AN: Just a quick note to say that I haven't gone anywhere, and that I have not forgotten you, wonderful readers, especially those who anxiously await the chapter of Tarnished. I'm working on that, and am actually about two thirds of the way, so hopefully I'm going to have an update for you within the next couple of weeks. Bear with me; if I have taken my time in updating with this chapter, it's because I want to make it as good as possible.

To those wonderful people who read any out of: He will never play with others, Find a Way and Resplendent, thank you for making them your favourites, and so on, really means a lot to me.

DISCLAIMER:

Obviously I don't own any of the characters and other things which belong to MARVEL Studios; what a fangirl-fest THAT would be!

NOTE: this story is based on the events that occur in The Avengers, so beware it contains spoilers.

I hope you enjoy this, and of course if you could let me know what you think I'd be extra happy and all.

AND ABOVE, THE TERRIBLE ABYSS

You can be somewhere terrible with one single purpose burning in your mind to the point that it excludes all else. You can be at the top of the world, or in a dank cave, and still be in a dark place. You find yourself fulfilling dreams you had up until that moment thought them to be just that: impossible, unreachable, unobtainable. And when you realise those dreams are actually wholly and totally within reach, you don't know how to handle the reality of it. It's all in the transition of the moment. One minute you're living a life you have fought damn hard to build for yourself, because you firmly believe that heroes are not born, they are made; the next minute everything around you burns away faded into the recesses of an analytical, eccentric and brilliant mind – except for that purpose.

Suddenly you're that purpose. That is your legacy.

You never thought you would grow up to become a hero; being in the business of Death, that's kind of the anti-thesis of what you should aspire to be.

You still don't feel yourself worthy of the title, not really, not deep down. You don't say it out loud, you don't wear it on your sleeve while talking to others, but it's in everything you do, it affect every decision, every plan, every direction you want to take.

Riding on a high up in the sky with a nuke practically strapped to your back you're in transition again, getting translated into something unknown.

There are impossibly too many lives at stake here. You firmly think about that, about the promise of death you're trying to break. They deserve a chance to live out their lives in a world that is a good place, as safe a place as can be realistically expected.

For decades you couldn't have cared about the fate of the world more, other than being as good as royalty in the eyes of the public, making profits, having a fucking good time whenever and wherever possible, and shunning all bad thoughts of being rejected and an unloved, sad little boy.

You're so different now, so much taller, so more humane. It's painful. It's far more painful than being that other guy ever was. But the transition. That was more painful than anything had been in your life, the cruellest wake-up call.

That transition is what made you. You were forged out of the fires and furnace of redemption; a man of steel with a steel resolve to do finally do what's right, and a heart made of flesh of blood, not of metal – a heart that bled for the horrors you had contributed to wreak upon this wretched world.

Now, you love this world. You realise that it's imperfect and sometimes it feels like you will never reach out to those who need the knight in shining armour, because the world is such a very big place, and there is only one of you.

But at the end of the day, you're only worthy of one thing, and that's to do the very best that you possibly can in order to protect it. The mantle you wear now has never felt so right before now, Avenger. That mantle is carrying you to the top of the world. There is a world to save right now, one that you are actually very fond of, the town you grew up in as a child. And there are people living in it that need to be protected, need to be avenged.

Maybe this will make you worthy. Maybe it will make you good enough, or just good, which would be a step up from being the Merchant of Death. Either way, it might just make you feel at peace at last. You've taken so much from this world; you feel it only right that you should give something back.

The AI's soothing voice in your hear is with you till the very end, a comrade-in-arms that makes this all infinitely easier to bear.

But there is one voice you're still waiting to hear. You're reaching the end of the world now, up in the big New York sky. All the things you've known … all the things you've done … you're leaving them behind. The place you lived in, the place you love, it looks small now. It feels like a weight that gets lighter and lighter to carry as you shoot up into the atmosphere. Things become clearer up here; they fall easily into perspective, whichever perspective you want to focus on.

Your insides are readying – the big moment is almost upon you. The close.

You tell yourself that it doesn't matter that this is one more thing which you cannot predict, not even a little bit; it's going to be your last. At least it's been an adventure, a fitting way to go out with a bang.

You fly past the inter-dimensional barriers, crossing through the portal, away from all you know and love, into another world. The last voice you're going to hear is one of your own creation, and even this is fading out, becoming fainter and fainter. You don't think about this too much, you mustn't.

Heart of steel. Don't falter now warrior-man, your ancestors await you. You can almost dream of it now, as your brain suddenly starts firing off and you're bombarded with everything, the house of your fathers.

This is it. You have transitioned once more. You can't feel it to the max as it's happening, there is too much else to focus on, to think about; but you're being translated into something other than yourself.

For a short moment, clarity elevates you to the highest plane.

It's the strangest out-of-body experience you have ever had, especially since technically you're still within your body. But you see yourself as you are. It may not be pure – you have tarnished too much in your life to ever consider yourself anything but a weak man prone to sins – but whatever you have done, whatever you have wanted, whatever you have achieved, it's carried you this far, it has taken you to where you are.

You see everything. You see all the light and as such all the dark.

It is good.

You are

No longer

Ashamed.

The only regret you carry –

- your life's companion.

Blue and the hue of the woman that sets your heart on fire.

Hers. Hers should have been the last voice you would ever hear before the final curtain call. You've never wanted anything more. That time you were being tortured essentially to force you to rape your own twisted morals and commit your genius to a band of terrorist murderers, it's her voice you hear, though you were quite alone.

When you were hurtling your way towards the last days of your life with the speed of a burning comet, nothing else had really mattered to you so much. Your legacy was being left in the hands of someone who could only take it and make it one hundred times better. Your heir the only person you had ever trusted completely, the one whom you had always relied on unconditionally.

That was the person you discovered yourself wanting to spend the rest of your life with, even if the rest of your life would only span a few more weeks and no more.

If there had ever been anything that stayed the same during these moments of transition, of metamorphosis, they all revolved around her.

In your life, you have been many things and many men, but you have craved her as all of them.

The quickening is upon you. The cosmos is a big, dark place, impossibly vast and unbearable is the feeling of being utterly small. You're in that terrible place again, no friendly presence beside you to reassure you all will be fine, to fuel your courage.

You look upon the utterly paralysing sight of your world's enemies swarming menacingly, which still fills you with disbelief. None of this was ever truly meant to be real. It was never meant to be quite like this.

You let the missile go and your mission is complete.

The thing that is keeping you aloft, suspended in the big nothing somewhere (who-knew-how-many) light years away can no longer sustain you. The very thing that is keeping you alive leaves you too.

The breath in your burning lungs eventually fades away from your conscious.

For the briefest moment, life, death, faith and belief, convictions and buried aspirations, it all exists within you even if you are so far without.

Below there is the life and the world and the love your left behind in the hopes that you made your life matter, that your second chance was not wasted.

Your fading heart inside the chest that still bears it will forever house it all, your shame and wish of being something more, something better, something good. Your life with her could and would have been something great, possibly the best thing that had never got the chance to happen, another big adventure; of this you have no doubt.

And above you, the terrible abyss that will swallow you whole, a great yawning, gaping chasm to which you are inconsequential –

- Except for the one and only weapon you carried with you –

- which impacts and suddenly it's the smallest threat they never saw coming, a hungry fire that blazes brightly in this giant darkness, that's what dooms them all-

-and you are at peace because you are done, because it is over-

-even as the last thought which crosses your mind is that you wish you could have heard her again … one… last… time-

You're startled awake and it takes a while for your beating heart to remember it is no longer frantically trying to make up for a whole lifetime's worth of beats in just a short few seconds. But then knowledge and memory come to you again, and you know you're in your bed safe and warm where you're meant to be.

Her soft breathing is close and wholly soothing, it makes your own slow down, and the icy cage squeezing your chest gradually expands again. You must have been quite restless in your sleep; this you know judging by the wholly protective manner in which she has wrapped herself around you in slumber. The precious weight of her on your chest, the smooth long legs tangled with yours, her delicate hand touching your arc reactor, all these things anchor you back to the here and now away from the memory of the abyss you witnessed, which you will never forget for as long you live.

It isn't something you will ever share with the creature who holds you so lovingly, not in so many details, of this you're certain; no sense in causing her further unnecessary anguish. Her heart would ache and spill its precious blood over you if ever she knew what you went through just before your tumble back down to Earth, and that you won't allow. Not if you can help it.

You're an Avenger now fair and square; the things you have seen up there have translated even this mantle into something different than it was when it took its first breath.

But you never want to be an Avenger where she is concerned. If we can't protect the Earth, you can be damned well sure we'll avenge it. You would be her protector and make sure that no harm ever came to her; the Avenger must always be separate where she was concerned. She heals you, makes you stronger, makes you better; makes you good. Makes you complete. You're no longer the selfish man you were long ago, and now there's so much that you could give back to her. Until the next transition. Until the next translation in the theatre that was your life as Iron Man, as an Avenger, as Tony Stark. Somehow you just know that when that time comes she will be your hopeful transmission. This gives you peace.