Tony is murdered but somehow comes back in a different body with his memories intact.
While he's trying to figure out who is his killer, he crosses paths with Stephen.
If they knew each other or not before I'll leave it up to you...
There was something wrong with the man watching him from the back of the deli. Wrong but familiar. Stephen’s order was called and he quickly retrieved his food, not taking his attention away from the man watching him.
Of course today was the one day that Wong hadn’t accompanied him to the deli. But Wong was in another dimension at the moment and Stephen had been hungry for something he didn’t have to make himself. He debated with himself for a long moment before he decided to do the sensible thing—though Wong would probably call it reckless—and figure out what, exactly, was so off with this man.
He moved deliberately toward the back of the deli, making eye contact with the man, making sure that he was prepared at any moment to pull out dimensional energy.
The man stiffened a little, as though he hadn’t realized until this moment that he’d been caught, but he didn’t move or try to escape.
Stephen settled across from the stranger, that sense of wrong and familiar even stronger now that he was close and looking the man in the eyes. “Is there a reason you’re watching me?” Stephen asked, keeping his tone deliberately light, as though entirely unbothered and unconcerned.
“Why are you watching me,” Stephen asked, when it became clear the man didn’t plan to elaborate.
The man’s lips tightened into a thin line. “I figure of everyone out there, you’re the most likely to be able to help me,” he said.
Stephen arched an eyebrow, pretending he had no idea what the man might mean. In some ways it was true. The average person should know nothing about what Stephen did. After Thanos and Titan, Tony had helped obfuscate Stephen’s and Wong’s identities. A flicker of pain twisted in his chest. Tony’s death only weeks ago—suspicious in too many ways, even if it’d been declared a heart attack—still hurt. In the months after Titan, Tony had become a friend. But Tony’s work had been good. No one should know who Stephen was or what he did. “How so?”
The man sighed, running a hand through his hair. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“I’ll suspend my disbelief,” Stephen said dryly. He’d seen far crazier things than this man could imagine.
It was clear the man didn’t fully believe him. “A few weeks ago I was murdered,” the man said. “I don’t fully know who, I didn’t have the good fortune of seeing them before they injected me. I’ve been trying to figure it out, but with no luck so far.”
Stephen froze, a dozen thoughts racing to potential conclusions.
“Except, instead of dying, I woke up in the hospital in someone else’s body. They ‘resuscitated him’, except not, because I was in there, not whoever Jacob Worthington is.”
“Tony?” Stephen asked, the name coming out more a whisper.
The man—Tony—gave him an unhappy smile. “Alive and in someone else’s flesh.”
Stephen stood, almost forgetting his sandwich in the process. It seemed a lot less important now. “Come with me,” he said. “This isn’t a conversation for the deli.”
“You’ll help me figure this out?” Tony asked.
As if that was in question. “Obviously,” Stephen said. “Now come on.”
