Playing the Numbers
The dust is still on his hands, the words echoing through his mind, roaring like a wind tunnel: I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna go, Mr. Stark, please, please, I don’t wanna go—
“We have to go,” the woman says from behind him.
He doesn’t answer. Can’t. Too numb for words, and part of him—the part that is always thinking, always calculating—is aware that the moment he stops being totally numb, he’s going to—
Pepper
Happy
Rhodey
The numbers rush in, all too easily: One in two, four, eight, sixteen. One in sixteen chance that all four of them made it out alive. Fifteen to one chance that at least one of them bit the dust.
Became the dust. Like Peter.
And even if he manages to make it home and finds them all alive, the chance of tragedy just gets worse as more people come to mind. Bruce. Natasha. Steve—god, for as much as he bristles at the thought of ever setting eyes on the man again, he doesn’t want Steve to be dead. Not like this.
Thirty-two. Sixty-four. A hundred and twenty-eight.
He can discount the odds against his own death, since he’s clearly not living in a universe where that happened. That’s still sixty-three to one for the other six.
Chance of all of them dying: one in sixty-four. One point six percent. That’s something, at least.
Chance that no more than one died: one in ten. Chance that more than one died: nine to one.
Chance of half of them dying: one in three. Chance of at least half of them dying: two in three.
Chance that exactly two of them died: one in four. Chance that four of them died: one in four.
Chance that only one survived: one in eleven. That’s a nine percent chance that only one of the six remains, and, in that eventuality, the chance that the survivor is Pepper is only one out of six.
All those numbers, endlessly racking through his mind. They won’t stop.
Six flips of a coin.
And Strange saw them all, and more: fourteen million possibilities for the future, and this…
How many do we win?
One.
If this is winning, what the hell does losing look like?
“My ship is damaged beyond repair,” the woman informs him; he hadn’t even realized that she’d left. “The Guardians’ ship remains operational; I require your assistance preparing for takeoff.”
The dust is beginning to swirl, the wind picking up. It stings his eyes, but he can’t look away.
“Get up,” the woman says, her irritation palpable. “You can mourn inside the ship. This atmosphere is barely habitable, and the temperature is dropping rapidly.”
She’s right; he’s shaking, has been shaking for a while now, but it hadn’t seemed important.
But Pepper’s waiting for him.
(Or not. But he can’t deal with ‘not’.)
Pepper’s waiting for him (one chance in two), but she doesn’t know that he’s alive; from her perspective, that’s one chance in two, or worse, because she knows he’d be in the battle. He could have died before… or after. Or he might never make it home. And there’s no way to let her know that he’s okay.
She might have lost Happy (one chance in two). Probably her parents (three chances in four that she lost at least one—assuming they were still alive to begin with). Maybe her uncle (one chance in two).
Does she have siblings? He can’t recall if she ever mentioned any. Just the uncle. What was that guy’s name? Morgan, he thinks. Never got to meet the guy, but probably would have liked him. Any time Pepper talked about her uncle, she got this little smile quirking at her lips.
Now and again, she’d mention a few of her uncle’s more brazen escapades. Tony can’t remember the details—just that half-unwilling smile.
He knows so little of her personal life. The two of them, they’ve spent the past decade dancing their little back-and-forth, drawing closer and pulling apart again, on a trajectory toward eventual union or the ultimate breakup, and now… maybe what he remembers of her is all he’ll ever know. Maybe he’ll spend his evenings making FRIDAY replay every moment that got recorded, a cold recreation of a woman so warm. Kind, hot, and spicy all rolled into one, and he’d been drawn to her from the moment she’d bluffed her way past his security guard by threatening the poor guy with non-existent pepper spray.
Everything Tony has ever wanted in a woman, he’d found in Pepper Potts.
What she’d wanted from him, though, he’d never been able to give her. Stability. A family. The knowledge that he wasn’t going to fly off and get himself killed. Before Afghanistan, he hadn’t been worthy of her hand; afterward, he hadn’t been able to step back from the hero work, no matter how often she’d begged him to give it up. Any time it had looked like they could finally relax and enjoy a life together, there’d been a fresh disaster to tear them apart.
Tearing Pepper apart from the inside, too, because she couldn’t handle the uncertainty. And why should she have to? All this time, he’s been trying to protect the world, but even his best efforts couldn’t prevent disaster. Would it have been much different if he’d provided the tech but stayed out of the fight? Let someone else be on the front lines, instead of him? Maybe it’s just hubris that kept him from stepping down. One hero hanging up the cape—it’s not enough to matter.
But there’s still a chance that Pepper’s alive, and a chance that he’ll make it home to her. And if he makes it back, if he gets to hold her in his arms again, then he is never letting her go. All the rest be damned, he is going to give her the life she deserves.
That’s the thought that gets him on his feet, that she might be waiting for him, hoping for one more miracle. One good flip of a coin.
Tony won the coin toss. Pepper might have (God, please let her be all right).
Peter… didn’t.
The dust is still on his hands, mixed with his own blood. Staring down at it, Tony hates his brain a little, because it’s so good at visualization and all he can see is the terrified face of the boy he failed, hear that begging in his ears again.
I don’t wanna go. Mr. Stark, please—
He’s going to have to tell May (one chance in two) that her nephew is dead. That Peter’s body is dust on another world, never to come home to Earth. Swirled away by the increasingly frigid winds that whip around them, reminding Tony that he needs to get inside. Needs to leave.
It takes him a long moment to force his feet to turn away, his eyes tearing up in the wind. The blue cyborg gal is waiting for him, her face showing little of whatever she might be thinking, or feeling. But at least she’s been patient enough to let him come to terms. For the moment.
As he takes his first step, a sudden green light flashes from behind him, and he’s too numb to even have a danger response as he turns—stares——
—
Even after everything else he’s been through in the past few days, this seems impossible to believe: the dust pulling back together, forming a body again, like playing the disintegration in reverse until it’s Peter stumbling to his feet, looking around in bewilderment, taking a step toward them.
“Mr. Stark? Did I just… what just happened? I was—I thought I was—”
It doesn’t register, at first.
Then it does, and Tony half expects to see other bodies reforming from the dust—that somehow, someone managed to undo the massacre nearly as soon as it had happened. Defeated Thanos, got the stones back, said the magic words.
But there’s only Peter, staring at his own hands, rubbing his fingers as if to figure out if they’re actually there.
“Peter?” Tony croaks, barely a word at all, just clusters of sound, but Peter’s head jerks up.
“Oh,” Peter murmurs. “That’s what… oh.”
“This doesn’t change the need to get in the ship,” the woman gripes, as a shiver runs through Tony and Peter both, and not just from the eeriness of the situation.