He waited for it to come. Waited for the moment when he would inevitably turn to dust. He waited, but it never came. And perhaps that was worse — that he watched them all turn to dust, right before his very eyes. That he didn't go along with them.
"I watched my friends die. You'd think that'd be as bad as it gets. Nope. Wasn't the worst part."
"The worst part was that you didn't."
He didn't deserve to be alive. He didn't deserve to be alive when so many other people were dead. But the Fates were cruel.
"I shouldn't be alive. Unless it was for a reason."
It could have been him. It could have been him instead of half the universe, if Strange didn't give up the stone. It could have been him instead of Peter, who deserved it least of all. Peter, who helped people because he could, not for any recognition. Peter, who was just a kid. His kid.
"I just wanted to be like you!"
"And I wanted you to be better."
Who else died? Who else died because he didn't? Was it Rhodey? Happy? Bruce? The rest of the ex-Avengers?
Pepper?
He couldn't lose Pepper. Not after Peter. Not after losing his kid.
"Threat is imminent, and I have to protect the one thing I can't live without. That's you."
His fault. All his fault. The weapons. Vanko. The Mandarin. Ultron. The Accords. All him. One after the other. Mistake after mistake. And now, this. He could have done something. Anything. But he didn't.
"I'm the man who killed the Avengers"
He should have died. It should have been him. He wasn't anything special, after all. It was the suit that was, it was the suit they wanted. Not him. Not Tony Stark.
"Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?"
He could see them all now, turning to ash because he couldn't save them. It was frighteningly realistic, because of course he had nightmares about their deaths for years, all different, but all equally painful.
"You could have saved us. Why didn't you do more?"
It didn't matter that he shut down the weapon manufacturing division at Stark Industries. It didn't matter that he became Iron Man. It didn't matter because everyone he came in contact with was put at risk.
"And what do you say to your other nickname? The Merchant of Death?"
It didn't matter what he said, or what he thought for that matter. Neither would change the truth. He was and always will be The Merchant of Death.
And as he knelt there, where his kid turned to ash, on a planet all alone but for a blue alien he had never met, he felt that then more than ever.