AN: This drabble was written on May 4th, 2018, the week after "Avengers: Infinity War" came out in theaters (and before we'd all seen Endgame). I meant to expand it into a longer story and never did. However, I like some of the ideas in this so after rediscovering it on my hard drive I'm putting it out now.


The Things Tony Carried

(You're always there / I'm always alone)


By Indygodusk


Tony Stark carries around a lot of things in his pockets. Strange things. If people notice and ask, he just smirks and explains that he's a billionaire—being eccentric and having deep pockets is part of his schtick. It's enough to side-track the questions, especially the ones he doesn't want to talk or even think about. Self-reflection is not his friend, much less a cordial acquaintance. He'd have security ban self-reflection from the building altogether if that was a realistic option.

So Tony does his best to never think about why he's always carrying around an obsolete flip phone, even over two years after the dissolution of the Avengers, even when doing something you'd usually empty your pockets for, like jogging with Pepper in Central Park. Along with the flip phone, he also carries around a spare Spiderman suit, even when he's just sneaking out of a meeting for a doughnut. He's never used the flip phone or the Spidey suit, not in two years. He still keeps carrying them, automatically transferring them from pocket to pocket to car to workshop to plane as he moves throughout his day. He doesn't have to explain himself to anyone. He tells himself it's just because he's eccentric or forgetful or obsessive. He pretends he doesn't know why he does it.

But he does know why.

Tony carries things to keep his people safe. He's an arrogant, unrepentant, sarcastic, selfish jerk who can't speak kind words with any sort of sincerity, can't get them out of his chest without the words mutating on the way up his throat and out of his mouth into caricatures. Expressing emotions is hard. The only thing he's comfortable being open with is his wallet and his fly (though nowadays everyone but Pepper is in the no-fly zone). Quietly carrying things for others is how he cares, even when he has to hide how much (even from himself).

One day he'll fail. One day everyone he cares about will die no matter how hard he tries. He knows this. Tony can't help but make his plans anyway. The vision or nightmare he'd once had of being surrounded by the bodies of his friends, the only survivor… it stays with him. Haunts him.

Almost as much as what happened with the Sokovia Accords. Sometimes when he's tinkering, Tony plays around with different scenarios, poking at what happened like a loose tooth as he wonders how he could have made Steve understand. How he could have kept the Avengers from splitting. How he could have kept everyone together. With him.

Yet the reality is what it is. Steve Rogers no longer has his back. Tony keeps the phone around in case Steve calls to apologize, hoping with a loyalty he hates himself for that each day will be the one when Steve finally reaches out. Steve has to know, they all do, that if they asked, Tony would help them. If they really needed him, Iron Man would suit up and fly to the rescue. It's obvious.

But he can't trust that they'd do—that they feel—the same. They left him, fought against him, betrayed him. They were the ones who made it personal.

Tony knows he's bad at social interactions, but he lives every day trying to be better, trying to be a man he can be proud of, a man less detestable than his father and his younger self. That said, he'll never be an optimist.

Part of him has always suspected that the gift of the flip phone was a goad rather than a peace offering, that it was sent for when Tony became humbled so they could try to manipulate him into an apology, for when he gave up. Partly he carries it for hope and partly to remind himself to stiffen his spine. Tony Stark does not give up.

You can try to trust others, you can make friends and lovers, but at the end of the day, we're all alone. We die alone. Tony's not afraid of dying. He doesn't want to die, but it doesn't scare him, not like his death scares Pepper. Maybe that's why his being Iron Man scares her so. Tony's not afraid of dying, he's afraid of everyone else dying. Tony hoards power: financial, mental, intellectual, physical, and technological. But no matter how much power he tries to collect in life, at the end of the day he's always left powerless and alone. It's never enough to say that final word to the ones he loves.

He's never enough.

At the end of the world on the far side of the galaxy, stabbed through, spitting up blood, all of his allies killed and turned to dust, and even the kid gone…. What made him ever think to try and convince Pepper to have his kid? Thank God she's smarter than that. She was always too good for him. He'll miss her.

And it's stupid, but at the end of all things, he misses the weight of that stupid flip phone in his pocket. He'd lost track of how many times a day he'd pull it out and flip it open and closed while thinking, misses the ritual of charging it constantly because its battery was crap, huddles around the memory of replacing the hinges after that first year from overuse.

If he had that phone right now, he'd—he'd finally press the call button. He'd call Rogers, call Captain America. Tony would call him just to listen to him breathe. He'd call Steve and say… what? I carried the phone in my pocket because you wouldn't let me carry your burdens? Say, I'm sorry I failed? Say please fix this mess I made? He'd say… nothing.

He wouldn't call. He'd flip the phone open and shut, open and shut. Then he'd tuck it back into his pocket and go on.

The phone couldn't save him. It wasn't a solution, it was a reminder of second chances. A reminder that he had choices and a reminder that he could choose not to make them. It was a talisman. A symbol that despite everything, he didn't have to be alone but he could make it on his own. He could choose it, had chosen the moral high ground, but even though they'd fought, he still cared. And until they said otherwise, he could pretend that they still cared too. The phone represented a lot of things, but just like the spidey suit and the kid, it was gone now.

Only Tony was left, but Tony Stark did not give up. So how was he supposed to flip the situation he found himself in on this ruined world with nothing but a cold-eyed, blue-skinned cyborg and a mouth full of blood and ashes?