Tony had never forgotten the time he’d spent with Yinsen.
“Yes,” the man had said, a smile on his face that Tony now recognized as sad, longing, “and I will see them when I leave here.”
And then he had looked at him, calm but piercing.
He’d felt an overwhelming sense of loss at the question. The sensation of grieving for something that he’d never even had.
At the time, Tony never thought he’d have a family. That life… that was for other people. Better people.
He’d thought that he was destined to be alone.
But here he was, at the end of his life. No, past the end of his life, standing in front of Yinsen all over again and still feeling the echoes of the Stones running through his veins.
In those few moments, he had seen everything.
He had seen it all, and he had known, intrinsically, that he was going to lose everything he’d been so desperate to keep.
“Stark,” Yinsen greeted, smile on his face. “Welcome.”
“Yinsen,” he breathed, eyes darting around, trying to breathe it all in. “Where are we?”
“At the end,” he answered simply, taking a step forward. “Did you find it, Stark?”
“A family. Did you find it?”
He thought about Pepper. God, there was so much to think about with Pepper. She had never let him fall. But, more than that, she had never let him forget that he was human. That he was allowed to be human. It wasn’t a failing, wasn’t a deficit in character. His gentleness was strength. He never felt more at home than when she was under his hands, never felt more like the person he wanted to be, rather than the mold his father had tried to break him to fit. There was something about her that brought out the best in him, something magnetic. She’d been giving him to space to transform for so long. For so, so long.
He thought about Rhodey. When they had met at MIT, Tony had been pretty sure that the guy had hated him. After all, who would want to be stuck with a 15 year old kid as their roommate? But Rhodey hadn’t resented him. More, he’d guided him. Taught him all the things his dad should have. He’d been there through his parents’ deaths, through Afghanistan, through the aftermath of New York. He’d been one of the first faces he’d seen after staggering off the Milano on the Compound’s front lawn. He had been there for the birth of his daughter. If there was any constant in Tony’s life, it was James Rhodes.
He thought about Happy. At the end of the day, he didn’t deserve him. The man had been chasing him for so long, through so many bad decisions, reckless nights. And yet Happy still cared for him, still stuck around to help scoop up his messes. Even after Pepper had hired him, Happy had stayed. Still called, still checked up on him. It was hard to imagine that the man had started out as just his bodyguard. There were very few people on the planet that Tony felt he could truly trust with everything, but Happy was one of them.
He thought about Steve. Despite everything, he’d never gotten rid of that stupid flip phone. He’d kept it charged, kept it safe, carried it around with him like it was a substitute for the man that had given it to him. There was something strange about the way he and Steve just… clicked together. They were two sides of the same coin, heads and tails. There was no escaping that. There was never any hope of trying.
He thought about Natasha. She had sacrificed herself for them, for just the chance of success. There had never been a doubt in her mind that they would succeed, that they were avenge her, that they would avenge them all. She had believed until her last breath. She had looked the end in the eyes, and she hadn’t even flinched.
He thought about the Avengers as a whole. They’d had their ups and downs, but the team had given him a purpose. A way to redeem himself. He’d found something beyond Iron Man within it, something better. Something more. They had pushed him to be better, to forge something for himself outside of Stark Industries and his reputation as the Merchant of Death. He’d spent so many years fighting, growing, living alongside these people. These friends.Â
He thought about Peter. His kid. He’d thought it was a dream when he was standing in front of him again, hadn’t really accepted that it was real until the kid was wrapped up in his arms, ribs pushing up against the nanites of his suit with every breath. For a few second, he hadn’t even known what to do. He’d just held the kid, treasured him in the ways he hadn’t had the strength to before. He’d looked to the sky, thanked every god he could bring to mind, and pressed a kiss to his temple, gentle, soft. The sealing of a promise. You’re my child, he had thought, you’ve been my child for so much longer than I’ve been willing to admit, but I’m ready, now. I’m ready.
He thought about Morgan. The memory of holding her for the first time was still just as fresh as the present moment. He’d felt so inconsequential, so out of his depth. But, god, the joy. The unadulterated, get-drunk-off-of-it joy. He’d built thousands of things in his life, but this, this creation, this was the greatest thing that he could ever hope to bring to life. He was going to do anything for her, pull stars from the skies and put them in jars, spend sleepless nights cooing her back to sleep, pour every ounce of himself into her happiness until she overflowed with it. In that single moment, their identities had linked, and he had never looked back.
This was his family. The family that had seemed like a distant dream, back in that cave 16 years ago. He’d found it, he’d built it himself.
“Yeah,” he whispered, a sense of completeness washing through him, “yeah, I did.”
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