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His chest is tight. No surprise there; it’s been that way since Afghanistan- since his heart was relying on nothing but a surgeon’s accuracy and a half-drained, eons old car battery. Since that blue light would simultaneously give him the life he needed, but kill him in the process, either from other hands that weren’t his own (or maybe they were) or from the element the damn thing was constructed from. Yeah, ever since the cave, he thinks that maybe he hasn’t been alive since.
It’s just all been noise; static, screaming, harsh glares and peeved sighs; betrayals, deaths, mistakes, guilt; words of hurt falling from the hero that his dad loved more than his own son; he hates to say that it hurts. Men of iron, he thinks, more than once. But are you really?
He says he is. He is Iron Man.
Faker, he thinks. Nobody argues.
So when Cap speaks, his voice just another addition to the static that fills his brain. He doesn’t answer. He knows it’s a one-way trip (why else would you do it, his tired mind says, If not for the promise of…nothingness?)
He hates it, but he won’t stop. The weight of the nuke is heavy on his shoulders and the screams of the otherworldly beasts hail from everywhere. Noise. Static.
Well, there is actual static as Pepper’s face pops up on his HUD. JARVIS speaks calmly, because he knows that his boss won’t be deterred. Or maybe he thinks speaking calmly will be a sore thumb in the cacophony of his boss’s head.
The wormhole gapes above him. There’s static in his ears.
Then- nothing.
There’s a loud ripping sound as his suit breaks the barrier between his world and not and then there’s silence. The last light of the HUD fizzles out and JARVIS’s voice vanishes. If Pepper was there, on the other line, she was gone too. The only source of light that penetrates the blackness of space is the faint starlight and the bright, pulsing blue of the arc reactor.
The nuke pushes forward and he hangs on. For a few moments, he’s not sure why. He’s attached to it, responsible for it. It feels like a scene out of Dr. Strangelove, he thinks, and the sheer absurdity almost makes his lips quirk in a giddy smile.
That slight semblance of a smile stays with him, even as his eyes turn toward the massive, looming structure miles away from him. Large masses, stark against the starlight, spill from the crevices of the ship. He knows sound doesn’t travel through space, but he swears he can hear the mournful moaning of the beasts as they slither their way towards him; towards home.
With a shuddering inhale of one of the last few mouthfuls of breathable air, he lets go.
The nuke continues forward without him, the light of the propulsion getting smaller and smaller as the distance increases. He’s left there, floating in the black swaddles of space, feeling the suit starting to give way to the god-like hold of the nothingness. He entertains the thought of just shutting his eyes and letting everything go, but he always has an innate need to know. He has to know that he hits his mark.
Any other time, the wait would’ve been excruciating. He was always a man of instant gratification, he will admit; a man of instant gratification in addictive things. Drink, sex, and, at one point, destruction.
Well, he thinks as he watches the light of the missile vanish against the vast ship. Some things never change.
The ship explodes in a ball of radiant orange light. The creatures, that were much closer to him now than he was comfortable, buckled and went limp, only their momentum keeping them moving through the black vacuum. Their armor glistened in the orange light. One of the creatures was so close it nearly brushed him with its stabilizing fin and it took him a long time to notice that there was no blue light being reflected back to him.
As if on cue, everything that had been running at minimal power in the suit shut down and he felt the tightness in his chest become more intense.
It didn’t hurt. Well, maybe it did, but distantly.
He shut his eyes, reflexively trying to take in air that wasn’t there anymore.
Behind his eyelids, behind the noiseless cacophony, he sees Obidiah again. He sees a face he’s known since he was born, inches from his own, his steel blue eyes alight in a malice that he had never seen before. He sees his godfather reach down and rip the reactor from his sternum. His chest was tight then.
He feels the effects of the palladium in his bloodstream. He hears JARVIS trying to find a suitable replacement. He feels his drunken haze, certain that he was going to die anyways so he answered any thought with a why not.
It feels like the panic attacks, the hard breaths; the wormhole, the desperation to kick-start some random kid’s heart and-
The wormhole?
His eyes flash open and it’s a different scene in front of him. He feels the weight of his armor on him, but his helmet is gone. His nose is bleeding. His whole body hurts. There are tears in his eyes. He’s angry and sad and scared. It’s cold.
He sees, maybe, a disk inches from his chin, clad in red, white, and blue, wedged in his chest, scratches etched into the surface. Above him, there’s a face. It’s shadowed with something familiar, yet distant all the same. The face’s eyes are hard with defeat, even though he’s the one standing over the splayed body.
It’s all gone in a flash, a blink of an eye, before it all goes away and he lets out a gasp, filling his lungs with the air he was deprived of.
He’s staring at the ceiling, the soft light of the moon filtering through the translucent blinds. The weightlessness that he had felt, the cold that had nipped at his chapped lips, was gone, replaced with expensive satin bedding and comfortable warmth. It’s such a jarring contradiction and he can’t help but panic slightly.
He sits up in the bed and runs a hand through his sweat-drenched hair and takes stock of where he is and what has happened.
He’s at home, first of all. It takes him a while to remember which home it was before he remembers that his Malibu home is currently residing at the bottom of the Pacific. Okay, so Stark Tower. Or was it Avengers Tower? Whatever- he can’t bring himself to care what it means to him right now.
He looks around him, letting his eyes fall across the familiar yet unfamiliar room he has found himself in. Eventually, his eyes fall to his right, at the figure laying curled up beside him.
Pepper, he thinks before even noticing the beautiful red hair encompassing her head like a halo atop her pillow. She is still sleeping soundly, which is to be expected, but his brain can’t fathom how she can be asleep when the world is falling apart around them.
Not everything is about you, he hears her say in the back of his head, a distant memory.
Yeah, okay, he thinks, as if he were speaking to her in the very moment. He knows she’s right, but it’s hard to put himself in that perspective when his brain is currently trying to concoct some potent nightmare, handcrafted for maximum discomfort and fear.
“Hey, J?” he whispers, hating the way that his voice shakes.
“Yes, sir?” The AI replies, his own volume low as to not wake Pepper.
“Time?”
“2:37 AM, sir.”
He rubbed his face. “And, uh, arc reactor is functioning at an acceptable rate? High nineties?”
The AI doesn’t answer right away. He isn’t bothered by it; whatever it took for JARVIS to get accurate readings on the damn thing keeping him alive, he would give.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” JARVIS responds eventually, a hint of confusion coloring his voice.
“Are you malfunctioning, J?”
“Do you mean the clean energy source for the tower, sir? Yes, you are accurate: high nineties.”
“You know, that’s all well and good, but I think if the tower dips below acceptable levels, the worst thing that will happen is that the lights shut off.” He heaves a sigh and puts a hand to his chest. “Now, if my nightlight decides to go out, then we’re going to have-“
His words cut off suddenly, as if someone had grabbed his throat and squeezed. A strangled wheeze escapes his lips as his hand touches the very flat surface of his chest. The arc reactor, that blue glow that was both the best and worst thing in his life is gone.
His chest constricts as he starts to hyperventilate, his hands shaking as they grab fervently at the night shirt that obscures his vision of the device.
He hears his AI speaking in the background, but it’s all just noise; it’s all just static as his mind is going haywire, trying to comprehend what has happened to him.
Obidiah’s face flashes across his eyesight again and, for a second, he thinks that’s what has transpired. Maybe not Obi, but someone else eager to take what’s rightfully his and use it for themselves; SHIELD, Loki, someone.
Maybe it’s back in Tennessee. Maybe it’s lying inside that one kid’s chest instead of his own, pumping water out of his young, desperate lungs. Maybe Harley is looking for the reactor’s owner. Maybe not. Maybe the man with the anxiety disorders is just a shadow on the wall.
The split second vision of the disk inside his chest screams across his mind’s eye again and he has no time to figure out what it could possibly mean before he collapses on his back.
A shadow looms above him, the moonlight etching the outline of the shadow’s form. He can’t even think about trying to fight when he’s so busy trying to scratch the arc reactor back into existence.
Something grabs his groping hands and peels them away from his sternum and another sound of anguish leaves him. That’s when he tries to struggle. He so desperately needs to protect himself against whatever had taken his glorified pacemaker that he can’t hear the soft, but desperate sound of someone calling his name.
Noise.
When it finally registers that the things that are holding his hands away from his chest are not constricting and strong, but soft and comforting, he stops struggling and really looks.
The shadows vanish from the figure’s face and he realizes that the lights must’ve turned on. The figure’s face is pulled tight with worry and fear and her eyes are wet with unshed tears. Her red halo is draped across her shoulders, like the drooping wings of a red hawk.
She’s sitting by him, her thighs pressed against his side. One hand is holding both of his, a thumb making comforting circles on the back of one of his hands. The other hand is on the right side of his face, her thumb rubbing his cheek and her fingers curling through the hair by his ear.
“-ony? Speak to me; are you okay?”
“W-where is it?” His voice is shaky and lacks any of the usual gusto. Pepper reels back for a moment, taken aback by the desperation in his voice.
“What, Tony? Where is what?”
He can’t even say it. His tongue is full in his mouth and he feels like his heart would give out any minute. He doesn’t want to tell her he was dying- been there, done that.
Instead, he lowers his hands slowly, as not to frighten Pepper into a panicked overdrive, and touches her hand to his chest. The skin burns through the shirt and he nearly falls into hyperventilation again.
Pepper’s face doesn’t change for a few long seconds, her eyes staring at the space where he had placed her hand. She meets his eyes and there’s something sad swimming in them; something pitying.
“The…arc reactor?” She says eventually and he thinks the grip on his hands becomes a little tighter.
He gives one nod and holds his breath. He feels like he’s back in space. He feels the weight on his shoulders and the wrenching in his chest. He sees Pepper in front of him, her face the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen, and he desperately hopes that she won’t fizzle out into static like last time.
“Tony,” she whispers. “You had it removed.”
Neither of them speak for a few long seconds. His brain short-circuits as the words weigh down on him.
“She’s right, sir,” JARVIS says, his voice most definitely concerned now. “After you activated the ‘clean slate protocol’, you had the shrapnel in your chest removed and the reactor along with it.”
“You made a necklace out of the shards for me,” Pepper says tearfully. She picks up one of his hands and leads it to the nape of her neck. He swallows as he feels cool metal against the warmth of her skin. She lets go of his hand and lets him fondle the beads of shrapnel between his fingers.
“What a shitty gift,” he mutters reflexively after a few long seconds, his mood easing as she gives him a gentle smile.
“It came from the heart,” she responds, earning a strained, but genuine smile from him.
There’s another stretch of silence, but it’s more comfortable than before. He takes that time to calm down and recollect his memories. Faintly, distantly, he remembers having it removed. He remembers throwing the hunk of metal into the ocean before driving away with what little possessions remained after his house was destroyed. He’s not ready to accept those memories yet. His memories, unfortunately, are indistinguishable from fantasy sometimes. Everything that has happened since Afghanistan doesn’t seem real, not in the slightest. The Avengers, aliens, gods, it’s just all not real. It can’t be. But it is. And that scares him.
Maybe it’s all just a dream anyways. Maybe he never went to Afghanistan in the first place. Maybe he never stopped selling weapons. Maybe his parents never died. Maybe Jarvis never died. He doesn’t know. None of it made sense. But, then again, did it ever?
“Are you okay?” Pepper says after about five minutes of silent comforting. She looks at him, so much trust in her gaze and so much love in her heart. He entertains lying to her. It would be easy to do, not quite easy to carry. He’s done it before. But that’s the thing- he doesn’t want to lie to her. He doesn’t want to be truthful, either. He just wants her to be okay. He…wants to be okay.
Men of iron, his dad says. Starks are men of iron.
“Not really, no.” The words drops like iron and his heart drops when he sees her face crumble. He quickly scrambles to save face. “But am I ever? Really, with you being in a relationship with me, I should be asking you that question.”
He’s not entirely sure that she’s convinced by him. Hell, she probably just pities him to the point where she’s willing to nod and smile at whatever he says. Maybe. Maybe not.
To his actual, genuine surprise, she does exactly that. She gives a slow nod and gives a small sympathetic smile. “Glad to see you’re being honest for once. We can work on your tact at a later date.”
Before he can even respond, she lays down beside him, one leg over his own and one arm over his chest. She nestles her head into the crook of his neck and hugs him gently. He can’t help but jolt slightly as her hand brushes over the scarred and caved spot on his sternum, but his anxiety is quickly dissipated when that hand presses comfortably over that spot, her thumb moving slowly across the skin.
He releases a soft, warm sigh and scoots in closer to her, wrapping his arm around her and drawing her in close. He lays his cheek atop her head and rubs a thumb across her bicep.
“Lights, please J.”
The darkness of the room returns and, for once, he’s not afraid by it.
“You think you can go back to sleep?” Pepper asks sleepily, his lips brushing against his neck.
Despite everything, he gives a small smile. He hums an affirmative.
With you at my side, he thinks, but doesn’t say. I’ve got this.
It takes a while for sleep to take him (he keeps jolting awake at the feeling of falling), but Pepper’s soft breathing and the beating of her heart lulls him into one of the best sleeps he’s had in years.