Tony froze in place, unable to move a muscle, to make a sound through the horrible rictus of pain coursing through every cell of his body.
For an eternity he was trapped, locked in place as pure energy flowed through his veins. More than one man could handle.
Even Iron-Man had his limits.
He shook and fought against the paralysis, struggling to remember his mission to snap his fingers before the Mad Titan turned the tables on them yet again. He had to. For Pepper. For Morgan. For Peter. For all the lives lost and regained that Thanos wanted to crush into nothing yet again.
For all life in the Universe.
This would kill him but it was worth it to save them all. Almost there.
He jolted to one side and heard a scream, sharp and bright in his right ear. Before he could register why it sounded so familiar he jolted yet again, to the right this time, his shoulder gripped so tightly he could feel it compress his armor. Then his left hand was clasped tight enough to pinch even through his armor.
Who? What was happening?
Suddenly pain was lessened, was shared. It decreased moment by moment until he could open his eyes and see the field of battle. See Doctor Strange and his sorcerers holding a barrier around… Tony looked into the glowing multicolored eyes of his wife, gripping his Infinity Gauntlet in her Rescue Armor.
“Pepp?” he rasped out, jerking his eyes away to see Peter clutching his shoulder and War Machine holding his other hand. From there the line of heroes continued, bound like the flight crew from Air Force One but by magical energy rather than magnetism.
Nebula held tight to Rhodey with a beautiful green woman clutching her other arm, Star Lord held Peppers’ shoulder and…was that tree branches wrapped around his torso?
Drax, Mantis, Rocket, Ant-man and the Wasp at normal human size except was he seeing double? Were there two of each? The line of heroes stretched on and wound in on itself until he lost sight of them all.
“Finish it, Tony,” Pepper gasped, trembling from the force flowing through them. He nodded and faced the Mad Titan who had been held off by the Scarlett Witch who was now engaged in combat by the formidable Ebony Maw. What had he said before his failed snap? ‘I am inevitable?’
“We are The Avengers.”
He snapped his fingers and watched as understanding and sorrow filled Thanos’ eyes just before he crumbled to dust.
The wreckage of his ship, his ‘children’, weapons, comrades, and allies, his filth all vanished from the universe in an instant.
All so much dust.
Then came the screaming. Wanda shrieking as she faded away yet again was easily drowned out by Asgardian cheers as those murdered by the Titan before the Snap reappeared all around them, dazed and confused but blessedly alive.
“Brother!!” Thor’s cry of delight echoed across the battlefield.
“Did I not tell you the sun would shine on us again?” Loki demanded of Thor, eyes wet with tears as they clung to one another.
Tony snapped once more sending a jolt through the chain of heroes as the Infinity Stones left the gauntlet and returned to their place and form in history in the flicker of an eye.
Dr. Strange turned to him with a smile and crossed his arms to open the re-formed Eye of Agomoto to show the time stone in it’s proper place. “One,” he said smugly, smiling wider than Tony would have thought possible for the standoffish man.
“Alright, not bad,” Tony conceded with a grin, wrapping his arms around Pepper and pulling her in for a deep I can’t believe we survived this kiss that she returned with gusto.
“How did you know to do that?” he asked her softy when they finally pulled apart.
“That’d be me and my awesome plan!” Star-Lord said with a sad smile. “I told you to leave the planning to me.” He concluded softly, looking past Tony to where Nebula and her sister were deep in conversation.
“It was just liked the dance off to save Xandar,” Drax said gruffly. “We held Quill to stop the stone from killing him.”
“Yeah! He was like grab Stark or he’ll explode!! So we all just ran in and-” Tony didn’t bother to swallow his tears when he turned to pull Peter into another hug.
“Good work, kid. You did real good work.”
“Thank you Mr. Stark, I just wanted to make you proud," came the muffled reply.
“You did.”
“And then some,” Rhodey clasped the young man’s shoulder affectionately.
“So, has it really been five years?”
~~
~~
“Tony you can’t dismantle the time machine!” Steve insisted, mad eyed and tense. “You can’t know if we’ll need it again.” He’d shown up too late to stop them from making that decision and he didn’t know enough about the science to ever hope of getting the machine up and running on his own.
“This power isn’t to be used lightly Mr. Rogers.” Dr. Strange cut in firmly. “Time is delicate and sacred; the fact that we were able to pull this off without destroying the fabric of Space Time is a miracle one in-well- higher than you can count chance.”
“We can’t risk it further, Steve. Besides, the stones are back where they belong and Thor already returned Mjolnir to its proper place in time. We’re all set.” Tony said absently, watching Peter and Harley climb all over the (powered down, ready to be disassembled) quantum instillation with an eager Morgan in tow, all chattering like monkeys. “Better than all set, we got everything we wanted,” he said in a hushed tone.
Steve swallowed and blinked hard, his plan falling apart with every denial of his request. If only Thor were here to support him, maybe… but he and his evil brother had joined the Guardians of the Galaxy and gone ‘adventuring as in the days of their youth’ leaving Valkyrie in charge of New Asgard and its freshly returned citizens.
So he was stuck here alone trying to convince Tony and his loyalists not to be the naturally selfish creatures they’d turned out to be.
How could he explain the feeling of seeing Peggy through her office window? Of knowing she’d be happier with him than with the man she’d settled for? A man he’d saved who should have had the decency not to go for Cap’s girl!
He could have saved her the trouble of building the rotten ship that was SHIELD. They would have been happy together. Happier than the hell either of them had to live alone.
He remembered the sorrow on her face during the recorded interview he’d watched at his museum. How happy she’d been to see him each time her dementia took her away for moments or days at a time. Her husband and the family they’d built clearly hadn’t been enough for her or she wouldn’t have mourned Steve and the life they should have had together.
And now Tony was taking their chance at happily ever after away for good. He just didn’t understand and there was no way Steve could make him. The shorter man was too attached to the memory of Peggy as she had been in his youth and wouldn’t agree to do anything to change that, even if it was for her own good.
This was the man who’d killed Wanda along with Thanos’ forces saying he’d wished away the villains and no one on his team had risen to her defense! Even T’Challa had agreed that it was for the best!
She was a misguided young girl who tried her best and Tony was literally getting away with murder, it was like no one cared about the damage HYDRA had done. They only wanted to blame the innocent. The victim.
“Plus Janet already came by and picked up the Pym Particles. They’re all accounted for,” Scott said cheerily from where he was disassembling one of the control panels. “Hank is a paranoid bastard and had some kind of tracker for them which was lucky, there were two vials stored in one of the spare jumpsuits that we totally would have missed without it!”
Steve flinched to hear that and looked up directly into the knowing eyes of Tony Stark, no longer Iron-Man.
“Go live your life, Steve. This life. The one you’ve been given,” he said gently but firmly. “Some things are lost to us for good.”
“All set, man?” Sam called from the driveway where he and Bucky were waiting, ready to leave the grounds.
“Yeah,” he cleared his throat and walked away without looking back. “All set.”
For obvious reasons there was still tension from the former Avengers who’d been lost in the Snap towards Tony, and to a lesser degree Rhodes and Spider-Man. It had been mere weeks since their return and the changes were still overwhelming for them, though some things remained the same.
Enough world leaders had vanished in the Snap to still be calling for their heads after their rampage through Romania and Germany, not to mention the tragedy in Lagos and their escape from legal custody.
With all the advancements in nano-tech tracking over the past five years it was unlikely that they’d be able to successfully go on the run again, especially without the aid of their pet witch.
Tony wondered if they’d return to Wakanda or actually man-up and have their day in court. Either way it was no longer his concern.
He turned from watching the former Captain America walk away at the sound of a shriek of laugher to see Morgan balanced on Strange’s cape acting as a magic carpet about four feet off the ground. While the wizard faked exasperation at the adorable display.
Peter and Harley were flanking Scott as all three discussed the inner workings of the quantum tunnel and the uses thereof.
“Well Mr. Stark?”
“Yes, Ms. Stark?” he turned to face the love of his life with a warm smile.
“Let’s order in for dinner, neither of us is ready to cook for a crowd.” He had to agree with that. “Besides, you’ll never guess who Happy is crushing on since she returned,” she grinned cheekily.
He laughed, loving that these were his problems now and nothing else. Let someone else save the day, he was retired.