Are those stars I see? (No they're just holes on the plot line)

Sometimes life is a mess.

And then you die.

Tony could count with one hand and still have fingers left over, the number of people who ever said they were proud of him and meant it.

It was just something that nobody did often, in fact, only Jarvis and Rhodey ever did it, and meant it, and sometimes even they didn't mean it.

And now...

Now he was dead, and the whole world was proud of him. Somewhat.

There were still those who blamed him for everything gone wrong, those who said he only ever did it for attention, those who never believed stuff happened, and those who were glad he was dead.

Like Wanda, she sure as hell was glad he was dead.

Steve didn't care.

Clint didn't either.

But there was no surprise there.

What was a surprise was getting more emotion out of a veritable stranger, than from many of his so called friends and team.

Strange was there, for his death, and his funeral, he did not cry, but he mourned, tony could see it, he could see it in the way the man carried himself, like an old man with a heavy heart, one who had lost everything.

More than once, Tony had found the man silently staring off into the nether while holding onto a set of glasses that Tony knew were his, and old pair that if Tony remembered correctly, he had lost at a gala before Afghanistan, and never payed them much thought because he was too drunk and high to notice at the moment and later on because Obie said they were just glasses, they didn't matter, despite the fact that for the longest time, they ahd been Tony's favorite pair. They were nothing fancy like the ones he wore in his later years that could connect to his AI babies, or the EDITH glasses he left for Peter, but they were confortable and nice, and he had really liked them.
Eventually Tony had moved on and forgotten all about them, got himself even better ones and that was that.

And yet as Tony saw it, Strange cared for his glasses well, like they were a great treasure. He cleaned them and, held them with the outmost care, like they were one more of the precious and sometimes dangerous relics in his magic house, or rather, like they were frail and breakable, that on anybody else Tony would resent, but not of Strange. The man was careful and thoughtful despite his acerbic personality. He handled his glasses and other trinkets like they were the finest things in the world, something that not even Pepper could boast about doing with something more precious of his like, say, the Arc Reactor that one time she had to help him change it.

Hell, Tony knew for a fact that pepper had, as a matter of fact, dropped his old reactor a couple of times, and once she even thrown it like a stress ball! She had even burned the thing, as a makeshift funeral, or tried to, anyway, because as soon as he could, Strange had used his magic voodoo to fish it out of the lake and spirit it away. For which Tony was very thankful because while the reactor was strong and could take serious damage, it was also old and lady luck had always been a tease to him which could have ended very, very badly.

And yet thanks to Strange, Tony had nothing to worry about in the mean time, because oddly enough, Strange kept the reactor inside a barrier of sorts, hidden from prying eyes, and not in some display case in the relic room like Tony would have thought, or in some showroom like the trophy it would be for some other people, or anything like that, but rather, in his own personal quarters, in a little shrine like space.

There was even a small, framed picture of himself in a nice charcoal suit alongside some of his mother's favorite flowers, in a pair of nice, pearl colored vases.

His mother would have loved them.

Which Strange seemed to think too, because his was not the only picture in the shrine space, there was also a smaller picture of his mother at his right and his father had an even smaller picture on the other side of the reactor, one in which he was young and in a suit not very dissimilar to Tony's own, in fact it was the picture most people who knew him used to use when comparing the two of them, it was one of the few pictures Tony liked of his father, in it the man stood behind a chair occupied by Tony's mom and himself at what appeared to be only months old.

In the picture, his father looked, if not happy, at least sober and serene, as he stared at his mom with a roughish smirk. It had been a candid shot that never got published, instead it was one for the private collection, the collection Tony had lost in Malibu, and whose only copy existed with Peggy Carter's family.

It was a good picture and Tony was grateful for it.

Even if he didn't know how Strange had acquired it, or even known about it.

Sometimes, Tony wondered if strange knew he was around.

It was the little things, really.

Like making an occasional cup of coffee that nobody would drink alongside his tea in the wee hours of the night when Strange couldn't sleep.

Or leaving books that Tony would have found interesting open for longer than strictly necessary when Strange wasn't even using them.

Or always making a show of touching his ring before opening a portal as if he were waiting for something, or warning someone.

It was those things that made Tony wonder... But then there were also the times strange would start conversations about interesting stuff and then tapper off and stare to his side or a chair as if he'd been seemingly talking to his cloack all along, even though those conversations sometimes required answers that a clock simply couldn't give, no matter how intelligent.

Sometimes he'd even go as far as picking those same conversations with Peter whenever he came to visit Strange at the Sanctum just to hear the kid's opinion, even going as far as researching those topics when he thought nobody was looking just to have something to talk about.

It was odd, so very strange.

It was also very endearing to Tony, that the man cared enough was a delight, that he put in the extra effort was... It was something Tony had always wished someone had done for him.

It was also a delight that Strange didn't only act considerate to Peter, but also his AIs.

whenever Strange was in a position to communicate with them he always talked to them as if they were human, say please and thanks and all the works. His friend had even complained once that he was more polite to them than to people and the man had just shrugged which had sent Tony into pearls of laughter because it was such a Strange thing to do.

It was beautiful and heartwarming to know someone still talked to his babies so.

Specially when outside of occasionally Rhodey and the kid, nobody ever seemed to consider them more than machines.

Dumm-E, and even gone permanently inactive when Pepper had scolded Morgan for trying to play with them so they wouldn't be lonely.

It had broken Tony's heart to know what Pepper really thought of his technological children.

It had devastated him when she had driven Peter and Harley away with petty excuses.

Tony had even been tempted to believe it had been Wanda's doing given how she'd suddenly started getting closer to Morgan, and hadn't that been a panic attack after another, to know his baby wasn't safe from the witch's madness, but so far, wanda hadn't tried anything.

It might have had something to do with the fact that Rogers's little minion was there to seemingly keep an eye on things, and hadn't that been a trip and a half, to know that Bucky HATED Wanda, and full on told Steve he'd pack his thing anf go if he evet tried to force him into anything with her. He did not even interact with her at all, always leaving the room the moment she stepped in or walking away if she approached him.

It had appeared some vindictive piece of Tony's soul to know he was not the only one weary of her.

It had been a treat to hear the man berate the high and mighty captain about accepting HYDRA volunteers as teammates and threaten to leave whenever it seemed Steve would try to pull some shit or something.

Another threat had been hearing Laura give Clint a dressing down about teaming up with mind manipulating monsters when he claimed to hate them whenever Clint started talking shit too. It was something Tony would treasure forever.

Something he would not treasure however, was the idea that Cap would be the one to return the stones.

It didn't give Tony a good feeling, at all, so he tried to do the sensible thing and tried to warn someone but by the time he did it was too late.

The world was crumbling down and Tony couldn't save it this time around.