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jinxquickfoot · 5 days

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@badthingshappenbingo Prompt: Grief/Mourning

Find the fic on Ao3!

Inspired by @16woodsequ's wonderful The Alternate End

Part I: Nebula

He’s put this off as long as he can.

Tony knows he should have done this much sooner. God knows how much pain Nebula’s been in while he’s been skulking in his hospital room, refusing to talk to anyone except Pepper. They’re probably all too occupied with their own pain to care. They probably think he’s angry over the Accords, the betrayal that still lingers there. He's still angry. He hadn’t realized until he was face-to-face with Steve Rogers in the home he’d decided wasn’t good enough for him anymore.

But that’s not why he’s avoiding everyone. He knows it makes no sense—after a long month in the cosmos, wondering who had lived and who hadn’t, he should just be relieved that they’re still here. Relief isn’t the word he’d use, though. It’s resentment.

He doesn’t care that he wasn’t strong enough to go after Thanos. He doesn’t care that the Mad Titan is dead. He doesn’t even care that the remaining Avengers hadn’t been able to win, not in the way that mattered. Tony had known it was hopeless long before they left the Compound. He knows because he’s been fighting this war longer than any of them. He’d known since he’d flown through the wormhole that this day would come if they didn’t pull out every weapon in their arsenal. Ultron, the Accords, scoping the planet for new talent like P—

Tony swallows back images of a dying planet and Mr Stark I don’t feel so good to focus on the project at hand. Nebula is already nervous enough without Tony’s mind being on a past he can't fix. There was never going to be a ‘fix’, this war always had to be won before it was fought, and no one had listened to him.

“We can wait another day,” Nebula bursts out. She’s been quiet since getting on Tony’s operating table, lying still and rigid as Tony tries to get a hold of himself enough to do this. She pushes herself up, swinging her legs over the side. “There is no urgency.”

Tony catches the flippant comment that comes to his lips. He’d gotten Nebula’s entire depressing backstory during their time slowly starving to death in space. He can’t imagine she associates body part replacement with fun and laughter. He nods at her damaged hand. “You can’t do anything with those fried wires. It has to be done sometime.”

“Some time does not have to be today.”

Tony pushes the rotating slideshow of Titan to the back of his mind, moving into her path as she attempts to leave. “Hey. You saved my life in space. I would have died of infection or, if I somehow survived, gone completely insane up there without our invigorating paper football tournament. Let me repay the favor.”

He forces himself to be patient as Nebula stares at her damaged hand. “You want to make us equal.”

That’s not Tony’s MO, but if it’s what gets this done, he’ll take it. “Yeah, sure. Equals” When she still looks nervous, he adds, “Besides, we don’t have to do the actual replacement today. I’m just mapping to get an extent of the damage before we take anything out or put anything in.”

It’s a straight-out lie as he’d been hoping to get this done all in one session, but Nebula’s shoulders finally relax. “Okay,” she allows. “We can do that. And you’ve done this before?”

Tony exhales, reaching for a holodisplay and moving it around so Nebula can see. He’d hoped to put this off until it was absolutely necessary. He doesn’t want to be reminded. He wants to take Pepper and find a cabin in the middle of nowhere and shut out the world forever. He shouldn’t have to fix things anymore. That’s what he’s been doing, for years, and he’s done it alone.

But Nebula shifts on the table, and Tony reminds himself that she wasn’t part of any of those fights, and it wouldn’t help to win the trust of a friend who comes without baggage. Bracing himself, he brings up the schematics for Vision.

Nebula’s breath catches as she takes in the holographic blueprints. “How much did you replace?”

“Replace?” Tony catches on and hurries to explain. “No, no, he was made like this from the start. He’s not a human we… Jesus, we don’t do that here.” He forces back images of a silver metal arm.

Nebula processes that. “He is all mechanics?”

“Was,” Tony murmurs. “Thanos…” He can’t bring himself to end the sentence. The death of half the universe chokes the Compound like a smog cloud, but the overwhelming nature of it has stayed in the abstract. Even now, weeks later, Tony cannot fathom just how huge a loss god knows how many planets have suffered. He can barely wrap his head around the death of four billion human beings.

But the knowledge that one of their own had been murdered in battle… That he can picture. That he can comprehend. Because one of his first ports of call when he could get out of bed without collapsing was Wakanda to retrieve Vision’s body.

He doesn’t know what to do with it. Vision had been very clear that in the case of his death, his parts were to be dismantled beyond repair. Tony knows he’s the best person left in the world for that job. It doesn’t mean he’s been able to bring himself to do it. He’s still not sure if the idea of keeping the corpse of a team member in the basement indefinitely is worse than the empty coffins they had buried on the Compound grounds.

“My father was a monster,” Nebula murmurs, staring at her toes. “I was never going to please him. And yet I tried to anyway. I would have done anything for him.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling.” Tony scrubs at his eyes, zooming in on the blueprints for Vision’s arm that will become the basis for Nebula’s new one. “Here, you can follow along with everything I’m doing…”

He trails off when he hears a sob come from the operating table.

He freezes. Their entire time in space, he had not once seen Nebula cry. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen him cry, either. It hadn’t mattered up there, not in any way that counted. They didn’t know who was gone. All they knew was that they would be gone themselves in barely the space of a few weeks, and then their grief wouldn’t exist.

But they didn’t die. Their grief didn’t pass into oblivion. They returned here, to Earth, and learned exactly what Thanos had taken.

Tony still replays that moment of seeing Steve sprinting toward the spaceship. Of Pepper following close behind. Seeing Rhodey, calling Happy. Realizing that, by some impossible odds, all the original six members of his team had survived the Snap.

Nebula hadn’t had that. Her team had crumbled in front of her. More than her team.

Tony moves over to her bedside to take her undamaged hand. “Thanos wasn’t your family,” he assures her. “You found a much better one. One who actually loved you. I know the feeling.”

"My sister..." Nebula angrily wipes away a tear. "She should not have shown him the Soul Stone to save me. I was not worth that sacrifice."

Tony squeezes her hand. "I doubt she saw it that way."

He sits and lets her cry into his shoulder as long as she needs to. He could have it worse. He could have lost so much more. He could still lose so much more if he stays in this mindset. He can’t change the past but he can stop it from changing him into a shape he doesn’t want to be anymore. Resentment is corrosive. He can’t afford it to spread when the rest of his life will revolve around construction.

Tony mentally puts aside Nebula’s repairs for another day. He has other building to do, anyway.

Part II: Thor

Clint’s gone and even Natasha can’t find him. Bruce is on the other side of the world, helping rebuild where he can, making vague promises about return dates. Tony’s not ready to face Steve. That leaves one.

The Asgardian refugees have taken over the Compound grounds. They’ve provided what they can for them but Tony still feels ill when he can see how few of them are left. Thanos had slaughtered half of those he'd found on the Statesman and then killed another half in the Snap. Asgard was gone, torn to pieces by an apocalypse they were never going to escape. Living on Earth feels the same way. They’d always known it would end here. Or at least, Tony had known.

He wonders if that is why his grief feels a little more tempered than the others’. This wasn’t a sudden loss for him. It’s the result of slowly losing a war, piece by piece, over the span of years. He always knew that they would only get one shot at victory. He’ll never know the future Strange saw where they scraped a win. He just gets this one and he has to do what he can with it.

He doesn’t find Thor with the rest of the Asgardians. A few conversations are enough to guide him to a tent in the far, far back, stationed away from all the others. Already a bad sign. So is the fact that the tent is dark as he approaches. Tony awkwardly paws at the tent cover to announce his presence in lieu of knocking, then calls out for good measure. “Thor. It’s Tony.”

He doesn’t get an invitation to come inside. He doesn’t get a refusal either. Good enough.

Thor doesn’t move from his prone position as Tony unzips the tent and steps inside. There’s no blanket over him or mattress underneath him, with barely the base of the tent to protect him. “You have a room at this Compound, you know. I built one for you. Just in case.”

Thor doesn’t look at him. He just keeps staring at the roof of the tent. “I will be with my people. Least their king could do after my brother sacrificed half of them for me." He spits the name of king out like venom. "After I could have killed Thanos when it mattered."

Tony still hasn't been able to wrap his mind around the image of Loki dying in a heroic attempt to kill Thanos. Whenever he thinks of the trickster god, the memory that tends to come to mind is Loki throwing him from a window or the mass of black clothing at Phil Coulson's funeral. If Bruce hadn't been the one who had told him the story, including Loki handing over the Space Stone to spare Thor's life, Tony wouldn't have been able to believe a word of it.

"I don't have siblings," he says. "And I know things between you and your brother were... complicated. But there were a lot of steps a lot of other people could have taken and didn't. It's not all on you." He's suddenly back on the spaceship again, listening to Strange lecture him about how he wouldn't give up the Time Stone even if Peter's life was on the line. Tony doesn't want to know what choice he would have made if it was up to him. "Guess it's easier to say you'll give everything up to save the world than to actually do it. You gave up more than most already."

Finding the Asgardians a more permanent new home is on Tony’s to-do list, but losing half a population apparently wreaks havoc on a planet’s infrastructure. There’s been so much to do, from getting hospitals up and running, to restarting supply chains for food, to getting entire cities’ electrical grids functioning again. After months of work, the world is somewhat physically functional again. Tony doesn’t know how many decades will pass before the human race emotionally recovers. He knows it will be a long, long time after his lifetime.

“Well. It won’t be tents forever. I can promise you that.”

“Promises,” Thor scoffs. Tony fights the sudden urge to bolt in the other direction. It isn’t right, seeing one of the strongest Avengers and one of the last to lay down in a fight so utterly void of spirit. Then again, none of them are themselves these days. “Wouldn’t make any promises. They just end up broken.”

“A lot of things have ended up broken.” Tony sits cross-legged in the tent, plucking at a stray thread in his jeans. “Luckily, I’m pretty good at fixing things.”

Thor’s next words are a whisper. “There’s no fixing this. It’s gone. It’s all gone, and it’s not coming back, and we’re all just going to have to live with that.”

Tony closes his eyes. He knows that’s true. He knows that they will never, ever get back to where they were. But they can take baby steps in the right direction. He reaches into his pocket. “I know you’ve lost a lot,” he says, the words so unbelievably inadequate that he almost quits then and there. He stays, though. He doesn’t get to quit. That’s not a luxury he’s had since Afghanistan. “More than most of us.”

Thor shifts slightly. “It does not help to compare losses.”

The guilt Tony’s been feeling since he returned to Earth swells, but now is not the time to voice it. “I can’t bring Asgard back,” he says. Even now, with half of Earth’s life lost, he can’t comprehend the magnitude of losing his entire planet. “Or anyone you’ve lost. But I’ve been thinking…” His mind trails to Nebula’s newly equipped arm, which he had put the final touches on that morning. “We have to focus now on what we can get back. Or find replacements for, at least.”

Thor finally looks at him. “Do not suggest that there is any replacement for…” He trails off, anger abating when he sees what Tony is holding. “Is… is that for me?”

“The talking raccoon told me the one you’re using… well, actually, you don’t want to know where it came from.” Tony holds out the mechanical eye he’s spent the past week perfecting. “Besides, I don’t think you’re really pulling off the whole heterochromia look. Thought you looked better in your classic blue.”

Thor gently takes the eye, marveling at it. “Thank you, Stark. And for letting us all stay here.”

“I’m not letting you do anything. I built this place for the Avengers. That includes you. Use this place as you see fit—hm, I could have used some warning there.” Tony barely has time to look away before Thor casually pops his fake eye out, tossing the brown iris aside. Tony waits until the squelching sounds have stopped before he risks looking back.

“How does it look?” Thor asks.

Tony takes in the two symmetrical eyes. To his trained gaze, the mechanical one is ever so slightly glassier. It’ll never live up to the original. But it’s a start. “You look great.”

“I doubt that is true.”

Tony hovers awkwardly, not sure what else to say. “Can I do anything else?” he tries.

Thor is quiet for a long moment before he speaks. “Perhaps…” He suddenly reaches out, grasping for Tony’s hand. Tony lets him take it. “Stay, for a while?”

A part of Tony rebels against the idea. He’s got so many things he’s supposed to be doing, to be building, to be fixing. Then he looks at his friend, sprawled and miserable on the ground, and realizes that fixing doesn’t always have to require tools and a workshop. “Sure. I’ll stay.”

Part III: Steve

Things don’t get better, but they do get easier.

The number of global catastrophes has reduced. Supply isn’t where it used to be, but at least most people have access to food, power and clean water. The daily body count of new Blip-related deaths reduces. Tony had provided whatever resources he could, but even his wealth couldn’t keep up with locating and identifying the bodies. There were those who had died on the roads after drivers had Blipped or had been on suddenly pilot-less planes that had tumbled from the air. There had been those who died in hospitals with drastically reduced numbers of doctors and nurses. And then, worst of all, the orphaned infants and small children who had perished from neglect.

A grateful universe, Thanos had called this. The Mad Titan title has never felt so fitting.

Tony finds Steve by Bucky’s grave.

They’d given each Dusted Avenger a tombstone: a place for the living to mourn the dead. Tony deliberately does not look at Peter’s as he approaches.

Steve must hear him coming but he doesn’t raise his head. He’s bent over a compass, holding it so tightly that Tony fears it might break. He figures that’s as good a place as any to start the conversation. “Careful. You remember you have super-soldier strength, right?”

Steve’s hold doesn’t loosen. “It hasn’t broken yet.”

Tony takes his place by Steve’s side. He wishes the pain of what happened in Siberia would dwarf in the magnitude of the Blip. It hasn’t. It’s just been buried, pushed aside until Tony’s heart has room to feel it again. “Rhodey says you spend all day out here.”

“There’s nowhere else to be. There’s nothing else I can do.”

Tony knows the feeling. “Still. It’s freezing out here.” It’s not, really. It’s just something to say to fill the silence.

Steve pulls the compass close to his chest. “Bucky gave this to me. Two weeks before he died. He was different after Azzano. Like he knew. And he followed me onto that train anyway. ”

Tony casts about for something to say to that. “Weren’t they already… doing stuff to him in Azzano? Winter Soldier stuff? That might be what he had been feeling. Not some kind of death premonition.”

Steve doesn’t react mollified by the words. He doesn’t react at all. “You know he had the offer to go home after Azzano? He could have. He didn’t. Because he chose to follow me. Then, in Wakanda, he was at peace. And I brought a war right to his doorstep.”

“I don’t think the narrative is that simple.”

“If I had—”

“What?” Tony interrupts him, a little harsher than he means to. “If you had made Wanda kill Vision earlier? It wouldn’t have mattered, Steve. We lost the second Thanos got his hands on the Time Stone.” He ghosts a hand over the scar disfiguring his abdomen. Why? he wants to scream at Strange. Why would you do it? I wasn’t worth it.

“Wanda could have killed Vision the second we knew Thanos was coming to Earth. It wouldn’t have mattered,” he continues. “And as for going to Wakanda—that wasn’t just your choice, Steve. All the Avengers with you chose to do that. T’Challa chose to open his borders to you. Everyone in that battle chose to fight. You didn’t pressgang them. In fact, I don’t think pressganging the Dora Milaje is humanly possible. Wakanda was the most prepared place on Earth to tackle an alien invasion of that magnitude and their technology probably prevented the pre-Snap damage from being even worse. Those aliens would have torn apart the Earth for Thanos.”

Steve is quiet as he absorbs all of that. “You’ve thought a lot about this.”

“Yeah. For six years.” One future where they win. Tony’s been ripping himself apart trying to imagine what it would have been, what step they didn’t take. Maybe there were more futures, earlier in the timeline. Roads not traveled that didn’t end with a line of empty graves.

“I know you tried to prevent this,” Steve says softly. “I have been thinking… Ultron, the Accords, if those had played out differently--”

“Don’t,” Tony cuts him off. He’s done dwelling on this. He can rage and storm and shout I told you so all he wants. It won’t fix anything. “It’s done. We’re here. We need to make what we can of it.”

Steve is still staring at Bucky’s tombstone in a way that’s becoming increasingly unnerving. “This is the second time I’ve buried an empty casket for him."

Tony swallows, all too aware that he nearly made that a full casket in 2016. If Bucky was still here, Tony would have apologized with an arm, like the one he had built for Nebula. But unlike with Nebula and Thor, there is nothing Tony can physically build here to offer comfort. At least, not anything he’s thought of yet. "I know I ruined things that day in Siberia," he manages. "That I made you choose between the two of us. That wasn't fair. That isn't who you are."

"Tony—"

"No, just let me say this. And fine, maybe, we could have made a few more sacrifice plays along the way and not ended up here." If Gamora had given up Nebula, it Loki havd given up Thor, if Strange had given up him. If Steve had given up Bucky, all those years ago, instead of fighting entire governments for his freedom. "None of us had the strength to do it. The only person who did was Wanda and then that didn't even matter. And maybe if we had... well, maybe we stop being the good guys the moment we start trading lives."

He's not sure how much of his own argument he believes. But, for the first time since he can remember, he has more goals than trying to prove that he's right. “I was relieved,” he finds himself saying. “When I stepped off the Benetar, and found out Pepper and Rhodey and Happy had all lived.” He doesn’t mention Peter. He hasn’t been able to put into words what exactly a teenager from Queens had meant to him. “I still feel relieved. And that feels awful. And it also feels awful that it doesn’t feel more awful.”

“I’m glad,” Steve murmurs. “I’m glad you got to keep them.”

Tony keeps an ear out for any bitterness in those words. He doesn’t hear it. Steve is being honest. Tony swallows past the stubborn lump in his throat. “I was relieved as well… when I saw you. When I got my feet back on land and saw you were there. I was relieved.” More than just relieved. In those first few minutes, none of their fighting had mattered. Tony had been grateful to tumble into the arms of a friend—someone else to hold him upright for a few moments.

Steve nods slowly. “I was too. I didn’t want to hope too much, not after weeks of not knowing, not after we’d lost so many. But I couldn’t kill the hope entirely. And then you were there, alive and…” There’s a small hitch in his voice. “God, Tony, if it had been Bucky and Sam and you, I don’t think I would have…”

Without letting himself think about it too much, Tony reaches out to grip Steve’s shoulder. “We’re still here. Still fighting. That’s something. That has to be something.”

Steve nods again. “We’ll make it something.” It’s the first time he’s sounded like himself in months.

“That we will.”

"Maybe..." Steve shifts his gaze, past Bucky's grave to Sam's. "Maybe fighting looks different now. Like... like what Sam did. At the VA." He straightens at little at the promise of a mission. "Maybe it would help."

"I have no doubt it would. God knows how many people out there need someone to talk to." Tony looks from the grave to Steve. “You know, I had the wild idea I might cook tonight. Want to make sure I don’t set the kitchen on fire?”

For a terrifying moment, he’s sure Steve is going to say no. Then, the man seems to pull some of his shattered pieces back together. “Well, we can’t have a fire, I guess. Been putting out enough of those already.”

It’s not a miracle cure. No one is magically better. But Tony gathers whoever is left and makes something hot and homemade with minimal kitchen damage, and for once the conversation is more than about the work they’ll have to do tomorrow.

He can’t fix the world. But he will fix what he can.

#bad things happen bingo #bthb card #grief #mourning #mcu #marvel #post-Snap #the Blip #avengers: endgame #whump writing #emotional whump #Tony Stark #Steve Rogers #Nebula #Thor

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