Chapter Text
PLAN A
You lock eyes with Stephen across the battlefield. Bitter understanding passes between the two of you, and he sends a tired and knowing look as he nods at you.
His cape, for all its sentience, throws itself forward in a last-ditch effort to assist the two of you, struggling to hold Thanos' fingers apart and keep him from snapping. You lunge towards it, just barely managing to pry the Time Stone from its position in the gauntlet in the few milliseconds gained by the cape for you.
The Titan's eyes widen in horror and he moves to use the Reality Stone to stop you, but it's too late. Green light fills the air, filtering out of the Stone and looking like stars and constellations as it fills the sky with a green hue, before condensing into a beam that shoots into your chest. You're pulled into the air, levitating as you soak in the power of an Infinity Stone, gasping for breath. Your vision goes in and out, flashes of scenes from the past coming to the forefront.
You and Stephen, discussing, before the battle.
"You've got the Time Stone, can't we use that? Go back in time to prevent this, or something?"
"No can do. Time is a fragile thing, a tear in the loop would rip the threads of reality apart."
"Isn't there any way..."
You're pulled away from the scene before the discussion can finish and sent to another.
"Dad?" Your horror grows as you move to his still body on the ground. "Dad!"
"Boss is unconscious, not dead," FRIDAY informs you, the gentleness and relief in her voice showing just how much AIs are like real people.
You pick Tony's body up off the cold floor of the abandoned Siberian bunker, glad that you at least got there soon enough that he was still alive and could be saved.
It continues, bits and pieces of the past slipping into your conscious as you are steadily pulled into darkness, each memory growing slowly dimmer.
"Miss Stark, thank you for joining us." A meeting after your father's kidnapping, in which you pass the appointment of CEO to the then-trustworthy Obadiah Stane—a failure in judgement you will forever regret. "Natalie Rushman." Meeting a woman who changed your life in more ways than you can count. "This is Laura, and these are my kids, Cooper and Lila." In which a friend introduces you to his family, swearing you to secrecy as to the matter of their existence. "Harley, Peter, if you don't want to work in the lab I'm sure Y/n and Pepper will have no qualms with giving you papers to file." Where your dad uses the threat of you and your pseudo-mother figure to corral two teenage boys into not acting up.
Each memory is darker and harder to make out than the last, until finally you see nothing but hear your father's voice as you struggle to maintain coherence.
"Sleep tight, kiddo. There are more dragons to fight tomorrow morning, alright?"
As darkness envelops you, it seems that the request you made of the Time Stone is bound to be ignored and denied, instead sending you into death. But as a shrill beeping of your alarm cuts through the air, and you force yourself to open your eyes to find the darkness that of your bedroom in the old Malibu mansion, you realize that it was instead approved.
Take me back to the beginning.