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Death had never been a concept too far from his thoughts.
He had always fantasized about it. He had always wondered about it. Was there anything after it? Science said no. His actions proved he was still scared of being deemed unworthy of entrance into whatever afterlife held those who had done good.
When he was seventeen and reckless and sad, he didn’t care about what any upper beings thought. He built little robots to keep him company, and he knew he was still too lonely to be considered okay, but he stayed alive because he had created something, and no matter how many things it dropped, it needed its motor oil every day.
He had still pretended it was an accident when his wrench slipped to bloom a deep bruise on his thigh, and he had still pretended it was merely forgetfulness that prompted him to completely disregard welding gear to end up with a galaxy of tiny burns up and down the lengths of both of his arms.
He was twenty-five and he didn’t care about anything. He built himself cars and drove well above speed limit, but nobody stopped him, and he wasn’t going to complain. He had found his first girlfriend, and they dated for eight months, but she left him because she wanted a better sense of normalcy and the only consistent thing in his life had been the fact that he still gave his bots oil every morning.
He had said it was fine, and he never left the lab after that, and he ate every three days, and he told himself that the reason he wasn’t showering was because he was too busy. He didn’t believe it. He knew he didn’t believe it. He still said it, and his arms got more scars, and they weren’t all from welding tools, but who cared?
He was thirty and famous and he still didn’t care. He wasn’t lonely anymore because there was a girl in his bed every night, and that was enough, right? Nobody cared about the scars on his arms because he covered those up with thousand-dollar suits, and that was fine, too. Nobody cared about the bruises on his legs because that was the assumed product of too many nights in bed with too many wild girls and not enough people bothered to ask if they were correct.
He was forty and he had just returned from being kidnapped and he had nightmares every night because he felt guilty for the death of the man who wanted to be killed. He was in an unstable relationship, but it was better than getting a new one every night. He was a genius, though. He could tell what her curt replies, and constant dismissal meant. She hated him. He hated him. Everyone hated him.
Still only forty, and his oldest friend tried to kill him, but he had almost killed Pepper because of his nightmares, so maybe that was fair. Maybe it was also okay how he shut himself away from everyone because he was terrified of betrayal, and the ones who wouldn’t betray him probably didn’t want to see him anyway. He would be loyal. He still gave oil to those robots he had made at seventeen.
He had stopped celebrating his birthday after a couple of years, so he didn’t know his age when his itch to drink and cry and burn or bruise every inch of his skin rolled from every corner of his brain. He had stopped being so lonely, and he had found a family to replace the one he had never really had, and he had smiled real smiles, and it was all torn apart by an argument. Ripped to the bone and shredded and destroyed by a fight. By betrayal. Again.
And the thoughts came back, because he had no friends left, and the one man who had been by his side since the beginning was sitting in a hospital-issued wheelchair because of him.
Every time Tony heard his name it sounded more like a curse.
He started working on leg braces so Rhodey could walk again, because how else could he apologise? He had to finish them. He couldn’t die before they were done. No matter how much he stared at the saw in the corner of his lab, and nearly snapped every single day, and came increasingly closer to just cutting his fucking legs off, because it wasn’t fair that he had them and Rhodey didn’t, when it was his own fucking fight that paralyzed him.
Every time he took a step, he felt so stupid.
He still didn’t care about his age when he set his head of security on babysitting duty for his one reminder that there were happy people in the world.
He knew he was forty-eight when he was calling to congratulate the kid about something he had already forgotten and remembered why he kept his distance. He remembered when he was a teenager; too reckless for his own good. The kid was fifteen and trying to pull together a ferry with his bare hands, and Tony was screaming, and his eyes were steel, but that didn’t show because his faceplate never betrayed any emotion, unlike Spider-Man’s.
He was begging the kid. He was crying and yelling, Don’t be like me!, but it was internalized, because everything about him was, and he simply offered a quip about band practise before fixing the boat.
He was forty-nine, and Peter was healthy, and the Avengers weren’t back together, but they weren’t fighting, and he was happy with Pepper, and he had finally found stability.
It didn’t matter, though. He was still stripped away by a wizard to battle aliens again, and go into space again, and he was still a bit too lonely, but that wasn’t important when a planet's worth of people were waiting for him to save them.
He was still forty-nine when a child disintegrated in his arms, pleading for him to help, because that was what he did. He fixed things. He couldn’t, though. He could only sit and watch and utter meaningless words of comfort as he subconsciously noted that at least Peter wasn’t fully like him, yet. Peter had been scared of death. Terrified of it. Tony had always wanted it, in one form of another.
He didn’t know his age when he was alone, again. He didn’t care about his age as he recorded a message on his helmet and closed his eyes as he leaned back against the freezing metal wall behind him. His eyes remained closed as he cursed everything about himself that he had the energy to think of. He was getting what he had wished for since he was a teenager, and he could only think about how had still had to find out a way so save Peter, and how he missed Pepper, and how he wanted to make amends with Steve, and his bots still needed oil, and he squeezed his eyes tighter as if it would help anything.
He was a dying man.
And for the first time in his life, he didn’t want to be.
But it had never mattered what he wanted, and he had always somehow known his death would never be a good one, and he rubbed at the smooth skin on his arms, no longer bumpy and disfigured from constant abuse.
His head dropped back to rest against the wall, and his eyes were still closed, and he was so angry about the it all, but his body did not move. Out of apathy or incapability, he did not know.
Long gone were the days that bled into nights.
He didn’t care.
And that was almost okay.