#very much like how i started shipping steve and zombie as a joke bc of dan bull's zombie song

[feliville]

Hey. uhhhhh So, if I made my Steve n Alex designs and my Steve+Zombie story into an OC thing, would yous like hate me for it HBJCD

actually i already started doing that and it's all I've been thinking about for like a week or something,

Its kinda funny to me that I don't have to change a lot about the story for things to fall back into place

[angel-gidget]

The Hop, the Skip, & the Endless Jump: My Tony Stark/Amnesia: Memories AU

I suppose we all have that one story for a fandom that's just sitting in our brains, marinating with little hope of coming to fruition bc it's just too complicated to quite get fully written out in actuality.

Mine is an MCU/Amnesia: Memories crossover au thing. Basically, Tony Stark wakes up with partial amnesia one day, and every interaction he has with every single person feels off. But being Tony, he adjusts and starts to kinda get into the swing of things over the course of the next 24 hours. Team? Avengers. Fiancé? Pepper. Bestie? Rhodey. Protege? Peter. Pain in the ass? Ross and/or Rogers depending on the day.

But then he wakes up on the same day in what is clearly a different universe.

No fiancé. Best friend? Rogers?! Protege? Riri. Pain in the ass? Some dude named Von Doom of all things. He figures out that he's in a different universe, but how he body-hopped into it and why is something he doesn't even get a chance to look into before he wakes up. Again.

Same day, different universe. Team? Avengers... Academy. Fiancé? None. Because apparently he's younger here? Best Friend? Janet Van Dyne and sometimes Loki. Protege? None. Because apparently, he can barely grow facial hair here. But he finds himself bestowing unwanted advice on Peter Parker anyway. Pain in the ass? Nick Fury. So he studies the local time-fog and only learns how utterly non-sensical the explanations for his situation could even be.

So he's kind of relieved when he wakes up again. But that relief dies with the next Q&A. Team? None. Fiancé? None. Bestie? Happy Hogan... but dead. Protege? Some Hulk-like kid who's clearly being emotionally abused. Maybe by Tony himself?  Pain in the ass? Definitely the man in the mirror because apparently Tony is a BAD GUY in this dimension. So Tony decides to wreck as much as possible for himself in the next 24 hours because, hey, might as well TRY to leave this world a better place, right?

When he wakes up again, the first thing Tony wants to know is if he's even a good person. But then the questions multiply because he realizes he's woken up on a space ship. Team? Guardians of the Galaxy. Fiancé? His teammates keep referencing a crazy alien protoplasmic being that is ruler of a distant planet, but Tony can't tell if they're joking or not. Bestie? Rocket or Peter Quill depending on the day. Protege? Peter Parker. Who is Iron-Spider in this 'verse apparently, and oh God, that is adorable. And apparently Peter is also his recently adopted son? What? Pain in the ass? Thanos. But also the Avengers, his former team in this dimension. (This entire universe is basically a slightly fluffier version of Influential Pineapple's AU, How to Repair a Broken Heart.)

.... so basically, the Amnesia: Memories premise just provides a framework for related dimension-hopping vignettes in which I could play with Tony's interactions with others, while still giving myself leeway for not being super-familiar with the comic-verse or writing Marvel fanfic in general. Also, maybe an opportunity to ask permission to play in the sandboxes of some of my favorite fanfic authors.

But unlike the Amnesia: Memories video game, Tony's dimension-hopping might actually have a lot of possible explanations. Did Tony get lost in a time-fog in his original universe? Did he get cursed by a magic user? Maybe this is the result of messing with infinity stones? Hard to say. He'd probably run a few of these theories in-story as well.

I guess notes have implied so far that Tony only spends 24 hours in each reality, but I think I'd also prefer to mimic A:M in the sense that his stays are not that consistent. He might spend anywhere from a day to a week in each reality. He's got no control over it. Until he realizes that if he dies, he'll wake up somewhere else. Thus Tony realizes he technically has the ability to shorten his stay. If he's desperate. Joy.

So the whole thing is an angstfest, basically. If he's in a nice comfy dimension, it's torture bc he knows he can't stay. Then the awful realities are just awful. And it only gets more and MORE tempting to apply things he learns about people into other dimensions.

Some of the WORST things:

Waking up in an addicted body. MCU Tony had a... less dramatic recovery from alcoholism than other versions of himself. Waking up homeless, curled up in a snow-covered dumpster, with every cell in his body screaming for vodka was an experience Tony could have 100% done without.

Going from 60 to 0 with Peter. Tony can adjust fairly quickly if he lands in a dimension where he's closer to Peter than he remembers. Hug more. Speak a little softer. It's nice, really. Maybe kinda addictive. Which would explain why following that up with a reality where Peter treats him like a total stranger makes him feel absolutely sick inside.

The revolving door of Romance. Tony is sure that in his original dimension he was with Pepper. At least, he's mostly sure. To be fair, the dimensions in which Pepper is his ex also have a feeling of... normalcy. Not good--not good at all--but not odd either. And of course, there are the worlds where he wakes up with someone else. Those can be tempting. Especially if the last few realities have involved waking up alone. Things sometimes go... badly if Tony explains the dimension hopping too quickly. He needs to know if he can trust people first. That often involves... playing along. Which may involve being a playboy again. He's too old for this. He's not the same age in every reality, but he knows he's too old for this. It sucks.

Steve. The pure whiplash of knowing the best and worst of the man, and having too much of all his lives affected by it. And then having to interact with whatever THIS Steve’s normal is. Good or bad, it never feels fair.

The damn dystopias. Some entire worlds are just that bad. Zombie plague. Dictator Von Doom. The Snap. Even one occasion where there was only a belt of iced-over rocks where the Earth should have been.

His own reaction to the damn dystopias. After the pile-of-rocks incident, Tony's first words when he woke up in the next dimension were "Screw this." He never found out if he was romantically involved with anyone, but he noticed Pepper left some calls. He told his AI--a new one, he didn't know this one. That was fine.--to book him a flight to the nearest tropical beach with minimal crowds. And to invite Peter Parker.

To his relief, a very confused eighteen-year-old Peter did show up in front of his private jet. This one didn't know him very well, but was his honest-to-God intern through SI. So of course he was up for whatever his boss's bosses' great-grand-boss wanted. So Tony lied and told Peter he'd picked his name at random, and that as an eccentric billionaire, Tony Stark invited random Interns on a flight of fun all the time.

He then proceeded to underhandedly use every little preference and detail he had learned about Peter over the span of realities to set him at ease as he proceeded to be a horrible influence and drag them both away from all responsibility. The Avengers tried to call him twelve times. Seven from Nick Fury. Eight from a Carol Danvers, whoever the hell that was.

Tony spent the week laying on a beach, playing video games, imbibing sugar, and listening to Peter call and make excuses to his aunt while joining him in all the above. It was funny until Peter dropped his phone into Tony's lap. Then May Parker reminded Tony that responsibility was a thing.

And okay, she didn't know. She didn't know that Tony was half-insane from witnessing the erasure of the earth. But she knew that her nephew was missing his classes and had been whisked overseas without a passport. And she knew that maybe Tony didn't care about what the consequences of that would be for Peter, but he should. He should.  

He looked up saw that Peter's eyes were wide as saucers and Tony realized his own cheeks were wet. So he told May he was sorry, and then told his AI to wire thirty-six thousand dollars into the Parker's joint bank account. (It was a strange tiny number, but it was the most money any May Parker had ever accepted from him in any dimension, and Tony remembered that.) It was just in case. In case Tony wasn't there the next day. In case they needed anything. Like a lawyer. Or a fund in case Peter lost his scholarship.

After a week of this? He probably had. And it would be all Tony's fault. Because he'd lost it and gone on a BENDER. And wasn't that a realization? He didn't need alcohol or sex to go on an irresponsible bender and drag his a kid into it with him.

Tony woke up in a new reality the next day, resolved to do better. He called May Parker first thing, and thanked her. This May Parker had never spoken to a Tony Stark, and assumed it was a prank call. That was fine. There were space aliens attacking, and Tony had a suit.

Team? Avengers. Fiancé? To be figured. Bestie? Thor? Thor. Okay. Protege? Harley Keener. Pain in the ass? The Chitauri today. Oh, goody. He already knew exactly what to do.

Time to be Iron Man again.