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The world ends with less bang than Tony imagined. It ends with a young boy terrified in his hands, clinging onto his neck crying help me.
It’s funny, Tony thinks, staring at the dust that is all that exists of a boy who held stars in his eyes. Nobody had wanted to die more than himself. Nobody, nobody on this stupid stinking planet had had more close shaves with death than him, had craved it with the sort of macabre, dark sense in the way Tony had, and yet they’re all gone and Tony is alone.
The hot breeze of deserted Titan rustles his hair. He feels so very, very small in a very, very big universe — a universe that is now considerably smaller, now that half of everything is dead.
He rubs a hand over his face.
There’s the clinking of a machine near him, a twitch and a whirr. He looks over to see the blue creature that had come from nowhere sitting down on a pile of rocks. Her face is inexpressive, her eyes are focused on the horizon.
She notices Tony’s eyes. They look at each other for a while, sizing each other up. The only two left on a planet with only ghosts as company, ghosts in the shells of their bodies and in the sand beneath their feet.
He wants to cry. He’s never wanted to cry more than he has now. He wants to scream I told you so, I told you all so many years ago. I spent six years trying to tell all of you that I’d seen the steps to the throne of a god and that god was not kind nor merciful; the steps were coated with red. But no one listened, and now we’re here.
Two people alone after the end of the world.
“I need to go home,” Tony says, the silence shattering beneath his hoarse voice. His side throbs. Everywhere hurts, the distant reminder of being alive and human.
The android turns to look at him. She asks, “Earth?”
“I need to —,” he struggles to stand, and nearly falls over. She is quick, though, and grabs his arm before he falls. Once more, there is silence as Tony chokes on his own blood. “Please. I need to go home.”
She cocks her head at him in a gesture that seems learned. “My pod is damaged,” she says. “You look like you’re good with machines.”
Tony wants to — he’s not even sure. He wants to stop breathing for a little moment. He wants to die for a little while.
“I am,” he says. The nanoparticles that make up his suit vibrate a little. “I am good with machines.”
“Then come,” the android helps him to his feet more and supports him as they walk. “I am Nebula.”
“Tony,” says Tony. He stumbles. Nebula catches him. “Tony Stark.”
Days, he learns, last long on Titan. It’s still bright out when Tony is pulling wires out of Nebula’s legs to fix the console. She cries out every time he disconnects something, and Tony finds himself growing rather fond of his quiet, stoic companion. In a lot of ways, he thinks, he’s like her. They both turned to technology to fix inferior parts of themselves — he winces as he disconnects her left toe — and both of them having nothing left to lose.
He wonders if Pepper is alive. If Steve, Thor, everyone who must be fighting back on Earth is alive. Vision, he knows, his hands slipping on his make-shift wrench, is gone. Nebula takes it from him and tightens the bolt. He shakes at the memory before he bites down hard on his bottom lip and carries on. Nebula watches him work, occasionally offering advice on the alien systems, but never saying much.
It takes too long. Tony is more than on his way to his funeral by the time he’s finished, his vision so blur Nebula does the work for him while he slurs his way to explanation. But in the end, they finish it together.
“I’ll pilot,” she says, as gentle as an android designed, Tony had noticed, as he dissembled her piece by piece, for war. “You will die if you stay awake any longer.”
“I’ve already died,” Tony says, his smile wide and bloody. The android is not amused, and carefully puts him down in a recovery position near the back of the pod. They’d already used what healing materials there were, but Tony knows his end is in the black spots around his vision.
He just needs to make it back, he thinks.
He just needs to make it back home.
He doesn’t remember closing his eyes, but when he opens them, he sees a bright white light above him. His mouth feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton balls, and the distant beat of a machine keeps time with a ticking clock above him. He blinks down at himself to see he’s hooked up to some wires in an unfamiliar laboratory — and he’s wearing socks with bright green hearts on them.
He raises an eyebrow.
He tries to turn over, but he falls back asleep before his head completes the motion.
When he awakens again, there’s a face sitting next to him, pressing a complicated looking touchscreen with quick fingers. She notices he’s awake quickly and Tony nearly recoils from the grief in her gaze; it’s like looking through a mirror. She looks exhausted.
“You’re awake,” she says softly. “The others will be pleased.”
Tony tries to say something, but his throat is too hoarse. She helps him to sit up and she hands him a glass of water, controlling carefully how much he drinks with a gentle yet insistent hand. “You should’ve woken up sooner,” she explains, her voice accented with Swahili. “Your injuries were healed in a day.”
“Maybe,” says Tony. “I didn’t want to wake up.”
Her smile softens. “You don’t have that choice, Mr. Stark. You have a duty. The captain has been waiting for you since the moment the scanners registered your re-entry. Your companion,” she tilts her head. “Is quite unique. We fixed her up, and now she sits by the lake and doesn’t speak to anyone.”
“The captain,” says Tony. He closes his eyes. “Who is left?”
“I think,” says the girl, because she is a girl, Tony notices, though her voice is formal and her head is held high. “You can find that out for yourself when you can walk.”
Tony spends one more day in bed, at one point forcibly chained down by vibranium handcuffs. He refuses to let his mind rest, and so the girl, Shuri, tells him of their city of Wakanda. He listens with intent, marvelling at their inventions, thinking this, this is the human race, as Shuri talks about her creations, and the lives she’s saved.
He has a lot of respect for the girl by the time the day is done. When she comes in the next day, she calls him Tony with a soft voice and asks, “would you like to go outside?”
“Yes,” says Tony immediately. She laughs and starts to prep him for the outside. She gives him a pair of loose cotton shirts and pants, telling him they used to belong to someone who won’t miss it anymore. Tony wears them with solemness, flinching as his bare feet hit the cold tile. She laughs at him and turns around respectfully while he changes.
“Come,” she says, helping him on his first few steps. “The captain is in a meeting, but he will receive you.”
“We’ve, uh,” says Tony awkwardly, trying to remember everything about Wakanda at once. “We’ve had a messy divorce.”
Shuri chuckles. “I’m aware,” she says. “Very messy,” and she pushes open a set of heavy double doors that open soundlessly. Everyone in the room turns to look at him but Tony only sees how little there are left.
Rhodey smiles. Natasha tilts her head, Bruce gives a little wave then hastily stuffs his hand back into his pockets. Thor beams. Steve looks at him with grief in his eyes then he’s walking forward and opening his arms and pulling him into a hug so tight it nearly breaks Tony again. He clutches onto Steve’s upper arms and desperately wills all the tears he’s never cried away because — because he can’t. Steve is here because he has to be here.
“Is this all?” He asks, his voice cracking, when Steve pulls away from him. “Us five?”
“I couldn’t find your kid,” says Steve. “I watched the rest,” he gestures to the sky. “Crumble.”
“We thought you were dead,” says Natasha. Her voice, like the others, is annoyingly gentle. “But here you are.”
“I have a habit,” Tony admits. “Of never being dead when people expect me to.”
Steve laughs breathlessly. He says, “we’re all here,” and Tony knows this means that Pepper isn’t around anymore.
The night time air in Wakanda is cool. Tony sits on the roof and watches the sky, the thousands of stars that are now half empty with a sort of remote detachment. In some ways, Tony knows, it’s good. Thanos wasn’t wrong that resources are scarce and that there’s infinite wants in a finite universe. He knows that killing half of everyone indiscriminately is in the long run good.
Yet — he lies down and holds his palms open against the sky. Yet he’s going to try and try and try to reverse it because he lost so many people he loved so dearly. Love, he thinks, bitterly, should just leave and go to waste. Strange had told him, after all, before he’d been blown away, that it was the only way. There’s only one future where they win, and the battle, he thinks, is not over yet.
There’s footsteps on the roof. Tony looks up to see Steve coming up, dressed down in a shirt and jeans. He comes to sit by Tony wordlessly and they both stare out over the city and the great big lake in the center.
They have many things to say to each other. Sorry should be one of them. I missed you should be another, but they don’t say anything. Tony just shifts closer to him and the sentiments they both have explode into the outside air like a million stars dying and dissipate into the sound of the crickets. Once upon a time, Tony was certain in the haphazard way of his that he was in love with him, him and his burdensome duty. But that was a long time ago.
Steve’s thigh brushes his own. He looks sad, Tony thinks. Sad and resigned. Quiet. After the end of the world, Tony reaches out a hand and rests it on Steve’s knee. It’s always the two of them who are left, after all. It would always be Steve and Tony, Tony and Steve, two of them against the world, opposite sides of the same coin.
At one point, they had both been certain they could’ve existed in the same space but — this — Steve’s shoulders shake and there’s a wet dot on his trousers that is joined by another. Tony makes a soft noise in the back of his throat.
“We’ll get them back,” says Tony, but even as he says it he knows he watched Peter die and knows that Steve watched Bucky and all the rest die because they’d both failed, and both would have to live with that knowledge forever.
Steve says, “I know. That’s why we’re here,” he looks meaningfully at Tony, wiping the backs of his hands against his eyes. “We’re the only ones who can do it.”
After the end of the world, Steve takes Tony’s hand as they watch the moon light up the great lake of Wakanda. They’re both so very tired of being the only ones left.