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The Dusting had been one of the worst days of Tony’s life. Having Peter (his boy, Peter was his even if he was legally May’s and not actually related to him) and T’Challa (his ally in pushing for the Accords, even if they didn’t always see eye to eye on...certain offers of asylum) and Stephen Strange (also an ally, one who understood and had lived Tony’s aversion to magic) turn to Dust before his eyes, Rhodey losing the use of his legs, and Pepper… Pepper…
Pepper hadn’t been Dusted, but she had been flying at the time, on the way to visit Stark Industries in China, when her pilot and co-pilot had turned to Dust in the cockpit. She and the rest of her un-Dusted staff didn’t survive the crash.
And when Tony had been saved and brought back to Earth with Nebula (his daughter in spirit, he only wished any daughter of his could be half as strong as her), and had found out about Pepper’s fate? He s h a t t e r e d.
Tony found the bottom of the bottle again, and the bottom of the next, and the next, until he was awash in a haze of booze and engineering binges that never led him to anything productive. They only made him remember, made him hurt.
Nebula dragged him out of his workshop, pulled bottles out of his hands, forced food down his throat, made him shower when he reeked, and poured him into bed to catch up on missed sleep.
She even stayed with him those nights, woke him up when nightmares plagued him, kept him company when the tears came.
Nebula was the reason that Tony crawled himself out of his bottles and began trying to live again.
When he had been sober for 2 months, Nebula brought him Harley, whose mother, sister, and uncle had all been Dusted. His aunt couldn’t take care of him, could hardly take care of herself, and was more than happy to sign guardianship over to Tony once he found out. His first son, the boy he was connected to (again, not by blood, though Tony would be proud to be Harley’s biological father) wanted to be with Tony when the entire world was crawling out of chaos around them.
Tony dumped all his booze the night Harley showed up at the Tower. He owed it to Harley, owed it to Nebula, owed it to Pepper to not piss his life away stuck in the could-have-should-have-beens.
Tony was a futurist, the futurist. Pepper would have been so disappointed that he had lost sight of that even if she wasn’t there beside him.
So Tony got back up. He took Harley in, invented with him, cared for him, helped him with his homework, and his life found a new equilibrium.
When Darcy Lewis made it to the Tower nearly 4 months after the Snap, Tony welcomed her in with open arms. Darcy had been Jane Foster’s intern and research assistant before being poached by Pepper and Stark Industries to take over as an Operations Manager for Stark R&D Department. She had been scheduled to go with Pepper to China on the day of the Snap, but had ended up taking a leave of absence before that to take care of her mother who had a stroke. The Snap didn’t change her mother’s new health needs, and so Darcy only returned to the Tower once she had everything squared away for her mother’s care with a nurse-friend of hers.
Darcy fit into Tony’s life with Harley (and Nebula when she was on planet) seamlessly. With Pepper gone, Tony had taken over Stark Industries again as CEO. Unfortunately, Pepper’s EA had gone down in the plane with her and Tony’s last EA was Pepper, so he didn’t have the heart to even attempt finding someone new. Instead, he gave control over his schedule to FRIDAY which, in hindsight, was probably not the best idea to give to an AI who wasn’t used to managing people. When Darcy got there, she took one look at Tony’s bloodshot, tired eyes as he rambled apologies for missing a meeting to his Board and Harley’s sullen, hurt avoidance at Tony’s lack of time to spend with him and wrested control of his schedule away from the AI.
Darcy may not be an astrophysicist, but she knew people. She knew how to handle them, how to schedule for genius and how to keep genius from going insane whether due to overwork or lack of self-care. She reconstructed Tony’s schedule from the ground up, building in time for Harley and Board meetings and inventing while not allowing him to sacrifice his health. She smirked and snarked back at him when he was sassy, didn’t get tired of his shit, and wasn’t scared away by the occasional nightmare fueled engineering binge, even when they ended up throwing off her perfectly curated schedule.
Darcy was stunning, and competent, and quick-witted, and caring, and it really came as no surprise when Tony started falling for her. He had a weakness for stunningly competent, beautiful women that could manage him within an inch of his life. But instead of allowing that realization to move them forward, Tony took a step back from their closeness, their banter.
He had Pepper, for as short a time as they had been together. Trying something with Darcy...it would be like forgetting her. Tony didn’t want to forget Pepper, even if he knew she would yell at him for even thinking about holding out for her when she was gone and there was someone he loved who could love him in return right in front of him.
The choice was taken out of his hands just shy of a month after his realization, just over a year and a half since the Snap.
Darcy was the one who came to him in the common room of the Tower, her two-weeks notice clenched in her shaking fist and tears in her eyes as she set it down on the island in front of him. “Tony, I — I’m sorry,” she choked out as he stared at her in confusion and alarm. “I just — I just can’t. ”
And Tony felt his heart rip in two in his chest. Plastering a smirk on his face, he flippantly waved a hand at her as he snarled, “No, no, it’s fine, Darcy, you don’t need to say it. I’m a handful, I know; I definitely don’t make your job easy. And being Iron Man as well as a CEO and having to deal with the fallout when my schedule blows up due to those things or even just due to me forgetting to leave my lab shouldn’t be in an EA’s job description. I just ask that you stay on to train your replacement, show them the ropes so they know what they’re getting into.”
Tony clenched his teeth as he smiled, hid his shaking hands beneath the tabletop as he felt his ripped and bleeding heart spark pain in his extremities, firing shockwaves of sadness along his nerves. He looked down at the tabletop, down at his dark tablet, and knew he should do something but before he could, Darcy’s hands slammed onto the table before him.
Flinching at the noise, Tony’s eyes snapped to hers and he was shocked to see pain and rage burning in her blue eyes.
“Tony, no. Listen to me; you are not too much to handle. You are a genius , a billionaire, a superhero, a philanthropist, and you do more for this country, for the world , in one hour than some people do in their entire lives ,” she snarled, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “But you are so much more than that. You are the man who cared so much about everyone else that he funneled most of his company’s funds into rebuilding infrastructure after the Snap even when he was still hurting, the man who took in an orphan and an alien assassin and a stupid Operations Manager with nothing more to her name than a Poli-Sci degree and an invalid mother and gave them a safe place, built them a home in this world after everything went to shit. ”
Darcy’s chest heaved with barely suppressed sobs as she grabbed Tony’s hand, willing him to believe her. Tears running thick and fast down her cheeks, Darcy confessed, “And that’s — that’s why I can’t work for you, can’t stay on as your EA when I’ve fallen so deeply goddamn in love with you that I can hardly breathe when you’re near me, I can’t think straight when you smile at me, or ask me a question, and I can’t handle seeing you everyday and knowing that I can’t compete with Pepper, and I don’t want to! I just…” Darcy trailed off, clamping the lid down tight on her emotions as she breathed deeply. Realizing she was gripping Tony’s hand hard, she loosened her grip immediately, slipping her fingers out of his as she finished on what was barely a whisper, “I just love you too much to see you everyday and know you will never be mine. And I’m sorry, Tony, I’m so sorry, but I’m not nearly selfless enough to keep working for you when my heart aches every time I’m near you.”
Tony stared at her in shock as her fingers left his and watched numbly as she stared back at him searchingly. As the silence stretched, Darcy seemed to collapse in on herself, Boulder hunching to her ears as pain flashed in her eyes. Turning her back to Tony, Darcy murmured, voice rough with suppressed sobs, “I would be more than happy to train my replacement, Mr. Stark. I will have a list of suitable candidates on your desk tomorrow.”
As she began to walk away, Tony felt his shock give way to hope so intense it felt like the first breath of air after drowning or like fire spreading through his limbs. Scrambling up from his seat, Tony sped after her with a choked, “Darcy, wait - “
Darcy froze as Tony’s hand grasped her shoulder and spun her around, eyes on the floor as tears ran black with mascara down her cheeks. Scrubbing her face viciously with her sleeve, Darcy mumbled, “Please, Mr. Stark — Tony — I have work to do, I—”
Tony cupped her face in his hands and tilted it up gently until her eyes met his. “Darcy, you didn’t give me a chance to respond,” he breathed over her lips and Darcy’s eyes widened in shock. “I love you, Darcy,” he replied and watched as Darcy’s blue eyes once more filled with tears. “I love you, and while you might be one of the best Executive Assistants I’ve ever had,” he joked lightly, an irrepressible grin flirting at his lips as Darcy smiled back at him tremulously, “I would much rather date you than be your boss, so if you could get me that list of replacements I would appreciate it. But not right now. Because right now, I am going to kiss you like I’ve been wanting to for so. Damn. Long.”
His first kiss with Darcy was nothing like his first kiss with Pepper. It wasn’t better, or worse, it was just different. And with Darcy’s blue eyes smiling up at him, shining with devotion and love , it was like Tony’s heart had figured out how to beat again.
Years passed, and Tony and Darcy weathered them together, eventually marrying and moving to a small cabin in the woods when Harley entered college. And when Darcy found out she was pregnant , found out they were having a little girl, there was only one thing they could name her: Morgan Virginia Stark , after Darcy’s mother and Tony’s first love, one of the most amazing women they had ever known.
And they were happy together, he, Darcy, and Morgan, in that cabin in the woods. And when Harley came home at breaks and Nebula dropped by between missions, Tony almost thought it was too good to be true, that having such happiness and contentment just couldn’t last.
He was right.
When Steve and Scott Lang came to him, asking about time travel and theorizing a way to reset the clock, Tony’s feelings warred between smothering hope and nearly all-consuming dread. What would this mean for the world? For those who had been Dusted, like Peter, and Stephen Strange, and T’Challa and everyone who had been gone in the blink of an eye?
What did it mean for those who had been left behind to pick up the pieces, like Darcy and Morgan and Harley and Nebula and Rhodey?
What was the right choice amidst a cavalcade of bad ones?
It was Darcy who convinced him, who found him after he had put Morgan to bed and returned to obsessing over the theoretical blueprints Lang had come up with.
“You have to, Tony,” she murmured, arms snaking around his waist as she pressed her face into his back. “You have to try. You would never forgive yourself if you didn’t, if you had the means to save all of them and you refused.”
Tony gripped her arms around his stomach and dropped his chin to his chest, eyes sliding closed as he breathed deeply. “You’re right,” he whispered. “I know you’re right, but…”
Darcy swung around in front of him, blue eyes accepting as they met his. “You don’t want to leave Morgan, leave Harley; you don’t want to run the risk of erasing this life we’ve built together,” she quietly stated, pressing a hand to his cheek. Tony leaned into it and hummed in agreement before pressing a kiss to her palm.
“End this, Tony. For the world,” Darcy smiled, eyes shining with tears she wouldn’t allow to fall.
“I love you 3000,” he replied, and Darcy chuckled as she pressed a chaste kiss to his lips.
“I know you do,” she tossed over her shoulder as she made her way out of his office. “Now get to work, husband. If anyone is going to crack the secret to time travel, it’s going to be you.”
Things moved fast after that. Tony was able to piece together the formula from Lang’s notes, was able to cobble together a working prototype that was only stable enough to give them one shot at the Infinity Stones. Tony messed up with Loki, but succeeded in retrieving the Space Stone after seeing his father again, but meddling with time led to repercussions they couldn’t foresee.
When Thanos came, Tony knew he had to go, had to fight. And when he had the chance, he used his nanotechnology to steal the Stones from Thanos and turn his own gauntlet into a weapon of Mass Destruction.
When he Snapped and reversed the devastation that had been wrought with the initial Dusting, Tony’s last thought before the pain nearly blinded him was of Darcy’s and Morgan’s blue eyes.
He watched, barely conscious, as Thanos dissolved into the very Dust he had condemned others too so many years and an alternate timeline ago. He tried valiantly to stay awake as Peter, so young, so alive, his boy was alive, crashed to his knees in front of him, sobs ripping from his chest as tears cut shining tracks in the spot on his face. Tony weakly smiled at his boy, before blinking slowly. When his eyes opened again, Darcy was there in the RESCUE armor he had made for her, those beautiful blue eyes she shared with their daughter lit with frantic, manic energy.
“Tony,” she breathed, eyes flicking all over his face, his body. “ Tony.”
Weakly, he lifted his left hand and Darcy grasped it in her own, pressing it to her lips as traitorous tears escaped from her eyes.
“Please stay, Tony. Stay with me. You don’t have to leave; everything is going to be fine. You’ll make it through this, you’ll be fine. Please ,” she choked out, tears thickening her words as her shoulders shook with silent sobs.
Tony hummed in his throat as a single tear escaped his eye. “I love you,” he rasped, brushing his thumb along her cheek. “Fuck, I love you so much, Darce, you and Morgan. But we both know I can’t. I’m not going to make it.”
A sob escaped Darcy then as she pressed her face into his hand, clutching it to her as she trembled. Tony blinked slowly again, eyelids weighing like tons as his vision started going dark at the edges.
“Hey, hey, Darce,” Tony slurred, pain making his tongue thick and cumbersome in his mouth. “I love you 3000.”
A started laugh burst from Darcy as her eyes met his once more. Pressing a kiss to his palm, Darcy forcibly steadied her breathing before smiling at her husband: genius, billionaire, superhero, philanthropist, father of her children, and the love of her life.
“I love you 3000, you brilliant man,” Darcy whispered. “Rest now, Tony. You’ve earned it.”
As Tony took his last breath there on the battlefield, Darcy gave herself a moment to mourn, then stood up. Helping a devastated Peter Parker to his feet (he was young, her husband’s other son, he would need her to be strong), Darcy turned her face to the horizon.
Tony was a futurist, the futurist, and it was up to Darcy now to carry on his legacy in this new world. She needed to get her Spider-son home, needed to call her other son, needed to check if Nebula was alright, and to see Morgan. There would be time to mourn later, but for now the future was calling. And she would do her utmost to make it a future Tony Stark would have loved to see.