one small cut
#6a - all this for a drop of blood
Once upon a time, Tony Stark had gotten into a fight with a crazy Russian – there was something to say about the amount of crazy Russians he’d had to fight in his life – who had left him with a couple of minor injuries and a pearl of wisdom.
Of course, back then, he hadn’t paid much attention to said pearl of wisdom: he had been too busy dying of Palladium poisoning and pretending to be shocked about the fact that the other crazy Russian in his life was actually a spy in corporate-siren clothing.
It didn’t mean that he had forgotten what had been said to him, however.
"If you could make God bleed, people would cease to believe in Him. There will be blood in the water, the sharks will come. All I have to do is sit back and watch as the world consumes you."
Tony had never understood the quote.
Despite what countless of self appointed psychologists and would be profilers liked to say, Tony did not believe himself a god. He had never demanded people to place their complete and utter trust in him, nor had he ever pretended to be better than everyone else.
Smarter than most? Yes, sure. He had the accolades to prove it.
Better? He wasn’t even sure he was good enough, ten years later, to have deserved Ho Yinsen’s sacrifice.
He did not understand the quote, especially applied to himself, but he had taken something from Vanko’s vodka fuelled rant.
That sometimes, all that was needed was a nick.
“All that,” Thanos said, running a finger over his wound. “For a drop of blood.”
The next second, Tony was flying and being pummelled into the ground, the Titan raining hit after hit on him that the armour was only just able to save him from, but Tony?
Tony did not even care about the awful bruises, the terrible headache and possible concussion he was going to have at the end of this.
Because, sometimes, all that was needed was a nick.
Thanos lifted his hand once more to punch him, and then.
And then he froze.
Tony watched from his crouched position on the ground as the Titan frowned, his eyes going from Tony to his now immobile arm.
“What–” he tried, eyes growing more and more confused the more he failed to move the limb. “What is this.”
And now Tony grinned, ignoring the taste of blood on his tongue, forcing himself back onto his feet and letting the nanobots free his face.
“You like my new suit?” he asked, and for once he felt no fear when the Titan’s glare fixed on him. “Nanotech. I control it,” he tapped the side of his head, “With just a thought. And these babies?” He pulled up the same sword he had used to cut the Titan with, now back to the shape it had been before. “Self replicating.”
Thanos’ eyes widened but this time, when he tried to turn his head to look at his arm, he found that he couldn’t do that eiyhrt.
He found, in fact, that not a single part of his body was following his commands. He couldn’t even move his fingers enough to use the gauntlet or any of the Infinity Stones.
It was like his body was no longer under his command.
Because it wasn’t.
It was, as hundreds-thousands-millions of nanobots replicated throughout his blood and nerve system, under Tony’s command.
Because Tony had just hacked Thanos' body.
As much as he wanted to, he did not waste time gloating or self congratulating.
He simply gave the furious Titan one last grim look before he moved one last time.
(Later, after Thanos laid dead and cut into little pieces, the Guardians would ask how exactly Tony had subdued the Titan all by himself.
The people on Earth would look at him with wariness and confusion, when told that Tony had all but single handedly defeated the Titan, especially after they heard of how Hulk and Thor themselves had fallen under him.
Everyone would question what special weapon Tony had used, how he had managed to take him down.
Tony – and Stephen Strange, because if the man had truly seen fourteen million futures, he had to know – never said anything.
He had a feeling people would get a little panicky if they knew Tony could virtually hack their brains and bodies via nothing more than a simple cut, and that was just not worth it.
He and Pepper had a wedding to plan.)
#6b - remember the natives?
Despite what Tony Stark liked to say, biology was not only important, it was also fascinating.
Even before he had realised he wanted to become a neurosurgeon, Stephen had been fascinated by biology.
He had been enthralled by the various pieces that made up the human body, and all of the ways a single change, a single mistake could cause the complete breakdown of one's anatomy.
After Donna had drowned, Stephen had spent months of his life researching everything about drowning and its effect on the body. How the lack of oxygen slowly shut down your motor functions, how the cold of the water affected your bloodstream and the rhythm of your various organs.
When Victor brought the chicken pox back into the farm and their father nearly died from it while everyone else just got a little itchy, Stephen spent years on viruses, bacterias and the immune system.
He had learnt a lot.
Stephen’s favourite thing about surgeries was having the chance to figure out all the different ways there were to put a broken person back together. All the various ways to reverse engineer the human body in order to have it work normally once more.
In order to know how to fix something, however, you had to first learn how to break it.
Stephen had eidetic memory, and Dormammu had given him excellent information on how to break the human body.
Still, he thought, as he watched the cut Stark managed to land on the Titan’s cheek, the best ways were often the simplest, too.
The Europeans had not won against the natives because they had largest numbers.
They had not won because they had the better weapons.
They had not won because they had the strongest fighters.
The only reason they had won was that they had a better – a different – immune system.
And if a common cold had been able to kill the Native Americans, one could only imagine what the foreign Earth-borne bacterias that Stark’s armour had gained by sharing fluids with super soldiers, black widows, other aliens and people who had been experimented on could do to the last of the Titans.
Stephen did not have to imagine.
All he had to do was use Thanos’ distraction as he fought Tony to his advantage, and hit him with a time speeding spell from the Time Stone when he had his back turned.
And even with Power, Reality, Space and Soul in his hands, Thanos could do nothing but stand there, frozen in a sea of green, as the infection from the cut spread from his cheek, to his face and to his brain in literal seconds.
He dropped dead twenty seven seconds later.
“Is he...” Stark looked at the Titan in shock from where he was still on the ground, and then to Stephen. “What the fuck- Is he dead?”
“You should clean your armour more often,” was all Stephen said, wiping the dust from his clothes. “You have no idea of the biohazards that thing carries.”
Stark just stared at him baffled.