Toni Stark's very obvious meltdown was fast becoming a worrying problems for both her team and those whose world they had been misplaced in.

In three weeks since Loki had royally screwed them over, the short brilliant brunette had already broken the curfew keeping them in Stark tower six times, drank her way through some priceless bottles of wine out of Tony's collection, and even once hacked into her counter parts lab and changed every access code in the building. It had taken several hours of Tony furiously pounding on the glass outside as Toni tinkered with the scraps of her suit, hoping the half-hearted repairs would distract her from this whole giant mess, before her bearded, slightly taller self managed to guess what her new password had been and swiftly shooed her out. She had argued with him for hours later, their egos at last coming to a full and fiery crash as Steph had predicted, how did she 'break' into his lab if technically it was hers too and she knew the codes?

It was officially 12:47pm on the third week and fourth day of being in the wrong universe when Toni made her seventh successful breakout.

Armed with little more than the Stark Industries credit card in her wallet, which she was delighted to learn still worked even though it was technically from another world, retail therapy was possibly the least destructive way she had coped in the last few weeks.

Inside Toni was burning, not just from missing Pepper, but from missing everything about her home.

Here she was the same weak little girl she had been treated as for most of her childhood, the woman who was still even to this day mocked behind her back by businessmen who rivalled and supported her company in equal measure. They used to be sexist to her face, until the day she had not only unveiled the revolutionary plans for arc reactor energy, but had also personally over seen every stage in the process. Every equation, every construction. All these traditionally 'male' jobs and she could do them better than anyone she had ever met.

She hadn't flirted her way to top of her class in Engineering at MIT, at only seventeen years of age, after all.

Toni had been working so hard for respect her whole damn life, and here she was in a man's game once more, denied access to technologies she had invented, told to wait and sit pretty locked away in the tower.

Like hell she was going to comply, she was Toni god damn Stark, Ironmaiden. No one told her what to do. She barely listened to Nikita Fury, what the hell did she owe to the SHIELD Director's counterpart? Nope, she wasn't going to go down without a fight, even if the other version of herself wanted her too.

After several hours of Fury, SHIELD and the incognito members of the Avengers trying to track the erratic patterns of Toni's disappearance, it had been Steve who had finally found her.

With her arms laden with dozens of heavy shopping bags, she had no chance of outrunning him. Hell, even if she didn't have the bags, the fact he is a super soldier would probably mean she had no chance. So instead, Toni tried to feign a mildly surprised expression, like she was unaware he had been looking for her, as well as at least thirty agents and the rest of his team.

"Excellent! I needed a hand with these, come here-"

Unceremoniously dumping half a dozen bags his way before Steve even had the time to sigh, Toni pretended to remain oblivious to his disapproving stare.

"Toni- What are you doing, you know people aren't meant to see you out and about? Imagine what they would think-"

She cut him off, her tone incredibly blunt.

"They would see a midget, since I've got no heels at the moment, trying to do her shopping. Not like I'm whizzing around blasting things in my suit-"

Biting back a protest, Steve just shook his head at her, before walking a little away from the crowd of bustling shoppers, his voice dropping to a whisper, but his tone was still sharp, not appreciating the number of goose chases she had been responsible for in the last few weeks.

"Stark, what's your problem?"

Her brown eyes flashed then, narrowing into slits as if he had crossed some invisible line.

"What's my problem?!" Her voice was a stinging hiss, quiet at first but grew louder with every second. "Oh, I don't know, maybe the fact I'm so far away from my home and we all have no god damn clue how to get back. It could be that I'm being treated like a stupid little girl because of my gender, apparently I'm not considered clever enough to be discreet the moment I step out of the tower!"

She was working up into a full rant now, people were beginning to slow and stare at her and Steve.

"Or maybe it's the fact that not even once have any of you stopped to ask how my team and I might be feeling! Stop treating us like inconveniences on your perfect little lives, or like you're our begrudging baby sitters, because we're human too, and we sure as hell didn't ask for this!"

She threw all her own bags down at Steve's feet, beginning to storm off before he could react, shouting a few last remarks over her shoulder.

"We deserve respect too, not just because most of us are women, but because we've had pretty fucking hard lives and this is just another issue on our plates. We have suffered everything that you guys have, but what do we have to show for it now? Nothing but a hasty order to stay placid and quiet in a tower while your people figure out what to do with us."

Stunned as Toni was gone so quickly after her explosion, Steve gave the crowd around a bewildered look. He scrambled to pick up her bags, feeling incredibly guilty that he had set her off like that when already she had clearly not been coping well- He felt so stupid, the last thing she probably needed was a confrontation. But then again, he couldn't understand her overreaction, it had only been a simple question… And it had mainly been asked because he was concerned with her recent behaviour.

Maybe he just hadn't done it the right way… Women were a mystery, after all.

And a mystery he had very little experience with, at that.

When Steve had arrived back to the tower, he had been surprised when Coulson alerted him that Toni had returned twenty or so minutes before him. He carried the shopping bags to the door of the room she was staying in before warily knocking. Silence greeted him, and assuming she didn't want to be disturbed, he left the bags outside.

Inside the room, Toni had been sprawled on the cream coloured bed sheets, peering up at the impersonal white ceiling. Her room was always decked in brilliant shades of red and gold, with beautiful dark stained wood furniture. Her bed was a king size, naturally, not this weak excuse for a double. She would bet all her fortune back home (she reminded herself in the eyes of others she had nothing here), that Tony's room would feel familiar. It would probably have the same layout, even the same size walk in wardrobe.

There just wasn't enough room for two Stark's, with their flashy taste and giant egos, to co-exist like this.

They were no step closer to a way home, not that anyone would update the stranded team, they were still treating them like inferiors, like copies of the originals.

Toni crawled off the bed, bending down and reaching under it to fish out the dozens of bottles of wine she had nicked from the cellar and hidden in case of the possibility everyone got so sick of her escape attempt they confined her to the room.

She couldn't spend another few weeks like this, and what if it spanned into months? Even years? It was painful to think about, after such a long hard climb to be at the top in her own world, here she was cruelly cast down to the bottom in this place that was so familiar, yet so entirely different.

These pales boring walls were not hers, the material of the sheets was not cotton or silk which were the only two fabrics she could handle on her skin when trying to sleep. Her only mirror was a small hanging one by the door which was nothing to the full wall of mirror in her walk in wardrobe.

This world would never be Toni's, at least not while the people in it tried to shun her, along with the rest of her team, and hush up their inconvenient existence.

Reminded oddly of Hamlet's old 'to be or not to be' monologue as she uncorked the first wine bottle with hands long accustomed to this action from years of collective drinking experience. She ran through the lines, trying to bring the college production she had learned the story from to the fore front of her mind.

Something about slings and arrows, she concluded, and whether they were worth it just for the sake of being alive. A fair enough question, Toni found herself agreeing, rather bitterly, with the deluded Danish prince, though his troubles really had nothing on the drama that her life had been.

And thus the next few hours Toni Stark devoted her efforts to drinking until she was sick, and then beyond, praying the alcohol poisoning that had never come over years of partying could finally steal her from her sea of troubles today.

She thought of Pepper and how angry he would be, or sad. It all depended on the time it would take for the others to get home and deliver the news. Maybe they would lie and say she died in the first confrontation, buried in an explosion or something. Toni really couldn't care anymore, her hands were starting to go numb which made the seventh bottle hard to grip between her slim fingers.

She had barely managed to get halfway on this one before keeling over, her vision slipping to black as her head hit the carpet and calmness washed over her. One last sluggish phrase crossed her mind as the end drew nearer and she would have smiled if she remembered how to through the intoxication.

And by opposing, end them.

- Waking up hadn't been part of the plan but, unfortunately, Toni did.

The room was white enough to be heaven but the smell of disinfectant and sterility gave it away for the hospital it really was and the genius shuddered heavily. She really hated any location to do with the medical profession, and couldn't trust these types of doctors as far as she could throw them. Another reason it had taken her so long to man up and have the procedure to remove the metal around her heart as well as the arc reactor.

Another promise to Pepper, Toni's chest ached nearly as painfully as if she still had shrapnel embedded in it.

Hearing footsteps, Toni pretended to slip back into her coma as the door to her room opened and the tapping of at least two pairs of feet echoed back at her.

"How is it possible she's only turning thirty? I thought you were all meant to be just like us, and Stark is definitely closer to pushing forty!" This voice was male, Steve's, Toni could compare it easily with the echo of 'What's your problem?' in her head.

The other spoke up then, and with a rush of guilt she made out the loyal voice of Steph. They were nearly opposites, and not particularly close friends, but the blonde always had been very good to the genius when she needed someone. They made an excellent team, and had stepped somewhat on a more united path after their initial loathing for each other when the Avengers Initiative had only just begun.

"I'm sure there's differences between you and I as well, but just think about it. You knew Howard Stark, your Tony's father. I knew Harriet Stark, my Toni's mother. The woman who shuddered at the idea of having a family because it meant she wouldn't be able to keep as effective a reign over her company. She was ambitious, the life of the party, and just as career driven as Howard, I'm sure."

Steph paused and Toni got the feeling she had looked towards her, hesitating as if worried she might betray the brunette's confidence.

"…Toni told me, since I was more surprised than anyone that Harriet had ever let herself have a child, she had only caved when Toni's father, Mario, had threatened to leave her. As much as she loved her career, her love for Mario was just as strong, and along with the fruitless attempts at finding me in the ocean beginning to wear her down, the choice wasn't hard in the end. Nine months after that decision, Toni was born, when Harriet was nearly forty. I think we can explain the age difference there."

Toni resisted the urge to snort, with great difficulty, if only to maintain her cover. Steph made it sound so romantic, like she had settled into domestic bliss for the sake of her husband, but that was absolute bullshit. The moment Toni was weaned onto the bottle was the moment Harriet shuffled her off onto nannies and had gone on with her job as if pretending she hadn't even left.

The only thing Harriet bothered to leave Toni with included her own last name of Stark, Mario hadn't seemed to mind in much the same way he was happy to let his wife not take his name for the sake of the company.

She had only dealt with the judging looks and non-maternal figure of Harriet Stark until she was in her sixth year of life. Both her father and mother had perished in a car crash. Toni vaguely remembered glimpses like the headlines on papers and magazines, or the clamber of everyone trying to fight about who the company belonged to.

Harriet Stark's will silenced the angry men in suits who thought they had the right to take over something they had never been a part of the building of. Odette Stane had become both in charge of Stark Industries, until the remaining Stark reached the age of 21, and she also the one burdened with the custody of a young Toni.

It probably would have been the nicest thing Harriet had ever done for her daughter, if not for what Odette turned out to be. Toni had to basically accept her mother figure since she was six had tried to kill her, more than once in her adult life, and that she had to personally be the one to take her down.

And people wondered why she drank so much, or couldn't keep up a stable relationship.

Snapping Toni from such thoughts, Steve apparently had whistled through his teeth at that new bit of information, puzzling over the fact that maybe the counterparts were more different than they seemed after all.

There was a long pause, before he spoke up again, a touch of guilt shining through into his voice.

"…I feel bad, you know? Like, it was my words that had set her off… She didn't need me on top of her too."

With a body like that, you can get on top of me any day, at least if you mean literally.

Those were Toni's thoughts, but what she actually pipped up and said at last was completely different, with a voice of pure, dripping sarcasm.

"Ahuh, because every time a man is mean to me, I go and do something like this, right?" She snorted, a difficult action with the current tube down her nostril. "Puh-lease, don't give yourself an ego like that, you and your people aren't my only problem."

Steph sighed wearily at the banter, hardly surprised Toni's first words were full of snark.

"I'm going to get more coffee, even I can't deal with this drama at 4am without it, would you like some, Steve?"

The male super soldier nodded his head and as Steph glided from the room Toni whined something on the bed about 'thanks for asking, I'd love a cup too!'

Taking the opportunity, now or never, Steve gently cut between Toni's muttering.

"I'm really sorry, you know, for how upset you got after I found you… And I- I told my 'side' about how you were feeling. Fury's thinking of reconsidering some of the conditions of your stay, and Tony… He's decided to let you have full access of the tower, after I specifically argued with him about you having every bit the right to access as he does."

Toni rolled her eyes, but did seem to perk up at the news about the tower.

"…This is only because I tried to kill myself, isn't it?"

Steve winced at how nonchalantly she had said that, like she had predicted they'd all be on tender hooks and watched the way they treated not only Toni, but all the alternates currently calling their world home.

"I'm not sure about the others, but no, not for me. I'm treating you better because you were right, and I didn't realise it. Talking to Steph, I started to realise that you didn't all just magically appear into the people you are. You've worked for it, suffered just as much as we have, and we can't be making it any easier on you all."

Toni stared at him, utterly perplexed, but slightly bemused, before eventually she laughed and settled back on the pillows, losing all her hostility and starting to warm up to Steve. "…Okay, okay, jeez you are such a boy scout, but I accept your apology without suspicion. And, I'm kinda sorry for scaring everyone… I don't know what happened yesterday."

Steve shook his head, pointing at a calendar on the wall.

"Actually, it's Monday, you've been out of it for the whole weekend. Nearly drank your way into preservation."

Toni didn't skip a beat, bouncing off his words with her ever sharp wit.

"…I still think it's a better way to stay young than being turned into a capsule."

Only a Stark would dare make jokes about Steve's freezing, and only a Stark could do it with such a perfect delivery that it made even the super soldier himself laugh.

And as he laughed, Toni joined in with her own higher trill, and they couldn't stop. Not until tears poured down their cheeks and a haughty doctor stuck his head in to shush the pair. Even then Steve had to nearly stuff his fist in his mouth to stop while Toni had her hands over her mouth to muffle her post belly laugh giggles.

It wasn't long after that Steph returned and between the two of them fretting over her, Toni began to feel like the queen bee she usually was even though the hospital bed was a poor substitute for a metaphorical throne.

Maybe, just maybe, there was enough room for her after all. And as she caught Steve's eye when he was about to take a swig of coffee, the male super soldier had waited until Steph's back was turned to sneak Toni a sip.

If even just one of the other side was starting to treat her like a human, maybe she could do this after all