Title: Good Intentions
Fandom: Avengers (movieverse)
Rating: PG-13 for language
Length: 1,400 words
Content notes: Warnings for references to self-harm, mild body horror.
Spoilers: Major spoilers for the movie; goes slightly AU from near the end of the film. Some backstory spoilers for Captain America, The Hulk, and Iron Man.
Author notes: Written for the Mythology challenge at fan_flashworks and for a prompt square on my Horror Bingo card (exact prompt at the end of the story). [btw - You can find out more about Horror Bingo here.]
Summary: It means Tony's math was wrong, and hey, he can live with a mistake like that once in a while, obviously. But he can't just leave it at that.

Good Intentions

His first clue is the arc reactor.

No, actually, his first clue is the fucking physics. Because he's Tony Stark, and the fact that he is carrying a fucking nuclear warhead through a fucking wormhole in space is not enough to distract him from doing the math.

He has to guess the rating on the bomb, though he’s sure he’s right about that because he’s always right about weapons. Usually. Frequently. Anyway, he has a solid estimate for the bomb, and absolutely certain knowledge about the completely inadequate radiation shielding on the suit, because he built the Mark VI himself and didn’t really plan to take it into space in the first place.

The expansion sphere of an explosion in vacuum would be easy, but he has to modify it for the gravity of the Earth coming through the wormhole. And isn’t that a kick in the pants, because gravity works through wormholes which means there’s a chance that Tony’s body might fall back home instead of floating forever in space.

And it will be his body, because no matter how he works the equations, that’s the only outcome of this particular situation. One dead Tony Stark, sorry about that, nice knowing you.

Except it doesn't happen that way. He wakes up on a pile of Manhattan rubble with the Hulk's roar trumpeting down the boulevard. Which means Tony's math was wrong, and hey, he can live with a mistake like that once in a while, obviously. But he can't just leave it at that.

Maybe there was some effect from the wakes of the Chitauri engines -- and how the hell much interference would it take to shift the radiation pattern, anyway? He starts working the problem on the back of a napkin at the shawarma place until Bruce spills his water glass and the ink runs across the table. That's why Tony doesn't like working on paper; too ephemeral.

When he talks to Jarvis after Pepper goes to bed, the AI confirms that some radiation made it back through the wormhole before it closed. Determining approximately how much takes a bit more time and some tinkering with designs for a modified spinthariscope that Tony never gets around to building because he notices the fucking arc reactor first.

Which isn’t really a clue so much as a giant fucking neon sign with ten-foot tall letters, because the scar tissue is gone.

The original magnet installation, though clever in its own bone-headed stone-age kind of way, wasn’t exactly performed up to Beverly Hills beauty standards. And Tony’s improvements weren’t perfect either, considering he was operating on his own fucking chest at the time, without even a decent surgery bot to help him. So there were ridges of scar tissue around the edges of the insertion manifold, and some nasty exposed nerves along the inside of the casing. Those were only an issue when the arc reactor was out of the casing, and since that hardly ever happened without something else being horribly wrong, Tony considered that barely a flaw at all.

So when he’s in the shower and his fingers don’t find that normal, expected, thoroughly reassuring ring of scar tissue, it’s more than a fucking clue. It’s just that it’s also confusing as hell. As is the fact that he can’t get the cover off the arc reactor. Even once he gets his hands dry and gets back to the workshop and all the tools that put it on in the first place.

Tony’s unpacking the scalpels to see if he can carve the damned thing out of his flesh before it occurs to him that maybe, just maybe, he’s not thinking straight. He doesn’t remember drinking this evening, certainly not enough to make him hallucinate -- which is usually enough to keep him from standing straight, and the floor looks like it’s in the right place. But he’ll be really embarrassed tomorrow if Pepper finds him on the floor in his bathrobe, caked in his own blood, and moaning about how the arc reactor’s grown into his body like a chest-burster in reverse.

Pepper’d probably be pretty upset by that, too.

So Tony decides they’ll both feel better if he lets Jarvis run a full medical diagnostic on him before he starts any unplanned surgeries. He’s ready to congratulate himself on his cholesterol numbers and his highly improved blood pressure, but unfortunately for Tony’s peace of mind, Jarvis’s readouts are all wrong.

“You missed a spot there.” He taps twice at the transparent image of himself to spin it again. “And there –“

“No, sir, the image is correct.”

Tony wipes the image from the screen impatiently. If he has to fix Jarvis, too, this night is officially fired. “No, it isn’t. You’re missing the scar on my left knee –“

“ -- Yes, sir, that was clearly indicated on your previous scans.”

Tony rolls his eyes, already calling up a diagnostic on the scanning equipment. Night, blown. “Then why isn’t it on this image, smart-ass?”

“Because you don’t have it any more. “

It’s not Jarvis’s voice, though Jarvis really shouldn’t have let anyone else into the workshop without clearing it with Tony first. So it takes Tony a moment to turn toward the door, and another to actually recognize Phil Coulson standing there.

And then Tony’s scrabbling to stay in his chair, because he almost falls out of it. And okay, maybe that drinking thing happened at some point when he wasn’t looking, because last time he checked, Phil Coulson was dead.

“No scars, no healed bone breaks –“ The obviously not-dead man takes another step into the workshop, letting the doors close behind him. “And you can stop touching up the gray in your hair; it’ll grow in like this.”

Tony takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Obvious answer: Nick Fury is a manipulating, lying, son of a bitch. “I presume rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated?”

“Oh, no. I was dead.” A tiny half-smile slides across the agent’s face. “I’ve been dead three times since the Hulk pulled me out of a collapsed building in British Columbia.”

Tony blinks twice as his brain just balks at information for the first time all night. Not that he can blame it – he needs a drink, or maybe about three hundred milligrams of caffeine in an insufflatable medium. “You are not implying what it sounds like you’re implying. And if you are, I really don’t think your head’s on straight.”

That half-smile disappears. “Be glad he knew the suit came off.“

Tony knows a challenge when he hears one, and no blank-faced agent is going to spook him that easily. So he rolls his chair a few feet closer and pushes his brain down that unlikely path. “Okay, let’s go with it. As a hypothesis. The Hulk can bring people back to life, presumably by roaring at them. Sound therapy, I’ve heard of that. From crackpots. Which Bruce isn’t, so I assume he’s entirely unaware of this amazing talent?”

Coulson tugs one of the workshop stools over and sits down, back still ramrod straight. His chiropractor probably loves him. “We don’t think Dr. Banner suspects.”

“Well, really, who would?” Tony laughs, but it comes out too high-pitched, so Tony swallows the rest back. No panicking for a hypothesis. “After all, he was trying to duplicate the Super Soldier research, not turn himself into a – hey! So he’s like Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Frankenstein, all at once, that’s hilarious –“

Tony catches the barest edge of an expression on Coulson’s face. “Wait, what was that about?”

Coulson just waits, in that ridiculously uber-calm way that Pepper really admires. Just for that, Tony’s going to make Coulson come to breakfast, and Pep can see how she likes that look when she’s freaking out.

Tony plays back through what he was saying before he derailed himself with his own scintillating humor. “Holy crap. The Super Soldier research. What the hell was Erskine trying to do?”

“Hell is the wrong word, Mr. Stark.” Coulson breaks into a full-blown smile, which is creepy as fuck and Tony would like him to stop now. In fact, he’d like to go on record as saying that Phil Coulson is no longer allowed facial expressions at all.

“Dr. Erskine wanted to make an angel.”



Extra credit note: Written for the "Resurrection gone horribly wrong" square on my Horror Bingo card.