#minor stark/gamora and implied starkquill

[lightrivals]

someone on twitter was like “au where the portal closed before tony made it” which is probably an entire trope of it’s own but i had to Input My Own Theories 5.5 years after the fact bc i’ve never really done much thought outside him falling into a role reversal au. so yeah this is just a what if au rant/drabble thing.

So, Tony’s suit dies, the radiation from the explosion is starting to reach him and the breath in his throat is the last he thinks he’ll ever taste. On the other side of the portal is the exploding Chitauri mothership, along with The Other. The Other spots Tony in the confusing haze of the atomic bomb and takes Tony in, figuring he’d be a better replacement to get more Infinity Stones after Loki’s failed invasion where he lost two.

Tony wakes up on the desolate space rock moon, freaks out because his armor is dead, but he’s still in it and moving as if it wasn’t. He later finds out he’s been recruited by Thanos and kept alive to help Thanos with his mission to make the universe the way he sees it should be. Tony isn’t all that keen on being this Titan’s lackey, especially given he sent Loki over to subjugate Tony’s world and that could mean he’d try to shape Tony to do the same to someone else. He would never willingly work with Thanos, and over the next year when he’s trapped in his floating cell in the middle of nowhere, left alone with his thoughts while also slowly and surely being conditioned to believe he can’t live unless he submits, he meets some of the rest of Thanos’ slowly growing team. Including the Titan’s “children.”

One of his children, Gamora, manages to escape and it makes Tony’s resolve to the same grow stronger and stronger. He doesn’t know how she did it, but now that he knows it’s possible, whatever hope was leaving him from the horrors he faced every day lost in space with aliens warping him for their whims is coming back full force.

Thanos decides after two years or so Tony is conditioned enough to go out and retrieve some mysterious Orb from ancient ruins across space in another galaxy. Tony takes the chance, decides he can pull some tricks with his armor when he gets weapons and such to defend himself when retrieving the Orb and eventually escape Thanos’ grasp. Peter Quill gets the Orb first and then basically it’s GOTG but with Tony instead of Ronan, though Ronan is still one of Thanos’ henchmen, just not used for this particular stone stealing scheme.

Tony runs into Gamora again, fate is really great that way, and by the time he’s up against Rocket, Groot, Drax, Peter, and Gamora, all five of these ragtag creatures, he realizes that he’s been trying to save his own hide so much, he hasn’t considered anyone else. So in the end, he gives the Orb--the power stone--to the Guardians, Peter uses it as per the movie, and then Gamora is the one who lets Tony join the team. Gamora could sympathize with him and also kill him so easily if he tried anything, but she could also see that Thanos’ influence wasn’t hovering over him anymore.

The Guardians, now with a renegade Tony in tow, go off doing pick up missions and such about the galaxy. Rocket steals batteries and the events of GOTG2 kick off, with Tony in tow. After that, Tony and Peter decide they should head on back to Earth, probably drop Tony off back in his world and for Peter to try to reconcile with his history again. On the way over, the Guardians still do pick ups across planets and worlds Tony would have never imagined, and he slowly heals the wounds isolation, desolation, and emotional torture Thanos had pressed on him over the past few years. Tony and Rocket work on making Tony’s arc reactor more sustainable in space and less breakable, Tony gets lots of info about spaceships from Peter and redesigns his armor’s HUD interface to better adapt to the different approaches to technology this other galaxy has developed. Since Tony’s not even in the same galaxy as Jarvis, he rebuilds Jarvis as a new AI system named Friday for the space-resistant suits he builds while they all travel about the Milano. Drax and Peter help him test it out a lot.

Tony’s content and happy here, bonding with these aliens and building a family as they fight together and grow together. They aren’t without their arguments, Tony and Gamora happens, Peter gets jealous about it in the weirdest way (Tony can’t tell who the other man is more jealous of, which is exciting in it’s own way), Rocket and Tony have conflicting personalities at times and Baby Groot is a fucking pain in the ass as a teenager. But through all the arguments, all the moments Tony blasts off into the sky with anger, Peter frustratedly pulls out his guns to shoot some floura into smithereens, or Drax spends insanely too long sharpening knifes with serious death threats on his tongue, they come back together and forgive one another. Tony almost never wants to leave but he knows he has unfinished business back home.

It’s 3 years after Tony joins the Guardians when they finally reach Earth. Tony’s excited (and nervous, Mantis points out) to return home, wonders how long it’s actually been because keep track of Earth time while on planets that move faster and slower than Earth has been hard. Peter is extremely enthusiastic about the arrival, landing the ship with Rocket off in some abandoned farmland further upstate. Tony steps out onto Earth for the first time in 5 years and falls to his knees with joy. He’s finally home, he’s got to find Pepper and Rhodey and Happy, he’s got to find the Avengers, too, if Fury kept that alive after the invasion.

So, with Peter and Gamora in tow while the other less humanoid creatures stay at the ship, Tony makes his way into the city. There’s a statue memorial for him up in Central Park, Stark Tower is refurbished in it’s glory, the city is almost the same but still missing his signature mark of existence. He wonders for a moment why no one on the street recognizes him. He’s dressed in odd clothing, didn’t bother trying to steal some more Earth fashions, and his hair is long enough for a small ponytail, but his signature goatee stayed with him the entire time, and 5 years is a lot but not enough to make him unrecognizable.

He runs into Pepper at the tower and she dismisses him pretty quickly, tired probably from cosplayers claiming they’re Tony Stark so they can take over his company or some shit. DNA testing would prove otherwise, but apparently cloning technology has come a long way. Tony sneaks his way into his tower anyway, finds out Jarvis has enacted a death protocol, which means he’s inaccessible from every location but the Malibu mansion. Tony hears about the Avengers compound upstate and finds himself mildly surprised that they’re doing well without him.

When he meets them, they don’t believe he’s Tony either. It kind of stings to see in unfamiliarity in their eyes. Sure, he only knew them for a couple days but they were a team that could have been more, and well, they are more, but they’re more without him. Don’t even subconsciously want him given they literally don’t accept any proof he offers. Gamora being green skinned doesn’t help his case, but Steve does at least give him some clothes to change into so he doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

Later, the Milano goes west to Malibu to crack the code that will unlock Jarvis. Tony doesn’t need Jarvis again when he’s got Friday, he doesn’t need the unfinished suits and prototypes stored in files and half-hashed out on tables in the lab. But they make him feel more human--being back he’s realized how he has a slight accent, some blend from all the alien languages he’s heard and picked up over the years. It sounds wrong when he’s on Earth but up in space, it feels normal, it sounds like him.

Tony just wants to be himself again back on Earth and first things first he needs Jarvis back. As soon as he can wake up Jarvis, he can prove that he’s the real Tony and finally get to talk to the Avengers and tell them everything he knows. Thanos will be coming, he’s not going to let Tony get away unscathed, and knowing Tony’s from Earth, he’s definitely gonna come back here. Tony needs to let the Avengers know, get them to prepare for this situation, to assemble appropriately. This is bigger than the enemies they’ve dealt with since, this is something they need Tony’s help with, but he can only get their trust if he can prove who he is.

He wonders as his plans to unlock Jarvis keep getting thwarted, as the Guardians are later spotted on the World Council watch list and Stephen Strange deems them a dangerous threat. He wonders why the Avengers are trying so hard to indirectly keep the truth hidden. He wonders maybe if he made it through the portal they would have been kinder to him, maybe they could have been the family he has with the Guardians.

But it wasn’t for him to know and maybe Tony simply isn’t going to be as human as he wants to be anymore. Surprisingly, as the Guardians agree to leave Earth in case of more threats following them, Tony isn’t too upset about that.