Work Text:
This is how his life ends. With grinding metal on metal, everything clanging and harsh and cold.
With a sharp snap, more piercing than loud.
By the fingers of a man too invincible not to fall.
With a circular statement and a breathy goodbye and all the grandeur of a god long forgotten.
This is how her heart breaks. Along with a million others.
Crushed and halted.
Dented and irreparable like gold between teeth. Like a soul between gears.
And like her family, between the hands of permanence.
This is how he loses sight. Of his hope. His future. His father and support.
Stripped away by another bullet to the heart. By more red stained floors and tunnel vision. Again standing so close.
So close.
This is how he loses himself. In the shadows. In another iron suit.
With his best friend resting on his arm, already dead to the both of them even as he took his last shaky breaths.
This is how the world ends.
Not with a bang.
Not with an "I am Iron Man."
But with a whisper.
With a twisted heart and a hand over a mouth and a name unforgotten.
With a final round of victory.
With the battle won against the fallacy in hubris and the intolerance in mercy.
That's how it all goes.
Lost above the clouds,
on a one way trip,
That was how the world began.
With silence louder than any scream.
I love you 3000.