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Tony Stark was not all that fond of space travel, he discovered. Unsurprising, really, when taking into account all that he had gone through, endured, survived. The Chitauri, Loki, Thanos. Space travel belonged in his nightmares, his catastrophic visions; in his fears and failings. Under no circumstance would he ever willing go back into space – particularly since he was under the strong impression he was going to die in space with nothing but a sadistic, robotic humanoid to keep him company (in all fairness, she was very nice, considering) just five years past. Yet here he stood.

Taking a stand. Against all odds. The entire universe waiting on bated breath. With the stars bearing witness.

Wow. That's odd, he's become almost poetic. It's funny the things a man becomes when his life is on the line.

"Do we know where the stone is exactly?" Tony asked his old friend or ex-friend – to be honest, he wasn't sure what kind of friend Steve Rogers was to him and he sure as hell wasn't about to get into that right now.

His Not-Not-Friend surveyed their surroundings as they trekked their way to the top of some kind of mountain on Vormir, taking into account the remote silence of the planet. Tony could tell Steve was awed by his experience on an alien planet; could tell the kid from Brooklyn was jumping up and down at the thought of actually being in space. Being a hero in space.

Tony, though, was less enthusiastic about their predicament. This was no cartoon or comic strip, as Steve's naïve optimism oh so desperately wanted to believe. This was real. This was his nightmare. The utter bleakness of the desolate, barren wasteland surrounding them, bereft of any warmth or love, only served to reinforce the billionaire's haunted feelings about their destination and their ultimate ending.

Win or die. That was the only choice left to make.

Big Man in a Suit of Armour. Take that off, what are you?

"I'm gonna go with at the top of this giant mountain in the slap-bang middle of nowhere," he snarked though it lacked his usual fire. God, was he nervous? No, that was impossible – he was Iron Man; Iron Man didn't get nervous. Could never get nervous. Was not allowed to get nervous.

Iron: strong, hard, magnetic substance but more than that; a symbol of strength, resilience – uncompromising, unrelenting, unwavering.

And wasn't that just the epitome of irony? The Man of Iron, the strongest man alive, felled by an enemy that you cannot see, touch, feel.

Fear, itself.

He really shouldn't be surprised that the legendary Captain America wasn't the slightest bit out of breath when they finally scaled the pinnacle. Tony also knew he should have exercised more than he had been doing before he donned Iron Man's mask, he felt as though he were letting the team down.

Again.

"Welcome, Anthony, son of Howard."

The voice was the metaphorical embodiment of pouring a bucket of ice cold water, not only down his back, but also within his body, contaminating his veins, his arteries and clogging them with ice. He shivered. Warmth was a distant memory. A brief glance over at his blonde-haired companion informed him that the golden boy was not so unlike himself in his reaction to the anonymous speaker. If anything, Steve Rogers appeared worse for wear; even more so than Tony, a fact which caused the older man to frown in contemplation.

For what frightened The Captain America – truly, truly frightened – was something even he knew was not to be trifled with.

"And a warm welcome to you, Steven, son of Sarah."

Tony watched as his friend's tentative composure shattered at the sound of his name, breaking irreparably at his mother's name accompanying his own. The accented voice was a catalyst to Steve – fracturing the cool mask the mantle of Captain America provided with relative comfort, the remnants left as mere splinters in its wake. It was the scrawny kid from Brooklyn that stood beside him, now.

A quiet, eerie sensation swallowed him, letting him almost sink and drown before allowing a brief respite and then Tony saw him. The ghostly apparition, conjured by black smoke and dark shadow, emerged at that moment when Tony's instinctual fight-or-flight response was kicked into overdrive. And wasn't it a horrific sight – red and black: the colour of blood in two different states. One just spilt, the other left out to dry.

Steve's quiet gasp as the spirit adopted the form of a man precipitated a niggling hint of recognition in Tony as well.

Red Skull. HYDRA. The Tesseract. Tony's father was the one who fished the space stone from the ocean following the confrontation between Red Skull and Captain America so he at least feels he knows this red-faced monster through association if nothing else.

"What are you doing here?" Steve said in as neutral a tone as he could muster. Tony remained silent as the self-proclaimed Stonekeeper professed where the Soul Stone was and what it demanded as a price. And, try as he might (and he really, he did try) to believe otherwise, Tony knew it was not in Johann Schmidt's nature to lie.

A soul for a soul.

I never said you're a superhero.

The Merchant of Death: that had been one of his nicknames, before. The name of Tony Stark, the ancestor of Iron Man. 'The Most Famous Mass-Murderer in the History of America' – now, that was a good one. Perhaps there was some truth there, he wondered dimly, as he stood and listened as his partner bartered his life for the Soul Stone.

The only person you really fight for is yourself.

"It's okay, Tony," Captain America said. "You have a family." There was no hint of spite or malice or raw, uncontrollable rage on his face and Tony hated that; wanted to punch some of that rage in him. How dare Steve Rogers be so damn perfect and special and Tony so flawed.

Because he was so perfect, the brave super soldier – the hero of the hour. And Tony was...

The Man that Killed the Avengers.

Iron Man.

But Tony displayed none of his internal struggle. Instead, he jerked a finger at the self-sacrificing idiot beside him and said to the man responsible for Hydra, "He's your guy." He shook his friend's hand – far too briefly for comfort but time was no longer an ally of his. Not since Steven Strange gave away the Time Stone for reasons as of yet undisclosed.

He did nothing and stood to the side, opposite to the one the Red Skull was currently occupying, as Steve mentally prepared himself for his last heroic act. Not that he needed much preparing, he was made for this kind of thing.

Tony – not so much.

Time slowed to a stop as his friend, the opposite to him in every way: the blonde to his dark, the hero to his antihero, the perfect to his wholly imperfect, charged to certain doom. Half of him desired nothing more than to haul him back and declare the Soul Stone was not worth this, this sacrifice, but the other half had blinkered vision and all it could see was Parker. His kid in every sense of the word.

But then Captain America, Steve Rogers, his friend, pushed off the edge of the mountain top and –

"FRIDAY, activate."

And his friend didn't know what hit him. The nanotech Tony planted on Steve's wrist flared to life, whirring and working in a brilliant flash of red and gold and the thruster on the hand activated just before he disappeared beneath Tony's vision. He could see the disbelief and the anger and the fear that was marking its territory on Steve's face as he slowly crumpled under the weight of its significance and he eyed Tony, a feral glint in his eye.

"What are you doing? Tony, we agreed. This is my choice."

"And this is mine," he replied quietly. Tony's sleight of hand saved his life. He decided he could live with that.

You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play.

And then he was running. The wind rushed past him, as though it were trying to dissuade him from pursuing this course of action; Steve's cries of protest deflected off him. He was untouchable like this.

Thoughts of Morgan, of Pepper flashed through his mind as the ground fell out beneath him. He imagined his daughter growing up without him there and his heart ached inside his chest but he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Pepper would raise their daughter perfectly. And then his mind went to his other kid – the very reason he was there in the first place, risking it all on a whim. A one-in-fourteen-million whim. He thought of the hug he never got to give him and he would have given anything to go back and hug him just once.

But he'd be safe. Because this was going to work. His son would be alive and would look after his little sister in Tony's stead.

I love you 3,000.

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Thank you, Iron Man.