Crossfire, Day 5 [Cap/Iron Man Big Bang 2012]
Title: Crossfire
Artists: angelicfoodcake and makowe-pola
Author: ashei
Rating (both art/fic): G for art, PG-13 for fic (cursing and mild violence)
Universe: Iron Man Noir
Word Count: 27,191
Warnings: Animal transformation, big cats, questionable magic
Beta: eschatologies
Art Thumbnail:
Fic Summary: Though both the war and his days of adventuring for Marvels are over, Tony Stark is still looking for a cure to his failing heart. When Nick Fury asks him and Captain America to investigate a newly discovered world dubbed the Savage Land, Tony jumps at the chance, hoping to find something - anything - that'll fix him. But once Tony finds that something, he discovers that it comes at the cost of Steve's humanity - leaving Tony to struggle to turn him back before it's too late.
Link to Art: angelicfoodcake's art and makowe-pola's art
Link to Fic: AO3 | LiveJournal
Prologue-Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6-Epilogue
Day Five
Tony woke up the next morning to find a giant sabretooth staring him in the face.
“Holy shit,” he gasped, arms flailing as he scrambled backwards, reaching for his pack so that he could retrieve his gauntlets. The giant sabretooth whined, and Tony blinked, belatedly remembering that oh right, this was the kind of company he was keeping these days because his life was crazy. “…Sorry,” he said after a moment, still trying to catch his breath. Was Steve trying not to laugh? It looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Hey. I dare you to react any differently if our positions had been reversed.” Really! If Steve had been in Tony’s position, he’d probably have decapitated him with his shield by now.
Anyway, now they were both awake, so Tony supposed it was time to grab something to eat before heading out. He glanced out the entrance of the cave they’d taken shelter in last night, squinting at the sunlight. Still early, it seemed. That was good.
He grabbed his pack, digging around inside. “I assume you want something to eat now, right?” he asked. Steve nodded, so Tony managed to retrieve a pack whose contents were labeled as “pork sausage patty”. “What about this?” he asked. “Sausage. Mmm.”
Steve actually frowned at him, shaking his head. Tony frowned back. “What? It’s sausage. Meat. Sabretooths like meat, I thought.” Just not human meat. He hoped.
But since Steve was having none of it, apparently, he pulled out another box, showing it to him. “Do franks and beans appeal more to your picky palette?” When Steve just shook his head again, Tony sighed, dumping the remaining contents of his pack onto the floor. “Well, what do you want? Black beans? Chicken and noodles? I’m not carrying around a five-star restaurant on my back, Steve. I ate pinto beans last night.”
Steve snorted, then blinked as something caught his eye. He reached forward and pointed at one package, looking at Tony accusingly.
Tony raised an eyebrow, following his gaze. Oh. Was that what he was looking at? “Yeah,” he said. “I brought fireworks. What of it?”
He received an eyeroll in return, though thankfully, Steve didn’t seem interested in chiding him further, presumably because he was now a sabretooth and therefore couldn’t chide anyone. Instead, he put one massive paw against one of the boxes of food and pulled it toward him. Then he drew a circle around it before pointing to himself and drawing a much bigger circle around his body.
Tony blinked, realizing the point Steve was trying to make. “Oh,” he said. “It’s not enough food for you. Is that what you’re trying to say?” Steve nodded, and Tony pursed his lips, thinking about it. Steve was huge. He was also not human. What did sabretooths eat? “Should we… hunt?” he asked uncertainly. “Are you up for some dinosaurs?”
Steve blanched and shook his head. Then his eyes lit up, and he started tapping his paw on the ground in a… familiar rhythm. “Do that again,” Tony said when he stopped, and Steve obliged. Yeah, definitely familiar. Son of a gun, he was using Morse code. “Deer,” he repeated. “Okay, wow, that would have been really useful yesterday. You should do that more. Anyway, what, you want to hunt deer? They have deer here?” Steve nodded again.
“Okay.” Tony packed up the food he’d poured out earlier, bringing out his gauntlets. “How do you want to do this? Should I go with you?” Steve shook his head. “You want to go alone?” A nod.
Frowning, Tony set his gauntlets back down. He didn’t like the idea of Steve going out there by himself, but it’d probably be easier for Steve if he flew solo, particularly since Tony wasn’t exactly well-versed in the art of hunting. Not that he thought Steve was either, but maybe he had new instincts now. Still, though… “It’s a bad idea to separate.”
Steve shook his head again. He jabbed one paw at Tony, like an owner motioning for their dog to sit. Safer here, he tapped out.
Tony rolled his eyes. “I’m a big boy,” he said. “I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself once I leave this cave. Look, I’ll just stay behind you, okay? But I don’t want to sit here all day and then find out that you got eaten by something. I’m coming.”
Steve let out a deep sigh, rolling his eyes right back. He didn’t actually argue, though, only turning and leaving, so Tony picked up his gauntlets again, following him out. They’d come back later-assuming Steve managed to actually catch something, he’d probably want it cooked. Maybe. Had Steve’s tastes changed? He supposed they’d find out.
True to his word, he kept a fair distance behind Steve as he prowled, sniffing the air and doing other cat things that Tony couldn’t comprehend. It was, to his surprise, all very boring. He had no idea how to hunt-only to avoid being hunted. And given that Steve couldn’t speak, he couldn’t tell what the hell it was he was actually looking for.
Tony sighed, letting his attention drift. This would make a hell of a storyline for Marvels-not that new issues had been written since the war started, but still. Maybe once they got back-because, of course, they would get back-he’d hit Pepper up and see what she could do. After everything that had happened, the country could do with some good old-fashioned entertainment. And Rhodey, well. Rhodey would be so jealous. But that was what he got for running off to the Army Air Forces instead of sticking around!
He was in the middle of imagining a heroic-looking cover when Steve burst into action in front of him, letting out a ferocious roar and pouncing at something. He looked in time to see what he assumed was a deer try to leap away before being swiped at with one massive paw-it went down in a heap of flailing limbs, then disappeared under Steve’s mass. After a moment, Steve pulled away, and the deer was quiet and unmoving, blood dripping from its neck.
“Uh, wow,” Tony couldn’t help but say as he got closer, staring at the dead deer. “I hope Bambi wasn’t around to see that.”
Steve whipped his head around to look at him, and Tony found himself involuntarily stepping back, automatically bringing his gauntlets up. It was just-for a moment, he’d seemed dangerous. Like an actual sabretooth. But then the look faded, and a puzzled expression took its place. Bamby? he spelled.
Tony took a deep breath, approaching him again since he seemed his usual, Steve-ish self. “I guess you haven’t gotten around to watching many movies since the war ended,” he said. “It’s okay. I’ll explain later. It’s just, uh, wow. You really took that thing down. Was that you or your… more animal side?”
Steve just shrugged, picking the dead deer up in his mouth and ambling back to where they’d left their things, Tony trailing after him again. Did any of this bother Steve? It was hard to tell. But Tony had to admit, for a second there… he’d been terrified. Terrified that Steve was gone and in his place was a massive prehistoric cat that’d just killed something and was looking for blood. And Tony didn’t know if Steve knew that for the briefest of moments, something else had overcome him.
He sighed. Maybe-maybe it had all been just his imagination. Maybe he’d only hallucinated that look of bloodlust in Steve’s eyes. Maybe.
They arrived back at their camp a short while later, Steve depositing the deer carcass at the entrance of the cave, looking at Tony. “Ugh,” he said, kneeling down in front of it. “This is like a mutant deer. Why does it have fangs?” Steve let out a sound that was maybe supposed to approximate a laugh as Tony picked up a stick and prodded it, continuing, “Are you sure this is safe to eat?”
Steve shrugged, licking his lips. Apparently, he didn’t care as long as he got some deer meat in his stomach.
“Okay,” Tony said, starting a fire with his lighter and bringing out his knife. Though he’d never hunted before, he at least knew how to gut and prepare a wild animal-he still had vivid memories of some of the tour guides he’d had during his days of adventuring, slapping down some massive dead animal in front of him and telling him what to do with it. Then again, how picky was Steve going to be? “So what are you expecting? Deer bacon? Or do you not mind if I’m messy and give you a slab covered with deer fur?”
Steve just stared at him for a moment, then lowered his head and took a massive bite out of the body, starting to chew and seemingly oblivious to the blood running down his neck. “Well, that’s nice,” Tony said, making a face as he put his knife away. At least he wouldn’t have to get his hands bloody, though he wasn’t sure that this was actually all that much better. A part of him wanted to watch in morbid fascination as Steve just… chomped away, while another part wanted to run off and go empty his stomach.
Speaking of which, he hadn’t actually yet eaten anything today. He dug out the franks and beans from earlier, going to heat them by the fire as he cast another glance at Steve, who seemed merrily oblivious. Should he point out that at this time yesterday, he’d been eating cooked chicken and rice with a fork? Probably not, he supposed. Steve was surely having a difficult time adjusting, and if he could just forget about it all for a little bit, then that was good… right? Right, of course. So Tony ate his franks and beans without comment, washing it down with some more aspirin, then discreetly scooted back into the cave to watch him. The deer carcass was already half gone by now, and Tony had to wonder if Steve was going to eat the whole thing. Was that even possible? He supposed it was. Steve was huge.
“So you know, I’ve been waiting this whole time for you to offer me some,” Tony said casually after a while, needing to hear more than the sounds of Steve eating an animal he’d killed. “Where are your manners?”
Steve blinked, tilting his head, and Tony could tell what he was thinking. “No, I’m just kidding,” he said. “Eat away. I’m just unsettled by the blood you’re spraying everywhere. But please, continue.” Steve let out a whine at this, like some sort of overgrown… sabretooth puppy, but he obediently went back to munching away as Tony put the fire out and packed their things. Once he was done, he rested his head back against the cave wall and let his eyes shut, tuning out the sounds of Steve eating raw meat.
When he opened his eyes again, Steve was gone.
“Steve?” Tony said, bolting upright as he poked his head out of the cave. Nothing. He turned to look at the remains of the deer, which seemed… recently eaten? He couldn’t tell. But if that gooey stuff there was saliva, then yeah, it was recent. Also disgusting.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself, grabbing the two packs and Steve’s shield as he got up, looking around. Maybe Steve just had to go do his business? He didn’t seem to be in the immediate area, though, and it was strange that he’d just go off without telling Tony.
After several minutes of searching, his fears were confirmed-Steve had apparently wandered off entirely, and Tony had no idea where. This was bad. Should he stay and wait for him to come back? What if he didn’t?
He groaned, running his free hand through his hair. Okay, yeah, magic was nice and it made his heart work and he was very grateful. But this whole sabretooth business was almost making it not worth the trouble.
After a moment of deliberation, he decided to head north, toward the mountain. If he was lucky, that was the direction Steve was heading in. If he was unlucky, then he was pretty screwed.
Hopefully he was lucky.
Half an hour later, he came across some footprints that looked like they were recently made by a large, Steve-as-a-sabretooth-shaped animal. Tony leaned down to inspect them, not sure how to feel. Either this was a good thing because it meant he was on Steve’s tail, or it was a very bad thing because there was another sabretooth wandering around. But even if it was the latter, well, what the hell could he do? He had to find out. So he kept on moving forward, praying that the tracks belonged to Steve and not some other thing that would only be too happy to eat him.
Twenty minutes after that, he was crouching at the edge of a clearing, watching as a sabretooth ambled across it, away from him. Was it Steve? It was hard to tell, and Tony realized with a sinking feeling that he wasn’t sure if Steve had any unusual markings. So what now? If he just called out Steve’s name and attracted the sabretooth’s attention and then it wasn’t Steve, he’d be in trouble.
Unfortunately, he didn’t see any other choice, and Steve-or whoever it was-was getting further and further away with each passing second. “Steve!” he hissed.
The sabretooth stopped-along with Tony’s heart-then slowly turned, looking right at him. His heart started beating normally again once he saw that yes, this was Steve, even if his eyes had gone kind of weird. “Thank God,” he said, standing up and heading into the clearing. “Why did you-”
In the next instant, Steve had bounded forward to close the distance between them, hissing. “Uh, Steve?” Tony began, backing away. He bumped into a tree, then quickly shimmied out of the way so he could keep on backing up, since Steve was being creepy and continuing to approach him slowly. “It’s me, Tony. You remember me, right? Because you have a sort of glint in your eye and it’s unnerving me just a little. So why don’t you just-”
He was interrupted again when Steve leapt at him; automatically, he brought the shield up to protect himself-and instead of hearing the expected sound of claws scratching on metal, he heard-nothing. After a moment, he dared to lower the shield, peeking over it.
Steve was sitting there in front of him, eyes wide and confused as he looked around. When he noticed Tony had lowered the shield, he gaped at him, mouth moving but no human sounds coming out.
“Hey, calm down,” Tony offered quickly, since Steve seemed on the verge of a panic attack, even if he was doing a good job at keeping it under wraps for the time being. “It’s okay. Do you know what just happened? Or how you got here?” Steve shook his head, withdrawing a bit and apparently trying to make himself look as small as possible, which, for an animal of his size, was basically an exercise in futility. Tony sighed. “It’s okay,” he said again, awkwardly reaching out to pet him. “I guess you just… forgot yourself for a moment.” If an hour counted as a moment, but hey, who was arguing semantics? “Anyway, you wandered off without me, but it’s alright. I found you and we’re headed toward the mountain anyway, so no harm done, right?” Steve gave him a morose look, like it was absolutely not alright, but Tony tried to ignore it.
“Okay,” he said instead, trying to sound peppy. “So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to please get that mopey look off your face, because it’s actually kind of depressing, and then we’re going to get our asses up that mountain. So turn around and let me mount you.” Wow, that came out wrong.
Steve stared at him, but instead of looking amused he just looked more depressed. “What?” Tony pressed. “Okay, that wasn’t the best choice in words. Let me ride you. Better?” Steve shook his head again. Dangerous, he tapped out.
Tony frowned. “Dangerous?” he repeated. “Why? Because you’re afraid you’ll forget yourself while I’m on you?” Steve nodded, and Tony waved a hand dismissively in response. “It’s going to be fine, Steve. Don’t worry.” When Steve refused to turn around, Tony just tsked, placing his hands on his hips. “So what?” he said. “You want to waste the rest of the day arguing this with me? Because that’s an awful idea. But sure, we can just sit here and do nothing, if you want. It’s your choice, really, because I mean, it’s not like we have to be anywhere by tomorrow night. So what’s it going to be?”
At last, the morose expression disappeared from Steve’s face, only to be replaced by one of annoyance. Well, Tony would take what he could get. “Thought so,” he said as Steve turned around. He clambered onto him, clutching his fur. “See? Progress is nice, isn’t it?”
Steve sighed and started heading off again, and Tony was left to just cling onto him in silence, watching the scenery fly by. Before he knew it, the ground was sloping upward as the foliage got less dense, though there were still trees frequently peppering the mountainside. Were there pterodactyls here? Tony really hoped there weren’t. Because that would be bad.
For now, though, the skies seemed clear, and Steve seemed to be himself, if quietly trotting up a mountain while inhabiting the body of a prehistoric cat counted as being himself. Several times, Tony wondered if he should just… say something, anything, to break the silence, but what good would it do? Steve couldn’t talk back. While he was moving, he couldn’t even spell anything. So Tony just stayed quiet, enjoying the ride as best as he could.
They managed to find a small pond partway up the mountain after dusk, deciding to set up camp there for the night. As Steve went to lap up water from the pond, Tony opened the pack of black beans and ate them cold, feeling too vulnerable to start a fire. What if pterodactyls were nocturnal?
Once the beans were consumed, Tony turned to look at Steve, who was back to looking morose, staring into the pond-presumably at his reflection. He sighed. “Steve?” he tried. But Steve just waved a paw at him, not looking away. Maybe he just wanted some alone time, so Tony decided to leave him be and leaned back against a tree trunk, staring up into the sky. It was still light enough to make out most things, though the moon had risen by now.
Once the stars stopped capturing his interest, though, he found his eyes drifting toward Steve’s pack. He hadn’t really looked inside it, except when searching for something more appetizing than beans-which, unfortunately, did not yield him any particularly thrilling results. But he was aware that Steve kept his notepad in there, and even though he knew he shouldn’t be nosy, well, he was curious and bored. Besides, it didn’t look like Steve was paying attention to him right now.
Carefully, he reached in, pulling the notepad out. Knowing Steve, it was probably filled with boring notes about the flora and fauna and whatever else they were supposed to be taking notes on, and sure enough, the first half of the notepad didn’t disappoint. But since Steve was still moping and Tony was still bored-since, after all, boring notes on stuff he’d already seen were boring-he kept on flipping. And that was when he found the drawings.
There were a lot of them. Various men in uniform who Tony assumed were the famed Howling Commandos-they looked vaguely familiar, at least. There was one man in particular who kept on showing up, labeled as “Bucky”. Then there was a woman, too, labeled only as “Agent 13”.
He flipped through more of the pages. There were a lot of Buckys and Agent 13s. Pages and pages of them, all with varying expressions, though none of them were sad or angry, almost as though Steve only wanted to capture them at their best. Tony had to wonder if they’d posed for Steve, or if he’d done them from memory, but looking down at the dates confirmed that some of these were only a few days old. Huh. He was very good, then.
Tony flipped to another page, only to realize that he was staring at a drawing of… himself. He blinked. What was he doing in here? He went to the next page, realizing that this, too, was a drawing of him, face lit by the firelight as he studied his gauntlets. When had Steve done these?
There was a caption beneath one of them. Tony leaned down, trying to read the writing in the fading light. Hero of Marvels, it said.
For some reason, Tony felt a pang of guilt ripple through him. All this time, Tony had thought of Steve as occasionally charming, but mostly annoying, and Steve… despite what he’d said earlier, Steve still thought of him as Marvels’ hero, regardless of what Tony himself thought-as though he could see something in him that Tony was missing.
He shut the notepad, quickly shoving it back into Steve’s pack and glancing over at him. From the looks of it, Steve was still staring into the pond-he should put a stop to that, probably, and so he got up, walking toward Steve. Once there, he took a seat beside him, ignoring his surprised glance. “Hey,” he said. “You want to talk?” Steve gave him a look, and Tony groaned, rubbing his forehead. Right. Steve couldn’t talk. And the reason he couldn’t talk was probably because Tony thought he was annoying. Magic was irritating sometimes.
“Sorry,” Tony continued with a sigh. “Look, Steve, I want to share something with you, if you want to listen. Do you know why I had a metal plate over my heart?”
Steve blinked at him a few times, looking surprised. He then hesitated for a moment, as though he was still shocked that Tony was actually opening up about this, then eventually shook his head.
“Okay,” Tony said, running a hand through his hair. He reached up, placing a hand against his chest. “I have a heart condition. Or, rather, had. It was, until yesterday, thought to be incurable.
“It’s not congenital. It’s not genetic, either. I don’t know what the hell it is. But it developed after-well, you’ve read Marvels, right? Do you remember the issue with Wong-Chu? Yeah. There was a point where I was completely alone with the guy and his cronies. No Rhodey or Virgil to see. And they just… they were brutal. I was unconscious for half of it, so I don’t even know what they did. By the time I managed to escape, I was dying, and I had a repulsor pump installed in my chest. Rhodey found me and took me back to Jarvis, and we worked out a way to get my heart working properly again. The problem was, the only way to do that was to keep the pump charged. If it goes empty, I die.”
Tony paused for a moment, remembering the terror he’d felt at the beginning. It’d been a long time ago, but some things never faded. “Ever since then, every adventure I’ve been on, every issue of Marvels you’ve read… that’s just been me looking for a cure. I tried science. I tried surgery. Nothing works but charging the pump, and that’s not a cure, that’s just a temporary fix, because even with the charge, my heart’s getting worse and worse, and eventually not even the charge will be enough. So I wanted to look for magic. I mean, at this point, science was failing me. Why not just throw all my cards to the wind and see what happened?”
By this point, Steve seemed to be looking vaguely horrified, but still Tony pressed on. “So I looked. And it wasn’t easy. All those adventures I went on took me to obscure corners of the world. Places in South America, China, India, you name it.” Now Antarctica, apparently. “And you can’t really charge up a repulsor pump in the middle of nowhere. So there was always that time constraint.
“Do you remember what you told me earlier? About the percentage display in my chest? You thought I was going to die if it reached zero. And you were right. If the repulsor pump stops, so does my heart. But I lied about it, because I was desperate. I’ve been everywhere, Steve. I’ve been traveling the world for years. If it weren’t for the war, I would have kept looking. But I was at the end of my rope, and I thought here… here would be my last, best chance. And that if it failed, then it wouldn’t matter if it reached zero anyway. Because without something to fix it, it’ll be zero sooner rather than later.”
He picked up a rock, idly tossing it into the pond and watching as it promptly sank without skipping. “So now you understand, maybe. Why I had to keep on looking while we were underground yesterday. We could have left and come back later, sure. But at that point, I didn’t know if there would even be a later for me.” He sighed then, turning to glance back at Steve. “I guess… I just wanted you to know. Why you’re like this. Why I was desperate. And I’m sorry. I never wanted this to happen to you.” Hero of Marvels, indeed. “So… so there we are. Now you know.”
Steve stared at him for a long while, and for a moment Tony wondered if he was even going to do anything. Then he lifted one massive paw, putting it around Tony’s shoulders and pulling him close. “Oof,” Tony said, because even something as well-intentioned as a hug came off as somewhat heavy-handed when Steve as a sabretooth was doing it, but once he got used to the pressure he leaned forward, burying his face against Steve’s fur. “So,” he managed, “a hug. Hugs are good, right?” He heard Steve snort, and then his neck moved in a way that seemed to indicate nodding, even though Tony couldn’t actually see.
They stayed like that for several moments, and then Steve let him go, turning to leave the pond and looking back at Tony, who quickly got up to follow him. There was no fire, so they settled down around their packs, Tony bringing out a sleeping bag and sliding into it. “Aren’t you hungry?” he thought to ask after a moment. Steve shook his head, and Tony frowned. He hadn’t eaten anything since this morning. Then again, for breakfast he’d eaten an entire deer, so maybe he was good to go for some time. “Okay,” he said, getting as comfortable as he could.
He closed his eyes, but instead of falling asleep, he found himself opening them again after just a few minutes, peering at Steve in the darkness. “Hey, Steve?” he asked. Steve made a soft questioning sound in response, so Tony continued, “We’re going to make it in time, Steve. By this time tomorrow, we’ll be at the top, and you’ll be human again. Alright?”
Steve gazed at him for a moment, contemplative, then nodded, placing his paw briefly against Tony’s shoulder. If sabretooths could smile, Tony thought that maybe Steve would be smiling right now. He reached up, patting his paw before Steve drew it away. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Tony rolled back into his sleeping bag then, letting his eyes shut again. “Good night, Steve,” he murmured. His mind drifted, and he thought about the top of the mountain, encased in clouds. They’d make it, he told himself. They had to make it. And then-well, Tony had to admit, he didn’t actually know what came next. Maybe there was another gem he could wish on. Or maybe it would happen on its own. He’d figure it out.
And no matter how many times he dreamed that night of wild eyes and pointed teeth, each time he woke up in a cold sweat and looked at Steve’s sleeping form, he told himself, over and over again-Steve was going to be okay.
Prologue-Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6-Epilogue
Artists: angelicfoodcake and makowe-pola
Author: ashei
Rating (both art/fic): G for art, PG-13 for fic (cursing and mild violence)
Universe: Iron Man Noir
Word Count: 27,191
Warnings: Animal transformation, big cats, questionable magic
Beta: eschatologies
Art Thumbnail:
Fic Summary: Though both the war and his days of adventuring for Marvels are over, Tony Stark is still looking for a cure to his failing heart. When Nick Fury asks him and Captain America to investigate a newly discovered world dubbed the Savage Land, Tony jumps at the chance, hoping to find something - anything - that'll fix him. But once Tony finds that something, he discovers that it comes at the cost of Steve's humanity - leaving Tony to struggle to turn him back before it's too late.
Link to Art: angelicfoodcake's art and makowe-pola's art
Link to Fic: AO3 | LiveJournal
Prologue-Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6-Epilogue
Day Five
Tony woke up the next morning to find a giant sabretooth staring him in the face.
“Holy shit,” he gasped, arms flailing as he scrambled backwards, reaching for his pack so that he could retrieve his gauntlets. The giant sabretooth whined, and Tony blinked, belatedly remembering that oh right, this was the kind of company he was keeping these days because his life was crazy. “…Sorry,” he said after a moment, still trying to catch his breath. Was Steve trying not to laugh? It looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Hey. I dare you to react any differently if our positions had been reversed.” Really! If Steve had been in Tony’s position, he’d probably have decapitated him with his shield by now.
Anyway, now they were both awake, so Tony supposed it was time to grab something to eat before heading out. He glanced out the entrance of the cave they’d taken shelter in last night, squinting at the sunlight. Still early, it seemed. That was good.
He grabbed his pack, digging around inside. “I assume you want something to eat now, right?” he asked. Steve nodded, so Tony managed to retrieve a pack whose contents were labeled as “pork sausage patty”. “What about this?” he asked. “Sausage. Mmm.”
Steve actually frowned at him, shaking his head. Tony frowned back. “What? It’s sausage. Meat. Sabretooths like meat, I thought.” Just not human meat. He hoped.
But since Steve was having none of it, apparently, he pulled out another box, showing it to him. “Do franks and beans appeal more to your picky palette?” When Steve just shook his head again, Tony sighed, dumping the remaining contents of his pack onto the floor. “Well, what do you want? Black beans? Chicken and noodles? I’m not carrying around a five-star restaurant on my back, Steve. I ate pinto beans last night.”
Steve snorted, then blinked as something caught his eye. He reached forward and pointed at one package, looking at Tony accusingly.
Tony raised an eyebrow, following his gaze. Oh. Was that what he was looking at? “Yeah,” he said. “I brought fireworks. What of it?”
He received an eyeroll in return, though thankfully, Steve didn’t seem interested in chiding him further, presumably because he was now a sabretooth and therefore couldn’t chide anyone. Instead, he put one massive paw against one of the boxes of food and pulled it toward him. Then he drew a circle around it before pointing to himself and drawing a much bigger circle around his body.
Tony blinked, realizing the point Steve was trying to make. “Oh,” he said. “It’s not enough food for you. Is that what you’re trying to say?” Steve nodded, and Tony pursed his lips, thinking about it. Steve was huge. He was also not human. What did sabretooths eat? “Should we… hunt?” he asked uncertainly. “Are you up for some dinosaurs?”
Steve blanched and shook his head. Then his eyes lit up, and he started tapping his paw on the ground in a… familiar rhythm. “Do that again,” Tony said when he stopped, and Steve obliged. Yeah, definitely familiar. Son of a gun, he was using Morse code. “Deer,” he repeated. “Okay, wow, that would have been really useful yesterday. You should do that more. Anyway, what, you want to hunt deer? They have deer here?” Steve nodded again.
“Okay.” Tony packed up the food he’d poured out earlier, bringing out his gauntlets. “How do you want to do this? Should I go with you?” Steve shook his head. “You want to go alone?” A nod.
Frowning, Tony set his gauntlets back down. He didn’t like the idea of Steve going out there by himself, but it’d probably be easier for Steve if he flew solo, particularly since Tony wasn’t exactly well-versed in the art of hunting. Not that he thought Steve was either, but maybe he had new instincts now. Still, though… “It’s a bad idea to separate.”
Steve shook his head again. He jabbed one paw at Tony, like an owner motioning for their dog to sit. Safer here, he tapped out.
Tony rolled his eyes. “I’m a big boy,” he said. “I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself once I leave this cave. Look, I’ll just stay behind you, okay? But I don’t want to sit here all day and then find out that you got eaten by something. I’m coming.”
Steve let out a deep sigh, rolling his eyes right back. He didn’t actually argue, though, only turning and leaving, so Tony picked up his gauntlets again, following him out. They’d come back later-assuming Steve managed to actually catch something, he’d probably want it cooked. Maybe. Had Steve’s tastes changed? He supposed they’d find out.
True to his word, he kept a fair distance behind Steve as he prowled, sniffing the air and doing other cat things that Tony couldn’t comprehend. It was, to his surprise, all very boring. He had no idea how to hunt-only to avoid being hunted. And given that Steve couldn’t speak, he couldn’t tell what the hell it was he was actually looking for.
Tony sighed, letting his attention drift. This would make a hell of a storyline for Marvels-not that new issues had been written since the war started, but still. Maybe once they got back-because, of course, they would get back-he’d hit Pepper up and see what she could do. After everything that had happened, the country could do with some good old-fashioned entertainment. And Rhodey, well. Rhodey would be so jealous. But that was what he got for running off to the Army Air Forces instead of sticking around!
He was in the middle of imagining a heroic-looking cover when Steve burst into action in front of him, letting out a ferocious roar and pouncing at something. He looked in time to see what he assumed was a deer try to leap away before being swiped at with one massive paw-it went down in a heap of flailing limbs, then disappeared under Steve’s mass. After a moment, Steve pulled away, and the deer was quiet and unmoving, blood dripping from its neck.
“Uh, wow,” Tony couldn’t help but say as he got closer, staring at the dead deer. “I hope Bambi wasn’t around to see that.”
Steve whipped his head around to look at him, and Tony found himself involuntarily stepping back, automatically bringing his gauntlets up. It was just-for a moment, he’d seemed dangerous. Like an actual sabretooth. But then the look faded, and a puzzled expression took its place. Bamby? he spelled.
Tony took a deep breath, approaching him again since he seemed his usual, Steve-ish self. “I guess you haven’t gotten around to watching many movies since the war ended,” he said. “It’s okay. I’ll explain later. It’s just, uh, wow. You really took that thing down. Was that you or your… more animal side?”
Steve just shrugged, picking the dead deer up in his mouth and ambling back to where they’d left their things, Tony trailing after him again. Did any of this bother Steve? It was hard to tell. But Tony had to admit, for a second there… he’d been terrified. Terrified that Steve was gone and in his place was a massive prehistoric cat that’d just killed something and was looking for blood. And Tony didn’t know if Steve knew that for the briefest of moments, something else had overcome him.
He sighed. Maybe-maybe it had all been just his imagination. Maybe he’d only hallucinated that look of bloodlust in Steve’s eyes. Maybe.
They arrived back at their camp a short while later, Steve depositing the deer carcass at the entrance of the cave, looking at Tony. “Ugh,” he said, kneeling down in front of it. “This is like a mutant deer. Why does it have fangs?” Steve let out a sound that was maybe supposed to approximate a laugh as Tony picked up a stick and prodded it, continuing, “Are you sure this is safe to eat?”
Steve shrugged, licking his lips. Apparently, he didn’t care as long as he got some deer meat in his stomach.
“Okay,” Tony said, starting a fire with his lighter and bringing out his knife. Though he’d never hunted before, he at least knew how to gut and prepare a wild animal-he still had vivid memories of some of the tour guides he’d had during his days of adventuring, slapping down some massive dead animal in front of him and telling him what to do with it. Then again, how picky was Steve going to be? “So what are you expecting? Deer bacon? Or do you not mind if I’m messy and give you a slab covered with deer fur?”
Steve just stared at him for a moment, then lowered his head and took a massive bite out of the body, starting to chew and seemingly oblivious to the blood running down his neck. “Well, that’s nice,” Tony said, making a face as he put his knife away. At least he wouldn’t have to get his hands bloody, though he wasn’t sure that this was actually all that much better. A part of him wanted to watch in morbid fascination as Steve just… chomped away, while another part wanted to run off and go empty his stomach.
Speaking of which, he hadn’t actually yet eaten anything today. He dug out the franks and beans from earlier, going to heat them by the fire as he cast another glance at Steve, who seemed merrily oblivious. Should he point out that at this time yesterday, he’d been eating cooked chicken and rice with a fork? Probably not, he supposed. Steve was surely having a difficult time adjusting, and if he could just forget about it all for a little bit, then that was good… right? Right, of course. So Tony ate his franks and beans without comment, washing it down with some more aspirin, then discreetly scooted back into the cave to watch him. The deer carcass was already half gone by now, and Tony had to wonder if Steve was going to eat the whole thing. Was that even possible? He supposed it was. Steve was huge.
“So you know, I’ve been waiting this whole time for you to offer me some,” Tony said casually after a while, needing to hear more than the sounds of Steve eating an animal he’d killed. “Where are your manners?”
Steve blinked, tilting his head, and Tony could tell what he was thinking. “No, I’m just kidding,” he said. “Eat away. I’m just unsettled by the blood you’re spraying everywhere. But please, continue.” Steve let out a whine at this, like some sort of overgrown… sabretooth puppy, but he obediently went back to munching away as Tony put the fire out and packed their things. Once he was done, he rested his head back against the cave wall and let his eyes shut, tuning out the sounds of Steve eating raw meat.
When he opened his eyes again, Steve was gone.
“Steve?” Tony said, bolting upright as he poked his head out of the cave. Nothing. He turned to look at the remains of the deer, which seemed… recently eaten? He couldn’t tell. But if that gooey stuff there was saliva, then yeah, it was recent. Also disgusting.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself, grabbing the two packs and Steve’s shield as he got up, looking around. Maybe Steve just had to go do his business? He didn’t seem to be in the immediate area, though, and it was strange that he’d just go off without telling Tony.
After several minutes of searching, his fears were confirmed-Steve had apparently wandered off entirely, and Tony had no idea where. This was bad. Should he stay and wait for him to come back? What if he didn’t?
He groaned, running his free hand through his hair. Okay, yeah, magic was nice and it made his heart work and he was very grateful. But this whole sabretooth business was almost making it not worth the trouble.
After a moment of deliberation, he decided to head north, toward the mountain. If he was lucky, that was the direction Steve was heading in. If he was unlucky, then he was pretty screwed.
Hopefully he was lucky.
Half an hour later, he came across some footprints that looked like they were recently made by a large, Steve-as-a-sabretooth-shaped animal. Tony leaned down to inspect them, not sure how to feel. Either this was a good thing because it meant he was on Steve’s tail, or it was a very bad thing because there was another sabretooth wandering around. But even if it was the latter, well, what the hell could he do? He had to find out. So he kept on moving forward, praying that the tracks belonged to Steve and not some other thing that would only be too happy to eat him.
Twenty minutes after that, he was crouching at the edge of a clearing, watching as a sabretooth ambled across it, away from him. Was it Steve? It was hard to tell, and Tony realized with a sinking feeling that he wasn’t sure if Steve had any unusual markings. So what now? If he just called out Steve’s name and attracted the sabretooth’s attention and then it wasn’t Steve, he’d be in trouble.
Unfortunately, he didn’t see any other choice, and Steve-or whoever it was-was getting further and further away with each passing second. “Steve!” he hissed.
The sabretooth stopped-along with Tony’s heart-then slowly turned, looking right at him. His heart started beating normally again once he saw that yes, this was Steve, even if his eyes had gone kind of weird. “Thank God,” he said, standing up and heading into the clearing. “Why did you-”
In the next instant, Steve had bounded forward to close the distance between them, hissing. “Uh, Steve?” Tony began, backing away. He bumped into a tree, then quickly shimmied out of the way so he could keep on backing up, since Steve was being creepy and continuing to approach him slowly. “It’s me, Tony. You remember me, right? Because you have a sort of glint in your eye and it’s unnerving me just a little. So why don’t you just-”
He was interrupted again when Steve leapt at him; automatically, he brought the shield up to protect himself-and instead of hearing the expected sound of claws scratching on metal, he heard-nothing. After a moment, he dared to lower the shield, peeking over it.
Steve was sitting there in front of him, eyes wide and confused as he looked around. When he noticed Tony had lowered the shield, he gaped at him, mouth moving but no human sounds coming out.
“Hey, calm down,” Tony offered quickly, since Steve seemed on the verge of a panic attack, even if he was doing a good job at keeping it under wraps for the time being. “It’s okay. Do you know what just happened? Or how you got here?” Steve shook his head, withdrawing a bit and apparently trying to make himself look as small as possible, which, for an animal of his size, was basically an exercise in futility. Tony sighed. “It’s okay,” he said again, awkwardly reaching out to pet him. “I guess you just… forgot yourself for a moment.” If an hour counted as a moment, but hey, who was arguing semantics? “Anyway, you wandered off without me, but it’s alright. I found you and we’re headed toward the mountain anyway, so no harm done, right?” Steve gave him a morose look, like it was absolutely not alright, but Tony tried to ignore it.
“Okay,” he said instead, trying to sound peppy. “So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to please get that mopey look off your face, because it’s actually kind of depressing, and then we’re going to get our asses up that mountain. So turn around and let me mount you.” Wow, that came out wrong.
Steve stared at him, but instead of looking amused he just looked more depressed. “What?” Tony pressed. “Okay, that wasn’t the best choice in words. Let me ride you. Better?” Steve shook his head again. Dangerous, he tapped out.
Tony frowned. “Dangerous?” he repeated. “Why? Because you’re afraid you’ll forget yourself while I’m on you?” Steve nodded, and Tony waved a hand dismissively in response. “It’s going to be fine, Steve. Don’t worry.” When Steve refused to turn around, Tony just tsked, placing his hands on his hips. “So what?” he said. “You want to waste the rest of the day arguing this with me? Because that’s an awful idea. But sure, we can just sit here and do nothing, if you want. It’s your choice, really, because I mean, it’s not like we have to be anywhere by tomorrow night. So what’s it going to be?”
At last, the morose expression disappeared from Steve’s face, only to be replaced by one of annoyance. Well, Tony would take what he could get. “Thought so,” he said as Steve turned around. He clambered onto him, clutching his fur. “See? Progress is nice, isn’t it?”
Steve sighed and started heading off again, and Tony was left to just cling onto him in silence, watching the scenery fly by. Before he knew it, the ground was sloping upward as the foliage got less dense, though there were still trees frequently peppering the mountainside. Were there pterodactyls here? Tony really hoped there weren’t. Because that would be bad.
For now, though, the skies seemed clear, and Steve seemed to be himself, if quietly trotting up a mountain while inhabiting the body of a prehistoric cat counted as being himself. Several times, Tony wondered if he should just… say something, anything, to break the silence, but what good would it do? Steve couldn’t talk back. While he was moving, he couldn’t even spell anything. So Tony just stayed quiet, enjoying the ride as best as he could.
They managed to find a small pond partway up the mountain after dusk, deciding to set up camp there for the night. As Steve went to lap up water from the pond, Tony opened the pack of black beans and ate them cold, feeling too vulnerable to start a fire. What if pterodactyls were nocturnal?
Once the beans were consumed, Tony turned to look at Steve, who was back to looking morose, staring into the pond-presumably at his reflection. He sighed. “Steve?” he tried. But Steve just waved a paw at him, not looking away. Maybe he just wanted some alone time, so Tony decided to leave him be and leaned back against a tree trunk, staring up into the sky. It was still light enough to make out most things, though the moon had risen by now.
Once the stars stopped capturing his interest, though, he found his eyes drifting toward Steve’s pack. He hadn’t really looked inside it, except when searching for something more appetizing than beans-which, unfortunately, did not yield him any particularly thrilling results. But he was aware that Steve kept his notepad in there, and even though he knew he shouldn’t be nosy, well, he was curious and bored. Besides, it didn’t look like Steve was paying attention to him right now.
Carefully, he reached in, pulling the notepad out. Knowing Steve, it was probably filled with boring notes about the flora and fauna and whatever else they were supposed to be taking notes on, and sure enough, the first half of the notepad didn’t disappoint. But since Steve was still moping and Tony was still bored-since, after all, boring notes on stuff he’d already seen were boring-he kept on flipping. And that was when he found the drawings.
There were a lot of them. Various men in uniform who Tony assumed were the famed Howling Commandos-they looked vaguely familiar, at least. There was one man in particular who kept on showing up, labeled as “Bucky”. Then there was a woman, too, labeled only as “Agent 13”.
He flipped through more of the pages. There were a lot of Buckys and Agent 13s. Pages and pages of them, all with varying expressions, though none of them were sad or angry, almost as though Steve only wanted to capture them at their best. Tony had to wonder if they’d posed for Steve, or if he’d done them from memory, but looking down at the dates confirmed that some of these were only a few days old. Huh. He was very good, then.
Tony flipped to another page, only to realize that he was staring at a drawing of… himself. He blinked. What was he doing in here? He went to the next page, realizing that this, too, was a drawing of him, face lit by the firelight as he studied his gauntlets. When had Steve done these?
There was a caption beneath one of them. Tony leaned down, trying to read the writing in the fading light. Hero of Marvels, it said.
For some reason, Tony felt a pang of guilt ripple through him. All this time, Tony had thought of Steve as occasionally charming, but mostly annoying, and Steve… despite what he’d said earlier, Steve still thought of him as Marvels’ hero, regardless of what Tony himself thought-as though he could see something in him that Tony was missing.
He shut the notepad, quickly shoving it back into Steve’s pack and glancing over at him. From the looks of it, Steve was still staring into the pond-he should put a stop to that, probably, and so he got up, walking toward Steve. Once there, he took a seat beside him, ignoring his surprised glance. “Hey,” he said. “You want to talk?” Steve gave him a look, and Tony groaned, rubbing his forehead. Right. Steve couldn’t talk. And the reason he couldn’t talk was probably because Tony thought he was annoying. Magic was irritating sometimes.
“Sorry,” Tony continued with a sigh. “Look, Steve, I want to share something with you, if you want to listen. Do you know why I had a metal plate over my heart?”
Steve blinked at him a few times, looking surprised. He then hesitated for a moment, as though he was still shocked that Tony was actually opening up about this, then eventually shook his head.
“Okay,” Tony said, running a hand through his hair. He reached up, placing a hand against his chest. “I have a heart condition. Or, rather, had. It was, until yesterday, thought to be incurable.
“It’s not congenital. It’s not genetic, either. I don’t know what the hell it is. But it developed after-well, you’ve read Marvels, right? Do you remember the issue with Wong-Chu? Yeah. There was a point where I was completely alone with the guy and his cronies. No Rhodey or Virgil to see. And they just… they were brutal. I was unconscious for half of it, so I don’t even know what they did. By the time I managed to escape, I was dying, and I had a repulsor pump installed in my chest. Rhodey found me and took me back to Jarvis, and we worked out a way to get my heart working properly again. The problem was, the only way to do that was to keep the pump charged. If it goes empty, I die.”
Tony paused for a moment, remembering the terror he’d felt at the beginning. It’d been a long time ago, but some things never faded. “Ever since then, every adventure I’ve been on, every issue of Marvels you’ve read… that’s just been me looking for a cure. I tried science. I tried surgery. Nothing works but charging the pump, and that’s not a cure, that’s just a temporary fix, because even with the charge, my heart’s getting worse and worse, and eventually not even the charge will be enough. So I wanted to look for magic. I mean, at this point, science was failing me. Why not just throw all my cards to the wind and see what happened?”
By this point, Steve seemed to be looking vaguely horrified, but still Tony pressed on. “So I looked. And it wasn’t easy. All those adventures I went on took me to obscure corners of the world. Places in South America, China, India, you name it.” Now Antarctica, apparently. “And you can’t really charge up a repulsor pump in the middle of nowhere. So there was always that time constraint.
“Do you remember what you told me earlier? About the percentage display in my chest? You thought I was going to die if it reached zero. And you were right. If the repulsor pump stops, so does my heart. But I lied about it, because I was desperate. I’ve been everywhere, Steve. I’ve been traveling the world for years. If it weren’t for the war, I would have kept looking. But I was at the end of my rope, and I thought here… here would be my last, best chance. And that if it failed, then it wouldn’t matter if it reached zero anyway. Because without something to fix it, it’ll be zero sooner rather than later.”
He picked up a rock, idly tossing it into the pond and watching as it promptly sank without skipping. “So now you understand, maybe. Why I had to keep on looking while we were underground yesterday. We could have left and come back later, sure. But at that point, I didn’t know if there would even be a later for me.” He sighed then, turning to glance back at Steve. “I guess… I just wanted you to know. Why you’re like this. Why I was desperate. And I’m sorry. I never wanted this to happen to you.” Hero of Marvels, indeed. “So… so there we are. Now you know.”
Steve stared at him for a long while, and for a moment Tony wondered if he was even going to do anything. Then he lifted one massive paw, putting it around Tony’s shoulders and pulling him close. “Oof,” Tony said, because even something as well-intentioned as a hug came off as somewhat heavy-handed when Steve as a sabretooth was doing it, but once he got used to the pressure he leaned forward, burying his face against Steve’s fur. “So,” he managed, “a hug. Hugs are good, right?” He heard Steve snort, and then his neck moved in a way that seemed to indicate nodding, even though Tony couldn’t actually see.
They stayed like that for several moments, and then Steve let him go, turning to leave the pond and looking back at Tony, who quickly got up to follow him. There was no fire, so they settled down around their packs, Tony bringing out a sleeping bag and sliding into it. “Aren’t you hungry?” he thought to ask after a moment. Steve shook his head, and Tony frowned. He hadn’t eaten anything since this morning. Then again, for breakfast he’d eaten an entire deer, so maybe he was good to go for some time. “Okay,” he said, getting as comfortable as he could.
He closed his eyes, but instead of falling asleep, he found himself opening them again after just a few minutes, peering at Steve in the darkness. “Hey, Steve?” he asked. Steve made a soft questioning sound in response, so Tony continued, “We’re going to make it in time, Steve. By this time tomorrow, we’ll be at the top, and you’ll be human again. Alright?”
Steve gazed at him for a moment, contemplative, then nodded, placing his paw briefly against Tony’s shoulder. If sabretooths could smile, Tony thought that maybe Steve would be smiling right now. He reached up, patting his paw before Steve drew it away. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Tony rolled back into his sleeping bag then, letting his eyes shut again. “Good night, Steve,” he murmured. His mind drifted, and he thought about the top of the mountain, encased in clouds. They’d make it, he told himself. They had to make it. And then-well, Tony had to admit, he didn’t actually know what came next. Maybe there was another gem he could wish on. Or maybe it would happen on its own. He’d figure it out.
And no matter how many times he dreamed that night of wild eyes and pointed teeth, each time he woke up in a cold sweat and looked at Steve’s sleeping form, he told himself, over and over again-Steve was going to be okay.
Prologue-Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6-Epilogue