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When the Stars Went Quiet
“The stars sound like bells,” Tony says.
Maria smiles down at him. “Do they?”
Tony turns to blink up at her guilelessly. “Can you not hear it?”
She sighs, long and slow and sad, and then sinks down to kneel in front of him, cupping his cheek and smoothing her thumb gently over the baby fat there. “No,” she says softly. “Not anymore. When you choose to be bound to a surface, you lose the ability to hear the universe.”
“Oh,” Tony says. “I’m sorry, Mama.”
Maria smiles again. There isn’t even a bit of regret on her face as she answers, “Don’t be sorry. Giving up the universe was my choice. I don’t regret it.”
(Tony doesn’t realize, until years later, that she didn’t regret it because she got him instead.)
Tony doesn’t know how his mother ever gave up the universe. He loves the sound it makes, loves the lights it gives off, loves to see the dark spots where light can’t reach. The planets glow in a different way for him. He spends hours after Jarvis has put him to bed staring out the window, watching dust storms swirl and rings of comets glitter around gaseous bodies. Howard always wakes him up in the morning, brushes fingers through his curls and murmurs, “Your mother had stars in her eyes when I met her, too.”
Howard doesn’t have stars in his eyes. He doesn’t know what icy comets look like as they rush by, glittering and glinting in the light of their star. He can’t hear the bells. He’d never been able to. Tony stares up at him with wonder, because he can’t imagine not falling asleep to the sound of the stars.
His parents die when he's twenty-one, and he leaves after the funeral. No one sees him for five months. Just before Obadiah starts proceedings to make himself CEO of Stark Industries, Tony reappears, straightening his tie as he walks into the building, plastic smile in place and hands full of specs for new weapons.
(“These are new,” Rhodey murmurs, gently tracing his thumb over the bridge of Tony’s nose, over the freckles there. “Where were you? Someplace sunny?”
Tony thinks of the stars and smiles. “Yeah.”
“Take me with you next time,” Rhodey orders gently. “I was worried about you.”
“‘kay,” Tony says, then sits up to look down at him. “Rhodey? You ever heard cathedral bells?”
Rhodey raises an eyebrow. “No? Can’t say we were near many cathedrals… ever.”
“They sound nice,” Tony says.
“Guess you’ll have to take me to listen then, huh?” Rhodey asks, and then, “When was the last time you had a burger?”
And Tony smiles with too-white teeth and too-bright eyes and answers, “Ages!”)
A bomb blows up in his face and Tony bleeds. A man puts together a machine to keep him from dying and for all that Tony loves him for it, he hates him, too.
“Did you know the stars sound like bells?” Tony asks one night, water still dripping from his hair.
Yinsen looks at him, but Tony doesn’t stop staring at the ceiling. He can’t hear anything down here. Sometimes, if he strains, he can hear a chime. But it isn’t the same as if he was out in open air. “I wasn’t aware,” he says. “Space is a vacuum, after all.”
“If it wasn’t, we’d hear the sun,” Tony explains, holding his hand up toward the dark stone ceiling, as if he can reach through it. “At about one hundred and twenty decibels. For reference, if you stood a meter away from a train and it blew its horn, that would be one hundred and twenty-five decibels. The frequency of the sun is about ten million different piano notes, and they chime like cathedral bells.”
Yinsen is quiet for a long, long time before he softly asks, “Have you heard the bells?”
“Howard always said I had stars in my eyes,” Tony replies, and then didn’t say more for the rest of the night.
There are no more caves when Tony is rescued; just a smoking crater where they’d been. Scientists posit that the Jericho was too much for the structure and it collapsed. Tony lets them believe that.
(“You really do have stars in your eyes,” Yinsen breathes around a mouthful of blood.
Tony just holds him, eyes sad but bright with light.
“Do you suppose I’ll be able to hear the bells, wherever I go?” Yinsen asks.
Tony smiles sadly. “You’re made of stardust. Don’t humans always say you go back to whence you came? You’re not just of the Earth. You’re of time and space, too.”
Yinsen smiles, and then he doesn’t, and Tony lets him go and wishes he’d been able to give him more comfort.)
The Avengers come and with them comes a nuclear warhead. Tony flies it into space.
Come home, come home
Tony stares up at the alien spaceships in horror even as he lets the bomb go.
Come home, come home
It explodes before his eyes, but he knows Earth isn’t ready for what’s coming.
Come home, come home
“No,” Tony says, and falls back through the portal back to Earth, back to where his mother set her feet and raised him to hear the stars’ endless peals.
(“You okay, Stark?” Fury asks days later.
Tony stares at him, fingers tapping along his coffee mug. There are freckles over Fury’s nose just like his, a glint in his remaining eye. “Do you hear the bells, Director?” Tony asks instead of answering him, because he doesn’t know.
Fury smiles sadly, says nothing, and turns to walk away. Tony wonders if he could but gave the gift away. Wondered if he didn’t, but could hear it now. It’s none of his business, he decides, and turned back to his computer.)
The Avengers leave, and in their wake leave him hating Earth for a moment. But just a moment, because when he comes back to Stark Tower, Pepper is there, and she smiles, and he smiles back.
“I had a dream,” he says.
Pepper’s smile widenes.
(“The stars sound like bells,” Morgan says one day.
Tony smiles at her, heart aching as he remembers the way his own mother smiled at him. “Do they?”
Morgan turned to stares up at him guilelessly. “Can you not hear it?”
Tony kneels beside her, reaches out to grab her tiny shoulders, rubs them gently with his thumbs. “No,” he said. “Not anymore. When you choose to be bound to a surface, you lose the ability to hear the universe.”
“Oh,” Morgan says sadly. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“The stars never sounded as beautiful as your and your mother’s voices,” Tony promises, and means it.)
Thanos comes for them, and Tony is wearing a gauntlet.
“I am inevitable,” Thanos says.
Nothing is inevitable, the dark spaces in the universe say, spaces where stars and galaxies existed and don’t anymore, sucked into a singularity. Tony can hear them, and his heart swells, wondering if his mother heard them before her throat was crushed. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing. Nothing.
“And I am Iron Man,” Tony says, and snaps.
(“It’s okay, Tony,” Pepper says, trying to smile and mostly succeeding. “You can rest now.”
Tony looks at her.
“It’s okay, Tony,” Pepper says again, tears rolling down her cheeks. “We’ll be okay.”
Come home, come home, the stars whisper. Come home, come home
“You’ve left me the stars,” Pepper whispers, just for them, so quiet no one else can hear it. “Please, Tony. You can rest now.”
“I’ll be here,” Tony whispers back. “I’ll watch over you.”
Pepper laughs, a sad, wet thing. “Do you even know what a vacation is?”
The corner of Tony’s lips tips into a smile, and his breath shudders over something that could have been a laugh, but also could have been a sob.)
“Morgan, what are you doing out here?” Pepper exclaims angrily, storming out of the house. It’s midnight. She should have been in bed.
Pepper still has night terrors about people disappearing. She’d just barely kept herself from having a meltdown when she stumbled into the living room and Peter, visiting on break, had sat up with a startled snort. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to tell Morgan how awful the time After The Snap was. She knows she doesn’t want to.
“Morgan,” Peter scolds. “If you had a bad dream, you should have woken me up!”
Morgan points one finger up at the sky. “That one’s Daddy.”
Pepper jerks her head up to follow where she’s indicating. A star winks at her. The laugh it startles out of her is wet.
“What?” Peter asks as Pepper picks Morgan up and holds her close, pressing a kiss into her hair.
“Did you know the stars sound like bells?” Pepper asks him, and when he looks bewildered, she wraps an arm around his shoulders to lead him back inside. “Let me tell you about it.”