The dust of the Triskelion's collapse had barely settled when the heavy glass doors of the Umbrella Executive Suite slid open. Tony Stark stepped in, his boots clanging rhythmically against the polished floor. He looked less like a conqueror and more like a man who had walked through a hurricane and forgotten why he went outside in the first place. His armor was scarred, the gold titanium alloy streaked with soot and the hydraulic fluid of crushed Hydra mechs. His face was a map of exhaustion, his eyes wide and unblinking.
Behind him, two massive U.S.S. troopers carried a stretcher. On it lay the Winter Soldier, still unconscious from the precision strike Tony had delivered in the bunker.
"You look like hell, Tony," I said softly, setting aside my tablet.
"I feel like the 'Original Timeline' version of me just got hit by a freight train," he rasped, collapsing into a modular sofa. He didn't even bother to take off the gauntlets. "It's done. S.H.I.E.L.D. is a memory. Hydra is... well, they're being hunted down like rats by your boys in black. Are we winning, Aryan? Because it feels like the world just got a lot smaller."
"We're organizing, Tony. There's a difference." I turned to face him, my voice steady. "Go to the residential wing. Get some real food and a shower. You've spent the last six hours playing God, now you need to remember how to be a man. Sort out your thoughts. We have a lot of road ahead of us tomorrow."
He nodded, stood up with a groan of protesting metal and muscle and let a waiting attendant guide him toward the living quarters.
Once Tony was gone, I turned my attention to the stretcher in the corner of the room.
Bucky Barnes lay motionless, his chest rising and falling in a shallow rhythm. The magnetic restraints on his metal arm hummed with a low frequency, ensuring that even if he woke, the limb would be dead weight.
I walked over and stood over him. To the world, he was a ghost story. To Tony, he was a wound. To me, he was a broken asset that needed recalibration.
I placed a hand near his forehead. My Omega level Telepathy brushed against his mind, even in unconsciousness, it was a labyrinth of frozen corridors, screaming static and blood stained memories locked behind heavy steel doors. The programming was deep… seventy years of torture and reconfiguration.
I spoke to unconscious Bucky, my voice low. "I am choosing to forgive you for now, James. But I am only one man. The families of the people you killed… they won't be so quick to offer grace."
I signaled the U.S.S. guards.
"Take him to the secure medical holding suite. Level 4 containment. Keep him sedated until I authorize the neural realignment protocol. No one disturbs him."
The guards nodded and wheeled the Winter Soldier away. He will sleep for now.
An hour later, I found Tony in the private lounge. He had showered and changed into a simple black shirt and jeans, looking startlingly human without the armor. He was staring out at the Manhattan skyline, holding a glass of scotch he hadn't touched. On a muted screen in the background, a replay of "The Leader's" speech was running, the amber eyes of my alter ego promising a new dawn.
I sat down in the armchair opposite him. "Feeling more human?"
"Slightly," Tony said, his voice quiet. "Still waiting for the part where I wake up and I'm back in that cave in Afghanistan that never came. Everything's moving too fast, Aryan. The Federation, the purge, the collapse of the spy game... I keep looking for the catch."
"The catch is that you're finally in a position to fix things and that scares you," I replied. "You're used to being the insurgent, Tony. Now you're the establishment. It's a different kind of pressure."
He swirled the amber liquid in his glass. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm just wondering what happens when we run out of bad guys."
"We won't," I assured him. "But I didn't come here to talk politics. I came to offer you something else."
Tony looked at me, a weary smirk touching his lips. "I'm already a technopathic god with a healing factor, what else is there? A flying car? I already built one."
"No," I said, leaning forward, my expression serious. "There is an option within the Castle's system. A manifestation of power called Mediumship. It's a bridge between the living world and the afterlife. It's a one time experience."
Tony's glass stopped mid air. He went very still.
"It can bring them through, Tony. Just for a conversation. Your father. Your mother. Tomorrow, in the Castle, you can get the chance to say what you never got to say."
Tony's breathing hitched. For all his genius, for all his power, for all the billions of dollars and the suits of armor, this was the one thing he couldn't build. He couldn't engineer a "sorry" to a dead man. He couldn't invent a "goodbye" to a murdered woman.
"You're serious?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "This isn't a holographic playback? It's not an AI simulation based on their brain patterns and old home movies?"
"It is them," I said firmly. "It will be a one time experience. You can ask Howard about his work, you can tell Maria you love her, or you can just sit there in silence with them. It's your choice."
Tony closed his eyes. A single tear tracked through the faint traces of fatigue still on his cheek. "I... I don't know if I'm ready."
"You have until tomorrow to get ready," I said, standing up and placing a hand on his shoulder. "But for tonight, you need to go home, Tony. You've spent enough time in the shadows of the Hive."
"Home," Tony scoffed lightly, wiping his face. "Malibu is a long flight."
"I've already taken care of it. I sent a U.S.S. detachment to protect Pepper. They've been there since the Triskelion went red. She's safe, she's at the house and she's waiting for you. My jet is prepped on the roof. You need to be with someone who doesn't see you as 'Iron Man.' You need to be Tony."
Tony stood up, his legs looking a bit steadier. "You're getting scarily good at this, you know? The whole 'caring for the soul' thing. It's a bit jarring coming from the guy who just dismantled the Hydra before lunch."
I laughed, a genuine sound that broke the tension. "Someone has to keep you balanced, Stark. If I leave you to your own devices, you'll start trying to build a Dyson sphere around the sun by Tuesday just to stay busy."
"Hey, don't give me ideas. A Dyson sphere would solve the energy crisis for the next ten millennia," he joked, the old spark returning to his eyes. He paused at the door, turning back. "Aryan... thanks. For the Pepper thing. And for... the other thing. Tomorrow."
"Go home, Tony. I'll see you in Sefirah Castle tomorrow afternoon. We have a soldier to save and a legacy to reconcile."
I watched him leave, his silhouette disappearing into the elevator. As the doors closed, I stood alone in the quiet brilliance of the Umbrella headquarters.
I walked back to the window. The city below was beginning to light up under the new Federation protocols, a sea of orderly light.