Draumr

He was shaking, unable to stand as the guards brought him to his knees. It was difficult to see anything. Everything around him was blurry, except the faces. Faces of strangers, strangers he felt as though he should know. Something heavy clasped around his neck, and Tony collapse under the weight of it, gravity pulling him down until he was practically lying on the ground, looking up at an old man he recognized, but didn’t know. The guard, or at least that’s what he guessed they were, were dismissed. He heard their echoing footsteps disappearing and the giant doors slamming shut behind them.

The woman was crying, and although Tony didn’t know her, he felt the great urge to crawl to her on his knees and wipe away her tears. However, he couldn’t, chained to the ground as he was. Like an animal that needed to be contained. A rabid dog that would be put down.

Then came the panic, as it always did. He remembered burning hot electricity shooting through his limbs. Water covering his head until he was convulsing, choking, desperate for air. He tried to stand, but the weight on top of him kept him down with no effort. He watched as the woman left, excusing herself with something about being unable to watch what was about to happen. Tony wanted to shout after her, beg her to stay, but couldn’t find his voice.

He looked back at the man, the damned, hated man holding that stupid fucking spear of gold like he was the kind of the universe. Hatred bubbled up inside him, threatening to explode.

“You deserve this you know” Tony’s eyes widened when the man’s face changed, revealing Steve’s mocking grin and sharp smile. “The pain you’re about to feel? The loss you will suffer? You deserve all of it”

“Because you’re a murderer, except you’re not even that.” No… no no no! “A pathetic, slimy maggot, feeding off of the reaps of your own destruction” It was Bruce this time, staring down at him with no emotion, the light of the torches reflecting in his glasses, hiding his brown eyes.

“How high is your body count now? A million? Two million? You had a hand in every war on the planet. Think about all the people you could have saved? Women… children? But no… no they weren’t worth it. Did you even see them as people at all, or were they just a number to add to your non-existent conscience? They were never worth a single “no”, or a small “stop”, were they?” Rhodey sneered at him, moving closer. The room around him withered, golden walls crumbling into rock. Into… no… no not here. Anywhere but here.

Clint grabbed his hair harshly, grinning at him with manic eyes. “What is about to happen is all your fault. Because you could have been a good man, a better man. But you were too greedy, too ignorant. The world is centred around Tony Stark, right?! Tony Stark does this. Tony Stark invented that. How does it feel to know that everything you did, everything you will ever do, is all for nothing? Because no matter how much you try to wipe your hands and pretend the past didn’t happen, it will Never. Go. Away!”

Tony watched, as if in slow motion, how Clint morphed into Pepper. How Pepper’s hold of his hair tightened. How she pushed down with surprising strength. Tony didn’t find the strength to fight when the water closed around him, and space opened up before him. She didn’t pull him up, didn’t stop pushing him down, down. Into the tub of icy water. Into the endless nothing of space. She pushed until his entire body was submerged in darkness.

“You are nothing.” The words, his voice, echoed around the endlessness of space, growing louder and louder until it felt like his brain would explode. He tried to scream, but no sound would come. There is no sound in space… no one will ever hear him. He was alone. Please no…

“Murderer” Why? Why was this happening? Why him?!

“Greedy killer” Please… please make it stop.

“Merchant of Death”

An ear deafening rumbling encompassed him, yet the darkness was never-ending. It was closed around him like an iron fist, suffocating and endless. Tony screamed, at least he thought he did. It was difficult knowing with the damned sound, like he was inside the engines of a rocket. Everything felt numb, tingly all over. His skin prickled, cracked with untamed power. Tony wasn’t even able to hold it back, couldn’t think about it when all he wanted was out, out of the darkness, out of this hell.

Something inside of him snapped then. Power, raw energy, emitted from his body life fire. The darkness was blown away, as was the lab he’d fallen asleep in. For a second, everything was just a flash of green fire, and Tony found himself on the floor, surrounded by destruction. What followed was the unusual silence. He groaned, clasping his head between his hands and rubbing the sore spots. He felt weak, worn out. It felt like he had been swimming for days on end, dragged under the water only to finally be able to pull himself out, finally able to breathe again.

He groaned, forcing his limbs to obey him and at least lift him up into a sitting position. Crawling over to a tipped over table, he leant against it, resting his spinning head. God, he felt so weak. He hadn’t felt this weak since waking up in a cave in… no, no he didn’t want to think about that.

Looking around, he tried to get a survey of what the hell had happened. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside his lab. Could that have been it? Some kind of assassination attempt? No… no that didn’t make sense. Deep down, he already knew the answer, though it would be easier to swallow shards of broken glass than admit it. This wasn’t an outside force… which only meant it was him. The complete and utter destruction around him. Lab tables crushed to splinters, some were even on fire. Expensive equipment was thrown into walls with enough force for some of them to stick there. Every single piece of glass seemed to have been pulverised. It seemed like only a few lightbulbs survived the blast, and were flickering desperately, trying to throw light on his situation.

However, all thoughts were cancelled when he heard it. A small whir, glitching and sputtering. It could almost resemble a person coughing, almost. Tony’s heart froze to ice, slowly rising to his throat. He knew that sound… that whir…

No…

No please god…

Another whir, this one weaker than the first.

No no no!

With new-found strength, he managed to push himself onto shaking legs. It took more effort than he felt he could muster, to limber over one of the turned tables. He fell over it, catching himself in the nick of time to save his head, and peered down on the floor. A loud cry broke from his throat, and he toppled over the table, rushing over to the crumbled heap of metal that lay on the floor.

“Dummy!” He sobbed, reaching out for the dented bot. the neck was completely snapped, wires severed and exposed. The body was crushed under some useless junk equipment which had probably cost him a million or two. Tony shoved it off, revealing the exposed circuits of DUM-E’s “body”. It was like looking at a murder scene. A murder scene and he was the killer.

“Dummy, come on buddy” If anything, it came out as a prayer. His hands went to fumble with the wiring in some desperate attempt to put him back together. Maybe if he just connected these two pieces here, DUM-E would at least start moving. That god-awful, broken whirring was currently the only sign of life, and Tony clung to it like it was his own.

“Come on…”

He heard footsteps behind him, rushed and heavy. Someone, Clint probably, swore upon entering, followed by some kind of command from Steve that Tony didn’t even bother acknowledging. He could feel them approach, but didn’t give two single craps about it. Instead, he mumbled to himself, recalling the equations and materials he had back in MIT when DUM-E had first come to be. If the motherboard survived, then he would be able to extract the data and rebuild him.

The whirring slowly dimmed, and Tony found himself yelling at the bot to not stop talking. The horrible fear that if DUM-E stopped making those tiny whirs, he would be gone for good. His hands were shaking, rendering his motor skills useless as he clung to the metal. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t. It couldn’t…

“Come on, ya Dunce. I don’t need a new wine rack now. Come on… just hold on for a few minutes… just a few minutes then-” then what? Some miracle from up above? No… if there was a god out there, it hated Tony with a burning passion. A heavy hand was placed on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off with a snarl, not even knowing whose hand it was. It didn’t matter. He had to find a way… had to fix this.

The whirring was down to only once pew ten seconds, he counted. It felt like he was listening to DUM-E’s heartbeat slowly fading. Desperately, he started prying metal plates away to expose more of the insides. The motherboard. He needs to get to the motherboard before it fries.

“Tony, what happened?” Finally, Natasha’s voice broke through his haze. Tony didn’t pause, didn’t even look up at her. His hand slipped, dragging along a sharpened edge of metal. Tony cursed -stupid fucking useless fingers- but didn’t stop grabbing at the metal with clumsy hands. They were shaking to the point where holding things felt like an impossible task.

Someone grabbed his shoulder, trying to pull him away from the machine. Tony hissed, yelled and fought. He could hear voices trying to talk to him, but couldn’t focus. It felt like he was under water, and they were trying to speak. He couldn’t understand, didn’t bother to understand. Distantly, Tony was aware they were shouting his name, but he didn’t care. Hands grabbed him, pried him away and he yelled, cried out as the world around him spun at the sudden change in motion. Dark spots danced around the edges of his vision, growing thicker by the second. He was wheezing now, unable to properly breathe, and even then, he didn’t care. Someone grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him.

The darkness grew closer, and panic rose to battle the exhaustion.

He had to get to Dummy.

People were trying to contact him, fingers snapping around his face in a desperate effort he couldn’t even comprehend at the moment.

Get Dummy…

Tony felt his body, as if he stood on the outside of it all, lean forward and make a mess of someone’s shoes. It took effort to push his body to the side as to not fall face first into his own sick.

Dummy…

With barely any control over his spasming muscles, Tony managed to drag himself an inch towards the whizzing bot lying only a few feet away.

Darkness grabbed him by the head, pulling him under like cold water. Tony was unconscious before he even hit the ground.