Chapter 12- All of Infinity in the Palm of my Hands (Complete)

XXXXX- TONY STARK

“What have you been able to find on Clark?” I asked Jarvis, walking into my lab with a scowl on my face. It had been months now, and for the life of me there was nothing to be found of Clark or his whereabouts. 

“I have been able to isolate the location in space top which the sceptre had created a portal. With the tesseract in hand, and the right equipment, we might be able to recreate the portal once again and search for him” Jarvis explained, drawing one of the few smiles I’d been able to crack since I lost the kid. Pepper could say all she wanted about this, but I knew it was my fault. I’d told myself to go get the bogey, so why the fuck had I hesitated? That hesitation had cost Clark his life. And it wasn’t even just that. If it had been, then maybe I’d have been able to overlook the entire thing with enough alcohol to drown my sorrows for a few months. 

But no, I was also forced to deal with the fact that it was because of me. I was the only reason Clark had been there. Whatever reasonings he gave beforehand, or whatever that Caretaker of his loved to say about him having had a desire for heroics, I knew it was me who’d inspired me. I knew the boy looked up to me. Why didn’t I see it coming that the kid would go ahead and make his own suit like mine? Not like miner, though. His tech was much, much different. Dare I say it, it was somehow more sophisticated than the best stuff I’d been able to do. The best I’d been able to do back then, at least. I’d thought he was a computer genius and nothing more, but of course, he had to be even more like me. Sure, I’d worked with him on a few projects, but nothing I’d seen could have shown me that he had that kind of tech in his back pocket. If only I’d done a better job of being a mentor, I’d have noticed something and put an end to it all on time. I’d have prevented him from being there in the first place. 

“Have you completed the analysis of the portal, Jarvis? Found out what caused it to spontaneously shut down?” I asked, cracking my neck to rid myself of the stiffness that came from spending too much time in the suit. Test flights were both fun and gruelling at the same time. More the latter than the former when I had the terrible idea of lightening up on the motion dampeners to see if that could let me squeeze out a bit more speed from the new Mark 67 armour. It was a failure, but it did give me a few ideas. Ideas I’d get to work on after I finished with this. 

“Like I concluded after the first five scans, Tony, there was nothing wrong with the portal. From what I can read and interpret, the portal was operating just as it had been for hours. The only possibilities are that, 1, the portal was set up with a time limit in mind and young Master Kent just managed to run afoul of it. Or more likely, Miss Romanoff disabled the portal despite all your pleas for her to wait.” Jarvis said, making me want to smash my hand against the table. Only the fact that it was already bruised prevented me from that bit of carelessness. 

I’d given Fury and his people the benefit of the doubt. Natasha had been so convincing when she’d run up to me claiming not to know how the portal had gone off. The fact that that could have been a lie just rubbed me in all the wrong ways. Sure, Shield was shady as fuck, but the Black Widow was no longer just an agent of Shield. She was an Avenger. Surely, she wouldn’t have done something like that to one of her own. 

I snorted to myself in sarcasm before finally plopping down on the chair in front of the desk and pulling the keyboard over to me. “Let’s see how long it takes us to get into Shield’s servers, Jarvis” I said with a smile at the memories this experience was bringing up, however briefly. 

XXXX

In the end, there had been nothing to find. None of Fury’s conversations with Natasha from the last few minutes of the fight were anywhere to be found. There was nothing, no official orders or whatever, to show why she’d done what she’d done. But in this case, the lack of evidence was evidence in its own way. After all, how would anyone expect Fury of all people to leave damning evidence like that lying around? On the other hand, however, I was able to find the official orders authorising the nuke that was fired at New York. Along with the signatures of all those who had signed off on it. Lo and behold, there was the name of our lovely President. He’d made a lot of noise about it in the news when Clark’s video feed was unable to be suppressed, and it was obvious that a Nuke had indeed been fired at one of America’s own cities. 

There was talk of an impeachment already, while he went from pillar to post, blaming everyone who could even vaguely be considered liable, with himself as the notable exception. Idiocy. It did not surprise me. No, what surprised me was the fact that pretty much every member of the top brass had signed off on the order. America had killed Clark, and Natasha had dealt the finishing blow. 

I’d checked Shield’s records to see if there was something about my young protégé that I’d missed that made him such a threat to Fury, but all I saw was the same story I was well aware of. I mean, sure, Shield investigated it even more thoroughly than I’d ever had. They had eyewitness accounts of people who’d seen the bastard son of the Kent family as he grew up with only a butler to rely on as both a father-figure and help. At this point, it was beginning to become obvious to me that the only way I’d be getting any more information would be by going straight to the source to find out. The only question was whether I’d start with the dog or the master. 

XXXXX

“Mr Stark. Is there any reason for this intrusion?” Fury said as he walked into his home, acting unsurprised to find me sitting on a chair in his apartment with my suit standing at attention right behind me with repulsers pointed at him. He did a good job. Of course, he did, he was a spy. I’d have had no idea just how shocked he was to see me. Not Jarvis, though. Connected through my new smart glasses, she easily pointed out all the shock and stress markers on the man’s face with my entrance. 

There was a reason I’d waited a month to make this visit. I had to ensure that there would be no way for the world’s greatest master of deception to deceive me. Needless to say, it was a tall task at the best of times. But the tech was good, and I was confident. Most importantly, Jarvis was also confident. His new upgrades would let him read human cues better than the best human readers and psychologists out there.

“Clark. Why did you order Widow to shut the portal and leave him there?” I asked, watching as he almost entirely ignored the question, walking deeper into the apartment and fishing out a bottle of scotch and a glass. I wasn’t worried about weapons. Firstly, Fury understood the balance of power. He had no chance against me, and starting things off was one way to sign his death warrant for no discernible reason. Secondly, all the weapons Fury hid around had been painstakingly examined and disabled. I’d been here a while. A long while. Long enough to know that the scotch he’d picked up was barely better than bottled piss. So I rejected his offer to join him before he even finished it. 

“Answer the question, Fury. I’ll only remind you once” I said, tense. Jarvis made the suit’s glow increase even more ominously. I had no desire to kill Fury here, but I would not abide mind games. A kid was most likely dead. 

“Fine then. Do you know what your friend was?” He asked, getting nothing more than a blank look from me. 

“He’s trying to make you answer to guide the conversation in his preferred direction. I would recommend not playing along” Jarvis’ voice spoke out through the earpiece I had in, essentially acting as my guide for this complex interaction. 

“Talk Fury. No games” I said harshly. 

“Fine. Nine years or so ago, we came across a ship. A ship that had an inhabitant. A whole alien baby. Of course, we had no trouble hiding it from the public, and so Project Kr was born. He showed nothing exceptional in the early years,” He began, nearly glossing over the fact that they’d found an honest to god alien as far back as in 2003. Guess, the government was just that fucked up. 

“Nothing beyond higher cognitive function than seen in any human children. Beyond that, it could have been mistaken for one of us. And then things began to change. It began to develop powers. A range of abilities from enhanced strength to invulnerability to enhanced senses. Despite all of this, though, the alien was cooperative. It was attending classes and lessons, and being treated exceptionally well at the facility it had been assigned to. And then everything changed on one day. There was nothing special about that day. It was almost like it had flicked a switch. Gone was the child, and in its place stood a cold-hearted killer. It tore through the base with no hesitation. Dozens lost their lives as it made its way out”.

“Escape, you mean,” I interrupted Fury’s futile attempt at manipulation. 

“What?”

“The alien kid. They didn’t make their way out. They escaped. You weren’t holding them in some base. It was a prison” I said, pointing out the inconsistencies between his story and the records that Jarvis was fishing out from the highly encrypted servers hidden in Fury’s own home. I wasn’t just here for one reason, after all. 

“Regardless. That doesn’t change the fact that over a dozen men lost their lives that day. A dozen men who had families.” Fury said, hitting hard on the point. 

“I cannot find any casualty figures in the files here, and it is difficult to tell from his facial expressions if he is lying about this matter or not.” Jarvis whispered in my ear, drawing a nod from me that Fury must have mistaken for agreement with him.

Before he could continue, I pre-empted him by asking, “I don’t see what all this has to do with Clark, though”

“It has everything to do with him. He clearly belongs to the same species.” He said.

“Do you need a water or something, so you don’t sound fucking crazy?”

“I know how I fucking sound. But hear me out here. Clark Kent was born all the way back in 1991. He has records that stem as far back as that. He has a human caretaker for Christ’s sake. But yet, there is something foul going on there. The physical records are there. People remember seeing him grow up, but whenever one of my agents asks a question out of the blue or beyond a set of occurrences, they have no recollection of the boy. How could a child grow up in a neighbourhood with neighbours who only saw him three times a year? And let’s not get to the fact that all the memories they have of his childhood are strikingly similar.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him, trying to buy time as Jarvis checked the servers for all this information he was talking about. 

“I mean that the grocery store owner across the street and the neighbour living in the other part of the neighbourhood both of startlingly similar memories of a young Clark Kent running through the street before tripping and spraining his ankle.”

“And so? Of course they remember that, it's the kind of thing people remember”. 

“Yes, I agree. But then why don’t they remember seeing the boy with a cast or anything. Never checking up on him. In fact, both of their next memories of the child come over a year later. Security camera footage from all that time has been wiped. Records burnt. It's almost like someone or something has gone to the effort of making sure that there is no hard evidence of Clark Kent’s existence and childhood beyond that which could have been faked. Of course, they were smart enough to make the cleanup general and wide enough that it looks accidental, but not to a discerning eye. No, I can see it clear as day. Clark Kent is no human. Clark Kent is the exact same species as the boy that showed up in the spaceship.”

“Now, you’re talking crazy”

“Am I? Think about it, Stark. They look like spitting images of each other. First time I saw him, it was like a blast from the past. Add to that the powers he displayed during the attack. That strength, the speed, flight, the heat vision? All of it was something else, on a whole other level. You could say it was the suit, but I doubt it. If the suit let him do all that, then Clark Kent would somehow be an even greater genius than you because he’d somehow have managed to build that, and use it in the battle for New York without ever having tested it.” Fury said, looking fucking insane, but making a little bit of sense. His suspicions had some bearing. I flicked my eyes over to the footage of the alien kid’s escape and noted the way they actually did look alike. The kid could have been mistaken for Clark’s younger brother or son. I mean, people looked alike all the time, but that was still suspicious when taking into account the rest of the things Fury was talking about. Clark’s suit had been good, too good to be realistic. I’d summed it up as previously unknown levels of genius, but applying Occam’s Razor left a lot to be desired with that explanation. 

“And even if this is all true, why does it matter? Thor’s an alien, and I didn’t see you trying to get him lost on the other end of the galaxy.” I asked. 

“Yes, but Thor never lied about what he was. Thor never hid. Thor never attempted to create a company that is now the largest private company in the United States, and has products with over a billion monthly active users. The future of earth is digital, and having the company at the forefront of that be an alien with suspect motivations would be ridiculous.”

“That isn’t enough. We both know that isn’t enough. Don’t insult me, Fury” I said, nearly snarling. 

“Fine. You’re right. You’re right, Stark. The company wasn’t the issue. I didn’t even really consider it when I made the call. No, the reason I did it was because my gut told me to. The same gut that told me to trust you. The same gut that created the Avengers Initiative, even when there was seemingly no need for such a project to exist. Clark Kent showed power far beyond the pale. Stronger than your strongest suit, stronger than Thor, and even stronger than Banner at his angriest. That motherfucker could fly at speeds beyond the quickest fighter jets on the planet. He had heat vision that could cut through steel. I looked at him, and I won’t lie. I fucking saw God. That’s how strong he was, that’s how scared he made me feel. I was shitting my pants as he dropped feat after feat. We had no chance in hell taking him down if he went rogue. No known weaknesses, no attachments beyond you and a caretaker that we didn’t even know if he gave a shit about. I saw an opportunity to take a wild card like that off the board. You best believe I took it. I’d take it again every fucking time.” At the end, Fury was almost shouting in my face as he gave his reasoning. 

“And he was helping us. He was helping. Us. Damn it, Fury. He was helping us. The only exposure you had to him was him helping us, and you want to act like that isn’t a good thing? Why not give him the benefit of the fucking doubt?” I almost screamed back, but was just able to keep my pitch semi-reasonable. 

“So? What if he was opposing Loki on the grounds of earth being his and his alone? If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this line of work, it’s that the enemy of my enemy is seldom my friend. He might just even be an even bigger asshole. His arrival wasn’t tracked. We have no idea when he showed up. We don’t know what species he belongs to. All we know is that there were at least the two of them on earth. And that the two of them could have torn through most of the planet’s militaries by their lonesome. No, the risk was too large. I wouldn’t have taken it. No one would have sanctioned it. If he was here for something good, he’d never have hidden what he was. He’d never have altered human memories to create a false identity. He’d have declared himself to Shield and would have been working with us. Anything less, and he was just an enemy biding his time.” Fury said. 

I was, perhaps for the first time in my life, at a loss for words. I could see the thought process. The disadvantage of being as smart as I was was that I could see just how he could be right. Just where his logic made sense. I found it difficult to fault him for it. Would I have made a different call in his position? Wearing his shoes? Probably not. But I wasn’t wearing his shoes. Clark is my friend, damn it. And I’d find a way to help my friend if it’s the last thing I ever do. 

“Fuck you, Fury.” I said, standing up. The suit opened up, and I stepped inside, walking to the balcony and taking flight. I could recreate the portal with the tesseract. I just needed Point Break to give it up for a bit, which was going to be nearly impossible considering he’s gone and fucked off the planet. 

A/N; Back to earth for this chapter. Done, done, and done. How was it? Dialogue still isn’t my strong suit, but this should be pretty good.