Chapter Text
Stars are scattered high overhead, millions upon millions of them. There are too many to count, Jarvis says. That, more than anything, makes them magical. Something unending, uncountable, it’s almost too much for Tony’s seven-year-old brain to process.
The rooftop of the Stark mansion is flat enough at some places to be able to lie on and on bad days, Jarvis likes to lift Tony on to it from the balcony and tell him about the stars.
Jarvis knows everything about stars. Their names, their meanings, the times at which they rise and fall. He points out the connections between them. Big spoon, little spoon (that’s us, Tony thinks), Cassiopeia and Orion, he names them one by one. Connect the dots – make a picture.
“Those are constellations,” Jarvis explains, “And each constellation has a story. In Ancient Greece people believed that every constellation used to be a person that the Gods loved and gave a place into the sky when the died, so that they would be remembered forever.”
Tony doesn’t believe in Gods, Dad says he’s too smart for that. But the thought of his name, woven into the stars, is enough to make him love the stories anyway. He asks for them every time. One day, he promises himself, he’ll claim his own piece of the sky above.
Those are some of his fondest childhood memories: flat on his back on the rooftop, with the endless sky stretching above and Jarvis’ soft voice in his ears.
When Tony is ten years old, he watches a documentary of the moon landing on TV. He’s immediately entranced by it. The explosion that launches the shuttle, the big bulky suit that’s almost like armour against the lack of atmosphere, the way the earth seems to be made of light. He learns pretty quickly that if he makes things explode, he can shoot them really high into the air.
The TV is full of space stories. A British Doctor in a blue telephone box visits aliens left and right and he’s got a talking robot dog that Tony immediately vows to make for himself. He watches Star Trek and falls in love with Spock’s pragmatic logic, with Kirk’s intense emotions and McCoy’s sharp wit. More than anything, though, he falls in love with the endless possibilities up there between the stars.
One day, he thinks, I’ll build a space ship, and it’ll be me up there, with my own robot dog.
Dad and Uncle Obie are glad enough to see that he likes explosions. There’s big money in that, they say. By the time he goes to MIT, Tony has learned that the military is where they get funding, that he has to keep working in bombs and guns and gear. With the money from that he can build the fun things, the cars and the rockets and robots.
By the time he turns fifteen, Tony is so immersed in the metal and numbers that he has all but forgotten about the stars. An ugly, one-armed robot is birthed from his hands; smart enough to drive around and beepbeepbeep, but too stupid to properly pick things up. Tony fondly names him DUM-E and he’s never been prouder.
Most of the other students are frustrated by his talent. They call him things behind his back but want to be his friend as soon as he takes his father’s credit card out of his pocket. They laugh at DUM-E, and Tony hates them with every fibre of his being.
That is, until Rhodey comes sailing into Tony’s life. He’s transfixed by the stupid little robot, intrigued by the chaos in his mind and both amused and concerned by the very real recklessness with which Tony crashes through life.
Rhodey, wants to join the Air Force. He’s got about ten scholarships in his pocket and he’s planning to make it big. Tony knows intelligence when he sees it, and he’s delighted at having someone in the room who can at least partly keep up with him – especially since this someone isn’t in the least offended by Tony’s special brand of humour. Yeah, he’s going to make it big.
And Rhodey talks about flying, about the thrill and the excitement of being in the air, held up by metal and fire and sheer human spite. Tony feels that. He feels it, nestled between his stomach and his heart, a great big longing he can never assuage.
By now Tony has almost got his degree, he’s about to intern at his dad’s company in the robotics division. Life is looking good. So, naturally, it’s about time for shit to hit the fan. And it does, spectacularly, because, hey, Starks never do anything by halves.
First Jarvis dies, then Mom and Dad and that brings up all kinds of confusing emotions Tony doesn’t want to think about because Tony didn’t even like his father but the death is still so sudden, so sharp he doesn’t know what to do with it. Rhodey stays for as long as he can, but he’s got a career path to follow and in the end, Tony manages to push him away just enough for him to leave. It is during this period of his life that Tony truly encounters his vices.
Everyone wants to offer the burgeoning billionaire alcohol and drugs, they don’t even think about it. And Tony loves it, loves when his mind is too numb to thinkthinkthink; loves when other substances make him think so fast that he can imagine the trajectory of the earth and the sun and the thousands of nebulas clouding around them.
When he drinks, he finally manages to sleep. And when he sleeps, he dreams of glittering constellations.
Most of Tony’s twenties are spent searching for something he can’t quite define. It’s not fulfillment, exactly, that he’s missing. If the act of creation was good enough for the Gods, it should be more than enough for a flawed human. The problem is that everything he could ever want is always within reach. The sky is the limit, but he wants the sky, too. He’s has always wanted the things he can’t have.
There are fast cars and beautiful women. Money seems to tumble out of him any time someone shakes him. Midas has nothing on Tony’s golden touch, and the things he loses have nothing on the things Tony pushes away.
Tony works and he fights and he fucks. Drugs manifest themselves around him and straight into his veins. Sleep is for the weak. Time is an illusion. The world is his oyster and Tony wants to tell all of it to fuck off straight into hell.
Well. Almost all of it. There are a few lights along the way - lonely stars, oases in the dark vacuum of space. Rhodey makes Tony feel almost human most days and if someone told him Pepper hung the moon he’d believe it, no questions asked.
None of it fills him though. None of it makes him whole.
There’s just money and bombs and expectations. Merchant of Death becomes his moniker and he screams out to the universe, to death itself to take him then, if it wants him so much. If life is so intent on turning him into a black hole then it should at least have the courtesy to let him be sucked in with everything else.
Then, of course, a few cars explode in a desert in Afghanistan. A bomb with Tony’s name on it places shrapnel lovingly in his chest.
And Tony finds out he really kind of likes living, actually.
(Somewhere amongst the stars, the Gods are laughing.)
In the caves it’s cold and dark. From the moment he wakes he feels like he’s in Hell, trapped in the Underworld suffering a punishment designed specifically for him. Grey stone, black shadows, red flickering flames in his hollowed chest – the colours here are either muted or painfully bright.
When warms himself by the fire and closes his eyes against Yinsen’s (mostly silent) judgment, Tony sees the azure of the Pacific Ocean, bright and soothing. He sees the cerulean stretch of sky above his house in Malibu, so deep it’s almost purple. He longs for that colour almost as much as he longs for his freedom.
They hold his head down in water to break him, to drown what’s left of his spasming lungs. The water swallows him, he swallows it and the world is quiet. He struggles, of course, but he’s still hurting from surgery, weak from hunger, held down by a thousand hands.
Here, there is just Tony and his thoughts, the heavy weight of his sins on his shoulders pushing him down. This is the place between panic and release, between pain and death, between the darkness of nothing and the colours of forever.
(And forever is coloured in black and blue.)
They drag him up and he breathes and they ask him to build Jericho and he says no.
No. No. No, no.
He’s lived on spite alone for all his life and he’ll die for it too.
When they push him under again he has only one thought: that, if anything, drowning in a desert is a fittingly ironic way to go.
They push him under water so deep that his thoughts scatter, that his lungs heave and heave but only fill with water. He dreams of space, then. In these dreams he is weightless, floating between the stars without air, without care, without pain and screaming and batteries in his chest.
In these dreams he is alone and he is at peace.
Eventually, when his hope for rescue has floated away with his dignity, he finally says yes. He says yes, and they let him see the sky again. Blinding himself by squinting up into the hot sun is almost worth it. Overhead is a familiar, Malibu blue. Hidden between the hills is an arsenal. His arsenal. The sight of it makes him want to is fly right it into that unflinching sky and never return.
They tell him they’ll let him go if he builds the Jericho.
“No, he won’t,” Tony says and he smiles and shakes hands. Next to him the translator nods and smiles.
“No, he won’t,” he repeats.
In Tony’s mind the numbers are already rolling. There’s enough firepower here to blow a hole in the side of the Earth. They want Jericho? Tony will give it to them. Biblical destruction is easy to achieve.
Over the next few days, Tony collects palladium like a man starved for poisoning. The car battery whines lowly beside him as he weaves a magnet from the taste of his own blood and despair. Slowly, slowly, the arc lights up and he gazes down in wonder at the little blue circle that’ll keep him alive.
A little piece of the sky, trapped in his chest. That way he can remember what home is like.
Yinsen lends his steady hands, calming words and stories. When he tells Tony about his family something lurches deep in his chest. Something that longs for Rhodey and Pepper, for JARVIS’ cool voice and the confused beeps of his bots.
Yinsen says, “So you are a man who has everything, and nothing.”
The truth of it bites, but Tony doesn’t refute it. The world is at his feet, but there’s not much to show for it. Everything isn’t enough anymore, or at least not the kind he has. There’s another kind of everything that he longs for, full of dark matter and stardust.
(For Tony, ‘everything’ has green eyes and strawberry blonde hair. Everything wears heels like stilts and gloss on lips that look like galaxies.)
Tony starts building an armour. He starts building rockets that will shoot him to the moon. When Yinsen sees the schematics he smiles and there’s a glint in his eyes Tony hasn’t seen before. Every time his hammer hits metal he imagines that power goes into the suit and he imagines it tearing all these sons of bitches down.
At night, as the lights are dimmed, he cradles the blue light in his chest. If he squints, he can just about imagine it’s the sky.
The first time Tony flies he’s high on pain and grief. Beneath him, the world explodes, the force of his own bombs propelling him up. Everything hurts. He’s half convinced that he might be dead already.
But it’s good.
No, good doesn’t do it justice. It’s beautiful, it’s brilliant, it’s euphoria with a kick.
This is what his life has been leading to, he thinks, this is what he was born to do. Years he spent chasing this, filling himself with every drug he could get his hands on, building until his fingers bled and he turned numbers into life.
But creation? Creation has nothing on this moment. The wind howls against the edges of his armour, the world is aflame beneath his feet. Endless, endless blue envelopes him, welcomes him with open arms.
His heart has never been so loud. His mind has never been so quiet.
Heavy armour, weightless air; Tony thinks he might scorch the Earth just to feel like this again.
Then the repulsors under his feet sputter once, twice and then goes out. Gravity grips him like a vice, yanks him back in one hard pull. All Tony can think as he’s going down is that this is how Icarus must have felt.
It’s still worth it.
The desert is red and blue, hot and cold. It is endless. It’s a sea that just keeps taking and taking and after a while Tony starts doubting the existence of time. Sand itches at his throat, grinds at the burns on his shoulders (right where the sun melted his wings away).
At night, he shivers in his jacket, colder than he ever felt in that cave. But he’d still chose this a thousand times over, he thinks, as he stares up into the sky. The stars spin until he’s dizzy and he tracks the invisible lines between them, counting constellations like a prayer.
A childish need to own it takes hold in Tony’s mind. He wants to touch the stars, wants them to kiss him to sleep for the rest of his life. He wants Ancient Greek Gods to rise up and scatter him among them - name captured forever in the minds of men.
Whispering prayers, he offers them everything his has. Every shred of dignity and knowledge, every shard of his old life will be theirs, if only the let him walk out of this desert and straight into the sky.
The next day he scrambles up, thirsty and delirious, jacket as a last protection against the closest star. A helicopter crests the dune behind him and he screams. He reaches for the heavens, for his salvation and it comes to him when he crashes to his knees.
“How was the funvee?” Rhodey asks and it grounds him, like Rhodey always does.
Tony laughs and he cries. Sand grinds against his knees and there’s Rhodey warm and steady, hands around his back.
“Next time you ride with me, okay?” Rhodey says, sandpaper rough. Tony lets his head drop forward against his best friend's chest. The arms around him are all the protection he’ll ever need.
They stumble to the helicopter and rise, finally, into that deep, dizzying sky.
It takes the world no time to crucify Tony Stark for the best decision of his life. Everyone says he’s lost it, some behind his back, but most right to his face. Rhodey thinks he just needs time to get his head on straight. Pepper is convinced he’s going to drive himself to the ground (which is understandable, but completely ridiculous, too, because Tony’s trying to get up, damn it, not further into the ground).
Obediah Stane doesn’t call Tony crazy to his face, but they’ve known each other long enough that it hangs between them, unsaid. Tony grins and bears it, watches his mentor sucking on his inevitable cigar and thinks the man really lacks a lot by way of imagination.
Tony buries himself deep underground and builds himself a new heart. Then he builds the greatest weapon the world has ever seen around that heart, piece by excruciating piece.
Tony builds and he remembers every death he caused.
He remembers the faces of the soldiers in his truck, remembers the timber of Yinsen’s voice, the movements of his steady hands. He remembers destroyed villages and bombs with his name on it. He remembers the taste of shrapnel as it digs into a chest.
Then he flies and he flies and he flies.
All around the world, Stark weapons go off like fireworks. A red and gold suit of avenging armour flies in to pick a bone with anyone who thinks they can prey on those who have nothing.
He flies and he forgets.
Then he’s abruptly pulled back down to earth when Obediah Stane rips his heart right from his chest.
Obie dies and Tony doesn’t know what to feel. Relief? Betrayal? Anger? Everything at once? Instead he feels nothing. He’s back to nothing. They want him to give a statement denying that he is Iron Man, denying even any involvement with the suit. People will believe it, he knows.
Who on earth would ever believe he’s a hero?
As he’s reading the speech cards, staring down the cameras for the millionth time in his life, he feels a familiar tightness in his chest. He wants to tap the reactor, wants to loosen his tie and breathe but he knows it won’t make a difference. This isn’t the kind of tightness that comes from having metal shoved in his chest. This is older tightness; the tightness of staring down a shark, of deflecting a question with a lie, of building and armour of words and celebrity so no one knows who is really behind that big Stark name.
“It is one thing to question the official story, and another thing entirely to make wild accusations, or insinuate that I'm a superhero.” He tells Christine Everheart.
The disdain on her face is as clear as it is in her voice when she answers, “I never said you were a superhero.”
The words stop Tony in his tracks. Somehow it hurts him more that people would think Iron Man isn’t a hero than if people would think Tony Stark isn’t a hero. He’s used to people thinking the worst of him. But his armour is the best of him. It’s all the good he has, wrapped in one metal shell and it’s still not enough.
He’s hit with the hard realisation that even if Iron Man becomes known as his body guard, no one will ever think anything good of him because of his affiliation with the Stark name. No matter how good, no matter how brilliant, in the eyes of the public anything that Tony could ever have created has to be a weapon.
(Don’t they ever consider the possibility that he just wants to fly?)
Tony stumbles over his words, rambling about his character defects, about how, clearly, he isn’t the hero type, until Rhodey whispers for him to stick to his cards. He looks down at them. Papers full of lies, of masks made out of words. Wasn’t this how he got in trouble the first time? All the lies, the deceit , the lack of accountability.
And he realizes he doesn’t want to do it anymore. He has new armour now. Safer armour.
They’ll crucify him anyway, the press. If he isn’t Iron Man then he isn’t at the top of his game anymore, he’s lying. If he is, he’s a danger. He wants people to see the suit, see the things it does and know it’s him. To keep him in check, to see that he can do good things too.
Tony thinks of the desert where he was nobody, where sand scraped his skin and the sky healed his soul. He thinks of Jarvis naming the constellations, of his name connecting the dots between the stars. In all his life he’s never been more whole.
So he says it. All of him: man, myth and suit.
“I am Iron Man.”
True to form, the one thing that’s keeping Tony alive, turns out to be the very thing that’s killing him. He feels himself weakening every day, no matter how many times he changes the palladium cores, or how many filthy green smoothies he drinks. Death just keeps on coming.
There are lines snaking from his reactor, little constellations on his chest.
He’s been on death’s radar for a long time now, since long before Afghanistan. These days, he can feel it creeping closer, breathing icy down his neck. But Tony is nothing if not a contrary son of a bitch and if death wants to take him before he’s fifty, it’ll be kicking and screaming.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t bring things in order. Pragmatism comes easy; it’s the emotions he doesn’t know what to do with. Pepper becomes CEO. Rhodey takes one of the suits and Tony does his very, very best to shove them away as far as he can. If he’s an asshole, maybe they won’t miss him quite as much.
So Tony is alone with his creations and the star-signs on his chest.
In the air, he feels alive again. He knows it’s killing him faster. He doesn’t care. Flying is the only thing that makes him feel like there’s a tomorrow. There has to be one, somewhere between the clouds and the stars and the rolling currents of air.
Of course there are other people who can build what Tony built. Maybe not as easily, maybe not in a cave, but there are others. Tony may be a narcissist, but he isn’t arrogant enough to believe he’s the only genius on this god-forsaken planet.
Vanko comes with fiery-white whips, and he comes just in time. Tony’s been counting the days until his heart gives out, until the palladium constellations on his chest lead him to his tomb.
And then there’s this Russian, swinging Tony’s tech around like he owns the place, talking about making Gods bleed. He thinks of dizzy skies and rolling grounds and the names of goddesses written between the stars. And he laughs. Because if he’s a God, then he’s a spectacularly bad one, seeing as he’ll be dead in a week.
(All Tony can think is this: who builds an arc reactor and doesn’t use it to fly?)
Then there’s the red-headed spy and the pirate with the long, leather coat and neither Pepper nor Rhodey is speaking to him (and that was the plan right? That was the plan). Dad, the tenacious bastard, comes back from the dead for a few minutes and tells Tony exactly what he’s been missing all these years.
And you know what? Tony decides to live a little bit longer just to spite him.
A new heart and a new suit later and Vanko and Hammer are down. Tony finds that there is in fact, one thing greater than flying. And that’s flying with War Machine by his side.
Meeting Steve Rogers leaves a taste in Tony’s mouth he can’t quite place. It’s the metal of his reactor, but none of the coconut. It’s blood and salt and the stiff taste of an ocean breeze. Tony wishes Howard could see him here, standing opposite the famous Captain America, and pissing him off immediately.
Despite his explosive first interaction with the Captain, he’s enamoured with the team, with the idea of the Avengers (even if Tony Stark wasn’t quite recommended). Bruce Banner, especially, is a fascinating man and Tony relishes their shared intellect and the fact that there’s finally someone who can keep up with him - maybe even surpass him.
There’s also something else; a quiet loneliness, a look that begs for death. Tony’s felt that emptiness, that knowledge that you couldn’t die, even if you wanted to. For Tony it was because of the things riding on him, because even dead, he couldn’t have stood seeing the look on Pepper and Rhodey’s faces.
For Bruce it’s his green alter-ego. Tony feels strangely grateful that the monster isn’t ready to die. He wouldn’t have wanted to miss meeting Banner. He suggests the Hulk saved Banner’s life for a reason, and wading through this difficult territory is worth it for the look of thoughtful wonder on the scientist’s face.
It all goes to hell anyway, of course, but at least that’s been said. Between the Hulk crashing out of the carrier and to the ground (been there, done that) and Coulson dying, Tony makes it his personal mission to wipe the smug look off Loki’s face.
When the wormhole opens up he knows it’ll be his death. Why or how he isn’t sure, but he can almost smell his destiny on the thing, it feels like the beginning of an end. Despite this, he’s strangely conflicted at the sight of it. It’s bad, he knows this deeply and certainly, but the scientist within him marvels at the technology, at the metallic forms of the aliens’ ships, at the advanced power behind their thrusts.
Then there’s a wild part, (a part that prays to ancient gods, that feels sky stretching blue under his skin, a part that screams higher, higher) buried deep under the rest that just wants to fly right up and touch the stars. He quells it viciously and flies right into the belly of an alien whale, repulsors blasting, metal screeching, fire blazing out the joints of this incredible machine. In the privacy of his own HUD, Tony whoops and only stops smiling when JARVIS reminds him of the destruction around him. Right, this isn’t supposed to be fun.
Then a nuke flies in; courtesy of the World Security Council (dick move, guys) and truly ends the fun. Fury tells him it’s coming in hot and though he doesn’t say anything else, and Tony hears the implied order. There’s only one way to get rid of this thing.
“You’re not one to lay down on a wire,” Rogers echoes in his head, a confirmation of everything Tony already knew.
But Tony is a contrary son of a bitch, so before he even knows what he’s doing he’s holding the nuke between his hands and he’s heading towards the wormhole. Maybe this time, his death will stick.
(He hopes not.)
“You know that’s a one-way trip, Stark,” the Captain’s voice calls over the comms.
Tony puts more power behind his flight, sees the wormhole opening before him, a glimpse of infinity caught between New York clouds.
JARVIS calls Pepper, but she doesn’t pick up. A part of him is relieved; he wouldn’t have known what to say anyway. It’s better like this, band-aid fast and bittersweet. He’ll take it over palladium poisoning any day.
As suddenly as a car-crash, Tony is in space. It’s beautiful and it’s terrible and for the second time in his life, Tony’s brain is absolutely quiet.
There’s a large ship and more, endlessly more, metal whales swimming through space. Behind it are the stars, the constellations of Tony’s dreams. He hears Jarvis murmuring their names in his mind. He’s filled, suddenly, with the same wonder he felt as a child, staring up at the stars, overtaken with the same awe that crashed into him in the Afghan.
Tony lets go of the missile and it soars on. He doesn’t. A few more static bursts of his repulsors, HUD flickering in and out and then –
There is no sound. No whistle in his ears, no crack, no bang, no whining repulsors. No JARVIS. Even the other Jarvis, in his head, is suspiciously quiet. The missile hits the mothership and the explosion is… magnificent. Tony watches it from the darkness of his helmet. Everything is slow here; the soft blooming of fire, the smooth movement of the metal ships. Still, the fire burns bright, eating away like a new big bang and behind it all, the darkness is gentle, interspersed only by the light of stars that are long dead.
But these are strange stars in a strange sky, upon which even the Old Gods have never laid eyes. Tony tracks lines between the stars he can see. He calls them Pepper, Rhodey and Jarvis; whispers goodbye to them so loud it makes his ears pop. Maybe they’ll name one after him when he doesn’t return. Maybe they’ll carve him into their own sky and he’ll be home again.
Gravity reaches one last, spindly finger through the wormhole and hooks it around Tony, dragging him back down. He is weightless and he is drowning, staring both empty and full at things he will never comprehend. Even as the Earth tries to drag him home, the universe is looking him straight into the eyes, begging him to stay.
A supernova is a quiet death, even if it hurts like hell.
Tony closes his eyes.
-and he falls.