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The sensation of a hand placing itself on his shoulder cut through the static lingering around Tony. Turning his head, he glanced over his shoulder to see Stephen Strange giving him a weary smile. “We’ve done it. You’ve done it, Stark. This is the timeline where we win.”
The words are sincere, the relief clear as day. But there’s an undercurrent to it all the same. Sure, they won. Thanos is defeated and the universe is not missing half of its population. They saved reality itself.
And yet.
Tony turned away from Strange, his attention once again returning to the jeweled gauntlet on his left hand. Even with the time stone in his possession it had taken him a long time to get to this point. Strange had seen millions of timelines where they failed. On his quest to fix it Tony had witnessed how many of them ended, and wished he didn’t know the exact number he saw. But finally, he’d done it. It was finished.
And yet.
He had to live with this, he knew. They had saved the universe. And while he knew that there was a good chance there was another unseen timeline in which they won, he also knew his odds of finding it. Tony wasn’t considered a genius for nothing; he knew this moment here was likely to be the only victory he would attain. And yet the inventor in him, the tinkerer, urged him to keep trying. To do it better. To do it right. He was an engineer, he could do it.
He had tried to use the stones the way he had seen the mad titan do. When he first started the journey he used the time stone to go back. To witness everything that happened, see where it all went wrong. He saw Thanos with Vision, using the gauntlet to undo a single event while keeping the circumstances around it intact. But for whatever reason the same didn’t work for him. Perhaps it had been due to Vision’s possession of the mind stone. Or, more likely, it was his own failings.
Finding key points in time to alter in order to shape a better future was one thing. But to bend and break the reality around them to conform to his whims was a line he hadn’t wanted to cross. It was a fine line, one he figured others might not see much difference in. He hadn’t wanted to follow in the footsteps of the mad titan himself, even though his every attempt to change events for the better led the same outcome. Perhaps Strange was correct and this was the only way they could win.
And yet.
The stones glinted in the sun, drawing his focus yet again. He had to let this go. Thanos was gone. The universe was saved. To use the gauntlet now would be to head down a slippery slope, one that Tony wasn’t sure he would be able to climb back up from. This was fine. They won. Trillions of lives have been saved and this could potentially be the only reality in which that was true. He had to be okay with this. It was fine. It was acceptable. This is what had to happen.
And yet.
Tony finally looked back up, across the torn up battlefield and the wounded Avengers. Across the lone soldier with a vibranium arm, knelt solemnly over the now cold, red-stained form of Steve Rogers. Lingering finally on the unmoving body of the kid he’d sworn to protect. Who had donned a suit that Tony himself had designed, which still hadn’t been enough.
It wasn’t okay. He could do better. He could find a way. He would find a way. He would fix this. They could have an ending that wasn't this. He was an engineer, if it didn’t exist he would create it. If it set him down a path, then so be it. He would make things right. He was a futurist.
Strange was trying to talk to him, he knew, but it was all incoherent static in the background. He stood up, taking a final look over the battlefield, over his failure. He took in a deep breath.
Tony snapped his finger.