Tony was tired.
Tired of being slowly poisoned to death, but also just tired in general. He was alone in his workshop, staring into his glass of whiskey at night. He didn't even feel like finishing it. It didn't cover the taste in his mouth anymore.
He felt weak. Any hope of fixing this was dwindling, and the poison was sapping his strength more every day. He still managed to hide it well, but that wouldn't last forever. His days were numbered.
Late nights drinking alone really made him maudlin, didn't they?
As Tony brought the glass to his lips, he spotted something that hadn't been there a moment ago. A pale figure, standing barely within his line of sight.
Tony startled and dropped the glass. Whiskey spilled to the table and dripped to the floor. His aching heart was racing as he stared at the ghostly apparition. It gave his spilled drink a pleased, if slightly vacant smile.
It was an alarmingly pale person with equally pale grey eyes and faded blond hair. They were dressed in baggy white clothes, but the color only seemed to be a canvas for the scruffiness and deep staining on it. They were unobtrusive, looking like they'd always stood there in Tony's workshop.
Tony was frozen, staring, for a while. The person seemed to be waiting. It radiated an air of immense patience.
Eyes still mostly glued to the apparition, Tony fumbled through checks on the screen next to him. Jarvis was running and no alarms had been tripped. That ruled a few things out, at least.
"What… the hell are you. Doing here." The last part was added mostly as an afterthought. Tony was fine getting an answer to either question. Nothing should've been able to appear in the middle of his workshop without warning.
The thing kept on smiling like it was vaguely pleased with something while it answered with an airy voice, "I wanted to meet you, Tony Stark. I am Pollution, successor to Pestilence."
Tony stared. "Pestil…" he breathed on an exhale. A strange pressure built up in his chest as he held eye contact with Pollution until it escaped from him in a burst of laughter. It was definitely the hysteric kind and Tony didn't feel the least bit bad about admitting it. He felt it was earned.
"Oh! Oh, never mind, nothing to worry about, it's just time for my recurring biblical hallucination to come around again!" Tony's laughter trailed off quickly when the only response from the pale figure was a curious tilt of its head.
It began drifting towards Tony like a cloud of smoke, and Tony debated backing away. That would've involved getting up, however, and that was too much trouble expended on a hallucination when he felt this shitty.
Though he felt ill, he hadn't thought he was in bad enough shape to get hallucinations. Yet. The previous times had been fair enough, but it was probably a bad sign for him that he was hearing and seeing things already from his illness. Or, well, a thing.
Pollution had reached Tony's worktable but seemed more interested in the items on it than Tony himself. The thing stepped onto the spilled drink with its bare feet but didn't seem to notice. Instead it picked up a gleaming piece of metal – a joint from the suit Tony had been fiddling with. It examined it with an almost animalistic focus. Without lifting its gaze, it spoke again.
"My siblings and I… We so rarely take notice of individual humans. We are global, universal, and though I find joy in every discarded piece of plastic my focus is generally… broader. The others do this more often – they are based more firmly in humans and their experiences, while my domain is in its way more… collaborative." Pollution's speech was littered with sighs and pauses, but Tony found himself enraptured all the same. There was no charisma – it was more like a spell.
It turned its eyes finally on Tony and allowed the joint to slip from its fingers with a clatter. "But I followed their lead out of curiosity, and I must admit that you are… very interesting." The pale eyes nailed Tony in place even as those long fingers reached for him. They remained, hovering, over his chest.
"I cannot say that I like these reactors of yours… They are far too efficient." Instead of the anger Tony half expected, Pollution seemed to be sad. "But I always get my way… And I find myself pleased with my retribution, this tainting of the blood, like muddied rivers…"
Tony couldn't say if it was only in his head, but suddenly he felt worse than he had a moment ago. He could almost feel the reactor's output malfunction, burning fiercely, pumping out more poison…
Afraid, he stumbled out of his chair and away from the wraith. It blinked at him, as if confused, then slowly, finally, lowered the raised hand. "Ah… but it is merely the excuse I needed for my presence. I intended only to introduce myself and see you for myself. I should take my leave before I end up leading you to Him. I feel… you have much to do before that, yet. If you find the strength."
Tony allowed some of Pollution's implications to freely pass over his head, but the last part sparked annoyance in him. He didn't need to find some nebulous strength, he needed to find a new way to fuel the reactor.
Though he wouldn't have been averse to some strength right about then. He felt sapped, and like he desperately needed to change the palladium and detox even a little. Instead of needling the pale figure – much less worrying now that it had turned away from him – he merely watched it drift to the door and leave without giving him another glance.
Tony was still staring at the door – he'd been sure it was locked – when JARVIS spoke up. "I'm sorry sir, my latest sweep of files and malware seems have malfunctioned. I had to do some emergency cleaning, but my protocols are adapting to prevent something like this in the future. My feeds were temporarily scrambled by the issue. Did you have need of me during my absence?"
Tony swallowed, finally shaking himself out of the daze he'd fallen into. "Yeah, um… I'm not feeling so great, get me some more of that goop. And get Dummy to clean up here. I dropped my glass."
"Very well, sir."
Inching back into his seat, Tony thought about the encounter. He didn't want to consider that it might not have been a hallucination, but… But.
He sat, trying to think and not to think at the same time for a while. Eventually Tony conceded that going to sleep would be the best thing he could do at the moment for himself and his state of mind. On his way out, however, he passed the joint Pollution had fiddled with, sitting innocently on the cluttered table. It was riddled with rust and tarnish.
With shaking hands, Tony turned it in his hands for a moment before setting it carefully down and continuing on his way. He felt that it would still be there, ruined and dirty, when he came back in the morning. For better or for worse.
Tony had known and understood pollution long before this, but never before with quite the same fear and respect as he did right now.