Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tony sits alone for a long time.

Maybe it’s only minutes. Maybe it’s hours. Maybe days, for all he knows, the sky thoroughly obscured with smoke and ash that refuses to blow away. It took a long time for the ashes of half the Earth’s population to settle after the first Snap, after all.

Now- now everything is gone. Because Tony fumbled.

Because he failed.

He gambled, and lost. He invented time travel, to try and get one kid back, only to lose both of them, and Pepper, and Rhodey, and Steve and Nat and everyone else- He failed. But before failing, he managed to piss off Thanos enough to be left alive.

A witness, the bastard said, smiling, as he snapped his fingers and erased everything Tony ever fought for, everything he ever loved- To the inevitable.

Then Thanos opened up a portal and just, walked away. Off to go start unmaking and recreating the entire universe, apparently, after casually obliterating every trace of life on planet Earth.

Every trace, except for Tony.

So. That’s that.

Done. Finished. End of the line, and thinking of that particular phrase is what manages to make him topple over and sob. End of the line, except momentum kept shoving Tony forward, even as everyone else turned to ash and fell away behind him.

Eventually the tears dry up. Nothing else changes, though. No reason for Tony to bother getting up and going anywhere. He just stays huddled on the ground, both hands curled around traces of ash, and he waits. Can’t take too long to die of a broken heart, right? Probably not as long as it would take for the dehydration to get him. Definitely sooner than Thanos swinging by again to put him out of his misery.

Tony waits. Alone.

...a sound reaches his ears, at one point. Maybe some rubble, finally collapsing. Or the hallucinations starting up, Tony figures those are bound to happen at some point. Maybe he’ll get to apologize to Pepper. To Peter. Hell, he’d even apologize to Barnes at this point-

Footsteps. Soft swishing. A voice. “Tony?”

-but Wanda’s a good place to start.

He blinks his eyes open, uncertain of when they closed in the first place. Wanda crouches in front of him, concern obvious on her face. But- she’s not the same. “New outfit?” Tony can’t help but ask in a croaky voice.

One side of her mouth tips up in a wry smile. “New enough. What happened?”

A half-hearted laugh escapes his throat. “What else? One step forward. Two steps back. Rinse, repeat, etcetera. Failure ad infinitum, until you’re out of chances.” Wanda keeps on staring at him, until Tony can’t take the weight of it, and shut his eyes again.

“...do you want another chance, Tony?”

The next laugh comes out as a harsh bark, bitter and grating. “Didn’t you just hear me, Wanda? I lost. Thanos got all six stones, he’s off to play king of the sandcastle, there’s nothing else I can do-!”

“I didn’t mean here, Tony. Do you want another chance somewhere else?”

“The hell do you mean, somewhere else? The past? Sure, I’d love for Hallucination-Wanda to give me a nice little mental fantasy to hide in until I’m finally dead-”

“I’m not a hallucination, Tony. I’m not from this universe.”

-okay, that’s enough to shut him up. Reluctantly, he cracks his eyes open, just enough to squint up at her face. “What?”

The wry smile comes back. “I am not from this universe. Where I am from, we beat Thanos. Everyone lived- except our Tony. He sacrificed his life to get the Infinity Stones and use them, killing Thanos and his entire army.”

“...fourteen million to one,” Tony mutters, stunned. Wanda dips her head in a shallow nod. “Hell. I’m glad someone managed it.” After a moment he shoves himself upright, until he and Wanda are properly sitting across from one another. “And they’re all- my family? The team?”

“We have all missed you,” she says plainly. “Two years have passed since your funeral.”

Hell.

Tony makes himself swallow, despite his parched throat. “And you’re just- what? Offering to let me move in? Take over another man’s life?”

“Your life,” Wanda insists, before pausing. “Although I do... understand. That fear.” Her gaze flickers. Tony follows it, off to the left, towards a mound of concrete that used to be the Compound’s main building.

Three figures are sitting on top. One lifts an arm to wave.

Wanda waves back, smiling faintly despite her pained expression. “After we won... Vision was still gone. I missed him- so much- that I let my grief take control. My power lashed out. It... did not go well, for those around me.”

Tony stares.

“No one was physically hurt,” Wanda is quick to say, “But that does not excuse the harm I inflicted. The harm I invited, when another witch came, seeking to steal my power for herself.”

“Hope you kicked her ass.”

That dry statement wins a snort, at least. “Eventually. That was- not the hard part. After... afterward, to fix what I’d done... I had to give them up. My family. My sons.” Wanda squeezes her eyes shut, taking a deep breath. “The people I hurt were free to return to their lives, but I could not make myself move on. I began dreaming, of other worlds where my boys still lived. Glimpses into other universes. And it hurt, to see them- to see other versions of myself, happy.”

“I’m sorry, Wanda.” On an impulse, Tony reaches across to grasp her hand, holding tight. She clings back just as firmly.

“I couldn’t leave well enough alone, of course,” she goes on. “And then I- I saw a world- a nightmare. Where I didn’t beat Agatha. She took my power- my magic- my boys. As soon as I realized- I couldn’t ignore it.” Another glance at the waiting figures. “I found a girl who can open doors between universes. Doctor Strange and I helped her gain better control over her ability, and then- she helped me get there. To that awful reality.”

“And Agatha got her ass kicked a second time?”

“Yes.” Wanda’s eyes flash as she snaps out that second word - not just metaphorically, either. Tony can actually see a flare of glowing crimson power, however brief. “And now- now I have my boys again. And they are coming home with me, so we can- try again. Another chance.”

Another chance.

“Billy, Tommy, America- this is my friend, Tony Stark. He’s coming home with us.”

“Sweet,” says the teenage girl wearing a scuffed jean jacket. “Always wanted to pick up a hobo superhero.”

Tony would take offense to that, but- well. For one thing, his nanite suit is pretty thoroughly trashed, he’s covered in dried blood and fresh bruises, and there’s a fine layer of ash dusted across him from head to toe. For another, this is the kid who can open doors between universes, and Tony’s willing to take anything she has to say if it means getting his second chance.

The two boys with identical faces and different hairstyles look him up and down, one slightly more thoughtful than the other. “Are you an Avenger?” The one with the longer hair asks.

“Yeah,” Tony rasps. “-or. I’m supposed to be, anyway.”

“Are you a cool Avenger?”

“Tommy,” Wanda chides, her glowing fingers moving in a circle flutter. The ash coating Tony slowly drifts off and away. “All the Avengers are cool.”

“Well, sure, but some are cooler than others.”

Once Wanda finishes tidying him up as much as possible while still standing around the hellscape of Tony’s world, she nods to America, and the girl literally punches a hole through time and space. The star-shaped fracture is, admittedly, a much more impressive effect than Doc Strange’s swirling orange-gold sparks and circles.

And speaking of Strange.

The man himself jerks to a stop on the other side of America’s portal, clearly caught pacing back and forth on the carpet floor of a dark office. Something in his face relaxes when America bounces through - a there-but-not relief that Tony recognizes in a heartbeat.

Looks like he’s not the only one who accidentally got attached to a teenager.

Strange’s expression smooths out further as Wanda and her boys step through, both the pipsqueaks clinging to her hands, but then the Doc does a double take when he sees- “Stark?”

“Doctor Strangeglove,” Tony can’t help but say, taking a cautious step of his own onto the carpet. It doesn’t seem real. Not until America’s portal closes, like a blade coming down to slice through a taut rope, and without the ruins of the Compound still looming Tony can finally breathe again. “Heard- heard you made the fourteenth million shot over here.”

Strange’s eyes close, a pained twist in his eyebrows.

Wanda says “I thought he could-” at the same time America goes “You said it would work for the kids-” Tony doesn’t dare move, suddenly feeling like he’s standing on unstable ground.

The wizard raises a hand. “It will only work if his timeline matches up exactly to our own, prior to the point of divergence you took him from. Otherwise-” Strange opens his eyes again, and meets Tony’s gaze with a clearly pained apology in them. “Otherwise it won’t take, and his presence could risk the fabric of our reality, if being here doesn’t just kill him outright.”

Tony swallows. “Well. No offense, but I think I’d rather die somewhere there’s still other people around, instead of- of-” the words can’t quite make it out of his throat, not when he’s here, where Wanda’s alive and Strange is alive and Morgan and Pepper and Rhodey and Peter-

“Fair enough,” the other man says quietly. “I’ll- run the diagnostic spell, then.”

This time it’s Tony’s turn to shut his eyes, as the glowing starts up, and he waits to hear the verdict.

He waits a whole ten seconds.

Then twenty.

Then nearly thirty, until America’s the one to break the silence. “So?”

“...inconclusive.”

Tony’s eyes snap open. “Well what the hell does that mean?”

Strange is staring at a pair of magic disks hovering over his palms, one slightly larger with an extra layer of squiggles around the outer edge, but otherwise- they sure look pretty damn identical to Tony, for whatever that’s worth. Wanda watches with a forced blank expression, hands gripping tightly onto her boys, while America fidgets in place, glancing between the disks and Strange and Tony and back.

After another beat, Strange closes his hands and the spell disks vanish. “I’m- going to get a second opinion.” And without so much as a ‘by your leave’, the bastard opens a portal, hurries through, and closes it again before Tony can say a word.

Again, America’s the one to break the silence. “Oh-kay. Well. I think it’s time to find a kitchen.”