...no mercy!
The thrust of the sword is stern.
Through wind and cold, the troops are marching
Following the enemy's scent.
(loose translation of A. Surkov's "Reckoning")
Two days after, millions of planets, stars and other cosmic bodies are stagnant.
A badly damaged starship - that's probably held together by sheer Stark's stubbornness - is drifting through space. There is a faint sound of the engines humming inside, and complete silence outside.
Space - his biggest nightmare - stayed just as he remembers it, cold and empty.
Mysterious and beautiful.
If he hadn't woken up drenched in tears and sweat after dreams of silence and stars, he would have been amazed. He would have been enticed, mesmerized.
But nothing ever goes according to plan, so Tony is looking at controls and panels in front of him, pointedly ignoring the vast blackness outside the ship. He is trying to make the ship move faster, desperately rushing to figure out anything, but with the same luck, he could throw himself out of the airlock hoping that the force of his will would be enough to at least drift in the correct direction afterwards.
Tony knows it wouldn't be enough, it's never enough these days. He got out of the Afghanistan desert by building a suit of armour with sand and cactuses, he managed to discover a new chemical element and to create nano-suit. All he needs right now is to figure out how the ship works, that's it. But the solution keeps running away, and he is getting desperately anxious. After everything he's done, isn't he due to one tiny nod of acknowledgement from Ms. Fortuna? He needs a tiny bit of luck, a damn miracle, so he would return to Earth, so he would return to Pepper.
He has to work to keep his mind off things.
Off the fact that food is limited.
As is oxygen.
He has to work so he wouldn't think how fast the wind blows away the dust that's been a human being just a second ago.
So he wouldn't think about Pepper...what if Pepper...
Tony barely manages to subdue a blinding wave of rage trying to overcome him. He is so angry it physically hurts him to stay calm. Nothing freaking goes his way.
He is stuck in a metal coffin in deep space with food and oxygen running out, and all he has for a company is his torn apart armour and a blue-skinned alien woman that looks at him like she knows how to kill a man with her bare hands. Any other time Tony would have laughed and compared her to Black Widow, no, to Natalie Rushman. He has always been attracted to strong people, to danger. But somehow he doesn't regard Nebula as a direct threat. Somehow, the fact that blue-skinned half-android aliens exist, doesn't even make it on the list of things that bother him right now.
All of his plans failed. All of his preparations were for nothing. All the things that he's done were simply not enough. He, Tony god damn Stark, the person who's privatised world peace, at the end of the day was not good enough for the said world.
Half. Thanos said that he was going to kill one half, and the Universe would turn just and balanced.
I have privatised world peace.
How could he be so stupid, so arrogant? How could he be so similar to Thanos in his belief that something like that could be done just like that?
Who decided? Who took a look at everyone, every living soul in the universe and decided who would live and who would perish? What were the criteria? And how in God's name did Tony freaking Stark manage to pass it? It couldn't have been territorial. There were seven of them on Titan, but only two got away: one out of four humans and one - whatever she was.
Or did some celestial being just cut out half of whatever? Would it mean, that some worlds stayed nearly untouched while others - were destroyed completely?
They expected carnage and got a finger snap.
Tony expected to have more time. He expected there to be collateral, but he also expected a tiny, barely there, chance to win. He was ready to jump and latch onto the tiniest bit of a chance, he was ready to fight for it to death.
But Thanos snapped his fingers, and their chances weren't there anymore.
Nothing was.
Tony casts the screwdriver away, trying to subdue the tremor in his hands, and it falls down with a loud bang. He is trying to breathe, too focused on his inner turmoil to notice an indifferent "Earthling?" from the other part of the damn ship.
Thanos said he'd kill one half.
He killed Peter.
He killed Strange, and Quill, and his whole team.
Tony's hands are shaking with full force now with a sick realisation dawning on him: Thanos won, which means he got the last stone. Vision's stone.
So, Vision and Jarvis' remnants - Thanos killed them too.
The air is finally sucked from his lungs, and Tony is slowly sagging down.
He is suffocating, and he is trying to anchor himself, to find his usual anchors, but they are not there anymore. Rhodey, who's always stood by him ready to prop him up when Tony was weak, and to punch him when Tony was obnoxious. Pepper, who's fallen into a raging fire and came back wearing his damn suit, scared and angry and so strong. Tony is picturing their faces, but the memories are turning to dust, leaving him to suffocate buried under the ashes.
Earth lost. Steve Rogers... lost.
What if Tony is so desperately dragging himself to Earth just to find more dust and dirt and dry wind there.
What if Pepper...
Tony's breath is fast and shallow. Rage, impuissance, and fear - a horrible mix, wouldn't recommend.
His throat feels constricted, he is trying and failing, and failing, and failing. He is drifting in the vast darkness of space, and New York is in ruins, and the Chitauri army is there raining down destruction and death. Thanos has haunted him all these years, haunted his nightmares, haunted his plans. Even when everything went to shit with Rogers, when Rogers sent everything to shit, even then the upcoming catastrophe wouldn't leave Tony alone.
And the catastrophe happened.
And Thanos happened.
Rhodey, Happy and Pepperpepperpepper...
What if Thanos killed them all?
What if Thanos took everything from him?
Nebula slaps him - swiftly and angrily, and suddenly the world jumps back up into Tony's face and he sees Nebula and her blue skin, and her weird clothes, and the metallic bits on her face and neck. Tony knows nothing about her. Tony knows everything about her. He knows she is Thanos' daughter, knows her name, knows that she's lost everything.
"Breathe, earthling," her voice is cold and sounds more like an order. "Breathe, damn you."
She raises her hand, no doubt ready to hit him again.
"I'm breathing, I'm breathing," Tony's voice is hoarse and tired, and she is watching him with her abysmal eyes like she is contemplating to slap him once more just for good measure.
She is watching him with raw anger and despair, and Tony knows the look all too well. He can see the same one in his own eyes every time he forgets himself and glances in anything that resembles a mirror. Nebula is holding something in one hand and balls the other into a fist before she relaxes the tiniest bit and sits down next to him. Tony doesn't know where all this metal she's covered with comes from, he doesn't know how much of her being alive he would even understand. He hasn't seen her eating or sleeping these past few days, but to be fair - he seemed to forget about those things as well. He is breathing, deep and slow.
"I'm going to kill him," the words are strung between them hanging on the ropes between their damaged souls. "I'm going to kill him even if it's for nothing, even if it doesn't bring anyone back, you hear me? I am going to hunt him down to the end of the damn universe and I am going kill him."
They are looking at each other, and the rage, the anger, the pain between them is so raw, so powerful, it seems they are echoing each other, uttering oaths that one can only utter over the tombstone of a person closest to one's heart.
Their faith is all that's left.