Okay so I have been chipping away at this since I saw Infinity War. And it has turned out to be one of those lovely pieces that are both cathartic and wonderfully stressful at the same time so I wanted to share it with you.
I'm thinking its probably going to be somewhere around a three chapter story but I'm still working and adding so it could be a bit longer. Please let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy!
-Lily
Tony Stark was good at many things, could understand nearly anything put in front of him but as he sat on the ground of that godforsaken planet, he could not force himself to comprehend anything. Not the increasingly throbbing wound to his side. Not the taste of blood on his lips. Not the smell of iron in the air. He could not understand the dust that coated his blood-stained hands. And for the life of him, he could not understand why he would not do what he normally did and brush it off. But he did not care, he reveled in his inability to comprehend even the most basic things. Since there was one thing whispering at the back of his mind, one thing he did understand because it was more fundamental than any of the other physical realities, it was an instinctual wound, a soul searing reality and it was the one thing he could not afford to comprehend.
But as was his fate, the longer he sat, the clearer his mind became. The pain of the physical wound built in the background, the feeling of tearing tendons and muscle a common feeling for the superhero laid low. The taste of blood made sense, the metallic tang hung in his mouth as the injuries of the fight caught up with him. Even the iron swirling in the air began to make sense again, everyone had been injured. The one thing that he still could not comprehend was the dust that coated his blood-stained hands. And while the reality that had created that dust made no sense, the shear pain and heartbreak that went along with it were beyond anything Tony had ever felt, driving home how real it was. His eyes were finally drawn away from the broken and burned landscape to the dust on his fingers, all that remained of Pete. When his mind finally allowed that connection, Tony felt the tears start to well in his eyes. They were dead. All of the people he had gone to the planet with were dead. Quill. Drax. Mantis. Strange. And…Pete. The kid, his kid, the person who should have never been there in the first place but the only reason they had gotten anywhere with Thanos. Peter is dead. The one invading thought his mind kept him from reconciling slammed into him with all the clarity and agony of Cap's thrown shield. Tony ducked his head into his hands as the sentence continued to spin through his mind, Peter is dead. The mantra gained momentum in his quickly adjusting mind, his normal ability to understand twisting a knife that Strange's offering had not been able remove. The tears began to course down his face, clearing the dust and dirt that had stuck to his sweat-soaked skin and he forced his head even farther into his clasped hands, squeezing his eyes closed. A small part of his mind telling him that if he shut them long and hard enough he would wake up from this nightmare.
He did not know how long he sat with his hands clasp to his lips but an insistent humming in the background forced him to open his heavy eyes. As the torn, ruined landscape assaulted his senses, a part of him, not a small part, wished his injury would kill him. Unfortunately, his labored breath continued and his broken heart persistently kept beating. Instead that humming morphed into something akin to the English language as Tony realized he was not actually alone. The blue alien woman was talking, to him or to the landscape he was not sure because he truly did not care. Peter is dead. She apparently finished some thought because her cold, black eyes were fixed on his face. He tried to remember anything she had said but it had been background din compared to the mantra that was burning its way through his mind, Peter is dead. He realized she must have said something but he could not find it in him to respond. His eyes squeezed closed as he savored the increasingly painful burn of his wound, a welcome punishment for his failure.
Then suddenly someone was gripping his arms and shouting. Apparently, the blue woman had gotten frustrated with this lack of engagement. Instinctually, Tony's eyes flew open as he violently pulled away from her grasp, but as soon as he was looking at her again, she let him go. She apparently took that as her opportunity to begin talking again and now that he was looking at her, some of it made sense, well a few words made it through anyway, "…should leave."
"What?" His voice sounded foreign. It was rough, ragged, like he had screamed himself hoarse but he had not said a word. Not even to Pete. God what had he said to him? Tony tried to kick his mind into gear and it gladly agreed. As that moment slammed into him again, he realized he had told the kid he was alright. A frightened fifteen year old kid that he had dragged along with him had been begging him for help, begging him to save him and he did what? He stood there and tried to tell him he was fine, only helping after the kid had already stumbled forward into his grasp. He could not even say anything as Peter apologized. As his mind replayed the scene, his utter weakness and the pathetic nature of his response was laid bare. His heart sped up, slamming against his battered rib cage in a desperate attempt to honor his death wish. All the while, his lungs squeezed closed, denying him the oxygen he needed to keep breathing. As he spiraled into this nightmarish reality, he could not help but wish he would plunge farther. Maybe if he died he could tell Pete he had nothing to apologize for.
A sharp cracked echoed across the plains of Titan as Tony was denied his wish. As the pain of a smack vibrated his teeth and bruised his cheek, his mind was forced into sharp focus as the black eyes held his, the blue woman's teeth were bared as she snarled at him, "Human," she demanded. At her words, Tony finally latched on. He could not respond but he actively looked at her for the first time.
When she seemed satisfied he was somewhat coherent, she continued, for what he assumed was a second or third time, "We need to leave here. I can pilot Quill's ship."
Tony felt himself nod automatically, the thought of escaping this place a comfort but he did not move, simply sat where he was, watching her walk away. He realized she probably expected him to follow as she charged off into an indeterminate direction, but his legs were not really obeying his commands at the moment.
Nebula realized the human was not following her. Huffing to herself, she turned and stalked back to him, unsure why she cared. Brushing the thought aside, she forced him to stand and helped him limp heavily to the ship. The human did not protest, did not say a word but allowed her to lay him down on the medical bed in the back of the ship. Realizing that he probably would not rest on his own but he could use it, she dug through Quill's meager supplies to find something like a tranquilizer. The man barely flinched when she released the pressurized needle into his leg. She stood over him for a few moments as his eyes slipped closed before stepping over to the captain's seat of the ship. Nebula could not avoid the snap of pain that coursed through her when she thought about what Quill would say if he saw her piloting his precious ship. Still, she had other things to attend to, like dropping the human off before dealing with the monster who had killed her sister. Quickly pulling up the map, Nebula programed in the coordinates to Earth before settling in and planning her next move. She needed to figure out where Thanos went and hopefully Earth held some of those answers.
A few hours later, she was shaken out of her wandering thoughts by a scream that tore through the cabin. Nebula snapped out of her seat, more caught of guard by the sound than she wanted to admit even to herself. Stepping cautiously forward, she crept up the steps to where she had left the man. As he came into view, she could tell immediately he was awake. His eyes were darting back and forth, his body held rigidly tense in a way that almost seemed more painful when she thought about the wound on his side. Still he did not seem to register her presence but as she stepped closer, a few of the pieces of armor moved around his body fluidly, reforming on his hands, crawling up his neck, and forming over his chest. The vulnerable parts of a human, Nebula caught herself assessing. However, she had seen how dangerous whatever those weapons were and she did not particularly feel like being blasted into space, so she addressed him instead, "Human. Stop." The command rung through the quiet ship as the man's eyes snapped to her, suddenly aware of her presence, "You're safe here, for now."
"Where is here?" Tony's voice was deeper than he remembered, weaker.
Nebula was surprised when he finally talked. There was no fight, none of the confidence she had expected from the man who had fought so viciously against Thanos. This man sounded broken, and some hidden source of compassion forced her to respond, "Quill's ship. I'm taking you back to Earth and then I'm going to kill Thanos. We will arrive in a few hours."
Tony allowed himself to relax a bit, forcing the visions from his nightmare into the overflowing box where he crammed all the terrible things he had done. Now was a time to focus, now was a time for revenge but first he needed to understand what had happened. Setting the nanobots to fixing the armor, Tony forced himself into a sitting position, breathing heavily passed the pain that radiated up his side at the stab wound that, unsurprisingly, was not yet healed. He watched the alien woman step forward like she wanted to say something but thought better of it as he gingerly set his feet on the floor and pushed himself off the bed. His arm was pressed into his side and the wound burned but a new determination filled his mind. Looking up at the blue woman, he asked the only thing that mattered, "What the hell happened?" He had to press the mantra, Peter is dead into that nightmare box as well. Repeating he was dead did not bring him back.
Nebula could not help but frown at this human's persistence, it was impressive for one so weak, still she shrugged as she explained, "Thanos finished his mission. The mission he has been trying to complete since the day his planet fell into the ruin and rubble you saw back there." She paused as if she expected the man next to her to say something.
Tony tried to wrap his head around what she just said, "What mission? What the hell did he do?" She looked at him with all the patience of a mother attempting to explain a concept to a child who just kept asking the same question repeatedly, like he should know what happened. It just frustrated him.
She answered his question with one of her own, a snarky quip that spoke to her own impatience, "If you don't know, why were you fighting him?"
"He came to Earth, kidnapped a wizard, destroyed some stuff, and wanted a stone. It seemed like the thing to do at the time but you did not answer my question, what did he do? Why did everyone else turn to dust and we're sitting here having this inane conversation?" The anger in his tone rose as he tried to get the answers he desperately needed.
"He destroyed half the universe." She explained simply, like that should somehow clear up any confusion.
He understood the words, realized that they worked in a sentence but he could not comprehend them, "I'm sorry, what? What do you mean he destroyed half the universe?"
She rolled her eyes, looking down at the floor as she physically gathered enough patience to answer the question, "For as long as I have known him, his goal has been to bring balance to the universe. To end the suffering of those who do not have access to what they needed in order to live productive lives because creatures are selfish and too greedy to share the finite number of resources that exist. His solution was to end the suffering by impartial means, ending the lives of half of the population in the universe. In his mind, that would bring the balance that would let everyone who was left survive."
Tony could not help the bug-eyed expression on his face, he was trying to reconcile what she had just told him and not vomit on the floor of the ship, "How?"
That was a new question, Nebula rolled her eyes but did not seem to need the same fortification to answer that question, "He must have found the last stone he needed, I'm guessing it was on Earth. As soon as he did that, a snap would have been all he needed to finished his life's work." She spat the last phrase, intending it to sound as sardonic as she could. Nebula watched as the man numbly stumbled forward into the chair behind the captain's chair and he slumped down into the seat. Shrugging more to herself than to the human who could obviously not see her, she took up Quill's seat again, content to sit silently if that is what the man wanted. It did not matter to her.
Tony could not even begin to comprehend what she had just said, half the life in the universe, gone? He felt his legs start to wobble as he stumbled forward, grabbing hold of the first chair he saw and sliding into it. Suddenly, another thought occurred to him, did that mean Pepper was gone? Happy? Rhodey? Could everyone he knew be dust? Surely someone was still alive. That was all he could tell himself as he dropped his head back into his hands. All of his nightmares had finally come to fruition.
The man sat in the chair behind her, not speaking, she checked on him intermittently catching him sitting with his head in his hand or staring out into the reaches of space as it coursed by outside the cockpit. They were only a couple of hours from Earth so she left him go but there was something that had been nagging at her since Titan. Nebula knew she should ask his name, should find out something about him but that was not what really interested her. The only thing that had caught her attention and the only thing she wanted to know, made no sense, but she asked it anyway, "Who was he?"
"I'm sorry?" Tony felt his gut twist as the pain of the memory crept out of its box but he could not help the quiet hope that she was talking about Strange or one of Quill's people. He could not talk about the kid at this point.
She could hear the understanding in his tone, he knew who she was talking about, or at least he had an idea and he was praying he was wrong. Still, some long lost or forgotten part of her needed to know, so she clarified, "The child, the one who died last, he seemed to trust you. Was he your son?" The tortured sob that tore from the man's throat made Nebula almost regret even voicing the question but she could not get the way the child had clung to him out of her mind. It had jarred long buried memories of her own family, from when Thanos had first arrived. She had been small and scared too, just like the boy had been. In that instant on Titan, she remembered being ushered into the town square, her father's arms holding her tightly to his chest. The feel of her mother's skirts was still burned into her memory, since she had been tugged into them as other families were pulled apart and separated. But then as Thanos's thugs waded through the crowd, her father's strong arms were torn away and her own fingers were ripped from her mother's skirts. That was when she had bit and scratched at the men holding her, clamping down so tightly on one of their fingers that she had nearly torn it off. Thanos took an interest in her fight and had taken her for his own, to mold into something terrible and broken. But for some reason when she saw that boy, that image of herself pierced tore through her consciousness, tugging at a fury she had forgotten the specifics of long ago.
"No," Tony answered curtly, unable to engage any farther, he was seeing Peter again begging for help he refused to give. Then he mentally shook himself and buried the memory again, unable to allow it to take control, unable to allow it to keep him from bringing the kid back. When he spoke again, his voice was cool, detached, closer to what Pete would need him to be, closer to the Tony Stark he knew long before Iron Man, before Pepper, before Peter, "He was my responsibility. Not my kid." It was callous and Tony knew it but it was necessary, still he could not help a hint of self deprecation, a reminder that Pete was better than he could ever be, "He was lucky enough to have someone else as his father."
Nebula turned to face him then, recognizing the change in his tone and seeing that same change on his face. Some kind of mask had slipped into place, keeping his emotions in check so he could accomplish his own mission. She knew what it meant and there was a pang of – what was it? Regret? Anger? Jealousy? – deep in her chest when she realized that this child had an adoptive parent who had no desire to make him different, to make him better. He had someone who just wanted to protect him. She mulled the emotion over before she recognized its taste. Jealously, she knew its burning hunger crawling up the back of her throat, it was the same thing she felt every time Gamora beat her, every time her father dismissed her. It was misdirected at Gamora and caused by Thanos but ultimately, the emotion was the same and to feel it again directed at a child she had not even known, Nebula hated it. Hated so much what she was. She turned away from the broken man, focusing instead on getting him home.
Tony's mask stayed in place as he stared at the woman before him, he knew she was wrestling with her own demons and a twinge of empathy hit him at that recognition. He realized he should probably find out the blue woman's name, it would be easier than referring to her as the blue alien woman, even if it was just in his head, "So what's your name? What do they call you?"
Her voice was hard enough to cut diamond when she finally answered, "Nebula." She did not turn again, unwilling to engage him any further.
Tony could not help the shiver that ran through him when she answered, it would not surprise him if she was able to kill Thanos. But when she did not continue, he decided to introduce himself, "I'm Tony by the way."
Nebula flicked up her fingers in response, they would be to his home planet in less than an hour and she would be rid of the man.
"Okay, nice talking to you then." Tony responded angrily, settling back into the seat as carefully as he could, still distinctly aware of the stab wound on his side.
So there you go, my take on the aftermath of the snap.
How long until Avengers 4 again?