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Stephen was doomed from the start.
Somehow that only made it sweeter.
He recalled the moment with startling clarity, the pounding of his heart, the bright flashes of colour behind his eyelids, the power pulsing in and around him from the stone, the adrenalin kickstarting through his veins, the way the air caught painfully in his lungs.
Stephen had watched, mesmerized as the future played out before him, hands trembling on his knees, head twisting this way and that in his eagerness for more. Instinct had him latching onto Tony Stark, some indescribable pull telling him that he was the one, the one to save them, the one to save them all.
If only he wasn’t also the one to end him.
It was the image of Tony Stark, dirtied and bloodied, standing on a war torn planet, eyes wild with victory and fist lifted high in the sky where fire glinted off a golden gauntlet that he felt the first thickening in his lungs, the scratching, the telltale sign that something foreign and wrong had begun growing within.
He could have stopped there.
He didn’t.
Instead, he knuckled down and kept searching, even when the familiar sting of blood touched his tongue, even when the first petal landed soundly with a hard cough behind his teeth. It was a warning, Stephen knew it wasn’t too late to turn back, but he didn’t. No, he wanted to see, to know, because the love that was beginning to grow like a parasite inside him was worth it, to see one more moment of Tony Stark.
Everything in that moment seemed specially crafted to send Stephen tumbling from admiration, headlong into love with the most brilliant man on the planet. It was a sacrifice Stephen would make, willingly.
And he did, twice over.
His lungs squeezed tight as they began sharing their fragile space with delicate petals, making him cry out to take in enough air and just like that the images slipped from his grasp, even as he fought to hold them tight.
Hands. Warm and strong clasped his arms as he fell out of the spell. He opened his eyes to stare into familiar brown eyes and as he spoke of the future, one worth saving, he used his tongue to press the sickly-sweet petals into his cheek and out of sight.
Stephen watched from afar afterwards, unable to tear his eyes from Tony’s mobile form, energetically strategizing, hopeful and so damn naïve. A hand was absently pressed to his chest, as if he could feel the air going short, as if he didn’t know his death would be long and painful…well the second time around.
He was distantly aware of the Cloak’s fretting, hugging and patting at him as if it knew its master was doing something it should disapprove off. He squeezed its fabric absently, realizing he really would miss his old friend.
He knew he should be angry, would be in his right to scream and lash out at the stone around his neck in denial and frustration…but he didn’t. Stephen had only ever watched three people over the course of his medical career die from Hanahaki Disease and like most in society, it had inspired a sickening feeling of disgust and a healthy dose of fear in him.
Love was a dangerous thing, too easy to fall into and too hard too fall out of. But it was reversable and few ever went so far as to have their lungs overflow with the beautiful white petals stained with blood. He hadn’t understood those who choked to death in the hospital, had the urge to shout in their face for their stupidity, that whatever love they felt was not returned and thus not worth dying for.
He had never been more wrong.
He knew exactly what he would have to do to reverse the effects only beginning to bloom within in him and he was suddenly, brutally aware that he couldn’t do it. There was no future that awaited them in which he could simply ignore Tony Stark, cut him out of his life. If for no other reason, then Tony wouldn’t let him.
As he faded to dust, heart-breaking for the confusion on Tony’s face, he felt an overwhelming conviction move through him, that in the end it would all be worth it. He just didn’t realize just how little time Tony would allow him to have however.
From the moment he felt his heart give a skip and a beat again, yanked from the Soul Stone through what felt like a brutal windstorm, he found himself staring into a smirking smile and familiar brown eyes.
He coughed on the feeling of a petal scratching up his throat.
Stephen waved off his concerned gaze, pointing to the dust and debris surrounding them as the cause, couldn’t bare for Tony to know what was growing inside him. There was doubt in his expression which was wiped clean at the sudden appearance of Peter.
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Wong begged him to tell whomever it was, the truth.
Stephen understood, he really did, how afraid they were of losing him after the Ancient One, after Thanos. They would be alright; however, he knew they would, had made sure of it while the Time Stone spoke to him and it was a small relief.
He grew steadily worse with each visit Tony graced him with and it wasn’t long until Wong figured it out. The pleading stopped when Stephen fell to his knees coughing, beautiful white petals stained with blood tumbling from his mouth onto the hard floor, as a few meters away sat a wedding invitation.
Instead, Wong tried baring Tony from the Sanctum which of course only ever ended with him barging in and trying to make sure Stephen was alright. It warmed his heart even as it felt like a noose was settled around his throat.
He hid the worst of it, counting down the days he had left, collecting the petals quietly as they soon began to come up in a deem crimson, without a fleck of white to be seen. His cough was a constant, his stomach turning as he began turning away ever dish that was presented to him. Stephen prepared a room in Kamar-Taj for his last days and he knew it didn’t make sense to Wong or Tony whose expression grew increasingly concerned.
Thing was…Stephen was happy.
Falling in love with Tony Stark might have been inevitable to save the world but the stone wasn’t without its mercies. It had shown him in the end, what he now knew to be a false future, in which he lived his own lifetime with Tony. It allowed him the future he couldn’t have, like a consolation prize, and it was those memories that he held close to his heart as his limbs grew weak and the rhythm in his chest began a steady falter, when Wong’s expression grew increasingly grave.
He liked to think he had already done the hard part.
Now, dying for Tony Stark for the second time, was as easy as breathing.