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pancaketax · 1 month ago

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What Remains | Chapter 19 Arms of Iron (Tony Stark x M! Reader)

TW : Depictions of revenge and moral ambiguity. Near-death experience Summary : Tony Stark rescues you from the edge of death, carrying you in his arms through a ruined warehouse soaked in blood, silence, and trauma. As your broken body clings to life, Stark becomes a living shield, absorbing a bullet meant for you. In the heart of chaos, faced with your attacker’s last desperate attempt to kill, Tony comes terrifyingly close to delivering final, lethal justice. But a single breath from you , a whisper of his name pulls him back from the edge. He chooses restraint. He chooses you. Amidst the rubble, the blood, and the unbearable weight of vengeance, he carries you out not as a hero, but as a man refusing to let you die. Not today.

word count: 17.5k

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His voice had dropped like a blade, but it wasn’t the question that mattered. Not really. It was what he was trying to cover. What he was trying to hide. Because it wasn’t a real question. It was a decoy, a fog cast between him and reality. A desperate attempt to keep control. To pretend there was still a conversation to be had, an exchange, a world where words could hold a bullet at bay.

You don’t answer. You can’t. There’s no word that could answer that.

No breath, either. Just a suspended tension, suffocating, sticking to your skin like cold sweat. Your body doesn’t belong to you anymore. It’s frozen, cemented in place. Everything is focused on the barrel of that gun. On the potential trajectory. On that fraction of a second you might not get. The silence that follows isn’t a lapse — it’s protection. A refusal to feed the scene he’s playing out for himself.

And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even acknowledge your silence. Because he’s not really waiting. It’s not a request. It’s a game. A demonstration. Raw, brutal, sordid domination. He stares at you without truly seeing you. He talks just to hear himself exist. To convince himself the world still revolves around him, even on the edge of collapse. He keeps playing the role of master even as the stage crumbles beneath his feet. But what he doesn’t see, what he refuses to feel in the room, is the shift. Subtle, at first. Invisible to someone who can’t read silences. But it’s there.

Thick. Dense. Electric like the air just before a storm tears open the sky. A silent pressure, suspended in the atmosphere, ready to burst. Something has changed. It’s not a feeling — it’s a certainty. An invisible but undeniable shockwave. The air has grown heavier. Every particle seems frozen, waiting. And you, even without turning your head, you feel it. You know. Because at that exact moment, Stark isn’t looking at you anymore.

The shift is imperceptible, but total. The slightest movement of his armor, the way the angle of his helmet adjusts, the way he straightens by a single millimeter… everything changes. It’s a silent, surgical mechanism. There’s no sound, no word, but the impact is stronger than a scream. He’s no longer here to cover you. No longer waiting for a move. He’s not gauging the situation. He’s read it. He’s decided.

And now, every fraction of his attention is aimed at the one holding the gun. The barrel hasn’t moved. But he’s no longer holding the scene. Not really. Because in this closed space, now sharp as glass, a new force has emerged. Not loud. Not theatrical. But absolute.

Stark is motionless.

But that calm is a lie. It’s the calm of predators. Of intelligent weapons. Of rage that’s learned to disguise itself as silence. The red light in the center of his chest pulses softly, like a heart that’s learned patience. But you know that light. You’ve seen it glow fiercer, sharper, when it switches into combat mode. And now, it’s changed. The angle of his helmet is fixed. Too fixed. His gaze, hidden behind the golden visor, is locked onto Matthew like a targeting system. He’s not watching the gun. He’s watching the arm. The shoulder. The center of gravity. He’s calculating. Anticipating. Waiting for the exact fraction of a second.

Matthew, for his part, doesn’t seem to have realized yet. He’s still talking. Or pretending to. A sentence. A half-taunt. Maybe a threat. You don’t hear the words anymore. Only the void around them. The tremble in his voice he thinks he’s hiding. The barely visible tension in his fingers. His clenched jaw.

Stark moves. No warning. No cry. No signal.

It’s not an attack. It’s a sentence. The motion doesn’t come from a jolt, or a desperate reflex. There’s no panic, no sign of improvisation. That move — he had it in mind before the scene even started, before Matthew spoke a single word. He knew. He’d seen your body. Noted every visible contusion, every barely contained tremor, every micro-fracture in your expression. He’d heard that voice, flat, disconnected, and recognized that tone — the one that still believes it holds power because it holds a gun. But what he didn’t know was that Stark wasn’t here to negotiate.

Inside the helmet, the interface deploys with a blink barely perceptible. Holographic markers tighten around Matthew’s silhouette. The thermal scan pulses one last time, the heat of the live barrel flaring in bright red. An angle appears. A firing arc. A margin of error. Everything syncs with icy fluidity. A choreography of lethal engineering. And the right glove moves. Not a punch. Not yet. Nothing showy. Just a pulse. A quick pivot of the shoulder. A millimetric rotation of the elbow. The metal plates glide over each other without a sound, as if the suit itself is holding its breath. The palm shifts slightly, in a gesture of unnerving restraint. It doesn’t promise violence. It delivers it.

The beam fires. A flash, red and sharp, searing. Barely visible. Not a burst. Not a shot meant to kill. Stark isn’t aiming to kill. He’s aiming for certainty. For neutralization. For total control. The impact is instant.

A dull thud, a muffled snap — and Matthew’s hand jerks. His fingers splay open in pain like twigs crushed in an invisible vice. If he cries out, it’s swallowed by the shock. He doesn’t fall. He staggers. And the weapon drops from his grip.

It spins through the air, in a grotesque arc, almost slow despite the speed. You see it, suspended for a heartbeat, before it hits the ground with a sharp clack. Metal on concrete. A cold sound, final. The pistol slides a few inches. It doesn’t smoke. It didn’t fire. It won’t again. Matthew looks down. As if he doesn’t understand. As if he needs to see the absence to believe the loss. His injured hand trembles slightly. A red glow rising along the tendons, a burning pulse, almost invisible unless you know how to read pain. But Stark doesn’t move.

He doesn’t speak. He waits. His arm is still raised, half-extended, ready to correct if needed. His silhouette is upright, locked onto one point: him. The attacker. The one who thought holding a gun was enough to control a scene. The error has been made. And in the air now, there’s no threat. No imbalance. The error has been made.

And in the air now, there’s no threat. No imbalance. Only this residual tension. This silent vibration, like a chord suspended. Like a question that only has one answer left. The answer to what Stark will do, now that the gun is on the ground. He straightens in the same motion, fluid, sharp, as if the previous action was only the first step of a prewritten sequence. And now he moves forward. Slowly. Relentlessly. Each step is a sentence, made audible by the dull thud of alloy striking concrete. He’s no longer just a man. He’s no longer Tony Stark.

He’s Iron Man.

The cadence of his steps is metronomic, unalterable, like a war clock. Each metallic impact vibrates in the air, echoes through the walls, shakes the silence itself. There’s no hesitation, no visible fury. Just that cold, determined mechanic that knows neither pause nor mercy. He doesn’t walk — he devours the space between them. He still doesn’t speak.

There’s nothing left to say. Words belonged to before. When balance was still possible, when the weapon still rested in an outstretched hand. Now, the language is metal. Impact. End. And it’s that absence of voice that breaks Matthew. He screams. But it’s not a cry of pain or submission. It’s raw, deformed, warped by shattered pride. A guttural burst, spat like an injured beast. It comes from the gut, from panic, from that sudden fear of never having been anything more than a fragile puppet, losing the stage. His injured hand, the one that held the weapon seconds earlier, hangs limp, fingers twisted, trembling, unable to grasp anything. But his other arm remains free.

And he raises it.

It’s a gesture without calculation. Without tactic. An animal reflex, one buried in marrow, triggered by terror. He charges. The scream that comes with it has nothing human left. It’s a tear. An implosion. A desperate attempt to reclaim dominance, to erase humiliation with a single punch. He runs. Not fast. Not straight. But with that blind rage that keeps cowards standing a second too long. His legs drag on the filthy floor. His boots slide across debris, his shoulder slams into a metal crate he doesn’t even see. But he keeps going. He rushes toward him, arm out, fist closed. He still believes. He believes that punch will bring him down — the man of metal. As if you could topple a wall with an insult. As if armor could feel the weight of an ordinary man.

But Stark doesn’t back down. He doesn’t need to.

He’s anchored to the ground, center of gravity locked like a rupture point. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t raise his voice. He stands there, upright and threatening, expected like an answer forged in iron. And deep down, even in panic, even in his charge — Matthew knows. He already knows he’ll strike only air.

He dodges.

It’s not dramatic. Not a heroic leap, no cape fluttering in the wind. It’s a half-step. A minimal shift. A slip barely noticeable, like a breath moved aside. Like a musical note just off from the last. A cold elegance, almost dance-like, fluid as if gravity itself hesitated to impose on him. The suit follows silently. No creak. No stray sound. Flawless engineering. And in that slight movement, his elbow rises.

Not in a burst of rage. Not in a violent explosion. A sharp, calculated pivot. The arm lifts, the shoulder locks, and the elbow draws its arc through the air with the precision of a blade. No need to look. No need to aim. He knows. He’s already read every trajectory. The strike lands — surgical, clean, mute.

And it hits.

The contact is brutal. Metal crashes into Matthew’s temple with a dull, horrifying crack. A clean snap, like a branch broken with firm hands. No scream. No outburst. Just that bone-deep sound, final, undeniable. Matthew’s body reels from the impact, his skull whipped sideways like a puppet cut loose. The violence of it freezes the air, slows time. But he doesn’t fall.

His foot stumbles back, his shoulder hits a decayed pillar, he staggers. His breath hitches, torn into ragged shreds. He gasps. One hand clawing at the air for support, the other clutching his temple, already swelling, purpling. Blood drips from his mouth, darker than red beneath dying lights. He shakes his head once, twice, as if he could snap his thoughts back into place. He spits. A thick, viscous string staining the floor between his boots.

He growls. A sound that’s neither human nor alive. A vibration. A primal whimper. A wounded beast not yet finished. And he comes back.

Not with intelligence. Not with plan. Just with that filthy rage that eats through guts, screaming that losing isn’t an option. His eyes drop. Searching blindly. His trembling fingers graze dust, shards, rubble. Then close on something. A piece of rusted metal, thick, heavy — a collapsed beam fragment, filthy and scarred. And he rises, swaying, holding this improvised weapon like a sacred axe.

No thought. No measure. He lifts it over his head in a shaky arc, trembling, but loaded with brute violence. And he swings. A wide strike. A gesture of desperation, a frozen scream in motion. Like a drunk lumberjack swinging at a storm. Metal slices the air. It’s the attack of a man who has nothing left. Nothing to lose. Nothing to prove. Nothing to save. The impact rings out in the silence like a shattered drum.

The metal smashes into the armor with all the force Matthew can summon, every ounce of rage, hate, and desperation. But this isn’t ordinary armor. Not just a shell. It’s a wall. A mobile fortress. The alloy doesn’t budge. Not a crack. Not a vibration. Not even a flicker on the surface. The hit makes a dull, almost mocking sound. A muted clong, as if the suit swallowed the blow just to show how meaningless it was. The improvised weapon rebounds, hits the dust with a pathetic thud. Matthew stumbles back, disoriented. And in front of him, Stark doesn’t move a single inch. No reaction. No hesitation. The armor renders him unreachable, nearly inhuman. He doesn’t even flinch.

And this time, he gives no more leeway. He strikes back. His arm lifts in a fluid motion, almost slow. No haste. No rage. Just a logical response, mechanical. A blow delivered with the force of a motor and the cold of a verdict. The fist strikes true, direct, into Matthew’s abdomen. Not to the side. Not to injure. To take the breath. To break the core.

The impact is brutal. The sound, a muted burst, like a sandbag tearing open.

Matthew’s body lifts from the force, thrown back a few centimeters before crashing to the ground. His feet give way. His chest folds. Air is torn from his lungs in a horrific wheeze, like the world collapsing inside him. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Just a silent gasp, a stolen breath. He wavers. His arms wrap around his belly in a reflexive, pathetic gesture. His legs tremble, buckle, fail. And he falls.

First to one knee. Then the other. Slowly. Inevitably. He stays there, kneeling in the grime, back hunched, breath shattered, racked by small spasms. Dust clings to his palms, his knees, his sweat-slicked cheeks. He trembles. He gasps. He’s nothing but an emptied body, a rattled shell. A man reduced to silence by a blow too precise, too well-placed, to be mere defense.

Stark still says nothing. He watches. Fixes his gaze. A statue of metal and contained fire. And you, now lying on the floor, finally discover what it feels like to no longer be in control. But even there, even on his knees, breath ripped away and ribs bruised, Matthew doesn’t let go.

He pants like a wounded dog, but he still spits. Blood at first—thick, dark red, sliding down his chin and hitting the floor with a dull splat—then words. Fragments of sentences, scattered, without logic or structure. Formless curses, guttural growls, syllables vomited in a mix of rage and bile. His voice is broken, trembling, but still carries that brutal hatred, that venomous bitterness that seems to rise from a bottomless pit. He clings to that anger like a lifeline, even if it won’t save him. Because that’s all he knows. Destruction. Defilement.

He raises his head in a painful effort, features contorted, jaws clenched. And despite the blood in his eyes, he searches for Stark’s gaze. He wants to be seen. He wants to be understood. And in that twisted, feverish stare, there’s still that spark. Sick. Obsessive. A flame refusing to go out. He won’t surrender. He doesn’t want to. He wants to keep going. To hurt. To wound. To kill, if he can. Even if his body no longer follows. Even if reality is already closing in on him like a cold jaw.

And Stark sees it. He doesn’t need a scanner. Doesn’t need analysis. He reads that hatred like a red warning signal on a screen. He knows what it means. What it demands. What it justifies. So he steps forward. One step. Then another. The metal of the suit echoes on the soiled ground, a dull, regular sound, implacable, like an endgame clock. He no longer needs to speak. No need to aim. No weapons, no blasts. Technology fades, unnecessary. He has become the weight itself. The answer. The wall.

Reaching Matthew, Stark stops. A dense silence falls, interrupted only by the man’s broken wheezing. Then, he raises his arm. His glove clicks gently as it tightens. Slowly. Like a lock closing. He doesn’t grab violently. He doesn’t strike. He simply closes his hand around the collar of Matthew’s shirt, where the fabric is torn, damp, clinging to skin. He grips—not excessively, but with terrible constancy.

And he lifts him. Not in a snap. Not with violence. He hoists him. Like lifting an empty sack. A body already drained of power, of authority, of threat. Matthew’s feet leave the ground in a pitiful scrape. His arms flail weakly, his breath whistles, trapped somewhere between terror and exhaustion. His feet kick the air, in an irregular, desperate rhythm. Frantic jerks, twisted knees, heels searching in vain for support, for grip, for a way to find the ground. But there’s nothing. Nothing but the void beneath him, and the iron grip suspending him like a useless, dismantled puppet.

His breath cuts off. Brutally. Clean. The collar of flesh and cloth tightens around his trachea, and the world becomes narrow, trembling. His lungs scream for air they won’t get. A sharp whistle rises in his throat, strangled, pitiful. He tries to cry out, but the scream chokes on nothingness. Matthew’s hands, already wounded, claw at Stark’s wrist. His fingers cling like a man grasping a cliff’s edge. He scratches, pulls, slaps ineffectively. His knuckles whiten, his skin slips against smooth metal, no grip. He struggles with all the misery he has left. But nothing moves. The arm holding him is fixed, unshakable, sculpted from brute will.

And yet, Stark isn’t squeezing to kill. Not yet. He could. With a simple gesture. He knows it, and so does Matthew. It would be so easy. A bit more pressure. A sharp move. And it would all end. But that’s not what he does. He holds him there, between heartbeats. Suspended. Halfway between punishment and sentence. And above all, he looks at him. Not with anger. Not even with hate. He stares. Straight into his eyes. An implacable gaze. Silent. Charged with something infinitely colder than rage. And what Matthew sees in that frozen instant has nothing of a hero. Nothing of a savior lit by glory.

It’s the gaze of a man emptied out. A man who’s lost time, peace, sleep, faith in logic. A man who’s been forced to act. To cross his own lines. To choose between containing horror or erasing it. What he sees is a vast fracture behind the steel. A calm darkness. A silent abyss. And above all, he understands, at last, there will be no mercy. Not tonight. Not for him.

Then Stark throws him to the ground. Not like shoving an obstacle. Not like dropping a sack. No. It’s a calculated, measured motion, still carrying all the force of a verdict. A cold, controlled trajectory—no unnecessary excess—but no softness either. The dull thud of impact echoes like a hammer on concrete. Brutal. Sharp. Irrevocable.

Matthew’s body hits the ground in a crash of flesh and bone, a grotesque shockwave folding him in half. Some limbs tuck beneath him at awkward, almost absurd angles, like a puppet with cut strings. His head hits the dust, breath shattering in his own chest. He groans. A hoarse, painful, strangled moan, more like an expelled breath than a voice. Every breath is a tear. A wheeze. A rebellion of the body against what it’s enduring. His chest lifts in jerks, unstable, uncertain. He gasps, mouth open, pulling air through a burning throat. The sound he makes is no longer human—a choked, rattling sob. His fingers claw the ground without really feeling it, his legs tremble, curling in on themselves. He tries to move, to rise, but every muscle screams its own fracture. He doesn’t get up. He collapses further with every attempt.

This is no longer resistance. Not even survival in the noble sense. It’s instinct. A primal urge. Not to die here, in the dirt, in front of him. And despite it all, despite the obvious failure of every gesture, there’s still breath in his throat. A twisted, crawling will, clinging to the ruins of his pride. A sick spark, refusing to go out. He still wants to believe he can resist.

But Stark isn’t finished. Not yet. He doesn’t move right away. He observes.

His eyes, invisible behind the mask, analyze every spasm, every breath, every millimeter of the collapsed body before him. It’s not the look of an executioner. Nor that of a savior. It’s the look of a man deciding. A judge. An enforcer of truth. The silence that follows is more threatening than any scream. And Stark, standing over him, is the shadow that remains when all light has been torn away.

He tries to crawl.

His elbows slip on the sticky concrete, drawing a dirty trail through the dust, like a wounded slug. His muscles tremble, too weak, too dislocated to truly support his weight. Every movement is agony. A slow, painful, desperate friction. He barely moves a few centimeters forward, crawling more than progressing, his ragged breath echoing like a muffled whimper against the floor. Mouth open, he gasps, sucking in air like a drowning man.

His face, contorted by pain, is smeared with blood — from his temple, his split lip, his shattered teeth. He blinks, grimaces, pulls his injured arm forward. The other hand dangles lifelessly, broken earlier by the surgical shot. But that one arm... still clings on.

And his gaze. That wild, sick, incandescent look. It scans frantically around him until it stops. There. Just a few inches from his bloodied fingers, just out of reach: a blade. His blade. Thrown earlier in the chaos, abandoned but not forgotten. A metallic silhouette, half hidden in shadow, lit only by the flickering reflections of unstable neon lights.

A breath. An impulse.

He stretches, slowly, painfully, every centimeter gained at the price of a groan, a gasp, a shiver of pure suffering. His fingers reach, extend, almost brushing the handle. He believes. He still believes. One last chance. One last act. Maybe with that knife, he could still change the course. Hurt. Scare. Leave a mark. Regain a fragment of control. Even a sliver.

But it's too late.

The shadow above him never left. Stark saw him crawl. Saw his gaze latch onto the weapon. He anticipated. As always. He waited, patiently, unhurried. Until the exact moment. And when it comes, he acts.

A simple weight shift. A servo impulse in the leg. Clockwork precision. And the boot slams down. A dull, sharp noise, a thick snap. Like an overripe fruit crushed, like a dry branch giving under a heel. It's clean. Absolute. Metal meets bone. And bone loses.

The scream erupts immediately. Raw, tearing. It shatters the air like an animal alarm. Not a man's cry. A child's, almost. Something broken, beyond anger, beyond hatred. A naked sound, ripped from the throat like a primal scream. The echo bounces off the walls, pure, raw, unfiltered. He doesn't even beg. He screams because he can't do anything else. Crushed fingers twitch uselessly at the void. The knife is there, still there. Within reach. Untouchable. Pain wipes out everything.

Matthew writhes on the floor, shaken by uncontrollable spasms. His body still tries to resist, but it's a lost cause. Everything in him screams — with pain, with fear, with shattered rage. His face is wrecked — no longer by hatred, but by naked suffering, the kind that can no longer hide, the kind no pride can silence. His features twist into a grotesque grimace, deformed by agony. His eyes, bulging so wide they look ready to pop, are flooded with tears he no longer controls. They run in filthy streaks down his hollowed cheeks, mixing with blood, with sweat, with the metallic taste clinging to his cracked lips.

His mouth opens and closes in ragged, arrhythmic gasps. He chokes. He coughs. He tries to breathe, but air refuses to come. And through this suffocating panic, torn sobs escape. Harsh, broken, humiliating. Nothing noble, nothing dignified. Just the desperate cry of a cornered animal, reduced to a raw state, incapable of hiding its collapse.

And Stark moves.

Not abruptly. Slowly, even. He leans down, with mechanical control, almost ceremonially. The armor barely groans under the tension. The sound of metal sliding on metal, quiet, chilling. He doesn't rush. He doesn't need to. He comes down to Matthew's level not to lower himself, but to dominate. So that Matthew has no escape, not even visually. So he can't look away, can't flee, even in thought.

The slits of the helmet glow with a dark light. Behind the visor, Stark's eyes are invisible to the world. But Matthew feels them. He feels them on him. Cold. Fixed. Merciless. There's nothing human in that gaze. Only judgment.

Judgment without appeal.

At this moment, Stark no longer sees an adversary, or even a criminal. He doesn't see a man. He sees a mistake. An aberration. A parasite. An anomaly to be eradicated from the system. His breath, inside the helmet, stays calm. Steady. Not a word has been spoken in long seconds. And that silence weighs the most. It crushes.

Then, finally, the voice falls.

A sentence. Simple. Relentless.

— "You made a monumental mistake."

The words are cold, sharp. No emotion clings to them. No anger, no contempt. Just the icy neutrality of a verdict already rendered, already weighed, already written. It's a condemnation. Not a threat. Not a promise. A bare truth, spoken like a knife sliding into flesh.

Matthew gasps, each breath a stab to the chest. His torso rises with difficulty, shaken by painful spasms, and his blurry eyes seem to drift without anchor. His pupils flicker in their sockets, swinging between raw panic and the numbness of pain. It looks like he no longer really sees. That everything around him is a blur of light and noise, that reality slips away under his clouded gaze. But deep in that chaos, something still crawls. A toxic impulse, a habit rooted in his bones: arrogance.

And then, despite everything — despite the blood on his chin, the nerves snapping under his skin like broken cables — he tries to smile. A rictus. Abominable. Twisted. More a grimace of pain than a true smile, but the intent is there. Split lips stretch into a parody of defiance, revealing teeth stained with red. It's not bravery. It's provocation. Pure vice. A last reflex of a pitiful player refusing to fold even when the game has long been lost.

— "Fuck... Stark..."

His voice is raspy, strangled, barely more than a whisper. It slides out of him like a malformed sigh. The words bounce off his broken teeth, drown in iron-tinged spit. He spits, a thick thread of blood spurting from his open lips, splattering the cracked concrete beneath him. But he goes on.

— "I can still negotiate..."

And in that phrase, everything tips. The tone, the intention, the subtext. There's nothing rational. Nothing intelligent. It's a pathetic instinct — that of the manipulator who still believes words can reverse the tide, even when drowning has already begun. He may think it's still a game. That naming the right cards can change the outcome.

But he's wrong. He just made the worst possible choice.

In front of him, Stark doesn’t answer. No word escapes his lips. No sarcastic line, no judgment. Only a subtle, glacial shift in the tension of his body. The jaw tightens under the mask. A brief tic of disgust. Of revulsion. Then silence. And that silence says more than all the threats in the world.

Stark doesn’t need to speak. His body speaks for him.

The arm lifts. Fluid. Natural. As if the motion had been restrained too long. And the fist comes down. Without flair. Without performance. Without explosive anger. It’s a dry fall, a verdict dropped straight from the sky. Alloy meets flesh with a dull, muffled sound, almost silenced by the weight of the impact. A pure hit. Clean. Devastating. The kind of blow not measured by strength — but by finality.

Matthew's head jerks violently backward under the force of the blow, as if torn by a titanic force. A dull thud echoes through the warehouse when the back of his skull slams against the ground — but he doesn’t get the chance to fully collapse. Stark’s hand catches him. The metal glove, clenched like a hydraulic clamp, grips him by the collar and holds him there, suspended at the edge of the void, keeping him from crumpling completely. Not yet.

It’s a cruel suspension. Deliberate. As if Stark refuses to even grant him the relief of surrender. As if he wants him to stay right there, conscious, lucid, to hear every word. To feel the slow sting of each second that follows. And Stark speaks. Finally. His voice comes from the helmet like a glacial blade, perfectly controlled. Without apparent hatred, but with a firmness that crushes everything in its path.

— "That was for daring to touch him."

No need to specify who. The tone, the density of the word, is enough to make the absent name echo. It’s a sentence. A judgment carved into speech. And before Matthew can utter even a defense, Stark’s fist rises. Not in rage. Not in excess.

It’s a mechanism.

A movement of clinical precision. The elbow bends, the shoulder pivots, and the fist comes down with relentless regularity. A hammer falling on a living anvil. The point of impact is the jaw. Right there, on the edge where the bone is vulnerable, where the shock can shatter the balance of the entire skull. The sound is sharper, more targeted, a contained crack within a muffled vibration. This is no longer a blow of anger. It’s an operation.

Matthew’s head bounces against the concrete, shaken like a dislocated puppet. His mouth opens in a disjointed groan, without a scream. He doesn’t scream anymore. He can’t. He moans. A low, hoarse sound, no longer human. A muffled, slippery whimper, like the breath of a wounded animal, cornered, emptied of hatred but not yet of fear. His body trembles. Not a shiver from cold, nor conscious fear. It’s a spasm. An uncontrolled nervous discharge. His arms buckle, his legs twitch as if still trying to flee, but there’s no direction anymore. No logic. Just a series of convulsions, a visceral, animal panic shaking his muscles in a last reflex of survival.

Dust floats around him, stirred by even his slightest movements, as if the air itself refuses to cover him. And Stark, standing over him, doesn’t move yet. He watches. He measures. He decides. He doesn’t need to rush the next step. Because in this chaos, he sets the rhythm. Stark straightens. Slowly. Like a mechanism returning to its default position, a war machine whose systems haven’t powered down. Every movement of his armor produces a subtle metallic creak, the scrape of advanced alloy against itself. It’s not a jolt. It’s not rage. It’s a verdict concluding.

His shadow stretches across the cracked concrete, immense, shifting, elongated by the artificial lights overhead. It spreads like a wave, engulfing Matthew’s curled form effortlessly. It covers him entirely, surrounds him, erases him. It leaves no doubt: here, now, Stark is everything. The ground, the ceiling, the sky. The authority. The unrelenting. His shoulders square, locked into a stance both defensive and predatory. A cold tension animates his neck. His chest rises in a perfectly measured rhythm. He breathes. Calm. Controlled. But his eyes, behind the visor, still burn. Two embers that refuse to die. Two centers of judgment still ablaze.

Then his voice drops. Low, calm, composed. But every word is weighed down with deep gravity, a tone that leaves no doubt about the sentence:

— "You thought you’d get away with it."

No emphasis. No shouting. Nothing theatrical. Just the raw truth, brutal, sharp as a blade.

And suddenly, movement. Direct. Sharp. Without warning. Stark lifts his foot. And brings it down into Matthew’s ribs with surgical precision. Not a wild strike. A controlled blow, measured to hit where it breaks but doesn’t kill. The noise is muffled but heavy — a dull, organic thud that resonates through the space like a sinister drum. Matthew’s body folds instantly under the impact, thrown onto his side like a marionette with snapped strings.

A rasp tears from his throat, hoarse, twisted, strangled. He opens his mouth, but no words come out. Air seems to escape him, snatched away, ripped out by pain. His chest rises in a brutal spasm, his arms curl around himself, seeking protection that no longer exists. He chokes. He can’t see anymore. His eyes flutter into the void, roll back. His body still searches for meaning, direction, escape. But there’s nothing.

Stark doesn’t lean in. Doesn’t yell. He watches. His armor, dust-streaked, stands firm in the heavy air like a rampart. He is the silence after the storm. The echo of judgment. And even without moving, even without another word, he places over Matthew a threat greater than all the blows already dealt. Because at this precise moment, it’s not just the man he’s facing. It’s what he represents: consequence.

He stares.

Coldly. Motionless. No hesitation. No visible emotion filters through the metallic mask. And yet, in the silence that settles, it’s clear everything inside is burning. That everything he’s held back so far pulses, swirls, seeks a breach. But he doesn’t give in. He doesn’t move. He simply watches. Steady. Unyielding. Like a judge staring at the condemned before pronouncing the sentence.

At his feet, Matthew is nothing more than a disjointed body. Chopped breath. A carcass drenched in sweat and blood, incapable even of lifting itself. He trembles. Shudders. But still exists, still takes up space, still soils the air. A crawling presence, still here, still alive. And that’s the worst part. Stark could end it. Right here. Right now. A simple move. A command to his armor. A shift of his heel. That’s all it would take. He could silence him, crush that grotesque groan, smother that breath of hate and poison like erasing a mistake on a board. He could erase all trace of that face, those hands, that voice.

He could let it all go. Let the anger he’s swallowed for far too long erupt. Release the tension coiled into every fiber of his being. Let out a war cry against the injustice of having watched that child — that fragile, broken being he’s seen fall, stand again, fight — be hunted, beaten, shattered all over again. He could strike in your name. For the fear he felt. For the dread that gripped him. For that image he will never forget: your body on the ground, your scream in the night, your silence ever since.

But he doesn’t. Not yet. Because he knows it wouldn’t be enough. It would be too easy. Too brief. A flash, an end, a hasty conclusion. No. What Matthew deserves isn’t a quick death. It’s not an immediate outcome. Not an end that would free him. What he deserves is to understand. To feel the weight of his choices. To see his own failure reflected in every passing second. He needs to feel fear seep in slowly, shame settle in, pain grow dull, heavy, unbearable. He needs to understand that he lost. And not just physically. Not just because of the blows. But because he holds no power anymore. Because he never truly did. Because everything he thought he held in his hands vanished the instant Stark walked in.

Tonight, vengeance must not be swift. It must be methodical. Cruel in its slowness. Complete. And Stark, a statue of metal with eyes of burning light, knows exactly how to do it.

A little farther away, removed from the incandescent chaos left behind, in that zone where the light barely flickers, where the walls seem to close in under the weight of night, a sound breaks the silence. Faint, nearly absent. But it’s there. A minuscule vibration. An anomaly in the weightlessness of fear.

A breath.

Shaky, disordered, clinging to life by a fraying thread. It rises from a corner where nothing had moved, where everything seemed frozen by violence. At first, it's a rattle. Coarse. Uneven. The sound of a body trying to surface while still buried beneath the black waves of shock. A breath that falters, stumbles at the threshold of the lungs. Then another. Sharper. More urgent. Like a jammed engine sputtering a cloud of pain before restarting. A raw survival impulse cutting through the space without anyone noticing right away. Not even you.

Because it’s you.

You, curled up in the shadows, erased by the brutality that just unfolded before you. You didn’t move. You couldn’t. Your entire body froze under the threat, reduced to a paralyzed observer. A spectator of your own impending end. Prisoner of terror, pain, and vertigo.

And now, slowly, you resume. A breath, a spasm. Your chest rises, but it’s an immense effort. As if every breath scrapes the bottom of a burning well. You gasp, like someone dragged too late out of the water. Your ribs protest. Your stomach tightens. A wave of pain ripples all the way into your clenched jaw. Your hands clutch at the floor, seeking anchor in this trembling reality. You feel the filth, the blood—yours, someone else’s. It’s all mixed. Your throat, burning, emits only a muffled sound. You want to scream, but you can’t. You want to speak, but your tongue is stuck to your palate like cloth forgotten in the rain.

A viscous liquid rises up your trachea. Blood. You know it even before you taste it on your tongue. It tastes like metal, iron, impact. You half-swallow it, half-choke on it. Then you turn your head. Slowly. One centimeter, two. As if each degree stolen from your stillness sets fire to your tendons. Your cheek grazes the floor. Your eyes try to open wider, but the light is too harsh, too raw after the darkness where you’d sunk. You make out shapes, distant movements. Sounds, distorted, reach you in waves: the breathing of the armor, metallic clicking, ragged breathing further away.

You’re here. You’re alive. But nothing holds.

Your body is broken along its axis. Your mind drifts, still clinging to fear like a lifebuoy. But one thing is certain, indisputable, almost violent in its clarity: you are breathing. It’s not a triumph. Not even a victory. It’s just… a return. A starting point. The spark of a comeback.

And then you spit.

It’s involuntary, uncontrollable. A hiccup, a jolt, a brutal rejection of what’s choking you. The liquid is warm, thick, saturated with that metallic heaviness unique to blood. It slides from your mouth in a thin line, dark and viscous, crawling slowly to the floor. There, it spreads, lazily, flowing into the concrete’s cracks, mixing with dust, oil, filth. It leaves a trace. A mark. Your imprint. A silent declaration of pain, of existence, of survival. A rasp escapes you, hoarse and gravelly, strangled before it even reaches the air. It’s not a call for help. It’s a reaction. A primitive sound, almost animal. The proof that something in you still stands, even if everything else is falling apart.

Your fingers move. First one, then two. Slow, numb, as if your whole body were thawing after a too-long winter. Your muscles protest. Your nerves scream. But they respond. You’re here. Not intact. Not unscathed. But here. Present in this soiled room, in this aftermath. And on the other side, Stark stops dead. It’s not theatrical. He doesn’t freeze to dramatize. He stops because a detail, an infinitesimal shift in the saturated air, just struck him head-on. It’s not a sound he hears. It’s a vibration. A wave. A shock.

You.

It’s as if your breath passed through the walls, pierced the alloy of his armor, struck directly into the fibers of his being. A flash at his neck. A vertigo. The sound of a truth no one expected anymore. He felt it, like an invisible hand on his shoulder. His shoulder pivots slowly. Almost mechanically. The rest of the body follows, in a silence thick with electricity. His arms, still tense, are heavy with contained energy, with rage not yet fully dispersed. His fists, still clenched, vibrate under the weight of restraint. But his breath halts. Just for a second. A suspension of air. As if the world, too, had stopped alongside him.

He looks for you. He doesn’t know what he hopes to see. He fears what he might discover. A slumped form. A lifeless body. A snuffed-out light. And yet. What he feels at that exact moment is neither fear nor relief. It’s something else. A dull wave of relief tainted by guilt. You are breathing. And he knows. Because he just heard you return. Because your rasp, your blood, your spit, your breath… it’s the sound of presence.

His eyes fix on you. At first, you’re just a spot in the scenery. A detail misaligned in the surrounding chaos. A form half-hidden in shadow, covered in blood, dust, silence. Then the illusion shatters. The high-tech armor, packed with sensors, doesn’t react yet. But the man inside falters. He doesn’t understand. Not right away. His visual receptors analyze, measure, compare. But his brain, still charged with the adrenaline of a lawless fight, refuses to connect the data. His mind wants to believe what he sees is a shock residue. A hallucination.

Until he sees the movement.

Tiny. Broken. But real.

Your chest lifts. Unevenly. As if battling an invisible weight, a sea of pain and exhaustion. A breath stolen from the void, torn from asphyxiation. He sees the spasm in your throat, the dull jerk that stirs you, the silent fight to hold the air. And he hears it. That wet gargle, that sound of agony suddenly turned into a cry of life. The breath scraping, rasping, whistling through blood.

Then he moves. Already. Without thinking. Without warning.

A step — heavy, precise, loaded with cold urgency. Then a second, faster, almost desperate. The armor grinds against the concrete at each impact, pounding the floor like a tragic metronome. Every step is a slap to fear. A denial of the impossible. He crosses the space in seconds, driven not by tech, but by raw instinct. That of the man, not the hero.

He falls to his knees. Hard. The shock makes the metal vibrate. But he doesn’t care. He no longer feels the armor’s weight. Not the room’s cold. There’s only you, lying there. Your grayish face, smeared with dust, stained with red too vivid. Your eyelashes stuck with sweat. Your split lips. Your jagged breath. And that puddle growing under your cheek, mixing into the filth of the floor.

His hands, once weapons, now hesitate.

They lift slowly. Unsure what to do. Protect? Stabilize? Support? He wants to rip you from this vile floor, get you out of here, but he knows the slightest move could worsen your state. So he stays, frozen, inches from your face, watching for the slightest twitch, flutter, sound from your throat. Then you move. You move. It’s slight. Barely noticeable. But real. A shiver runs through your arm. A spasm in your hand. Your mouth parts more, letting out a breath heavy with blood. It’s ugly. It’s fragile. But it’s alive. Tony inhales, and for the first time in hours, it’s not out of rage.

It’s a breath cut short by emotion. A tension unraveling inside but refusing to collapse. He feels his own heart pounding against his chest walls like a caged beast. Not panic. Not yet. But a fracture. A wave. Hope. Fierce. Unstable. Twisted, like everything in him. But unshakable. Because you’re here. You’re breathing. You’re holding on. And it’s all he needs to keep going. To believe, even for a second, that he can still get you out. That it’s not over. That despite the blood, the fear, the violence — he wasn’t too late.

Your eyelids move.

Barely. First a tremor, faint, nearly imperceptible. Just a twitch at your skin’s surface, drowned in the general stillness of your broken body. An involuntary spasm that could be a leftover nerve reflex, an empty motion. But it returns. A second tremor, more marked this time. Rooted in flesh, in will. A micro-rebellion against unconsciousness.

Your brow contracts. A line slowly forms, deeply, between your eyebrows. Like a crack on a wall kept too long in tension. Your lashes, glued by fragments of dust, dried blood, acid sweat, tremble with effort. They shake under the weight of the world, of what you’ve just endured. And then, with the painful slowness of a body coming back from the brink, you open your eyes. It’s not a simple gesture. Not a waking. It’s a tear. A raw ascent, wrenched from the darkness where your mind had taken shelter. Your lids part by mere millimeters, each fraction of opening struggling against exhaustion, gravity, and the pain pulsing through your skull. You open them, slowly, against the current of the panic still lurking inside you.

Even dim, even dirty, the light hits you like a shock.

It assaults you instantly. Pierces your retinas like a blade, raw, invasive, unwanted. A white burn. Your eyes, flooded with a surreal blur, struggle to focus. Shapes dance, liquid, inconsistent. Nothing is stable. Everything dissolves. You can’t make out the ceiling above, or the walls closing in.

And most of all, you don’t yet recognize the figure leaning over you.

It’s just a mass of metal and shadow. An imposing blur, haloed in light like a mirage in armor. A presence without a name. You feel more than you see. The heat of a gaze fixed on you, the magnetic tension in the air, the echo of a heartbeat close by — not yours, his. You barely distinguish the muted red of the visor, the cold sheen of steel shoulders. But your body knows. Your unconscious mind recognizes the aura, the weight. Something in you wants to flee. Something else refuses to move. You don’t speak yet. Your throat is ruined, your tongue dry, your chest too painful to make a sound. But you’re here. Present. Pulled to the surface. And that’s already a miracle. An act of resistance.

Your blurry, derailed gaze finally catches a steady light. Two eyes, behind a visor. Two embers locked behind glass. They’re there. Watching you. Worried, maybe. Furious, surely. But they found you. And in this moment suspended between shock and lucidity, that’s all that matters. You breathe. The helmet hisses softly as it lifts, almost solemnly, like the metal knows it must be silent. And suddenly, his face appears. Clearer. Closer. More human.

Tony.

You recognize him before you can truly see. It’s a feeling, an anchor in the chaos. It’s the way his eyes pierce you without violence, but with an intensity that freezes the world. That light in his gaze doesn’t come from the suit or the surroundings — it’s deeper. Older. Fiercely alive. His face is tight, marked by fatigue, by still-burning anger, but above all by silent worry. His features don’t move, but you feel the tension beneath. The stillness isn’t calm: it’s restraint. A dam about to break. His eyes scan you, read you, as if searching for every micro-expression, every twitch of muscle. He observes like he’s afraid to miss a sign. A blink. A breath. An absence.

And he says nothing. No commentary. No panic. He just stays there. Present. Not like a dream, not a last image summoned by a dying brain. Not a remnant before the end. He’s really there. The man. Not the hero. Not the billionaire. Just him. In the silence, in the dust, in the blood. His hands, still covered by the suit, approach. Slowly. Carefully. He doesn’t touch you — not yet. He brushes. He avoids pain. He leaves space. A gesture that could seem clumsy, but is actually perfectly controlled. He doesn’t want to hurt you more. He won’t risk snapping the thin thread of consciousness you’re clinging to.

He waits. He waits for you to be lucid enough to understand. To feel. To know. He doesn’t need to say it. Doesn’t need declarations. It’s in his presence. In how he doesn’t look away, how he kneels despite the armor, despite the blood. He came.

For you.

Your lip trembles. You taste blood in your mouth — metallic, thick, bitter. Your jaw opens slowly, like a door rusted by pain. Every motion makes you flinch, every inch is a battle. Your lips part at last, cracked, dry, nearly fused together. Your tongue, rough and sore, searches for a sound. A word. Just one. Then, in a breath barely audible, more groan than voice, you call him.

— "T… Tony?"

His name escapes like a moan from your core, a syllable broken by pain, doubt, fear. A fractured whisper the air barely carries. You don’t know if he’ll hear. You don’t know if he’s real. You don’t even know if your brain invented that face to comfort you before the end. But you say it anyway. Because you must. Because there’s nothing else. Because that name, in your mouth, is your last link to the world, your last refuge. A desperate call. A reach for solid ground. A lifeline in the wreckage. And you fix your gaze, best you can. Through the blur, through the too-bright light, through tears that won’t fall. You search for his eyes. You want to hold on. You want to see an answer. Proof. Even if the world shakes around you, you feel it: he heard you.

You know it. He looks at you. Long. Deeply. Without once turning away, like his gaze alone could anchor you to the world. Like looking at you could be enough to pull your shattered pieces together. He barely moves, but his silence is thick with unspoken words, searing tension. And then he answers. Not with empty lines. Not with grand declarations. He answers with what he is, what he offers in that instant: a short, shaky breath. A barely visible pulse in his throat. A light in his eyes that has nothing to do with his suit. It’s a promise. Raw certainty. Undeniable truth.

He’s here. And he won’t leave. His face, still tight with fear and rage, softens just enough for you to notice, even through blurred vision. He dips his head, leans his forehead slightly toward you — not too close, just enough so you feel his warmth. And his voice cuts through the space.

— "Hey, kid…"

It’s low. Gentle. A rough caress in the chaos. Nothing sharp left in it, no sarcasm, no defense. Just what matters. Naked vulnerability, stretched between the fear of losing you and the relief of finding you. He doesn’t talk like to an employee. Not like a lost kid. He talks like to someone he almost lost. Someone he searched for. Someone he found. A shiver runs down your spine. Your eyelids flutter shut for a second. You inhale. The air still scrapes. Each breath is a fight, but you continue. You want to stay here. With him. Then your eyes open again. Slowly. Like rediscovering the world inch by inch. Like your body itself needs confirmation. That face, hovering above, is real. That voice belongs to this moment. Not a trick of a delirious mind.

You blink once. Then again. The image sharpens a little. You recognize the contours. The details. The exhausted black eyes. The drawn features. The sweat on his temple. The dust on his cheek. It’s him. It’s Tony. And he came. You want to speak, but your breath is too short. Your body, too heavy. So you stay there, half-conscious, clinging to his gaze like to a rope stretched over the void.

You’re not alone anymore.

Not abandoned in this corner of misery, of cracked concrete and walls weeping grime. The smell of blood, rust, and dried fear still hangs in the air like a second skin — but it no longer traps you. Something pierced it. Someone. He stands before you, frozen in a stance that’s not stiff. It’s contained tension, dense, like a spring stretched to its breaking point. He doesn’t move, but not from hesitation. From total control. Alertness. His eyes lock on you, burning with a fire his armor can’t hide. The metal shell, the articulated plates, the sleek lines of technology — they seem irrelevant now. It’s not Iron Man kneeling there. It’s Tony Stark. A man. Present. Focused. And his sole purpose, his one anchor, is you.

— "We’re getting out of here."

His voice is low. Flat. Not a shout, not a command. A clipped phrase, direct, nearly hoarse, like it was carved from stone. He’s not trying to joke, not defusing the moment with a quip. He’s not trying to sound heroic. What he says isn’t a promise — it’s a fact already in motion. You won’t stay here. Not while he still breathes. You want to answer. To tell him you can handle it. That you can walk, or at least try. That you’re not just dead weight. You want to move, prove you still exist, that you’re more than this broken body he has to carry. Your arms try to bend but collapse. Your legs are just pain, tension, inertia. Every nerve screams. Your back tears out a silent cry at the slightest motion. You claw at the air like a man condemned — but nothing responds. You want to help. But your body has deserted you.

And he sees it. Every flicker of your jaw, the smallest twitch of your fingers, your chest struggling to pull air like a rusted forge. He reads the effort. The wounded pride. He understands you want to fight, even now. And he doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t sigh. Doesn’t say anything to shame you. He just moves closer.

— "Let me handle it, kid."

His voice is different this time. A softness in the rough. Almost a whisper. Not a command. An accord. A hand offered over the abyss. Then he acts. His movements aren’t mechanical, despite the suit. They’re precise, controlled, but hold a tenderness that feels almost unreal. He lifts you slowly, as if he feels you are far more fragile than you appear. One arm slips behind your back, dodging pain with surgical care. The other cradles your neck, supports your head without pressure, just enough so you won’t fall.

You feel his chest against you — smooth and cold under metal, yet oddly reassuring. You hear, against your ear, the low hum of his artificial heart. That steady sound becomes a reference point. An anchor. And in this suspended moment, where everything still teeters, you understand he’s truly holding you. Not just your weight. Not just your body. You. Your existence. Your pain. Your damaged breath. He holds them all. Without flinching. Without backing down.

You let go. Without shame. Because this isn’t weakness. It’s finally safety. You feel yourself floating. Literally. Like your body gave up all structure, all logic, all will. You’re nothing but a suspended weight, raw flesh battered by pain, consumed by exhaustion. Your breath is short, choppy, erratic. You don’t know if you’re inhaling or exhaling — just that air moves, barely enough to keep you between two heartbeats. And in that drift, there’s him. Tony. An anchor. A presence. A weight unlike any other.

His arms hold you, firm and sure. He doesn’t shake. He doesn’t waver. And even through the suit, you feel something human. A strange warmth. A steady calm. The metal is warm against your skin, as if it’s absorbed some of you — the panic, the blood, the fever. And his gestures... they aren’t those of a man in a hurry, or a soldier on a mission. They belong to someone who’s careful. Who adjusts every step to keep from jarring you, every shift to avoid worsening your injuries. He wraps you in a silent promise: that he won’t let go.

You want to thank him. But your tongue won’t work. You want to open your eyes, keep them open, show him you’re still here, holding on. But the light becomes an assault. It pulses, wavers, dissolves into white blots, then black. Glare, halos, as if reality itself melts into patches of filthy light. Your vision narrows. Everything wavers. Even sound changes. Footsteps, the scrape of armor, the breath in your ear it all blurs into a hazy echo your mind can’t hold.

You’re slipping. Softly. Slowly. And yet, in the void, you still feel. His arms around you. The curve of his forearm beneath your head, the hand steady on your shoulder, the way he cradles your neck without weight. You feel the steady hum of his chest reactor, like a second heart — mechanical, faithful, unwavering. You feel the control in his fingers, the calculated support of your body, as if every angle, every contact, was planned to spare you pain. And you feel something else a tension, a mute urgency, beating against him like a restrained fear.

So you hold on. To anything you can. To that warmth. That metal. To him. You don’t need to fight anymore. Not really. Just stay. Present. Conscious, even a little. Because now, you can let go. Just a little. You can surrender to that grip without fearing the fall. You can sleep knowing he’s watching. He’s here. And he won’t let you fall again.

Then a noise. Sharp. Distant. A metallic crack. A vibration too precise to belong to the empty space of this room. The sound of a mechanism. A lock. A step that doesn’t come from him. Something is coming. The sound slices through the air like a blade. Distinct from everything else. Not a groan. Not a sigh of pain. Not even the crash of something falling. No. It’s sharper. More precise. More intimate. A click. Pure. Cutting. Like a guillotine dropping. The familiar sound of a safety catch being disengaged, slowly, methodically, as if it had been anticipated. As if it heralded what’s to come. It’s a sound you never forget. A promise folded into metal. A threat spoken by a machine only the hand of a dangerous man knows how to wield.

It’s not just a sound. It’s an ultimatum.

And immediately, the silence — that fragile tension stretched out for long minutes — shatters like glass under a blow. The moment freezes. Every molecule of air locks into deadly stillness. Stark stops. Instantly. A block. His whole body locking like a defensive system on maximum alert. The suit doesn’t creak, doesn’t shake. But you feel the tension, everywhere. In the angle of his shoulders. In the sudden curve of his back. In the way his head stays immobile, as if the slightest move could trigger what’s next.

And you. Even you. Even in this dissociative state, this blurry space between consciousness and collapse, you feel it. You recognize it. That sound. That chill. You don’t know exactly where it comes from in the room, but your body knows. It remembers. It contracts. Instinctively. As if every nerve, every cell, every bone recognized that frequency. That message. That danger signal etched into your flesh.

It’s not an ordinary sound. It’s a silent scream. The scream of fractured memory. Of a body that hasn’t forgotten what fear is. Real fear. The kind that freezes. That anchors you. That always comes back through the sound of a weapon being cocked — above your head, behind your back, or in the middle of the night.

And then, the voice.

It scrapes the walls. Twists the air. It’s there, too close, rising from a poorly extinguished corner of shadow. Broken. Hoarse. Soaked in bile. Strangled by hate. It stumbles on the words but doesn’t die. A voice you’ve heard scream, laugh, whisper, bite. A voice capable of everything. And nothing. A voice that hurts even without strength.

"Put him down."

Not a scream. Not a command. An order. Spat through clenched teeth. A groan of frustration, of muffled rage, but still standing. He’s there. Still. Standing. Armed. And what he demands, what he insists on, is unthinkable: that Stark lets you go. Puts you down. That you return to the floor. That the pain starts again. That the terror returns.

And all at once, you feel the cold. Not the cold of the metal. The cold of possibility. Of threat. Of fear. Stark doesn’t turn his head. Not yet. He doesn’t need to.

He knows. He’s always known that a man like Matthew doesn’t vanish without resistance. That he never really falls. Not as long as he has breath, a pulse of hate, a muscle left to bite with. That’s a rule, a constant for that kind of filth: they don’t go out — they detonate. And Tony understood that from the first second. From the moment he saw that flicker in his eye, that twisted thirst for power, that sick need for control.

So he stays still. Not out of surprise. Not out of hesitation. But calculation. Perfect read of the moment, the trajectory, the danger. His body remains locked, like a beacon rooted in the ground. But inside, his sensors activate. His instincts too. And in that short lapse of time, in that suspended fraction of a second, he measures what’s coming. Matthew is still there.

Behind him. A few meters away. Maybe less. Standing — or something close to it. A grotesque, fragile balance. His silhouette flickers like a sick flame, shuddering with spasms and tremors. His legs are bent, unstable, like two shattered stakes too proud to collapse. One arm hangs useless. The other, armed.

His face is a shredded mask of flesh. One eye almost shut, purpled to the bone. His mouth barely bleeds now, as if his body no longer has the strength to bleed properly. A raw gash cuts across his temple from a blow poorly absorbed. He looks like a ghost. A leftover human who should’ve been buried long ago. And yet, he’s here. Alive. Threatening.

And in his right hand the only one still mobile glints a compact shape. The other weapon. Not the one Stark knocked away earlier. Another. Kept warm, hidden in a boot, a pocket, a sleeve. Plan B. Last trick. Final venom. The barrel trembles, blurry, but aligned.

Not at Tony.

At you.

At your weakened body, leaning against the suit, clinging to what’s left of consciousness. You don’t see it — not yet — but you feel the shift. You feel the silence twisting around you, like the world holding its breath. And Tony too. Just for a second. Enough to calculate. Enough to confirm. The barrel is aimed at you. And in Matthew’s eyes, despite the pain, despite the exhaustion, despite the blood dripping into his collar, there’s that fire. Weak, but there. A wild ember. A sick rage. A blind, desperate fury. He doesn’t want to win anymore. He wants to destroy. He doesn’t want to flee anymore. He wants to mark you. One last time. To erase you. To own you all the way into your fall.

Even if it kills him.

Stark feels his pulse pounding against the inside of the armor, stronger, more brutal, like a deafening echo reverberating off the metal. Each beat is a war drum hammering in the hollow of his chest—heavy, steady, ready to explode. His jaw tightens slowly. He doesn’t move yet, but every nerve in his body is on high alert, every joint primed to unleash lethal force in a fraction of a second. He has become silence. He has become steel. He has become threat.

His arms tighten around you with an almost unreal slowness, millimeter by millimeter. Not to suffocate you. To hold you. To shield you. He pulls you closer against him, as if the armor isn’t enough to protect you anymore, as if his own body must become the barrier, a living rampart, a fortress between you and the bullet. He knows where the barrel is aimed. He saw the trajectory, the shift, the alignment. It’s not him he’s targeting. It’s you.

He says nothing. Not yet. Words would be a luxury. A useless noise in a scene that has become too fragile, too saturated. There’s no more room for banter, no more space for sharp retorts he knows so well. There’s only this short, held breath, and this heat in his throat, this growl, this fire rising and threatening to overturn everything.

And he knows that this time, if he acts… it’ll be to kill.

The gun is there. Raised. Steady. A black cylinder aimed at them like a sentence, a final injunction. Matthew’s arm trembles slightly, but not enough to make him doubt. It’s not weakness shaking his muscles. It’s adrenaline. Excitement. Hatred. His fingers, clamped to the grip, are clenched so tight they’ve gone white, every joint taut like a cord about to snap. It’s the final spasm of a mind refusing to go down without leaving a last scar.

And his eyes.

They’re not looking for Tony. Not even for fear or recognition. They’re looking for damage. For the impact. For the end. Bloodshot, swollen with rage, they gleam with a sick, icy intensity. A raw hatred, ancient, visceral, almost religious in its obsession. A hatred without aim, without meaning, just one need: to scar. To erase you.

Then he speaks.

— "You really thought it would end like this?"

His voice rises, rasping, strangled. A thin thread of sound scraped from damaged vocal cords, saturated with bile, blood, pain, and crushed pride. Each word seems to cost him a bit of life, but he doesn’t care. It’s not a line for dialogue. It’s not a question. It’s a bite. A spit. A final provocation. He growls more than he speaks, a kind of dying breath, a defiant snarl from a beaten dog who refuses to die without biting one more time.

And Stark, still frozen, knows. He knows this isn’t a scene. Not a confrontation. It’s the moment. The one before. The one where everything can flip.

Stark exhales.

Not out of fear. Not even anger. A heavy sigh. Worn out. Bone-tired. Like a father at the end of his rope facing the same mistake for the hundredth time, one he doesn’t even bother correcting anymore. The kind of sigh you let out when everything has already been said, when words are too light to hold the weight of the obvious. It’s a breath that stretches. That rasps along the edges of his helmet, infiltrating the tense silence like a crack.

Then, slowly, Tony closes his eyes.

Not for long. A second, maybe two. But in that brief instant, everything in him closes. Resets. He pushes away emotion. He buries it. He stores the fire, the panic, the protective instinct that’s devoured him since he saw you on the ground. He shelves it all to become what he’s always known how to be when it counts: a damn machine. Efficient. Surgical. Unstoppable. When he opens his eyes again, they’re void of compassion. Just a glint of steel. Sharp. Cold.

— "You really are a fucking idiot."

His voice is flat. Slow. Devoid of any emotion, except for the weariness hanging from every syllable like a silent threat. No need to raise his voice. No need to get angry. He doesn’t even need to say he’s about to act. It’s all there already, in the way his body shifts balance. Subtly. A shift in stance. A micro-adjustment. Just enough to strengthen his footing, to restore gravity around him, to calculate.

But he doesn’t let go of you. Not for a second. Not an inch.

His arms remain closed around you, held with infallible precision. He holds you like one would hold an answer. A promise. Like he refuses to abandon you, even for a heartbeat. Like the idea of laying you down on the ground — that ground soaked in blood, fear, agony — is an offense he won’t tolerate. Not after all this. Not now.

Across from him, Matthew wavers.

His legs buckle beneath him, stiff, tense like two rusted metal rods about to snap. He clutches his side, fingers clenched on his ribs as if trying to hold himself together, keep his body from collapsing. His breathing is a rusted saw, wheezing, chopped into irregular, painful segments. He tastes blood on his face. Along his cheek. On his split lips. The taste of metal and dirt, acidic. He trembles.

But he still has the gun.

And he feels it, that last sliver of power. That fragment of unstable balance in the hollow of his hand. He grips it like someone clutches a grudge. He’s not shaking from fear. He’s trembling with tension. With pride. With the refusal to bend, even on the edge of the end. He straightens slightly, still swaying, but raises the barrel toward you both.

And he spits:

— "I swear if you move another inch, I’ll blow his head off."

His words fall like stones into an empty well. Raw. Warped by pain. Loaded with a filthy, childish rage, almost pathetic. He throws in everything he has left: his anger, his fear, his illusion of control. He wants to be taken seriously. He wants to inspire fear. But Stark doesn’t respond. Not yet. He stays still. Silent. And that silence… is worse than a threat.

Stark does nothing — or so it seems. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t yield. He stays rooted to the floor, in the moment, in this suspended second where everything can fall apart — but nothing is lost yet. He’s still holding you, firmly, with a precision that defies pain, fear, even logic. And yet, in this perfect stillness, something shifts.

He simply raises an eyebrow.

Nothing theatrical. Nothing ironic. Just that small, barely perceptible movement, almost mechanical, as if he had just decoded the utter stupidity of what he just heard. As if Matthew’s words were nothing more than a distant echo, a threat already dissolved before it even hit. Then, with calculated, glacial slowness, he finally turns his head. Not in surprise. Not in a flinch.

No, he turns his head with the calm of an ancient god. With that silent authority only men tired of violence can carry without trembling. And when his gaze lands on Matthew — direct, sharp, total — it’s no longer Tony Stark standing there. It’s something else. A stripped entity, devoid of humanity. It’s no longer arrogance. No longer exasperation. Not even rage. It’s emptiness.

Not a hollow void, not a fragile nothingness. No. A void of steel. An absolute absence of emotion, so sharp, so dense, it seems to suck the air around it. A gaze where everything is already over. Where the verdict has fallen, irrevocable, final. A gaze that doesn’t threaten — it condemns. That doesn’t kill — it denies existence. Denies the right to be.

And Matthew feels it.

Oh, he feels it. In his gut. In his bowels. In his knees that, despite himself, begin to give way. He takes a step back. A tiny retreat, almost imperceptible. But it’s too late. Stark saw it. And that movement, that simple body shift, that instinctive micro-defense, is worth more than a thousand confessions.

Then Stark speaks.

— "You really wanna play this game?"

The question is asked without emphasis. Without drama. Like a blade laid on a table. Sharp. Cold. Needlessly polite. And the sound of his voice cracks the air with the same intensity as glass shattering in a silent church. No need to raise the tone. No need for added threat.

Because everything is already there.

Matthew straightens his shoulders. Or tries to. His back bends under the pain, but he wants to give height back to his body, pretend he hasn’t flinched. He tries to swallow the step he took back, erase the gesture. He tightens his grip on the gun, grits his teeth between jagged breaths. And he speaks, louder, to cover the wavering.

But in his eyes, the confidence is cracking. His breathing is too fast. Uneven. His forehead drenched in cold sweat — not from effort, no — from fear creeping in, drop by drop, down his spine. His fingers tremble. Barely, but just enough to throw off the aim. And his movements, suddenly, become too much. Too jerky. Too erratic. He flails like a puppet whose strings have been yanked too hard.

He’s no longer in control. Not of the scene. Not of the pace. Not even of himself.

And Stark feels it. Not just through the suit’s sensors, not only via the micro-vibrations of the ground under his feet or Matthew’s thermal signature burning from the inside. No, he feels it like an animal senses a storm, like a predator senses the irregular heartbeat of prey. It’s visceral. Primal. Obvious. Because he’s learned to recognize it — that vibration, that nervous derailment, that fault line running through a man when he loses control.

Because everyone, sooner or later, has felt that terrible thing when Tony Stark closes up like this. It’s not explosive anger. Not a roar. Not a flare of rage. It’s an internal collapse, controlled, contained, a thousand times more terrifying. It’s the void settling in. The absolute silence before a surgical strike. It’s the moment when humanity fades to make way for something else. Fear. It’s there, in the air, suspended between the grimy walls of this room, between the debris on the floor, between each irregular heartbeat. And Stark, without a word, moves. Almost nothing. A bend of the knee. A subtle weight shift from one foot to the other. A barely perceptible adjustment in posture. But enough. Enough to shift the scene into another register. The gun barrel rises instantly.

— "DON’T MOVE!"

The scream cracks. High-pitched. Nervous. Hysterical. An explosion of panic, a pure fear discharge, vomited into the space like a desperate reflex. Matthew’s voice, already broken, tears itself into a lopsided shriek, too shrill to be solid, too shaky to be dangerous. And in his eyes, you can see it. The moment of terror. The crack.

He wavers.

His pupils dart from Stark to you, and back to the gun. Then to his own hands. As if suddenly realizing he no longer controls anything. That he’s just a link dangling in a mechanism that no longer belongs to him. His breath accelerates, grows loud, almost wheezing. His chest heaves with difficulty. He tries to compensate. To keep face. But the tension betrays everything. His arms tremble. His fingers, clenched on the grip, vibrate despite him. A shiver runs through his shoulders, derails the aim, throws off his center of gravity. He tightens his hold on the weapon, but it’s too late: the doubt is there. The instability. The obvious. He knows.

He knows he’s losing. Not just the upper hand. Not just the battle. But everything. The scene. The power. The narrative. And he feels it, in his broken bones, in his exhausted muscles, in the clammy heat of his blood spilling too fast: this part right here — it’s the end. There will be no glory. No final revenge. Just the fall. And like all cowards, like all monsters too weak to fall alone, he wants to drag you down with him.

— "Put him down. Now."

The phrase comes out in a rasp, between clenched teeth, like a final desperate plea for a balance that no longer exists. It’s no longer a command. Not really. There’s something fractured in the tone, a tremor, a break. He’s begging without admitting it, panting, lost. His voice is jagged, unstable, stretched to the extreme, oscillating between threat and collapse.

But Stark doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t need to speak. You watch him think. Calculate. With surgical precision deployed in perfect silence. Every microsecond becomes a world; each fraction of a moment an equation. He reads everything — the tension in Matthew’s shoulders, the subtle twitch of his arm, the increasing pressure of his index finger on the trigger. He analyzes the angle, the velocity, the firing radius. He isolates trajectories. Assesses the margins. Corrects for the unforeseen. The right moment. The only moment. The one where everything can tip. And then, Matthew screams. A shout. A spasm. A total rejection of lost control. A dying man’s order, a final command hurled like a stone into a storm he can no longer stop.

— “STARK!”

And the shot is fired. A flash. A tear. A sonic implosion in a room saturated with tension. The detonation isn’t just a noise. It’s a shockwave. A blade of fire that lacerates space, rips the air, splits the scene in two. The yellow flash spits its light into the gloom like lightning dropped into the heart of silence. The barrel flares, violent, blinding, and the bullet flies. A sharp whistle. Shrill. A vibration that pierces the eardrums like a scream of metal. A shiver of steel. A heartbeat. Not even a second. Not even a full breath. If Stark’s inhale had been different, if he’d hesitated, if he’d blinked, if gravity had been heavier by a single milligram... the bullet would’ve hit you. Split your throat, your chest, your skull. It would’ve ended everything — brutal, filthy, final.

But it didn’t. Because he left no room for error. Because he saw it coming, sensed it, anticipated it. Because the exact moment Matthew’s finger twitched, the moment the gun’s internal mechanism clicked, Tony Stark had already moved. Already shifted his center of gravity. Already pivoted half a step, his arm pulling you in, shielding you with the armor, ripping you from the line of fire in a motion so swift the world didn’t have time to react. The steel wall intercepted the bullet. An impact. A spark. A tiny burst of light on the reinforced chestplate. The dull sound of a bullet meeting a world it cannot pierce. You didn’t feel a thing. Just a breath. A warmth. Then a tremor through Stark’s entire body — the shockwave he absorbed for you.

And for a fraction of a second, he doesn’t move. He remains frozen. Not out of fear. But to make sure. To listen to your breath. To confirm that you’re alive. Then he slowly lifts his head. And this time, it’s not a look. It’s a sentence.

The impact tears through you like a silent thunderclap. You didn’t understand at first. You felt a warm gust skim your cheek, like the scrape of an invisible fire. Then the rumble echoed inside Stark’s chest — the one cradling your body, limp and suspended between terror and exhaustion. The metal vibrated. His armor took the hit. And you — you couldn’t do anything. Not even scream. Your breath locks in your throat, ripped away by the violence of the moment. You want to speak. To move. To cry out. But your vocal cords are tied, your muscles unresponsive. Your fingers try to cling to him, to seek an anchor, anything — but they slip, powerless, drained of strength. Your entire body is dead weight, suspended by another’s will.

And him… he moves. Slowly. Deliberately. Like an ancient statue waking after a thousand years of silence. No panic. No rush. Just chilling, methodical, surgical precision. His head pivots on a perfect axis. A single angle. His gaze finds Matthew. And something shifts in the air. It’s no longer that abyssal void that burned seconds ago. It’s not flaming rage, ready to consume. No. What emanates now from his eyes, his movements, every line of his face… is worse. Older. More fundamental.

It’s the total absence of forgiveness. An implacable, cold, silent force that seeks nothing but a conclusion. He’s no longer looking at you. Not really. But he hasn’t forgotten you. And yet his movements remain gentle. Tender, incongruously so. He lays you down with surreal slowness, as if afraid to break you more. Every motion is measured. Controlled. Deliberate. His arm slips behind your back, supports your descent, holds you until the last moment. And then, with the care of a surgeon, he slides you against the wall.

You feel the concrete against your back. Rough. Cold. It almost burns. But his fingers linger a moment longer. Just long enough to keep you from falling. Just enough to offer a last anchor. Then his gaze tears away from you. For a second. Just one. Like a parenthesis. Like a temporary farewell. He entrusts you to the ground. And from here on, everything that follows is no longer about you… it’s about him and Matthew.

Then, he rises.

The metal groans softly, as if the suit itself were holding its breath. A low vibration escapes the still-warm joints. A deep murmur, almost organic. A beast waking up. The lights embedded in the joints shift — first imperceptibly, then abruptly: the bright white turns to pulsing red. Combat red. Retribution red. Judgment red. Every LED becomes an ember, each glowing point a silent siren screaming the irreversibility of what’s coming.

Matthew sees it. And he understands.

He tries to back away. A step. Then another, stumbling, uncertain. His body won’t follow. His legs buckle beneath him. His arm lifts again, but the gun in his hand shakes more than he does. The barrel wavers, dances in the air, uncertain. He still believes. In one last chance. One final shot. He tells himself he can fire. That he can take Stark down, or at least slow him. That he can hurt him.

But Tony gives him no time.

The roar of the thrusters splits the space. The armor launches, carried by raw, thunderous force. A comet of metal and fury. The distance between them vanishes in a fraction of a second, erased by the taut trajectory of a body hurled like a cannonball. The impact is brutal. The weapon flies. A palm strike — dry, surgical — hits the grip and sends it spinning into the dark. It spins, skids somewhere out of reach. Harmless. Forgotten.

But Stark doesn’t stop.

His fist crashes down the next instant. It plunges into Matthew’s abdomen like a hammer through plaster. His breath is ripped from him, torn out in a high-pitched gasp. His torso folds, his body lifts, before slamming into the wall with a sickening, wet thud — flesh against concrete. He collapses like a sack, half-conscious, half-empty. But the second blow follows fast. Sharper. More precise. The jaw. A clean crack of bone. A red burst explodes between his teeth. Blood, saliva, a thread of bile. Matthew screams — or tries to — but only a gargle escapes. He crashes to his knees, arms slack, mouth twisted in a grotesque, disjointed grimace.

And Stark advances. This time, he doesn’t run. He walks. Slowly. Methodically. Like an executioner. Like judgment embodied. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t speak. He moves, and that’s enough. His shadow engulfs the floor. It blankets Matthew’s body like a shroud. He stands above him — towering, immovable. The red light from the arc reactor at his chest pulses, bright, steady. His arm lifts.

The gauntlet expands, and the lines etched in the metal ignite a deeper red. Energy hums, pressure rises. The core in his chest vibrates, ready to unleash full power. Each pulse is a promise. A warning. A useless one. Because this time… Stark is ready to finish it. Matthew raises a hand. Not to attack. Not out of anger. Not a trick. It’s a plea. A tremor. Feeble, pathetic. His blood-covered arm struggles to extend. His fingers, bent, broken, flutter in the air as if they no longer remember how to beg. His whole body trembles, his knees trying to hold but collapsing with each passing second. His mouth opens, slowly, painfully, and a word slips out. A syllable, barely. A groan more than a voice.

— “Wa… wait…”

But Stark doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. His gaze is locked. Glacial. Immutable. And his voice falls into the room like a verdict etched in stone, low, metallic, inevitable.

— “You should’ve stayed down.”

And you watch. Pinned to the ground, trapped in your own body. Your breath trembles, unstable, each inhale a tear through your chest. The air burns, scrapes, resists. You no longer have the strength to move. Your arms are limp, your legs feel torn from your control. Your muscles won’t respond, your nerves scream, and yet, you remain conscious. A consciousness glued to the pain. A clarity sharpened by fear. And your eyes… your eyes stay open.

They see it.

They see Stark, standing there, frozen in a stillness that no longer feels human. His silhouette is black, almost liquid under the red reflections of the pulsing armor. Every light seems to beat in rhythm with his heart, but in this moment, that heart no longer beats to protect. It beats to strike. His arm is extended, a perfect line—cold, rigid. His open palm is aimed at Matthew, and in its center, the reactor pulses. Incandescent, unstable light radiates from it like a tide of contained fire.

You hear the crackling. The charged energy vibrates around him, dances in electric arcs along his gauntlet. The armor groans under the surge of power. It growls, lives, almost breathes. Like a beast untethered for too long. The lines of the suit light up in shades of scarlet, the red veins of a war monster waiting only for the order. And that order won’t be shouted. It’s already there. In Stark’s eyes. In the silence that follows the last chance.

And in front of him, slumped against the wall, Matthew no longer resembles anything. A dislocated puppet. A sack of hateful flesh. Curled up. Unable to flee. His face is a mask of blood, fear, and despair. His eyes are wide—far too wide—locked on the outstretched gauntlet like the muzzle of a cannon. He knows. Every fiber, every still intact bone knows. He knows it’s over. That there will be no mercy, no return, no escape.

And you know it too.

You feel it, deep down, that Stark won’t stop. That the rage he’s held back this long is begging to be unleashed. That it’s no longer a decision. It’s an instinct. A drive. A need. He’s gone too far to halt now. Too far to turn back. And in your pain-drenched gaze, fear returns. Not for yourself. Not for what you’ve endured. But for him. For what he’s about to do. For what it will leave in him. For what that blast, if unleashed, will shatter—not in Matthew. In Stark.

You want to speak. But your throat is a raw wound, a voiceless pit. You want to scream, but nothing comes. Even a sound is a mountain. Your lips barely move, cracked, salted by tears and blood, trembling like the leaves of a tree shaken by an inner storm. The air you try to inhale scrapes your larynx, too dry, too thick, like every particle stabs you. But you keep going. You refuse to give up. Because it’s all you can do. Because you have to stop him.

So, slowly, painfully, you gather what strength remains. You dive into the pain, arms wide open—you embrace it, you swallow it, you use it as your anchor. You cross that frozen sea, that threshold you thought impassable, and somewhere, buried deep inside, you find a breath. A whisper. One last echo.

— “Stark...”

It’s not a cry. It’s not even a sentence. It’s barely a breath. A shard of soul, scraped, raw, fragile as the wingbeat of a broken bird. And yet… that word slices the air like thunder. It lacerates the silence. It pierces. It cracks it open.

Stark hears it.

He blinks. A single beat. An imperceptible tic in that fortress of steel. But you see it. You feel it. The silent shockwave. A hesitation. A micro-movement. A fissure in the war mask. His gaze doesn’t leave his target… not right away. But something just struck him. A private tremor. A call he wasn’t prepared for.

Then, he looks at you.

Not for long. A second. An eternity. But it’s enough. Enough for your eyes to meet. For your eyes—reddened, exhausted, shadowed with pain and terror—to offer something other than fear. It’s not a plea. It’s not forgiveness. It’s not even an order. It’s a truth. Bare. Silent. An evidence as simple as it is searing: you don’t want this ending. You don’t want to see his arm become a sentence. You don’t want his hands, the ones that carried you, supported you, protected you, to become the tool of an irreversible vengeance. You don’t want him to cross that line. Because deep down, you know what it would do to him. And you know that he knows it too.

Stark doesn’t move. But you feel the tremor. The internal storm. His mind is fighting. Behind the mask, behind the metal, calculations spiral, pulses of rage beat like war drums, demanding justice. He has every reason. You know it. He could do it. He wants to. Part of him screams to do it. It would be so easy. So clean. So just.

But you’re there.

And you spoke. You threw him that rope at the edge of the cliff. You held him back. With one hand. With one syllable. You just saved him—not from danger, but from himself. From an act that would never leave him. You stopped him from crossing a line that can never be uncrossed. So he breathes in. Slowly. Deeply. A breath long, heavy, weighted like a world. He closes his eyes, briefly. He lets the tension drip away, drop by drop. He feels the heat recede from his gloves, the energy ebb. Without a word, he releases the rage frozen in his arm.

And for a second, you think the world starts spinning again. And the arm begins to lower.

Slowly. Like an overloaded pendulum, like a weight that even technology, even titanium and fire, can barely bear. The energy in Stark’s palm dissipates, dull, into red wisps that flicker, then die. The internal circuits of the suit, which just a second ago vibrated like a heart ready to explode, calm. The sound muffles. Silence returns. Not peace—suspended tension. An electric silence, like the pause before lightning, the moment the air tightens. Stark stands there, half-raised arm, body frozen in a posture of painful restraint. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. His eyes stay fixed on Matthew, his fist still clenched, jaw tight enough to break teeth. His breathing is short. Shallow. Like every breath is a battle against instinct, against the call of swift justice. He trembles. Just enough for you to see it. Just enough to understand.

You feel it. You know it. This isn’t forgiveness. It’s not mercy. Not even principle. It’s you. Just you. A broken voice, a syllable on the verge of drowning, enough to make him lower his arm. Not from weakness. Not from morality. Out of respect. A silent promise. To honor you. And this silence, this suspended moment… could’ve been the end. But then it happens.

A sound. Faint, at first. Almost inaudible. A shadow scraping through the rubble. Then clearer. Sharper. Dissonant. Unreal.

A laugh.

Dry. Broken. A rasp twisted by pain and blood. A sound that shouldn’t be there. That doesn’t belong in this field of ruin. And yet, it echoes. It rises—ridiculous, chilling—like a specter refusing to die. Matthew. He laughs. His disfigured mouth half-opens, red, shattered teeth visible. He laughs through the pain. Through the fractures. Through the blood dripping from split lips. A filthy laugh. Cracked. Sick.

You see him lift his head. Just a little. Too little. But enough for his gaze to catch Stark’s. And what’s in his eyes… it isn’t fear. It’s not even hatred anymore. It’s something rotten. Hollow. A madness laced with clarity, a pure provocation, raw, thrown like a slap.

— "That’s it..." he spits, between ragged breaths, his voice like chewed paper. "The great Stark. The hero. The savior."

He coughs. Violently. A spasm bends him. A spray of blood gushes from his throat and spatters against his chin. But it doesn’t stop him. Quite the opposite. He smiles. A smile that’s anything but human. A hyena’s snarl. Twisted, swollen with violence. A pathetic grimace of hollow triumph.

— "You raise your arm. You could erase me. Literally. And you... you look down because of him."

He turns his head. Slowly. Like a broken puppet refusing to shut down. His gaze slides toward you. And there... it’s worse. Worse than the blows. Worse than the barrel pointed at you. He looks at you with that clammy intensity. Vicious. A viscous hatred. Filthy. A contempt so strong it almost becomes intimate.

— "Fuck... you’re just a parasite. Even now..." His voice breaks halfway in his throat. He swallows it back. Stitches it together with anger. "You need someone to carry you. Defend you. You can’t even stand up. And he listens to you. You."

You feel your stomach twist. Not from fear. From disgust.

— "I knew you were weak..." He laughs again. A hiccup barely human, a rasp that becomes almost a sob of madness. "But not weak enough to make Stark your fucking guard dog."

Silence returns. Not the kind of forgetting. But the kind that rumbles. The kind that doesn’t fall, but rises. Like a tide. Like a warning. In Stark’s eyes, something just reopened.

Stark doesn’t move. Not yet. But something shifts in his posture. Tiny, and yet terrifying. His fists close slowly, the metallic knuckles tightening until the joints of the armor groan. His shoulders tense, muscles — or their steel and servo-motor equivalents — lock into a silent tension. A pressure, muffled and incandescent, builds in his chest like a second energy core about to implode. But he doesn’t look at him. Not yet.

He looks at you.

You, and nothing else. His eyes don’t leave your face. They anchor into yours with such intensity that the world could collapse around him and he wouldn’t flinch. He studies you. Every millimeter. Every breath. As if searching for an answer. A green light. Permission. As if he doesn’t want to decide alone this time. He’s heard the words, the insults, he’s seen the sneer, felt the provocation. He could answer. He could crush him like an insect. But he waits. He’s waiting for you. It’s in your eyes that he searches for the end.

And the choice floats there, suspended between the two of you.

Between the still-glowing red lights in the joints of the armor, pulsing like a heart of war, and the bloodied, grotesque figure on the ground, still laughing despite the pain. Between cold justice... and pure vengeance. The universe holds in that suspended beat.

Then Stark moves. One step. The ground barely trembles under the impact. Another. Slower. Heavier. Every movement is measured, sculpted from steel and decision. But he doesn’t go to Matthew. No. He doesn’t approach him. He doesn’t even touch him.

He comes to you.

He turns slightly, stares at you again like he needs to count you, to register you among the living. And he advances. He walks toward you, his arms still heavy with tension, his jaw clenched hard enough to fracture a soul. He chooses you. Not the hate. Not vengeance. You.

And Matthew, still on the ground, lies there. Abandoned. Sunk in his own filth, mouth still open in a pathetic snicker. A laugh turned rasp, muffled, trembling, with no more substance than the rest of his broken body. Stark doesn’t even grant him a last glance. Not a word. Not a breath. He has erased him from his line of sight. Reduced him to what he’s become: a leftover. Waste. A mistake.

Because he saw your blood on the floor. Because he saw your chest rise with difficulty, as if each breath threatened to collapse under its own weight. Because your body slumped further against the wall, your head dropped a few centimeters too much, and for a moment — he thought. He thought you were going.

He crosses the space between you with no hesitation, each step grounded in brute determination, like he refuses to let distance exist between you. The alloy of his armor groans softly, echoing through the air with a deep murmur, almost organic, like the breath of an alert beast. The lights on his shoulders, hips, pulse faintly, oscillating between the red of alert and the clinical white of medical protocol. He’s not a superhero anymore. Not Iron Man. Just Tony, stripped of everything but the absolute urgency to reach you.

He kneels beside you, and this time the movement is faster, less contained, almost instinctive. This isn’t about control. It’s about survival. Your eyelids flutter, heavy, as if each blink demands an effort your body can’t afford. And yet you see him. You recognize him. Despite the pain tearing your insides apart, despite the fire burning through every exposed nerve, you’re still there. And he sees it.

— "Hey... hey, kid..." he breathes, reaching a hand toward your face, palm open. The glove stops a few millimeters from your skin, suspended in the air like a prayer he doesn’t dare complete. The metal doesn’t touch you. He won’t let it. He won’t risk adding one more pain. But his breath, behind the mask, you feel it. Light. Shattered. As if each word tears his throat. "Breathe. Can you hear me? Breathe... stay with me."

He’s bent over you, back curved with almost animal tension, his arms carefully sliding beneath your limp body. He lifts you, but nothing is abrupt. Nothing mechanical. He adjusts his grip, millimeter by millimeter, avoiding the worst wounds. One arm slides beneath your shoulder blades, the other under your legs, bringing you slowly against his armored chest. He holds you. Cradles you. Protects you. You feel the artificial heat of the armor through your blood-soaked clothes, a synthetic warmth — but comforting.

Your breathing is erratic. Broken. You gasp like each puff of air has to cross a minefield. Your chest rises, trembling, then drops too fast. A bead of sweat slides from your temple to his forearm. And he doesn’t move. He anchors you. He becomes that pillar, that column, the only fixed point in a collapsing world. His sensors — he almost ignores them. But they’re screaming. Your heart rate is irregular. Your temperature dropping fast. The numbers scream in his interface, red, unstable, merciless. But he doesn’t look at them anymore. He looks at you.

And as long as you’re here, he’ll get you out of this hole. No matter the cost. Not in a bag. Not under a sheet. Not in the clinical silence of a hospital hallway where your name is whispered in the past tense. Not as just another statistic. Not as forgotten collateral damage. No. Not this time. He’s here. He crossed hell for this. He found you. He heard you. And you are not a burden.

You’ve never been dead weight. You are not a problem to solve, nor a mistake to erase. You are a life. A voice. Fragile, broken — but alive. And that’s all that matters.

He holds you a bit tighter. Not to constrain. To hold. To remind you that you’re here. That you’re back. That even if everything in you screams it’s too late, that it’s over — he hasn’t decided that.

— "Told you I wasn’t gonna let you fall..." he whispers, his voice muffled in the helmet, but close enough to brush your ear. Not a heroic declaration. Not a punchline. Just words. Bare. Trembling. Worn by fear, charged with a promise that surpasses gestures.

And his voice trembles. Just a little. A crack. But you hear it. You feel it. A strangled note, drowned in the emotion he never allows.

He holds you tighter, slowly adjusts your back against his chest, until your head rests beneath his chin. He braces your shoulders, stabilizes your position like one would cradle a flower against a strong wind. His armor, designed to destroy, becomes a cocoon around you. A fortress of metal, bent on one mission: to keep you alive.

With a wrist flick, he activates the interface on his forearm. Lights shimmer in an electric shiver, dancing along the glove like a controlled wave. No words. No need. The armor understands. It executes. A trajectory opens. A signal fires.

You hear the rumble. First from afar. A low buzz, barely a tremor in the tainted air. Then stronger. More distinct. The sky answering. A vibration approaching. Not a threat. A response.

The armor. The sky. The way out.

And you, in his arms, feel it. Truly feel it. The artificial warmth of his chest, the tension in his arms, the calm returning to his breath. Not because the danger is gone. But because he’s got you. You falter. No panic. No terror spike. Just... the limit. The edge. Your body has nothing left to give. You left it all here. On this floor. In these walls. In that scream you launched without knowing if it would find an ear.

Stark adjusts his grip on you with almost supernatural precision. One arm under your knees, the other supporting your back against his chest, like he’s carried you a thousand times in nightmares without ever daring to touch you in reality. The gauntlets, built to withstand atmospheric pressure, cradle your shattered body like one would hold a secret too fragile, too precious. He calculates every angle, every support point, every buffer zone so nothing — not even a jolt — aggravates your wounds.

You’re there, against him, your body surrendered in the crook of his armor, forehead pressed to the warm curve of his shoulder. Your breath is uneven, raspy — but present. He feels it. He counts it. Through the metal, he senses every heartbeat, every tiny vibration betraying your pain. And he clings to it. Like a prayer. Like a mission.

Around you, the warehouse has become a tomb. The echo of blows has faded. Screams have given way to a cottony void, warped by crumbling walls and twisted beams. Even Matthew, somewhere in the shadows, makes no sound. No words. No snicker. Just silence. Heavy, dense, saturated with what you’ve both left here. With what you’ll never get back. Only Stark’s footsteps break the mute air, a slow, controlled march that vibrates through the ground with every step. The metal of his boots strikes fractured concrete in a deep cadence, almost ceremonial. He carries you toward the center of the room, where the extraction platform has opened in silence, like a mechanical mouth ready to swallow you and lift you from this hell. The locator beam already draws lines of a safe trajectory. Beacons light up one by one in a discreet ballet of bluish lights.

Stark doesn’t speak right away. He looks at you. Checks one last time the curve of your neck, the tension in your arms, the faint twitch of your eyelids. Then he whispers, barely loud enough for the world to hear:

— "We’re going home."

It’s not a victory speech. Not a boast. It’s a promise. To you. To himself. To what’s left alive between you.

He clenches his teeth. His gaze sweeps the shadows one last time, scanning the scene to make sure nothing is left behind. No enemy. No detail. No threat. Then, finally, his thrusters deploy with a low growl, a rumble from deep inside the suit, like the roar of a monster still held in check. The reactors heat up, shift from blue to red, and a powerful jet forms beneath his boots, casting an orange halo around you.

Dust rises. Bits of concrete vibrate. Metal fragments roll across the floor, pushed by magnetic force. The air shivers. The moment hangs suspended.

But Stark doesn’t take off yet.

He stands still, holding you in his arms with strength made more incredible by its restraint. He checks your weight. Your axis. The openness of your ribcage. Your temperature. He cross-references every signal, every clue, as if he can still delay the moment you leave this place. As if he must be certain you’ll survive every meter of the trip. And then he lifts off. In a single motion. Fluid. Perfectly vertical. A precise ascent, rapid, powerful. The ground recedes, walls blur. The warehouse becomes a gray smudge, swallowed by shadow. And you, in his arms, you rise. Away from the blood. Away from the concrete. Away from fear.

You leave the darkness.

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