Chapter Text
Tony Stark was a futurist.
He lived for the future; he lived to build a better world, to design and construct and mould his creations. He wanted to bring them to life as a master puppeteer to make the world a better place to live for everyone else. He knew such selflessness was heroic. But before he knew it, the future was quickly closing in on him. It was up to him to keep up and to ensure that it went his way.
This was his era. This was Tony Stark’s future.
His eyes shot open and his lungs flooded with oxygen when he gasped, air with the faint taste of ash and dirt tingling his reawakened taste buds. The air was thick, and it felt like it had to be forced down his lungs to be processed. Tony’s mouth was still agape as the blurry images that flashed before him took a while to form into shapes. Eventually, the silhouette of the bald dark skinned man became clearer. As always, that one-eyed glare bored into his soul. He choked on the thickness of the air, sitting up and hacking heavily, eyes shutting with the sheer force.
“You’re awake.”
Tony rubbed his head, feeling the metal finger casings skim through his hair, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. Although he winced the moment his finger ran across the back of his head, instantly withdrawing his hand to stare at his metal fingers.
The first observation that he had made was that the hand was in fact not part of his armour at all. It was black, thin, a skeletal structure that moved as though it were real. It began to tremble as the realisation became more and more clear, noticing how it was attached to his elbow and that was where it ended the trembling alone was just too realistic, too humanistic.
A prosthetic hand, a robotic one, was now attached to him. This thing was in place of his real hand. The sudden switch filled his mind with so many questions that his head began to spin.
A light dizziness befell him. Luckily, he was on a table.
In the past, Tony had struggled with distinguishing himself with his technology, separating the two into different entities entirely; there was Iron Man and then there was Tony Stark. Ever since the incident with his armour becoming sentient, he tried to keep the two as separate as he could; removing his consciousness from the systems even if it was initially input as a safeguard. But from then on, he vowed to keep some sort of line, some sort of separation that prevented him from becoming a victim of what he had created.
Now it was part of him, more so than before. As if his arc reactor wasn’t enough integration. But as long as it was keeping him functional, as his reactor was, then it served a purpose and it did no harm. But that was his limit; he didn’t want to become any more of a machine than that.
“My… My hand,” he stuttered, eyes fixed on the tool that he had used to create, now replaced.
“It was blown off in the explosion.” Nick said calmly. “You were out for 5 years, Stark.”
A sigh of relief escaped the billionaire’s lips, “Only five years.” As opposed to 70.
“A lot happens in 5 years, more than you could ever imagine.”
Suddenly the sigh of relief didn’t seem very relieving. His dark cobalt eyes darted up to Nick, his face set into a harsh frown.
“Tell me everything,” Tony demanded.
“Where do I begin..?”