"It's ok Tony. I'm happy, I've done so much more than I could've ever imagined. My time is here, and I'm glad that I can say good-bye to my idiotic best friend. Don't start worrying about me now."

Tony remembers her words, her pale paper-thin skin crinkling into a smile as she said it. He remembered the cold, shaking hand on his cheek where she was wiping away his tears, and he remembered how it fell away only hours later, together with her breath, and the last fluttering beats of her heart.
And then Pepper Potts, the last of his friends, died at the incredible age of one hundred and four.

The memory was extremely vivid, partly because he didn't dare let it fade, mostly because it was saved like most other memories and information he deemed important.
No matter that it'd been almost six hundred years ago, that he didn't even live anymore on earth.
People dying over and over is incredibly frustrating, and lets not begin with the fickle minds and the completely stupid choices they make again and again and again.
He used to scoff at the words that history repeats itself, but yeah, it does, humans are incapable of learning from others it seems.
'Humans' instead of the collective 'they' or 'we', because he was 'human' in only the looses of terms.

What he was, was a patchwork of immortality. He was a machine as much as he was plant and magic these days, an ash and yew heart, and a soul touched and approved by Lady Death, he couldn't even tell if there was anything originally 'Tony Stark' to him anymore at all.

Jarvis could've probably told him, if he was still with him, but he'd let the AI go and explore the realms. J knew where and how to find him anyway.

For about a century he'd done the same, but he'd grown mellow with the years, tired of the people always asking the same questions where ever he went, he was tired of the stares once someone had accidentally seen him without a shirt on and he'd gained the reputation as 'creature', next to many other things.

What he didn't get tired of was his thirst for creation and knowledge, all he wanted was a place he could call his own, away from prying eyes.
All he wanted was peace.

And believe it or not, he's actually managed to get it.

His home for the past couple hundred years was an old, tall, gleaming black citadel, in midst an old forest, towering even over the largest of trees. Most of the surroundings were lost to nature, but downright ancient wards Tony found had protected the main towers and halls from any foliage or creatures nesting into the massive structure, not even letting him in when he'd discovered it quite by accident, until he tweaked them a bit, allowing him entrance.

It had taken him almost a couple of years to remodel the three towers, great hall and few remaining connecting rooms into what he wanted, and some more to get all his belongings collected from where they were strewn about the realms.
Once everything was settled in it's place, he'd created workspaces for magic, science and all his other studies respectively, had two large arc reactors installed and everything wired as needed and even a quite extensive library. What took him the longest through was figuring out how to keep the whole complex evenly temperated, not a concern for himself but volatile or sensitive materials.

Tony was outside, wandering through the snowy forest, incapable of not admiring the gargantuan trees and evergreen foliage, so much bigger than the plants of most other realms.
He's never really been a nature person, until the mistress death herself shoved a new heart under his skin, literally made from ash and yew than grew roots within him, easily visible under his skin, and ever since then he couldn't help himself but feel calm around plants.

It was when he stood in the middle of quiet cacophony that a forest brings, running his hand along an old, gigantic yew tree (together with ash, oak and olive one of the few familiar species from Midgard), feeling it's very own magic surrounding him comfortingly when there was a noise out of place.
A step, a branch cracking, the faintest sound of someone breathing, the shudder on Tony's skin from being watched.
It was a testament to the feeling of safety that trees, especially those of the same kind as his 'heart', brought, that he's let his guard slip this drastically.

"Face me." a quiet, shaking voice says, and Tony knows even before he turns and faces his not-yet attacker that this person is young and probably unskilled or just learning in magic or he would've been left alone. His Frankenstein's monster of a magical signature tends to do that.

There is an arrow pointing at his face, and for a moment he had to think of Clint, but arrow and shaft are covered in runes, some to poison, some to punch through wards, some for accuracy, and the (as always) androgynous elf barely three meters away is shockingly young, a child to be exact, seventy at most, twelve if he was human, but already as tall as Tony himself.

For now he doesn't say anything, just stares at the kid unblinkingly, one hand still on the rough bark.
Tony doesn't have to wait long, the kid starts to fidgets, his fingers loosen around the arrow the same moment that it's mouth drops open in shock.
He let's the nanites form on his skin for just a moment to deflect the arrow (winces when he hears it bore into the tree behind him), and in the same time he snatches the bow out the kid's hands, melts it's dagger and throwing knives in their hilts with a word, and he doesn't wait to throw the kid onto the ground where it yelps in shock upon impact, pushes his knee into it's back, one hand clamped around the wrists and one on it's neck holding him down securely without taking the kid's breath.

"Let the Wolfram brood go, outsider." a voice, much older, comes from far up in the trees barely visible to the naked eye, just a Tony hoped, but the warrior (not hunter, why a warrior?!) said it in such a dispassionate way, that he wasn't sure that was one of the kid's folks.

And as if on command the kid under him freezes dead, "Please don't hand me to them, please, they're going to- I didn't mean to- please don't!" it whisper's quietly, desperately and Tony can see that the kid actually started crying.

"They're not one of yours?" Tony asks quietly and quickly got a hissed, panicked barrage of "No! They're Wagenham, they hate my clan, Norns why didn't I listen to him, please help me!"

Oh great, what was that about peace and not getting dragged into some shit? Either way, he's not going to let some stray kid get picked up by an enemy clan. Carefully he pulls up the kid, and whispers into his ear, "When I say 'run', you will run as fast as you can north to the black citadel, get into the main hall, and before anything in there takes you apart you'll say that 'The Maker' sent you. Understood?"

The kid nods lightly, spiky green dreads almost smacking Tony in the face, as he quickly weaves some hiding and tracking wards onto the kid, and creates an illusion just where it was. Then he whispered "Run" and gone was the original small elf, utterly silent this time.

"Outsider! I said, let the Wolfram go!" the old elf yells down again, and Tony lets the same magic weave over himself.

The genius smirks, "Yeah, sure, but what is in it for me? He's pretty after all." he answers with a leer, hearing three answering dirty laughs. God people made him sick some days.

"You have good taste, Outsider, but I'd rather have him for myself. How about a trade?"

Tony laughs, unheard thanks to the concealing ward, and doesn't stay to watch his clone play shifty mortal and bargain for the elf kid's illusion. Instead he strolls northward after removing the arrow from the tree and healing it. He's got some terrified elf kid to catch up to before he tears apart his citadel.