the stages of grief

tony was helpless as his worst fear was realized, nightmares hardening into reality all around him. the guardians disappeared, crumbled, gone. it didn’t feel real.

he felt an empty pang in his chest, a hollow hole. he couldn’t feel anything at all, he had failed, they all had failed. thanos had done it, he had won. they had lost everything, there was nothing left to lose.

but then..

“mr. stark?”

it sounded like a question, but it felt like a condemnation, a final verdict.

god damn it, he was wrong, he still had everything to lose.

his voice came again, innocent and shaky, trying so hard not to sound terrified but failing so miserably, “I don’t feel so good.”

tony’s response came automatically, almost preprogrammed, “you’re alright, kid.” because he couldn’t handle anything else. he had to be alright. he had to be.

but then the kid was lurching forward, and tony came to meet him, coming together in a painful, painstaking embrace.

peter, finally, after so long of being brave, of being strong, succumbed to his youth and fear. he cried out desperately, “I don’t want to go, mr. stark, please, I don’t want to go!”

a child, begging his hero, his mentor, his father, to save him.

but tony couldn’t, he couldn’t save him. so instead he held on, grasping him as tightly as possible, his stab wound forgotten, his pain and weariness put aside, none of it mattered. all that mattered was peter. his knees buckled under their combined weight, and they fell together.

peter had never looked so young, shaking beneath tonys arms, seventeen years had never been so short. tony wanted to answer him, to comfort him, to tell him that he was here, that it was okay, but no words came out. anything he said would be a lie. so he just held the shaking, terrified child to his chest and prayed to forestall the inevitable.

peter turned to look at him one last time, guilt and sorrow in his eyes, “I’m sorry.”

he heard words echoing in his mind, fragments of memories .

if you died, i feel like that’s on me. I don’t need that on my conscious.

peter’s apology pierced his soul and he wanted to assure him that it wasn’t his fault, but it was too late - peter was gone, and with him, tony’s spirit.

——

denial -

tony stared at the wisps of ashes on his hand, the grey flecks that, even as he watched, blew away in the wind. all that remained of the boy who disintegrated in his arms. his mentee, his prodigee, his kid .

peter. peter , so full of energy, so full of laughter, so full of life - how? how could it end? how could his kid be gone?

no, no, no, it wasn’t fair, nothing was fair.

surely he would be back, bouncy laugh and bright eyes and brilliant smile. surely not even a titan could extinguish the light in peter’s eyes, smother the flames of his soul.

he burned so brightly, he was a ray of sunlight, a shining star. how could he be gone?

tony was numb, waves of shock and grief rolled over him, and he couldn’t feel anything. he felt cold, frozen, insensible.

he knew half the universe was gone, that they had failed. he knew somewhere in him that he needed to get up, to do what he always did, to move on and fix things, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t.

because this wasn’t real, none of it was real, peter couldn’t be dead, it couldn’t be happening.

he refused to allow it to be true, and as long as he denied reality, reality couldn’t touch him. so he did.

he sat on haunted husk of a planet and closed his eyes, holding peter’s ashes against his face, because as long as his eyes were closed and his hands clenched tight, peter’s heart was still beating, his eyes still shining, and none of this was real.

anger -

the anger didn’t come until later, until he was aboard the ship with nebula, until she asked him what the plan was moving forward, what they should do.

he’d been silent, shaken, as they escaped titan, speaking only when spoken to, saying no more than what needed to be said.

he had finally stopped his denial, realized the necessity of action, of moving forward, but he was still wracked by grief and guilt.

as they left the hot, suffocating atmosphere of titan, and entered the emptiness of space, the blank void inside him transformed into fiery anger, icy shock giving way to white hot rage.

“so what next?” her dry voice finally broke tony’s reverie, and he realized that she was looking at him expectantly, that she wanted him to lead.

“what’s next?” he repeated vacantly, his mind far away, and he forced himself to snap back to the present, “what’s next is we’re going to go to earth and figure out who’s still alive and then we’re going to make a plan to kill thanos. we’re going to destroy him, we’re going to make him pay, make him suffer!”

the outburst came from no where and it silenced her questions, but she didn’t argue so tony stettled back into his seat. his thoughts drifted away from the plan, turning to the satisfaction of vengeful fanasties, he thought of the torture he was going to inflict on the titan who had wiped out half the universe, who had killed his child.

it didn’t matter any more, they didn’t have to succeed, they didn’t have to win, but he would be damned if they didn’t avenge. his mind was set on justice, on vengeance, on avenging .

bargaining -

it took so long, too long.

the solution seemed so far away, peter and the others had been gone for weeks and some people were beginning to accept the new reality. tony did not give up so easily.

the sweet, empty comfort of denial had long faded, and the sharp, razor blade of anger had dulled, ebbing into a familiar self-loathing guilt.

he still hated thanos, still dreamed of watching the life fade from his eyes, of watching him bleed out in front of him, but his anger was no longer a maniacal obsession but rather a steady motivation, it kept him going.

but it seemed they would never find the solution. after arriving at earth he’d teamed up with what was left of the avengers, the original crew all over again. but try as they might, nothing seemed to work.

shuri had been helping him and bruce try to discover the properties of the soul stone, where the billions of lives had been sent, but it was a long, futile process, and it yielded little progress. but he would do anything, risk anything, bargain anything, to get peter back.

so when he found a cryptic note, that may or may not have been from dr. strange, dating from before the snap, with vague instructions for him to follow and hidden messages for him to decode, he didn’t hesitate to act on it. at any cost.

depression -

an overwhelming, crushing depression descended over tony, a black shadow, a terrible darkness.

he had been given just a shred of hope, and it had been so cruelly snatched away.

it was so obvious now, he’d a fool not to connect the dots earlier. he’d been blinded by his desire to see peter again, dr. strange had foreseen this future, had known the only way to win, he used tony’s naivity against him, took advantage of his love and blind hope, and in doing so he broke tony stark.

the whole sequence had been set up by dr. strange, it was ingenious, he was an incredible chess player, a remarkable puppet master. tony had followed the steps of the note to the dot, like a guilable idiot.

it had explained that the gauntlet truly belonged to tony, not thanos. apparently, according to the ancient laws of magic, regardless of who collected the stones the person who sacrificed a loved one to awaken it is the one who controls it. thanos thought it was him, he had sacrificed gamora, and he was sort of right, the gauntlet had a loose loyalty to him, which was why the snap had worked, but the gauntlet’s true allegiance was to tony.

because while thanos had sacrificed his unwilling daughter due to his own desires, tony’s son had sacrificed himself for him out of pure goodness and love.

strange explained that peter would’ve been gone even without the snap, tony hadn’t seen it but during the heat of the battle he had thrown himself in tony’s path to protect him, and thanos had struck him, hard enough to cause internal bleeding. he was already as good as dead when the snap took him away. and that qualified as a sacrifice and was enough to render tony full control of the gauntlet - if he could just access it, he could reverse the snap.

& so charged with righteousness and elated by hope, tony, along with the remaining avengers, stormed thanos’ hideout.

strange had, again, thought of everything, his location, including directions on how to get there, were provided in the note.

it was a rough, difficult battle, but in the end they prevailed, although they suffered heavy losses. thor, clint and natasha all went down in the process, each heroic and noble and self-sacrificing, heroes until the end. so when thanos was finally incapacitated, and tony wielded the gauntlet there was already suffering, already heartache.

tony didn’t hesitate, he, in that moment, was the true master of the universe.

he didn’t hesitate, he didn’t sway, he snapped his fingers and squeezed his eyes shut, when he opened them again he expected to see peter.

tony, for the last time, had made himself vulnerable for love, easily manipulatable, and it would finally break him.

acceptance -

at first he thought there had been a mistake, where was peter, why didn’t he appear?

tony was sure something had gone wrong, the snap didn’t work, the magic had malfunctioned.

but then they all appeared one by one, reunion by reunion. the guardians, bucky, sam, wanda, tchalla, all of them. they all reappeared, except peter.

this couldn’t be happening, it was back to denial all over again.

he had done all of this for peter, he had to be coming back. & then he saw dr. strange walking towards him a forlorn, pitiful expression on his face, and he knew .

“where is he?” his voice broke, he already knew the answer but he needed to hear him say it.

strange just continued to stare at him sadly, and tony felt a surge of anger, “WHERE IS PETER?”

all around him his friends looked down, avoiding his gaze, and he realized that they had suspected this all along. truly, he had too but he never admitted it to himself, he had clung desperately to that shred of hope.

“tony,” dr. strange said gently, “you are the true possessor of the soul stone, but you can only reclaim its powers, can only release the souls of half the universe if the soul stone keeps peter. it’s not a true sacrifice if you get him back.”

tony had suspected it all along but the ground still seemed to sway under him, the world still spun.

“no! NO! you didn’t .. you couldn’t .. you said..” he couldn’t get the words out, he couldn’t bear to acknowledge the truth. “I can still get him back!” he grasped the gauntlet and squeezed his eyes shut again, praying hard, and snapped his fingers, please . he would bargain his life for peter, he would bargain anything.

he opened them again and .. nothing.

they were all still staring at him, pity in their gaze, “NO!” dr. strange had used him, he had used him.

“I’m sorry tony, he had to die and you had to survive, the universe willed it. the only outcome in which we win, is this one.” he looked genuinely apologetic, but if tony hadn’t been so utterly and completely torn apart he would’ve killed him.

he had purposely declined to disclose this information in the note, given just enough to motivate tony, just enough to feed his hope. as if reading his thoughts dr. strange said, “you had to think there was a chance to get peter back, only sheer will allowed you to win this fight and fighting for the world wouldn’t have been enough, you needed to be fighting for him.”

briefly tony registered the truth of those words, but they meant nothing. nothing, if he couldn’t get peter back. he was going through the cycle of grief all over again, but again he seemed to stall at depression, acceptance was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

everyone experiences grief differently and not everyone makes it through the cycle, tony certainly didn’t. acceptance implies healing, it implies being okay with what happened, coming to terms with it. and like hell would tony come to terms with the death of his kid. so tony succumbed to grief, lost himself to depression, embraced the shadows.

iron man could survive a lot but the armor melted and the iron cracked, revealing the broken man beneath it. so acceptance came with a shot of whiskey and empty words of comfort, which is to say it didn’t come at all. because tony could not accept this.