Father of the Slain (IV)

They roared out of the parking lot with Meredith Quill in Agent's lap and Rogue on the other side, both women holding onto Richard's legs so he wouldn't be blown off his feet where he stood in the middle of it all, one foot on the floor and one on the backseat. It was just in time for metallic stomps to come from around a building, then a laser sight and massive flare alit on them from the shoulder ports of a fucking giant robot.

Richard took out the spotlight with a short burst of fire just before Tony managed to turn them around a building and escape its sights.

"What the hell are those things?"

"We call'em Sentinels."

"Sentinels? Sentinels against what?"

"The 'mutant menace', if you believe anything coming from them."

Mutants? So they weren't a myth – a second sentinel landed with a crash right ahead of them. "OH SHIT!" Tony barely swerved around it and the rocket holy shit, before Rogue managed to shoot out its lights this time – "Son, on your right!" – and Tony barely managed to take the side-alley in time. He tried not to think too much about the two random vehicles that hadn't survived their encounter with the-

"Bogey one at seven a clock one block away," Agent Agent rattled. "Taking to the air. Flight confirmed. Miss Rogue, any info on how they're tracking us?"

"Night vision, probably. Heat and motion sensors too I guess."

"You guess?"

"Ya think this is my normal evenin' entertainment?" Rogue grit her teeth as she strained to hold Richard in place during a particularly nasty turn. "Only heard about them before, and it were a long time ago."

"Why the night flares?" Richard cut in.

"Target acquisition I think. Face matching. But they ignored me before so I'm still not on their databases. Either they're after the magic lady or one of y'all."

"And the miss and Mr. Rider are the only two that haven't been targeted today," Agent said as grim looks were exchanged. "Threat assessment?"

"They're giant killer robots that fly, what do ya want me to say?"

Robot one overflew them just then and landed harshly right ahead. It took every last nerve Tony had not to crash the car the same way those two other in late-night traffic did against its shins.

"LEFT!"

"I see it!"

Barely, but enough to jink away from the path of the machine gun that unfolded from its arm. They hoofed past the robot just short of the missile spat out from its chest. The rapport of Richard and Agent's rifles barely registered amidst the cacophony. "Steel-made exoskeletons for great strength, dexterity and resistance to attacks," Tony rattled in an attempt to calm his racing heart. "Chassis capable of retaining integrity at moderate jet speeds, so probably capable of withstanding the impact from a falling crane. Flexible but armored frame. Armor strong enough to shrug off heavy calibre weapons."

"Not quite," Richard said as he reloaded and how was he so calm!? "Agent, there should be some sticks of TNT in the bag. Get them ready for me."

"Fight capability not exercised in tandem with other capabilities," Tony rattled before old Dad could more than sputter. "Insufficient computing? Poor target lock? Inadequate recoil compensation?"

"They tried it with Logan," Rogue said as she tracked what she could in the dark. "Couldn't hit jack."

"So one or all three?" Tony said, mildly disbelieving. "What is this, a test drive?"

"It might be," Stark senior said darkly. "Or it was sold that way by whoever needed cover to take us ou-MISSILE ON YOUR NINE!" Tony braked so abruptly that Richard almost fell on top of them. The road ahead exploded under missiles and gatling gun fire. "GO GO GO!" Tony stepped on it and cleared the spot just as a second trio of missiles hit where they just stood.

"Interstate exit on the right in five hundred meters," Agent wheezed. "Don't miss it!"

"What, you mean like they're missing us?" Tony said hysterically. "What, were heat-seekers above budget?"

"I'm containing our heat emissions," said implausibly pretty witch lady. "Don't think I can manage anything fancier though."

"Lady, what even are you?"

The wail of police sirens began to pierce the night, finally, but Tony didn't think it was anything more than too little, too late. What could police do, anyway? The noise of a flying sentinel behind them overtook it immediately too. Tony wondered if he should feel more sympathetic to the various people forming the troublesome traffic they had to wade through, but it washed away in the steadily mounting tide of sheer panic he was barely staving off.

Social engineering. This had nothing to do with social engineering but social engineering goddammit!

"Agent. Light one of the TNT sticks for me, will you?"

Agent Creepy looked up in disbelief, but did as told anyway.

Then Richard shot the robot. Three times in three second bursts. Glancing sparks were all he got for his trouble. Undeterred, he aimed more carefully and shot again. At the shoulder joint. Once. Twice. Three times.

Tony, miraculously, got to see it through the rear-view mirror. Whatever thrusters it was using were not stealthy at all. The first burst dented it. The second hit right between the armor and the shoulder plate. And the third struck the edge of the shoulder armor just so.

Three .44 magnum bullets ricochet off plate and behind the plates, wrecking merry havoc inside. Impact-primed missiles exploded in their sockets.

The sentinel went down in a loud, flaming a rumble.

Then Richard took the dangerously low-fuse TNT stick and threw it almost gently.

It reached the spot where it landed just in time to blow up in its face.

BOOM!

Tony Stark really wondered if he should feel suspicious of his old buddy, but he was a tad too scared and stunned out of his – "MOTHERFUCKER-!" With an abrupt jerk of the wheel, the car damn right drifted and barely made it through the interstate exit he'd almost missed. "Why did it have to be revenge of the Fun-Fun Killer Robot?" Tony moaned as he struggled not to puke from the g's. "Why couldn't it have been The Iron Giant? Or Peter Pan?"

"You know, there are two versions of Peter Pan. Disney didn't get much right. In the story everyone knows, there's mention that he flies with children who have died. Helping them find the afterlife. In the other, in the original edition, Peter kills the lost boys when they get too old. Either way, he's surrounded by death."

"Oh fuck you so much, Agent!" That was when the overpass caved in. "YAUGH!" A piece of concrete smacked him in the head, but it actually helped his focus rather than hinder it. Which was good because he'd missed his Dad's last couple of calls of "Right – left - THE OTHER LEFT!"

"Dad shut up!" Tony yelled as he avoided the many cars that had screeched to a halt and sped past the few that hadn't. "I can see well enough and the mirrors are enough for everything else!"

For a wonder, his dad did as he demanded, but Tony found he didn't much care about finally scoring such a triumph. Not after having had his most exciting day in years cut short, only to then be blown up to hell and back. Then only narrowly escape going through it again. And again. All the while holding a high-speed chase against flying robots allied with unknown villains. This, shooting forward while the world exploded around him with just a machine between him and destruction, this... this was what he was built for.

Unfortunately, apex moments also tended to be the times of heaviest realizations. "Hey Dad," Tony said casually. Too casually. "Say you had to sell a product to your directors board. How many would you make?"

"…Three," Howard Stark said, the dreadful realisation coming upon him as well just as they burst onto the highway. "The prototype, the backup prototype, and..."

"The final proof of concept EVERYBODY DUCK!" Tony changed lanes and switched gears so fast that they went from 65 mph to 200 in less than ten seconds. It was barely enough to spare them death by six explosions, unlike the poor saps that they left behind. "Fuck!" Tony burst. "Fuck you twice!" he then screamed when he reflexively ducked from the gatling gun fire that thankfully missed them.

"Bogey one at six o'clock, four hundred meters," Richard wheezed from behind him. He'd fallen down between the seats at some point.

"Bogey two at 4 o'clock, eight hundred meters flight path erratic but gaining on us steadily. Damage to head was not crippling."

"Damn," Richard said. "Okay. Okay, fine. We'll just use a whole roll of TNT this time. Rogue, think you can handle that while I cripple the second one?"

"Call it, sugar."

"Completely certifiable," Agent muttered but did his own part in keeping an eye out.

Which would have been fine if not for one thing. "So what, no third?"

The answer came in the form of the biggest and brightest searchlight yet. And not from any of the police helicopters that were all still too far away.

Sentinel three. Intact. Fresh. Its light locked on them from where it was landing a mile right ahead.

"… Mother of god," shitty old Dad breathed next to him.

Tony agreed with his father and the world seemed sharp all of a sudden. Like those moments when he was inventing things and a mental block crumbled in the face of a eureka moment that showed him perfectly what he was working towards. Where everything should be. When everything should lock. How everything should fall. It was strange to have one now. Also, vaguely insulting. These flying robots were nothing like anything he'd ever design. The frame was too big, the machinery too inefficient, the armor superfluous in the face of even civilian-grade armsfire as long as the gunner knew what he was doing. The weapons were all conventional systems that the robots had been built around, instead of the reverse. And the less said about the propulsion the better. They wasted power and maneuvered like shit in the air. And the stabilizing hand thrusters had enough power behind them to blow up a block, but whoever their maker was had somehow missed the offensive potential entirely.

Honestly, was their maker on drugs when he designed them? Because deliberate sabotage was the only other explanation! Who made giant killer robots that managed to kill everyone except its targets, seriously? Give him a suit of armor and he'd kick their ass to the far side of the moon and back. Give him the barebones of an exoskeleton and he still could do better than this lot!

Hell, he was doing better than that right now! He knew how fast they could fly. He knew how slowly they accelerated and why. He'd guessed their ammo capacity and then some. He'd seen enough to know their load and attack times. The only thing not his that he knew better than those robots now was Richard's car. He knew its size. He knew the engine and the mods. He knew just how to steer and what pedal to press and when and how. And he knew that he would never measure up to even the lowest of his old man's standards no matter how he tried. This, though. This he could do at least.

"Hey Dad," Tony Stark said with unnatural calmness as he gripped the wheel tighter than he ever had anything. The car's inertia vs. momentum ratio, calculated. The drag of the tires on one year-old asphalt beneath them, calculated. The missile launch and impact times thereof, calculated. The bullet firing rate and flight paths of the gatling guns, calculated. The distance to the lane divider on the left and the edge fence, calculated. The distance to every other car on the road around them, calculated. "Don't blame Richard for this, alright?"

"What-?"

Then he spun the wheel all the way to the right and then all the way back one second later, all in one blast.

The car swerved violently perpendicular to their travel path and tipped dangerously sideways just in time for the wheels to reverse all at once. And so the car slid forward in a 180-degree drift amidst bullet fire and a rain of missiles that exploded behind and ahead of them in paired bursts that never struck them even once, because Anthony Edward Stark was just awesome like that. Oh, how he'd bedazzle the world with his brilliance if he made it out alive.

Dreams were really something, huh?

If there was one thing that frustrated Tony Stark about his mind, it was that it always ran ahead of his body. It was why he didn't like fighting. Because very often he only got to see ahead of time how and why the other guy was going to pound him into the ground. All without him being able to muster enough strength or even move fast enough to stop it.

It was kind of like that now, with how he saw in full the sentinel's gun firing and the air parting between him and the bullet that got him right through the left eye.

He fell into darkness. He stayed in darkness for a time. At one point he thought he could hear something tearing all around him, like fabric. But the darkness remained. Then everything seemed to fall even though he couldn't see anything. But he fell too, from dark to light and dark again amidst distant cacophony. The dark parted from him then, leaving him to tumble away through a world colored in shades of amber until he struck and rolled across a rough, hard ground. He came to a halt at the foot of a massive wall. It reached far into the sky and stretched from one horizon to the other. All the while, light and smoke and clouds seemed to rise and fall and rush every which way around him. He was surprised to see so much. There was no sun in the sky, so wasn't it night still, wherever he was?

The sound of distant thunder sounded. Then it sounded again. Closer. Massive rainclouds gathered from the west. He wondered if it was important.

Then he heard the flap of wings and a gargantuan raven came down from the sky. It bent down, plucked him in its beak and took flight again, shooting like an arrow towards the east. Higher and higher until every car below was a pinprick of color he shouldn't be able to see at all. Then down again even as the rainstorm gained on them, lightning streaking all across the sky in their wake and was that a blackbird?

The raven landed on the hood of Richard's car just in time to distract the driver from the man that appeared and punched a crack into the world right in their path.

The world broke around them, in shards that came through in their own color despite the amber film overlaying the world. Tony saw reflections on them. Of everything that was and things that weren't there. Visions. Shards on a spider's web, with a flower from which a seated man glanced right at him in passing. Then they came out the other side and found themselves driving through an empty mirror of reality where nothing lived and nothing moved unless it was moved or moved itself.

Through it all, Tony stared at his dead body and the weeping father who clung to it, entranced.

Then the raven took flight again, forth and higher and higher even as the road seemed to bend and wrap around itself like a cage, paths and earth and road slabs turning into bars that grew thicker and thicker until the cage barely had any splits at all. The raven burst out through the last of the closing gaps just in time for Tony to see the three sentinel robots fall into the trap. Then they were away, soaring higher and higher as the world ahead folded in half at the horizon. Folded further and further until they may as well be flying not up but straight down towards the empty reflection of a town.

They burst out of the mirror world in the sky above Fulton. The raven veered away then. Flew towards a homestead on the outskirts amidst greenery and trees, then past it over a forest and a veil of ripples in the light. A great vision bloomed before him then, of a myriad strands of white light in the shape of a man dotted with eyes of fire. It winked out of sight the instant after. Just a normal man was left behind, if any normal man existed that could stand on one finger on the tip of the top-most needle of the only fir tree anywhere in sight.

The raven circled him once, twice, three times before the man deigned to acknowledge them. He flipped off the tree and fell dozens of meters before landing lightly on his feet. Floated to the ground, almost. He then held out an arm for the raven to land upon.

"Not many know of me," the man said as he beheld the bird. "Few among them could find me. Fewer still are likely to receive warm welcome from me, and I count no gods among them or their messengers. Why are you here and what offering think you is good enough to buy my goodwill?"

The raven spread it wings and crowed long. A trio of interlocked triangles overlapped Tony's sight for a moment. He thought he caught a glimpse of the many-stranded-one too, but it was gone quicker than he could catch it.

"Ah. Well this is a mighty fine mess you brought me, isn't it? And your price for me having to fix it is nothing less than undeserved leverage upon all I mean to do from here to home."

Offering. Was he talking about him? How the hell was he an offering? Who was this man? And who was this bird to use him as bargaining currency!?

"And what if I refuse your price? I need neither you nor this boy. Whatever he might become, the universe can go on without him just fine."

Tony felt insulted and bitter at the dismissal and the raven ruffled its feathers and made a sound in its throat like it didn't care either way and Cawboy you dick!

"Just like that?" the man said, sounding sad. "You would give up every last gain and advantage here, and still consider it a good investment of power? How hopeless you must be…"

What was this man even talking to this bird about?

"I refuse your price and any help you might offer." The raven croaked faintly, disappointed but not surprised. He dropped Tony in the man's palm regardless. "But I offer xenia to this messenger and to you." This time it was surprised. It was blatant and complete even on its alien face as it squawked its wonderment.

The man waved his other hand in a circle, opening a portal made of fiery sparks. He stepped through it while rolling Tony across his fingers like the coin he'd been used just now. "Don't fret too much, young one. You'll live more than long enough to become a man. I'll make sure of it."

What was he talking about?

The other side of the portal, it turned out, was the front of the property. The man stepped through, closed the portal behind him and opened another, smaller one from which he pulled a blanket. Then a third from which he pulled a first aid kit. Or possibly a surgery kit considering how big and bulky the case was. The raven flew off to watch from the fence posts as this all happened.

That was when the world cracked like glass again and a very familiar car emerged from behind the mirror. It came to a screeching halt just outside the open gate.

Tony watched the people coming out of the car while finally wondering if he was hallucinating. He continued watching his father drag his dead body out while trying and failing to restrain tears as if it were a dream. The stranger spread the blanket on the grass then, where Howard Stark staggered and laid Tony's bloodied remains.

Also soiled. Death did bad things to the bowels, it turned out. Ugh.

"Your daughter, she said you-you could," Howard stark stumbled over his words, voice hoarse with tears and exhaustion. "Please, can you help him?"

What the hell, Dad?

"There is a price for everything," the unknown man answered. "Part of it has already been paid and I can pay the rest. But I have a price of my own. Will you pay that?"

"Anything!" Dad, what? "This is all… if I hadn't – He didn't even think about his own life, If I'd been a better…" Wait, now he gets it? Fuck you, Dad. Seriously, fuck you! This guy just bartered with my life! "I'll do anything."

"It's not about what you can do but what you can give."

"What do you want then? My wealth? My life? Tell me!"

"I want your son."

Tony's mind seemed to crash into itself. Say what?

"What?"

"He will live and you will give him to me," said the Devil to the desperate father kneeling at his feet in the dirt. "Mine to foster. Mine to teach. Mine to raise the rest of the way to manhood." The man's countenance seemed to change then, into something heavier. Firmer. Grim, even. "By my measures."

Everyone else may or may not have reacted with varying degrees of whatever it was, but Tony couldn't be arsed to pay mind to any of it because of what happened next.

"Alright."

Molten outrage sputtered under an even bigger outrage. His Dad… His father… His bastard of an old man! He hadn't hesitated at all! Fuck you Dad, fuck you squared and fuck my life too! This day was just the worst!

"You agreed so easily," the man said with that same sadness of earlier. "I can see now why your son is such an angry child." Excuse him!? Fuck him too, then, and fuck him twice for being the only one who gets it! "Still, the deal is struck then. Daughter. Attend to me."

The ritual they used to revive him was probably something he should have paid at least some nominal attention to, what with the amber shell crumbling and the man basically shoving him in into his own empty eye socket and holy shit, resurrection. But he couldn't spare even that little energy for it, and what the hell? Couldn't his old man at least pretend some indecision before throwing him away?

And had he just spent his whole death inside that weird eye trapped in amber that Cawboy had spat at his eye earlier in the shop? Did the damn bird know what would happen? Did it plan it? Did it plan for it? And who was it even a messenger for?

Tony Stark was seriously starting to think he had some major gaps in his education. This is what he gets for speeding through his schooling and specialising so much.

Then he woke up to the deadest case of halitosis he'd ever had and spent almost half an hour being incapable of fending off his crying, clingy, tearfully relieved wreck of a father.

"You're the worst, Dad," Tony mumbled at the ceiling of his sickroom when he could finally do things again and had more energy than it took to pretend his old man wasn't at his bedside. Holding his hand to his mouth. Looking like… like a father whose son had just come back from the dead. "The worst."

"I am," agreed the jerk who'd jumped at the chance to disown him without taking even a moment to think about it. "You can say it as many times as you want. I won't be mad."

"I hate you."

"I know."

He'd have said more but he was so tired. He fell asleep half-way to opening his mouth, carried under by the scent of incense and roses.

He dreamed of ravens circling in the sky above a kindly old man that walked through mud and blood amidst a field of corpses.