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Is that all it took for the whole world to crumble?
Is that all it took for the best man to fall?
What would that make him?
Not on the top of the world, but standing far above even that. Towering high, standing with the planets, he couldn’t feel his father’s hand resting on his shoulders, but he couldn’t hear Pepper tap her pen on her knee, either.
He was too far up to hear himself breathe, too far gone to care.
Not a pretty face, not even a pretty mind. He was too untouchable to notice. He was too far to understand.
His thoughts could swirl and they could scream and pound, but he couldn’t feel his heartbeat, so he assumed it wasn’t there.
His eyes were spinning, or maybe that was the moon? Closer and closer, ready to remind him that his blood was his father’s. The same as Pepper’s or Steve’s or Obadiah’s because they all bled the same. Did he know?
Did he know?
He was freezing and whatever surrounded him was too thin to be air, but that was love.
You did it to yourself, they all whispered, he did it to himself.
It’s all gone.
The land around him was too blood-red to be beautiful and too cracked, too arid for him to say he was surprised he was alone.
It’s all gone, Stark, and where will you go?
Higher?
He was rushing, rushing like a river, but above the world where he stood, the water all froze.
That's how the world works, Stark, that's how the world works.
You’re going too fast, you’re going too fast, he was going too fast.
But he was standing still.