Five Universes.

[quigonejinn]

Tony Stark builds himself a television that shows parallel universes. What? He likes broadcast cable news, and Christie Amanapour is still a hottie, even if she is getting old. On the other hand, these days, Tony is, in fact, the news in maybe half, definitely a quarter, of the news cycles. He knows the news because he is the news.

So he builds himself a parallel universe television. A couple Skrull invasions and two galactic wars later, he figures out how to turn it into a gate.

These are the stops on his itinerary.



the universe where everything turned out OK

When Tony lands, it's early in the morning. It was early in the morning when he left his LA in his home universe, but this is definitely not LA. The grass on the hillside is green, and the trees are all wrong. The air smells right, though, and Tony isn't exactly hopping blind from universe to universe, so after a minute or two, he sees a guy come down the driveway, wearing a bathrobe.

"Hey, I was expecting you," Tony-in-a-bathrobe says. He has a mug of coffee in his hand. "You want some coffee?"

This Tony has built himself a parallel television, and he has been watching Tony while Tony has been watching him. They haven't exactly been able to communicate much more than write big words on the wall to each other, but there is enough comfort and trust so that Tony lets Tony into his workshop, and Tony wanders around, looking at things, while Tony reads the newspaper and makes noises about the Local section. It's the Hartford Courant.

"In Connecticut?"

"Never had a reason to move," Tony says and turns the page to something about the local board and zoning for a new highway. He is on a second cup of coffee in a cabinet. Also, bits and pieces. Jarvis in this universe has a girl voice, but it's British, and has the same round, upper-class tones.

"Didn't the weather drive you crazy?"

Tony looks over, then back at his newspaper. "It's closer to the kids. And Mom."

This is the universe where only Tony's father died in the car crash. It's also one of the ones where Tony didn't have to be the face and brains and soul of a Fortune 100 company around the time kids can buy beer legally. Mom wasn't in the car, so she got everything aside from a handsome trust fund that made living comfortable and easy. Tony was a grown man before he had to make a choice about how to live with the full weight of Howard Stark's legacy.

"Those are my -- your -- kids." Tony gestures to the mantle with one hand that holds a coffee cup. "I get them one weekend a month and every other major holiday."

This Tony doesn't have a personal arc reactor. He never went to Afghanistan. He still designs weapons, but is more interested in biotechnology, and this Tony has pictures of his kids in his workshop. He gets along with his ex-wife. It was an amicable divorce; the problem was that they married young and grew apart. Obadiah, on the other hand, died old and peaceful, honored and respected. There was never any question about control, even though Tony still had an equity share, inherited full control when he turned thirty-five. He was wise enough to turn it into non-voting preferred-dividend for a handsome payout a couple years back.

He visits his mother in full-time care at New York Presbyterian once a month. On the mantle, there is a picture of a very old, very frail Maria Stark sitting in a hospital bed with a grandchild on each side and birthday cake in front of all three. The children look a little distracted, but Maria has her chin tilted up and is looking into the camera, proud and possessive and unafraid.

The housekeeper packs some sandwiches for Tony. Generally, though, he can't get the dust of that universe off his feet quickly enough.





the universe where he is a dinosaur

However, Tony, as a dinosaur, turns out to be small and quick-moving with red stripes down the back and sides. Also, Tony as a dinosaur turns out to be a carnivore and to have poison-spitting glands. Take a genius carnivore with poison-spitting glands and add repulsor technology, and you have a serious threat to life. Jarvis nearly wets himself picking him out of there and slamming not-poison-spitting-Tony into the next universe.

"Look, I had to go," Tony says to Pepper, when he is sitting on a medic bed with his arm stuck out next to him and the painkillers have kicked in enough so that he's comfortable. "It's me. As a dinosaur."

She looks up from where she is observing the medical tech at extremely close range.

Pepper keeps very close control of her features.

"You don't get it, do you," Tony says, finally.

"I don't get it," she says.

"Dinosaur Pepper was cute. She had eggs. And claws. Really big claws."

Human Pepper resists the urge to show him her claws; instead, she focuses on hovering over the SHIELD tech working on Human Tony's arm.





the universe where he married Pepper

It's a beautiful room with views of the Pacific. Tony is familiar enough with the coast to know that they're pretty close to where he has his house in his universe. It's a little to the south and the west of Point Dume and set a little further back from the cliffs, though this part of the house is higher, so that you can see the water. There also isn't a pool. It makes sense, though. You don't when you're a married man with three young kids.

"So let me get this straight. I'm -- you're -- a superhero in your universe?"

"Bona fide, guaranteed, 100%. Have they discovered Captain America in your universe?"

"Wasn't he an old project of Dad's? I thought he died back during the second World War." They're sitting together at the breakfast table by the window, and there are some paper newspapers spread around. The Times, both LA and New York, and the Financial Times, too.

On the kitchen counter, there are some framed photos. One of them has Tony standing with Obadiah and Howard. It's pretty recent; Howard's hair has gone almost entirely silver, and Obadiah looks proud and please with himself. Tony hadn't intended to bring up the fact that the Obadiah in his universe had gone evil, but they got to talking about how the car crash just hadn't happened, and Maria Stark had died old and cranky in her brownstone on the Upper East Side.

From another part of the house, they hear a thump and Pepper's voice telling her son to stop it.

"How'd you convince her to marry you?"

"How'd you convince her to work for you?"

They grin at each other, and they have a comfortable, warm moment of understanding and appreciation of Pepper across universes, and then the light strapped to Tony's wrist starts to beep and flash yellow.

"Fuck," he says. "They need me back home. Alien invasion. I gotta go."

"Because you're a superhero."

"Because I'm a Earth's greatest superhero. You could be, too," Tony says, standing and grinning. "Come on. I know you."

Tony sort of smiles, a little ruefully.

"Listen," Tony-who-is-not-a-superhero says finally. "I can't tell you what I'd give to be you, to have had your chances."

"You don't mean that."

"I do. The arc reactor. The adventures. All of it." Tony stands up, too. He is wearing a gray pinstriped suit and a neat white collared shirt, and he extends his hand across the table, and the feel of his fingers is warm, strong on Tony's. He left hand has a wedding ring on it.

"Come back anytime. And I mean that, too."

Pepper comes into with an exasperated look on her face and a crying toddler on her hip just in time to see the flash of light as Tony jumps home to fight the Skrull for the third time.





the universe where he is a girl

Tony pops into existence sitting on a very comfortable seat, which is a nice change, and he has a pretty nice view, too: it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust, but he really likes what he sees . A woman's foot hangs off the side of the bed. The foot is attached to a very shapely and bare leg. There are clothes on the floor.

"Who the fuck are you?" the other woman, the woman who is awake and who was in the middle of buttoning on a dress shirt when Tony popped into existence. As it is, all she's wearing are black panties and the shirt. "How the fuck did you get here?"

Tony looks for a second, trying to pin something down in his head, before he finally puts two and two together. "Oh my God. You're me. I'm a chick in this universe."

"What the fuck?" They look at each other.

Finally, the Tony who is not wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt and black panties with a little bow on them says, "Am I really that short?"

"How are you powering parallel universe travel?" she says in reply. "I mean, it's possible, I've done the math, and I can see how you'd get a big enough power source going into the universe, but how do you go home?"

Tony is in the middle of something. He's about to say something, but he doesn't say it. There is vibration under his feet.

"Where are we?" he asks.

"The plane. The long-range international corporate plane. "

"And where are we going?"

"Afghanistan." A beat. "Why?"





the universe where he married Pepper and everything turned out perfect

Rain comes down on glass. In every universe where there is a Malibu, there is a rainy season, and Tony can hear the drops hit the glass. He can hear it dripping off the sides of the building, and he could, if he opened the windows, hear the ocean, too. In this universe, though, there is no Jarvis that will open the windows. The house is lovely, and it has certain architectural elements in common with his place at Point Dume, but it doesn't have an artificial intelligence unit embedded in the walls and foundation. Tony would have to turn a crank down at the end to open some of these windows. Others are sealed into place and cannot be opened, which makes sense for a man who is married and has three young children.

It comes down slow and steady, and Tony reaches his hand and runs his finger along the edge of the mantle. There are photographs on the mantle: this is a photograph of Tony standing with his father and Obadiah. This is a framed magazine cover of Tony and Obadiah standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a white background. The cover reads THE NEXT GENERATION. This is a picture of Pepper in what Tony assumes is some kind of glamor photo shoot, maybe for a magazine, maybe just a vanity piece that Tony ordered. It's a black and white picture, and Tony thinks it was taken outside at Point Dume. Pepper is wearing a diamond necklace with a center stone that is maybe half the size of a chest-worn arc reactor; the wind is blowing through her hair, and the dress does not have sleeves. There are also a few pictures of the children.

The Tony who belongs in this universe is on the other side of the door, on the phone with his father while Pepper talks to their youngest child, who has just finished her first day of school and is showing them her new name tag, and the Tony who has fought Skrulls, the one who has actually made hard choices in his life and known grief and sacrifice and mourning, takes his hand away from the mantle and turns the sound back on the video message from the Ten Rings in Afghanistan.

Without assistive AI or Jarvis in this universe, decoding is a little harder; there is no instantaneous translation, but the smile on Raza's face and the phrase Thanks, Tony comes through clearly.

When the superhero leaves the world this time, nobody sees the flash of light.

Comments

[dafnap.livejournal.com]

THE GTONY ONE, HOLY FUCK. I admire your brain, you know this, but I love how this line bridges both the hard sci-fi with the tiny sensory details that manages to ground it into something real:

Rain comes down on glass. In every universe where there is a Malibu, there is a rainy season, and Tony can hear the drops hit the glass.

[jamaillith.livejournal.com]

Seconding the HOLY FUCK. Especially for this line, which pretty much tore out my heart and then stamped on it:

"Afghanistan." A beat. "Why?"

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

In my head, he then tells her exactly what she needs to do to avoid capture because this is also the universe where TONY DOESN'T END UP HORRIBLY FUCKED UP BY AFGHANISTAN. :|

[jamaillith.livejournal.com]

GTONY ICONS UNITE

But she gets horribly fucked up by Obadiah instead, right? Car accident, industrial accident, small plane accident, these things are so dangerous, you never know what's going to happen.

[dafnap.livejournal.com]

BIONIC ARM. LITTLE ARC REACTOR IN HER RING FINGER THE SIZE OF THE MIT RING THAT GOT LOST IN THE CRASH.

[dragged-up.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh, this is delightful.

[smilingskull.livejournal.com]

WHERE DID MY GTONY ICON GO, I NEED THAT FUCKER RIGHT NOW.

Ok, so never stop writing every again please? Your stuff is like this gorgeous breath of fresh air. I laughed out loud at the Tony-as-a-raptor one, because, duh, of course Tony thinks that dino him is so awesome and Pepper just has better things to do that do not include raptors.

And the gtony one, jfc. I will always need more of her story, no matter what universe it is.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I love how the dinosaur one should have been crack BUT IT TOTALLY WASN'T, eeeeeeeee. :D

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

djfkgjdf. Look, Tony thinks he makes a great dinosaur, OK?

saw this

[ferricent.livejournal.com]

and literally said "Yessssssss" out loud.

Read this

and am now unable to even... think.

"Thanks, Tony"

Imagining this subtitling a cheery, full-mouth smile, Raza toasting a mug of beany coffee to the camera.

[kurukami.livejournal.com]

For some reason now that last bit makes me wonder about Raza in the alternate universe. Or whether, in this universe, Tony is the evil one, who had Obadiah killed, and who in return gave Raza a gift of weapons...

AUs are such twisty myriad things. *grin*

[gabby-silang.livejournal.com]

he has been watching Tony while Tony has been watching him.

I want to make out with every single word that drips from your magical fingertips.

I honestly can't even talk about this, it hits my sweet spots so hard. GIRL. GIIIIRL.

[amonitrate.livejournal.com]

oooooohhhh.

i. wow. I love this idea so so much, and these are different from the ones I remember from before, and they are all great. The *dinosaur* one. DINO TONY. omg.

This Tony has built himself a parallel television, and he has been watching Tony while Tony has been watching him.

how much did I love this bit.

also the end of the G!Tony one was a punch to the solar plexus.

[goddesspharo.livejournal.com]

Dino!Tony made me smile like a crazy person, but the second to last line in the last universe killed me dead. Amazing!

[besyd.livejournal.com]

This is what I miss when I go offline! ARG!

Fabulous! Every little letter. Dino!Tony made me spit on my computer. The end of the GTony tale made me shudder. And no matter what you meant by the end of the last one, it totally knocked the wind out of me. You're just so incredible with words ... and ideas ... and images ... etc.

But yeah. This made me all warm and fuzzy ...

"How'd you convince her to marry you?"

"How'd you convince her to work for you?"

They grin at each other, and they have a comfortable, warm moment of understanding and appreciation of Pepper across universes,

[obeetaybee.livejournal.com]

I really, really enjoyed this. I love universes where boys meet their genderswapped counterparts. I like it even better when there's sex involved, but that's just me. ♥

[plasticity.livejournal.com]

I've been negligent of IM lately, having only just seen the sequel, and so came back to see what I'd missed. And I'd missed this, and it's so great. I love that narratively-rich scifi concepts like AUs are even more plausible to fic than the Movie!Science, and you've framed this so nicely. (It's unfortunate that I kept thinking of that terrible show Sliders, which I think was my first extended exposure to AUs/parallel world explorations. God, that was a shitty show. Though there were dinosaurs in that too.)

The last one is definitely my fave. It's like, Tony's got this fairytale life, and with the transmission from Raza, who did he have to become to get it? It's so deliciously dark. Which, any legitimately Tony/Pepper story should be. (hi, I think you've corrupted me!)

in short, yay, I love your writing so much!