sylvius

[sylvius]

This was going to be a frostiron... But then I got distracted.

He was going mad.

This room, this glorified cage they’d put him into was turning his mind into slush. How many years had he been sitting in this glass box? Too many.

The few books he’d been given to read had been read and re-read hundreds of times, each time in hopes of seeing something new in their pages. Other than the books, there were a few pieces of furniture in the cage, and he’d long since passed the point of stacking them for his amusement. He’d fallen so low. If they could see him now. Maybe they could.

The cages across from him, around him, down the hall - occasionally they changed occupants. Occasionally someone would throw a fit, and it would be amusing for a while. But mostly everything was the same. He didn’t quite know how time passed on the outside. Some days he would wake up and the day would be like any other day in a prison. Most days he would wake and it seemed like the world had stayed utterly still as he slept.

45,938, 45,939, 45,940, 45,941, 45,942…

Stencil, stenography, stentorian, step, step-brother…

The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.

He wonders if he will die in here. And if it will come by time or by madness.

—————

“No, no, over here. No, move over here. Never mind, just stay there. You’re of no use at all. You’d be a better hat rack, if I wore hats.”

He hears the unmistakeable sound of CEO high-heels on his workshop floor even over his music. It was one of those sounds he’d never been able to let fade into the background, though he pretended not to hear them anyway.

The clicking heels quieted and Dummy whines and moves out of the way. “Tony, what are you - Tony, what is all this?”

“This is, ah-“ he pulled his fingers from the circuitry and closed up the shell. “this is work.”

Pepper’s arms fall to her sides, she’s holding paperwork - another thing to ignore - and she seems speechless for a moment. “Tony, you gave this up. Iron Man is gone, you promised.”

Yeah, He’d promised his girlfriend he wouldn’t take any more stupid risks because of the armour, because of Iron Man. But he was Iron Man, that doesn’t just go away. And besides, she wasn’t his girlfriend anymore. Apparently she just wasn’t the girlfriend type, she’s married to her job. which was just as well, he would have gone mad as CEO. Not to mention that he would have ruined the company ages ago.

He was going mad anyway, this stagnation. Parties, galas, premiers, socializing this way and that, schmoozing, flirting, manipulating. He was good at it, it was what he did, but it was all getting very routine. He needed something different, something more.

He swiped away his screens. “Yeah, I did. And I kept that promise, for like two years-“

“Sixteen Months.”

“- and now I need to move on-“

“Move on? Tony, you don’t just move on-“

“-and Nick says something’s up, he says he doesn’t know what, but he needs to play it safe so-“

“-you promised me, you can’t just break it - Nick Fury? What does he-“

“-I’m making new armour, better armour, and I’m going to hack into SHIELD and find out what’s going on, because there’s something he’s not telling me, there always is.”

It was silent for a few beats. Then Pepper catches up. “You’re starting this whole thing again. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

He swivelled his chair to face her, giving her his full attention. “Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. But this is what I do. I find out what’s going on. I stop it if it’s bad.” a monitor flashes, information spilling onto the screen. “I figure it out if it’s interesting. Both, sometimes. Pepper, my mind needs more than it’s getting right now, and Fury needs my help. I’m doing this.” he turns to the monitor and quickly reads through what Jarvis has found for him on SHIELD’s servers.

Pepper crosses her arms, one part angry, two parts annoyed, two parts worried. “… What is it?”

“It’s the tesseract. Well, no, it’s like the tesseract, but it’s a steady reading and not as strong as the tesseract. I can’t pinpoint exactly where it’s coming from. This looks like Dr. Foster’s work, an Einstein-Rosen bridge? What was that called - the Bifrost?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That has to be it, it’s Thor. Or, it’s Asgard. Maybe they fixed their broken connection, it’s clearly there,” he tapped a box on the monitor showing the steady energy reading, “it’s just not on. Or rather, it’s connected but not specifically to Earth.”

Pepper sighs and walks up to the desk, dropping a small stack of papers near his arm. “Look those over, sign them, get them back to me by Thursday, and call me if you’ve gotten yourself killed.” with that, she walks away, heels clicking. Dummy rolls back up to the desk and holds out a cup of lukewarm coffee.

“Yeah, thanks buddy.”

—————

“Do you see better, with the bridge fixed?”

Heimdall stands in the golden Bifröst, looking out into the stars. His eyes seem unfocussed, but Thor knows his eyes are focussed on many things.

“Or does it affect your sight at all?”

The gatekeeper turns to the crown prince, eyes half-focussed on the blond. “The Bifröst does not help me see. But it provides a beautiful vantage point.”

The two stand in silence for a while, Heimdall watching the realms, Thor watching the stars.

“The bridge is fixed. Your father has not disallowed you passage to the other realms.” Thor looks at the gatekeeper questioningly. “Will you see her?”

“Ah, Lady Jane. Yes, I will see her.” but he does not move.

Heimdall’s eyes stare blankly out past the end of the realm. “You think of your brother.”

“Yes.” Thor shifts his weight. “I do not know what punishment father has given him, or if he deserves it. Father would know best, I still believe that, but I feel as if…” he trails off, unsure what he means to say. He was never very good with words.

“Your brother is no friend of mine. But I can sometimes understand why he does the things he does, even if I do not agree with them.” he walks down off his dais to stand beside his prince. “Your father has treated him poorly. And he has retaliated as any child would.” he looks up, then turns towards the golden city, and the palace beyond. “His sentence is done.”

Thor looks between the city and Heimdall. “Loki? It’s barely been a year, how can his sentence be done?”

Heimdall just looks blankly back out at the stars. Thor waits a moment for a response, but grows impatient and quickly heads to the bridge back to the city.

—————

“He’s really got the whole God thing going for him, you know? The muscles obviously, and the hair, the eyes, the cool armour and cape, real hero stuff. But that’s all well and good in an underwear model, that doesn’t make him a good boyfriend.”

Some sort of handheld device makes a beeping noise. “He’s not my boyfriend. Or, well, kind of. We haven’t really talked about it. Also, shut up, I’m working.”

Darcy types something into her phone. “Well there was a lot of kissing and swooning and he took you to meet his parents, so I’m not really seeing how he isn’t your boyfriend. Now, you have to talk to him about these things, is he just going to woosh back up to planet Hunk whenever he feels like it, or is he really going to commit? This is something you should probably know.”

Jane walked over to a machine against the wall and cursed before inputing more data and running the program again. “Yeah, I know. I do, but - hey maybe just let me find him first? He hasn’t come back and I have no way to contact him unless I can figure out the Bridge. Now shut up.”

“Can’t you just jump through a portal into god-land or whatever?” Darcy swivelled on the table, facing Jane even though she never looked away from her phone.

Jane huffed and gave up trying to quiet her intern. “Those only let things through during the convergence, which happens once every few thousand years, I can’t wait for that to happen again. why don’t you make yourself useful and get me a coffee? And get rid of your intern, you can’t have an intern.”

Grumbling, Darcy got off her ass and went in search of some coffee. They probably didn’t even have any in here. Also she should probably find out where she left the kid, her intern, what’s-his-name, yeah.

[sylvius]

Avengers Vampire!Tony fanfic I never did anything with

They were a myth. They didn’t exist, everyone knew that. They were just stories to entertain or to make children fear disobeying their elders, or kinky fantasies if that was your thing. So when the young woman who Tony took home with him after a gala smiled at him with a mouth full of fangs, he just figured she was one of the kinky ones. He could roll with that, it wasn’t really his thing but if it made her more passionate, he wasn’t going to complain.

When she bit harshly into the skin of his neck, he cried out in pain and promptly kicked her out of his bed. He had Happy drive her home while he got some antiseptic and a bandage to cover the holes the insane vampire-groupie left in his neck. That done, he mostly forgot about the incident while burying himself in armour repairs and prototypes for his new line of prosthetic limbs for war amputees. He was used to spending days on end in his workshop, not eating and barely sleeping. So he didn’t notice that he wasn’t getting hungry or tired, and passed off any discomfort or pain as work-related. Jarvis had long ago given up prompting his maker to eat or sleep at regular intervals, and since he was no longer CEO, there was little to distract him for the next few days.

The first person to see him since he had kicked out ‘vampire-groupie woman’ was Steve. He knocked on the glass door to the workshop before using his code to open the door. Tony was testing the joint on a prosthetic arm when he noticed Steve walking towards his current workstation.

“Hey Steve, what brings you down here so early?” Tony inquired absently, confirming that the joint worked perfectly and moving pull a fleshy sleeve over the prosthetic.

Steve doesn’t know what to make of the human-like arm Tony is holding. From this distance, it looks like Tony had severed an arm and was casually moving around the fingers like some kind of twisted marionette. Tony noticed his focus and smiled, holding up his newest toy. “Do you like it? It’s ready to go through final tests, it nearly ready for the masses. Well, the one-armed or no-armed masses.”

“You-“ Steve cut himself off. He’d come up here to see if Tony was still awake, he couldn’t sleep and Tony was one of the few people who could be found up at this hour. He didn’t know what to make of what he’d walked in on. “Is that an arm?”

“Obviously.” He turned the arm around so that Steve could see the inside, the hole where the end of an arm stump would slide into, and the tiny silver bits inside that would allow the arm to move as the user wanted it to move. “I’m sure you’ve known a few people who’ve lost an arm. Like your friend there, James?” Steve was still staring a little blankly. “It’s for war veterans, mostly. But of course anyone who is missing an arm will be able to use this.”

Understanding bloomed on Steve face then, and he steps close to see the arm better. Tony holds it out to him so that he could see it better and Steve marvelled at how lifelike it seemed. But then he caught sight of Tony’s skin against the false skin, and realized that it was significantly lighter than the colour of the prosthetic. He grabbed for Tony’s wrist then, and started when he realized just how cold the skin was. It was as if Tony’s arm was the fake arm, it felt as cold as death.

“Tony, what’s wrong with you? Have you lost blood? Have you eaten? When was the last time you slept?” Steve frantically groped the older man’s wrist to see if his pulse had slowed, and couldn’t find one at all. Confused, he switched his attention to his neck to find a better pulse, and finding no luck there either. He had a moment of blind panic before he realized that obviously Tony couldn’t be standing in front of him with no pulse, obviously something was up. His eyed looked from Tony’s startled face to the prosthetic hand he was still holding. He put his hand on the prosthetic, then on Tony’s arm. They felt the same.

“Did you build yourself a prosthetic body?” He asked. Tony just looked at him confusedly, putting down the arm and furrowing his brows. “Like, a robot. Is this a robot? Tony, where are you?” He turned his back to what he figured was a robot and looked around the room, half expecting Tony to pop out and yell ‘surprise!’, but no luck. He turned back to Tony to find his expression hadn’t changed.

“What are you talking about? I’m not- I’m not a robot Steve, what kind of crazy sci-fi have you been watching? Are you ok?” Tony stepped around his workbench and lifted his hand to Steve’s forehead, feeling for a fever. Steve’s skin was normally quite warm, running a higher temperature to normal humans, but the heat coming from Steve’s skin now seemed unnaturally hot even for him. “Geez Steve, been sitting in a sauna lately? You could cook a steak on that.”

Steve stared wide-eyed at the ‘robot’, and carefully removed its hand from his forehead. It had to be a robot, it didn’t have a pulse or body heat, but it was moving like a human. But the details were so intricate, even the best artist wouldn’t be able to make something like that. Or if they could, they wouldn’t be so careless as to get the skin tone so wrong.  No, this was something different. If this was Tony, something was very wrong as he needed to get him help now.

Steve made a quick decision and picked Tony up bridal-style and hauled him out of the workshop, into the emergency elevator and down to the private labs where he was sure to find Bruce. He was the nearest person who might be able to figure out what was wrong with Tony

“What are you- Steve, put me down! You can’t just pick people up without warning- slow down what the hell- Seriously you are very warm, if you’re picking me up right after working out I will not be happy, you’re probably all sweaty and gross, come on. Steve, stop. You’re not stopping. You’re lucky I trust you or I might think you were kidnapping me. This better be worth my time, I was on a roll with that prosthetic.” Tony babbled on and on while Steve frantically rushed to Bruce, hoping whatever was wrong with Tony could be fixed.

Bruce looked up from his screen when Steve rushed in holding a grumpy Tony, and pushed his glasses up onto his face after saving his work.

“Something’s wrong with him, can you fix it?” Steve deposited Tony on Bruce’s swivel chair and pushed him towards Bruce with worriedly.

Bruce looked at Tony who was sitting with his arms crossed, looking fidgety like he usually did after too many hours without sleep. He did look different though, he observed as he stepped closer. He lifted Tony’s chin and looked at his face - pale skin, almost unhealthy looking, and it was cold like steel. Concerned, he put two fingers on his neck to check his heart rate, checking his watch as he did so. Ten seconds without a beat. Twenty. That wasn’t possible.

“What is it with you two checking my pulse? I’m fine.” complained Tony, slouching in his chair, looking around for something interesting to occupy his attention.

Bruce looked around to see if this room had some kind of first aid kit - it didn’t. He really wished he had some tools, like a thermometer or a heart rate monitor, anything like that. Tony was clearly alive, he was completely lucid, but it was as if he had no blood for his heart to pump, so it had just stopped trying. He wasn’t a medical doctor, but he had never heard of anything like this and if he had to guess, he would say no proper medical doctors had either. But coming into contact with aliens or supposedly mythical beasts or even lab-engineered creatures and viruses wasn’t uncommon for the avengers. Tony was only human, he could have caught some previously unknown disease.

“Tony, your skin is unnaturally pale and you have no pulse, something is clearly wrong. I’m going to call SHIELD and you are going to go through medical to find out what is wrong with you. And until then you are going to stay away from anyone who could contract whatever you have, that means Natasha, Clint, and Pepper. Total seclusion, you do not leave this room until SHIELD can come get you.” Bruce went to lock the doors to the lab and started dealing his phone.

Tony jumped out of his chair so fast that he knocked it back several feet and sent it clattering to the floor. He grabbed Bruce’s phone out of his hand and tossed it onto the nearest surface before Bruce even knew what was happening. “No way, SHIELD medical isn’t getting anywhere near me. Fury would sedate me and steal my arc reactor in a second if I so much as stepped in their med bay.” Startled, Bruce stepped back, trying to wrap his head around the speed at which Tony had gotten to him. “I feel fine, there is nothing wrong with me, I just need some coffee. And maybe food. Actually, just the coffee, I’m not hungry. Jarvis, can you-“

“Sir, you do appear to be quite pale. Perhaps you should-“

“Jarvis, coffee. Put some on for me. Bruce, out of my way.” Tony made to move around Bruce, but Steve caught his arm and spun him around to face him.

“Tony, you have no pulse.”

Tony stopped to stare at Steve and actually seemed to hear him this time. They stared at each other for a while, not moving. Then Tony snapped out of it and held a hand up to his own neck and waited. After a minute he pressed fingers to his wrist. After another minute, Tony gave up trying to find his pulse and quickly started walking around the room, frantically searching for something sharp. All he could find was some electrical wire and a pen, so he took the electrical wire and jammed it into the palm of his hand, trying to puncture his skin. Failing that, he took the pen and did the same thing. the pen broke, but he succeeded in breaking his skin. But there was no blood. Steve, seeing what he was doing, rushed to stop him. He tore the broken pen from his hand, nicking himself with it along the way, and grabbing Tony’s hand to inspect it.

“Tony, what the hell are you tryi-“

Tony cut him off, swaying slightly. “Oh my god, what smells so good? Did someone order Thai? I changed my mind, I am hungry, gimme!” Tony looked around the room, but couldn’t find the source of the smell. He licked his lips hungrily but winced as his tongue caught on something sharp. “Ow, whad the huck! Whad the hell, ow, ow!” He mumbled, sticking his tongue out and leaning over in pain. He reached into his mouth to check for damage and promptly pulled his fingers back out when they cut on something sharp. “Ow, fuck!” He splayed his hands and opened his mouth wide with his tongue hanging out and looked at Steve and Bruce in panicked confusion.