Back Before the Start of Us (on hold)

There's no time for tears

They had all been shouting at him for forever. He had watched a thousand years pass by as they all yelled different versions of what he already knew. It was his fault. The kids were gone and it was his fault. Of course it was Bruce's lab too and he could have some of the blame on him as well. But Tony was the last out of there. And Tony was the last one to open the storage cupboard. It was his fault.

"How are we going to get them back?" Steve turned to Tony. They had all finally stopped shouting.
He sighed, "Well first I would have to figure out how to pull data from the machine in order to see when they landed. Then we would have to figure out a plan to get them back from there. Honestly I don't know. That machine is years old. I wouldn't have expected it to still work."
"Do it then. And quickly." Natasha said, turning on her heel and storming out of the room.
Steve gave Tony a passing glance and followed her out.

The room was a mess. Wanda was stood in Bucky's arms with tears in her eyes, shaking ever so slightly. Pepper had tears rolling down her face and was stood next to where Tony was sat in a chair with her hand on his arm. Bucky's face was completely unreadable but he was obviously angry at Tony. They all were. Clint and Laura stood quietly talking in the corner but both of them looked just as upset as each other. And they still had to tell Thor. He'd been off world for a while spending some time keeping peace in other realms and it had been their responsibility to keep Tatum safe. And as usual Tony had gone and fucked everything up.

Everyone blamed him. He blamed himself. Self loathing rolled off of him in waves and threatened to drown him. He wanted to tell them all that he was sorry. That he was sorry, so so sorry for what happened. He was sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry. He wanted to tell them that he would get right to work and find the kids in no time because if Tony was good at anything it was fixing his own mistakes. But his words kept on sticking to his tongue and he couldn't for the life of him spit them out. So he opted for just getting up and leaving.

He walked straight to the lab and into the storage cupboard. Dragging the machine out and into the main lab proved more difficult than he had thought and his arms ached with the effort but he didn't care. The blueprints for the machine were surprisingly easy to find, having been locked away in a compartment that had been built into the back of a cupboard for safe keeping.
Swiping some of the stuff off of one end of the lab table, Tony spread out the blueprints and started reading through them. He also had FRIDAY pull up all records he had on the machine and had them all floating around him as holograms. This was going to be difficult. Incredibly difficult. But that didn't matter because he would do anything to get their kids back.

He hadn't allowed himself to panic or to worry about whether the kids were okay or not. He hadn't allowed himself to linger on his feelings about the whole situation. Because Tony knew the only way to get the kids back was to keep going. Besides he couldn't stop now: he owed them at least that. And he couldn't be slow with this either.

There wasn't enough time.