Irony
Irony was a terrible thing.
The world was in a terrible state. Everyone had lost somebody, the economy had tanked, and the world was basically in a state of confusion and disarray. Questions that no one could answer were flooding the world, like “Why is there no more electricity in my city?”
Because the people needed to maintain the power plants were snapped away.
“Why is the highway jammed with cars?”
Because the drivers got snapped away.
“Why are half the buildings in New York razed to the ground?”
Because there are three airports in the vicinity of Manhattan and half of the pilots flying planes in the air space got snapped away.
“Why is my mother gone?”
Because…
Tony looked out the window of the common area, eyes soaking in the dishevelled state of the city. He nursed his glass of whiskey as he watched the dark clouds roll their way into his line of sight.
Because we failed.
He closed his eyes tightly with a sigh and a lone tear slid down his cheek. A stabbing pain shot through his heart as he remembered Pepper’s smile – tender, teasing and truthful. Then he nearly collapsed when he remembered being told how she had died when a car had smashed into her when the driver had been snapped away. She left only their two year-old Morgan as her legacy, who was now sleeping soundly in bed.
Because I failed.
“Why is the whiskey gone?”
Tony turned around, hastily wiping the tear from his cheek, finding Natasha glaring at the empty bottles by the liquor cabinet as if they had committed a personal offense against her. He smiled tiredly.
“It was gone before I got here,” he replied, deliberately taking a sip from his glass.
She cocked an eyebrow at him in amusement, smirking as though she was about to come back with a witty comment. But she didn’t. She just looked at him and he could see that underneath her casualness and humour, the same pain and exhaustion that haunted him haunted her too. She felt the same disappointment and resignation that he did, and she had come to the living room for the same reason as him. He stepped towards the liquor cabinet, placing his glass down on a table.
“You know what?” He asked, suddenly. “It’s not even a good time for whiskey. It’s raining – it’s perfect for hot chocolate.”
Natasha raised an eyebrow at him questioningly. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed that fiery look. Her willingness to challenge anyone and anything they said; her refusal to be intimidated by super-intellect and super-strength. In the two years that Cap had whisked away the Rogues and been on the run, Tony had been angry. He had been absolutely livid. But he still knew that their absence left a hole in the fabric of the Avengers, a missing part of its soul.
“Hot chocolate?” Natasha repeated.
“Yes,” he answered decidedly. “Hot chocolate,” he pulled out a bottle of Irish Cream, “and a pot of gold.”
Natasha smiled in agreement. “I’ll start on the hot chocolate,” she turned to the kitchen.
“No,” Tony said, looking out of the window, where the rain pelted down like bullets from Thanos’ ships and the thunder shouted angrily after the flashes of lightning. “I’ll get the hot chocolate. You build the blanket fort.”
This time both eyebrows were raised at him. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was rather proud of himself, and he made a mental note to elicit that response from her as often as possible. “A blanket fort?” She asked incredulously. “Tony how many drinks did you have before I got here?”
“I’ve never built a blanket fort before,” he pointedly ignored her, pushing her in the direction of the couches. “Then again, I never did have a childhood or friends growing up.” It wasn’t a statement aimed at garnering sympathy, just a fact.
“And you think I did?” She asked again, almost offended.
“You’ve definitely built more makeshift covers in the wild than I have,” he replied methodically, putting the kettle on and pulling out the cocoa. “Spare blankets in the drawers.”
Nat sighed in resignation as she pulled out the twenty blankets that Tony referred to and got to work. She didn’t think it’d take this much effort just to get a fucking drink.
In the end, she was definitely very proud of herself. She’d utilised the couch cushions and the chairs to produce what seemed more like a blanket tent.
“Now that is a masterpiece,” Tony approached with two mugs of steaming Irish Hot Chocolate, clearly impressed. “Let’s do this.”
Once they were inside and comfortably situated, Natasha took a sip and groaned in pleasure. “Holy shit, Stark,” she hastily took another mouthful. “This has got to be the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“Well, there’s more where that came from,” Tony sipped with a smile. “I’m just impressed you found a lantern to bring in here.”
“You were taking so long I had the time to go to Cap’s storeroom,” she rolled her eyes.
Tony snorted. “Remember when he would go down there and do weekly checks on his field pack? As if we were going to send him into the woods at any moment?”
Natasha laughed fondly. “The stuff in there was from World War II!” She took another sip. “Still acting like he was in boot camp.”
They sat there in their fortress of blankets and memories, taking turns to refill their drinks of comfort, and reminiscing about days gone by. At one point they added vodka-laced whipped cream which, surprisingly, Tony made from scratch.
Time was an obscure construct for them, and at a certain point, when all the bottles (how many were there again?) of Bailey’s and all the cocoa had been expanded, Tony closed his eyes and sighed. They were both past the point of inebriation, but hadn’t that been the point?
“Irony is a bitch,” he whispered.
“What’d you mean?” Nat asked. They were both on their backs, staring at the ceiling of sheets and the lantern turned off.
“How long has it been?” he asked quietly.
“Since what?” Natasha mumbled.
“Since you guys killed Thanos?” he answered.
Natasha was silent for a little bit, sobering slightly. “6 months,” she replied finally.
Tony wished to God that he had been there, but he had just returned from Titan with Nebula. He had been too dehydrated, malnourished, and emotionally incapacitated from hearing the news about Pepper’s premature departure.
“Everybody lost somebody,” he finally explained. “It wasn’t just 50 percent of the world. Other people died too in the aftermath.”
“I know,” Natasha turned to look at him.
“Everything’s gone to shit,” he gritted out. “And yet…” he reached to his Arc Reactor and squeezed it, as though it were some kind of comfort. “And yet the irony is, he was right,” he wheezed out.
Natasha sat up. Even in her state, she knew she had to hear this, whether to agree or disagree.
“I lost Peter, Pepper and Happy,” he choked out. “But the world is slowly healing, world governments are putting selfish agendas aside and actually working together, and pollution has gone down exponentially. World peace and world hunger pretty much solved.” His body shook at every word he forced out.
“Tony…” Natasha placed a hand on his shoulder, and as she stared into his tear-filled eyes, she knew he didn’t believe himself.
“Was the price worth it?” Tony was sobbing at this point. “Was he actually right?”
Natasha sighed and slipped her arms around his head and pulled him into an embrace, which he immediately returned, crying unabashedly. She knew that he knew the answer; he just needed to hear it from someone else.
“Of course not,” she whispered soothingly. “Nothing is worth losing lives for.” Tony sobbed even harder at this. “Not one,” she continued. “And certainly not half of all lives.” He never loosened his grip, and eventually Natasha started humming a song he’d never heard before. “We don’t trade lives, Tony,” she said at one point. They stayed that way for a while, him breathing in her scent while she played with his hair and hummed. He always knew that she’d been the heart of the team, helping to centre the strongest heads and to be the voice of unity. She’d turned the team into a family, and he lost that when she left with Steve.
“Let’s leave New York,” he said suddenly.
Natasha pulled away to look at him in the eyes. “What?” There was that eyebrow of question again.
“Let’s leave this building and go somewhere else,” he looked at her with determination from his red, wet eyes. “I have some property in Georgia, by the lake. And we can build a cabin. You can have your own room, and Morgan can be away from all the carnage in this city.”
“Tony, we have responsibilities to carry out,” she argued.
“Which we will be able to carry out with a change of environment,” he replied. This seemed like a better and better idea with each passing minute. “Cap will stay in New York and we’ll be able to contact our foreign friends when I build the hologram communicators into the cabin. C’mon Nat, I need to take Morgan to a place she doesn’t have to witness pain and suffering on a daily basis, and I can’t watch her alone. I can barely take care of myself.”
She thought about it silently, but the breaking in his voice took the strength out of her denial. The truth was that she needed a change as well, and the constant reminders of failures in her everyday life did not help. She needed time to heal. They needed to heal.
“Okay,” she whispered, returning to hugging him. He pulled her closer in response, clearly satisfied with her answer. Where do you turn when there’s nowhere left to go? What do you do when you’ve lost everything? “Okay,” she repeated.