#BUt Thanos died completely unapologetic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sciencelings-writes · 5 years

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Endgame Fix-it Prompt

@iron-man-bingo

For once in his life, Tony didn’t want to die. He had spent so much time wishing that he could just stop existing until he found something to live for. After the first snap and seeing the kid he thought of like his own disappear in his arms, all he wanted to do was follow him in the same billion pieces. But he didn’t. He stayed on the barren planet far from his home. Even before that, there were dozens of times he wanted to give up but at the last second, the universe threw in something for him to live for into his life.

He had just gotten everyone back. He could introduce Peter to Morgan and Harley, He could finally retire with his family. He could go home. But that wasn’t going to happen. The battle wasn’t over. In fact, they were losing. Until Tony got a hold of the infinity stones. He had the chance to save them all but he had to confront the certainty of the sacrifice.

If Tony used the stones, there was no going back. But if Thanos got the stones back, the entire universe would be destroyed. Tony knew what he was going to do and he took a selfish moment to think about them. To think about his beautiful, wonderful wife, his best friends, his kids… and he realized that he would do anything to stay with them. He couldn’t leave them. Not just for his own sake, but for the people that loved him.

He had spent so long trying not to let anyone get near him that it was only then, when he was about to die, that he realized who he would leave behind. If he died, Pepper would have to raise Morgan alone, Morgan would grow up without her father, Peter would’ve lost his third father figure and judging by how close he was to the scene, the second father figure who would die in front of his eyes, Rhodey and Happy would probably feel pretty bad, no matter how much Tony wished they shouldn’t.

For some reason, he didn’t want to die. But he still needed to end it. Someone did, and it was too late to make another plan, one that would keep him alive. It was too late. All he could do was take the shot and hope that there was a chance that he could survive. For his family if not for the simple reason that he finally had hope. He had finally gotten his family whole again and he so desperately wanted to experience everything with them, he wanted to see Peter graduate and buy way too many gifts for Christmas and feel like a buttery mess after movie nights. He wanted to help Morgan with her homework and teach Harley how to fly a suit. He just wanted to live.

So while he had the most powerful reality warping tool within his grasp, he didn’t just use them to completely decimate Thanos and his army, he added a little selfish request. He wanted to survive. He didn’t care how painful it would be, how horrible his quality of life would be, he just needed to stay. He needed to stay with them.

He looked straight into the purple assholes eyes, with extreme power coursing through him, and he snapped. After that was a painful blur, and then darkness. His last thought was the dim hope that this wasn’t the end and the blurry sight of his wife and her muffled voice.

“You can rest now.”

No, he doesn’t think he will.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tony died. But not for long. Only for a moment. A long moment. Long enough to be pronounced dead at the hospital. Long enough for everyone to think he was dead. Pepper was crying over his body when he took his first breath.

He expected the pain, but this was kind of annoying. His right side felt like it was submerged in lava and his arm was completely gone. But pain was nothing new. He wrapped his remaining arm around his wife and swore that he wasn’t a zombie. She still had her cool-toned iron suit on, mildly damaged from battle. His side, neck, and part of his face were heavily bandaged. He had technically felt worse in his life but this was pretty shitty.

Tony unapologetically took several long moments just being held by his wife, trying not to think of the world around them. Just thanking every single god from every single religion he could think of that he was still alive. That he didn’t have to leave his family yet.

“Oh my god… Tony… Do you want me to bring everyone in? We all thought you were dead, Peter was.. Jesus poor kid…” Pepper stumbled over her words like she did only when shit was really fucked up.

“Some… only your favorites… I can’t… It’s a little fucked up but… I kind of want to stay dead. I’ve been in the public eye since Howard revealed that mom was pregnant. I just… I think I’m done…” His voice was weak and only came out in a soft grumbling whisper.

“I think we can work that out…” Pepper said gently as she pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I am going to let the spider-kid in though. You know, if it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have gotten you here to check if you weren’t dead. Your heart had stopped and the arc reactor shut off. Everyone thought you were gone but he convinced us to patch you up and wait. He said he knew what death felt like and that you were still there. I’m glad that we held on to that speck of hope.” Her voice wavered a bit. Looking at Tony like he was a ghost and that she still wasn’t sure that he was there.

“Yeah… I want to see him. I really want to see the kid.” He said weakly.

“I’ll get him then. Are you sure you want to… ‘Stay dead’?” She used her fingers for air quotes.

“Yeah. I think… I think I’m done. Maybe the Avengers will stop bothering me if they think I’m six feet under.” He gave her a little smile. The only person that would be able to figure it out was dead too. None of the other Avengers were very bright. Except for Bruce, but he also tended to mind his own business.

Pepper left the room after glancing at him again and was only gone for a moment. Tony took a few steady breaths and closed his eyes for a second. It turned out dying was exhausting. His eyes snapped open when he heard a timid familiar voice.

“Mr. Stark?”

“Hey, Kiddo. You glad to be back in the land of the living?”

“I-I could ask you the same thing…” Peter’s eyes were red around the edges like he had been crying tears made of acid. He looked like he really wanted to see if Tony was really there and alive but didn’t want to hurt him. The look was pretty specific but Peter was usually pretty easy to read.

“Come on.” Tony opened his remaining arm, offering a hug. It looked kind of odd with only one arm but it was still pretty obvious the intentions.

“You’re hurt, I don’t want to-”

“Kid I literally don’t give a shit.” This seemed to be all the permission Peter needed to practically launch himself over to Tony’s side and wrap him in an obviously much-needed hug. Tony’s heart clenched when he heard Peter’s muffled sob into his shoulder. Tony automatically combed his fingers through his kid's hair and he assumed that helping raise Morgan made his affectionate actions more natural. He blamed that when he kissed Peter’s forehead like he would his own biological kid. Thankfully if Peter didn’t feel weird about it, he didn’t say anything.

In fact, they didn’t say anything for a while. Tony just held onto his kid with his one weak arm with Peter curled up around him on the hospital bed looking unbelievably small for someone who could throw a bus. After a minute of listening to steady breathing and comfortable silence, Tony realized that Peter had fallen asleep.

For some strange reason, this caused Tony’s old scarred heart to swell in pure admiration for the kid. Getting the kid back had been one of the most wonderful surreal moments in his life. At first, he didn’t believe it. He had spent so much time feeling guilty and mourning that getting him back felt too good to be true. He could only hug the kid close and fondly listen to all his rambling. Now, they were both alive and Tony was overwhelmingly relieved.

He didn’t care that he lost an arm, people like Bucky and Nebula had missing arms and he could figure out a cool prosthetic pretty easily. He didn’t care about the pain. He was alive to raise his daughter and to just… live. All he wanted to do was live. Live without the burden of knowing the next world ending event was on the horizon. Without being the only hero to prepare for it. But now, there were plenty of heroes, a few of which he even trusted to take his place.

They didn’t need him anymore. He had done enough. This didn’t make him feel sad, it made him feel relief. He was done. He had always strived to be done. That’s why he fought, to be done. To go home. To be with his family. But for so long he had always been pulled back in. This had been the last time. He was done. No more. Over. He could rest. Thankfully for him, his rest wasn’t death and it didn’t have to be. It seemed like stories of heroes who couldn’t stop being heroes always ended up dying and that was the only way they could rest. But not him. He was all for breaking stereotypes.

His train of thought paused when the door squeaked open a few inches. He smiled when he caught sight of his best friends. Happy and Rhodey snuck in, after noticing Peter fast asleep in Tony’s arm. They both looked relieved to see him and Tony swore that he saw tears in his oldest friends eyes.

“If you ever do that kind of shit again I’m gonna-” Happy whisper threatened, as not to wake the baby.

“I know… I won’t. I’m… I’m done.” Tony promised

“Like Done done?” Rhodey raised a suspicious eyebrow.

“My beautiful, perfect, intelligent wife is making sure that I’ll be legally dead. So yeah. I’m done.” Rhodey and Happy shared a look.

“Are you sure? I didn’t think we could take the hero out of you…” Rhodey confirmed.

“I’m done. I mean I don’t think I can completely stop, but I can do what I did with this kid. I can help the baby superheroes. I even have an idea of who can replace me as Iron Man…”

“What are we gonna do about the funeral?”

“I’ve got an idea... But that’s for later. I’m happy that you’re both here.” He smiled a little.

“I think we’re both pretty glad that you’re not dead too.” Happy shrugged.

“Yeah, I can see that…”

Tony’s funeral might’ve been a small private affair but he could’ve never expected to be mourned as much as he was. It almost made him feel bad that it wasn’t real. There was a gigantic statue of Iron Man in New York where the old Avengers compound used to be, along with a well-funded museum of heroes dedicated to the ones lost. Including Nat and the Vision. Tony had never been there but Peter told him about it. He took pictures of everything Iron Man related and texted him a picture of his own gravestone. That was kind of weird but he ended up making a joke about it, so now they joke about leaving flowers on his tombstone and his ghost haunting the kid.

Morgan, Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey had to do quite a lot of acting at the private funeral to keep up the story that Tony was dead. But Peter didn’t have to act too much. He knew what it felt like to go to a father figures funeral. Even though he knew Tony was alive and even had an earpiece connected to him directly, it was still kind of jarring to pretend that he was dead.

Once he had to get away from all the people and hid in the bathroom for a while with Tony asking through the earpiece if he was okay. Peter would reply that it was just weirdly familiar and he didn’t like talking about him in the past tense. He also didn’t like being around people who believed it. He desperately wanted to tell someone, but it wasn’t his place and he managed to keep his mouth closed. Even when the shreky Bruce Banner looked really sad, Peter managed not to spill. It was kind of hard.

Morgan was surprisingly good at keeping her mouth shut. She was a drama queen just like her father. She was mostly confused at the situation and thankfully was not aware of the concept of death so she just whined about wearing a boring dress and getting hungry for cheeseburgers.

A bunch of people that ‘were’ close to him talked about him a little, Peter was informed that if they had enough time, they would let him say a few words and evidently, there was plenty of time. So Peter was a little nervous, it wasn’t like he was talking about his dad figure to a bunch of super-people… So, Peter was a lot nervous but he ultimately decided to do this because he had things he wanted to say to Tony that he was too cowardly to say in front of him.

So he stood up from his place at the head picnic table and looked at the darkly dressed superheroes all around him. He took a shaking breath and decided to introduce himself.

“Hi, uh, I’m Peter Parker. Spider-Man, but don’t go blabbing about that, some of us want to keep that kind of thing a secret.” There was a small ripple of polite laughter. “Tony is… Tony was like a father to me. When no one believed in me, he did. When I was alone, I had him. When my aunt found out about my secret vigilantism, he confronted her and managed to not get slapped.” He looked at May who had a sad look on her face but still smiled a little. She still wasn’t in the light about the reality with Tony but Peter was sure that he would tell her eventually.

“Tony was my hero before he surprised me at my apartment. He was the type of hero I wanted to be before I got powers. He didn’t need super strength or a magic hammer to be a superhero. He didn’t need a gamma radiation accident or years of training as a Russian spy. He didn’t need an infinity stone or magic or vibranium. He was a hero because of his brain. He was a hero because he made himself one. He was a hero because he was doing anything he could to fix his mistakes and the mistakes of the people around him. He was a hero because while I was a nerdy middle schooler, with nothing but my above average brain, he was someone I could see myself in.”

“He became a hero when he was broke and kidnapped with a battery in his chest. When his brain was the only thing he had left, he rose from the ashes and became Iron Man. He made me realize that no matter how broken I was and was going to end up being, I am not worthless or unfixable. Tony Stark still saved the world while the world never believed he could.”

“There are a lot of heroes out there,” Peter looked around the dozens of superheroes around him and smiled, “but no one like Tony Stark. No one can ever be like Tony Stark.”

‘Aw, Spider-kid, you’re making me tear up…’ Tony’s voice echoed quietly through the earpiece.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be used to him being gone, sometimes I can still hear his voice…” Peter smiled a little, hoping that it came across as reminiscent instead of knowing.

‘No you can’t’

“Anyway, sorry I ended up rambling didn’t I… I just want to finish with the fact that I think Tony was my hero. Not Iron Man. He will always be my hero.”

The Stark household was like a domestic heaven. Both Peter and Tony had never expected to have a family again, yet here they were, at the dinner table with a handful of other people laughing along to a joke one of them had made.

Peter had been living there while May figured out the apartment situation as she had been dusted too and their apartment had someone else living there. But it was fine, apparently Tony had prepared a room for him, filled with Star Wars themed things and even a poster for a few Star Wars movies that he had missed while he was all dusty.

Living there had been kind of weird for Peter but he welcomed it. He wasn’t used to being around a little kid but being around Morgan was a lot of fun. Apparently, Tony had told her all about him and insisted that he was her brother and Peter didn’t have the heart to tell her that wasn’t the case. Even if he did have the heart to, he wouldn’t. He always got a little smile on his face when Morgan said ‘Petey’ instead of ‘Peter’ because she couldn’t quite pronounce her ‘r’s very well yet.

Harley was a different sort of weird but just as welcome. He was more extroverted and confident than Peter was but just as nerdy. Half of their conversations were about the logistics of sci-fi weapons and the other half were about dumb things like the memes Peter had missed. It struck an easy balance and Peter didn’t think he could become friends with someone so fast. Peter could ramble almost incoherently at the speed of light and Harley could still follow along. Peter was pretty happy to have more than one friend now.

So, sitting at the dinner table, with a bunch of people Peter could imagine thinking about as a family, was a little bit overwhelming. He had always kind of envied people with siblings, parents and all that, with no offense to the aunt and uncle that raised him, he loved them more than he could say, but he knew from a pretty young age that his family was a little odd. It was even worse after his uncle was killed but now, he had more family than he had ever thought he’d ever have.

“You zoning out fart-face?” Harley’s voice broke Peter’s focus of staring at nothing.

“I guess you were that boring asshole,” Peter said with no maliciousness in his voice.

“Language! What will the good captain think!”

“Carol wouldn’t care…”

“No, she’s the great captain, I mean Steve.”

“Oh! I don’t care.”

“Don’t swear in front of my kid though.” Tony interrupted before taking an unsteady bite of a cheeseburger with his nondominant hand as his dominant arm had yet to be replaced with a prosthetic. He was still working on living without his most useful limb. Usually, Pepper had to help him with simple tasks but lately, DUM-E had been happy finally being useful. He was almost competent.

“Fine dad…” Peter rolled his eyes over dramatically.

“Am I hearing sass from you, Spider-boy?”

“Come on, Harley sasses you all the time!”

“I’m not saying that it’s bad, I just never expect it to come from you…”

“I guess when I died, the last bits of hero worship died too…”

“Please don’t talk about dying… I’m not in the mood. It’s cheeseburger time.”

Dinner continued like that, with casual conversation and Tony complaining about having to take breaks from eating because his body was still too annoyingly weak to do such hard tasks as chewing and holding something in his hand for several seconds. May was planning on coming down to the cabin in a couple of hours after her shift at the snaps rehabilitation center, Happy would fly her over and they were bringing back some things from the storage facility that Tony had put all the Parkers things into.

Even though everything hurt and he could barely move, Tony was very happy to be alive. He loved being with his family and was already planning on making a joke about trading his right arm for them. Which was much truer than they knew. It had only taken several decades of absolute torture, but Tony was finally happy to be alive.

It had been a few months since the big battle, since the final snap, since Tony lost his arm. By now they had made mark one or the Iron Arm, it wasn’t too bulky and moved when Tony wanted it too but he was still getting used to it.

Thanks to the jolly green giant, Tony knew that today was the day that the stones were being returned. It took a little while for the time machine to be rebuilt and made smaller, and more Pym particle to be made but the time had come and everything was ready. He was taking a stroll near his little pond and without his usual paranoia, didn’t notice someone behind him until they spoke up.

“Tony?” Tony turned around without urgency to see who had caught him not being dead. He was actually kind of surprised to see who it was.

“Hey Cap. You’re looking… a little more elderly than I last saw you…” Tony raised his graying eyebrow at the wrinkly version of his teammate.

“You’re alive?”

“Apparently, I knew none of you would leave me alone if I told you before.”

“Well, I am pretty glad about that. I have about a half hour until my younger self takes the most powerful weapons in the universe back. Would you like to sit with me?”

“I don’t have much else to do. Being dead gives me way too much free time…” Tony sat on the bench facing the pond and Steve sat down next to him. Tony noticed the strangely shaped circular bag at Steve’s side and realized what it was for pretty quick. Not many things were that size that Mr. Rogers would bring back from his timeline. “So, Barnes or Wilson. Who’s gonna be the next Cap?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Steve chuckled, “Bucky… he deserves a break. Sam is more than worthy to inherit the shield. Captain America was always more than a World War two science experiment.”

“So, is he going to be the eagle now? Uncle Sam?” Tony joked.

“Americas Angel? Well, I’m not quite sure. He might even decide to keep being Captain America. Just younger and fewer steroids.”

“You know, It’s kind of weird getting old. Passing the superhero mantle. I didn’t know if I could ever leave it behind.”

“And what changed your mind?”

“The kid. Spider-Man. There are so many heroes out there now, I remember being the only one. But now, there are plenty to go around. But the kid? I wouldn’t trust anyone with my legacy more. I mean sure, there are a few other choices that I would totally support being the next Iron Man, but Pete’s already in the game. He followed in my footsteps the moment he used being a superhero to cope with world-shattering trauma.”

“That is very you isn’t it. I think the world is going to be in good hands.”

“Probably better hands than before.” There was a moment of silence. “You don’t seem too surprised to see me alive…”

“You forget that I know you, Tony, if you were to retire, you’d have no choice but to be as dramatic as possible and faking your death while saving the universe is pretty damn dramatic.”

“Faking my death was a little last minute… I didn’t mean to be that dramatic.”

“It’s just part of you.”

“I don’t know whether that was offensive or not…”

“It wasn’t meant to be. You’re a showman. Life is much more fun with you around.”

“I’m flattered but you must remember that I am married and not in my prune phase yet.” Steve laughed weakly.

“Not in every timeline…”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean-”

“Maybe I’ll tell you later, you should probably get going, they’re starting to set up the device.”

“I’ll set up an extra plate for dinner tonight, don’t skip out on me.” Tony stood up and took a moment to stretch.

“I don’t plan on it. I had to wait several decades for people to start putting spices in food and I started to regret going back.”

“Maybe I’ll boil some potatoes for your old man tastebuds,” Tony smirked as he walked away.

“Tony I swear to god-”

“See you then Grandpa.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” Steve smiled as he looked out into the shimmering water. Maybe it was cheap to call Tony dramatic when he traveled through his original timeline to give his friend a large sheet of metal. Well, if he had to learn something from the smartest avenger…

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