The End
Pushing down the agony to the deepest corners of his mind, Tony focussed on making his way through the waves of reality warping chaos towards the Infinity Gauntlet. FRIDAY’s voice guttered and died in his ear as the more complex systems gave up on him, HUD fading to darkness, Tony was left alone in the claustrophobic confines of his armour. The suit was silently shredding to pieces around him; the precious synthesised vibranium titanium alloys flaking away like so much rust, its complex pseudo-crystalline structures breaking down into simple molecules, the very atoms disintegrating into subatomic debris, photons floating away like starlight.
Even given the meagre protection the suit provided, progress was torture. He was shedding pieces of himself as he marched onwards, he knew it. He could feel his skin dissolving away in great patches, despite extremis’ frantic efforts at keeping him whole; there simply wasn’t enough material left to effect repairs. He dreaded to think what he’d see in a mirror right then, perhaps his flesh would finally match the horror of his soul.
Vision was dea- gone, torn asunder when The Mad Titan’s forces had burst through their last desperate barricade less than an hour ago and ripped the mind gem from his core. He choked back that thought, still too raw at the loss of his, his son, and reran the mission specs for the umpteenth time.
The other Avengers had still been shooting him hateful glares even as he’d volunteered for this last ditch suicide mission; they still blamed him for everything. Had been ever since Sokovia, and The Accords, perhaps even before then. A tiny part of him knew it wasn’t true, but the rest of him was resigned to the inevitability. Everything was always his fault regardless of whether or not he’d been involved in the situation in any way shape or form. He’d learnt that harsh lesson decades ago. Steve’s look of pure derision, not even hate, had hurt though.
Their previous last-ditch plan had failed miserably and Park-Peter was dead as a result. Tony was under no illusions that he was worthy enough to have even a smidgen of a sip of omniscient power, but he could do this at least.
With a great effort of will Tony refocused on his mission, hit the gauntlet with a carefully calibrated mystical and temporal energy beam from The Device. (There hadn’t been time to come up with a name; the beam had been an utter bitch to prepare as it was. Working with Strange and Richards simultaneously was an …experience. Prying rudimentary magical theory past Strange’s tight lips had been an effort in futility, thankfully Doom had proven surprisingly helpful, here at the end of all things.) The gems would scatter to the four corners of the universe, the backlash would wipe Thanos from existence and they’d be free of his threat. The universe would be rewritten. Simple. Of course being at the epicentre of events, the backlash would erase Tony too, but that didn’t matter much in the scheme of things. The universe was far more important than even the great Tony Fucking Stark, hell poor Peter’s dead dog was more important.
The other Avengers were fighting and dying around him as he staggered doggedly forward, providing the distraction he needed to get close enough. He winced when he spotted Hulk’s normally invulnerable form stumble in the distance, vivid red blood pouring heavily from a terrible wound. Richards' elongated form lay shattered in pieces across the field of battle, forming a morbid tableau, Rocket hadn’t hesitated to use his frozen limbs as crude projectile weapons, too caught up in his grief at the loss of Starlord and Groot to mind what his actions were doing to his comrades.
Gritting his teeth around the metallic taste of blood Tony pushed forward in a great burst of effort, ignoring the strange tearing sensation as he felt something, fabric, no the undersuit wasn’t that thick, fall down his leg inside the armour. His left arm was hanging useless and ignored at his side, skin and muscle long since dissolved away. All of the extra protective plating they could scrounge from the sorry remains of Asgard had gone into shielding The Device from the devastating reality rewriting radiation. Sweat and other fluids running down his face beneath the somehow still intact faceplate Tony finally, finally, dragged his rotten carcass in range.
Aiming his uru and magic enhanced repulsor through blurry eyes Tony targeted the gauntlet and miraculously managed a hit. Three of the six gems apparently shattered on impact, Tony blinked in surprise; he honestly hadn’t expected this to work at all. Absently he noted that he’d fried his good arm when the device fired, all of the shielding had been directed outwards after all.
Thanos and Iron Man stared stupidly at one another for a moment that stretched to infinity. The pair caught in the epicentre of a storm that engulfed the universe, and large swathes of the multiverse. The Infinity Gauntlet seemed to crumple in on itself, Thanos cried out in agony doubling over clutching his left arm to his chest. Tony bitterly thought it served the bastard right, Loki hadn’t deserved his fate. The remaining gems lit up haphazardly in a blinding lightshow of orange, blue and green. The flashes increasing in speed to epileptic fit inducing intensity.
The void of darkness edged Nothingness that formed between them was pants wettingly unexpected, it wasn’t just darkness, people too often assumed that darkness was the opposite of light rather than the absence. This was something more, something malevolent and somehow self-aware. It immediately began sucking inwards, as if noticing the attention. Tony felt sick satisfaction at Thanos’ strangled cry of pain as it touched him, the purple titan immediately began to wither, the arm nearest the void actually vanishing to dust before his eyes. The rest of the Mad Titan vanished as if he never was a mere moment later, the crippled Infinity Gauntlet vanishing with a surreal and cartoonish pop.
Tony could almost feel the fabric of reality ripple around him, the carnage seeming to fade away. He slumped in relief, it was done, he didn’t even attempt to resist the pull of the Nothing it was his due. He’d done his duty. Perhaps saving the universe would be enough to cleanse him of his ocean’s worth of blood.
As he felt himself fading Tony noticed a hooded female figure out of the corner of his eye, nodding at him approvingly - it couldn’t be could it? Surely she was courting Thanos, had resurrected him several times, which was why the utter annihilation from existence had been so painfully necessary. He was left utterly mystified when he she lowered her hood, revealing a young …goth rather than the anticipated skeleton.
Then the overdue shockwave finally deigned to kick in, wiping out the rapidly fading evidence of the battle and sucking Tony the final length into Nothing. He had a split second to notice that the colours of the remaining gems brightly outshone the rainbow like effect – brilliant blue and orange mixing disturbingly followed by a high crest of vivid green.
As reality faded to Nothing he heard the beating of her wings.