Chapter Text
The streets of New York were busy as usual. People were walking purposefully, caught up in their normal everyday lives. As far as one could speak of a normal everyday life, after half the population had been bliped and then had reappeared just as surprisingly five years later. It had been a shock for everyone.
Those who had gone missing, were now trying to fit back in. While the ones that had survived the blip in the first place were still trying to keep society going.
It wasn’t easy for anyone. People just tried to concentrate on the day at hand. One step at a time.
It was a cloudy day in spray. The sun had made itself scarce the last few days and that put a damper on everyone's mood. Especially the food vendors noticed that, when trying to attract customers around Central Park.
Like Stan, who owned a hot dog stand in the north end of the park. His numbers weren't great today either. There were only persistent joggers or dog owners in the park, none of them falling into the category of his main target customers. Hardly any teenagers after school or tourists who wanted to make their New York trip even more authentic with a hot dog (so they could brag about it back home).
To stave off boredom from the quiet day, Stan stepped up to his booth neighbor, a newspaper vendor. Both men knew each other well, having shared the space for years.
All the while, Stan didn't notice those watchful blue eyes that were observing him from the shadows, just waiting for him to leave his meat on the grill unattended for a moment.
The hunt had begun.
It was pure instinct and hunger that made the cat move. Stalking quietly, eyes locked on its target. One jump and it had a hot dog in its mouth – which should be way too hot, but miraculously it didn't bother the feline - and then fled with its prey.
But not fast enough.
"Hey!" Stan spotted the black cat and ran after it, even though the sausage was long lost. "Darn beast!"
The man stumbled (there was nothing in his way he should trip over, it was as if he had received a push from an invisible force) and the cat disappeared among the bushes.
The animal stopped only when it knew it was safe. Then it hungrily ate its meal.
It was an all black cat, once for sure sleek with beautiful long hair, now scrubby and broken-down. It picked its food out of the garbage or stole it when the opportunity was good. Like it had been now.
Life on the street was tough. There was no dignity left for those who wandered them long enough.
It was just a regular stray. There were hundreds of them in the city. Although, this one might have had an ace up its sleeve – as good magicians always did.
But that was about it.
It wasn't an easy life but a chosen one. The simple mind of an animal helped to forget. And the cat had every reason to want to forget. More than a single mind should ever endure.
The cat finished its meal.
Sometimes it thought of a stray dog it had met on the other side of the world. In another life.
It had felt a connection to the other animal back then, like the fellow stray it was. Like the cat was now again. Life had come full circle.
The cat's ears pricked up as it heard a sound, a rustling in the bushes.
It was just a bird, but the cat was leaving anyway. It didn't feel safe staying at one place for too long.
__________________________
Peter and his friends were sitting on a bench in the park. It was the weekend and Ned's parents had sent the trio outside so the teens would get some fresh air and sunshine.
It was a crisp day and they wore their jackets as they talked about their upcoming school projects and spring break plans. And, of course, about Star Wars.
They ate the sandwiches Ned's grandmother had packed them. She always made too much, but they were so good the kids ate them all anyway. They were, after all, growing teenagers – at least that was their excuse. (And at least with Peter and his enhanced metabolism, it wasn't wrong).
Peter noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye and picked the ham off his sandwich, which he rolled up. With that, he lured the shy animal out.
"What are you doing?" MJ asked, her eyebrows raised in question as she watched him hold the ham toward the bushes and click his tongue.
"Just wait. I've seen them a couple of times. They look like they could use the food."
Ned was joining in immediately. He had never been allowed a pet, so he was over the moon when the cat eventually approached and ate the meat they threw at it.
MJ was naturally more suspicious. "I thought only baby cats had blue eyes. Most change color after the first three months.
"Maybe a gene abnormality," Ned guessed and that made the girl re-think, because it would actually be cool. Still, she kept an eye on the cat.
The feline remained cautious and while it was offered food, it evaded any attempt at petting. The message was clear: no touching.
It sat under the bench, peering out from between the teenagers' legs and politely lifting its paw to ask for more food. It devoured up every treat as if it was afraid they would be taken away from it.
Finally, the teens stood up and shouldered their backpacks.
"Bye, kitty. We gotta go."
They waved at him.
"Don't tell my Nana we fed her sandwiches to a cat," Ned told his friends.
MJ took one last look back. The cat was still sitting under the bench, staring after them, tail twitching. She swore those blue eyes were not normal.
__________________________
It was raining cats and dogs when Peter ran through the streets of Manhattan. He was late (it was his own fault, because he had dawdled to leave after school). His sneakers were not waterproof and soon even his socks were wet.
Maybe he should have texted Mister Stark and asked him if he could send a car. But Peter still had a hard time asking for anything of the man, even everything they had been through.
It was Peter’s senior year. He was about to graduate from high school and his college application was already out (He had only sent one).
He had pulled the hood over his head and was dodging passersby with umbrellas. As he did so, he was careful not to get too close to the road, because cars weren't paying attention to whether they were splashing pedestrians. Like now, when a car that passed by way too fast. Thanks to his Peter Tingle, the boy had stopped just in time and prevented the worst.
But not everyone was so lucky.
The first second he thought he was just imagining it, but then he heard it again: a small meowing sound. And when he turned his head to the side, he saw a drenched black cat among the garbage bags that had been placed along the road for collection day.
Peter realized that Central Park across the street and the feline had probably come here in search of food. How it had managed to cross the street alive with all the traffic was a mystery.
The cat – Peter recognized the blue eyes – looked worse than ever. The rain of the last few days had not done the stray any good. It’s fur stuck in weird ways and it looked even thinner than the last time Peter had seen it.
Peter bit his lower lip. His heart ached, but he was still late and it wasn't like he could just take a random animal home.
The passers-by started complaining to the teenager that had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. So Peter stepped to the side, towards the cat. It shook its fur and a few drops flew off it. It did little to help with the soaking wetness. The boy crouched down, put his hand out and went for a classic 'pspsps'. It got him the animal's attention and the blue eyes locked on the boy.
Whatever Peter had expected to see, it was not the resignation he saw. The feline looked so very tired, as if it had already seen far too much in its short feline life.
And didn't Peter know that look, because it sometimes stared back at him from his own reflection.
How many of its nine lives had this cat been through?
The animal approached slowly, bare paws on the asphalt, sniffing Peter's fingers in hopes of food. Unfortunately, the boy had already eaten the lunch he packed this morning.
"Mrrew." It sounded like a soft sigh when the cat realized Peter was empty handed. It was about to turn away when Peter all of a sudden swooped it up in his arms. The cat wiggled and made an alarmed cry of protest, which did not faze Peter.
He opened the zipper of his jacket and took the cat inside. There he held it tightly and continued his way to the tower in fast steps.
__________________________
Peter carefully wrapped the cat in a towel and rubbed him dry. The animal still looked pathetic, but by now had quietly resigned himself to his fate. Perhaps he also realized that an unknown, dry place was still better than a wet pile of garbage.
Peter left him in the towel on the couch and went into the adjoining kitchen to look for something he could feed the feline. Fortunately, the refrigerator in Stark's penthouse was always well stocked.
He had just opened the door and winced when he heard a loud string of swearing. Apparently Stark had found the cat and was not happy about it. Peter rushed back.
"What is this wretched ball of fur doing on my couch?"
"IfoundhimintheraininthedumpsterhelookedsohelplessandhehasnohomesoIbroughthimhere." Peter took a deep breath. It was impressive just how much he could say in one breath.
Tony stared at him. He was a certified genius, but it took his brain a whole moment to filter out the relevant information from this far-too-fast gibberish.
His answer turned out to be a lot shorter.
"No."
Peter blinked. "Please, Mister Stark! Just for a few days. Until it stops raining," he pleaded. His lower lip began to quiver dangerously. He had far too soft a heart for a superhero and took everything highly personally.
"Why don't you take him to May?" Tony asked as an alternative suggestion.
"She's allergic to cats."
And, shit, Tony really couldn't refuse the kid anything when he looked at him with his big doe eyes like that. Initially, when he'd found out about the boy's abilities and showed up at his aunt's house, Tony had seen him as someone he could sponsor. Just keep an eye on him.
But then came Berlin, the arms dealers on the boat, and all the other incidents. As time went on, their professional mentor/student relationship shifted more and more to this science parent and kid thing they had going on.
And then Peter had followed him onto the flying doughnut.
Tony would never be able to forgive himself for that. Nor would he ever forget the boy crumbling to dust in his arms. He still had nightmares about that.
Now, Peter was standing in front of him, a can of tuna in his hand, looking like Tony was about to throw the boy's first homemade AI robot on the scrap heap.
He recalled a discussion he had with his own father many decades ago. When young Tony wanted a dog and Howard was adamantly against it.
"Fine. It can stay – for now. And we will scan it for diseases.” He gave in. Even if it was just a fuck you, Howard. Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, trying not to think too hard about his reasons, before he turned to the cat. "And you! I warn you only once, so listen closely: if you piss on my carpet, you'll be back on the streets faster than you can say 'meow'."
The cat sniffed at his index finger, which he held out to it. But when he found no food there, he turned to Peter and the can.
"He won't," Peter assured his mentor.
"He?"
"Yes. It's kinda obvious if you look at him from behind."
"Alright, that's enough information. Actually, it's more than I wanted to hear."
The results of Friday's medical scan came back clean. So the cat was allowed to stay – for now.
__________________________
It was the middle of the night when Tony stumbled into his kitchen. Nightmares had jolted him out of sleep, and even though he couldn't remember exactly what horror scenario it had been this time, he didn't feel like going back to sleep anytime soon.
He turned on the coffee maker and listened to its soothing sounds when the cat jumped up on the counter and stared at him in a way that only cats could. Tony was too tired to see anything else in it.
"You hungry?...yeah, me too."
Contrary to his initial fear that the feline would annoy him, he hardly noticed his presence.
Tony grabbed a bagel and got cream cheese from the fridge. The cat stretched his neck, his blue eyes now completely fixated on the delicious smelling food. Tony placed a spoonful of cream cheese in front of him, which the animal began to lick contentedly.
The inventor took his coffee and breakfast (could it be called breakfast yet? It was only 3:14am in the morning) to his personal lab and opened the file of his latest project.
He didn't realize he wasn't alone in the room until he heard DUM-E moving around in the background and then a hissing. Outraged and with flat ears and arched back, the pet jumped onto the table, but even there he was not safe from the robot's claw.
"DUM-E behave," Tony instructed his artificial son. "Fri, keep an eye on Blue Eye. I can't have him getting hurt by something sharp."
Mostly because he could not stand the resulting drama with Peter.
Sulking, DUM-E moved to another corner of the room and silence reigned again. Tony looked back at his hologram.
But he could not concentrate. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, a sure sign that he was being watched.
He turned his head and looked into the black void the black cat had become by curling up.
Blue orbs stared back from the void.
Yeah, cats were a different kind of weird.
__________________________
Tony quickly discovered that his small roommate refused any kind of cat food. They had even tried the expensive one, but the feline turned up his nose when he saw this weird gibberish mass in his bowl (Tony wouldn’t want to eat that either) and demonstratively turned away.
Instead, he jumped up on the dining room table – something Tony had repeatedly forbidden him to do – and demanded to have whatever food Tony or Peter were having.
Tony had never had a pet and was only now learning that cats had an amazing amount of food they were able to eat. And the one living in his penthouse rent free apparently had a particularly culinary sense of taste. Whenever they ate take-out – and, admittedly, that was most days, because Tony didn't have the time or desire to cook – the cat appeared, meowing loudly and demanding. Whether it was pizza, burgers, sandwiches, Thai, or just fries. Once he even ate the salad.
But Tony drew the line when the cat sniffed at his mug of coffee.
„No,“ he said and took the mug away.
„You won‘t like that anyway,“ he explained when he pressed the button on the coffee maker in the morning and lifted the cat off the counter.
„That‘s mine!“ he stated every time he moved his cup away from the feline in the lab.
„Don‘t you dare!“ he shouted when he spotted the cat across the room right next to a whole pot of coffee. He swore there was something wrong with this animal. The way it looked at him with that cocky smirk in his eyes was not normal.
The cat pushed the pot with one of his front paws to the edge of the table board. Tony raised his finger in warning.
The cat pushed a little, not breaking eye contact.
The pot broke on the floor and the cat jumped down to lick the coffee off the floor.
"I hope you choke on it," Tony growled as he set a small bowl of coffee down for the cat, the next time he fixed himself a cup.
__________________________
Tony had never been allowed to have a pet as a kid, and he was pretty quickly convinced that Peter had brought some fucked up result of an animal experiment into his house.
The cat hadn't even put one paw in the litter box. Instead, he sometimes disappeared into one of Tony's bathrooms. Tony followed him exactly once to see what the cat was up to. But the cat had only stared at him for so long until Tony felt like a creep and backed off.
Friday had no video access to the bathrooms – because Tony was not a creep – and so it remained forever a mystery what the cat did in there.
This creature looked like a cat, sounded like a cat and behaved like a cat (debatable! But Tony checked the internet and found a lot of people sharing weird stories about their cats) but Tony was not taking chances. He had seen talking trees and raccoons, flying hammers and spontaneously combusting people.
He crouched in front of the cat, who had flopped down on the couch and now raised his head in what Tony called the death stare, looking at him intensely.
„Blink once if you understand what I say.“
He waited for a reaction – any reaction – but those clear, blue eyes didn‘t betray a single thought. Tony moved his head slowly forward, not wanting to miss anything, until their faces were almost touching.
The cat licked Tony’s nose.
„Ugh, gross!“
Tony jumped to his feet, turning away and missing the one eyed wink.
__________________________
After a few days, the cat had settled in well. While in the beginning he had been hiding under and behind the furniture or watching everything from on top of the cupboards, Tony soon found him more and more often sleeping on the couch or following the man into the lab.
Peter loved the feline and whenever he was in the penthouse – Tony swore that was even more often now than before – he would scoop him up on his arms or pet him. The first few the cat had been reluctant, but he didn't stand a chance against the teenager, and eventually he'd given up to complain whenever Peter buried his fingers in the fur.
Even Tony had to admit, albeit reluctantly, that the fur was very soft. It also looked nice and shiny and healthy now, and not as scrubby as it had been in the beginning.
But whenever visitors came to the penthouse – it was admittedly not very often; only a few people had access these days – the cat disappeared. First Peter tried to coax him with food whenever Pepper or Rhodey came around, but with no luck.
"Stage fright, Blue Eye? You aren’t shy around me or Peter." Tony found the cat as soon as the doors to the elevator closed. The feline sat by the window, observing the city and fully ignoring Tony.
Fine, Tony had work to do anyway and went to his lab.
There was one person he had not yet tried to show his newest roommate.
„Fri, babe, what day is it?“
„Thursday the tenth, Boss.“
One person, who hasn‘t shown up in a while and was late by over a week.
„Call Dumbledore.“
It went straight to voicemail and that was weird.
You see, after everything that happened on the flying doughnut, Thanos, that five year gap (aka Tony being angry about losing everything, including his final break up with Pepper) and then getting everyone back and defeating the mad titan – he kinda struck a friendship with the wizard doctor.
Maybe it was jump started by the fact that Strange saved Tony‘s life after he had used all the infinity stones at once. Plus he helped Tony build his new arm.
It also didn't hurt that Strange was really nice to look at. Like really nice.
Even after completion of the project ‘new arm who dis?‘ (not the best Tony came up with but he had started it as soon as Dr. Cho had cleared him off medical and he had been full of pain killers), they still met on the first Wednesday of every month to be snarky, arrogant and just being awesome together.
Strange kept an eye on Peter, whenever Tony wasn‘t around and Tony really appreciated that.
There was also a lot of flirting involved whenever the two men met, but that was just part of their charm and completely without any deeper meaning…
Tony was still in denial about his blossoming feelings for the doctor. And as long as he ignored them, they weren’t there. Even if he actually enjoyed the banter and the flirting and the way Stephen’s face lit up when… anyway!
Sure, sometimes the job came between their meetings. Tony may be retired (on paper), but Strange certainly wasn't.
He wasn't the Sorcerer Supreme anymore – due to technicalities as he always was fast to point out – but he still had a lot of duties protecting their reality.
He usually texted Tony when something came up. Maybe it was an emergency, but eight days was a pretty long emergency and Stephen had once mentioned that he didn't like to leave Earth for such a long time at a stretch.
So, Tony did the next best thing.
„Friday, call Wong.“
He had kept in touch with the other sorcerer in the five year gap after the blip, albeit sporadically, because they all had more than enough to do filling in the gaps the snapped people left. It still was enough to excuse a friendly check in. Just to make sure that Stephen was okay and unharmed.
"Stark," Wong's always unamused voice greeted him a few seconds later. To this day, Tony didn't know if Wong even liked him.
"Wong," he mimicked his tone, but then got straight to the point, knowing Wong was no friend of unnecessary pleasantries. "Strange missed our awesome facial hair bros meeting last week and he doesn’t answer my phone."
There was a short pause before Wong replied. "He's not here." Did Tony imagine it or did he sound more annoyed than usual today? Maybe he was displeased to be treated as Strange‘s secretary.
„Okay, sure.“ Tony nodded to himself, starting to pace in the room. „When does he get back?“
„I don‘t know.“
Well, that wasn‘t very helpful.
„Did he leave the dimension?“ Tony asked anyway, unwilling to give up this easily.
There was a long pause as Wong actively hesitated.
"I don't know," he said again, and that caught Tony's attention. He stopped walking.
„What do you mean, you don‘t know?“
"Strange disappeared a few weeks ago." That alone might have been explainable, but then Wong added, „… and he left the Cloak of Levitation behind.“
That had Tony alarmed. He had made acquaintance with the red piece of fabric that was unusually expressive for a being without an actual face. And Strange never left his weird magic castle without it.
Tony’s mind immediately jumped to various conclusions.
„Any enemies that might got hold of him? Kidnapped by evil forces? Has there been a ransom demand?"
"We have no idea. It’s nothing we can trace with magic." His voice was clipped, concealing the paused anger at losing control of the issue. Wong was Strange's friend; he should have taken better care of him. The man couldn't shake the feeling that he had let him down.
"I'll try the tech way then," Tony suggested. "Nothing escapes the modern eyes of the ever-watching cameras."
"Thanks, that's appreciated."
Wong gave him the details of Strange's disappearance, the time period in which it must have happened (it was impossible to pin down exactly), and Tony promised to get back to him if he found anything.
He ran his fingers through his hair after hanging up. One of the most powerful sorcerers Earth had ever seen and someone he considered a friend was missing – that wasn't great news.
"Alright, Fri, run a face recognition search for Strange. Start in New York, then expand it world wide."
"I'm on it, Boss."
Tony propped his forearms on one of the tables and stared into space. If Strange had been gone for several weeks already, without a trace...that was very concerning. Briefly, the image of a cave in Afghanistan flickered before his eyes, but he quickly shook it off and focused on the map of the U.S. on Fridays screen and the small loading bar she liked to display for funsies.
„Where are you, Stephen Strange?“
__________________________
The fact that the cat rejected any kind of cat food didn‘t mean that he wasn‘t hungry. He had been starved when Peter had dragged him to the penthouse, and after overcoming his initial distrust, he began to bug anyone available for food three times a day.
"You're a menace," Tony growled angrily as the feline jumped up on the couch next to him and began meowing loudly to tell him that it was time for lunch. "A weird, precisely timed menace."
By now he was able to interpret his fluffy roommate's behavior well and knew that he wouldn't stop making noise until there was food on his plate. (Yes, the cat wanted to eat from an actual plate. Tony had never used so many dishes).
Since the cat was happy to eat whatever Tony was having, Tony had taken to simply ordering two portions at a time. Tony couldn't help but think he had been bullied into having a regular eating rhythm by a cat.
He had to admit that the company was nice. He talked to the feline as if it were a human being - he had already applied this mannerism with his AI sons and it hadn't done them any harm (except for Ultron, but there was always a black sheep in the family) – an sometimes the cat answered with a meow, so that it almost felt like a real conversation.
Tony balanced two plates of sushi to the table - no algae for the cat, just rice and fish. The feline jumped on the table and waited patiently, eyes fixed on the food and tail twitching slightly. He stretched his neck, annoyed that Tony was holding the plate just out of reach. The human teased him only briefly, then finally put the plate on the table and at the same time gave him a kiss on the head. The cat looked very scandalized and puffed out his chest, not amused about the unexpected act of affection.
Tony chuckled and sat down at the table as well. It had been worth fishing a cat hair out of his mouth just for that reaction.
„You‘re the strangest cat I‘ve ever met,“ Tony grinned when the cat gave him the stinky eye.
The irony was lost on him.
__________________________
Tony had had a long day when he landed on the platform of the tower and the nanobots retreated to the house unit on his chest. Well, it was only afternoon in New York – but not on the other side of the world in Norway where he had helped Thor and Loki with something.
New Asgard was developing well. People started healing.
Tony had set up a fund and that involved a lot of paperwork and details he had to supervise. Next time he would take the jet. It might be slower, but he could get a nap on an actual bed on his way back.
"Hey Blue Eye." The cat tiptoed around his feet to greet him (and possibly trip him) but Tony was too tired to do anything more than a quick pet along his back. He only wanted to lie down in his bed, pull the covers over his head and sleep for the next three days.
Unfortunately, it was still too early to go to bed and, besides, he still had some contracts to read and approve.
Tony needed coffee.
The cat stayed at his side and seemed almost understandingly about the absent attention. Or at least he didn’t complain about it. In return the cat got his smaller bowl of coffee – together with a kiss on his head.
At first it had been funny to watch the feline's unwilling reaction to it. Now it was routine. Tony swore if cats could roll their eyes, this one would do it every day.
With coffee in one hand and a Starkpad in the other, Tony made himself comfortable on the couch. He put his house unit down on the small table on the side. He always kept it within reach; it was his safety anchor, if only to ease his mind.
It probably said a lot about him that he never let it out of his sight for more than a few minutes, but he had made his peace with it. Besides, it was better safe than sorry.
It didn't take long until the cushion dipped and the cat joined him. Blue eyes fixed on him and the Starkpad. Carefully, the animal placed a paw on Tony's torso and when nothing more than a hum came in response, the cat climbed onto Tony's chest where he lay down, his paws tucked under his fluffy body.
"No," Tony protested, "No, that's no place for you." After all, his chest was still his sore point, even after the surgery that had removed the arc reactor. Or maybe because of that.
But the cat merely started purring loudly and closed his eyes.
Tony blinked at him, baffled.
Surprisingly, the cat did not feel heavy at all. On the contrary, the slight vibration of his purring felt pleasant. Like a small, warm engine.
"Fine, you can stay – for now."
Tony turned his focus back to the Starkpad. Reading, he absently buried his fingers in the soft fur.
This was kinda relaxing.
Later that evening Peter came to visit later to ask about New Asgard and its princes – he had wanted to travel overseas, but wasn't allowed – he found Tony asleep on the couch. His hand was on the cat, which was still on his chest. The feline lifted his head when he heard the boy and narrowed his eyes as if to tell the boy not to be too loud.
Peter put his finger to his lips as a sign that he would be quiet.
Tiptoeing, he fetched a blanket for his mentor.
(He also snatched a photo. It was too cute not to.)
__________________________
The other day Peter helped Tony to tweak some issues with his new arm. It was nothing serious, just a few detail problems that had only become apparent in the long-term use of the prosthesis.
Since Peter was not a medical expert and only lent an extra pair of hands – everything took so much longer with only one functioning arm – Bruce and Doctor Cho joined in a video conference. Between the number of PhDs and genius brain cells they all mustered, the work was a piece of cake.
"I'm taking the boxes out for recycling," Peter announced after they fixed it.
A lot of materials were made in the lab itself, other things Tony had delivered. But he rarely took care of the packaging, always throwing the boxes in a corner, preoccupied by the projects he needed the materials for in the first place. He grew up rich and never had to clean up after himself, but always had staff or robots for that.
Sure, he kept his workspace neat – or at least the neat ambivalent to the creative chaos, he liked to call it. But the state of everything around it was less important. So there was often a growing stack of empty boxes in at least one corner of the lab.
Peter, raised by his aunt to clean a mess before he left, stacked the boxes inside each other. As he reached for one further in the back, he heard a disgruntled meow. Apparently he had just disturbed someone's nap.
"Sorry," Peter chuckled and set the box aside to take another instead. "Mister Stark bought you that fancy cat tree and you still prefer sleeping in that box? Honestly? Mood."
In response, he heard the noise of paws on cardboard as the cat turned around and lay back down with his back to Peter. The message was clear: he didn't want to be disturbed.
Tony, meanwhile, glanced at Friday's search results for Strange, which were pretty depressing: there were none. It was already the third try – Tony had run the search again and again, always adjusting the parameters – and there wasn’t any trace of the sorcerer.
He had even hacked the cameras in the street of the Sanctum (it wasn't quite legal, not even close, but nobody was able to track his traces anyway, so yeah... ), and had Friday analyze the whole video data of the last few months. There was nothing to indicate the sudden reason for his disappearance.
Nothing.
If the sorcerer was still on Earth, Tony didn’t know where he could possibly hide.
__________________________
Tony was having a nightmare. He floated in space – the world had crumbled, all worlds had. Snippets of his loved ones popped up like visions from the past. Peter, Rhodey, Pepper, Happy; all of them in a moment of death. Their screams of agony echoed in Tony‘s head.
He tried to reach out to them but he couldn't move in the vacuum of space. His friends were too far away and he was too small in the magnitude of cosmos.
He needed his suit! He was in space and he needed his suit.
Tony tapped his chest, but there was no house unit, no arc reactor.
There was just an empty, black void where his lungs should be.
Did he even breathe? How could he breathe in space?
As if the thought had become reality, he suddenly got no more air. He tried to kick and scream without moving and making a sound. The feeling of suffocation brought tears to his eyes. He tried to grab something, anything, but there was nothing.
He was alone.
Suddenly he felt pressure on his chest. Not uncomfortable, more like an anchor that reassured him – like his house unit usually did. With his chest no longer an empty void, he was able to take a deep breath and slowly became aware of his surroundings as he awoke.
He heard the hum of an engine in the background, and still felt the weight on his chest.
"Friday?" he whispered into the darkness, his eyes still closed.
"It's 5:37 in the morning, Boss. Today is Monday the fifth. You're free until ten, when a call with the UN is scheduled," the familiar voice of his AI listed the facts. It helped Tony to shake off his dream, to focus on the present.
„Thanks, babe.“
He reached for his chest and his finger touched fur. Surprised, he opened his eyes and realized that the hum of the engine was actually the purr of the cat.
"Hey, Blue Eye." He smiled softly, his throat still feeling sore. "What are you doing here?"
It was the first time he was seeing the feline in his bedroom. Before today he had always slept in the living room and never even pried into Tony's personal room, as if he wanted to give him space.
Ridiculous! First off, cats had no sense of personal space. Exhibit A was on his chest.
Secondly, his bedroom had probably seen more people than his personal lab. At least in the past – not so much recently.
"He sensed your distress," Friday told him. She knew that speaking to him after a nightmare helped him. „And he refused to leave.“
„Thanks, I guess.“ Tony petted the head of the feline. „Are you gonna let me get up to make coffee for us?“ The cat didn‘t move an inch, just looked at him in concern with his bright eyes. „Fine, five more minutes.“
Tony – perfectly able to move the cat if he wanted to – remained lying and scratched the feline behind his black ears, under his jaw and along his back. The purr got louder and contentedly the cat closed his eyes, relaxed into Tony’s torso.
Half an hour later the cat finally stood up, stretched and jumped on the floor. He was meowing, announcing that it was now indeed time for breakfast.
That wasn‘t a bad idea, Tony could go for a bagel. And coffee. Always coffee.
The feline got his coffee served as usual with a kiss on his fluffy head.
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That day he felt better than he normally would after a horrible nightmare. Having a pet wasn't as bad as he had first thought when Peter dragged the cat in.
When Tony was a kid he had begged his father for a dog – probably like every kid did at one point. His father had refused, had said that animals were too much of a responsibility, that they were dirty and that Tony didn't have time for it. Then Tony was sent to a boarding school, and he never asked again.
Later, when his parents died and Tony took over SI, he really did not had time for a pet. Besides, he had been more interested in women and men anyway
For the next few decades, he hadn't given a second thought to getting a pet. Why should he? He had his robots to look after and Jarvis who kept him company.
But it still felt different when Tony went to bed that night and the cat jumped on his mattress. He didn't even acknowledge Tony when he flopped down next to his shoulder, as if he had always belonged there.
Tony didn't complain about the pet in his bed – something he definitely wouldn't have allowed in the past.
Somehow he knew it was the cat's way to look out for him.
Ridiculous! - it was just a cat.
But Tony had seen weirder stuff. He stroked once along the back through the soft fur and slipped under the covers. „Good night, Blue Eye.“
If this was how retirement would be, he could get used to it.
Then the cat moved his tail into Tony‘s face.
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„So, we still have no idea where he is,“ Tony concluded his conversation with Wong. It was something that worried him a lot. Strange had been gone for several weeks, as if he had simply vanished into thin air. (He didn't, at least not magically. Wong said they would have traced that).
The other sorcerer sat in his kitchen with a cup of tea in his hand. He looked seriously concerned and that had a lot to say.
They had spoken a few times, updated each other on the case – although there was depressingly little to update.
Today Wong had walked through a portal into Tony’s kitchen. In that respect, he was worse than Strange, who at least texted him like five seconds before he showed up. It was the thought that counted.
"I should have looked out for him more. He hasn‘t been the same after the snap,“ Wong said in something that sounded like regret.
„It was hard for everyone to settle back in,“ Tony acknowledged. „The world moved on while half of the population was absent.“
The sorcerer shook his head. That wasn‘t what he meant. Sure, Stephen lost his position as Sorcerer Supreme to him and in the meantime the Sanctum had also chosen a new Master, but that was not the reason why Stephen had become distant after everyone reappeared. It wasn‘t the reason why he had been almost unstable.
Stephen had tried to hide it – of course he did. That was just how Stephen acted. Especially since he knew first hand about all the responsibilities Wong had to juggle as Sorcerer Supreme.
Wong had seen snippets of it anyway. But it had to be worse than he had assumed. He didn't know what had happened to his friend, but it couldn't be good.
„He told you about the various possible outcomes of the battle with Thanos, right?“ he asked and Tony nodded. „He didn‘t just watch over 14 million futures, he lived every single one of them. That takes a toll on any man‘s mind. It must have been worse than fighting Dormammu.“
„That was the demon he pulled into a time loop and annoyed him until he left earth?“
Wong's eyes darted up in surprise that Tony knew about that. Stephen didn‘t talk about it a lot. „That‘s one way to describe it,“ he snorted.
„So, you think he went insane in between those futures and forgot which reality is the real one?“ Tony's conclusion was, as always, precise and hit the mark. He even took it further. "And when you think about how many futures he's had to watch fail…" How many deaths of family, friends and close ones he had had to watch, over and over again.
Tony had seen such a future once and it had been borderline torture. It still haunted him sometimes, seamlessly joining the long queue of his nightmares.
„He seemed okay last time I saw him,“ Tony muttered lamely. He knew that it didn't mean anything. He had kept it secret from his friends for a long time, that he was outright dying. Back when he had the palladium in his blood.
And he remembered that he had often caught Strange staring into space, like he had simply zoned out. But sometimes he confused basic facts on who was still alive.
Tony hadn't read too much into it. Although he liked the man and enjoyed having him around (Tony was too old to call it a crush), he didn't know the doctor well enough to judge him.
"We are still waiting for some replies from other dimensions. So, there's still a chance." Wong put down his cup and rose. A clear sign that the meeting was over. He raised his hand with his portal ring. "I'll inform you if we-..." He froze as a black cat pawed around the corner of the doorway into the kitchen, stopping equally surprised.
Tony had never seen so much emotion on Wong's face. The sorcerer literally gasped before he found his voice again.
„Strange?!“