@dontcallmerupert
Biblical Meme: (Accepting)
ACEDIA – neglect to take care of something that one should do.
It’s Nebula who drags him to his feet, who shakes him and shouts and tells him that they cannot stop, they cannot grieve until Thanos is dead. It’s Nebula who pulls him onto her ship and points them back towards the direction of Earth.
It’s Tony who sits against the hull and tries to not be a person, who holds himself together with tunnel vision and force of will.
The only way. The endgame.
A selfish part of Tony wonders what else he has to lose, and the thought sets off the panic attack he’s trying to hide from, stealing the air from his lungs.
When he steps off of the ship and onto Wakandan soil, Tony expects the worst. And for a moment, it is, because all he can see is Steve Rogers sullen, exhausted face.
But then there’s movement to his right, and Tony’s world lurches into motion again, along with his feet. They stumble on one another, heel catching toe, but Tony manages to keep himself upright long enough to slam into Rhodey, to curl hands against his shoulders and just hold on.
The sound Tony buries into his neck is a wounded animal sound. And like always, Rhodey holds him up. He keeps him strong. He murmurs that it’s going to be okay, Tony.
It isn’t. They both know it. But effort is there and Tony sags beneath the comfort of it.
He isn’t thinking. There’s white noise, static where his thoughts should be. Distantly, Tony hears himself tell Rogers that he’ll be back, a hand on Rhodey’s as he leads him into a sprawling castle that doesn’t belong to him, that he has no right to, but he strides into with all the gravitas of a rich man used to getting his way.
An arbitrary right turn. A left. Rhodey’s hand in his, Rhodey’s worried voice tickling against the nape of his neck, Tony… breathed out in worry.
So Tony stops. He stops and he thinks of every opportunity he’s squandered. On the couch in their dorm at MIT. On the plane back from Afghanistan. With palladium poisoning his chest. After he flew through a wormhole. After Ultron, and the Accords, and Rhodey falling out of the sky.
So many chances, so many times Tony told himself this is it, only to let fear keep him stagnant and inactive.
Not again. Not when fate let him stand here, hands curled against Rhodey’s neck when half the galaxy was gone.
Tony knows he should be trying to find a solution. Some way to undo all of this. But not right now.
Not until he kisses his best friend, and says the words he’s been avoiding for decades.
“I love you.”
