A Revelation of Rain

He's Alive

It was ten in the morning. 

Stephen stood over the organic host body that Tony's Astral Essence would soon be occupying, carefully inserting the Arc Reactor into its chest. Tony hovered nearby, offering vital advice to make certain that the device wasn't inserted incorrectly. 

"A little higher?"

"Just here, then?"

"Yeah, that's perfect Doc, right there. Dammit, I wish I could help."

Stephen looked up at him, nodding his head once. 

"You're helping immensely, Tony. This will make all the difference. If we don't get it perfectly right, the generation of the body won't progress as swiftly as we need. Thank you for your patience."

Tony moved around to Stephen's side, looking down as the final electrodes were connected to the Reactor, their shimmering ends visible through the translucent skin as they stretched out into the torso. He was excited. This was WORKING! 

Stephen's hands, though they shook, still knew how to perform surgery. It took him longer. He had to be more careful. He needed to focus on every single movement. But he could do it. And after an hour...he did. The Arc Reactor was in place.

He stepped back, clicking the door closed and setting the seal, then leaned down to rotate the tank back into a horizontal position. 

"Now all we need to do is wait."

"Couldn't come a moment too soon. I'm going crazy here."

"Another twenty hours at the very most, if those nanobots are as swift as you believe. This is a cloned body. It will feel very odd to you when you first ease inside of it. You will notice a certain amount of weakness, which will linger until your muscle tissue builds. It won't feel like your body. But over time, these sensations will fade."

Tony didn't even speak. He was crouching near the chest of the clone, watching with pleased fascination as a subtle glow began to spread through the gelatinous form. Those were the nanobots, doing their work and building up cell tissue and skin and bones and nerves and sinew. Repairing what wasn't broken, but needed to be forged and fortified to turn the fragile vessel into a strong human body. Stephen took a seat at his desk and sorted through his mail. 

"You get a lot of fan letters, Doc?"

"A fair amount. I throw them away."

"What?" Tony floated over to hover behind him, looking down at the pile. Effortlessly, even though he'd only been taught the skill a handful of weeks earlier, Tony lifted the Essence from one of the letters and skimmed it. Then another. "Breathless praise, outright worship, offer of marriage....oo! Naked pictures! She's not bad." 

He flipped a picture over, squinting at the number printed on the back in a feminine hand. "Why are you such a freaking monk?"

"I have work to do. When you've finished reading my mail, do let me know so I can have my servant burn them." Stephen turned in his chair to look up at Tony, regarding him with amusement. "Surely you received ten times as much mail as this?"

"Twenty, at least. You know, back when I was alive. Before the Snap. It was only about ten afterwards. Half my fans disappeared."

"I still have no idea how you ever managed to fit your head into that helmet. Which brings me to another question, something we need to decide. The suit. You're very recognizable, Tony. I can't have the world knowing you're alive until we can come up with some decent cover story to explain why that is. If people knew that I had the ability to resurrect the dead....well, you know what would happen. This place would be mobbed by desperate, heartbroken individuals begging me to bring their loved ones back to life. I sympathize with them, of course. I'm not saying I won't do this again at some point. But it's time consuming, and I have entirely too much to do as it is."