Tony Stark woke up like he'd been slapped by a thought.
Not a nightmare. Not a jolt of panic.
An itch.
It wasn't on his skin. It wasn't in his muscles. It sat somewhere behind his eyes, under his skull, like his brain had discovered a splinter in reality and couldn't stop worrying it with its tongue.
He lay there for a second, staring at the ceiling of his penthouse suite, and tried to name the feeling.
Static? No.
Déjà vu? Too dramatic.
It was… like the universe had cleared its throat and then pretended it hadn't.
Tony blinked twice, and the itch didn't go away.
He rolled over, reached for the glass of water on the nightstand out of habit, and stopped halfway—because for the briefest fraction of a second, the glass looked like it was already in his hand.
Then it wasn't.
Tony froze.
"…Okay," he said aloud to the empty room, voice rough with sleep. "Either I'm still dreaming or reality is lagging."
His bedside display lit up as it sensed movement. Time, temperature, atmospheric conditions, a dozen tiny data points that usually made the world feel clean and measured.
Everything looked normal.
Which, to Tony Stark, was sometimes the most suspicious thing of all.
He swung his legs out of bed, feet touching cool floor, and the itch sharpened—like the moment before a sneeze.
"FRIDAY," he said, rubbing his face. "Scan the tower. Is something wrong?"
The AI answered immediately, calm and crisp, her voice filling the room from hidden speakers like she was standing right behind him.
"Negative, Boss. All systems normal. No intrusions detected. No structural anomalies. No unusual electromagnetic activity."
Tony paused, hand hovering over the closet panel that would slide open to reveal an unreasonable number of designer suits he rarely wore.
He narrowed his eyes.
"Okay. Great. Love that for us."
He walked toward the windows. The city sprawled beneath him, bright and alive, traffic already thick like the world had agreed to pretend mornings weren't a personal attack.
The itch remained.
It wasn't pain. It wasn't even discomfort in the normal sense.
It was wrongness without evidence—and Tony had built his entire life on the idea that evidence always existed if you were obsessive enough.
He pressed his palm to the glass, feeling the faint vibration of the building's systems humming through the frame.
"Run a deeper diagnostic," he said. "Like… stupidly deep. The kind that would make my accountants cry."
"Already initiated," FRIDAY replied. "Results still indicate normal operational status."
Tony exhaled slowly through his nose.
"Wonderful. So either the tower is fine and I'm losing it, or something is wrong in a way my own AI can't see."
"Given your medical history, the first option is statistically—"
"FRIDAY," Tony cut in, pointing a finger vaguely at the ceiling. "We're not doing this first thing in the morning."
A pause. Just a beat.
"Understood, Boss."
Tony stared at his reflection in the glass. Hair doing its usual "I survived a hurricane and look better for it" thing. Eyes slightly tired. Face that looked like it belonged on magazine covers and courtroom exhibits, depending on the day.
He frowned, suddenly irritated.
"Do you feel it?" he asked.
"I do not experience itch," FRIDAY said.
"No, I mean—" Tony stopped. How did he explain it? "Like… reality's off by one pixel."
"Clarify."
Tony threw both hands up. "I can't. That's the problem. It's indescribable. Like when you walk into a room and your instincts scream something moved, but you can't tell what."
"Perhaps you are experiencing residual stress," FRIDAY offered. "Your sleep cycle was interrupted twice."
"By what?"
"By you," FRIDAY said, unhelpfully honest.
Tony blinked, then snorted. "Right. Okay. Fair."
He turned away from the window and started walking, bare feet silent against polished floors. The tower was quiet. Too quiet.
There were days Tony loved the silence, and days it felt like the world was holding its breath.
Today was the second kind.
He made coffee—because Tony Stark could have a hundred machines do it for him, but there was something grounding about the process. A ritual. Heat, smell, a tiny act of control.
He took a sip, and the itch flared again, sharp enough to make him pause mid-swallow.
He set the mug down slowly.
"…FRIDAY," he said, voice careful. "Tell me we're not in the Matrix."
"Impossible," FRIDAY replied without hesitation.
Tony leaned on the counter. "Come on. It's a classic. Glitch in the system. A déjà vu cat. A spoon that isn't real. You telling me I can't dodge bullets if I believe hard enough?"
"Bullets travel faster than human reaction time, and the laws of physics are not influenced by belief," FRIDAY said.
Tony stared at the empty space where a person would be if he hadn't filled his life with holograms and voices.
"I miss Jarvis sometimes," he muttered. "At least he let me have my delusions with dignity."
"Jarvis also allowed you to attempt building a suit out of a microwave and a toaster in 2009," FRIDAY replied.
Tony pointed at the air. "That suit saved my life."
"It also caught fire."
"Details."
He forced himself to take another sip of coffee.
The itch didn't go away.
So he did what Tony Stark always did when something didn't make sense.
He buried himself in motion.
By late morning he'd cycled through half a dozen lab tests, stared at three separate projections of probability models, and tried—briefly—to trick his own mind into forgetting about the itch by focusing on something simple, like upgrading his repulsor stabilization algorithms.
It didn't work.
The feeling lingered, weaving through everything.
Like a background noise only he could hear.
"Boss," FRIDAY said, interrupting his spiraling, "there is a reported armed robbery in progress. Multiple hostages. Midtown."
Tony didn't even hesitate. A robbery was something he could understand. A robbery had edges. A robbery had villains and victims and a nice, clean ending where he could feel like the universe still followed rules.
"Suit me up," he said, already moving.
Panels shifted. Hidden compartments opened. Nanotech crawled across his skin, cold for a second before it warmed into a familiar weight. The helmet sealed with a soft hiss.
"Try not to punch anyone through a wall today," FRIDAY said.
"No promises," Tony replied, then launched out of the tower like a missile pretending to be a man.
The city rushed up to meet him. Wind screamed against his armor. For a few seconds he felt something close to relief—because flying always did that, made his brain shut up and let physics speak.
He spotted the commotion quickly: a bank, police cordon, a handful of terrified civilians pressed to the ground, and three men in cheap tactical gear who clearly thought intimidation was a personality trait.
Tony landed with theatrical flair because he couldn't help himself.
The pavement cracked under his boots.
All heads turned.
One robber raised his gun, hands shaking. "Stay back!"
Tony tilted his head. "Buddy, I'm wearing thirty billion dollars of 'stay back.' You sure you want to test it with that little pew-pew?"
The guy fired.
Tony didn't move. The bullet pinged off his chest like someone flicking a soda can.
Tony sighed. "Okay. That was your one free mistake. Now we do the part where you drop the weapon, the hostages go home, and you think about your life choices."
The robber screamed something incoherent and fired again, which told Tony that thinking wasn't his strongest skill.
Tony raised one hand and fired a low-power repulsor blast that sent the gun skittering across the pavement, then knocked the man backward hard enough to stun but not injure.
Clean. Controlled.
He moved through the rest of them the same way—precision, efficiency, the kind of violence that ended before it truly began.
In less than a minute, the robbers were on the ground, webbed by police zip-ties, and the hostages were staring at him like he was a myth with a bank account.
A little kid—maybe eight—peeked out from behind a woman's legs.
Tony's helmet retracted, and he gave the kid a wink.
"Hey," Tony said, lowering his voice like it was a secret. "You okay?"
The kid nodded, wide-eyed.
Tony stood, looked around at the crowd, and felt it.
The itch.
Again.
Not tied to the robbery. Not tied to fear.
Just… there.
Like the universe had watched him save the day and still felt incomplete.
Tony's smile slipped for a second.
No one noticed.
They never noticed when the mask cracked, because Tony Stark was very good at gluing it back together with jokes.
He turned back toward the police line. "Alright, gentlemen, try not to lose these idiots in the paperwork. I'd hate to do this again next week."
A cop started to say something grateful.
Tony barely heard it.
His HUD flickered—one tiny, almost imperceptible stutter—like the world itself had blinked.
Then it was gone.
Tony's stomach tightened.
He lifted into the air, leaving behind cheers and cameras and the comforting illusion that heroics fixed things.
The itch followed him all the way back to the tower.
By evening, Tony had convinced himself of two things:
One: he wasn't crazy.
Two: if he was crazy, it was at least the interesting kind.
He was halfway through rebuilding a diagnostic framework that would make FRIDAY analyze the tower's systems down to quantum-level fluctuations when his comms pinged.
The signal wasn't from Avengers channels.
It wasn't from Stark Industries.
It wasn't even from his personal network.
It was… something older.
Something that carried weight.
Tony answered, already annoyed.
"Fury," he said, because of course it was.
"Come to the Watchtower," Fury said.
Tony froze mid-keystroke.
"Okay," Tony said slowly. "Either you're prank-calling me with a Justice League number—which would honestly be impressive—or something is very wrong."
"Come to the Watchtower," Fury repeated.
Tony's brow furrowed. "Why are you calling me for that? That's not your territory."
Silence.
Not the casual silence of someone waiting.
The heavy silence of someone who didn't want to say the next part out loud.
Tony's hand hovered over the desk.
"…Fury," Tony said, voice quieter now. "Is everyone alive?"
Another beat of silence.
Then: "Get here."
Click.
The line went dead.
Tony stared at the empty air for a second, then exhaled a breath he didn't remember taking in.
"FRIDAY," he said. "We're going to space."
"Of course," FRIDAY replied. "Should I prepare a list of possible reasons for your impending death?"
"Save it for the eulogy."
The suit wrapped him again, familiar as skin.
He launched upward.
Clouds fell away beneath him. The atmosphere thinned. The world curved, beautiful and fragile and still somehow pretending everything was normal.
And through it all, that itch.
Like a finger tapping on the back of his skull.
Remember.
Tony couldn't remember what, and that scared him more than anything else.
The Watchtower came into view—clean lines and silent menace, floating like a judgment.
Tony docked without fanfare. The airlock hissed open.
He stepped inside.
And immediately knew something was wrong.
Not because of alarms.
Not because of damage.
Because the entire room felt like a funeral.
There were people there—people who should not have been together in the same room unless reality had gotten bored and decided to mash action figures.
Batman stood in the shadows like the shadows owed him rent.
Superman stared at the floor, jaw clenched, refusing eye contact with anyone. Like he was afraid his eyes would reveal something.
Flash paced in tight circles, too fast to be comfortable, like he was trying to outpace a thought chasing him.
Hal Jordan leaned against a console, arms crossed, posture casual—but his eyes were tired, the kind of tired you couldn't sleep off.
And beside him—
Bruce Banner.
Bruce Banner was talking to Hal.
Tony's brain tried to reject the sight on principle.
They were discussing football.
Of all things.
"—I'm telling you," Hal was saying, voice forced light, "the spread was ridiculous. You can't blame me for trusting—"
Bruce lifted a hand, tired smile not reaching his face. "I can blame you. I can blame you deeply."
They both chuckled.
It sounded like two people laughing at the wrong time because silence would be worse.
Tony took a step forward.
"Wow," Tony said loudly, because that's what he did when he didn't know what else to do. "This is the weirdest crossover episode I've ever crashed, and I once fought a guy with a magical hammer who talked like he ate Shakespeare for breakfast."
Batman didn't react.
Superman didn't look up.
Flash's pacing didn't stop.
Only Fury turned.
Nick Fury stood near the center of the room like a man holding back a tidal wave with sheer stubbornness.
And beside Fury—
A kid.
Tony's brain took a second to place him.
Then his chest tightened.
Rob Jones.
Tony's expression softened instantly, instinctive.
The kid sat on a bench, shoulders slightly hunched, hands folded in his lap like he was trying to make himself smaller.
He looked exhausted.
Not sleepy-exhausted.
Not "I stayed up playing games" exhausted.
This was the kind of exhaustion that came from surviving something no one should have to survive.
Tony took another step forward, voice gentler.
"Hey," Tony said, as if they were back on Earth, as if this was just another Tuesday and not some cosmic intervention dressed like a meeting. "Hey Rob!"
Rob's head lifted.
His eyes met Tony's.
And Tony felt the itch spike so sharply he almost flinched.
Because Rob's eyes looked like he'd woken up from a nightmare—
And the nightmare hadn't let go of him yet.
Rob blinked once.
Then, slowly, he raised one hand.
A small wave.
A kid wave.
The kind of wave that should've been normal.
The kind of wave that should've meant everything was fine.
Tony's smile stayed on his face like armor.
But inside, something cold settled in his stomach.
Because everyone in the room was looking at Rob like he was the answer to a question no one wanted to ask.
And Tony Stark—
Tony Stark suddenly understood what the itch was.
Not a glitch.
Not paranoia.
A warning.
Reality had been touched.
And it had left fingerprints.
Rob's hand lowered back into his lap.
He still looked tired.
Still looked like he'd just woken up.
Still smiled—small, polite, almost apologetic.
Tony opened his mouth to speak—
And the chapter ended with that wave hanging in the air like a tremor before an earthquake.