Okay so this is the second part of The Dust of Creation :) I know some of you guys are probably confused but not to worry! Everything will (hopefully) be explained in this last chapter :)
Disclaimer: I do not own The Avengers.
Continued…
"This is where I died."
Steve blinks. Once, twice, thrice. And blinks again. But the world is still buzzing, and the scene behind them is still on fire, and bodies are still being pulled out of the rubble, and Tony is still standing in front of him.
"Wha…what?" he stutters with a brow creased in confusion. "But you're real! You have to be real! You…you held my hand! I felt your skin!"
Tony shakes his head, "I'm not real, Steve. I'm just a ghost. You felt me because you believed that I was real, but I'm not. I'm nothing but a speck of dust in the fabric of reality." Tony breathes out, gnawing on his bottom lip.
"It was never supposed to be this way."
Steve growls through a clenched jaw, "Just explain!" He curls his hand and tries to contain his shaking. "This is not possible, you're real! I'm in a dream, none of this is real! All of this is wrong!"
He looks back at Tony, and notices the pale skin, with blue veins sticking sorely out of his wrists. Pale, with the blood drained out of his system. His lips are chapped, there is bruising around his neck and his head. The blue light in his chest is flickering. Steve stretches out his hand, and it falls through Tony's chest.
He is dead.
He is a ghost.
All of this is wrong.
"You were supposed to be there, Cap. In the war, you were supposed to help us," Tony began, "but something went wrong and you weren't there, and I died.
"I wasn't supposed to die."
Steve takes a deep breath and smooth's down his beige shirt. He can hear his heart pumping against his chest one beat at a time. "What happened?"
Tony takes a glance behind him and Steve follows his gaze to the ruined tower in the distance, with letters barely hanging on and the top floors destroyed.
"There was a portal. And creatures from another world came through to ours. Life beyond our own, scattered amongst the stars. There is more to life than us in that vast void of darkness and space. And the portal could be closed if the scepter holding the source of the destruction was used to close it.
"You were supposed to give one of us a boost, so they could catch a quick ride to the top of the Tower, to close the portal. But you weren't there, so she wasn't able to get there in time.
"They sent a nuke in on the city, and I took and flew it through the wormhole. I thought I was going to die. I saw the vast ship destroyed with my own eyes, and there was life on that ship, and I killed them in cold blood," Tony says.
Steve watches him in silence.
"And then I was falling, faster and faster and faster and I wasn't stopping. And she didn't make it to the Tower in time to close the portal before the explosion of the ship reached it.
"I was falling when the explosion reached the portal, and they didn't see me hit the ground," Tony eyes fill with tears as he lets out a shaky breath. Steve notices pieces of destroyed red and gold twisted metal charred and embedded into the ground, and a slight crater about a hundred and fifty yards away.
"You were supposed to help her get to the Tower on time."
Steve tears his eyes away from Tony's. "I'm sorry."
He shakes his head, a stray tear rolling down his cheek. "Out of all of time, and out of the whole of creation, we are nothing but dust from dead stars, and there are universes out there beyond our own, and I hope that in one of them, you didn't wake up too late."
Tony clears his throat, "But even so, in all of space and time and of monsters and gods, there is not one person who doesn't matter."
And then he's gone, and there's nothing left in Tony's place but a swirl of cold wind, and the howl of magic and gods and creatures of the unknown.
Steve leans forward, and gazes at the broken Tower in the distance and the black clouds on top with the beginning sounds of thunder and lightning. He hears a hawk squawk on the building next to him before taking flight towards the Tower, and a black widow spider crawling on the wall of the building the hawk just left.
He hears a crack, and he looks down to see a shattered piece of glass from bent glasses, and sees a strip of purple fabric in the rubble. And amongst the twisted metal, he stumbles upon a piece of untarnished red and gold metal shaped like a face, and thinks that maybe Tony left it for him.
A sound of thunder cracks. A hawk flies by. A spider crawls. A pair of cracked glasses. A faceplate of the brightest red and gold. And Steve knows that this was meant to be home.
A gust of wind chills his bones, and Steve swears he can see a ghost of a man flying through the city in a red and gold suit.
A soft howl of wind pulls him towards the Tower, and he knows he can hear Tony speaking.
Even heroes fall.
This is the explanation! Shorter than the last chapter, but that mainly just set it up. I hope it made sense! If it didn't just tell me and I'll explain :) But yes, Tony is dead in this story, like legitimately dead. Dead and gone and whatnot. It's basically a parallel universe where Steve misses the Battle of New York and Tony dies.
Anyway, thank you for reading!
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