement of the brownstone he and Jan were living in now, white plaster walls covers in printouts and charts that had been annotated in Hank's distinctive scrawl, long lab bench cluttered with test tubes, petri dishes, and a terrarium filled with ants. The smooth, poured concrete floor radiated cold, and even at four in the morning, the harsh halogen track lights cast everything into bright, harsh relief.

Tony was sitting hunched over on one of Hank's lab stools, his face in his hands, looking upset and exhausted, but very much alive, and something tense inside Steve eased a little. Tony was whole; not unconscious, not crazy, not dead.

Hank was sitting across the lab bench from Tony, half dressed and barefoot. "There's no history of schizophrenia or anything else that causes hallucinations in your family, and as far as I know, you've never-" He looked up as Jan opened the door, Steve at her heels, and fell silent mid-sentence.

Tony slowly lifted his head from his hands and half-turned to glance over his shoulder at the doorway, then froze, eyes fixing on Steve. He shook his head slightly, looking trapped. "You said you weren't going to call them," he blurted out. "You promised."

"I didn't," Hank protested. "Jan did."

"Oh, very mature, sweetie," Jan said dryly. "I thought we should get one of the other Avengers in here," she said to Tony, voice gentle. Steve had heard her use the same voice on Hank when he was very upset or very spun-up. "We need to know what's been happening to you, and you've admitted yourself that you're not a reliable source right now."

Tony didn't answer. He was still staring at Steve, motionless and wide-eyed like an animal with a foot caught in a trap.

"It's okay, Tony," Steve said, trying to mimic Jan's calming tone. "We'll figure this out. Jan said you turned the armor off, is that right?" Jan had filled him in on everything she and Hank knew as she walked him from the door to the lab. Missing time. Nightmares. Dead people in mirrors. Why hadn't Tony said anything when it had first begun? Why had he waited until things got this bad?

"It's on a twenty-four hour emergency lockdown." Tony sounded dazed, voice distant. "I checked that everyone in the tower was okay first, on the security cameras, and everyone was, but I left the building, and I have no idea where I went." Something about the way he said it was almost apologetic. "I don't know what I might have done."

Steve wanted to protest that Tony couldn't have done anything, but they all knew that wasn't true.

"I'm sorry. It's good that Jan told you. I shouldn't be on the team." Tony looked away, shoulders slumping further. There was resignation in every line of his body, as if he'd simply given up in the face of whatever this was. That wasn't like Tony. He never gave up.

Steve couldn't think of anything to say to that, so he turned to Hank. "What is this? What's happening to him?"

Hank shook his head, shrugging. "Like I was saying when you came in, this isn't chemical or neurological. He's got no history of any neurological problems that could cause this, and the toxicology screen I ran after I gave you the sedative and then realized I might have just done something monumentally stupid," this to Tony, "came back negative."

"You drugged him?" Steve asked sharply.

"It's okay," Tony told him. "I have a very high tolerance for depressants."

Yes, definitely drugged. Tony didn't usually broadcast that sort of information, since everyone knew perfectly well why he had that tolerance.

He had turned on the stool so that he was facing Steve and Jan, and the bright lights of the lab gave Steve a perfect view of the dark circles under his eyes, the crumpled dress shirt he'd probably worn to work, the tangled hair he'd obviously been running his hands through, and the dilated pupils that turned his eyes nearly black.

He looked fragile, breakable, and he couldn't protect Tony from whatever this was, anymore than he'd been able to protect him from the hacker, or Tiberius, or even from his own demons.

"I'd like to run some more tests and take another look at your blood," Hank said. "I ran a tox screen, but there are other things to look for. Unless this is some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion, or some telepath is influencing you, in which case there'll be no evidence and we'll have to call in Emma Frost."

"She'd never forgive us for interrupting her beauty sleep," Jan said. "Let's hope for evidence; psionic powers and magic are a lot harder to fight."

Tony nodded dully and rolled up one of his sleeves. He avoided looking at Steve as Hank drew a blood sample and put it under a very fancy-looking microscope.

After a moment, Hank made a surprised humming sound. "Tony, come look at this and tell me what it is," he said, waving a hand to beckon Tony over without looking away from the microscope. "There's something here that's not organic. And if that's the Extremis, it's creepy."

Tony obediently crossed the room to look, and Steve followed, resisting the urge to put a hand on his shoulder as he bent over the microscope. He wasn't sure if Tony would welcome it at this point.

Tony put his eye to the microscope's eye-piece, fiddled with some knobs on the side of it, and went stiff. He straightened abruptly, whirling around to lock eyes with Steve for what was possibly the first time in a week, Steve realized with a sudden pang. "These are nanites. How did nanites get into my bloodstream?" Oddly, he looked almost relieved, some of the strained whiteness around his mouth fading. He certainly was more focused than he'd been a minute ago, eyes sharp, a frown creasing his features. "Hank, do you have anything that can magnify this further? We're going to need to take a closer look."

Several minutes later, Hank and Tony had an image of the blood sample projected onto the lab's wall, displaying round, red shapes that Steve recognized as blood cells and two silvery, robotic-looking things. They looked sinister somehow, possibly because nothing that blocky and obviously inorganic was supposed to be in blood.

"They look familiar," Tony said, squinting at the image.

Hank frowned. "I don't know about familiar, but these look like they're designed to broadcast some kind of signal," he said, tapping one of the nanites with a finger.

"It's a modified variant of Ty's old DreamVision nanites," Tony said, voice suddenly alive with excitement and relief. "I'm not crazy. It's Ty. He's doing this to me somehow." As soon as he'd spoken, he put a hand to his head, wavering slightly. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he pitched forward.

Steve grabbed him before he hit the floor. "Tony? Tony!"

It took Steve a long moment to ascertain that Tony was still breathing, though shallowly. He was limp and unmoving, a dead weight in Steve's arms in a way that was horribly reminiscent of that day a month ago. It didn't matter if Tony didn't return his feelings romantically; he was Steve's best friend, and Steve should have told him so. However Tony felt about him, what mattered was that he know that Steve cared about him, as a friend above and beyond anything else, and that he would do his best to help him, be there for him, no matter what.

He couldn't lose Tony. He couldn't. What would he do without him?

Steve looked up, arms full of Tony, to find that Hank had crouched down beside them, face full of consternation.

"Hank," Steve demanded, "what's wrong with him?"

***



He opened his eyes and found himself staring up at a white ceiling, squinting against the glare of Hank's track lighting. Tony frowned. Less than a second ago he'd been talking to Steve, almost dizzy with relief from the knowledge that he wasn't insane, and then he'd just been dizzy. And now he appeared to be on the floor.

No, not on the floor, he realized after a moment. There were flat pillows underneath him, the fabric rough against his fingertips -- he was laying on some kind of couch. Of course he was. Hank, being a man after Tony's own heart, could always be counted on to make sure his lab contained a place to sleep, so that he'd never have to leave.

Tony rolled onto his side and pushed himself up onto one elbow. He did it tentatively, waiting for something to hurt. In his experience, something generally did after he passed out.

He seemed to have been lucky this time, however; nothing hurt, and there wasn't even any lingering dizziness. Tony blinked, rubbing one hand over his face. Ty's nanites must have done something to him.

"Oh, thank God!" Steve's voice, the relief in it so strong that Tony abruptly felt stupid for being so afraid to ask him for help.

He was standing in the lab's doorway, staring at Tony as if he wanted to memorize him, crumpled shirt, stubble, and all. Jan and Hank were nowhere to be seen.

"I was so worried you weren't going to wake up," Steve went on, coming to sit on the edge of the couch beside Tony, his thigh pressing against Tony's hip. "You passed out cold. Hank thinks maybe he overdid it with the sedatives. How are you feeling?"

"Sane," he said, smiling just a little at Steve.

"Good," Steve said, then leaned down and kissed him.

Tony closed his eyes, leaning up into the kiss, filled with a sort of slowly dawning wonder. He'd never let himself think this might actually happen, but now it was, and Steve was sliding one hand into Tony's hair, strong, warm fingers cradling his face, and his lips were touching Tony's lips, and his tongue was...

The fingers in his hair tightened, pressing painfully into his skull, the kiss turning more demanding, forceful enough to hurt.

Eyes still closed, Tony pulled back just far enough to break the kiss, which was as far as the hand in his hair would let him. "Get off me, Ty."

The fingers digging into his scalp let go, and Tony could hear fabric rustling and feel the weight on the couch shifting as Tiberius moved away from him.

"How did you know?" Still in Steve's voice.

"Because you kiss like you've paid for it," Tony said, opening his eyes.

If he hadn't known it was Tiberius, he would have been utterly convinced that it was Steve bending over him. Every detail was perfect, from the way his shirt collar gaped open just enough to reveal a flash of blue leather to the nearly invisible blond stubble on his jawline. Even the little, concerned line between his eyebrows was perfect.

It was so utterly, completely wrong that Tony felt sick. "Don't you dare wear that face. You have no right!"

"But I thought this was what you wanted, Tony." Ty grinned, and it was Steve's grin, the broad, innocent, goofy one that made him look like a high school football player, and always made Tony feel warm somewhere deep inside and oh, God, Tiberius was taking this from his memories, from inside Tony's head, because there was no way he could have known what that smile looked like.

"I thought this was what you saw in your dreams," Ty went on, the cheerful grin vanishing into a disapproving frown, Steve's square-jawed, stubbornly noble face. "Well, not lately, of course." He made a dismissive gesture that was entirely Tiberius. "Lately, things have been more like this," and abruptly the lab was gone, white walls and bright light fading into the scorched and smoke-stained façade of the Avengers Mansion, roof and half the walls gone, ominously backlit by the reddish glow of sunset. There were bodies lying motionless midst the rubble. Clint, Thor, Wanda... Peter, looking very small. Hank, the yellow and black of the Yellowjacket costume muted by smears of ash and blood. Jan, tiny and crushed, lay atop his chest.

Tony was standing on the lawn amidst the carnage, Tiberius -- still wearing Steve's face and costume -- at his side. Tiberius made a sweeping gesture, taking in the entirety of the mansion, and smirked at Tony. "Haven't they?"

***



"Going by his brainwaves, he's not actually unconscious per se." Hank frowned at the wavy lines scrolling across the monitor Tony was hooked to. "He's in some kind of dream state, so technically he's asleep."

"How do we wake him up?" Steve asked, cutting straight to the important part. Tony was lying on Hank's lab table, hooked up to two different machines, one monitoring his brainwaves, and another his heartbeat. Wires sprouted from silver disks on his forehead and bare chest, like something out of an old science fiction movie. It was far too familiar a sight, and, as always, it hurt to see Tony this vulnerable.

It filled him with a driving need to do something, anything, to fix Tony, and also with a burning desire to kill Tiberius Stone. Hopefully, these goals would coincide.

"We can't," Hank said, voice flat. He began to pace back and forth beside the lab table, gesturing sharply as he spoke. "This has to be related to Stone; he's controlling Tony's brainwaves with those nanites somehow. He must have had some kind of failsafe in place in case Tony figured out what was going on."

"If they're transmitting a signal, can't you just turn them off?" Jan asked. She was standing by Steve, only a foot or so away from his place beside the lab table and Tony. Steve guessed she was trying to be comforting. "Block the transmission, or shut them down with an EMP pulse, or something?"

Hank shook his head jerkily. "Exposing people to electromagnetic pulses high enough to shut down this kind of tech is dangerous enough at the best of times. When the person in question is a cyborg, things get a whole order of magnitude more complicated. I might interfere with the Extremis, and shutting down that could kill him."

There was a cold, hollow feeling in the pit of Steve's stomach. Tony was under some kind of mental control, they couldn't wake him up, and turning it off might kill him. Why did things always have to get so bad, so quickly with Tony? "There has to be something we can do," he said, not allowing it to be a question. Sitting by helplessly while Tiberius did whatever it was he had in mind was not an option.

"I know." Hank half turned away for a moment, running a hand through his hair; it was a nervous gesture he shared with Tony.

Tony hadn't moved at all, eerily still, his face lacking even the slight twitches people usually made in their sleep.

"Whatever we do, we need to move quickly," Hank went on. "Before this kills him. Because there's a very good chance that it might." He started pacing again. "I didn't think anything of it at the time, but a few weeks ago, Dr. Richards was worried because Arcade had gotten his hands on some of Stone's DreamVision tech, when the company started selling off some of its defunct projects."

"You think Arcade has something to do with this?" Jan interrupted, laying a hand on Hank's arm. "Tony never fought him, and the Avengers never really had anything to do with him, either."

"This could kill him?" Hank had just said that it was safer not to try shutting it off. How was "a very good chance it might kill him" safer?

"Arcade's dead." Hank twitched his arm away from Jan's hand. He was still pacing, three quick strides down the length of the lab, turn, and three steps back. "A few days after he bought Stone's VR toy, the police found Arcade dead in his house, hooked into the DreamVision machine. You know, the one that put Stone in a coma. I'm not positive, but I'd bet money that if you checked Stone's hospital record, that would be around the time he miraculously woke up."

Jan frowned. "How did he die?"

Hank glanced down at Tony, grimacing. "Apparently of a heart attack."

"Right," Steve said grimly, "it's time to pay a visit to Tiberius Stone and ask him how to turn his toy off." And if Stone didn't feel inclined to give them that information, Steve would have no problem convincing him.

They had his own technology crawling around in Tony's body as proof that he was involved. Stone wasn't going to get away with his sick little games this time.

"It would be a pleasure," Jan said, through gritted teeth. "Let me get my costume."

"I should-" Hank started.

"Stay here," Steve interrupted. "We're not leaving Tony alone."

"You know, I'm not actually a medical doctor."

"Then call one," Steve ordered.

Jan shook her head, setting one hand on her hip. "You might not be a medical doctor, but you've got more training than I do. I'm a fashion designer. If something happens, you at least have a chance of being able to help."

Hank nodded, deflating slightly. "I'll call Hank McCoy," he said to Steve, and to Jan, "Hit Stone once for me."

It took Jan less then five minutes to change into her black and gold Wasp costume. All Steve had to do was remove his coat and put on his gloves and mask.

Hank was still in the lab, watching both Tony and the monitors carefully, so Steve couldn't say what he really wanted to say. Instead, he bent down and brushed that stray lock of hair that would never stay put back from Tony's forehead.

As he went to join Jan at the front door, Steve carefully tightened the straps that held his shield in place on his back. He was going to fix this. They were going to fix this.

He threw the front door open, ready to go hunt Stone down in his ostentatiously decorated lair, and ran straight into Spiderman.

"Hey," Peter yelped, skipping backwards a step to avoid being knocked over. "Careful. Wolverine and I came to help you."

Steve looked from Peter, standing on the Pyms' front steps in full costume, to Logan, who was lounging against the nearest street lamp, also in costume, managing somehow to look like he wasn't actually there with Spiderman but had coincidentally just happened to be in the neighborhood.

"Also, um, we followed you," Peter said. "In case 'personal business' involved supervillains and explosions and things. Or, you know, the mob."

"Fine," Steve said. "We're going after Tiberius Stone."

"About time," Logan growled. He straightened from his slouch against the lamp post. "Lead the way."

Steve nodded, and turned to Jan. "Can you give us a ride?" Jan had only recently developed the power grow using Pym particles, but she'd seemed to be getting a handle on it pretty quickly. At fifty feet, she would be able to get them downtown in only a few minutes.

"I'm still not used to hearing that," Jan said, shaking her head but already starting to grow.

"Um," Peter said, staring up at Jan as her head reached the level of the brownstone's roof and kept rising, "what exactly are we helping you with?"


***



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{Chapter One} {Chapter Two} {Chapter Three} {Chapter Four} {Chapter Five} {Chapter Six} {Chapter Seven}