So yeah. I cried writing this. I hope you all enjoy.
SPOILERS for Infinity War if you haven't seen it?
The scream can't have come from him. Too high, like a woman's, or a child's. Maybe it wasn't there at all, just another nightmare in his head.
It's so fast that he doesn't understand what happened until he looks down. It felt like a gut punch from Happy, knocking the breath from him, but he's still standing. Thanos' enormous hand keeps him upright. He gulps down a breath and he stares at the blade sticking out of his abdomen. The pain still doesn't register. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knows this is somehow wrong. He knows it should be there. He can't tell if the mangled red surrounding the blade is his blood or his torn suit. Maybe it didn't happen.
He hooks an arm around Thanos' wrist and he manages to just curl his fingers around the hilt of the blade, before he freezes. The image of a 1963 Château Latour uncorking pops in his head, the Hoover dam crumbling. Tony heaves in a breath, a reminder that he still can, and lets his hand drop. He's not dead yet. The blade, while tearing open his stomach, is also keeping him alive.
He cranes his head up. Thanos wobbles in his vision. He focuses on the cut under his right eye. I did that, Tony thinks blearily. The last thing he'll ever do.
"You have my respect Stark," Thanos' voice rumbles deep in his ear. "When I'm done, half of humanity will still be alive."
He steps away, and Tony's legs give out. He swallows down a scream. He can feel the blade now, like a foreign limb deep in his stomach. His eyes burn for a moment before a voice hauntingly like his father's seeps like cold in his head.
Like iron, Tony. Starks don't cry.
He knows pain. This isn't pain.
Thanos raises the gauntlet. The purple stone shimmers. "I hope they remember you."
Tony sags on one arm. He doesn't have the strength to stay right anymore.
"Stop!" a far away voice wavers.
Tony's vision swims. The orange horizon bleeds into his retinas. A brief, I'm going to die here, flashes in front of him, like a bullet train passing an old rusted sign.
Strange, bleeding from a cut in his hairline, sits up and slumps against the wreckage behind him. He huffs and blinks slowly.
"Spare his life," he says slowly, "and I will give you the stone."
That wakes him up a little. No. Tony shakes his head. He coughs - Is that blood? - and groans.
Thanos' fist does not waver. "No tricks, wizard," he says.
Strange shakes his head once.
"No," Tony grunts. "No." This is not how this ends. They do not surrender. They don't give up. He struggles to get his feet under him. This isn't how it ends.
Pepper, Rhodey, Peter.
He's going to kill this fucking wizard.
But he's useless, like always. He can't even stand. Strange conjures the stone with his shaking hands, and it's like the final nail in the coffin. They had a chance. They had. A fucking. Chance.
He can't make himself look, knowing the truth will force the blade deeper. He hears Thanos' satisfied glory. "One to go," he says.
The Titan vanishes through a portal, and they are left in silence, only the wind whistling over them on this damned planet.
The Missouri man's jaw drops. "Did we just lose?"
Tony keeps his hand around the blade to hold it steady. He half turns.
Strange is looking at Tony like he just kicked him.
He wants to be angry, wants to beat the living shit out of him. He wants a passage straight back to Earth so he can get Pepper to safety. He wants to track Thanos down and stab him double in the gut.
But it all seems so futile, so big a task for a drowning man who can barely keep his head up.
Instead, he whispers, "Why would you do that?"
Strange's eyes flick down, heaving a slow breath. "We're in the end game now." And in the way he says it, Tony knows this is what he saw. Maybe there never was a "one way" that they could win. Maybe they were all destined to be the ones who failed half the universe.
It's daunting, to know that he played a part in its destruction. He always knew he would be the one to destroy himself, but never the ones whose paths he never crossed.
"Mr. Stark?"
Peter lands next to him. His mask peels back and he looks like he might cry. Why? He didn't do any of this.
The kid stares down at the blade sticking from his abdomen. His hands clench and unclench, and he shuffles on his feet. He wants to help. Always the helper, always needing the validation that he is doing good.
Tony can give that to him. He holds out his hand.
"Help me out here, Pete. Can you do that?"
He nods shakily. "Mr. Strange?" he calls.
Tony hears the doctor grunt and the crunch of gravel under his feet.
A hand settles gently on his shoulder. He glances back at the dark blue tunic. He can't look the traitor in the eye, not right now. The betrayal is still raw. Tony grits his teeth.
"You need to call back your suit so I can see the wound," Strange murmurs low and calm in his ear, not even the waver it was just moments ago.
Tony raises a shaking hand and taps the reactor twice. The suit separates with a shink, and the sound of sprinkling metal as the nanytes peels themselves away.
Tony feels fabric flutter around him and he looks down and sees the red cape tucking around him like a stretcher.
"Just let it support you," Strange reassures. "You need to relax your torso."
Tony allows it. Without the tension, the pain floods into his gut, like a pulsing burn. He shuts his eyes. Strange's hand hovers over his abdomen, probing like the magnet detectors at security checkpoints.
"We'll need to break it off where it meets the surface," Strange sighs. "It's punctured your stomach. That's why you're coughing blood. If we can stabilize it, it'll keep acting like a cork for you until you get back to Earth." He looks up. "Peter? I'll hold him still, and you need to break it."
Tony opens his eyes. The kid looks pale, almost green. "I don't know, sir, I'm not very good with..."
Strange grips his wrist. Even with his mangled hands, he suddenly seems the stronger of the two, and Tony knows the kid can throw a bus about half a block.
"I need your help, Peter," Strange commands. He gestures to Tony. "He needs your help. Now you snap out of it, and do what I say."
Peter's mouth snaps closed and he nods.
Tony snorts. "That how you get the girls in the bedroom, Doc?" he mumbles.
Strange ignores him. "Stay as still as you can, Tony."
Peter grips the end of the blade with one hand and the other just above where it sticks out of him.
"Givin' me the warm fuzzies - " Tony breaks off with a gasp. His breath hitches and he slams his eyes shut. Strange's hands, and some force the doctor is using, holds him still while the metal crumples sideways and snaps away.
Strange gives the faintest, most genuine smile Tony has seen on the man, and pats Peter's shoulder. "Thank you," he says. He looks down at Tony's stomach.
"The trick you did on the space ship," he prompts. "With the breech in the hull. Can you do that again?"
The cloak sits him up and he lifts a shaking arm where the suit has fused into a glove. He uses the fire suppression system and the rest of the nanytes to freeze the broken blade in place.
"That will hold you until you get back to Earth," Strange says. He closes his eyes and sags into a piece of rubble. He holds his head. "It has to."
Tony swallows down the bile that washes up his throat when he stands. He catches the double meaning in the man's words. "Yeah, what about you, hm? Where you off to?"
Strange doesn't answer. He strokes the end of his cloak, eyes elsewhere.
"Something is happening."
Tony turns. The alien with the antennas is staring far away.
It starts with her hand, pieces of her drifting away, climbing up her body like it's unravelling. Then she's gone.
They all go quietly, each with a more mounting of dread, something whispering to them that they are about to be taken.
The sunset is like fire in his eyes.
"Tony."
He doesn't understand. He turns. Stephen Strange is sitting against the rubble. He looks tired, more haggard than anywhere else in their battle.
He stares earnestly at Tony. His eyes are so blue in the endless orange.
"There was no other way." His gaze drifts down and he breathes heavily once, twice, and he is gone.
This can't be right. This wasn't how it was supposed to end.
"Mr. Stark?"
Tony goes cold, a second sense telling him before he knows.
Peter is frowning. His arms wrap around his middle. "I don't feel so good."
Tony's stomach drops. He shakes his head. "You're all right." It won't happen. Can't.
Peter blinks rapidly, stumbling forward. "I don't- I don't know what's happening."
"You're okay."
Tony rushes forward with a jack rabbiting of stabbing pain, just as Peter collapses into him. Tony holds him, as if he can hold on tight enough to keep him there. He's never been the strongest, that's Steve and Banner and fucking god of thunder. He's never been strong enough, but this time is different. It has to be.
He feels Peter's arms around him, fingers gripping his jacket. The boy buries his face in his shirt.
"I don't wanna go," he whispers. "Please, Sir."
He trembles against him.
Tony presses his cheek into Peter's hair. He couldn't make himself speak if the world split open beneath them. He holds on, but the boy's weight is too much for him. He drops to his knees, careful to avoid Peter's legs, and he makes the mistake of looking down.
Peter's legs are gone.
It's happening.
No it's not. He can still stop this. It can't happen.
It's happening.
He feels like he's choking. He forces himself to look at Peter. He won't look away. No matter how long it lasts.
Peter's breath shudders out. He sees Tony.
"I'm sorry," he whispers.
"No." Tony's breath punches out of him. He tightens his grip, and Peter... Peter slips through. Tony holds his hand out, as if he can chase him down, mold him back together because that's what he does. He fixes the messes of this world his father built.
He stares at his hand.
It's kinda your fault I'm here.
But this is his mess, the poison started by his father dripping down into someone who didn't deserve any of this.
Tony bows his head and presses his hand to his mouth. The world is crumbling around him.
Peter is gone.
Not IronStrange, I know. But I really wanted to get this part from Tony's PoV.
If you liked, please review!
