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Voices in the Ether
(Part of the Endgame Homecoming Series)
"Tony...I don't know if you can hear us, but, we miss you. We'd like you to wake up, Morgan and Peter miss their Daddy, and Harley and Abigail, they miss Papa Tony."
Pepper was sitting at Tony's bedside, gently holding his unbandaged left hand as she talked, endlessly, about everything and nothing at all.
The doctors had said that it might help, to talk to him, that there were studies that indicated he could hear them. Nobody knew for sure. But, there wasn't much else they could do, so they all tried. Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, Pete, even Steve and Bruce came by occasionally, to help give the four of them a break. It had been ten days, and Cho, Strange, and Shuri had done all they could, physically, and Tony was actually recovering far better than anticipated. No-one was totally sure why, but Strange had theorized that the Infinity Stones had somehow helped mitigate the damage, because, medically, he had said that there was no way Tony should have survived.
Once they'd evacuated him from the compound with the help of Strange's portals, they were shocked he was even still alive, though barely, and the race to try and save Tony's life began. The organ damage was the biggest hurdle, but the radiation burns and radiation exposure were the most important to be dealt with quickly. Fortunately, Dr. Cho had been doing research on both Extremis and the Super Soldier serum's healing factors, having made breakthroughs in both. A modified version had been given to Tony via IV immediately, and the scans they'd run since were surprisingly hopeful. It was just a waiting and nursing game beyond that. There was an immediate question as to whether they would be able to save Tony's arm, but at that junction, the prognosis for at least some use was good. As with everything else, time would tell, ultimately.
And so Pepper found herself once again at Tony's hospital bedside, almost two long weeks into the ordeal, hoping against hope that he might wake up. She wondered, in the darkest moments, whether or not it was fair to do this to him. He had never really recovered from Afghanistan, much less the Chitauri wormhole, Ultron, and then The Blip, being lost on space while injured, fevered, and starving, not to mention losing Peter, Harley and Abigail...But then Pepper thought of their life at the cabin, the beautiful place they had built, and the young daughter Tony thought hung the moon. Surely he shouldn't have a Tolkien ending, not like Frodo, who saved the world, but not for himself. No, Tony deserved better. This was his chance at better. Pepper just had to hang onto that belief.
Hearing the door open behind her, Pepper turned to look, watching Steve quietly make his way into the hospital room. Pepper just nodded to him before getting up from her chair, slightly stiffly, as she stretched her arms above her head. The routine that had somehow settled into play made Pepper aware that the Super Soldier was there to give her a relief break.
"Thanks, Steve. Are you okay for a few hours here? I'd love to take a shower, and get a nap, but I don't want to inconvenience you, either?" Pepper asked, stifling a yawn.
Shaking his head to the contrary, Steve gave her a wan smile as he answered, "No, no, it's nothing Mrs. Stark, I'm happy to stay as long as I can help. Besides, we all owe him a debt that nothing can repay. A few hours of relief for you is the least I can do."
Pepper nodded her agreement, too tired to say much more, but she quietly laid her hand on his forearm with a gentle pressure for a moment just before she turned and left the room. There was still some awkwardness between Steve and Tony since the Civil War, but Pepper knew that the two men had mostly worked through it, and she was well aware of the soldier's good intentions. For her part, she had moved past what had happened along with her husband.
Steve settled down in the now vacant chair next to the bedside. He was unsure as to what all the modern medical equipment was, some of it bleeding edge technology, having been created by Dr. Cho only weeks prior to being used now. For much of it, Tony was the first human test subject. Feeling once again so very out of place in a world that had moved so far beyond his familiarity, Steve gave a tired sigh. He put his elbows on his knees, resting his head in his hands, and he slowly started to talk.
"Tony. I...I can't tell you how sorry I am. I was so very wrong about you, and I know we kind of moved beyond those first meetings...But I never told you how sorry I was, and still am. Because I didn't give you a chance. You were everything I grew up, well, not hating, but, not having any respect for, either. I thought you'd been given everything, and had worked for none of it. I-I know better. I've known better for a long time. I was wrong to say that you were the guy who wouldn't make the sacrifice play. Clearly, you made the absolute play...and this isn't the first time. You were always the first one to throw yourself into harms way on missions."
Steve pushed back from the chair, taking a short walk around the room, his blue eyes soft, but pained, shoulders slumped, clearly displaying his discomfort at the conversation. Having completed his circuit, he sat back down and resumed his soliloquay with a heavy sigh.
"And...I'm...sorry, about Bucky and your parents. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I shouldn't have left it to that, for you to find out in such an awful way, good grief, Tony, I'm so sorry. Now that he's back, I hope that someday you and Bucky can hash that stuff out, because he really *is* a good person, underneath what HYDRA did to him. Speaking of HYDRA...SHIELD/HYDRA told me so many terrible things about you when I first came out of the ice, but I should have trusted my own eyes, seen for myself the half-truths they told me, but I was blind. And I'm sorry." Once again, Steve quieted, trying to figure out how to phrase what he was going to say next. It was something he'd been considering for a long time, but had never tried to put into words before.
"I may be the leader of the Avengers, but you were always the father to all of us, in a way. I knew it as soon as you took that nuke into the worm hole...I just wasn't ready to admit it, yet." Steve shook his head, smiling despite the awkwardness of his confession.
"You always called me the Old Man, but, you sir, are far more of an Old Man than I am!" Steve broke off with a soft laugh, a smile briefly flitting across his face before sobering again.
"I may have been frozen for seventy years, but you were busy actually living those years. I hope that, one day, I'll be able to find someone to make a life with as good as the one you've created with Pepper and Morgan." Steve broke off again, his eyes coming up to gaze away from the bed and through the hospital window along the far wall. Any time he thought about Morgan, the guilt was almost enough to swallow him whole.
With a hard swallow, Steve went on. "I-I hope you wake up. Because despite what Pepper said, they DO need you. We all need you. And not just for the inventions, and the compound, and the financing. We need YOU, because you...you're an integral part of the team. Bucky and I need you, as hard as that may be to hear. We both grew up without fathers, and having someone around who, weirdly, kind of fits that bill? It just--it helps. Good grief, Tony, we need you to wake up. It's worth waking up. Take it from someone who's been there."
-oOo-
Another long and unproductive day had elapsed. Pepper had been forced to deal with a few emails and a couple of calls from the company that couldn't be handled by anyone lower on the totem pole, and Bruce had volunteered to give her a break. Pepper had finally relented, softly giving Tony's forehead a kiss, ever noting the papery feel of his skin and the pallor of days without natural sunlight.
Bruce had been returned to his "human" state shortly after the battle, the Big Guy having decided that integration was more than he could handle. The loss of Tony had shaken the Big Guy, and he needed time to process, leaving Bruce to his own devices. The scientist wasn't totally sure what to think about that development, but he decided that the necessary internal conversation could wait for a few weeks, at least. If nothing else, being in the guise of Dr. Banner made it easier on the hospital staff.
Someone had taken the time and effort to brings in a more comfortable chair, one designed to be slept in by families of the patients. Bruce was familiar with the style, and he sat on the very edge, leaning over and checking IV's, assuring himself that everything was situated properly with his friend before he settled and started talking.
"Tony, hey, I-we-we all miss you. It's just not the same in the lab...without you. The Big Guy misses you, too. He's always had a soft spot for you." Bruce trailed off, never much of a talker to begin with, in this instance he was even less sure about the situational etiquette.
Fiddling again with one of the IV lines, he finally let it go before going on. "I just wanted to tell you, Cho's discoveries, they, they really do work, Tony. My arm is almost healed up, and I thought for sure it was going to be a floppy mess for the test of my days after that snap. You've got to wake up so that you can appreciate it. It's definitely Science Bro's territory over here." Bruce paused, he was naturally a very quiet man, unused to talking so much, and he wasn't quite sure what else to say.
With a sigh, he tried to ramble on. "Hey, and my lab, you told me that you'd be by to collect on that, one day, well, Tones, it's that time. You've got to wake up, because I'm hogging all the science without you." Bruce once again found himself quieting. He got up from the chair, having found that it was somehow easier to talk if he was moving around. Slowly making lazy circles, gesturing with his hands as he spoke, Bruce went on.
"And, Tony, I've gotta tell you, I-I-I...I want you to wake up for, well, for selfish reasons, too. You did it, Tony, you made the life I used to think I was going to live. The wife and the kids and the house...Science at work, and then a family at home. Cookouts and drinking beers, watching stupid football games. Radiation Science and Physics by day, bedtime stories and baby-shampoo baths by night. You beat the odds, Tony! You and Barton both! You gave Barton his family back, and you've got to come home to yours now, too. For the ones of us who can't do it, we get to experience it through you. Come on, Tony, we need you to come back to us."
-oOo-
Harold "Happy" Hogan (lord how he HATED that nickname the Boss had stuck him with...) was not a talkative man. He was quiet, taciturn, borderline, well, grumpy...Especially if you asked Peter. That thought alone brought a sort of begrudging smile to the security guard's face. He loved the Kid, he really did, but, lord, he was insistent. It reminded him of someone else with a one track mind, an endless amount of determination, and the conviction that he's responsible for, the entire freaking Universe's safety...
Happy had been sitting in Tony's room for a solid half hour, and after his initial, "Hey Boss, I hope you're having a nice nap there, but maybe it's time to change up the scenery?" He couldn't think of much else to say.
Happy lived in his own head, it was a side effect of the job. See and be seen, but do not talk, do not socialize, blend into the background. That was the expectation of security personnel, especially with a high profile client. Happy was the hired muscle, the body guard, brought on after one of several kidnapping attempts that finally actually succeeded in at least taking Tony.
Tony had been twenty seven, and he'd been grabbed coming off his jet after his first really big arms demo for the Pentagon. He was held for ransom for nearly a week before he'd engineered his own escape. Obadiah's previous security firm hadn't been able to find Tony, and eventually Obadiah had agreed to pay the ransom.
Apparently that agreement had caused the kidnappers to get sloppy, allowing Tony a chance to escape before the drop off and exchange. The warehouse where he'd been held had suffered a "mysterious" explosion, and three of the five kidnappers were dead, one having been actually *strangled*. Tony might be a small statured man, but he was an ARMS MANUFACTURER and an expert in martial arts, with a 200+ genius IQ. Criminals were, at best, stupid, to mess with the man. But Obadiah had been insistent about new security.
Tony finally relented, and ended up meeting Happy by happenstance at the amateur boxing club Happy was running while looking for new boxing talent to promote. In his inimitably charming way, Tony had convinced Happy to join the ranks of SI security, and...The rest was history.
But that was a great many years ago, and Happy still found himself unsure of what to say to The Boss. Tony was more friend than employer, as the weird little quartet of Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, and Tony had become Tony's adoptive family over the years. But Happy's job had always been protection, he was the muscle, the large suit in the background. Ever present, but silent, watching, but never revealing. It was hard to overcome all that conditioning and his own taciturn nature.
In the end, Happy decided to turn on the TV, and he was pleased to find that PBS was airing Downton reruns again. Deciding that talking from the Crawley family was as good as anything he could come up with, Happy settled into the familiar position of bodyguard. He sat next to the too still, too silent, too bandaged figure in the bed, the cultured British voices mingling with the beeping cardiac monitors. As the hours went by, and Happy's "shift" was about to end with Rhodey taking up the vigil, Happy decided there was one thing he could think of to say.
"Come home to us, Boss. We've got a cheeseburger waiting with your name on it."
-oOo-
Rhodey had brought Peter, who was still working on getting his driver's permit. With all the upheaval from the Blip, and then the Un-Blip, the DMV and every other government agency was swamped, and the crush was likely to last for some time. Peter had accompanied Pepper down to the cafeteria for a much needed dinner, and Rhodey had volunteered to take over Tony Watch as they'd all sort of started unofficially calling the bedside vigil.
Pulling up a hard plastic hospital chair, ever the soldier even in half-retirement due to his paralysis, Rhodey sat straight, with a sense of purpose to his posture. He was quiet, at first. Just looking at the man in the bed. This wasn't the first time he'd seen Tony laid up like this. The first was after Afghanistan, having finally gotten him to the base in Baghdad, they'd had to sedate him, eventually, to get him to sleep. He had kept roaming around the room, tearing out IV's over and over, and absolutely refusing to wear the oxygen canula.
Anytime someone would come into the room, he'd jump, his eyes wild, the terror clear on his face. So, they'd finally sedated him, and bodily put him back into a bed. Rhodey had positioned himself as sentinel through the many hours until Tony woke up again, prepared to help ease the nightmares and reassure his friend that the nightmare was over. Neither had anticipated, at that stage, how many more times that bedside scenario was going to play out.
To Rhodey, this seemed horribly similar, though this time it wasn't a terrorist who had taken him, Tony had sacrificed himself, knowing full well the consequences of that choice. Rhodey couldn't decide if he was more angry or awed by that decision. Angry because Tony once again put himself into harm's way in order to protect everyone else. And awed by the man's absolute core of resolute goodness that drove such a decision. Even if Tony stubbornly refused to ever see his own depth of good character, it was clear and ever-present to anyone else who met him. To make the ultimate sacrifice...was not something lost on a military man.
Finally, Rhodey leaned forward, gently taking Tony's left hand in his own, and he started talking. "Tones, man, what the hell, dude? I know why you did it, but, fuck! Pepper and Morgan and Peter, and hell, man, ME, I need you to wake up! I know I'm Morgan's godfather, but, Tony, I don't want to take on that mantle...not like this. Not like this." Rhodey stopped himself, once again looking at the pale, slight figure in the bed. The oxygen mask fogging every other beat as he breathed, the heart monitor recording the beating of his much abused heart, at least for now.
"Tony, man, I'll make you a deal. If you wake up, I'll let you tell that stupid MADE UP STORY about spring break to anyone, anywhere, anytime. I will gladly let you create new chapters to the damn thing if you'll just wake up to smirk at me and tell some poor, unsuspecting victim your bullshit. I'll even let you tell them about that time when I took you home with me to that backwood county fair and *I* puked all over everything after the tilt-a-whirl. I thought for SURE you were going to be the one to get sick...Little did I know you were the kid who always wanted to run in circles until you fell over. You're the only person I've ever known who actually enjoys g-forces and being flung in circles...you freak bastard." Rhodey ended his tirade and promise with a grin, thinking back to the trip during their sophomore year at MIT.
Rhodey had just turned nineteen, and Tony was fifteen, but they were already fast friends. Rhodey had thought to fill Tony up on fried carnival fair and then tease him mercilessly after he got sick on the rides. Only for Rhodey to have the tables turned on him when he discovered Tony's iron stomach...But a moment later, his remembered happiness faded as he watched Tony's chest rise, and slowly fall, as the EKG traced the beat of his life.
"Tony, I'm serious. You've got to come back to us. You've got a second chance here, waiting for you. You just need to wake up to take it."
A few minutes later, Rhodey heard a knock on the doorframe of the hospital room, and turning around, he saw Peter standing hesitantly in the doorway. Standing up as he motioned the boy to come into the room, Rhodey quickly enveloped him in a hug, squeezing him tight for a just a beat before relaxing.
Peter's eyes were bright with unshed tears, and not for the first time, Rhodey questioned how impossibly young the boy was.
"Hey, Colonel Rhodes, I, uh, I just was wondering if I could, uhm, maybe talk to Mr...Mr. Stark, for a little bit? Ms Pepper told me that they thought it might help, to talk to him. And, I...uhm, I'd like to, well, just tell him some...stuff. Would that be okay, do you think?" Peter asked, the pleading clear on his face, right along with the questions.
Nodding his head with a wan smile, Rhodey agreed. After all, if there was anyone in the world other than Pepper or Morgan who could convince Tony Stark to come back to the land of the living, it was this boy in front of him.
"Sure thing, Pete. Just---I'll be in the cafeteria, when you're ready to head out, just find me down there. All right?"
"Sure thing, thanks Col. Rhodes." And with that, Peter walked over to stand next to the bedside, to fully take in the scene before him. Peter wasn't ready to look at much, doing his best to keep his eyes turned downwards, trying to drown out the cacophony of thoughts beating thru his mind. Guilt and fear being primaries in the running for loudest intrusive thoughts.
Peter settled himself into the hard plastic chair in the corner, the one furthest from the bedside. Bringing his knees up to his chest, he wrapped his arms around them, and buried his face. He could hear Tony's slightly irregular heartbeat, due to his heightened senses, along with the beeping of the cardiac monitor on the wall. He knew that the whole point of them being with Tony as near to round-the-clock as possible was to keep up a running commentary, but, Peter couldn't think of anything to say, at least nothing that he wanted to say out loud.
He sat there, in his chair, for the next several minutes, doing his best not to cry. He was fifteen! He was nearly grown! Grown adults don't just *cry* because someone they...love...was hurt. It was ridiculous. But for all of his bravado, Peter couldn't deny the tight feeling in his chest, or the painful thickness in the back of his throat.
Finally deciding that at least trying to figure out something to say was preferable to the pain of determindly Not Crying, Peter finally started to speak.
"Uhm, hey, uhm, Mr. Stark, Sir. I, I hope that you're going to be okay. They told me that, that May died, they said she had leukemia. I...I'm not sure what to do, from here. Nobody has called CPS yet, I think they're all still so disorganized from, well, everything. I was going to see if I could stay in the Compound, but Mrs. Stark, she, she insisted that I stay with you guys. They, the lease on the apartment, with May, it was up, and someone else lives there now. Mrs. Stark showed me that you guys saved everything, she told me that there's a storage unit with the rest of the furniture, for, later, when, when I'm ready." Peter broke off, a sob welling up from his chest.
He had lost May. He had lost everyone. The feeling of being untethered, alone out in the world was intense and terrifying. He was so afraid to ask Pepper about what was going to happen to him. Peter felt sure that if Tony didn't wake up, Pepper wasn't going to want him around. And he'd be under the auspices of the State, a ward of New York until he turned eighteen. He did his best not to think about that possibility.
"My...my room...it's, it's really nice. And thanks for putting my bed in there, Mrs. Stark said that was your doing. And the posters, they're, they're really nice. Oh, I met Morgan. She's so little. I never even thought about you and Pepper having any kids, but, she's, well, she's so much like you." Peter stopped again, mind wandering back to the past week, having met Morgan for the first time, and his surprised pleasure at realizing that Mr. Stark had a daughter.
Clearing his throat as he rubbed a tired fist over his eyes, Peter was quiet for a time before he went on. "Mr. Stark...I...I just...I...I need you. I don't know what to do without you...And not just for the Spiderman tech and stuff, I...First my Mom and Dad, and then Uncle Ben, and then Aunt May, and now, and now...you...I don't want to lose anybody else. I, I miss you, so, so much." Peter trailed off, his voice barely audible as he tucked his head further into his arms.
"Please, please...I don't want to lose anymore of my-my family...Dad...Please wake up..."
-oOo-
Tony was...somewhere. He knew he wasn't dead, and he knew he wasn't awake, but somewhere, inbetween? He had fully expected to die, had assumed that inevitability. It was something that had plagued the back of his mind ever since the Infinity War, when Strange had looked at him and stated that there was one outcome where they won. And then saved his life. It didn't take a genius (literal or figuratively) to have a pretty good inkling that meant he was an integral cog in that unlikely victory.
Tony felt like he had lived on borrowed time for much of his life, particularly after Afghanistan. Those days in the cave with Yinsen, coming to terms with the fact that his heart was being run by a car battery, and he was likely to be dead in a week anyway. It was something that he thought about frequently, and it didn't come as much of a surprise to him that he was going to run out of that borrowed time at some point. The Snap was a worthy sacrifice. So it was to some surprise that he was...here.
Somehow he knew that he wasn't dead, that this wasn't some bizarre form of the afterlife. (After all, if energy cannot be created or destroyed, that energy that ran the mind had to go...somewhere, didn't it? Tony's analytical scientist's mind had long ago ceased to wrestle with that great Unknown and Religious question that plagued so many people. He had just decided to accept that his energy went...somewhere, though he didn't trouble himself much with those details.) But he still felt somehow tethered to the waking world, it was as though if he just worked at it a bit, he could resurface. The curiosity was there, under many quilt batting layers of muffled warmth and peace and probably a huge dose of drugs. All conspiring to make him mostly just want to stay, floating and quiet, away from pain and nightmares and too big responsibilities.
There were voices, sometimes. Some of them were familiar, others were not. Some he could identify as caretakers, people tasked with keeping his body...alive? He knew he was injured, probably devastatingly so, and he frequently wondered if he really *wanted* to come back. Was it worth it? Hadn't he suffered enough? Did Morgan and Peter really need some sort of hideously mangled human lump to be their Dad?
Maybe it was better to let Rhodey take over, he was Morgan's official God-father, after all. And Pepper would ensure that Peter was taken care of until he went to college and was out on his own. Pepper had said it, she had told him, they were going to be okay. That he could rest. So why was his body refusing to give up, why was he still floating along in this purgatory of existence?
There had to be a reason. Maybe he should listen harder to the voices. After all, there wasn't much else to do...