Pepper would wake and stretch her hand out, often times in the middle of the night to stave away the crisp chill coming from the window that had never closed properly, and find her palm pressed to a cold pillow, her arm resting against empty space.
It happened more and more with each day.
She'd pour a cup of coffee and set it on the counter beside her before turning back to pour her own cup, and suddenly, the thought would hit her, the impact of it akin to a tidal wave against her, knocking her mind asunder as she'd grope for the counter's marble edge for purchase, breaths coming in short, shuddering gasps as her fingers trembled, her clutch on the mug tightening.
She'd walk into the penthouse after hours of carefully shopping for clothes and groceries alike, only to realize that she'd bought his favorite soda.
It was useless to him now, of course.
When she'd go to tell him a joke she'd heard from Happy, something that still made her laugh, he wasn't there to hear it, and she might have felt her heart crumble after every fresh revelation.
In how many ways could you realize that someone was gone?
...
J.A.R.V.I.S still played the alarm that had been set to wake Tony from his slumber, still went through the motions that he'd been designed to go through, and yet it felt lacking.
Mr. Stark wasn't there to complain at the dummy bot, and he wasn't there to tinker in his workshop for all hours of the night and complain to his A.I. when he realized what time it was. He wasn't there to be pushed to the max, wasn't there to experiment and ask J.A.R.V.I.S. for assistance.
He just wasn't there, and the feelings that might have been there, the feelings he could have been created with, the feelings that just very well might have been somewhere within his system, lessened the normal cheer in J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice when he sounded Ms. Potts' alarm for the morning, as well, wishing her a good day that he knew would be just as awful as they'd all been.
...
Bruce still gazed fleetingly at the notepad every now and then, still imagined what words would have been scrawled across it, what story would have lain there, if he hadn't fallen asleep listening to Tony's tale of tragedy and hopelessness and love, if he hadn't nodded off at the very beginning, if he hadn't missed it all.
He'd failed to listen to the billionaire with a penchant for keeping private memories to himself, and the doctor felt remorse at the thought. There wasn't anyone to listen to now. His biggest fan, his friend, was gone, and he'd never gotten to return the sentiment.
The only thing left was a blank notepad, and Bruce couldn't even look at it for very long without tears pricking his eyes.
...
On the days that Natasha wasn't staring, almost longingly, at a case file spread out on the table before her, Clint could almost believe that the rest of the day would be normal. He could almost think that he'd finally get the chance to take her out for dinner, or go watch that movie with her that they'd both been waiting for.
Clint could fool himself into believing that S.H.I.E.L.D. would call in and give them a mission to go on, or anything to get their minds off of it. He could trick his mind into thinking, briefly, that they'd eventually fall back into a pattern of mild normalcy.
But Tasha always looked to him, some indescribable pain in her eyes, some kind of regret shining there, some kind of sadness that he couldn't even hope to fix, and she'd turn her attention away from him and back to the file laid out in front of her, the one she'd first made so long ago.
He caught sight, from a distance, of a few of the words typed across one of the papers.
Narcissistic tendencies.
...
Thor had seen so much loss in the recent year, remembering with clarity his brother's hot blood spilled across his palms and the sight of his mother's pale eyelids, forever closed. And now he could add another memory to the lot.
A phone call, maybe, or a news story late at night caught for a moment on the television screen, or a funeral littered with black suits and dresses and tear-stained faces, a trembling sigh caught in the cold afternoon rain.
Another friend lost.
Perhaps.
Another soul departed.
And yet he thought that maybe, just with the slightest certainty, it was for the best. A world that lacked acceptance was hardly one worth living in, after all. A world that could not achieve, even for a moment, peace was one constantly at war.
What life was that?
He took a breath, remembering.
What life would that have been?
...
Steve no longer despised Tony, had stopped doing so a long while ago, probably the moment he'd witnessed a dwindling figure in the mass of aliens entering a fatal doorway to space. He respected him, or his memory, and accepted that he'd been wrong.
Steve had been dreadfully wrong about so much in his life, and adding one more to the long list hardly affected him-but it was significant.
He'd judged someone and when push came to shove they'd done the most selfless thing possible. And now it was all over, done and passed and buried in the history books. He'd never even apologized, and now it was too late.
He ran a finger over Peggy's number, the one typed out on her file, the one he'd still never called. She was a moment in time he'd let slip through his fingers, a memory that had faded into the background, a life he'd never gotten to see, and he realized that he desperately needed to see it now.
He couldn't let another friend pass him by, couldn't let another person become a mere tombstone upon the earth, couldn't let another life fall away from him.
Based on a prompt given by dumplestiltskin over on Tumblr.
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