Too Little Too Late

Tony Stark 04

As soon as it was possible to live in, oxygen, water and electricity working, Tony moved to the moon. Only one room was truly ready and it was totally empty. Never mind that. It was freeing to be so far away from everything. They couldn't find him here. Shield was as far away from him as it could be. Even if his dreams were full of Steve Rogers slamming it down his chest, Tony would know, waking up, that he was as safe as he could be.

Thanks to Extremis, Tony took his first good breath since Afghanistan. He never enjoyed it when it was natural, normal to be breathing without pain or being uncomfortable. Now he couldn't have enough of it. How ironic to enjoy breathing so much somewhere without a natural atmosphere. He couldn't help but laugh at the thought. The room was large enough and more than that, deep enough within the satellite for his new workshop location. Friday beamed everything up from the compound. Fastest move ever. Even his good old sofa was nicely there in the corner. He didn't have to pack anything, not even to close any ongoing projects and nothing had been broken. A dream come true.

Tony had the rest of the house to build around his brand-new workshop. After all tinkering was the heart of his life, might as well also be the one of his house. Tony found pleasure in that, building and decorating to his taste. The house was getting bigger and bigger, finding space for people that weren't there. Pepper had done everything in the tower. From the art collection to the carpets. He had let her but now, he could be honest with himself, her style was a little bit too cold for him. She had been happy then to put her touch in his life. Very Pepper-like really. Now he wanted warm and cosy furniture in large rooms, big enough to have many people he could maybe call family. Decidedly, he was full of contradictions these days. Life and death, intimate and large, family when he was all alone.

Days passed by rather quickly. He kept himself very busy. The house was almost complete when the rogues were officially pardoned. Tony hadn't been in the compound for months but he was going on Earth regularly for supplies, furniture and the occasional cravings. So, he knew. It was everywhere. Newspaper front pages, television and even in conversations in the street. Did that hurt? Yes, but not more than everything else that had happened so far. It couldn't harm him more than it had already done. He couldn't deny the logic behind the U.N. decision. Rhodes wasn't in condition to carry on being War Machine, Vision was almost a rogue by then, Thor was back in Asgard and the Hulk was nowhere to be found, so was Tony. Who else was there?

Of course, Tony had worked on the braces with his brand-new fingers. A work of precision that he couldn't have been able to do before Extremis. Something that was always on his mind though. But that didn't mean that the colonel would want to be a hero once again. He had lost so much already. Tony had just beamed down the tool that Rhodey would need to have the main part of his life back. It wasn't a way to tell him to be War Machine again. Anyway, he hoped that it wouldn't be seen that way. The Colonel had said that he didn't want any of it, what being Tony's friend had brought into his life. Tony wouldn't make this mistake twice. Life tended to choose for them in the end. When it had been clear that Thanos was coming for Earth, army man or not, if you had the tools to fight, you had to do it. Whatever it took. Rhodes had always been a hero, way before the War Machine. One way or another, he would help during that battle.

Tony's real problem began when he ran out of projects. When his brain wasn't on a problem to be resolved, his thoughts would irremediably come back to some negative feelings. A vicious circle. The house was done. He had sold everything. The braces were done and without the input of the wearer he wouldn't be able to improve them. He had worked on a lot of defensive measures from the Moon. The merchant of death was useful now. To make something explode was really easy. Those weapons were necessary but they weren't a challenge for the genius' brain. At that moment he felt the loneliness. Even if he never had a lot of people around him, the human contact was missed dearly. Of course, Friday and the bots were there and they were doing their best. But Tony was a very tactile person and he had no-one.