st_arkintern | Ghost of Christmas Future

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Ghost of Christmas Future

"Mr. Stark?"

Peter stands at the edge of the bed that Tony shares with Thor. He wears the Iron Spider armor Tony made for him, the faint glint of the moon through the thin slit between either side of the curtain reflecting off the suit's dark colors.

Peter's hair is styled differently from the Peter here at the inn; it's longer, more wild, even floppy. School had grown more and more demanding as the end of his sophomore year approached and balancing school and his time as Spider-Man was difficult. He had promised May he'd maintain his grades as part of the Spider-Man Negotiations of 2017, but criminals didn't stop just because he had two papers to write by Friday, a quiz tomorrow, and a test next Tuesday.

Hair had been less of a priority. Peter couldn't put off his homework if he wanted to continue being Spider-Man; he couldn't put off his evening patrol if he wanted to protect Queens, either. There were no serious long-term consequences to not getting his hair cut (save for perhaps more bullying from Flash, who was prone to bullying him anyway). A haircut could wait until later.

Peter always thought there'd be more time later.

Tony doesn't stir. Peter presses his lips together -- a nervous habit acquired when he was still alive -- and draws a little closer. He resists the natural urge to place a hand on Tony's shoulder to wake him; he knows that his fingers will slip right through. Instead he repeats, this time a little louder:

"Mr. Stark?"

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That reply was all that Peter needed. The room was suddenly swallowed in darkness and then just as quickly, rebuilt in a pouring of light.

Everything on the planet is in a state of decay. Husks of spaceship and building alike lay stretched out across the orange-tinged planet, littered with debris inside and out of it. Any matter that was light enough floated listlessly through the air, too light to be pinned down to Titan by its own gravity.

Peter -- or the ghost of Peter -- stands near the Tony from the Inn, looking over the scene with a passive expression. He hasn't been here since he died, and he felt so overwhelmed by all the new people and all the new sensations that he had a hard time zeroing in on any of the specifics. This was the first time he was able to look out upon the planet and really experience Titan one piece at a time.

The planet's air is old and musty, like an undisturbed Egyptian tomb. And like a tomb, it's very cold and very still and very quiet --

Until a lone voice permeates the silence.

"Oh yeah. You're much more of a Thanos."

Sitting on the crumbling steps of what was once a city plaza sits a man garbed in navy blue robes, wearing an impressively thick dark, red cloak. Around his neck, he wears an necklace with a massive golden eye for a pendant.

True to the man's words, the massive alien in front of him does look like a Thanos. He's large and muscular and purple with long patterned ridges carved into his skin in patterns that extend below his armor. The patterns look natural -- not the product of mutilation.

"I take it the Maw is dead."

The man's head bobs slightly in not quite a nod.

"This day extracts a heavy toll," Thanos says as he approaches the wizard with a steady gait. "Still, he accomplished his mission."

Tony was only just beginning to get his bearings of the utterly alien and downright hellish landscape when the welcome wagon begin sounding. For a split second, Tony could have sworn the man (wizard?) was speaking directly to him until—

Thanos.

Tony’s blood ran cold, and he reflexively covered his body in his armor. Standing just meters away and faced parallel to them was him. There was no mistaking it. He looked every ounce the monster that had been haunting his dreams. He kept his body between Peter and the threat—for all the good it did.

Thanos continues walking towards the man at a steady pace. "Still, he accomplished his mission," he speaks in a calm, even tone.

"You may regret that. He brought you face to face with the Master of the Mystic Arts."

Thanos' gait doesn't change. "And where do you think he brought you?"

"Let me guess. Your home?"

Thanos stops, props his leg up atop some debris and laughs to himself as if the wizard had told him something he found personally amusing. He sets a large, gauntleted hand on his leg. Four stones are already embedded in it; only two open sockets remain.

"It was. And it was beautiful." Thanos clenches his fist, and the Reality Stone suddenly lights up. In one swooping motion, like an image loading horizontally, the scenery changes. Instead of a Titan broken and desolate, there's a Titan full of life and people.

"Titan was like most planets. Too many mouths, not enough to go around. And when we faced extinction, I offered a solution."

The wizard's expression is incredulous. "Genocide," he supplies.

"But random, dispassionate, fair to rich and poor alike. They called me a madman. And what I predicted came to pass."

The image of Titan at its peak dissolves in much the same way as it appeared; the red light of the Reality Stone dies out.

"Congratulations, you're a prophet."

"I'm a survivor."

"Who wants to murder trillions."

"With all six stones, I could simply snap my fingers." Thanos demonstrates. "They would all cease to exist. I call that mercy."

Dispassionate. That was a good word for the logic of the monster--no, not quite that. He was single-minded. Clinical. That was better. Thanos presented the logic of his solution the way Tony had heard a thousand researchers present their findings like a matter of supreme objectivity. It was goddamn chilling.

'And here...he does it.'

Dr. Strange rises to his feet, unconvinced. "And then what?"

Thanos looks out the crumbling remains of Titan and gestures vaguely.

"I'd rest and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe. The hardest choices require the strongest wills."

The wizard's arms begin to move as his magic begins to materialize physically.

"I think you'll find our will equal to yours."

"Our?"

Thanos looks up. An extraordinarily long spaceship races straight towards him, propelled by the force of Mark 50's propulsors. It strikes the ground hard enough that dust rises up in clouds large enough to swallow a person.

"Peace of cake, Quill," Tony says as he flies by Quill.

"Yeah, if your goal was to piss him off!" Quill activates his mask and then his boosters -- and then the Battle of Titan truly begins.

An enormous plume of smoke swallowed Tony's field of vision, and he reflexively raised his arm to guard--though it simply passed through. For the first time, Tony wondered if this was what it was like to be a ghost. Intangible, unseen, unheard. Powerless. If he were in a better mood, he'd have made another Patrick Swayze quip but his attention was fully consumed by observing the action.

Seeing his own suit at full throttle in conjuction with the absolute madness of the other warrior's additions would have been fascinating if not for the heavy pit in his stomach reminding him how it all would come crashing down.

The ship Iron Man dumped on Thanos suddenly bursts apart, revealing Thanos and his gauntlet. The purple Power Stone is lit up in his massive gauntlet, though the light fades and the red of the Reality Stone takes its place as the debris shifts shape into a massive swarm of bats that chase Iron Man into the ruins.

The fight continues, and true to what Quill told the others back at the inn, there was a definite plan. Even as they all work separately, they're all strangely coordinated. They all are strangely in-sync. Despite their efforts, Thanos doesn't seem winded at all; he just seems irritated. A second spaceship (this one functioning) crash-lands into Thanos.

And Thanos gets right back up in time to be assaulted by a blue-skinned cybernetic alien.

"This is it," Peter says quietly from behind Tony.

The wizard pinions the gauntlet, pulling the finger of it open. The shirtless, tattooed alien kicks him in the knee and knocks him off-balance; he attempts to hold him in place.

Quill shoots an electronic trap down to Thanos' right; it holds Thanos' unarmored hand in place.

Spider-Man swings in and webs Thanos up. The extra legs of his suit dig into the ground to anchor him as he attempts to hold Thanos in place. The wizard's red magic vanishes just before Iron Man pulls at Thanos' gauntlet.

A portal suddenly appears above Thanos' head, and another alien drops easily onto his shoulders; her hands hit the side of his head and the ends of her pale antennae light up.

Thanos lets out a guttural yell, and for the first time since the battle began, Thanos seems something more than moderately inconvenienced. The shouting stops; Thanos' eyes go cloudy.

"Is he under? Don't let up," Iron Man says.

"Be quick. He is very strong."

"Parker, help! Get over here." Spider-Man is at Iron Man's side immediately. "She can't hold him much longer. Let's go."

The two of them tug at the gauntlet together, just as Quill flies in and lands in front of Thanos.

"I thought you'd be harder to catch. For the record, this was my plan. Not so strong now, huh? Where is Gamora?"

"My... Gamora...?"

"No, bullshit. Where is she?"

"He is in anguish." The alien woman seems pained as she says it.

"Good."

She's crying now. "He... he... mourns."

"What does this monster have to mourn?!"

"Gamora," the blue-skinned alien says, her voice strained.

"...What?"

"He took her to Vormir. He came back with the Soul Stone... but she didn't."

A shadow fell over Quill, and Tony seemed to synchronize perfectly with his other self in that moment.

'No.'

"Okay, Quill?" His other self began, far too knowing exactly what was going through the man's head. "You gotta cool it right now, understand?"

'No. No. No. No no no nononononono.'

"D-Don't engage! WE'VE ALMOST GOT THIS OFF!" The pleas fell on entirely deaf ears.

And it all came crashing down right before his eyes.

Quill starts pommeling Thanos. Iron Man starts flings towards him to stop him. Spider-Man comes close enough to pulling off the gauntlet that it visibly slips off the butt of his hand and down to his fingers. Thanos thumb is completely out of it when he yanks it from Spider-Man's grip. Thanos sends the alien-woman flying and Spider-Man catches her.

Everyone else continues to fight, but the mad Titan sends the wizard flying; he easily knocks the Guardians back with a pulse of purple energy; he headbutts Iron Man to the ground.

He looks at Iron Man for a beat, then gestures at Titan's moon. The Blue and Purple stones light up as the moon shatters, and he sends all of it slamming onto the red, dusty planet below as effortlessly as a professional pitcher delivering a pitch.

Thanos seems to have a response for everything they throw at him.

A nanite hand pins Thanos' gauntleted hand open and Iron Man lands in front of him.

"You throw another moon at me, and I'm gonna to lose it."

"Stark."

"You know me?"

"I do. You're not the only one cursed with knowledge."

"My only curse is you." Rockets launch from the Mark 50 and launch themselves at Thanos.

"Come on!"

It's just the two of them now: the Guardians are incapacitated and Spider-Man is with them; the wizard is still splayed out on the ground. The fight itself seems almost even, until Iron Man flings a metal fist at Thanos' face.

The metal catches his cheek. When Thanos lifts a hand to his face, he finds there's blood there.

"All that for a drop of blood."

Thanos smiles.

He kicks Iron Man with enough force to flip him over, then continues to punch him -- over and over again, without mercy. He lifts him by the head, then punches him, using the force of the Power Stone.

Iron Man puts his everything into firing his repulsors at Thanos, but the Titan is not deterred. He continues to steadily close the space between them, then knocks the malformed remains of the helmet off of Iron Man's face. Iron Man forms his glove into a shortsword and attempts to attack Thanos with it, but Thanos breaks it off --

-- then slams it into Tony's torso.

The world around Tony went silent. The color drained away.

This was it.

This was how Tony Stark's story ended.

He watched numbly as Thanos walked him back slowly, as if putting a wounded animal to rest. The monster's hand rested upon his head in a twisted show of sympathy, and Tony watched himself seize up in shock and pain the entire way.

"You have my respect, Stark." Thanos spoke softly, soothingly. "When I'm done, half of humanity will still be alive." Then, Thanos was leaving him and taking aim with his gaunlet. Overkill for a human who was minutes from death--perhaps his way of showing that respect to send his enemy off with the sum of his might.

Tony didn't want to watch. He didn't want to see what came next. He knew. There was no other way this would end, yet he couldn't look away.

"Stop. Spare his life... and I will give you the stone."

Thanos turns and regards the wizard with a curious look; his expression quickly neutralizes.

"No tricks."

Strange shakes his head.

"Don't."

Despite the order, Strange lifts his hand and the Time Stone materializes out of thin air and floats, spinning in the space between his forefinger and his thumb.

Thanos holds out his hand and Strange sends it towards him. The stone snaps into the second-to-last socket in the gauntlet.

"One to go."

Quill launches himself at Thanos, blasters blazing, but Thanos opens a portal with the Space Stone and vanishes with it.

Everything stops then, as if the entire scene had suddenly been put on pause.

"Mr. Stark?" Peter says quietly from behind Tony.

Beat for beat, Tony's emotions and thoughts mirrored his future self's. The shock of the bargain--who was this Dr. Strange to offer up a stone for his life?--to the despair of Thanos accepting. He was on a crash course to Earth.

Where The Avengers were.

Tony's utter numbness at the revelation he lived for that much longer burned away by a sudden fire lit in him. He spun to face Peter, his mind entering crisis management mode. "Pete. Earth. We need--we need to go to Earth." He pleaded.

"I can try to bring you to Earth, but there's still more I need to show you here before we go anywhere else." Peter wishes he didn't have to show Tony any of this -- just as he wishes he didn't have to show any of Peter this, either, but he had to.

"This is --" Peter looks out at the landscape around them; the planet looked bad off when they arrived, but after just a few minutes with Thanos on it, it looked even worse. "-- it's a lot to take in all at once."

Tony shook his head uselessly as if to ask what could be even left to witness on this hellscape. But he owed this much to Peter, no matter which Peter it was. He owed it to everyone--if for no other reason than to see what his failure bore.

"Alright." He steeled himself. "Alright."

"You know why I brought you here, right?" Peter asks quietly.

He doesn't wait for an answer.

"None of this has to happen for you or for me," he says. "There's so much time to change things. Even now, things are probably already changing."

This Peter can't be certain of it.

"Everybody needs to work together. And everybody needs to know what will work, what might work, and what won't work at all. I really think we can beat Thanos."

Tony forced himself to meet Peter's eyes, pained as he was to do it. "So there's hope." He didn't realize it, but he was holding his breath. "That when I get shunted off whenever the hotel decides...I can change things."

Peter keeps his gaze steady on Tony.

"If I didn't think there was hope, I wouldn't have visited you. I wouldn't have visited Peter, either."

Tony felt his heart sink at the mention of Peter--his Peter. He shut that emotion away. There would be time to deal with it later.

"Understood."

Peter presses his lips together.

"You okay?" He knows the answer's probably no, but Tony just needs to be okay enough.

Tony's face was a mask, as it so often was. "I'm here."

Peter turns away and the scene swings back into motion. Spider-Man helps Iron Man up as everyone on Titan gathers together.

"Something's happening," Mantis says, her eyes turning skyward.

Moments later, she turns to dust.

The same happens to Drax and to Quill and to Strange; the most any of them is able to manage is a few short words.

"Mr. Stark?"

It's not the ghost Peter speaking, but the real one.

"I don't feel so good."

Tony had no concept of what half of all life meant. The universe was far too infinite for even a genius of his caliber to grasp. When Thor finally confessed that Thanos had succeeded, Tony didn't even have a concept of what their deaths would look like. When he began hallucinating caskets floating in the sky shortly thereafter, he was certain one of the many was left for him. A still corpse to feed the earth.

But Thanos wasn't so kind. The once-living faded away into the breeze, leaving nothing but the memories.

Mr. Stark.

Tony's mask shattered at the sound of Peter's voice. Moving on pure instinct, Tony went to him, right as his other self caught the boy.

"Please." Tony begged, watching himself give the only real embrace he would have given the boy in his life if not for the Madonna Inn.

"I don't want to go. I don't want to go, sir, please. I don't want to go." Please, I don't want to go. I don't want to go."

The other Peter clutches Tony so tightly that when he falls back, he takes Tony down with him.

For a moment, the other Peter's eyes go skyward, then turn back towards Tony.

"I'm sorry," he says softly.

The other Peter dissolves into dust.

His other self made a desperate grab for what little remained of Peter, only to have it slip through his fingers. Tony slowly lowered to his knees, staring at the spot where the boy used to be. And he stared.

And he stared.

And he stared--as if he could will the particles that once composed Peter Parker to come back together.

Time stops on Titan again. Peter crouches down next to Tony.

"There's a chance that even if we eventually stop Thanos... this still might happen," he says softly. That was his whole reason for showing Tony; he's not sure he would have shown him otherwise. "You need to be ready for it because you're still going to have to keep moving forward. You can't just stop."

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