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“We failed.”
This is a dream, Tony knows. This is just a dream. The sky above him is a deep, dark red, the colour of sunset and rust and drying blood. The other world looms above them, impossibly large, impossibly close, as if one could reach out and touch its surface. The incursion device shines like a spotlight from his palm, red numbers blinking 00:00:00, a countdown that was never supposed to reach its end.
“Just like we feared we would.”
A nameless city in ruins. Countless bodies litter the ground, friends and lovers and familiar faces, the little family he had. He wonders how many of them didn’t hate him, in the end.
“Just like she said we would.”
The end of the world is nothing new. Everything dies, isn’t that what Reed kept on telling them? Everything dies, died, will die—no one knew that better than people like them, so occupied with the future they forget to care about the present. It is his burden as a futurist to live not only with what’s past, but with all that could come to be. This is a dream he’s had before.
“Just like he knew you would.”
He feels blood caked onto his skin, between his fingers, underneath his broken nails, and a sensation like a battering ram hits his chest.
He thinks of his lungs, the constricting passageway of his airways as he struggles to breathe.
He thinks of his old, tired heart, beating, beating, its uneven palpitations thrumming in his ears.
Tony is on his knees on the ground, in the middle of a broken street, kneeling before one corpse in particular.
“We failed, because when have we not, when it truly mattered,” says a man who has his face, and his voice, and his armor. The man who is him but not him sits upright against a concrete block that used to be a wall in front of Tony, a crumpled heap of scrap metal and man. A twisted piece of rebar impales him through the arc reactor, the metal piercing him and bursting from his chest like a grotesque flower. The helmet is nowhere to be found.
“Everyone died because you failed, Tony,” it is saying, and to call it odd to speak with your own corpse is a criminal understatement, but Tony finds it difficult to feel anything like grief, or even disgust. Tony finds it difficult to feel anything, only an empty numbness in his chest. Perhaps it’s that being inundated with these fears, these visions, on a near-constant basis, has inured him from the worst of it. Familiarity breeds contempt, and his nightmares are nothing less than his loyal companions.
(“The thing about repetition is if you witness something enough times, you begin to pick up on incremental differences,” he remembers someone saying. McCoy, he thinks. Tony can’t yet see what’s different about this one.)
He stands in front of his dead (dying?) double, and says: “This is just a dream. This is not real.”
The corpse lifts its head up from the ground to look at him, revealing in place of its eyes two pitch-black hollows, void so dark as to be impenetrable, and Tony flinches, takes an uncertain step back. Something stirs in his heart like fear at the sight of it, so maybe he isn’t so insensate from it all yet.
“Isn’t it?” the corpse says, and with the disjointed logic of dreams, Tony finds himself holding the cracked helmet of the armor in his hands. A jagged slash cleaves through the faceplate, running down one side of its face. The eyeholes are dead and empty. “Or maybe you are having this dream because it is fated?”
“There’s no such thing,” Tony replies.
“Numbers do not lie. You’ve run simulation after simulation, cataloguing incursions, observed the end of our world so many times you’ve lost count. And every time, Rabum Alal takes his tribute," the corpse replies. “What would you call that, if not fate?”
“I won’t let it happen,” Tony says. “I—I’ll stop it.”
The corpse tilts its head, and smiles, the set of its mouth curved with cruel mirth. “You will stop it? But since when have you ever been able to protect anything precious to you?” it barks, with genuine laughter in its voice.
(this is a dream) (this is a dream I’ve had before) (this is a dream I’ll always have)
Tony looks down at his hands, and the Iron Man helmet he held is gone, replaced suddenly with Steve’s decapitated head. He screams.
*
He has an idea running through his mind. A number of ideas. Too many of them, or perhaps they are all just the one? It gets stuck in his head, one idea, or an infinity of them, like a bug that crawls in his ear, and it infects everything, consumes everything.
The Black Swan sits in a cold, glass box, facing away from him, sitting in a meditative pose. Tony mirrors her on the other side of the glass, taking his seat against the wall, drawing his knees up to his chest. He hides his face, head bowed down on his folded arms. His own skin feels warm to him, almost feverish.
In the dark, twilight gloom of Necropolis, he begins to realise the prison they have built out of these ruins did not discriminate between those who were meant to be kept here, and those who had lost their way out.
*
Tony is on his knees, and battle rages around him. A dizzying array of flashing colour and noise, the sound of clashing steel, Thor’s thunder and Ororo’s lightning roaring through the heavens and the rust-red sky. It is the chaos of all-out war, Avengers alongside X-Men and everyone in between, all of Earth’s mightiest heroes putting up one last, desperate front against the end of the world. It is the Sidera Maris and the Mapmakers—no, it is Thanos and his Black Order—no, no, it is the Builders, with their Alephs and their World-breakers, razing everything in sight…
It was—it is—so much death and destruction and the great wheel grinding—
There is something wrong in all of it, how the end of the world is so familiar that it feels routine. The thing about repetition—if you witness something enough times—
How many times can he be made to see this before something breaks beyond repair? (It is impossible to bleed indefinitely.)
“Tony, move!” a voice comes from his left, before Steve Rogers smashes into him and pushes them both behind the cover of a collapsed building. Some great red beam of energy blasts the spot where Tony had been moments before into rubble and scorch marks behind them. The explosion leaves his ears ringing, rendering the words Steve is shouting at him unintelligible for several moments.
“—ony! Tony!” he yells, grabbing Tony by his shoulders and shaking him. Steve’s lost his helmet somewhere, and Tony sees the fine of line of blood trickling down from a cut on his temple, another on his jaw, fine dust from debris falling out of his hair. Steve holds him upright, and he traces one hand on the contour of the armor helmet until his fingers caught on a latch. Suddenly, the faceplate pulls up, snapping Tony out of his daze. The air is dry and scalding hot on his bare face, like the warmth of a live forge, tasting like ash and fire in the back of his throat. The world around them is burning, burning down.
He takes deep, gulping breaths of air. A hand stays on his shoulder as he pulls himself together.
“Tony, what happened? Are you hurt?” Steve asks, his voice hoarse.
“We’re losing, aren’t we,” he replies, and the cadence of his words kills any sort of inquiry in them. Steve’s grim expression is answer enough. Tony pulls up his left palm; the incursion warning device emits a glowing set of red numbers, 00:22:57 and counting.
Steve’s mouth is a thin, hard line, and he doesn’t meet Tony’s eyes as he speaks. “We’ve lost Hyperion, Magneto, Hulk, Strange, Logan, Smasher... Carol’s group hasn’t reported back and our comms are down.”
“Thor can’t hold them all off on his own forever,” Tony replies. “The armor is still alive. I can give air support, buy enough time for some of us to escape.”
“We can’t retreat,” Steve says. There is anguish on his face, but it is a determined sort of grief, the expression of someone who's already accepted the inevitable and knew his place within it.
Tony grits his teeth, and he can feel frustrated tears welling up in his eyes. It repeats and it repeats, and there are slight differences within each iteration, but it always ends the same. “We can’t win. We can't win but you still saved me.”
"Of course I saved you," Steve says, sounding not a little impatient. "Did you want me to just let you die?"
"Just—I betrayed you," Tony replies. "You hate me."
"None of that matters now."
"I thought if I sacrificed enough, I could save everyone, but I only ended up hurting you."
“You’re not asking for forgiveness.”
“I’m not deserving of anything like it.”
Steve holds Tony's face in both hands so that their eyes met. "There’s barely anything left to protect, but I’m still going to fight. I’m going to fight, until I can’t fight anymore,” he says. “We can fight, side by side.”
There is no measure of distrust or anger in Steve’s eyes, the old ills and betrayals if not forgotten, then at least set aside. Those arresting blue eyes look into his, the blue of the clear skies he's so dearly missed, and Tony finds he can hold his gaze. Tony leans forward, touching their foreheads together, and closing his eyes, nods.
(If you witness something enough times, you begin to notice the incremental differences. This iteration is kinder than most, he thinks.)
They rejoin the fight, and it would require far more time, some many more years of estrangement before he could forget how to fight alongside Steve… though of course, the only reason he’s allowed to do as much is because they have no time. Many of the armor systems are already offline, but the repulsors still work, sounding off a high-pitched whine as he puts up both palms to fire at the enemies at Steve’s back, while Steve throws the shield like a discus to behead the enemy over Tony’s shoulder. There’s a barrage of fire, a flying assist, a concentrated repulsor beam that Steve deflects with his shield to the enemies that surrounded them.
A dark figure flies above them, a heavy golden mask with great horns and a single giant eye engraved on its face resting upon its shoulders. Its large voluminous cloak casts its shadow over them—a Black Priest. Tony aims a shot of repulsor fire at its head, but a hand emerges from beneath its cloak, thin, long fingers curled like the legs of a dead spider. With a small gesture, it deflects the repulsor fire back to his palm.
“Tony!” he hears Steve yell. Tony draws back his left hand with a choked gasp, electrical burns shooting up his arm as the repulsor node overloads, and he struggles to take the armor off it. His left hand is numb with the pain, blood beading through the skin like sweat, and it’s hard to breathe for the agony of it. The figure in the golden mask prepares to fire a second shot, a violent sphere of energy concentrating at its forehead, and Tony meets its single, unblinking eye, when Steve is suddenly in front of him, the shield held up to deflect the beam.
There are variables in each scenario, but it always ends the same. Steve holds up the shield, but instead of ricocheting, the shot pierces through the indestructible shield to hit its mark, the white star upon his chest. Tony feels his heart stutter as the shield falls to the ground, followed the next second by Steve collapsing to his knees. Tony reaches Steve before he falls on his front, but he is already gone by the time Tony catches him. Tony embraces Steve in his arms, holds him near, and waits for the rest of the world to end.
*
The bridge of his nose is broken. Subconjunctival hemorrhage in his left eye. Fractured collarbone, some bruised ribs. Lacerations on his upper arm and hand, dislocated left wrist. His physical injuries are not his main concern.
There’s an idea running through his mind, overwhelming, all-consuming—
Steve was always going to find out, he thinks.
The room is silent, its occupants immobile, all but one by circumstance rather than choice. Huddled against the wall, Tony finds the quiet oppressive, echoing through the halls as loud as any noise. He fidgets in place, and his eyelids flutter, and his body shakes with fine trembling.
Still, he doesn’t move from where he’s sitting. The Swan looks at him from within her glass prison, smiling, always smiling. She does not open her mouth but her voice rings clear in his head, clear as day.
“There was everything,” she says, “followed by nothing.”
The unnatural acceleration of their end, Reed had said. A death trillions of years into the future, after all the stars have died, after all the black holes have evaporated, and the universe empty save for lonely subatomic particles, separated by inestimable distance, left over to wander the infinite dark. Entropy increasing until heat death… and in death, equilibrium.
What can he do, if that death is now at their doorstep?
*
Tony is on his knees in a desert, an endless desert of sand the color of bleached bone, the grains so fine they run through his fingers like water, and there is nothing but sand for the miles and miles that he can see. The ruined city is gone, the corpse, the strewn bodies, but the sky is still the same dark red. The air is dry on his skin, but feels neither warm nor cool, and more instead as though it has no temperature. He looks down at his left hand; the device in his palm is dead, the glass plating cracked.
He is alone.
It repeats.
This is still only a dream.
Something moves up above that catches his eye, and he looks up at the sky to see not one other earth, but hundreds, thousands upon thousands of worlds twinkling brightly, ominously, from the monstrous orb that eats up half the sky to the farthest pinprick of light, all with the same promise. Infinite worlds, he’s said so himself. Infinite worlds he will have to destroy to protect the one. Infinite realities in which he’s already failed to protect that which is most important to him. Tony’s eyes widen and something in his chest constricts at the sight of endlessness given form.
It is one thing to know that something has always been impossible, but another to see just how futile his efforts actually are. Tony curls in on himself, hands tearing at his hair, tears streaming down his face as he sobs.
“I’ve seen many earths die,” she says, when she finally appears over a tall dune, “and always, always on the worlds where a version of you exists, Anthony, you are an interesting constant. You are always a fool. You are always a coward. And always, it is worse in the ones where you love him.”
The Black Swan appears in front of him, and she does not leave footprints where she walks on the sand. Her silver-white hair spills about her shoulders like a waterfall.
“Get out of my head!” Tony roars, his face contorted, anger and grief warring for equal expression. His eyes bore daggers into her skin, but she merely continues to talk as if he had not spoken at all.
“It is an unending cycle of loss. Constants and variables exist with each iteration of the game, but the end result is the same,” she says, her voice soft. “The game of worlds is a zero sum.”
“There is nothing you can make me see that I haven’t seen already,” he says through gritted teeth. He feels nothing but contempt for the creature in front of him, not a swan but a vulture circling over carrion. “You can’t hurt me.”
“That is true. These are all dreams you’ve had before. But these are all realities I have seen unfold. If you witness something enough times, you can see what remains the same,” she replies, eyes gleaming with cold fire. “Sooner or later, you will have to stop running.”
Steve was right after all. They can’t afford to compromise. He must find a way out, to break out of the cycle of death instead being a cog within it. He has to find a solution—there has to be a solution. If Steve is wrong, then everything is already lost...
The Black Swan smiles, baring her teeth, and as though she can read his thoughts, says, “Do you want me to tell you what of the worlds where he loves you back?”
Tony clenches his fist. “I know what I have to do. You can’t break me,” he says.
“Good,” the Black Swan replies, and a howling wind arises and picks up the sand around them, a whirling storm swallowing them both, obscuring everything, even the dark red sky and its many earths. Yet, even when he cannot see anything but the white sand, her voice is clear through the tempest. “The game,” she says, “cannot be played without its players.”
*
Tony wakes, but he does not move, nor does he open his eyes. His left hand is balled into a fist; the device in his palm thrums softly, its alarm like a soft heartbeat. He closes his hand tighter, fingernails digging painfully into his palm. He knows that when he opens his eyes, he will see the red light glowing through his clenched fingers.
“In this life or the next, there is no refuge to be found, anywhere,” a voice says.
Slowly, he opens his eyes, and uncurls his hand. The Black Swan stands in the center of her glass prison, staring squarely at him. Her expression is blank, without its usual mocking edge.
“I’m not trying to find refuge,” he says, tiredly.
“Then where does your resilience come from?” she then asks, sounding genuinely curious.
He can say any number of things. Loss and suffering. Some chance at forgiveness. A pair of blue eyes flash in his mind, blond hair and broad shoulders, a shield. Tony doesn’t speak any of them out loud, but instead finally musters up the strength to stand. He walks out of the room without looking back.