Tony has been in a lot of accidents, which he supposes isn’t unusual considering his usual recklessness and general job description. He’s been in dozens of lab accidents and maybe he’s suspected but it wasn’t confirmed until Afghanistan. Everyone said it was a miracle that he lived, that Yinsen must be one hell of a doctor and Tony is sure people were right about Yinsen but he doesn’t think they were right about him.
He should have died when he got blasted by that bomb- he knows what he built it to do and a vest shouldn’t have protected him as much as it seemed to. He should have died in that cave when he had open heart surgery with nothing but some Advil to dull the pain but he didn’t. He should have died in the fire he created escaping but he didn’t. He should have died in the fall from the sky, smashing into the dirt at top speeds but he didn’t. When he was testing the boots of the suit and he blasted himself into a wall he should have crushed his skull. He should have died fighting Obadiah.
There are more incidences than that how, things that should have killed him but didn’t. He’s come to the frankly absurd conclusion that he’s unable to die but it really is the only explanation for why he never seems to suffer permanent damage. Even in a fight with Steve and Bucky he ended out coming out better than them. With Steve’s shield poised above his head he’d wondered if he’d even die if Steve brought it down on his neck. Steve didn’t do that though, and Tony suffered injuries, but he didn’t die. He didn’t even seem to be as injured as Steve or Bucky and he’s only human. He thinks.
*
Tony is certain he shouldn’t be able to breathe on an alien planet. Strange and Peter did fine, but Peter is enhanced and Strange has magic. Quill, he learns later, is a celestial so his ability to breathe makes sense also. “You should be dead,” Nebula tells him, voice harsh and mean.
After meeting her father Tony can’t say he blames her for being so cold. “I should be a lot of things,” he mumbles.
“He recognized you,” Nebula says. She looks suspicious, like Tony may be working for him but he isn’t. He’d never do something like that and god, the sheer loss. He can feel it in his heart and it burns.
“Don’t know why,” Tony mumbles at her.
“He threw a moon at you and you lived,” she says, voice still tight.
Tony shrugs, “I can’t die.” Its the first time he’s ever admitted it out loud to anyone and he absolutely doesn’t expect Nebula to shove a fucking knife through his eye socket. There’s a moment, just a moment, when he floats freely in the dark before it all comes rushing back and he scrambles to pull the knife out.
“What the fuck,” he gasps out. He can’t see through one goddamn eye and his entire face feels like its on fire. It reminds him of Afghanistan, except the pain in in his face instead of his heart.
“Hm. Guess you can’t die. Come here,” Nebula says. If Tony were currently capable of glaring at her he would but sadly half of his eyes are out of commission at the moment.
*
The goal is to get home which, for Nebula, is nowhere in particular so she seems to have attached herself to Tony’s goal. The bonus he guesses is that she’s taking care of his eye wound though he supposes she should given that she caused it. “How long will this take to fix?” she asks, gesturing to the internal wiring of one of the Q ships.
“Less time if you didn’t stab me in the fucking eye,” he tells her.
“It was one time, let it go. You’re healing fast. Faster than a human would,” she says.
“And you have a frame of reference for that?” he asks. It comes out snarky but he’s actually curious.
Nebula nods, “we... Thanos... there were some experiments on humans. You heal at a far faster rate than any I’ve ever come across.”
He wonders if that’s because of the no dying thing or because its something else. “Sure,” he says. “Pass me that wrench.” They work for a long time in silence, Nebula passing him tools and occasionally explaining technology he doesn’t understand. She compliments his fast learning and he thanks her for the explanations. Its comfortable considering she tried to kill him a week and a half ago just to see if he was right about his theory on not dying.
That’s how it is for weeks before Nebula asks how he knew. “I’m accident prone,” he tells her. She rolls her eyes.
“No, you have a death wish,” she tells him.
Does he? Instinctually he realizes that he doesn’t, which is news to him because, if he’s honest with himself, he’s never been happy enough to genuinely want to live. “I don’t have a death wish. But I have always been close to death,” he says. His job, all of them, his superhero status, that whole Merchant of Death thing, whatever the hell this is. He’s always been uncomfortably close to the deceased.
Nebula considers him. “That’s why Thanos knew you then. He’s obsessed with death,” she says.
Tony snorts, “don’t think being a genocidal maniac would typically result in someone recognizing someone who can’t die,” he says.
“You aren’t human,” Nebula tells him. “Thanos said you were cursed with knowledge. What is the knowledge you are cursed with?”
Knowledge that has come to pass. “I knew he was coming, could feel it for years. Doesn’t matter now,” he mumbles.
“It does. You can feel more than that, you have to feel more than that,” she says.
He glares at her, “why? Because you think I can save the universe? Half of it is already dead, Nebula, there’s no fucking coming back from that,” he snaps. He failed, again, and this time it cost a price so high even he can’t pay it. He should have died too, its what he deserves and more.
“Don’t you want your son back?” she asks and he frowns.
“My son?”
“Yes, the irritating arachnid,” she says.
Peter, right. He sighs, “Peter isn’t my son, he’s- he was my apprentice of sorts. I thought... doesn’t matter, I thought wrong.” God, he was so young. But Tony thought... youth are the future, they’ve always been the future and Peter would have eventually changed the way superheroes did things. That’s just the nature of how things work. If he could mentor Peter into not making the same mistakes he had, or any of the other Avengers, then Peter would go on to mentor others. He’d make mistakes of course, but then he’d learn, and then he’d teach others to do better too. Peter was supposed to ensure that superheroes fight for the people they’re trying to save.
In hindsight that seems like a bit much to put on one kid’s shoulders. Poor kid hadn’t even graduated high school yet and now he never will. And May, god he almost hopes she’s dead too just so she doesn’t have to lose yet another family member. She’s lost more than enough.
The hand on his knee surprises him and he jumps. Nebula has shuffled closer, a little uncomfortable with the proximity but she looks determined. “He was your son whether or not you want to admit it. I... I lost my sister too. I want her back, and I’m sure you want your arachnid back.”
Of course he wants Peter back, but what the fuck is he supposed to do?
*
The first time he sees a ghost she’s green and angry. It doesn’t take him long to determine that this must be Nebula’s sister, they share too many mannerisms. “Get off your ass and do something!” she yells and Tony jumps, woken up from a dead sleep by a pissed off alien ghost. This is not where he thought his life would be at twenty five.
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” he asks her. Same thing he’d asked Nebula, and its the same thing he’ll ask to everyone else who refuses to give him a damn answer. He can’t die, how the hell is that supposed to save anyone else let alone half the universe?
“You control death, reverse it,” Gamora tells him. “You’re the only one who can save us now.”
He frowns, “I can’t control anything, I just can’t die,” he tells her.
She shakes her head, image fading slowly. “That’s not true. You need to learn.”
“Learn what?” he asks, desperate now.
“How to bring us back. Please,” Gamora says, sadness etched into her features like the emotion is permanent.
Tony shakes his head. “I can’t... I don’t know how,” he whispers to a now empty room.
*
For months Nebula is obsessed with his Gamora sighting, enough to insist on staying on Titain to see if she’ll come back. She doesn’t, but sometimes others appear. He sees a little boy, a dog, several cats, an elderly pink alien, and an ugly grey one, but no Gamora. When Tony finally convinces Nebula to leave the planet in search of his own she changes gears.
“Maybe you should focus on someone you care about. Maybe you can make their ghost appear,” she tells him.
Its not actually a bad idea but he sighs. “And if nothing happens?” he asks.
Nebula shrugs, “than we’re in the same spot we were before,” she points out. “I think you should think of your son. We already know he’s dead, he would be a better choice than other people you might care about.” What she doesn’t say is that he cares about Peter more than them and she’s not entirely wrong. He loves Rhodey, god he does, and Pepper too, but he doesn’t love either of them like he loves Peter. Maybe Nebula isn’t wrong about his paternal feelings towards his late mentee.
After a few long moments he nods in agreement.
*
Peter doesn’t know where he was before, if he was even with anyone else he knew. The place he was in had been a red wasteland, what he imagined Mars would look like, and then suddenly he was on a ship. He recognizes the inside immediately and frowns. “Um,” he says mostly to himself. He talks to himself sometimes to remember that he can talk, that he might be alone but he’s civilized.
“Peter,” a familiar voice says, sounding astonished. He turns and finds Tony there with Nebula of all people. Both of them look astounded.
“Mr. Stark!” Peter says happily, flinging himself into Tony’s arms. The last time they hugged it was awkward and weird but this time Tony hugs him back hard, almost enough to hurt and that’s odd considering not much really hurts him anymore. Except dying, he could feel that coming and it hadn’t been pleasant. It wasn’t as bad when Tony held him though, trying in vain to reassure him.
“Oh my god,” Tony whispers. “I thought you were dead.” He’s shaking hard, too hard to be any kind of normal and Peter tries to pull back with no success. He frowns, surprised that a human could even do that but maybe when he died his spider powers died too. But when he sticks his hand to the hood of Tony’s sweater it doesn’t look like its going anywhere, even when he lifts his hand so that’s not it.
“Um,” he says, “Mr. Stark I appreciate the love and all that but I think you’re dying,” he says because that’s the only explanation for the shaking. He barely finishes his sentence and he feels Tony go limp in his arms. It takes some work to pry Tony off but Nebula is thankfully happy to fill in the missing blanks because Peter is confused.
*
Try as he might, and he does try, Tony can’t bring Rhodey or Pepper back and it starts to frustrate him until Peter points out he might be trying to bring back people who aren’t dead. A control, he reasons, is needed so he suggests they try someone they know is dead. Nebula obviously suggests Gamora, and Peter suggests Stephen Strange, but Tony goes with neither.
He brought Peter back, somehow, because he cared enough to do it. So instead of Nebula’s sister or a fellow human Tony concentrates on Mantis. She’d been young, or at least naive, but she’d been so strong and impressive. She reminds him of Peter and she didn’t deserve what happened to her, didn’t deserve to know what was happening before it even hit her. She shares that with Peter too. So he concentrates on her features, how determined she was to stop Thanos, how she managed to hold him in place for so long. None of the rest of them had been able to do that.
When he hears a soft gasp from behind him he knows he’s succeeded in bringing her back, and unlike with Peter he passes out right away.
*
Manis is standing over him when he wakes up. “You’re exhausted but you don’t really feel it,” she tells him, antennas glowing. “This feeling must not be unusual for you.”
He smiles a little and sits up, “its fine, Manis. There’s no need to monitor what I’m feeling.” She pulls back, hand hesitating a little as it goes and she looks troubled but she drops her hand. Tony doesn’t want her to feel what he’s feeling, she doesn’t need that on top of her own problems.
“Do you know what he is?” Nebula asks. Mantis shakes her head and they’re back to square one.
*
“You can’t bring people back like that,” Peter tells him and Tony knows he shares Nebula’s sharp glare. Peter doesn’t flinch because he’s brave and stubborn, probably too much so in regards to both traits. “Stop looking at me like that. Its way too slow and you keep passing out when you do it.”
“Look, I want Gamora back as much as the next guy but the spider kid is right,” the other Peter says. Tony didn’t even want him back, he’d been thinking of Gamora and somehow Quill’s ‘where is Gamora?’ comment crossed a wire in his brain and his apparent power and he got Quill instead of Nebula’s sister. “I think we need to figure out what he is before we do anything else and I have never seen power like that before.”
“There’s other news,” Mantis tells them. “I think he’s bringing back other things too. It takes time for news to reach the ship, but a planet reported an entire forest reappearing. Other people have gotten loved ones back. One planet reported the return of an ocean.”
Quill turns to give Tony an astonished look. “Shit, no wonder you keep passing out every time you try this shit. You’re brining back oceans too.”
*
They all want to find out what Tony is but he doesn’t really give a damn what he is. What he knows is that he has the power to reverse this, to bring everyone and everything back. So when they land the ship on some random planet that’s suffering the massive loss of Thanos’ genocide he sneaks away to somewhere quite and considers the worst of the memories he has of the snap.
He thinks of Mantis’ face when she told them something was happening, of Drax reaching out to Peter and how his last word was his friend’s name, of Peter disintegrating into dust the way so many other’s had. And he especially thinks of Peter, how scared he was, how everyone else must have felt that way too. Maybe they didn’t feel it like Peter, but they were terrified as the things around them fell to dust and Tony concentrates on reversing it, giving everyone what they had back. Giving every world their old problems back, and their strengths. Of righting the heinous wrong Thanos committed because he’d been stupid enough to assume he was right.
This time he feels the power pulling at him, seemingly trying to pull his heart straight out of his chest but he doesn’t care about that. He lets it go, he’ll let anything go if he can fix this. People didn’t deserve his failure, or the failure of the rest of the Avengers and the Guardians. People didn’t deserve Thanos.
Like he has many times before in his life he feels the darkness creep up on him like a black wall, surrounding his entire being and he lets it. He has no idea what or who he’ll bring back, but he’s got to try. He doesn’t expect the white light though, and for a moment he thinks this is that stupid tunnel of light people supposedly see when they die.
It isn’t because that’s ridiculous, but Tony doesn’t expect the beautiful woman with flowers in her dreads either. “Its been a long time,” she says and he frowns.
“I don’t know you,” he says because that’s all he can think of at the moment.
She smiles sadly, “you did, once, many incarnations ago. What you’re trying to do will kill you, you know. Are you prepared for that?” she asks.
“I don’t care what this will do to me, those people didn’t die the way they were supposed to,” he says.
“People die all the time, who care about this?” she asks.
She must be fucking nuts but Tony doesn’t tell her that. “It was genocide. Death may be senseless most of the time but this was an act of cruelty.”
“You’ve never cared about cruelty, even within this carnation you haven’t cared about cruelty,” she points out.
“Well I was wrong!” he yells. “My whole life I’ve been wrong, how should that mean all the things that died should stay dead because I was an idiot? I have the power to bring them back, I can feel it. Let them come back, die the way they were meant to. Let me die instead.”
*
Tony wakes up in a lush forest that wasn’t there before and he sits straight up, gasping for air. He can hear people crashing through the branches yelling but it takes him a long few moments to realize its his name they’re yelling. “Over here,” he yells back, voice hoarse.
Peter finds him first, probably unsurprisingly given his spider senses, and throws himself down beside Tony. “What did you do?” he asks, eyes wide. Tony reaches out to Peter, running his fingers through Peter’s messy blonde hair and smiling. He can feel Peter’s long lifespan, his strength, his anxieties. Tony knows he’ll overcome his adversaries.
“You will grow up to do amazing things,” he tells Peter. And he’ll take on a mentee too. Tony can feel him distantly, he’s only just been born, but Miles Morales will come into the same powers Peter has and Peter will do so much better a job with him than Tony has done with Peter.
“What did you do?” a new voice asks. Tony looks up to find Peter Quill standing there with energy glowing in his hands. “I thought my power died when Ego did.”
Tony shakes his head. “Your power was never his to take. The mind is a powerful thing, and he didn’t want you to use your power without him. He knew you’d never try to reach your potential again if you thought your abilities were gone.” Ego is a selfish prick, a piece of shit that makes Howard look like a pleasant man. Tony still despises people like that, can feel them everywhere and when he takes their lives he won’t pity them.
Peter’s power flickers at the mention of his father, but comes back when Peter wills it to. “So... am I immortal then?” he asks.
Tony shakes his head. “No. Most everything dies eventually,” he says. The only thing that doesn’t die, that can’t die, is Death. And when Tony is the last thing in this universe he knows his power isn’t limited to the destruction he’s caused over so many life times. Power over death isn’t about snuffing lives out of existence- its about allowing life to continue its natural course. Everything comes to an end eventually, but the end isn’t what defines the whole.
Its taken him more time than most can even fathom to have learned that lesson.
*
Nebula is anxious to get back to her sister, whom Tony knows is on Titan and he agrees that its best to go back and get her. Peter Q experiments with his power aboard the ship, marveling at his ability to create things seemingly out of thin air thought Tony knows better. Celestials are special though, and rare, even if they’re only half celestial like Peter.
“Look!” he says excitedly. “I made a plant!” He holds up, of all things, a mini dick topiary and Tony starts laughing. Apparently recovering memories of all your past incarnations doesn’t dull the humor of a dick shaped plant.
The other Peter laughs too but Nebula gives it a skeptical look. “If it pollinates I’m throwing it into space,” she tells him.
*
They reach Titan at a critical moment, Tony can feel it, so he rushes them all off the ship. Someone is going to die and he hopes it isn’t Gamora. Right now its not clear who will win this fight.
It isn’t hard to find them and Tony has to admire Gamora’s sheer will and power as she takes on a man with all six infinity stones. She’s lucky he’s damaged otherwise she wouldn’t stand a chance. Thanos sends a blast Gamora’s way and Tony steps in front of her. She yells at him to get back but the stones do nothing to him. He can hear the whispers of his old friends, a soft welcome home from each stone. They aren’t the same kind of being he is, but they’re all concepts. Time, power, soul, mind, space, and reality are both the physical and intangible versions of Tony’s power. Space is both a concept and a place while mind and reality are constructed by each individual as both a physical and conceptual thing.
Tony is a blend too, but his powers are more rooted to the physical than most concepts are. Death is death no matter where or who you are. Few other concepts can say the same about their powers.
“How...” words seem to fail Gamora as Tony simply absorbs the power being thrown his way. The powers that created the universe can’t hurt him and, in a way, he can’t hurt them either. They simply are.
Thanos’ attack stops when he seems to realize that nothing is happening and he stares. “How is this possible?” he asks.
Tony considers the power he can feel in his body both from his own newly unlocked abilities and from the stones. “Its possible,” he says, “because you can’t kill Death. You will hand over those stones, and if you don’t I will make that obsession you have with death come full circle because I will kill you.” His power isn’t one to use lightly, and if Thanos can be saved he will spare him, allow him his natural lifespan. But if he doesn’t Tony has no choice- Thanos is too dangerous to let live.
*
When Nebula bravely tries to end her father’s life Tony can’t stop it and he tries. Nebula doesn’t deserve what happens to her, and for the first time in his living memory Tony feels death reverberate.
He can feel the deep, harsh grief of Gamora. She got her sister back for mere moments before she’s gone and her loss is bone deep.
He can feel the shock and disgust from Peter Quill as he watched Thanos kill his own daughter, reminded of his own father and the atrocities he committed. Peter’s loss is different from Gamora’s- he feels because he knows what it’s like to be on the wrong end of a father with disgusting intentions.
He can feel Peter Parker’s budding trauma at having witnessed such an awful thing, and his determination to never let people like Thanos win. He is steely strength weaving itself around cotton candy. Peter Parker is soft, but that softness is what makes him so strong.
And Mantis. She doesn’t need to touch anyone to know what they’re all feeling and its overwhelmingly painful for her. She feels Nebula’s life force leave her body, she feels Gamora’s pain, Quill’s disgust, Peter’s resolve, and unlike the rest she feels Tony’s power.
Tony hopes that when Thanos blinks out of existence she doesn’t feel that too, not like they all feel Nebula’s sacrifice. She has succeeded in her goal though because Tony refuses to let her die in vain.
*
“Where’d you put them?” Peter asks.
“It would be senseless so hide the stones and then tell you where they are,” he points out. Not that anyone but a concept could get to the stones anyways. His visit with Gaea had given him the idea and the stones were happy to cooperate with his plans.
Peter lets out an annoyed huff. “Well fine then, mind telling my fortune? I’ve heard you acquired that ability,” he says, grinning.
Tony rolls his eyes because fortune telling is not how he’d describe his ability to see a person’s lifespan and, inevitably, their death. “Quill, I’m a concept, not a crystal ball.”
“Whatever man. I’m out here trying to help people with my cool powers and you fucking speak in riddles now. Its rude,” he says.
“I brought back half the universe, what more do you want?” he asks. He did more than that too, but Peter doesn’t need to know how he trapped himself in a cycle of death, reincarnating over and over again until he finally figured out the problem he’d set up for himself. All the other concepts broke their loops long before he had but he supposes everyone makes mistakes. He just happened to make an unusual amount of them.
The fact that he lost the ability to die, even if it wasn’t really death considering that he came back, had shown that he’d learned something. Yinsen, as it turns out, did much more than save his life. Tony suspects he was going to die, but some sliver of his mind, maybe a thought before that bomb went off, kept him around long enough for Yinsen to do his magic. Its his words, Tony is sure of it, that changed everything. He’s a man with everything and nothing- knowing what he is that statement holds up. Holding the power of Death is everything and nothing all at once. Life is precious, and he could do as Thanos did and destroy it all but what would he have left? Everything and nothing, that has been the dichotomy of all his lives.
“I mean, a fortune would be nice,” Peter says, breaking his thoughts.
Tony rolls his eyes, “you die choking on a fruit roll up,” he lies.