Chapter Text
“ If I tell you, it won’t happen .”
Stephen was holding up one finger, and Tony felt his blood run cold as he realized what he had to do. But without hesitation, he charged the Mad Titan.
It was brief, quick, a scrabble just to get close to Thanos, but it was all Tony needed to get what he needed to end it all.
“I am Iron Man,” Tony said, the line that had started it all, now here to end it. Then he snapped his fingers.
There was a brilliant flash, and Tony felt like he was on fire. There was a searing pain rushing up his arm from the gauntlet, extending past his shoulder into his torso and racing up his neck and across the right side of his face. It hurt more than anything that Tony had ever gone through before, a white hot pain that was leeching the life out of him.
Tony didn’t care though. He was more than happy to go through it just to see Thanos turn to ash, his god-like aspirations reduced to dust. He was more than happy to go after seeing that.
He stumbled as his knees buckled, and he dropped back, leaning against some of the rubble. The tension drained out of him, leaving Tony feeling miraculously calm for once in his life, his fears and anxieties about Thanos finally dead now that the titan was no more.
Suddenly Rhodey was there, and then Peter. Tony could barely make out what they said, but he did catch Peter say that they had won.
“Mr. Stark, we won.” Peter’s voice broke, it broke as he was pulled away, “Don’t go, Tony.”
Tony wanted to reach out, to hold his boy, his bright-eyed, overly eager boy. He wished he’d hugged him more often. He wished he could have the strength to tell Peter he loved him.
And then Pepper was there, right in front of him. She wasn’t breaking apart like Peter, but she was breaking. It was in her eyes. She kept herself steady though. She’d always been so strong.
“We’ll be okay,” she whispered, putting her hand to his chest. “You can rest now.”
With the last bit of strength he had, he put his hand over hers. He thought of how terrified he’d been when everyone disappeared on Titan, that she had vanished too. He thought of how, despite his fears of death, there was a part of him that had embraced it on that ship when it was just him and Nebula out in space, all because it was a chance to be with her again. He thought of how when he came back and saw her it had sent such a strong wave of relief over him that it had almost knocked him out. He thought of how he’d teasingly scolded her that he had been right about them expecting. He thought of how the happiest day of his life was the day Morgan came into the world.
Morgan. Their little ball of sunshine. She was so smart and curious and so ready to explore every aspect of life - and now she was going to have one. A good, long life. Even though it hurt him to leave her, he knew she would lead a happier, safer life now.
It hit him like a freight train. He was dying. He was leaving the three biggest loves of his life. They were safe, because of his sacrifice.
He only wished he could tell them he loved them, that he could hug them, one last time.
Tony exhaled slowly, his hand still over Pepper’s, with Pepper right in front of him, his son not far behind her, and the promise of a safer future for his daughter.
The light from his reactor faded as his hand slipped from Pepper’s grasp.
Steve woke up in a cold sweat beside Peggy. It had been the same nightmare again. Finding himself underwater and trying to break the surface, knowing he had to break the surface, and seeing someone laying on the water above him, just floating there. But no matter how hard he swam, he never made it close enough to be able to see who it was, let alone reach them. It was just pure desperation that pushed him to try and get through the water, to save himself and whoever was there. But every single time, he jolted awake feeling like he was drowning.
His put a hand to his chest to try to calm his breathing, to keep himself quiet and not wake her up. She barely stirred, pulling the blanket over herself a little tighter. Steve let out a small sigh, glad that she was still sleeping soundly.
He quietly pulled himself out of bed and left the room, making his way to the kitchen. Even though the thought of drinking water wasn’t appealing at all to him, Steve knew that just having a little to drink might help him clear his head.
Steve poured out a glass of water and drank it slowly, making sure that he kept breathing through his nose. He didn’t want to have a panic attack over simply drinking water.
He set the glass in the sink, deciding to just leave it there until morning so that the noise didn’t wake Peggy. Steve got out of the kitchen, stepping into the living room to move towards the stairs that would take him up to where his bedroom with Peggy was.
It’d been three months since he’d come to back to stay, and while he was enjoying every second that he’d had with Peggy, he still found himself feeling a little hollow when he was alone. Moments like this, especially after a nightmare, made him feel unmoored, untethered, on the cusp of stability and breakdown. He was still haunted by everything that had happened in his past five years, haunted by the people they took so long to save, and by those that they hadn’t been able to save in the end.
His hand was still at his chest, and it was then that he realized he had been holding the necklace Pepper had given him. It was a simple chain, with a tiny vial that had a handful of the nano-particles that had been on Tony’s suit.
A reminder of a friend who cared for you, no matter what had happened, Pepper had told him as she’d pressed it into his hand. So that he can keep him close, always.
“As if I’d ever forget you,” Steve sighed. He let go, running a hand through his hair as he rubbed his eyes, sleep suddenly descending upon him again. Time to try for another round of sleep. Steve made his way upstairs slowly, walking past the mirror that they kept there - then whipped around. He could have sworn he’d seen something in the mirror beside him, something right out of the corner of his eye.
He blinked once, twice, glanced around suspiciously once more, then shook his head. It was the stress, the guilt, the underlying anxiety all getting to him in the dead of night, preying on him in his loneliest moments. He hadn’t seen anything - it was just his mind playing tricks on him.
Even so, he was a little more on edge as he made his way into his room with Peggy, and as he lay down beside her, moving in close to hold her to him, he felt the edge ebb away enough for him to think about what he saw. What he thought he saw, he reminded himself.
Because it was impossible, but deep down, he knew who he’d caught a glimpse of. For a split second, on the stairwell of his two story home with Peggy, he could have sworn he saw a man beside him, a shorter man with dark hair, a man whose funeral he’d attended more than three months ago and fifty years in the chronological future.