Chapter Text
They call it the Blip.
It is unclear when the term became official. The only thing chronicled with absolute accuracy is the relentless mocking of the American press for picking the stupidest name possible for the worst tragedy to befall the planet. There had been many of them floating around during those first chaotic months when nations were still counting their losses and trying desperately to take a functional census. The British called it the Halving. Australians went with the Vanishing. Several European countries simultaneously coined a name that loosely translated to “the end of days”. China and Japan spoke of the Great Loss, a name that also found its way to Russia and Southeast Asia.
Tony calls it the Avengers’ greatest failure. The exact words are not his own. They arrive on the lips of a pale-faced news anchor staring down at him from a buzzing television screen in the Compound’s infirmary. He takes them in with the numb acceptance of an inmate on death row as he watches the team discuss strategies on the other side of the transparent wall. Every once in a while, their eyes, dulled with shock, chance quick glances at him, as if evaluating if he is capable of assimilating what they have learned at the Garden.
Their concern is wasted. Pepper has already told him everything, choking back a sob every few words. And he had listened, her cold hand clasped between his, as he held onto her presence like a lifeline and did his best to ignore his own shameful gratitude.
When he is strong enough to walk unassisted, he leaves the Compound never to return.
His resignation as CEO of Stark Enterprises follows soon, two days before Rhodey takes over the mantle of Iron Man. Pepper becomes the sole owner of the company as he disappears from the public eye into a void of empty days and nights that drag on for too long. On good ones, he feels like he is reeling from a concussion, adrift in a sea of confusion and apathy. On bad ones, his brain is constantly playing catch-up to perform the most basic tasks like getting up in the morning. On really bad ones, he feels like he is walking through a computer simulation, staring through the hollow eyes of a drone as it goes through the motions of another cycle, not because it wants to, but because nobody has turned it off.
The feeling is not entirely new. It brings back memories of another life when he had just returned from Afganistan and everything felt just a tiny bit unreal. Except back then, he had drunk in every moment, afraid that he would run out of them. His blood was liquid fire in his veins, food did not taste like dry ashes, and he still believed that his survival had some kind of purpose.
All of that was gone now. He had been left alive in a dying world with the dubious privilege of watching it burn out.
Days blur together into weeks, weeks into months. He watches the Stark Relief Foundation struggle with the weight of a catastrophe they were never prepared to handle and wonders if there's anyone in the universe who is. Stark Enterprises diverts every resource their way, hires every engineer with a pulse to keep the wheels spinning but it is not enough. Even with the Iron Legion compensating for those lost to the Infinity Gauntlet, they can’t keep food in warehouses from rotting. Life-saving drugs are left in labs with no one to distribute them. Water-filtering plants across the globe are racing at breakneck speed to become fully automated. It is still not enough. Nothing will ever be.
He thinks of Steve's voice on the radio, encouraging people to join his support group and recognizes the deceptive reassurance in it that barely hides a crumbling facade. It comes through even clearer when he asks Tony to do the same. It is the first conversation they have in a long time and what was gearing up to be a five-minute courtesy call ends up lasting two hours that only tentatively begins to repair broken bridges. It wraps up with a firm promise to send willing Blip survivors Steve's way.
Tony can't bring himself to join them. He is what the media calls uniquely blessed. Pepper has survived the Blip unscathed. So have James Rhodes and Happy. And still, the sickly reddish light of Titan burns in his dreams as Mantis's sleep mantra grows more desperate. Still, Peter's terrified eyes stare at him from a quickly disintegrating face. And still, guilt eats away at his sanity when he turns on the news and feels just as powerless as when he was fighting off the infection on the Benatar, wondering if it should claim him before dehydration set in.
Steve tells everyone to move on. He tells them to find a bright side, something to hold on to. Nothing about their two-hour conversation suggests that he has. Tony knows him too well and he can't stand the thought of sitting in a room with motivational posters on the walls and hearing him lie to broken people about a better future even he cannot imagine. He feels like lying back to him even less.
He can't be the only one who does.
He thinks of Natasha, locked away in the Compound, struggling to keep together what remains of their operation. Of Clint, leveraging his sketchiest contacts to disappear and leave a blood trail of unsavory individuals in his wake. His hit numbers grow fast, as does his skill at covering his tracks. Rhodey has little hope of tracking him down. There's a part of him, Tony suspects, that doesn't truly want to.
He thinks of Thor, far away in Norway, trying to rebuild Asgard the best he can. Every time a news crew finds its way over there he catches a glimpse of the emptiness behind his eyes. He looks smaller somehow, stooped over, with a scraggly beard and hands that shake around whatever tool they are holding. He never speaks more than a few words. A few months later, a woman with black hair and worn-out features replaces him. The shadow of tragedy and death haunts her brown eyes as well.
Bruce says her name is Brunnhilde and she used to be a Valkyrie. That Thor calls her a king but she calls herself a regent. He fills him in while munching on a cold turkey sandwich in a gamma lab, while he is glued to a computer screen. By then, a soft green tinge is beginning to cover his hands, an undeniable sign that his plan is working. Tony doesn't really understand his reasoning but he doesn't try to talk him out of it. They all must find a way of dealing with their grief. He's glad Bruce has found his.
Thor has not. In fact, a week after New Asgard is declared an independent nation, Thor leaves Earth without warning. The only explanation is a curt note that arrives in the Compound's mailbox a few days later and whose snapshot finds its way to Tony’s phone via Rhodey. In it, he says he has gone to look for answers. That maybe someone out there knows how to recreate the Stones or how to tap into the same energy without them. His handwriting grows worse as the letter goes on, so much that Tony can hardly make out the last line.
I'm sorry.
Tony’s throat closes when he reads those smudged words. The context isn't hard to figure out, he has read all the articles that started pouring out after the initial shock had worn off the press. He has found the Internet conspiracy theories linking Thor to Thanos, thousands of angry people swearing up and down that he had a willing hand in the Blip. Even if Thor wasn't tech-savvy enough to get to them, echoes should have reached Asgard at some point. Enough for new rumors to surface claiming that the price for their safe haven was Thor's immediate exile from Earth.
Half of all living things snapped out of existence and Alex Jones is not one of them. The thought prompts a bitter chuckle every time.
Brunnhilde dismissed him and everyone else with a glint of steel in her eye. It did nothing to quiet the conspiracy machine. It doesn't help that, despite his promise to keep them updated, Thor never synced his comm with Natasha at the Compound. Two years later, neither Carol Danvers nor the last remaining Guardians have heard anything from him.
Tony is starting to think he isn’t coming back. The realization stings more than he likes to admit. He wishes he could have seen him one last time, wishes he had caught a plane to Norway in all the months Asgard had been in a political turmoil. The Stark Relief Foundation had sent humanitarian aid their way. They could have dealt with one more passenger.
He didn't. He is not proud of that. He hopes the rest of the team had better judgment but he has his doubts. Bruce is the only one he ever heard talking about Thor and what he heard wasn't good. Their few meetings were described to him as a cycle of reticence and joyless laughter fueled by a growing pile of empty bottles and tear-stained rage, poorly contained behind gritted teeth. The better things looked for Asgard, the more he unraveled, the further he withdrew from everyone. When the time came to decide on his living accommodations, he built a tiny cabin far away from the rest of their settlement, on a craggy hill that seemed to operate on its own weather patterns. Word started going around that the god of thunder was losing his mind.
Tony is well-acquainted with this type of madness. For Thor, like for him a long time ago, the frantic chase to right a sinking ship had come to an end. Everyday routine was starting to emerge and with it, the wounded world became an inescapable reality. And that reality had to be drowned out by any means necessary.
He knows that dark tunnel to its core and back then, he feared taking even a glimpse of it. Not with his own sobriety hanging by a string. He is not proud of that either, especially when his caution doesn't even pay off. The darkness ends up claiming him in a thousand other little ways.
What pushes him off the metaphorical cliff is the global census published on a misty January morning. It prompts a humorless snicker that leaves a disturbed expression on Pepper's face so he chooses to take a walk in the woods surrounding their home and wait for his demons to run themselves into exhaustion. It isn't a good strategy, but it usually works well enough to keep him functional. On that cold winter day, it fails.
Less than four billion people, he thinks in a stupor as he ventures down an untrodden path. Four billion people gone in a flash and three years later, the population is dropping. How long till they are all gone? Will it happen in his lifetime?
A suit of armor around the world, he thinks and laughs, loud enough to scare the magpies pecking at the frozen ground. That's what they needed. A suit made of steel and fire. One that would outlast him, that Peter could inherit to protect them against anything that threatened the tiny blue marble they called home. Except Peter isn't here anymore. His corpse is scattered across a barren wasteland, blown away by aliens winds. And so, EDITH is nothing but a string of deleted code, quietly degrading in a hard-drive fried by the strongest magnets he could find.
He was an idiot. There was nothing that could protect them from what was coming. They were doomed from the get-go, they still are. Some just took longer to realize it than others.
A thick crust of snow cracks under his boots. They are too light for the season and for the terrain but that barely registers as an inconvenience to his numb feet. The tree branches are starting to weave together, blocking out what little sun is seeping through. He must have been wandering for hours, but it gets dark early in these parts. He should check the time.
The thought sinks into the gloom that beckons him from the depths of the snowy woods. His hands are too cold for fiddling with electronics anyway.
He takes another step towards the dark through the crumbling layer of snow. And then, he hears a familiar chime in the depths of his coat. Pepper has sent him a text and it has found its way through the maze of trees despite the choppy reception. With a mechanical motion, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the glowing screen.
It shows a picture of a positive pregnancy test. A short list of baby names follows underneath capped by a smiling emoticon.
For a moment, he can't breathe. A second later, he is fighting back the sharp sting of tears. A shocked smile tugs at his lips and is soon quelled by a profound sense of shame.
He dreamt about having a child with Pepper once. It was a good dream, the kind that made every breath worth taking. Now that dream was going to become a reality and this child would have to grow up in a world he had just written off. Just like he was going to selfishly write himself out of that kid's life before he knew they existed. Before he had the chance to look into their eyes and find out if they were his or Pepper's.
His child does not deserve that. None of the children born after the Blip do. They deserve to grow up on a planet that recovered from its wounds, among people who looked to the same future Steve keeps trying to find. And if the stupidly-named Blip has chosen to spare him, he is going to do his best to give them that.
He is alive for a reason. Again. It just took him a little longer to find it this time.
He pulls his foot out of a deep hole in the snow and rubs his hands to get his blood flowing. The meek winter sun finds his face when he turns away from the dark nest of trees and starts a long trek home. On his way back, he wonders if chained arc reactors could supply power for cities where the infrastructure had collapsed. By the time he gets back, he has a rough idea of how to make it work. By the time Pepper walks through the front door, she is mildly puzzled to find the first draft of the project on her desk.
That night they settle on the name Morgan. It works for both a boy and a girl.
Tony is hoping for a girl.
His workshop in the Compound remains surprisingly intact.
Save for the thick layer of dust covering every surface, nothing is out of place and nothing has been stored. It feels like walking into a time capsule and it makes him wary of disturbing the chaotic order of prototypes waiting for him to iron out their imperfections. Guilt pecks at him when he realizes his garage is already full of their updated twins, which means those sad shadows can only be cannibalized for parts or melted down. Nothing went to waste in the new world, especially not precious resources like metal.
He pulls open a drawer in his burn-spotted desk. Among rusted bolts, old batteries, and dulled screwdrivers lies exactly what Tony is looking for.
He inspects the silver memory stick for damage and plugs it into an old netbook. It takes the screen a while to light up but when it does, it flashes back rough sketches of an energy-efficient engine. Tony breathes a sigh of relief, at least he doesn't have to start from scratch. That would have easily eaten up three months.
The workshop door slides open in the screen’s reflection. Steve Rogers walks through but doesn't move further than a few steps, his hand tapping the wall for a light switch. It is only then that Tony notices he had been walking in a veiled gloom, diluted only by the dim sunlight trickling through pulled blinds.
His mouth quirks at the corners. Despite the long absence, he still knows this room like the back of his hand.
Steve's eyes narrow under the sharp fluorescent beam as he regards him with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. "I thought I saw your ID in this morning's logs. I was convinced somebody stole your access card but the bio-scanner doesn't lie.” He nods at a Stark Enterprises tote bag hanging over a chair. “Glad to see you've decided to come back to New York."
Tony slips the memory stick into his pocket. "Not likely. Once you get a taste of that mountain air you can't go back. The silence is great too. I don’t miss the car horns as my personal soundtrack."
"There's less traffic here now. Cleaner air too."
Tony shakes his head at the thread of optimism stretched to a breaking point in Steve's voice. Same old Cap, he thinks helplessly, chasing after a silver lining until he can't run any faster. There were times when he admired his resolve. There were others when he wanted to strangle him for it.
"We're staying where we are for now," he says. "Living in the countryside is going to do wonders for Morgan. She can go to school in the nearby town. And I can take her sledding on that shield when she's old enough." He pauses on his way out the door. "That is, unless you want it back."
Steve forces out a smile that does not reach his eyes. "Captain America needed that shield," he replies. "I've come to find Steve Rogers works better without it."
Tony nods, not pressing further as they walk up a flight of stairs. Soon they find themselves in what used to be their Briefing Room and what has become Natasha's base of operations. Tony hopes to find her there but she is gone leaving behind a plate of stale crumbs under the cold light of the holographic screen. His eyes are automatically drawn to the blinking red dot on the left corner, letting him know that the training room is currently in use.
It has been for a while now according to the timestamp.
He thinks of their first meeting at the boxing ring where she kicked Happy right in his pride. He thinks of her now, pulling on boxing gloves in an empty room to train against an enemy she can no longer defeat to quiet the demons that will never stop gnawing at her.
They all must find their own way to deal with grief. He hopes Natasha has found hers.
Steve reaches towards a water pitcher and fiddles with a triangular paper cup. "How's Pepper?" he asks.
"Just past her third trimester. Apparently, this is when the cravings are in full swing." Tony winces as he accidentally presses his bag against a wall and rummages inside, pulling out a crushed cardboard box. "Hope she isn't a stickler for presentation."
Steve snickers and leans over to examine the bright yellow frosting leaking out the damaged side. "She sent you all the way to New York for cupcakes?"
"The cupcakes are a surprise, her favorite bakery is not far from here. I actually came to get some old blueprints and check to see if you guys still remember my face." Tony sets down the stained box and licks honey-flavored goo off his fingers. "Speaking of, you need to keep a better eye on security. Bio-scanners are pretty solid but I checked the entry codes and they have been the same for nearly a year. What's next, setting the password on all our personal information to your birthday?"
Steve gives him a conceding nod. "Nat keeps them static for Rocket and Nebula. It's easier than sending out new ones every month and we have to consider time dilation.” His relaxed expression wavers as he stares at the incoming messages. “She keeps hoping Carol will come back but I doubt it. After Thanos's death, she tried to track down Maria Rambeau and her daughter. All signs pointed to the worst."
A thoroughly depressing conversation bubbles up in Tony's memory as he tries to recall the few details Rhodey was able to provide. "That's messed up," he mutters. "Does she have anyone left at all?"
"Not really. Brother died in Vietnam, mother succumbed to leukemia shortly after. I don't know what became of her old man but I don't think they were close." Steve taps the flimsy paper cup, then throws it in the bin without ever filing it up. "That's probably why she's been moving further away from us. The Rambeaus and Fury were the last threads connecting her to Earth and losing them must have hit hard. A lot of people in the group can't even go back to the apartment they shared with loved ones. Some moved cities altogether. I know Sharon's parents did after all their children were erased."
Tony bites his lip as he hears the thin thread of optimism wobble. "I'm sorry about that," he says. "Do you keep in touch with them?"
"I never officially met them. Sharon and I split up long before the Blip." Steve's attention drifts over to the window where the traffic is indeed a lot sparser than Tony remembers. "Nat keeps saying I should date again. I can't tell if she's joking or not."
"If you do, you should stop shaving. The beard made you look more dignified."
Steve chuckles and rubs his chin where light stubble is beginning to form. "Thor says the same thing, that's two against one. Maybe you both have a point."
“I don’t remember you ever caring about odds.” Tony inspects the coffee pot, trying to decide if what is left inside is worth risking. The implications of Steve's words only reach him when he is halfway through filling a cup with its questionable contents. "Wait, Thor’s back?"
Steve hums a vague confirmation. "He was here a week ago, going through old data logs. I ran into him completely by chance when I was picking up my laundry. Startled the living daylight out of me until I realized who I was looking at.” He glances up, not bothering to hide his puzzlement at Tony’s shocked silence. “He asked about you. I assumed he was dropping in on you and Pepper next."
Tony returns a dejected frown. "He didn't even drop in when he left. I wish he had, I haven't seen him in forever. Pretty much since..."
He trails off as he swills the coffee in his cup. It looks like an unholy marriage of machine oil and burnt tobacco so he pours it out and realizes he had last spoken to Thor right here, a few weeks after Steve and the rest had returned from the Garden. Tony had just begun to recover from malnutrition and had shuffled to this same machine hoping that someone had learned to make a decent brew in his absence. Thor had been there to pick up what remained of his things in the Compound. There were bags under his eyes even then.
They didn't talk for long, and what they talked about wasn't uplifting. Tony told him about Titan, losing Peter and most of the Guardians. He learned about Hela and the fall of Asgard, about the forging of Stormbreaker and the subsequent failed attempt to kill Thanos. Thor's voice had cracked with guilt multiple times through the last part, shoulders drawn close in an unnatural way and fingers woven tightly together. His eyes, one blue, one a warm shade of brown had born a vacant expression. They never looked up at him once.
At the time, he couldn't tell if Thor feared Tony’s anger or if he was holding back his own, like a caged storm tearing itself to pieces. He was out the door before Tony could find out. Before he could tell him he had nothing to fear.
He runs a finger over the chipped rim of the cup. "How is he?" he asks tentatively.
Steve heaves a very telling sigh. "Not great,” he replies. “He looked rough when I met him, like he hadn't slept in days. Or like he had been sleeping for too long." He crosses his arms, blond eyebrows knitting together in recollection. "I don't know, he seemed..."
"Spacey?"
The nod Steve gives him carries little conviction. "More like scattered. Like he was rushing somewhere one moment and not knowing where he was going the next. I asked if he was planning to stay, but I didn't get a clear answer." His eyes veer towards the gray horizon again, watching bushy snowflakes drift by. "I guess that's as good as a no."
Tony's heart sinks in the heavy silence that follows. "Do you know what files he was looking at?"
Steve lets out a pensive hum. "I didn't check," he admits. "Didn't have the time, there was a meeting across the city in less than an hour and I was already running late. I thought it would do him good so I brought him along."
Tony feels an involuntary twitch across the left side of his face. For a moment, he is reduced to speaking in single, chopped syllables. "You did what? Why?"
The corners of Steve’s mouth rise in a sad smile. "What do you think? Because he lost his entire family and instead of trying to rebuild his life, he chose to run from everything that reminds him of it." He turns away from the window and flips through a thin brown notebook under the holographic screen. "I've seen this happen over and over with grieving people. They think that by changing everything around them the pain will stop but I'm pretty sure there isn't a single place in the universe where you can hide from yourself. I think that’s why he came back."
Blue eyes give him a long, meaningful look. The twitch across Tony's cheek returns. "He told us why he left. You think that was a lie?"
"If it was, he was lying to himself as well.” There's a brief pause as Steve takes Natasha’s empty plate to the sink. "This is a classic case of bargaining, Tony. He is stuck, he can't let go of what was lost. It’s perfectly normal but the opposite of productive.” He sighs, wiping away stray crumbs. “I understand how he feels, you know? I could have told him that if he had come to me first."
"Do you understand how he feels? Or did you just assume that before you put him in a room with Blip survivors?”
Steve shakes his head with a kind of practiced resignation. "We're all Blip survivors," he says. "I told him there was a place for people dealing with loss, one where he could express his grief in a safe environment. I thought that hearing other people’s experiences might help him open up but in the end, he didn't say a single word." Silence trails after him again, cold and empty as the streets below. "It happens more often than you'd expect,” he adds, “first sessions are never easy. I guess he just needs a little more time."
Tony doesn't reply. He suddenly becomes very aware of blood pulsing in his ears like distant waves crashing against an invisible shore. “Were you living under a rock the year after the Blip? Even if you were, didn’t you think he deserved to know where he was going? Didn’t you think he might feel just a bit guilty about what happened in Wakanda?”
This time, his voice could have cut glass. A ripple crosses the calm surface behind Steve’s eyes as his lips press into a hard line. "Of course he does,” he replies eventually. “We all do, but we move on from that too. We have to. It's the only way we survive."
He pulls a stained glass pot towards himself and busies his hands with a paper filter. Tony stands rooted to the spot, watching him put on a new batch of coffee. Anger coarses through him, the same visceral anger that poured out unrestrained when he returned to Earth. He had come to regret it over time and yet, here he is, dangerously close to doing the same thing all over again. The urge is almost overwhelming as he unclenches his hands and counts to ten.
"For what it's worth,” he hears Steve say over the murmur of boiling water, “I think it worked. Even if he didn't talk, it definitely helped him collect his thoughts."
Tony swallows a hard lump in his throat. "Yeah? Did he tell you that? Did you even ask?"
Steve’s shoulders rise under a beige shirt. "He wasn't in a talking mood back then. But that’s okay, I wanted to give him space to process everything.” He drums his fingers on the table as the first dark drop lands on the glass bottom of the pot. “Sometimes we need to watch others walk before we can run. It’s not supposed to be easy."
"Have you heard from him since? Did he say where he was going?"
“Like I said, he wasn't in a talking mood.” Steve looks up in puzzlement as Tony shoves the damaged cupcake box in the fridge and moves towards the door. “Hang on, where are you going?”
Tony fumbles with his phone, flicking through several screens in increasing frustration. It takes him a few moments to remember he can no longer check air traffic from it. He has reverted back to an older model, one that does not carry FRIDAY’s gentle voice or her efficiency. He did not realize how much he missed that.
He did not miss the power armor. But it would cut his travel time in half.
He stops, trying to recall the code to the suit stored away two floors below him. “To see a friend,” he replies and walks out, right as the red light of the training room switches back to green.
The sky grows darker as Tony approaches his destination.
It isn't just the natural lack of sunlight that Norway has to deal with during the long winter months. The country lies six hours ahead of New York and the day grows shorter as he speeds through thick, gray clouds, grateful for the heating system in the armor. Ice crystals keep building up over his faceplate and he hears them scape the metal surface as they slide off. His sensors tell him the air outside is at twenty-six degrees Fahrenheit, which isn't unusual for the end of February. Still, he is beginning to long for the sun as it dips further behind the horizon.
He glances at a long list of unanswered calls lining up on his visor. He has been trying to reach Bruce for hours but his phone is either turned off or critically out of range. The latter is a common occurrence when he locks himself in the lab and though Tony can hardly pass judgment, he finds himself grumbling at his timing. He doesn't have any contacts in New Asgard and Bruce is the only one who's been there enough times to point him in the right direction. Without him, Tony's best bet is to land on foreign soil, very late in the evening, among people who do not know him and start knocking on doors until he finds someone willing to help.
All of that proves unnecessary in the end. Thor's new home on Earth stands exactly where the rumors said it would be.
It still takes Tony a while to spot it on his way down. The lonely hill rising over the village of New Asgard lies under a thick blanket of snow which doesn’t seem to touch the roofs of the houses below. It is also beset by an oddly localized blizzard that rocks him from side to side when he walks up the gentle slope towards a small wooden cabin at the very top. Every once in a while, he stumbles over a root or the remains of a stump. Soon enough, his eyes find an irregular outline of pine trees etched against the night sky less than fifty feet away. They grow close together, holding armfuls of snow as they sway and shudder under the inclement weather. The stark wind blowing through their branches sounds almost melodic.
A thin sheet of frost cracks beneath the metal fist when he knocks on the heavy oak door. He repeats the process a few more times before giving up and trying to let himself in. His efforts are thwarted when he finds the hinges stuck fast, encrusted with ice to the point of practically disappearing beneath it. After a few seconds under the lowest setting on his repulsors they thaw and let out a low moan as he pushes the door open.
He calls out for Thor before stepping through the doorway. He gets no answer.
It is freezing cold inside the cabin, despite the windows being intact. There is barely any furniture except for a wardrobe ravaged by woodworms, a narrow bed, and a table pushed against a wall. Empty soup cans pile up on top of it. Colorful candy wrappers he doesn't recognize lie scattered across the floor mixing with pale ash that spills out of a small fireplace. It hasn't been lit in a long time. He finds no firewood around either.
His eyes settle on a nearly empty plastic bottle. Under these conditions, it should have frozen solid but when he turns it over, water drips onto the floor, scurrying away between the cracks in the wood. Thor was here, he thinks. Probably not long ago. Six or seven hours at most.
He lowers himself on the bed and hears it creak in protest under the weight of the power suit. At the same time, a crackling sound from under the blankets catches his attention. When he pulls them aside, several empty pill blisters tumble to the floor and land between his feet.
They are a Norwegian brand of a potent sleeping pill. He knows that because FRIDAY, in her infinite wisdom, finds the information faster than he can ask. Or because she knows that he is afraid to. Just as he's afraid to pull the blankets further when he hears another telltale crackle as he shifts his weight on the bed.
He leaves the room without looking and lets the wind slam the door shut.
Outside the blizzard is starting to settle down. The heavy snowfall that had clouded his vision on his way up has dissolved into sparse white flakes calmly drifting from the indigo sky. A crescent moon hangs over him and he scans the snow for footsteps, knowing full well he is wasting his time. Any tracks would have been snowed over long before he got to the cabin, the same goes for any mark the Bifrost could have left behind. He doesn't even know if Stormbreaker works that way. At this point, he doesn't know anything, only that his hands are steadily gathering cold sweat under the power armor and his chest is a hollow drum. His thoughts, usually shouting over one another, slink away one by one into terrified silence.
He might need us at some point and we wouldn’t even know.
That was what he said last time he saw the Bifrost seal burnt into the lawn in front of the Compound. But Tony knew. Of course, he knew, and it made no difference whatsoever.
Who is he to argue with Steve, he seethes as FRIDAY’s infrared scan sweeps the trees ahead. Steve tried. So did Bruce two years ago. Where was Tony all this time?
He barely knows the answer himself. The year that followed the Blip, as well as the next two float in bits and pieces in his head and they have been cobbling themselves together these past months. They say depression can give you memory loss and whoever they are, Tony absolutely believes them. He has come to see it as a survivor instinct, a way for the mind to protect itself by erasing the bits that keep it from functioning. The human brain could be remarkable like that.
He doesn’t have a human brain, remember?
The moonlit snow blanketing every inch of the lonely hill blurs before his eyes. In the distance, the trees hum a familiar song, branches swaying in the dark. They all must find a way of dealing with their grief, he thinks numbly. Otherwise, the woods come calling.
A blue dot blinks in the upper corner of his visor. A second later, his helmet is flooded with persistent static as someone on the other end of the comm demands his attention. Tony feels his breath catch. He knows the cadence of that particular interference by heart. He has been trying to work around it for years.
"Thor?”
The fearful hope in his voice is met by another wave of static. The signal is weak, very weak, and Tony wonders if it is coming from the same comm they were using during their final battle against Ultron. If so, it is a small miracle it was still working, not to mention that it was even compatible with the suit’s upgraded interface.
"Thor?” he calls out again, trying in vain to isolate anything resembling speech from the deafening noise. “Is that you? Talk to me!"
The signal wavers, threatening to fade completely. It stabilizes for a less than a second, just in time for a single word to slip through. “Stark…”
"Thor! Goddamn it, where are you?" Tony finally manages to locate the GPS ID of the comm and curses under his breath when he realizes how far away he is from it. "Never mind, just keep the channel open and stay put! I'm triangulating your position..."
He pauses, skimming the data before his eyes and blinks as he forces himself to re-examine it. He must be undercaffeinated or unused to processing a lot of information quickly. Or just plain tired because there is no way he is reading that right.
But FRIDAY doesn’t make mistakes. And all of the satellites drifting in a merry-go-round across Earth’s orbit can’t be conspiring to throw him off his mark. He is definitely staring at the same spot in an isolated Sokovian mountain range where Strucker’s base used to be. And it fills him with nothing but apprehension.
"What the hell?” he breathes. “What are you doing there?"
The storm that roars in his helmet loses its rage as the signal grows stronger. Thor’s next words come through clear enough for him to catch the bone-deep exhaustion in his voice. "Come meet me and I will explain."