Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel comics or characters or movies, and am making no money off of this fic.
AN: Written for the October 21st Whumptober prompt: harsh climate.
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All Day Long by luvsanime02
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The desert is clinging to his skin and his throat, and Tony Stark doesn't know what to do next. His communications system is damaged, jammed, and so he can't contact anyone. His suit is dead in the sand dune that Tony just crawled out of, gasping for air and blinking the grit from his eyes, and sadly finding no relief in sight.
There's no one and nothing, only endless sand and heat. So much heat. He's being cooked from the inside, roasted in his skin, and he's never quite felt this much like an entree before. It's not a pleasant sensation at all.
Tony can't bring his suit with him, can't do anything but stumble away on the shifting sand and wonder how in the hell he's going to survive this one. This harsh climate is a friend to no one, he knows. Briefly, Tony considers staying right here. His suit has a tracker, but he doesn't know if that's damaged too, or not.
Even if it's working, so what? The sun is high overhead, and will be for hours, and Tony can't even look out across the endless hills of sand without feeling like keeling over. He's never experienced anything like this before.
Why couldn't he have crashed in an ocean? Sure, he might still die, but at least he wouldn't be this hot while doing so. Seriously, Tony feels like his skin's going to crack open and ooze fluids any second now. He needs shelter. He needs water, wants it so bad that he can almost taste some, but there's no moisture to be found. Even his mouth is nothing but dry cotton.
If Tony has to cut himself open and drink his own blood in order to make it out of this alive, he's going to be furious and disgusted. Not that that's anything new, but this would take those feelings to a whole new level.
Help might be on the way, but Tony isn't even scheduled to arrive at his destination for another few hours. No one can know yet that anything's wrong. By the time that they do figure it out, if Tony stays here, he will be long dead from sunstroke and dehydration.
Most people know that drowning will kill you. Even a child understands this instinctively. What most people don't understand is how easy it is to die from a lack of moisture. They know that the human body is mostly made up of water, and assume that their bodies will absorb that liquid if necessary for survival, and they're right, but it still will only take an hour or two at the most before Tony will collapse and never get back up again.
Tony hacks into his suit and finds the tracker, shoves it inside his pocket, and then sets out. From what he memorized earlier of the surrounding area, there's nothing convenient for shelter nearby, but Tony still heads east. He might, if he can survive long enough, come across some sparse trees in that direction. Nothing but a few scraggly plants barely a couple of feet high, but at this point, Tony would take a towel. He can rest there, and hope that someone comes and rescues him before the sun sets and he freezes to death, or he goes delirious from the heat, or any number of other ways that he can die out here in the next twelve hours.
Tony walks away from his suit, and tries not to feel like he's leaving the best part of himself behind, and he walks, walks, walks. He wonders if this blue, blue sky will be the last color that he ever sees, and that wouldn't be so bad, maybe. It's the exact color of Pepper's eyes right now, and there are far worse things to gaze at before dying.