revivalproject | Transference

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Transference

WHO: Tony, Wesker?, OTA
WHERE: Around Temba, and the hospital
WHAT: Tony's doing his silly little task
WHEN: The week after this
WARNINGS: Tony continues to be miserable.

a. days 1-6
The first problem with Wesker's request was convincing a whole bunch of different people to reliably carry around some new thing on the off chance that they were caught off guard, far from help or shelter. Including children. Most people didn't even have a jack in their car. Building this mechanism into something they already carried, like their communications devices, would have been the best case scenario. The second problem with Wesker's request was that all electronic systems, including the communication devices and the network itself, were not reliable in these disaster scenarios. So much for small and portable.

Tony was going to do neither of those things. What Tony was going to do, was try not to be seen trundling around the city, sometimes dragging his wheeled cart behind him full of broken consoles, glass and steel. He looked terrible. A longer day did not make a week long enough to solve this fundamentally social problem, but if he didn't sleep and kept a careful balance of coffee and red fruit juice, he could buy himself a few more hours. It didn't really take that long, in the grand scheme of things, to erect a radio tower, after all.

These started to appear in a slow circle around the perimeters of the city first, wherever Tony could get the highest, even if that meant doing his best Spider-man (Link?) impression and scaling a building with long metal beams strapped to his back. The one that was hardest to ignore crowned the Whale Comb Sent Her, unavoidably in the middle of the city, assembled on site and bolted to the roof and trying vainly to stretch as tall as the structures around it. Inside, among some debris from some necessary remodelling work, a line of tiny bells hung along the wall, each with quickly scrawled co-ordinates and distances under them, directly onto the plaster.

The most difficult part, really, was the materials. This wasn't new technology, a crystal radio was something the Greeks had, Tony was pretty sure. It was never going to be a strong signal, but he could make that work in his favour--the closer the transmitting tower, the more bells it could ring. While he was scavenging for enough beams to erect his towers, he could be looking for something that would satisfy Wesker's request more closely.

b. day 7
He had one day left when he startled awake, not realizing he had been asleep, jerking up quickly enough that his back protested with a sharp pain where it had been contorted over the workbench. A day was plenty of time, he thought, when he found he still had a mouthful left of coffee in a nearby mug. He didn't even get up out of the seat, just found his loupe among the tools and went back to work.

It was hours later that he started to tell himself that maybe he had been counting wrong, and when Wesker had said a week, he meant starting from the next day, not from when he made his request. That would have been the fair thing.

It was when it was hard to see through the pain in his head, and the red-stained bottle was empty, that Tony thought Wesker might have been right, and he had never done any of this altruistically, and if he really wanted people safe and not just relying on him for safety he could have figured that out any time in the last 30 years. Hell, he'd had a whole week to dedicate to one, little problem. He'd had a few more than that to figure out how to make one rocket stable enough to break the atmosphere. He didn't even need a rocket, he could do what he had always done best; make a gun. Nothing had really stopped him from making one of those before, except now he had the perfect opportunity to use that natural impulse to help people. All of that explosive inspiration suddenly failed him.

It was when all of his scattered eyes around the city alerted that the sun had set that he was left staring down at a frustratingly small scrap, and had to accept that it wasn't getting finished. He pushed away from the workbench finally, every joint creaking in protest, struggling to straighten his back and blink through the pain behind his eyes as he stumbled away to the sink. While he washed his face, D.A.T.A. helpfully rallied to pack his meagre offering into his waiting jacket pocket. The water didn't really improve his face. Despite the hour, he slipped on his sunglasses after carefully fixing his hair in their reflection, and accepted the silk jacket from the robot with a muttered, "Thanks." He could have given a half-way convincing press conference, if the lighting was forgiving. He really only had one person to convince as he made his way to the hospital.

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"That's not what - " he starts, frowning. "Is that why you think I'm here? To punish myself for something I did to a different you?" Because it's useless, he knows it. Whether this one offers him absolution or not for his crimes, it won't have any reflection on whether the other one does. "I apologized for something I did to you, not to him."

They're still so close together, it's a little bit awkward, but the physical awkwardness of it is just a manifestation of how strange it is for the two of them, to be talking to each other, each an imperfect mirror of the man they ought to be talking to, but can't.

He supposes this also reflects the first time he met Tony - Tony, who looked so much like Howard, who resented him, who wanted to be known to Steve by his own merits and completely disconnected from his father. And now, meeting Tony again, who's supposed to be nearly a complete stranger, there's still all this baggage.

Steve drops his hands to Tony's arms. "Can we start over?"

Tony's eyebrows raised, maybe a little patronizing, but open to what else Steve thought he was getting out of asking what another Steve had done. It wasn't obvious to Tony, and Steve wasn't offering any further clarity, turning Tony's expression skeptical as it became clear he neglected to produce an argument.

As distracted as the touch to his face had made Tony, it was when Steve's hands brushed down over his shoulders that he did recoil, closing off with his elbows dropping tight against his sides and quickly taking hold of Steve's wrists to release them more gently than shrugging them off, all in rhythm with his patter, "Oh, role playing, I can do that one, that's much more fun. What were you thinking? Maybe I see you sitting at the bar, you've been there just a little too long, it's clear that someone's stood you up, so I can drop by and offer you a drink. No, you're right, I hear it, too, that's a little too close to home."

He always does this, and Steve always manages to get angry about it. At least back home, the other one was a little less forward. He's honestly thinking that this one just adds a flirtatious component for the specific purpose of making him feel uncomfortable.

He wonders if, perhaps, either this Tony is inherently less faithful than the one he knows, or if his Steve Rogers is just so exceedingly heterosexual that Tony thinks this tactic is going to work to piss him off when they're the emptiest words he could've pulled out. Well, aside from mentioning the alcoholism. Now that was actually something that could have possibly gotten Steve to stay angry.

With his touch shrugged off, Steve naturally moves his arms to cross over his chest. "I don't get stood up." A beat. "But fine. I get it. It's not gonna work. Why are you angry with me? Not with him."

"Of course not, look at you," Tony purred, telling himself he should be more relaxed now that he had successfully convinced Steve he was the one on the defensive. It wasn't as reassuring as he was hoping, watching Steve bar his chest. He went to slink back to his perch on the table, only to be snared by Steve's question, all of his cool grace turning sharp and wide-eyed.

"What? I'm--not," was definitely not a convincing metre and not because he meant to be deceptive, and now Tony was going to have to work twice as hard to convince anyone that was true. Steve's arms across his chest looked like a brick wall now, that Tony couldn't slide his fingers through to try that answer again. He had to keep them to himself, digging the heel of one hand against his heart. "I'm not angry with anyone," he said. "I'm not." His track record was saying otherwise. "I'm..." He should have had a better explanation than a vague gesture around the disorganized shop, and he could already hear Rhodey parroting 'I, I, I' at him.

Steve really fights not to roll his eyes at Tony. The flirting won't drive him away; he should know that by now. The more he tries to project it, the harder Steve's going to ignore him. Besides, he's caught Tony anyway, and as he tries to deny it, Steve cocks his head to the side as if to say he's not selling this very well.

"Right, that's why we're basically arguing over nothing," he says. "Why you get all up in my space just to push me away." Which is why he asked what the other Steve even did to him, to warrant this. Because yes, they're different people, all four of them, but they also all know each other well enough to get under each other's skin faster than pretty much anyone else. Zemo took years what Tony and Steve perfected in minutes.

Tony's mouth was ready before he was, as ever, and he could hear the 'I' ready to burst out again before it made it past the quick clack of his teeth, lip raised in some frustration, nails digging into his chest. At least Steve didn't look like he was about to cry like Donnie did, though Tony's focus still couldn't settle on him for very long then, darting anxiously around for some way to tell Steve that everything was fine and very normal. "You're right," seemed to be what Steve wanted to hear, and maybe even Jon could see him from down the hall chipping away to make himself smaller and more manageable. "What do you want me to do?" See, he could even listen, he was asking for it.

"Tell me why you're angry at me so we can work through this," he says, arms crossed over his chest, leaning up against one of the work tables. How are they so dysfunctional? Steve feels like he's just talking to a feral cat sometimes, one who doesn't understand him and any of the words that come out of his mouth.

But he doesn't say that, because he doesn't think it'd really be any help. "Because the alternative is - the alternative is we just keep fighting. Or we walk away." He'd tried both of those once and somehow whatever call he made with Tony, it'd always been the wrong one.

"I'm not!" definitely sounded angry this time, and it would probably get angrier if Tony had to hear himself say it another six times. It did break the seal on those 'I' statements again, so maybe Tony should get them all out before Steve made good on that threat and left him. "I've been here without you for years feeling like the only good I've ever done is because of you, and I'm just getting worse and no one can stand to talk to me and my--Jon--doesn't even want me in the house, and then you're here and you come into my--no one's supposed to be in here, and I don't have any armor, and I feel like if you breathe on me wrong I'll fall apart."

Jesus christ.

"I'm not angry. I have been trying--so hard...I never had to say any of this stuff, not with you. Maybe we do have to start over." Every fit and start was an aborted flick of his hand, bouncing off of the barrier of Steve's crossed arms and leaving Tony feeling like he hadn't completed a single thought, and still raw for it.

Yeah, Steve doesn't have any idea why they don't just communicate. He just stands there, listening to Tony, and maybe he doesn't complete any of his thoughts but he doesn't have to, because they don't have to start over that far back.

"I'm not your Steve," he reminds Tony, after a long pause, a very tense, long pause. But he comes forward anyway, trepidatiously, reaching out for him, gently at first as if touching a reflection in water and not wanting it to break. "But I know he wouldn't want you thinking the only good you do is on his account. Steve Rogers didn't help you become Iron Man," he says, even though he doesn't know if that was literally the case or not. But to clarify, he says: "You were a hero before the armor. And you're a hero without it."

He continues, and he comes closer still. "I want to talk to you. So does Jan. Hell, pretty sure Peter doesn't really care which universe you come from either. You guys have a Peter, right?" He shakes his head, because it doesn't matter, ultimately. "I can talk to Jon, if you want. I don't know the guy, but I think he's just trying to give you space."

And then, finally, he pulls Tony into a hug, enfolds him in strong arms, and though he may not be the same Steve Rogers, he might as well be when he's this close: he's the same kind of solid, the same kind of constricting. He even smells the same, despite the whole dystopian post-apocalypse thing. "Just because we don't have the same history doesn't mean I'm not the same Steve where it counts. There's just some things missing. Think of it like a hard reboot." No, that's not it. "New operating system. Work with me here, I don't know computers like you do, please tell me this analogy makes sense."

If the tension drew any tighter up Tony's spine it would snap, he could already hear it humming a high, dangerous note, and he had to throw himself back while Steve left him in that awful silence so he could grip of the edge of the table behind him until his knuckles were white. That left him nowhere to retreat when Steve was suddenly coming horribly closer, a move that at least distracted Tony with his focus darting like he might be assessing Steve's weakest point to escape while Steve belligerently ignored what Tony had thought was a very mature breakthrough regarding his compulsive destructive tendencies and general self-awareness. Or maybe he was just lying, because he was definitely lying about enjoying this conversation that he just said could be the last time they talked. Tony's eyes narrowed skeptically.

He was in no way prepared for the hug, bracing for a strike and one hand coming up instinctively to try to keep anything from getting too close to his chest, only for it to get trapped flat against Steve's, unable to brush him off again. Not that the secrets he was trying to protect by maintaining that distance were all that secret anymore; he had just admitted how pathetic he was, and even without the telling ridge of a chestplate under his shirt, that wasn't going to be easy to hide anymore. He didn't return the hug with much grace, just his free hand tangling in the fabric of Steve's shirt, hanging at his side and knuckles digging into his ribs with the same ferocity that he had clenched around the table. Maybe Steve wasn't lying to him.

"It doesn't," Tony mumbled, and pressed his cheek against Steve's neck, hard enough so the burr of his beard could have left a pink blush in an acknowledgement that he was still arguing. Maybe it was because Tony kept on testing those boundaries and finding the new shape of him, but Steve was the one who kept on pointing directly to that phantom of himself and Tony hadn't yet properly acknowledged, "Sorry my parts are missing. I'm working on it." It was hard to imagine that he missed Tony in the same way, no hollowness in his chest that Tony could have possibly left behind, but it must have been disorienting all the same to see a familiar face and hear all of the wrong words.

This hug is awkward. It is one of the most awkward hugs that Steve has ever had, because Tony's hand is still in the way and his beard is pressed up against Steve's neck and he's never actually had to deal with anybody's beard scratching up his neck before, so, there's that.

But he's trying, trying to find a common ground with Tony, trying to find all the parts where he fit and all the parts where he didn't exactly so he'd have to approximate or just start over fresh. Maybe Tony hadn't had Ultron and maybe they'd never fought over accords, or maybe there'd be villains and Avengers and countless others in their rosters and rogues gallery that they'll have to reintroduce.

And, yes, Steve is getting the distinct impression that Tony is disappointed he's waited for years and gotten a completely different Steve Rogers, one who knows him only so well, but he'll have to forgive Steve for the aliens' transgressions in having selected the wrong one. "Yeah, well, you're the genius, figure out an analogy that does make sense."

These kinds of conversations, oddly enough, remind him of the ones he had with Bucky, who wasn't the same Bucky anymore, but that hadn't ever mattered to Steve. The foundation was there, and yes, he had lots of things he had to work on separately; they both did. But as much as Bucky had kept thinking Steve was going to expect the same guy who used to take him out on double-dates and offered him a place to stay after his ma died to just show up out of nowhere and replace the Bucky that was in front of him, he'd been wrong about that. And whatever Tony thinks Steve expects of him, well, he's definitely wrong about it.

They might be here a long time. Steve isn't sure he's letting go until Tony relaxes.

"And - sure. But I don't like the thought of you being alone all the time," he says, mostly because Tony seems to have somehow thought that nobody wants to talk to him. "So I better see you topside or I'm coming back to your lab."

This hug might be the only thing holding Tony together. He might as well have been a stack of ill-fitting parts, no bolts or solder at any seam, an illusion that Steve was going to shatter if he stopped bracing it upright. Incrementally, with each breath of that familiar warmth at Steve's throat and the steady chord of his arm molded against Tony's back, Tony's tension bled out enough for him to ease the arm trapped between them up and over Steve's shoulder instead, and the tight fist in his clothes to a smoothing pat down his side.

"Don't," he finally said when he had managed enough equilibrium to encourage Steve back, not far yet but enough that Tony could meet his eye and pluck again at the front of his shirt to assure him, come closer, don't make empty threats. It wasn't the invasion of his space that Tony was protesting. It might not have been so bad, letting someone in his lab. "Don't defend me," he elaborated, because Steve had already suggested it and Tony didn't want him making his isolation everyone else's problem. He had been doing that for a decade, and Tony hadn't even noticed how much he relied on Steve cleaning up after him until he was here. "They hate that, they always have. You get away with it back home because they respect you, they'll do whatever you tell them. Most people here don't know who you are. Jon doesn't know who you are. If he thinks he's doing this for my own good, he's probably right. He's always right. You're going to really like each other."

Steve gently rubs Tony's back, the way his mother always did, when he'd be up all night with sickness. And he really, really has to fight from rolling his eyes. "Well, if he's good to you, then I'll like him. And if he's not, then I won't. Simple as that. If he thinks not talking to you is good for you, then I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have words with him about that." That, or Jon just hasn't seen Tony like this, on-edge, or the fact that Jon's ignoring him is just some sort of paranoid delusion his mind's made up to go with whatever this all is. It doesn't really matter to him that Jon has no idea who he is, or that none of them know.

He likes that better, actually. The anonymity. The respect isn't handed to him; he has to earn it the same way anyone else does. And he will, the same way anyone else does.

But, he's got another bone to pick with Tony about that: "Other people care about you," he says, as a fact. Like he's not doing any convincing or dragging people into coming to check in on Tony in his isolation. He's informing them because he knows that they'll want to get dragged along because they just want to see him, too. All the better they don't know Steve, then it won't be something Steve did or Steve caused.

He really has to wonder what he and Tony were like, on the other world, to make him this way.

"He is," Tony readily corrected, no if, talking over Steve as he continued so both of them knew that if Steve was looking for a problem to punch into submission, it was entirely Tony's. He was the one that had failed to be worth that care Jon had given him. What he really didn't want to do was talk any more about those fun house versions of themselves that he and Steve were seeing in each other's faces, but it was hard not to purse his lips then and accuse, "Hypocrite." He thought not talking to Tony was the best course of action, too; he had a whole beard about it. The accusation was toothless, though, not baiting Steve into an argument over it, but with a flicker of fondness in Tony's eyes before he was closing them to tip his head against Steve's shoulder, folding with exhaustion and the assurance that there were plenty of parts of Steve that were relentlessly consistent.

"Not to pull rank on you or anything," he grumbled into the warm space between them, "but you've been here, like, a day. I've had a few years to figure out my social standing when I'm not handing out cheques. Maybe we trust me on this one for now, and you pick something in your wheel house to argue with me about. I'm sure you've got some strong opinions about the baseball season, we can compare notes, maybe your universe got the lineup all wrong."

He raises an eyebrow because he hasn't explained to Tony the full situation - he'll have to, someday, just in case it happens to him because the whole problem was that he had kept secrets from Tony in the first place. That's why he's here, checking up, because he hadn't gotten to, in person, for years. But he won't defend himself on this part, he'll just say, "And that's how I know it's the wrong move," as he gently rests a hand on the back of Tony's head, to keep him there, assure him that there's a spot for him on Steve's shoulder.

Why Tony continues looking for something to argue about is beyond him. He'd rather they just work past this, that they recognize that they're going to be slightly different versions of the men they know, that they each come with similar problems but also very familiar ones as well, unfortunately. "How about sleep?" he asks. "Can't find anyone who's slept longer than me and isn't dead, and I can tell you that you need some."

There was a quick hitch of Tony's shoulders that must have been a laugh because he had set himself up for that counter, and he was relieved to have an excuse not to try to convince Steve again that he would find an easy welcome when he sought it back home. The way Tony had been picking is words had only made Steve more defensive, Tony would have to find a way to show him instead. For now, the reminder of his poor sleep schedule (and that this other Tony must have been more beautiful than him, maybe he did deserve to never be spoken to again, the asshole) finally had Tony disengaging, lifting his head and easing Steve back so he could turn his attention back toward the table and the project he had shoved aside. He had as much time for sleep as he did indulging in Steve's attention. He always did have a hard time denying himself some heady vices. "Some of us have a job to do," he excused, waving away these pedestrian suggestions with a flapping hand, "not just cheese-making to impress a boy. I've been wasting enough time on this planet, someone's got to make sure these people are safe."

"The people are safe, for now. You've already spent years here, so what's eight hours to get some rest?" He asks, not even bothering to address the cheese comment. It was the closest he could get to a cheeseburger and he didn't do it to impress Tony, he did it to make sure he'd eat something.

But maybe this seems unfamiliar because Tony's out of the compound at home so much that Steve never gets to make him anything to eat, only ever bringing things to his fellow Avengers when they're around and he's near a kitchen. But as Tony's the only one to bug around here that Steve absolutely knows needs it, he's the target.

Tony really was impossible in every universe, wasn't he? "Besides, Tony, we're all trying. I don't even think we could get off this planet with the current state of the hangar. Even if we could figure out intergalactic travel." Yeah, and all the way back to talking shop. At least this part's easy, the part where they don't have to talk about feelings.

If anyone else had brought Tony food, he would still be on edge and waiting for what they expected in exchange, and they wouldn't have even gotten through the door. At least the shop talk let Tony meticulously rebuild the facade that Steve had knocked off of him by letting him so close, pushing his shoulders back and arranging his face into cool control. "I'm on a clock," he protested. "I had a week, and I'm already cutting it close. I was wasting time making radio towers, but the brief was something that could be carried, and I'm--Don't you think I should have been able to make one spaceship by now? I've been too focused on, I don't know--not on helping, on telling myself that I'm helping. If I do this, if I listen for once, maybe I'll actually do some good. I'll sleep when I'm done."

Steve looks at Tony like he's talking nonsense, and then reaches out to take his shoulder, again, not letting Tony shrug him off this time if that's what he's going to do. He has no idea what that was about.

"You're not on a clock. I have no idea why you think there's some sort of deadline for you to invent something. No, you've never built a spaceship before, as far as I know, so I don't know why anyone would expect you to have figured that out if you don't even have enough resources to build a suit."

He wonders if Tony has lost so much sleep that he's delusional, because he sure as hell isn't making a whole lot of sense. "Hey, how about this. You show me what you're working on, and get some sleep. And while you're doing that, I help you come up with a couple new ideas to try." How he can promise this when everything looks like actual gobbledygook to him on a normal day is beyond him. "How's that?"

No wonder Steve was being so gentle with him, he hardly expected anything from Tony. While Tony hadn't made the move to brush Steve away this time, a flicker of tension that he rerouted to tap a restless, hollow sound on his chest, his eyes widened with surprise, then darted away guiltily. "Captain, darling, I don't know how to tell you this, but I think Tony's been hiding the spaceship from you," he decided was the only rational explanation. When he stopped focusing all of his money and effort on the machine of war, he could hardly be kept within the atmosphere. Especially after the Avengers. "And--I have. Made a suit. Several. You're not listening, they didn't help, I didn't help, I'm trying to be better, and the guy that beat the last one off of me thinks I should be making...this." He turned and dragged what he had finished of the fabric across the table, prompting the robot that had been sitting there quietly observing Steve suddenly spring up protectively, his thin, needle-like leg shooting out of his shell to try to tap down and stop the cloth from whispering away. Spread across the table as it was, it didn't look like much; a dull metallic, very thin and silky, delicate like a handkerchief. It was only when Tony flipped over the corner of it that it revealed why Tony had been fixated on it; where the right side of the fabric lay, the table underneath suddenly appeared through it, a perfect laser cut through the little triangle corner, like there was nothing there at all.

Okay, well, he wouldn't exactly be surprised if Tony was also a rocket scientist, but he honestly also didn't think that he was. Or that he was hiding that bit from Steve, at home. Well, okay, maybe he'd done that out in California, and Steve hadn't known about it, because he'd never actually gone to visit Tony out in California, had he?

Right, he is going to put a tab in the idea that someone beat a suit off of him and then assigned him some sort of a task, whatever that meant. Sure the suit would've been helpful fighting the demobeasts, but sure, he can run with the narrative that they're not. It's fine.

"Okay," he says. "So it's a cloaking device. You made it. It took you a week." He's not really seeing where the problem here is.

The technology was there, sure, the concept had translated from the stealth armor and Steve, in all of his aggravating generosity, would have been satisfied with just that. "Uh-huh," Tony answered, hoping Steve would figure out that this was not the end of the conversation or solution to the problem before Tony had to start an argument with him again, only Tony did not have the patience to wait that out and was snatching his scrap of fabric up to drop onto Steve's head, where it was barely long enough to drape over his brow. "What is anyone supposed to do with that?," Tony snapped. "And if, okay, we pretend I can just whip up enough of it to be a jacket or whatever, who is going to use it? I can't just hand out a bunch of rags and expect everyone to keep one in their back pocket, in case the next time something horrible happens, it would be equally as helpful to just get behind the couch. That's--this is nothing, this is stupid. The brief is stupid. But as soon as I say that, I'm the asshole who's making excuses not to help anybody, and maybe that is what I've been doing this whole time, so I'm making this stupid nothing, and I don't know what's going to feel worse, when I'm right and I still haven't helped anybody, or he's right and I'm here complaining about doing the bare minimum."

And about the time that Tony places the cloth over Steve is the time when he thinks that Tony has officially lost his mind. He definitely needs a nap. A long nap. A full night's unadulterated sleep. Maybe a few days' worth. But Steve tries to back all this up so that he can make any sense of what Tony is saying or doing.

"Okay. So. Someone beat you up and destroyed your suit last week. And told you that you have a week to design... something. Helpful. And you made an invisibility cloak, and now you're regretting having made it." He looks at Tony like he's got two heads. "Did I get that all right?"

Not to mention - if Tony wasn't able to do anything he considers "helpful" in a few years, then how was putting a deadline on it and no limits supposed to actually get anything done? He shakes his head.

The details weren't precise, but that was all of the important beats, Tony had to admit, even though Cap laying it out like that made the whole problem sound very trivial and he was looking at Tony like he should have been aware of that this whole time. The only defence that Tony really had was, "Well, the suit--that was a while ago...," like the timeline made it seem any more important. "And then, this thing with the demon creatures in the Mirror Universe, I should have seen that coming, and instead I had spent the weeks leading up to it thinking the most vital thing I could be doing was making sure the kids around here were in school, like that would even matter if I let them all get eaten by bats, who even cares about that, so, he was right, and he just tells me to make something, and this is the best I can do. Stop looking at me like that."

Steve continues looking at Tony like that because he wonders if Tony hadn't actually stopped to think if this was all a terrible idea, and if he had just maybe considered that it was instead of going in and implementing it the first chance that he got, that maybe things would be different and he wouldn't have spent sleepless nights designing a cloaking fabric to hide.

"How were you supposed to predict the mirror universe demon creatures coming?" he asks, looking at Tony like he's still trying to catch up with the actual words he's saying and not just their meaning. "Look." He takes a breath. "I guess you could have used the data that already exists to make a predictive model the way that weathermen have tools to predict the weather. But I'm not sure we even have the backlog of information to do anything useful with it."

Point one, squared off.

"Also, the fate of everyone doesn't rest squarely on your shoulders, Tony. I don't know why you think it does. It's why we have a team. It's why -" He pinches the bridge of his nose. "- So what, we train the kids in combat. We make an armory of weapons that don't require knowledge of alien tech. There's a lot of things we could do, and all of them allow you to get some rest."

Transference

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