Cling Close To Me

Marvel Cinematic Universe The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Gen
Multi
G
Cling Close To Me
author
Summary
After the worst possible outcome, after all of their human weaknesses, the rifts that had set them adrift, sent them sprawling in all directions...it is time to make amends. Heroes keep digging even when there's no light at the end of the tunnel. But these heroes need something if they're going to do anything other than survive, than go through the motions. In order to do more -- in order to live -- they need each other.
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Tony

Cursed with knowledge.

Tony doesn't feel cursed with anything but defeat. Failure. It happened. His worst nightmare -- he failed everyone he cared about and now he's gone and survived.

He can't summon up the energy to be furious with Strange at the moment. Stephen. Not when the man (wizard…doctor…) has crumbled in front of him. He can't summon up the energy to do anything, not even to brush away the remnants of the boy who's died in his arms, desperate and afraid and apologizing.

God, Peter. What has he done?

It's a long time before he senses movement nearby and he remembers that there is one other survivor on this rotted core of a planet. The blue woman-cum-android whose name he doesn’t know. Tony doesn't look up at her when she steps around to him, wanting to do anything but talk, wanting to die.

Feeling a little like he is.

"Your wound will open again."

Her tone is dispassionate and Tony barely registers her words. Of course he's dying. Thanos punctured right through him before Strange had traded the stone for his worthless life. That seemed appropriate, didn't it? Shouldn't he just die? Couldn't he?

He finds it so hard to think at the moment, which isn’t a first, but it’s certainly unusual. Usually he can’t shut off the brain. Right now it’s stuttered to nothing.

The woman doesn't seem fazed by his lack of response, pacing ahead to survey the area. He doesn't know what she is looking at; there is nothing and no one here. The planet is a wasteland and Tony manages a brief, bitter thought about that, about his first trip into space and how his futurist ideals seem so empty now, surrounded by nothing but dust.

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