Chapter Text
Something wasn’t right.
Something other than the obvious fact that half of the entire population of the fucking universe had been halved, of course.
Being unable to make contact with anyone as the Benatar landed on Earth made some modicum of sense, Tony supposed. Space tech was, in so far, not compatible with Earth technology, Tony had tried several times as they had started their descent. As much as it pained him to admit it, attempting to contact Earth from the Benatar was like trying to use wireless earphones to try and listen to music from a cd player.
It was just not going to happen.
What wasn’t right, was that the Benatar managed to land in front of the Compound and they had done so without being attacked once.
Tony didn’t want to be attacked, but, to be honest? He had sort of expected it. The Avengers were not really known for asking questions first and shooting after.
And considering that, according to his calculations, only twelve days had passed since that day...
Something was off.
When they landed in front of the Compound and were not immediately surrounded by panicked Avengers or other people trying to kill them, Tony’s concern only grew. He had been unsure that his heart could feel anything other than the grief he had felt, watching Peter disappear in front of him, or the fear that only grew the longer he went without contact with Darcy, but now it was clear that it could feel anxiety and nerves still.
Because where was everyone?
It wasn’t like Tony was in any rush to see any of his old teammates. He had refused to think about who had survived and who could have died for that very same reason. But surely not everyone in the Avengers could have died, right? Not every single one of them could have disappeared, right?
He wasn’t alone, right?
(“I watched my friends die. You’d think that’d be as bad as it gets, right? Nope. Wasn’t the worst part.”
“The worst part is that you didn’t.”)
Nebula side eyed him as the Benatar came to a complete stop in front of the Compound, but Tony ignored her, keeping his eyes focused outside, watching and hoping...
Thanos had said half the population, after all. The ratio had seemingly been different on Titan, where only two of them had survived, but on Hulla (the planet they had stopped on their way back) Nebula and the few people they had spoken to, had agreed that it was half of their population that was now gone.
So it should make sense that the same happened on Earth. And yet-
“Oh thank god,” suddenly said Tony, as a glare of light caught his attention.
Nebula looked at him in confusion as he rushed outside, but she did not stop him, hands holding onto her weapons as she followed him out.
He didn’t mind having her behind him. She could have ditched him on Titan from the beginning, or left him to die about a dozen times after that. Sure she was grumpy, starved for love and generally prickly, but she wasn’t bad.
Tony liked her, and even though she had yet to admit it, considering her own actions so far, she liked him too.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to be completely alone, no matter how used to it she seemed to be.
He didn’t ponder about it too much (or about why Nebula was now alone, why they were both alone). Instead, he focused on the light glare again, feeling his heart grow heavier in his chest at the way FRIDAY expressed her relief at seeing him alive once more.
Even before master spies and assassins and supersoldiers and enemies were surrounding him on a day to day basis, Tony had made sure that the first things his AIs learnt from him was how to communicate with him without anyone else knowing that they were communicating or what they were saying. They had a language made of code, lights, static and secrets that only they and Tony were familiar with, a language not many even knew existed.
(Rhodey knew; he didn’t know the language itself, but he had been around them from the beginning, had seen JARVIS since he was basically an infant)
(God, Tony hoped Rhodey had survived)
It was that same language that FRIDAY was currently employing to tell him that,
“There are intruders inside the Compound,” he repeated for Nebula’s sake, growing a little stiffer. “There are other people inside too, but the intruders - two of them - have managed to subdue them. Assassins.”
Nebula did not ask him where he was getting his information from, or if he was certain of his words. She only became a touch tenser, holding her swords a little tighter, and moving in front of him.
Unfortunately for Tony, he had not been able to find the materials necessary in space to fix up his nanosuit, so he did not really have a choice other than allowing her to do that. He’d have maybe enough to form a gauntlet or something, which was better than nothing.
(part of him could not help but take note of the fact that either she did not consider him a threat at all, or she trusted him as much as he did her, letting him have her back like this)
“They have noted our arrival,” said Tony, keeping his voice low as they moved towards the main door of the Compound. He wondered if he should be more nervous about assassins inside the Compound most likely waiting for him, but at this point? He was fresh out of fucks to give. “They are not in the foyer, but are approaching it stealthily so that they can try and incapacitate us as soon as we get there.”
FRIDAY opened the door as noiselessly as possible when they got close enough to it. Nebula paused for a second, and glanced at him. When Tony nodded, choosing to forego words now that they were inside, Nebula turned back around and walked inside.
The lights inside the foyer were turned off, but that wasn’t particularly bothersome with the light still spilling from outside the building. Tony’s internal clock was all over the place, but he was going to assume it was sometime after noon.
Nebula paused when they walked in, pushing Tony a little farther away from her without turning to look at him, and Tony took it for the cue it was meant to be. Even if FRIDAY was compromised (she wasn’t, and she never would be – no one could hurt her, no SHIELD, no Stane, no ULTRON, never again), with where he was standing he’d be able to at least see the assassin duo in the Compound coming. Though...
He touched his arc reactor, tapping it four times and then twice.
Mark 42.
FRIDAY made the fourth line after the big 2 on the classic clock light up for a moment.
Fourteen seconds.
Then the lamp on the missing receptionist’s desk lit up in quick intervals, as did the one near the balcony.
Incoming.
Tony did not even have time to try and find a way to warn Nebula before the alien was moving.
Whether she also saw FRIDAY’s message or she simply saw something he didn’t, the Blue Meanie jumped at the same time as two figures dropped into the room, one more loudly than the second.
Then Nebula yelled, throwing herself against them, and Tony ducked, moving towards the receptionist desk.
He had seen Nebula on Hulla and even fighting on Titan, so he wasn’t particularly worried about his Neytiri’s chances in fighting against two human - ... they were human, right? Damn it, Tony really hoped they were human - assassins. Still, he did not like sitting out of things and-
His eyes narrowed as the blonde woman Nebula was fighting threw herself at her in a move that was incredibly familiar.
Now, Tony wouldn’t go around and pretend himself particularly good at understanding how people fought or at recognising fighting patterns or anything like that. But he had seen that move before, had even wondered if the woman performing it would teach him it. He knew that move.
He did not doubt that the two assassins had seen him too, but Nebula was keeping them both engaged pretty well. The shorter of the two had tried to run in his direction already, and Nebula had-
Jesus Christ, was that a child, he couldn’t help but wonder in slight horror as she was thrown against the wall and he managed to make out her face from the distance. She looked maybe fifteen, what the hell?
The armour crashed through the ground just then, startling Nebula and the other assassins both, but not Tony. He threw himself inside it as soon as it opened beside, feeling his body relax even as his lungs constricted inside of him.
The last time he had been wearing the suit, the last time he had been fighting inside it...
“Hello, Boss. Good to have you back on Earth. Please do not leave the planet without me again,” said FRIDAY, and Tony would have smiled at the familiar voice, had he not been trying hard to keep his feelings and emotions at bay.
Because the last time he had looked at things through a HUD screen, the last time he had been in his armour, the last time...
His abdomen wound throbbed even though Tony knew it was by now mostly healed, and he could have sworn for a second he could taste dust (Peter, Strange, and the peanut gallery) in his mouth.
FRIDAY made the visual of the fighters appear in the HUD, and Tony focused on that. And fuck, that was a kid, and the woman beside her was a Black Widow. No shadow of doubt regarding either.
“FRIDAY, project me,” he said, taking flight as the two kept trying and failing to take down Nebula. They were clearly trained and good at fighting, but neither stood a chance, Nebula was too good, and she was going to kill them if they kept this up much longer.
“Alright, enough!” he called out, voice coming from all of the speakers in the room at once.
Nebula fell back immediately at that, kicking both women back at the same time.
She had been toying with them, he noted, and wasn’t quite sure if he should feel proud that she had remembered his ‘don’t kill unless they are active threats’ rule or disturbed that she had fought a Black Widow with half of her attention focused on someone else and that still had not been anything more than a quick workout for her.
He was very glad that she was on his side.
The two women did not attack as soon as Nebula stepped back, standing back up but staying where they were, eyes wary.
The blonde was scowling at Nebula with quite a bit of annoyance, but the kid beside her was watching Tony and his suit instead. He wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but for now it did not appear too threatening.
Not that it improved his mood by much.
“I just watched half of my team disintegrate in front of me, got stabbed in the gut with my own weapon, fought with a genocidal grape, trekked across space with an infection, nearly died again on a different planet and just managed to get to Earth. I’m fucking exhausted and tired and I still don’t know if some very important people are still alive, so what the fuck do you want?”
Uh. The delivery could have been smoother, he thought, wincing a little inside of his suit.
The blonde straightened up. “I’m Yelena Belova,” she said, in a thick Russian accent, and Tony’s eyes widened slightly. “She’s Xu Xialing.”
“You’re Romanoff’s sister,” said Tony, not relaxing in the slightest at the revelation.
Black Widow the blonde did relax, nodding. “You are Tony Stark. You are the one who does the fixing. I need my sister to not be dust anymore.”
“Oh, is that all?” said Tony, unsure if he should feel pressured, annoyed or proud at her words.
“No,” said possible Black Widow in training, completely missing the sarcasm. “I need my brother back too. His name is Shang-Chi. He goes by Shaun.”
“Look,” said Tony, when it became apparent that they weren’t messing around. What sort of reputation did he have around their parts? Very few would have said he was ‘the one who fixed things’; after all the blame for ULTRON rested on his shoulders, according to the majority of the world, didn’t it? “Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard about me or what you think I can or cannot do. But it’s not that simple. I can’t just bring them back with the force of my mind or whatever you think I can do. I couldn’t even save... I can’t do anything for you.”
“But you have to,” said Xialing, frowning at him. “That’s what they said on the news. You’re Iron Man, and Iron Man can save us. You always do, and-”
“Well not this time,” said Tony, deciding on feeling pressured after all. “Not this time. I couldn’t even save Pe- I couldn’t even save the people I went off world with. You’re insane if you think I can fix this. I can’t.” And he still didn’t know if Darcy... if Rhodey... “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” said Yelena, just as decided as earlier, a stubborn expression on her face. “Natasha always said-”
“Natasha doesn’t know as much as she thinks she knows,” snapped Tony, shaking her head. “Natasha is-”
“My sister,” said Yelena, a warning in her voice. Nebula came to stand closer to where Tony was, eyes trained on her. “And I know that you and her have a ‘complicated relationship’ because she lies to you all the time and you know how to spot the majority of her lies, and she doesn’t like that.” Tony was a little startled at those words, and Yelena rolled her eyes. “We kept in contact. She has a lot of stories about you and everyone else. You were the one she liked the least on the team.”
Tony pretended it did not still sting, two years later. “The feeling’s mutual.”
“But you were also the one she respected the most,” continued Yelena, which did make Tony pause. “She did not like you, but she did think you were the best and most powerful of the Avengers. That you could win where everyone else before you had already failed. That you were the hero the team and the world needed.”
“Those other ones were all waiting for you,” said Xialing, jumping in. “They said that maybe you knew how to fix it. That you would know what to do because you were Earth’s greatest defender.”
Tony scoffed. “Who the fuck said that?”
“The American one.”
The vast majority of the Avengers was American, but Tony had a feeling he knew who she was talking about. He wasn’t sure if he should feel proud that Rogers had referred to him like that, or if he should simply feel annoyed that once more the Captain expected Tony to fix everything that was wrong with the world.
“They were all being very uncooperative when we showed up,” continued Yelena. “But they all seemed in general agreement with this.” She glanced over at Nebula. “I didn’t know anything about a blue assassin though. Are you an alien?”
“Everyone’s an alien to someone,” said Nebula, weapons still unsheathed.
Xialing nodded. “That is true.”
“Back to the Avengers being uncooperative,” said Tony, snapping his fingers together. “Did you... what did you do to them?”
“I didn’t kill them,” said Yelena, rolling her eyes. “Natasha said that sometimes you could be very petty and vengeful, I wasn’t going to risk that.”
“We just knocked them all out,” said Xialing, a hint of a smile on her face. “It was very satisfying. Also, they are all very bad fighters.”
“How old even are you, Yori?”
The girl frowned. “My name is Xialing.”
“He uses nicknames with people he is fond of,” explained Yelena, and just how much had Natasha told about him to his little sister? “I think Yori is that little girl from Kim Possible. Have you ever seen Kim Possible?”
“I’m eighteen,” said Xialing, still looking confused. “I don’t know who Kim Possible is. Dad only let Shang-Chi learn English. I learnt by watching him watch the television and the movies.” She turned to look at Tony again. “Dad is also gone, but you don’t have to bring him back if you don’t want to. I just need Shang-Chi to come back, so that I can kill him myself for abandoning me.”
“Are all of the Black Widows this fucked up?” wondered Tony, which made both women appear offended.
“First of all, no we are not ‘fucked up’. We are just survivors.”
“Second, the Black Widows could never get me,” continued Xialing. “They tried, and they failed. My dad is much more powerful than they are, and trains better soldiers.”
Tony wanted to ask who her father was, but Yelena spoke up again. “It’s because they didn’t send me. I would have brought you in.” Then she turned to Tony again, eyes narrowing. “Enough American polite small talk. Are you going to fix it or not?”
Now even Nebula was looking at him, clearly wondering the same.
Tony wondered if that was why she had decided to save him. Did she also think he could ‘fix’ it?
Thanos had known his name. Claimed that he too was 'burdened by knowledge'.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he admitted, trying to not think about dust, about stones, about Titan and the Titan. “I...”
“But you’re going to try,” said Xialing, and when she looked at him now, he no longer saw the confused assassin from before who had claimed she wanted to kill her brother.
Instead he saw an almost afraid little girl, looking at him with firm belief in her eyes, looking at him like Peter used to look at him, like Darcy used to look at him when she was younger.
(god, he hoped Darcy was alive, he needed Darcy to be alive)
All Tony had ever done since New York was try and save people. Try to keep everyone safe. The suits, ULTRON, the Accords... it had been all to keep the world safe from Thanos, safe from what he had seen on the other side of the wormhole.
He had failed each time, which was why they had lost.
Nanakorobi, yaoki.
Fall down seven times, stand up eight.
Tony had been filled with anger and grief the entire time they had been flying back towards Earth, ever since that dumbass Strange had given Thanos that stupid rock.
Anger, and fury, and rage.
And one single certainty that he hadn’t been sure of how to achieve: that he was going to do anything in his power to undo whatever the fuck Thanos had done.
That he was going to do whatever it took to bring Peter and everyone else back.
So he let the helmet lift from his face and met the three women’s eyes with as much hope and certainty as he could.
“I’m going to die trying.”