Man Out of Time - A Captain America / Avengers Fanfiction

Chapter 11

Or at least that was Peggy's take of the situation…

"As I was saying," Steve repeated, aiming the little red dot at the image in the center of the screen, technology so simple even he had quickly mastered it. "Some of this we know. The tesseract cube was retrieved from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and Howard Stark devoted the rest of his life trying to harness its power. With limited success. The fact the cube even existed inspired his research into alternative sources of energy such as the arc reactor, but he was never able to recreate or fully harness the tesseract cube as Red Skull had done."

Tony Stark gave Steve a dark look. Talk about your Oedipus complex! Steve had learned a whole lot of information he hadn't known about his nemesis from Pepper Potts, most of it knowledge that forced Steve to temper his irritation and cut him some slack. Just as Peggy had asked. That didn't mean he had to like dealing with the arrogant jerk! Steve hit the red button and advanced to the next slide, an image of a gigantic carved tree.

"Yggdrasil," Thor said. "Gateway to the nine worlds."

Steve nodded.

"Both Red Skull and Adolph Hitler were obsessed with the occult," Steve said. "While Hitler believed he could harness the mythology of the gods to inspire people to support his rise to power, only Red Skull understood that behind that myth lay technology. In that, Red Skull and Tony's father were a lot alike."

Tony Stark sat back, his expression one of disdain. "Tell us something we don't already know."

"If you knew it," Thor growled, his fist wrapping around Mjolnir, "then it would have been you who contacted Asgard. Not the mortal Jane."

"Enough!" Banner said, his voice possessing that dangerous edge they were all learning meant his other half was lurking a little too close to the surface. "If you want to bicker like teenaged girls, do so on your own time."

Steve's eyes were drawn back to the empty chair in the room. So, he noticed, were everybody else's. Natasha had been more than the token female. And also the least likely of the bunch to 'bicker like a girl.'

"Stark … the elder one," Steve continued, "thought his research into the cube had failed. He tried testing the cube again and again, only to have the facility he was conducting research in blow up. Some of his failures were pretty … spectacular."

Steve flipped to an image of a miles-deep crater in the ground. And then another one. Then a third one. Craters the government had officially attributed to research into nuclear weapons, but which Pepper Potts had turned up were failed tests of the tesseract cube. Tests none of them would have even known were not nuclear weapons had Peggy not told him about Howard Stark's obsession and the three failed tests.

"I was always told those were tests of the hydrogen bomb," Stark said, leaning forward in his seat with curiosity. "Although there were a lot of things about my father I'm discovering I didn't know."

"He was the father of the atomic bomb," Banner said, gesturing to the wasteland that was left after each atomic … or tesseract cube … explosion. "Why would anybody question … this?"

"Can you increase the resolution of that image?" Thor said, his voice filled with excitement. "There. That one there."

Steve smiled. They had spotted it. The anomaly he'd noticed while digging through photographs of Howard Stark's old research. He stared at the remote control, trying to remember which button told the machine to make the image bigger.

"The green one," Tony whispered, leaning towards him and pointing to the correct button. This time, there was no condescending tone to his voice. Only urgency.