(MCU) Arcs Collide: Chapter 25 – Filled In

Chapter 25 – Filled In

Summary: Tony, Hope, and Janet return to the tower to catch up with Hank and Scott, where some unfavorable truths are revealed.

The travel back was even worse for Tony without his suit on. He felt his bones turning to rubber and being pulled again, but this time, without the suit, it felt like his skin had no limit to how far it could be stretched, and the force pulling him seemed to take full advantage of that.

Tony wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard himself screaming through his popping eardrums. The next sound he heard clearly was a ‘thud’ followed by another a moment later.

When Tony managed to shake the feeling of rubber bones away and refocus on his surroundings, he noticed he was lying on the metal platform he had left from—what was it? A couple of hours ago? A little more?

He looked behind him to see the tunnel shutting down, the light flickering out, leaving only the metal frame.

Turning his head to the right, he saw his suit, no longer stiff, lying next to him. Tony released a sigh of relief. Fortunately, the suit had regained emergency power and had enough to activate the wireless link to the arc reactor unit in his chest. Once his command to return had reached it, the armor used its hidden supply of particles to join their journey. Tony shuddered at the thought of some mad tyrant getting his hands on the suit.

Quickly pulling himself to his feet, Tony looked to his left to see Hank, Hope, and Aunt Janet hugging tightly. With a raised eyebrow, Tony called out, “Fri, were there any damages caused by the tunnel being open for a couple of hours?”

Tony was surprised when no immediate response came from his AI. Looking around, he saw Aunt Janet eyeing him with confusion, which he could understand, but why did Scott and Hank have the same expression?

When Friday finally answered, it was with a confused tone. “Umm, Boss… You were gone for a couple of minutes, not hours.”

Aunt Janet was turning in place, probably looking for the other person in the room who had just spoken. Scott and Hank remained confused, while Hope went pale. “No, there’s no way it was just a couple of minutes. Just the fight took at least fifteen… how?”

That was when realization hit Tony, and he began mumbling aloud. “The only way that could happen is… The quantum realm is outside the usual laws of time and space. But time there did feel normal, and Aunt Janet did age similar to Hank, so there is some correlation between our timeline’s direction and pace. That would mean the time jump happens during the travel… but how?”

Tony turned to look behind him and snapped his fingers when it hit him. “The tunnel! It’s like a door to and from the quantum realm, but it moves—not in space, but in time. The door advances with the pacing of this timeline, so using the same path brought us to the same place, but not the same time.”

Tony spun to look at Hank with a grin on his face. “It’s amazing! All we need to create is some sort of quantum GPS, and we’ll practically invent…”

Hank cut him off, and for the first time ever, Tony heard honest wonder in the man’s voice. “A time machine. We can create a time machine!”

Both Hank and Tony began to consider what it would take and what they could use it for when a firm voice called out, “There will be no time machine! Understood?”

Hank and Tony stiffened and answered in unison, “Yes, dear/Auntie.” Both felt very disappointed.

Then Tony shook his head out of his mad-engineer mindset and sighed. “Probably for the best. We’ll keep this realization a secret unless we’re in an Armageddon situation. A time machine can be really dangerous in the wrong hands, and I know a man who would kill for a chance like that, and he’s in the building right now.”

Scott finally found his voice, and the first thing he did was ask, with concern, “What happened to you, man? Your suit’s over there, and your shirt is almost gone.”

Tony looked at the nearest reflective surface. His black track shirt was missing all of its right sleeve, and his entire chest was exposed. All that was left of the shirt was the left sleeve, held in place by a thin material attached to the waistline.

Thankfully, his pants were undamaged—dirty and slightly burned, but still covering all of his lower body.

After a moment, Tony turned to Scott with a smirk. “We found Janet, and were about to leave when someone else found us. We ended up disagreeing about the whole ‘our freedom’ thing, so I had to knock some sense into him. And some air out.”

Hope snorted. “King of understatement.” Then she turned to her father and boyfriend, saying worriedly, “We saw Darren there.”

Scott turned pale while Hank blinked twice and asked, “Darren Cross?!”

Tony nodded and stared at Aunt Janet. “Yup. A little bigger-headed, but he’s still alive and… floating. But what’s more important is who was the guy he called boss, Auntie?”

Aunt Janet sank into a chair before speaking. “Kang the Conqueror. One day, he crashed near my hideout. He looked injured and in need of help. I took pity on him and nursed him back to health. The key points are that his ship could travel through time and space, and he promised that if I helped him fix it, he’d take me back to Hope. Once it was fixed, he sat in his chair and began absorbing energy to pilot it. But when I touched the power source, I got a glimpse into his mind.”

Aunt Janet swallowed the bile rising in her throat before continuing. “He was a monster. He started a war with all his variants, destroying reality after reality until some of them sabotaged his ship and trapped him in the quantum realm. Once I shook off the shock, I grabbed the power source and ran outside, but it was too late. Kang had absorbed enough energy. He was about to kill me when I broke the power source, causing an explosion. We both thought it killed the other. But I later learned he’d used his regained power to rebuild his empire and was searching for ways to escape and restart the war he craved.”

She let out another heavy sigh. “He knew from what I told him that Hope and Tony were very smart. He believed that one day, you’d try to look for me. That’s probably why he created the signal. He hoped to use you to pull his entire empire into this reality.”

Hope and Scott looked at Tony with pale faces and asked in unison, their voices shaking, “Tony…”

Tony felt a headache settling in. He rubbed his forehead with both hands before looking at the two Avengers and saying firmly, “He’s stuck there, and we already have one megalomaniac warlord to deal with. I’ll talk to Nick, Phil, Carol, and Rhodey later, but we should focus on the threat that’s on its way now.”

They both nodded their understanding, while Aunt Janet looked around wide-eyed before demanding, “I’m sorry, what do you mean you’re already dealing with a warlord?”

Tony shrugged and sent a jab her way. “Oh, don’t sue us. Yours is a time-travel war monger, ours is an alien coming for magic stones to erase half the universe.”

“Oh.” Aunt Janet nodded before glaring at Tony and yelling, “At the risk of sounding like Hank, WTF?!”

Tony chuckled. Scott tried to hide his grin while Hank frowned, and Hope just rolled her eyes. Eventually, Hank spoke, “It’s a long story, Mom. We can talk later.”

Aunt Janet nodded but locked eyes with Tony again, saying in a parental tone, “There are still two things Tony mentioned that I need to know about right now. First, you mentioned Howard is dead?”

Tony nodded with a stony face. “He and Mom were killed in 1996.”

Tears filled Aunt Janet’s eyes. After a moment, she managed to say, with a sad smile, “I’m so sorry to hear that, dear. I’m glad Hank and Hope stayed with you to help.”

Tony kept his expression emotionless. Hope stared at the floor with regret, while Hank looked away, his face pale.

Noticing their reactions, Aunt Janet narrowed her eyes at Hank and asked with a dangerous edge to her voice, “I know you and Howard had your issues, but you left Tony out of it, right? You were there for our nephew, right?”

Hank cleared his throat several times before responding. “You see… there was this fallout… we were in San Francisco…” He trailed off.

“What. Fallout?” Aunt Janet asked through gritted teeth.

No one spoke for a minute as the tension rose, until Scott broke and began rambling. “A Hydra agent in SHIELD was the one who sent the missile and assigned the mission. He wanted one of you dead so he could steal the formula for the particles. But when he tried, Hank caught him. The agent blamed Howard Stark, and Hank believed him. Then Hank took Hope and moved to San Francisco. He kept lying to her about how you died, and Hope got angry and stopped talking to him, and then I stole the… OW!”

Scott finally shut up, rubbing the back of his head where Hope had just smacked him.

Aunt Janet was fuming. Tony was sure if anything else happened, she’d start steaming from her ears. She gave Hank a harsh glare and growled, “You and I are going to have a long conversation later, Hank.”

The old man squirmed and nodded fearfully, proving he really had a brain.

Aunt Janet took a deep breath before turning to Tony with a softer expression. “I’m really sorry to hear about your parents, dear. I know you still loved your father, despite all your issues. Who took care of you?”

Knowing she’d find out eventually, Tony explained, “I was left in the care of Obadiah Stane.”

Aunt Janet huffed. “Maria and I never liked him. We told Howard not to trust him so much.”

Tony nodded sadly. “You were right. He was dealing under the table the moment Dad died, selling weapons to terrorists.”

All Aunt Janet could do was curse under her breath. “Did he at least take good care of you?”

Tony let out a heavy sigh, found another chair, and sat before answering. “He wanted control of the company, so he encouraged my self-destructive behavior to create an image of me as an irresponsible asshole, which worked. Then, when he didn’t need me for my name and inventions anymore, he hired terrorists to kill me. So that’s his parental skills in a nutshell.”

Aunt Janet clenched her fists and hissed, “I was going to ask you about the ‘almost killed’ thing you mentioned earlier, but I guess I got my answer.”

Tony tilted his head, confused for a moment, then realized what she was talking about and shook his head. “No, that wasn’t what I was referring to. Stane was too cheap when paying the terrorists, so they kept me alive to build weapons for them. I refused. They tortured me, so I came up with a plan and pretended to work on the missiles. The first thing I made was this…”

Tony tapped his arc reactor, and Aunt Janet seemed to notice it for the first time. Realizing the device was inside his body, her face turned pale. Tony continued, “It kept the shrapnel in my chest from reaching my heart. Then I built my first suit to get out of there. That’s the nutshell version.”

“What happened to the bald bastard?” Aunt Janet growled.

Tony shrugged. “He copied my suit, stole the arc reactor from my chest, and tried to kill me again with his suit, but I killed him.”

Aunt Janet blinked twice before commenting, “Well, good, I suppose.” Then her face filled with worry. “Wait, so what were you talking about when you said you almost got killed?”

Before Tony could answer, Hope jumped in. “And since when can your eyes glow? You fight super robots with your bare hands and heal yourself from fatal wounds in minutes?”

Scott and Hank stared at Tony, wide-eyed, and asked in unison, “What the hell?!”

Tony sighed and called out to his AI. “Fri, remind me to create a recap video for all the dead people or aliens from outer space that keep popping up every day.”

Friday’s amused response came quickly. “Of course, Boss. What should I name this project?”

Tony shrugged, feeling completely drained. “Fill In.”