Be forewarned: This is about Endgame, and it includes major spoilers. If you haven't seen the film and you want to stay unspoiled, DO NOT read this. Seriously, do not pass go, close the webpage and come back after you've seen the film. I'm not kidding. I'm not even including characters for fear of giving something away.
OK, if you're still here, enjoy. The characters and the storyline don't belong to me, I'm just filling in a little background. After all, one in 14,000,605 is pretty amazing odds. A special thank you to the friends who saw the film before me and left me unspoiled — and to Alpha Flyer for the beta and confirming dialogue in her second viewing of Endgame today.
The title is from an exchange between Thanos and young Gamora in Infinity War. It seemed … fitting.
AVENGERSAVENGERSAVENGERS
Had he really thought so little of him?
Somehow, even with the life ebbing out of his body — and damned if that wasn't the kicker, after everything he'd dodged...after everything he'd learned...after everything HE had changed — Strange's words were the first to come back to him.
"If you know, it won't happen."
At the edge of his vision and consciousness (the end of his life, his rational brain screamed with all possible power), he could see the kid running up to him. Parker's lips were moving, but the words ...Tony couldn't really understand them. All that mattered, really, was that the kid was still standing, even if Tony was not.
"If you know, it won't happen."
But Tony had known, in some small dark recess of his admittedly self-absorbed brain. For all of his pandering, all of trust issues, all of his attempts to run away and pretend the world didn't matter — of all things, the world mattered the most. And who was he kidding, anyhow? If fate had had its way, he would've been dead in that cave in Afghanistan. Without Iron Man...
Without Iron Man ... who was Tony Stark without Iron Man? Genius, billionaire, … husband … father? Was it even a question now? In front of him, the kid was ... was Parker crying? Why was Parker crying over him?
Oh. That ... that snap. For a moment, he had been omnipotent. Fully in charge, of everything and everyone.
How could he have made any other choice? Any other ... at all? After all he'd said and done?
"And I... am ... IRON MAN."
A snap, the power of six stones coursing through his body, the cost of omnipotence finally too great for him to stand.
He was Iron Man. And then ... he wasn't.
Oh. It hurt. The pain, rolling in now, threatening to pull the last breath of his body. He couldn't even get a word out to comfort the kid, whose tears and devastation appeared to have matched Tony's own when he...
"I lost the kid."
He'd said it for Cap to hear, for everyone to hear, and then there was Pepper, and that was all that mattered for him. Pepper, in his arms, proof that half the universe could vanish and he'd still be the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.
Pepper. Now in front of him. Guiding the kid away from him, her hand suddenly on his face, her face at an oblique angle...maybe so he couldn't see her tears.
Tears, he knew, he'd caused.
"Tony. Look at me."
His Pepper. Her now, not Parker. He tried to focus, just one last time, for her. Tried to get his head to turn, just once more, so he could see her face, her eyes.
And when his eyes locked with hers, he could see the tears, but he saw her smile, too. And it was gorgeous, a bright, awesome light in the darkness that was creeping in from everywhere.
There were words...what were they? His hearing, so sharp for a fraction of a moment, began to acquire that muffled quality again. He ... he couldn't quite catch the words.
"...we...OK."
Then he couldn't keep his head turned to her any longer, his final bit of strength beginning to ebb. Had it been enough? Would she, would Morgan, would the others move on?
Had it been enough?
And then, at the edge of everything, darkness and light blurring, despair crashing with hope and mixed with awe, he heard her say one last thing.
"You can rest now."
Yes, he could. And it was enough.