JOINING

Trapping exhalation vapor and purifying urine was simple. So was extracting oxygen from the resulting water. But the process didn't have a hundred percent return - some loss occurred within each run of the cycle.

Now the water was gone. The oxygen would soon also be gone.

Tony recorded his message to Pepper. He knew the odds of her ever hearing it were impossibly long, but he had to at least try. He'd always been so damned bad at explaining himself to others. And nobody deserved an explanation more than Pepper.

Well... maybe Steve did. If the Avengers had been together when they found out about Thanos, would that have made a difference? Tony was haunted by that thought.

And Tony kept having that dream about Pepper being pregnant. And he kept having the nightmare where Peter disintegrated in his arms. And Strange's words about the endgame sometimes seemed like a never-ending echo. What the hell did it mean? Why did Strange give Thanos the time stone?

Nebula came into the cockpit and sat down in the pilot's chair. Her strange eyes seemed to look deep inside Tony.

"We need to talk," Nebula said.

Tony just raised an eyebrow. Talking used up oxygen.

Nebula would survive him by a day or two. She was a cyborg and required far less resources than Tony did, but the handwriting was on the wall for her as well.

Then Nebula told Tony her plan. Actually, it had already occurred to Tony. His brain sometimes just wouldn't stop working.

"No," Tony said without hesitation.

"Do you want to see Miss Potts again?" Nebula asked. Her words were remarkably peaceful for someone who was in a total berserk fury the first time Tony saw her. And she was a pretty good at emotional blackmail for someone who liked to pretend she was a soulless machine.

"I can't guarantee that you'll survive," Tony told Nebula. "And if you do, I can't say what you'll survive as."

"Tony, I won't outlive you by long. And I want another chance to kill my father."

Tony understood that last part. He understood it quite well.

Dragging the remains of his breastplate over to the pilot's chair, Tony fitted it around Nebula. His hands fumbled intimately over her body as he made sure it was fitted properly to her smaller form. Her breasts felt like those of a human woman. The fleshier parts of her body were also soft and warm, although he could sometimes feel the strange hardness of unflesh components beneath her skin.

After Tony engaged the power, the breastplate formed itself around her.

The helmet was incomplete; some of its systems non-functional. And somewhere in it was his desperate message to Pepper. Would that survive what was coming?

Nebula was doing a good job of being the stoic warrior-woman, but Tony would see fear in her eyes. This would hurt and it would probably be the end of her.

Just before Tony put the helmet over Nebula's head, she surprised him by leaning forward and kissing him.

"When you see your Miss Potts, please apologize to her for that," Nebula said once she was done with him. "It's just... I've never kissed anyone."

Tony smiled, "She'll understand. She's ridiculous that way."

Then Tony put his helmet on Nebula. Embracing her, Tony pressed his nanite-filled chest module against the suit's chest. The suit and the nanites reacted to that and went to work.

Nebula screamed and spasmed as her body began breaking down.

Tony held her until she was gone.

God, he was getting tired of that.

"Are you ready?" Tony asked his on-board artificial intelligence.

"Yes, Stark," the AI replied. Her voice was a bit harder than he would have programmed.

They were outside the ship, floating in the deep dark. Tony was in the latest version of his armor. It had a blue and red color scheme that only an hour ago he would have sworn would look terrible. The armor was intact, mostly functional, and fully powered. There was oxygen and water stored on-board.

Tony was too far gone to think about where it had come from.

"Just call me Tony," he said.

"Yes, Tony," the suit replied.

"What are our chances?" Tony asked. He was gazing in what his helmet said was the direction of Earth. Of course that tiny blue ball of life and hope wasn't visible.

The suit began to reply.

"No. Scratch that," Tony interrupted. "Never tell me the odds."

Tony smiled as he quoted a space pilot that he'd always admired.

"I don't understand that reference," the AI said. She sounded confused.

"I'll explain it after we get the first burn done," Tony replied. "Hey, we'll have time."

"Now, let's go home," he finished.

"Let's go see Pepper," Nebula replied. "I want to meet the woman who took your heart."

Tony's boots formed into a single unit and then engaged.