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The sky over Upstate New York was a bruised, apocalyptic purple, choked with the smoking hulls of Chitauri warships. In the center of the scorched crater, the Mad Titan stood victorious, his massive fingers reaching down to wrap around the lip of the Nano Gauntlet."I am... inevitable," Thanos rumbled, his voice echoing across the silent battlefield.He brought his fingers together.
CLICK.
Nothing happened
.Thanos frowned, turning the gauntlet over to find the six empty, hollow slots. His eyes shifted across the dirt.Tony Stark knelt five yards away, his chest heaving under the weight of his battered, blood-streaked armor. His right arm was raised, the nanotech shifting and locking into place as all six elemental forces—Power, Mind, Soul, Reality, Space, Time—cascaded into his glove in a blinding, multi-colored network of cosmic fire.
The sheer power tore into his fragile biology instantly, white-hot energy melting the metal into his skin and creeping up his neck.Tony looked straight at the Titan, his breathing shallow, his face tracking lines of raw, bleeding cosmic burns.
"And I... am... Iron Man,"
Tony whispered.SNAP.A blinding flash of pure white energy erupted from his fingertips, washing over the ruins. Across the field, the Chitauri leviathans crumbled mid-air, raining down as harmless dust. The Outriders vanished into smoke mid-stride. Thanos stumbled backward, looking down at his own hands as they dissolved into the wind, before the Mad Titan faded into nothingness.The heavy cosmic feedback left the armor sputtering.
Deprived of the energy keeping him upright, Tony’s body collapsed sideways, slumping heavily against the hollow shell of a concrete partition. His left eye closed, his right eye staring blankly into the smoking skyline.Across the field, the sudden, deafening silence was shattered by a frantic, uncoordinated scramble."Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark!"Peter Parker came tearing through the debris, his legs trembling beneath his raw, blood-streaked nanotech suit. He tripped over a piece of ruined vibranium, scrambling back to his feet with a child's raw, suffocating panic, before falling to his knees with a heavy thud right in front of the concrete wall.
"Mr. Stark? Can you hear me? It's Peter," the boy whispered, his hands trembling violently as he dropped them onto Tony's unburned shoulder.Tony didn't move. His head remained tilted against the stone, his lips parted as he took a ragged, painful wheeze of air."Hey. We won, Mr. Stark," Peter said, trying to force a bright, reassuring smile through the heavy, hot tears that were instantly tracking through the soot on his pale face. He squeezed Tony's shoulder, his knuckles going entirely white. "We won, Mr. Stark. We won. You did it, sir. You did it."
Tony’s right eyelid flickered. Slowly, agonizingly, his unfocused brown eye rolled over, locking onto Peter's face. He didn't speak. He couldn't.
The cosmic feedback had completely destroyed his vocal cords, but the sheer, unyielding affection in his gaze cut straight through the smoke."I'm sorry..." Peter sobbed, his chest finally heaving as the wall he had built completely disintegrated. He buried his face against Tony's unburned shoulder, his fingers clutching the cold metal plates of the armor. "Mr. Stark, I'm so sorry. I couldn't... I tried to pull the gauntlet away from him. I tried to get to the stones first. I'm sorry I wasn't fast enough. I'm sorry I let you do this. Please don't leave. Please, Tony, don't leave me here alone."The raw, heartbreaking use of his first name made Tony’s chest hitch.
With a final, monumental surge of willpower, Tony weakly moved his left hand, his trembling, carbon-scored fingers brushing against the side of Peter’s messy hair, a final, silent gesture of comfort. You did perfect, kid, his eyes seemed to say. You're safe.Suddenly, a soft hand rested on Peter’s upper back, gently but firmly pulling him back from the dying man.Pepper Potts knelt down in the ash beside them. Her own Rescue armor was scratched and dented, her face entirely pale but completely composed with a terrifying, tragic grace. She looked into Peter's wide, terrified brown eyes, her voice dropping into a rare, comforting whisper as she pulled the weeping fifteen-year-old child against her side, shielding him.
"It's okay, Peter. You did everything you could. You brought him home. Let him rest now, sweetie. You did so good."Pepper turned her face back to her husband, her hand coming up to gently cup the unburned side of his jaw. She forced a beautiful, devastating smile through her tears. "Hey," she whispered softly."Pep," Tony managed to wheeze out, his voice nothing more than a ghost of static."We're going to be okay," Pepper promised him, her eyes locking onto his with absolute, unyielding certainty. "You can rest now."Tony looked at her. Then, his eyes slowly flickered past her shoulder, taking one final, long, and deeply protective look at Peter huddling against her side.
The tension completely drained from his face. The chest-mounted arc reactor let out a low, fading whine, the bright blue light flickering twice before going completely dark. His hand slipped from Peter’s hair, dropping heavily into the dirt.The exact second the bright blue glow went completely dark, the last string of Peter’s composure snapped."No—no, no, no, Mr. Stark! Tony, please!" Peter screamed, his voice shattering across the silent, ash-choked ruins of the battlefield.
He violently tore himself away from Pepper’s gentle, holding grip, throwing his entire fifteen-year-old body back over the cold, unmoving metal of the suit. His hands—shaking so badly they were completely uncoordinated—frantically clawed at the charred breastplate, desperately pressing over the dead reactor as if he could physically force his own heart's rhythm back into the mechanical core."Wake up! Please, you have to wake up!" Peter jobbed, a raw, animalistic sound of pure, unadulterated agony ripping straight from his lungs. "You promised! You told me if I died, that was on you! Well, you can't leave me here! I can't do this without you! I don't know how to be a hero without you!"The hot, heavy tears streamed down his pale, soot-covered cheeks, dripping directly onto the cold gold faceplate of the helmet. Peter buried his face into the hollow space right between Tony's neck and his unburned shoulder, his fingers clutching the rigid metal seams until the fabric of his own nanotech suit began to tear. He was thrashing against the reality of it, his chest heaving in rapid, suffocating hitches that made him physically gag from the smoke and the sheer weight of his grief."I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Peter kept choking out, the words blurring into a continuous, desperate prayer against the unyielding armor. "I should've fought harder. I should've taken the gauntlet from you. It should've been me. Please, Tony, don't leave me alone.
Don't leave me behind."Across the ruins, the sound of Peter’s agonizing, childlike breakdown cut through the absolute quiet like a blade.Steve Rogers stumbled forward through the debris, his shattered vibranium shield slipping completely from his grip and clattering dully against the stone. He fell to his knees a few feet away, his face entirely pale, burying his head in his calloused hands as silent, heavy tears racked his large frame. Beside him, Thor lowered Stormbreaker directly into the dirt, his thunderous composure completely vanquished as he stared at the ground, his broad shoulders slumped in crushing defeat.
Bucky Barnes stood perfectly still near the edge of the crater, his mechanical hand clenched into a tight, trembling fist. He looked down at the weeping child clinging to the dead billionaire, a sudden, suffocating wave of intense sorrow hitting him so hard he had to close his eyes to shut out the sight of a grief he knew all too well.As the realization of the loss settled over the battlefield, the rest of the Avengers began to close in. Rhodey landed heavily nearby, his armor's systems completely silent as his faceplate retracted to reveal tears cutting through the grime on his face. He fell beside Peter, his metallic hand shaking as he touched Tony's cold armor, his jaw tight as he let out a choked, ragged breath. He had been there since the beginning, and watching his best friend fade away while a fifteen-year-old child completely fell apart over his chest was a weight too heavy to carry.
Clint Barton dropped to both knees, lowering his bow completely into the dirt, unable to look away from the broken boy huddled over their leader. He buried his face in his dirt-streaked hands, weeping silently as the absolute devastation of the sacrifice took hold.Wanda Maximoff and Natasha Romanoff walked forward together through the settling dust, their footsteps heavy and uneven. Natasha completely broke her silent, stoic mask, a sharp, ragged gasp escaping her throat as she drop-shattered into the ash beside Pepper. She reached out, her hands open and trembling, wanting desperately to pull Peter into her arms but remaining completely frozen by the sheer, unfiltered tragedy of his screams. Wanda knelt right behind her, her hands pressed tightly over her mouth to smother a raw, heartbreaking sob.
Her chaos magic was completely dark, snuffed out by the overwhelming cloud of pure grief suffocating the crater.Doctor Strange stood perfectly still a few paces back, his hands resting inside his heavy fabric sleeves, his usual clinical, calculated detachment completely shattered as he bowed his head in heavy solemnity. He had looked through fourteen million timelines, but watching the human cost of the single victorious path play out through the cries of a child made the victory feel incredibly heavy.Loki remained in the shadow of a fallen Chitauri leviathan, his twin daggers sheathed, watching the sacrifice of the mortal who had out-manoeuvered the universe. The cynical God of Mischief had absolutely nothing witty or cruel to say; his expression was fixed in a dark, profound respect, his eyes tracking the blood on Peter's suit with a heavy solemnity.
The Guardians of the Galaxy gathered at the inner perimeter. Rocket slowly lowered his heavy blaster, his ears flattening against his head as he looked at the ground, a silent tear tracking through his fur. Peter Quill rubbed a hand aggressively over his face, unable to look at the dead man or the broken kid, while Drax and Nebula stood like twin statues of stone, their weapons lowered, their cold exteriors entirely cracked by the raw display of mortal heartbreak.Behind them, the entire Wakandan force, led by a bruised and battle-weary King T'Challa, crossed their arms over their chests in a silent, deeply respectful Wakanda Forever salute, honoring the fallen defender of Earth.Peter didn't see any of them. He was still thrashing against the unyielding gold and red plates of the armor, his small body shaking with quiet, exhausted sobs. He pressed his forehead against the cold metal, his hands weaker now, his fingers slipping in the soot as his energy completely burned out. "Please..." he whispered into the dark metal, his voice nothing more than a hoarse, scraping thread. "Please don't leave me..."Pepper Potts didn't try to pull Peter away this time. She couldn't. Her own composure finally shattered, her head dropping forward against Tony’s unmoving knee as she let out a quiet, heartbroken wail, her fingers loosely tangling into the fabric of Peter's jacket, anchoring the two of them together in the ash.
The universe was saved. The Mad Titan was gone. But looking at the vast, silent ring of heroes and the broken, screaming child left clinging to the ghost of his mentor, the victory felt entirely dead.