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When Strange had looked into the future, he'd witnessed thousands of realities, thousands of outcomes. Fourteen thousand and five it took until he found one that would work. He expected Tony to die at the end of it, like she was supposed to, but if he'd have gone just one more, he'd have wound up here.
No one told Tony Stark what to do, let alone when to die.
The searing agony left behind in the wake of the Snap left her barely able to breathe. She could still feel the energy coursing through her the same way one enjoyed a breeze in the middle of a sandstorm. She'd lost all the feeling in her right arm. It was likely toast. Well, it was good that she'd trained to become ambidextrous after Rhodey and Pep had Morgan, so she could hold the darling little girl and keep working as God intended.
Rhodey was the first to find her, as he always was. When wasn't Rhodey the first one in her corner?
"Oh, Tony." He looked like he wanted to drop to his knees. If she'd have had the breath through the pain to speak, she would have told him not to worry, she'd had worse. And it was true. The open heart surgery for the Reactor in Afghanistan hurt way more than this. For one, her entire right side was without feeling, which was already leagues above her chest all those years ago.
Speaking of, she managed to raise her eyes to the sky, sending every kind of thank you in every language he'd taught her. The Reactor was the only reason she was alive right now, with how it was pulling the rampant, raging energy from her body and cycling it away to the reserve cells. Even after all this time, Yinsen was still looking out for her.
Peter came into view next, tears already gathering in his eyes. Pepper was behind him, but she was more pragmatic than anyone else she'd ever met.
"She's still alive." Pepper said, kneeling at her side. "We have to get the glove off. You said the energy levels were what would kill the gauntlet's wearer, right?"
Rhodey jumped into action, ever the soldier. He barked an order for Friday to release the glove at the elbow, even though the whole thing was fried. There was the distant sound of a well-done steak being manually ripped in half, then the gauntlet came off. Pepper vomited next to her, the sickly sweet scent of burning human flesh making Peter's eyes water. Poor kid, his nose was so sensitive.
"Fuck." Rhodey managed in a strained voice, dropping the gauntlet away from her. She didn't look over at it, didn't want to see what was inevitably charred skin and a mangled arm with revealed bone.
Pepper wiped her mouth. "We need to get her to a hospital, now. That whole arm has to go. She's going to die otherwise."
Strange walked up, something close to awe in his eyes and voice. "I'll take her. Don't worry."
She passed out while they were talking because the pain had been the only thing keeping her awake. Aside from the uncomfortable thrum of the Reactor, she felt nothing, and collapsed into darkness.
It was close to three months since she'd woken up in a hospital bed with no right arm and Steve slumped over her bed, salt tracks from tears staining his cheeks.
"It's hard, isn't it?" She mused to him later, once he was done pouring his heart out about all the regrets and festering resentment between them. "Having everything you want to apologize for on the tip of your tongue when you think they're dead, huh?"
Steve had ducked his head down in shame.
"I went to Wakanda, you know."
"You- You did?"
"Yup. I went to Wakanda to work with Shuri on an apology. Between the two of us, we made Barnes his arm." She stared up at the ceiling so she didn't have to look at him. "But, eventually, I just went to see him myself."
"What did you say?"
"I apologized, obviously." She glared at him from the corner of her eye. "I hope you realize by now that I'm not heartless."
He went pale. "No! That's not what-"
"I told him that it wasn't his fault, and that I forgave him for their deaths. That if it still bothered him, we could use my attempted murder to cancel out his homicide and call it even. He laughed and I decided to do my best to make amends."
"You never called me." He said, large frame shrunken in on himself.
"No, I didn't. You hurt me deeper than he ever could have." She blinked back the tears. "You lied to me, Steve. You preached at me about unity, that I couldn't run off on my own and try to solve all the world's problems. So I stepped back, I trusted you and let you take the lead. I would have followed you to the ends of the earth. I considered you a friend, like Rhodey and Pepper. Not many people get into my heart like that. And you seemed to decide I was worth less than everything else. I wasn't worth the respect of knowing what actually killed my parents. You didn't trust me enough to tell me about the Winter Soldier at all. And then, when I try and stop you from running off with a fugitive when I'd already put my ass on the line to keep you out of jail, you try to kill me. You let Wanda empty a parking garage onto my back."
"You were in the suit." He rationalized weakly.
"Just because someone's inside of a car when they crash doesn't mean it doesn't hurt." She deadpanned. "My suit is armour, not invincibility. And inside of it, I still bleed, I still break bones."
"Tony, I-"
"But none of that was Barnes' fault. None of it, and he didn't deserve to be held responsible for it." She finished, eyes back to the ceiling. "And he deserved that peace after all those years of HYDRA turning his brain to spaghetti."
"Peace." Steve said, face pinched in misery. "You always say peace."
"Because it's what I want."
He ducked his head.
"You've gotta understand, Rogers, what it means to watch people die for you without hesitation. Time and time again, I've been responsible for other people dying in my place. You only ever dealt with Barnes dying on you. The people who wanted to kill me were willing to level entire venues, cities, planets. Steve, Thanos knew me by name."
His head snapped up, locking gazes with her. "What? How?"
"The Mind Stone. It knew me - it gave me the vision of him! He was the one that gave Loki the Sceptre. He knew about me years before I knew about him, and it was me he feared."
"Pretty rightly, it turned out." He tried to joke, but winced even as he spoke.
"Pfft, yeah." She snorted. "When do I get team MVP?"
Steve choked a laugh through more tears. "I've got a medal in the works."
"Good. I'd hate for you to forget about me."
He took her remaining hand. "Never."
"Stop feeling bad and start feeling productive, Rogers. I'll do enough wallowing and stumbling for the both of us in the coming months and I think I've earned a break from carrying the team for a bit."
"Yeah, you have." He stood, leaning down and pressing a kiss to her sweaty forehead. "I'll make good on my promise. Us, from here on out."
That was three months ago now.
"Thinking about Steve again?"
She looked up from the metal skeleton she'd been staring at for the better part of - let's check - ten minutes.
Barnes had become a pretty steady figure in her workshop in the months following her release from the hospital.
"I know a thing or two about losing arms." He'd joked. "Besides, between the two of us, we have a complete set of hands."
"Something like that. Mostly just staring at these screws." Her remaining hand wasn't as dexterous as her dominant one had been and it shook every now and then.
He sat down next to her on the bench, handing her the coffee he'd come with, and taking up the micro screwdriver. He tightened the bolts she'd been trying to before her hand got too shaky. "There you go."
"My hero." She deadpanned, taking a sip of her coffee. Barnes made the best coffee of all the Avengers, past and present.
"Why don't you have JARVIS pre-fab it for you? You've already drawn up the schematics."
"I don't know. I don't know why I do anything."
His face softened. He nudged their remaining shoulders together. "Tony, don't be like that. I tried to go without the arm in Wakanda because for so long, it had been HYDRA's leash. I wanted to be myself again for a little while, to figure out who that was in the new world. But you? Iron Man's always been a part of you. So what if that's a little more literal now? You've always been and always will be Iron Man."
She put down the cup before her shaking hand could drop it. She didn't know why it took Barnes to make it better. Rhodey and Pepper had been trying for months to help her, but she just couldn't. Even when they brought little Morgan, she had to turn away (she couldn't hold her and it had shattered her heart to realize it). She laid her head on his shoulder, breathing out a deep seated sigh. "Thank you."
He didn't respond, and she was grateful. She didn't need words - Steve said enough for all of them nowadays - she just needed a helping hand. Someone she could push off to stand on her own again. Someone who didn't want to help her, just support her.
"I've got to run, before I can walk." She muttered.
"Hmm?"
"J, fabricate the arm."
"Sir?"
"Let's get this show on the road." She sat up, offering a sad smile to the empty space. "Freddie Mercury told me the show must go on and I'll be damned if I don't live up to his example."
"Right away."
"Don't start being nice just because you feel bad for me."
"Never."
Barnes chuckled, standing too. "I'll leave you to it, doll. But try to eat? Natasha made cabbage rolls."
"Oooh, I might just have to follow you upstairs, Soldier."
She'd been hiding down in her workshop for days on lockdown. Even Pepper and Rhodey had been denied access.
Barnes knocked on the door gently with his metal knuckles, knowing it echoed way louder in the lab. "Tony?"
The door cracked open. "Hey."
Her right arm was hidden behind the doorframe. "Can I see it? You don't have to come out."
She took a deep breath. "No, I- I should come out. I've not seen Pepper look so haggard in a long time."
She stepped out into the brightly lit hallway and the shining red and gold caught brilliantly. It was sleeker than his own arm, looked lighter too. The way her fingers twitched looked like she'd managed to get more refined control than his own hand. She needed more control than he did, granted, but it was still impressive. To an untrained eye, his own hand functioned just like his flesh one. Even he barely felt the lag anymore.
"Suits you."
Her lips quirked up, the shadow of a playgirl surfacing, but it quickly fell for nerves and anxiety. "Let's just go. I want coffee."
Morgan was the first one to spot her, rushing over and jumping into her godmother's arms. Tony caught her, squeezing her tightly. "Hey bean."
"I've missed you, Auntie Tony."
Tears started to leak from her eyes even as she repressed the ugly noise trying to break free from her chest. "Me too, munchkin, me too."
Barnes' hand on her shoulder grounded her enough to hoist Morgan onto her hip and face the other Avengers, who stood upon her entrance. Natasha, stolen from the seconds before the TimeHeist, offered a broken smile and walked over, throwing her arms around the billionaire.
"Thank you, Tony. For everything you did, tried to do and have done for us." The spy tucked her face into the crook of the other woman's neck. "Thank you for giving us everything."
Tony shifted Morgan to her flesh arm and wrapped the metal one around Natasha, holding her tightly. "Always, Nat. Can't give up on the one who's been with me since the beginning, huh?"
Natasha breathed out what otherwise would have been a sob. "Yeah." She pulled away and sniffed, regaining her composure. "It's not supposed to be you offering me support, you know."
"Whoops." She smirked, more of herself shining through. "Guess we'll have to do it again."
Rhodey and Pepper were naturally next, holding her tighter than ever.
"Don't you ever do that shit to me again." Rhodey was openly crying. "You can't scare me. I can't take not knowing if you poisoned yourself with alcohol down in your lab."
"Not anymore, platypus." She kissed his cheek, then Pepper's. "I'm dying on my own damn schedule."
Pepper laughed. "Will that be all, Miss Stark?"
Tony laughed. "I could use a coffee, Miss Potts, then a crash because I have been up waaaay too long."
"I'll make sure she gets to bed." Barnes volunteered.
Pepper mouthed Thank you over Tony's head.
A year after the Snap, the two of them are sitting on the edge of Avengers Tower, looking out over the bustling New York skyline.
"I never thought I'd wind up here."
"Me neither."
She laid her head on his shoulder and he took her flesh hand in his. "What do you want to do?"
He rested his cheek on her head. "Got any bad ideas?"
"Date me."
"Done."
"Sweet." She squeezed his fingers. "Bionic Commando and its Sequel."
"I'd say yours is better. Flashier, punchier. People certainly aren't painting murals of me."
"That's because you don't pose."
They stayed up there until sunrise, not doing much of anything and enjoying every second.
She looked at herself in the bathroom.
Most of her had recovered. With the help of creams and a dermatologist, the scarring on her face had been almost erased. Thick and ropey scars were still around her the ball of her shoulder, but that was to be expected no matter what. The burn marks up her neck and down the side of her chest, though . . .
Those she had incorporated into a tattoo of a spewing volcano. She'd been getting a lot of tattoos lately. The little pair of round spectacles sitting folded atop the Reactor was her favourite. She had one for every precious person, all on her chest or back where they could never be stolen.
She grinned at herself in the mirror.
"Thank you, Yinsen. I hope I made you proud."
She left the bathroom, catching Barnes' metal hand with her own and smirking at the clank.
I'm not wasting it.