WIP game: steveendgame & tonyendgame, because frankly I'm curious if they are related or actually totally different things! (But like, also hoping they are Endgame fix-its of some sort.)
They’re two different things, and neither of them are fix-its because I tried writing a few fics (there are two other ones on the WIP list in addition to these two) within the first few weeks after I watched Endgame to deal with my feelings and was unable to finish any of them. :( I was grieving so hard that my mind went straight past being sad to “404/BLUE SCREEN” every time I tried to think about the ending of the movie! I might try finishing these now that enough time has passed, but I don’t know if I’ll be successful this time.
Anyway, steveendgame is about old Steve once he returns to the main timeline and he stays to support Tony’s family and friends. He found happiness like Tony asked him to and now, after all that, he decides to devote the rest of his remaining time to making sure Tony’s loved ones are okay like Tony would want them to be.
1. He wasn’t prepared for how present Tony still was as if he had momentarily stepped out of the room, to grab coffee, to go to the bathroom.
“I was going to say you were lucky. Seemed like you skipped all that while we’re just starting, but…” (I don’t remember if this is Rhodey or Pepper)
2. Most of [Morgan’s] love [for Tony] will come from hearsay, secondhand stories passed down from everyone around her as her hold on her early memories grows more tenuous.
3. And Steve thought of this, of how loved Morgan would have been, what it would have been like had the original Avengers not been ripped apart.
Tonyendgame is a lot more awful because it’s Tony in his dying moments because I thought that hey, maybe the way to deal with this mental block is to put myself in his shoes and achieve catharsis that way. I WAS WRONG. I got to Tony staring at Rhodey and I lost it. :(
1.He always knew he would go out with a bang.
He tried to tell Rhodey that—summer 1987, Rhodey by the pool in itty bitty hot pink shorts that Tony had bought him as a prank after he had thrown up on Rhodey the night before while he helped Tony into bed. “Gonna go out with a bang, gonna go out in style, you’ll see, sugar bear,” he had slurred—but his throat burned. Blood dripped down it and he wanted to swallow except he couldn’t. He couldn't move.
It pooled uncomfortably at the back of his mouth.
2. Every time he thought about his death, there was no one else he wanted more at his side than his best friend and first friend—and for a long time his only friend—but he always hoped Rhodey wouldn’t be there to see it too. Except he had been there through his overdoses and blackouts, the self-destructive stunts he pulled right after his parents’ deaths, in the ambush in Afghanistan, and the palladium poisoning. Through everything. It didn’t matter what he hoped, but he had been able to come back all those times, at least.
He knew there wasn’t coming back from this one.
3. The tears kept sliding, but Rhodey never looked away just like he never left him no matter what even when the going got rough, staying with him like he always did when Tony needed him. Finding him wherever he was, no matter how far away he was or how long it took.
4. He knew what it was like to be left behind like that, and he never wanted to hurt [Morgan] that way or any way.
He was going to leave her so early, he thought, the way his father did. The way Peter’s father and uncle did, the way Harley’s father did.
:)))))))))))) I think I’ve only cried once or twice in all the years I’ve written stories in my life, but I couldn’t deal with what I was writing for the tonyendgame one so I had to stop! Same thing went for some of my other Endgame fics. ;_;
I do love what I have for all of them, though, and in retrospect, despite my frustration over my inability to process my grief through writing at the time, I think it helped a tiny bit even if I couldn’t finish them then. <3
