Archive of Our Own ^beta

Alas poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy;

- Hamlet, Hamlet V.i

If you send a man to his death and you can’t bring yourself to watch does he still die?

(Yes.)

Two days after the funeral Stephen starts hallucinating a dead man.

“I can’t believe you wear a watch that doesn’t work Strange, that defeats its entire purpose.” 

Stephen’s eyes snap open into darkness and for a moment he’s sure that the voice he heard was nothing more than the remnants of a nightmare. Then he illuminates the room with a flick of his wrist and there, lounging against his dresser, is the corpse. 

Stephen scrambles out of bed but the apparition does nothing but give him a casual once over. “Don’t bother getting dressed on my account, we’re all friends here.” 

Tony Stark is dead. He died on an apocalyptic battlefield ten days ago and even if Stephen didn’t see the life fade from Stark’s eyes he knows it happened. He knows it needed to. This thing isn’t dead yet, it’s dying. It’s clad in a steel grey suit with a white rose boutonniere but it’s the blood that captures Stephen’s attention. Red stains the torso of the white dress shirt, outlining where Stark was impaled with his own blade by a Mad Titan on that fateful day Stephen first decided to play God. 

Stephen raises a defensive hex. “Who are you?” 

The apparition does a decent imitation of mock offence. “Wow, I’ve been gone less than two weeks and you’ve already forgotten? You sure know how to make a guy feel special.” 

Stephen eyes him critically. “You are not Tony Stark.” 

“Okay, you caught me.” The vision raises its hands. “I’m the Easter Bunny and I’m looking for someone to follow in my rabbity-footsteps.”

“Stark is dead.”

The demon wearing Stark’s face shoots him an unimpressed look. “Yes, and?”

“The Dead are dead.”     

Not-Stark snorts. The red stain on his shirt grows. “You have a doctorate in medicine and mystical Merlin powers and all you’ve got for me is he’s dead, Jim?”

“There are no such things as ghosts.” 

“Ten points to Gryffindor!” the ghost crows, eyes twinkling. “I’m not a ghost. You don’t believe in the afterlife and neither do I.” Not-Stark makes itself comfortable in the armchair, one ankle propped up on the opposite knee. The red on its torso keeps growing, drenching its suit front and if it were human - if it were alive  - Stephen knows they’d have past the point of no return. There’s only so much blood a human body can afford to lose. 

Blood runs down the ghost’s left wrist dripping onto the floor in time to the subtle tick of Not-Stark’s perfectly functional watch.

Tick, tick, tick. 

Drip, drip, drip. 

The sound could drive a man insane.

Stephen squeezes his eyes shut. “You’re not real.”

Not-Stark rolls his eyes. “Of course I am.” 

“There is no sorcery that allows any such - “ 

“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Stephen’s eyes narrow. “Stark would never quote Shakespeare and he’d have made a terrible Hamlet.”

“True: you’re the pretentious douchebag seeing ghosts,” the apparition pauses thoughtfully, “though Hammy was certainly the original avenger: trying to avenge his father’s death and subsequently fucking up the lives of everyone around him.” A grimace sours Stark’s face. “So point for me.” 

“He also dies at the end,” Stephen adds coldly. 

"If you really want to get technical, he’s murdered.” 

The last word echoes. 

Stephen can hear his own teeth grind, can feel the pulse of magic build in unsteady fingers. “Whatever you are, I order you begone.” 

The orange burst hits its target and fizzles out like a Fourth-of-July firecracker. The apparition just smirks before it fades like the Cheshire cat, dissolving slowly. The last pieces to go are a sliver of white teeth and the brilliant glow of the white rose boutonniere. 

The after-image burns itself into Stephen’s retinas. 

Stephen’s not an idiot, he tells Wong about the intruder immediately.

“There’s nothing here,” Wong says when he finishes scanning the entire Sanctum and Stephen for mystical interference. “If it is sorcery, it is unknown to me.”

“And very little is unknown to you,” Stephen mumbles.

“You’re learning.” Wong looks smug.

“So how do I make sure it never comes back?” 

Wong shrugs. “You don’t.”

“Full of helpful advice today, aren’t you?” Wong’s glare is sharp and Stephen should have learned better by now than to ignore it. “Hope for the best is easy advice when you’re not the one being assaulted by visions of a dead man. I never even knew Stark.”

“Fourteen million - ”

“Futures, yes, but the lives the time stone showed me were like… dreams. Nightmares.” Stephen rubs his eyes. “The details faded when I woke. I knew I had to keep Stark alive at any cost, get everyone to New York, and let Stark - " Sacrifice himself. Let him die. Lead him to the altar and hand him the knife to keep your own hands clean.

Stephen stares at the floor. “Seeing the dead breaks natural law. It shouldn’t happen.”

The book in Wong’s hands thuds shut. “It should not. But there are a lot of people in this world who would trade places with you if they could.” He picks up a picture frame nearly lost in the clutter of his desk and hands it over. It’s one Stephen has never seen before, from the Gap. It’s a candid wedding shot and he nearly doesn’t recognize Wong outside his Librarian’s robes and in a neat suit. The bride is caught mid-laugh, her ginger hair coming undone and radiant in ivory lace. Opposite her is Tony Stark, grinning like a man who’s gotten away with the crime of the century - 

Tony Stark with his bright white grin, steel grey suit and white rose boutonniere. 

Something slick and uneasy rises from the pit of Stephen’s stomach. 

Wong's still talking. “It was a nice wedding. Smaller than they planned obviously. Stark took your last words to him as licence to drop by whenever he wanted. I’d find him on the doorstep trying to break in. Eventually he realized it was easier just to bribe me.” Wong is a monk in many ways but internet access via the latest StarkPhone prototype would have been an irresistible temptation. 

Stephen’s gaze traces the outline of Stark’s torso, hunting for a red stain and the wound underneath. “He never recited Hamlet by any chance?”

Wong raises his eyebrows like Stephen’s grown a second head. “No. He mostly wanted to talk about you. He wanted to know what kind of man you were. I told him the truth as I knew it at the time.” 

At the time. 

Stephen wonders what kind of man Wong thinks he is now. 

If only the rest was silence. Thirty-six hours later the Not-Ghost reappears as Stephen waits at the intersection. He doesn’t even notice at first: a stranger simply steps up to his side and then Stephen startles backwards into the waiting crowd of pedestrians. 

“Are you alright?” Wong asks, ignoring the dead man entirely. Wong can’t see him. Of course no one else can see him, that would have been too easy. Even the Cloak seems unaware of Not-Stark’s presence. 

They’re spared an ugly sight. The ghost is dressed like Tony Stark on the day Stephen first met him; in black and orange jogging gear. The triangular glow at the centre of his chest flickers like a faulty connection. His left eye, orbital bone and parts of his skull have been obliterated. Stephen did his time in the trauma ward; he knows what taking a bullet at point blank range will do.

“Stephen?” Wong prompts.

Not-Stark smiles like his raw brain matter isn’t exposed to open air.  

“I’m fine,” Stephen lies as he tears his eyes away to meet Wong’s skeptical gaze.

The ghost looks fondly at the man beside him. “I always liked Wong. Mostly because I had wizards ranked on a relative scale and you weren’t very stiff competition. He told me you were an asshole, which was not new information to me. He also said he’d trust you with the universe so I was getting a lot of mixed signals.”

The light turns green and Stephen rushes forward, head down. The dead man follows. 

“Turns out he was absolutely correct though,” Not-Stark says and it should have been physically impossible for a man three inches shorter than Stephen to keep up, “you saved the universe and you were an utter dick about it. Which was previously my schtick so I’m not sure I can judge.”

Stephen abruptly stops, startling the flood of New Yorkers around him. “What do you want from me?” 

“Nothing. You’re the one with the imaginary friend. Wanna start a Fight Club?” 

Stephen steps closer and there is no way he should be able to feel heat radiating from a body that no longer exists. “Why are you here?” 

Stark throws him a look. “I’m not here, Strange. I’m at the bottom of a lake getting eaten by fish.” 

“Actually you’ve probably been flushed through the MacKenzie river system into the Atlantic.”

“So I’m getting eaten by gulls. Fact remains I’ve reached a point in the carbon cycle where I’m definitely not staking my life on the goodwill of New York cabbies by blocking traffic trying to turn onto Fifth avenue.” 

A hand on Stephen’s shoulder jerks him backwards and a speeding taxi lets out a harsh blast as it careens past, inches from his knees. Stark should have been run over but instead Stephen follows the hand on his shoulder backward to find the ghost standing safely behind him.

“Watch yourself, Strange,” Stark tucks his hand back in his pocket, “my death was tragic, if you die LARPing Ming the Merciless in traffic it’s comedy.”

Stephen’s arm passes straight through the not-ghost, intangible once more. “Why me?”

“Apart from Wong’s glowing recommendation?” Stark’s mouth twists. He drums his fingers against his dead heart. “You claimed to be a genius, Strange. Figure it out.”

If it isn’t magic, it must be mundane and despite Stephen’s impressive credentials he’s not nearly arrogant enough to believe there aren’t more things in heaven and Earth than are in his realm of expertise. He goes to California to see the last best expert on the Infinity Stones. 

“Dr. Banner,” Stephen greets, “what do you know about the residual artefacts of gamma radiation?” 

Hope flares and then fades in green eyes. “C’mon in, Strange. If this is about what I think it is, it’ll take awhile.” 

Two hours later Stephen’s still trying to cover all angles. “But if somehow - “ 

“You’re not listening!” Banner erupts, frustrated. “I’ve gone over the numbers again and again, the answer is no regardless of how much you or I or anyone wants it to be different. It’s impossible.” 

“So was time travel four months ago,” Stephen says without missing a beat, “if Stark somehow activated the time stone he could be stuck - “

Banner shakes his head. “The stones emit specific energy signatures all of which disappeared from our present when Steve took them back.” 

“What if it’s not the stones themselves? What if it’s Stark that’s - “ 

“The gauntlet nearly killed me,” Banner almost yells, his limp arm swinging uselessly in its sling, “Tony had no chance. His armour wasn’t designed to - it couldn’t handle the overflow. The stones used him as a conduit, lit up his nervous system like a Christmas tree, and then burnt him from the inside out - ” Banner chokes. “It was a miracle he did what he had to do. He’s dead.”

Banner stares into the abyss of his equations. “Whatever you’re seeing? It’s not Tony.”

Stephen lets himself feel the ache in his bones, extinguishing the last embers of hope he didn’t even know he still harboured. I thought I still had the chance to undo it all.

He doesn’t realize he’s said it aloud until Banner answers. 

“So did I.” Banner motions to the board. “We have time travel. I wanted to go back and do everything right but we can’t. Or rather we can, but…” He exhales softly. “It was your teacher who explained it to me. The moment you go back and rob other timelines of their Tony, or their Natasha, you doom their universe. They’re like the stones; too important to their timelines, too important to save.”

Maybe Banner needs absolution too. He might be the only other person alive who understands what it is to see nigh infinite possibilities and still find yourself condemning the same man to death, over and over and over again. 

“We did the best we could.“ Stephen hopes it’s enough and knows it isn’t. 

Green eyes lock on his. “That doesn’t make it not our fault.” 

By ours Banner doesn’t mean everyone’s. 

By ours he means yours and mine. 

That night Stephen watches a star fall to Earth.

Iron Man slams into the ground with a sickening crunch -

- ripping apart under the force of impact - 

- exploding in a hail of sand still warm from the desert sun.   

There is no reason Stephen’s right hand should shake more than his left. He knows his own diagnosis back to front, the damage he has done to his nerves is irreparable but more or less symmetric. Tremors in the right hand more prominent than in the left: a new mild, insignificant symptom, as least compared to the other. 

Stark flops down on the park bench next to him. The Cloak doesn’t even startle. The ghost’s appearance is macabre: half his face is burned behind tinted sunglasses where gamma radiation fried him alive. He belongs on a battlefield in upstate New York, not in a park dressed up like a person like the Weekend at Bernie’s from Hell. 

Trust Stark to notice Stephen's trembling. “Hey, twinnsies! Except my whole arm used to shake. None of the doctors could find anything wrong, told me it was all in my head.”

“Psychosomatic,” Stephen corrects automatically. 

“Whatever. Turned out later to be the same arm the Giant Purple People Eater used to murder half the universe.” Stark snorts. “We had a connection, not that I was pleased about it. Destiny’s a bitch.”

“So you don’t believe in the afterlife but you’ll admit to destiny?” 

The corpse hesitates and Stephen wonders if all ghosts doubt themselves after death. “I knew I had to have survived Afghanistan for a reason. I thought it was for Iron Man and in the end I guess it was.” Stark purses his lips. “I used to like being right.”  

“It wasn’t destiny,” Stephen snaps with contempt, “the Grand Plan that ended in your death was mine. You didn’t have some intertwined fate with an alien warlord, you were a sacrifice I was willing to make. The tremors in your arm were an involuntary stress reaction to your frankly out-of-control anxiety, nothing more.”

Stark just tilts his head to the side. “Maybe my tremors were psycho-whatever. Point is, yours aren’t.”

“Mine are physiological.”

“No, they’re not. Well okay, some of them definitely are because apparently not everyone has the foresight to install an AI in their car for distraction-free texting…” his head lolls towards Stephen, “…but some of them definitely aren’t.” 

Stark takes off his sunglasses and his eyes are burnt out, unseeing. It’s obvious now that he’s nothing more than animated dead flesh and yet he tilts his face up to the sky like he can still feel the warmth of the sun. “Grimace was a lefty. Wore the gauntlet on his sinister hand, should’ve been everyone’s first clue.” 

The ugly black maze of burns migrates from one side of Stark’s face to the other, a memory rearranging itself. The corpse holds up a charred, mangled hand. “I used my right.”

Stark snaps his fingers with a dull click and slumps backwards. Dead.

Stephen’s right hand won’t stop shaking. 

It’s neither sorcery nor science which leaves Stephen with the most frightening third option: that it originates somewhere inside his own skull and there’s only one person he trusts with a diagnosis.

Christine Palmer is going over his MRI scans. She’s five years older, five years kinder. “It’s not a tumour.”

“It could be a parasite. Bacterial meningitis. We should do a panel to check for prion diseases - “ 

“Your brain is perfectly healthy, Stephen. Your recall is perfect, your tests all came back negative, your MRI,” she shoves him down in front of the scans, “is clear. You don’t have any pain, blackouts, or aphasia, and as far as I can tell you haven’t undergone a massive personality shift: at least not since you ran off to Nepal and discovered magic.”

“The mystic arts,” Stephen corrects as he stares at the screen. “You’re saying I’m fine.”

 “I’m saying according to standard diagnostic testing there’s nothing physiologically wrong with your brain,” she hedges. “If you told me what symptoms you’re actually having I could run more specific tests.” 

“I wanted to rule out purely neurological causes first.“ 

“Stephen.” She waits. Christine is patient. 

Stephen didn’t tell her because he knows exactly what it sounds like. “I’ve started seeing dead people. Person, singular. He talks to me.”

Her face gives away nothing. “Hallucinations.”

“Auditory and visual.“

“No family history? Recent head trauma?”

“No.” He appreciates the professionalism but he still can’t meet her eyes. “No homicidal, suicidal, or paranoid thoughts either, and I’m twenty years older than the average onset age of schizophrenia in males.” 

“Doesn’t rule it out,” Christine says, not unfairly. She studies him and then asks the question he’s been dreading. “What is it you see?”

He shouldn’t lie. He’d hated it when patients did it to him but he can’t seem to bring himself to say the truth aloud. Then he hears it: the heavy clunk of metal on metal and his stomach drops. Stephen shifts slowly, dreading what he’ll see over Christine’s right shoulder. 

There, slumped inelegantly in the armour against the MRI machine, is Stark. His gauntleted fingers scramble desperately over his chestplate, clinking and scraping against the plate. At the centre of his chest is a hole: deep and dark and bottomless where a harvester grabbed hold of his heart and yanked it out at the root.

His eyes are wild, pleading, and Stephen tries to concentrate on Christine but he can’t quite tear his eyes away. “Iron Man. I see Tony Stark.” 

Behind her Stark gurgles. He’s dying like an animal, trying to force air into battered lungs but without the pump to keep the machinery running he’s losing. 

Christine's voice breaks through. “So what do you want to do about it?”

Stephen’s gaze swings to her, sharp. “What do you mean?” 

“Well your symptoms clearly point to something at least partly psychological and you’re clearly avoiding that answer.” Her gaze pins him and Stephen thinks he’d have rather watched a man die than been laid bare this way. “You’re stalling so you don’t have to do anything about it.” He can’t find a voice to defend himself. “Stephen,” she asks too softly, “do you want these hallucinations to stop?” 

Stephen forces himself not to look at Stark. “It’s a delusional psychosis, Christine, of course I want it gone.”

Stark’s dying breath sounds like one final word: 

Liar. 

The ghost can’t haunt him in his dreams. Surprisingly or not, Stephen’s nightmares remain remarkably self-centred. He dies in the Dark Dimension, in a car accident, of hypothermia on Mount Everest. He dies in New York for the Ancient One and in Kathmandu for a watch. Thanos kills him on Titan, in Wakanda, on a battlefield just upstate. He falls alone at Vormir for nothing (there is no one who loves him). He crumbles to dust and accepts his fate. He snaps his fingers and - 

Stephen wakes to the tingling of nerves up his right arm. He pads to the kitchen, careful not to disturb Wong. Strong tea is not conducive to sleep but sleep is what Stephen needs to escape. 

“Nightmares?” Stark stumbles into the kitchen like he too has just awoken, fidgety and lost. “I know what that’s like.” This is one of Stark’s less morbid disguises. Cause of death looks like blood poisoning; dark dead black pools in the capillaries in his neck, around his eyes, along his wrists, tracing out vascular flow in a pattern reminiscent of a microchip.

Stephen volleys back the familiar refrain. “You’re not real, you can’t sleep.” 

“I was real and I couldn’t.”

“You’re exhausting, do you know that?” Of course he does, he’s Stephen’s own mind.  

“Well then a few minutes with me and you should be out like a light.” Stark gives him a half-smile before regurgitating a story about Ibiza and supermodels that Stephen probably read in an airport magazine a lifetime ago. 

Stark likes the sound of his own voice (or rather Stephen apparently likes the sound of Stark’s voice) and doesn’t expect any listener participation. Stephen lets the words wash over him, filling his head with images of sunny Spain and fast cars.

The tea sits untouched. 

“…and then I just - “

“I dream of dying,” Stephen interrupts. “Every night.” He’s probably talking to himself but it helps a bit to imagine a man with the same plight. “I dream I’m still stuck in Dormmamu’s time loop but he’s chosen more interesting ways to kill me. And then I wake up and…“ 

“ …and you realize you still have one more death to go before you get to rest.”

Of course Stephen’s mind would know him better than himself. He waits for his hallucination to give him a pep talk. “No advice?” 

Stark shakes his head. “No. In my nightmares I always lived.”

Stephen has no idea why his mind would invent a fact like that.  

Two weeks of dead air follow and Stephen lets himself believe that the mystery ends here. Stark was just a manifestation of his own subconscious and once Stephen finally accepted that - poof - gone. Perfectly logical, perfectly sound. None of which explains why Stephen stops on the steps of Our Lady of Mercy when there’s no one around to see. He’s not religious but he understands the temptation of theism. He understands wanting there to be more than the perfectly logical, the perfectly sound. 

The rectory is draughty and echoes as he hears the first few bars float through the doors. 

“…Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try…” 

The keys of the piano are sticky and out of tune but it’s the voice that carries the melody. 

“…no hell below us, above us only sky…”

Stephen knows this song. He used to play it back when that was something he could still do. It’s out of place here, blasphemous.  

“…Imagine all the people, living for today…” 

The figure seated at the piano is near unrecognizable. Thin - too thin. Skeletal, with sunken eyes as black as the far reaches of space. He’s barefoot and the closer Stephen gets the raspier the voice becomes.

“…Imagine there’s - “

“Not my favourite solo Beatle effort,” Stephen interrupts softly. 

The piano stops with a discordant clunk but the player doesn’t turn. Stark’s tone is flat, in contrast to his singing voice. “Let me guess, you’d have preferred Live and let die.” 

“Mull of Kintyre, if I have to pick a McCartney. December '77 with The Wings.” 

“Only Beatles song I can stand is Hey Jude,” Stark mumbles and Stephen can see every muscle and tendon flex under paper thin skin. 

“That’s the obvious answer.” 

“God, you’re such a music snob.” Stark stands slowly, swaying on his feet, and Stephen forgets for a moment that he isn’t alive. He reaches out to steady him but his hand passes straight through. Stark manages to limp to the front pew, laying down along it and the old wood creaks under a weight that isn’t there. 

It’s the distant memories of an Episcopalian upbringing that prompt Stephen to ask. “Are you punishing me?” 

“For thinking Hey Jude is overrated?” Stark closes his eyes. “Absolutely.” 

“For not watching you die the first time.”

“No,” Stark says solemnly. “I don't think so. I watched a good man die once, it wasn’t fun.” He stares straight up at the ceiling. “He told me he’d be reunited with his family on the other side.” 

Stephen pauses. “Maybe he was.” 

“You hope he did because you hope I did.” Stark’s voice grows frail. "I didn’t know if it was true then and I can’t know now because I’m not a ghost and death is the end of the pattern.”  

“What was his name?”

Stephen watches his own subconscious dig the name out of somewhere: an article, an offhand comment, the superheroic ether. “Yinsen. Ho Yinsen.” There’s a quirk of lips. “He was a doctor.”  

Stark starts to drift off to sleep, movement flickering behind eyelids. Stephen doesn’t say anything further, he just sits; a vigil of sorts. He coaxes the Cloak off his shoulders and he’s pretty sure it thinks he’s crazy until it humours him and falls dramatically across the pew only to encounter Stark’s sleeping form. Stephen could swear it looked shocked before wrapping itself tighter.

(A ghost cannot sleep; it cannot feel the cold; it cannot still under the comfort of a caring hand.) 

Stephen doesn’t feel himself nodding off but when he wakes Stark is gone and the Cloak is draped over him instead. Before he leaves he pauses to address the empty church. “On the off chance someone’s listening, I don’t like seeing him die.”

He doesn’t expect an answer and he doesn’t get one.  

It doesn’t work either. Two nights later he follows the sound of splashing and choking to the Fountain of Khan Kubrat in the Sanctum’s solarium. 

Stark is already dead by the time Stephen arrives. He’s kneeling on the ground, head and shoulders shoved into the water, a puddle around his knees. Koi swim lazily around the lifeless body. 

Stephen almost trips over the car battery on the floor as he rushes out. 

So in the absence of divine intervention, a sudden transdimensional/scientific breakthrough, or the willingness to check himself into an inpatient psychiatric facility, Stephen resolves to investigate the problem himself. 

It starts with a little breaking and entering. 

Stark’s workshop is his true tomb. It’s untouched but without dust, an array of Iron Man suits replacing Terra Cotta soldiers. There are news recordings about Iron man being projected onto the south wall on loop. The clips cycle every minute or so, a continuous tribute for an empty audience. 

Stephen picks his way carefully through the debris like an archaeologist in a pyramid. Apart from the movies the only light in the darkness is a glow emanating from the far workbench. Stephen gets close enough to recognize where it’s coming from and like a fool he cannot resist reaching for the sacred jewel at the heart of the temple. 

Right before his fingers make contact Stephen feels the soft brush of lips against his ear: “Bad idea, Indy,” Stark’s disembodied voice says.  

Then the whole workshop lights up.

“Do not touch the arc reactor technology or I will be forced to stop you.” 

The voice is female and Irish and Stephen raises his hands in immediate surrender. “FRIDAY,” he guesses. “Stark’s AI.”

“Stephen Strange.” A number of security measures disengage, glaring red turns green. “Stage Magician.” 

“Doctor Strange. Master of the Mystic Arts.”

The AI ignores him. “Boss granted you full access to data archives only. Hands off the merchandise.”  

“I have no interest in Stark’s reactor - Wait, when did he give me access?” 

“May 15th, 2020 at 2:43 am,” the Intelligence replies. “You were dead at the time.” A screen comes alive: security footage of Stark sitting in this very workshop, beer in hand, one shoe missing. “Complete access to all files was entrusted to a select number of individuals. You were eventually among them.”

Onscreen Stark’s exhausted: Fuck it, Fri, add the wizard to the list. Not like he’s gonna be around to enjoy it.

FRIDAY fades the audio but the video remains. “Boss was wrong.”

The bodiless voice breaks nearly imperceptibly. It shouldn’t, it’s a machine. It’s Stephen’s own fault if he hears otherwise. He spent the entirety of his medical career studying the human brain, the idea that a computer program could capture even a tenth of its complexity is laughable. Stephen would have bet his reputation on it. Except there’s no reason for FRIDAY to play film footage of Stark on loop. That video exists in her memory banks already in millions of 1s and 0s. It’s useless to project and re-record them. It’s redundant and inefficient, a pointless self-directive. It’s grief as plain as day. 

Stephen stares at the video of Stark and sees a computer program’s desperate attempt to remember its creator as a living, breathing human being instead of dealing with the silence of a tomb. He wonders what kind of man would create a machine capable of mourning the dead. He wonders if she would thank him.

“FRIDAY, does my access include Stark’s workshop security footage?”

“Yes.” 

“I’d like copies. Whatever you’d be willing to share.” 

FRIDAY doesn’t reply but a black thumb drive appears and Stephen’s shaking fingers tuck it securely into his robes. 

He conjures a portal and hesitates at the threshold. “I’m sorry about your... father.”

There’s a pause that Stephen is sure an advanced AI does not need. 

“…Thank you, Doctor.” 

Stephen’s plan, insofar that there is one, is to prove to himself that the ghost in his mind is nothing like the real thing. 

FRIDAY gifts him thousands of hours of Stark - the real Stark - from before and after the Gap. Fixing engines, tinkering with the suit, engineering binges. The footage is accompanied by background music on constant loop: AC/DC, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones; driving rock that sometimes takes an abrupt left turn into synth-pop or new wave before finding its way back. There are human moments too. Hours of Stark curled up against a wall, a few raging benders. A twenty-five minute rant against men named Steven and the trouble they bring. There is Stark’s mission to digitize Stephen’s entire stolen record collection and the subsequent dismissal of 90% of it. There is a futile attempt to teach his lab robots to dance. 

The only Beatles song to make an appearance is Hey Jude. 

Stark is so much more alive, boring, flawed, frustrating when no one is watching. He talks to himself, to FRIDAY, to the surrounding inanimate objects; a steady stream of insults, accusations, admissions, soliloquies. Contemplations on guilt and righteousness and pride and suicide.

He’d have made a decent Hamlet after all. 

Watching the real Stark does nothing to keep his ghost at bay. Stephen is still treated to macabre reenactments on a near daily basis. Stark overdoses once at the kitchen table by accident and once in the bathroom on purpose. He’s strangled by a one-armed man so effectively he dies without a sound. He screams as he burns from the inside out, an explosion erupting under his skin. He spends six days wasting away of brain cancer in Stephen’s bed. He dies and dies and dies.

Stephen can’t save him: not from disease, accidents, other people, or himself. So they talk instead. Well, they argue. About music, about grant applications, about Shakespeare. About the limits of science and magic. About what makes a good death.

It passes the time.

One morning there’s a phone message from Pepper Potts. FRIDAY must have ratted him out.

“I have your record collection at the Lakehouse, Tony borrowed it. Come pick it up whenever you’d like.”

And just like that Stephen can’t ignore them anymore. 

He doesn’t know what he imagines the woman who loved Tony Stark to be. 

Virginia Potts is slim and calm but Stephen has enough experience with loved ones left behind to know not to trust it. As long as she has logistics to work out, accounts to settle and cheques to write she can tread water but eventually the water will close in. It is not Stephen’s place to save her from drowning.

She smiles tightly. “We’ll replace anything that’s missing or broken, just leave my assistant a list. Happy can drive you anywhere you want but your method might be faster.”  

Stephen pretends to check the albums over to avoid her gaze. “Thank you for returning them.” 

“Well Tony’s argument for taking them in the first place was that you weren’t around to press charges. As soon as there was a chance of you coming back he left FRIDAY an explicit reminder to return them before you noticed in case you…” 

“…threw a hissy fit?”   

Her smile is warmer. “Decided to turn him into a newt.”

“I’m not a witch,” he objects softly. 

“No, you’re not.” 

There’s something resolute in her voice and he knows that now is his cue. “Ms. Potts, I wanted to say  - “ 

“I know,” she says firmly. She knows what he’s done, she knows he’s sorry, and she knows there is only so much such regret is worth to her.

“I know,” she repeats, softer. In her heels she’s as tall as he is, blue irises iridescent. She does not crumble. 

This is exactly the type of woman Tony Stark would fall in love with.

Stephen takes a break to breathe outside. The lakehouse seems dead without its owner; the leaves stripped, grass yellowing. Even the sky is the blank grey of a dead connection. Pathetic fallacy at it’s finest.

“What do you do?”

Stephen whirls and sees no one until his eyeline falls three feet closer to the ground. “Pardon?” 

Morgan Stark's nose crinkles. “Everybody does things. Daddy does machines Mommy does business Uncle Bruce does science - do you make clothes?”

Stephen doesn’t know where to start: with the use of the present tense when it comes to her father to the elevation of business to a superpower to the most remarkable thing about Bruce Banner being his professional credentials and not his stature or colour. “Why do you think I make clothes?” 

She points to the Cloak who seems much more comfortable with the idea of children than Stephen is. 

“I’m a Master of the Mystic Arts.” The words mean nothing to her. “I do magic.” 

Magic she has a grasp on and her eyes go wide. “Can you make Daddy come back?” 

Four-year olds don’t understand death, they can only parrot back what they’ve been told. She won’t understand for years yet; maybe only after Tony fades from her memory and becomes a magazine cover instead. 

Stephen steadies his breath. “No. I can’t.”  

She pouts. “But it would make everybody happy if he came back.” 

Stephen doesn’t make the common mistake of saying her father died doing something brave. He does not tell her the most heroic thing Stark ever did was leave her because it is cruel in addition to true and because Stephen was the one who designed it that way.  

“I’m sorry,” he says helplessly to a child too young to understand how inadequate it is. 
 
She’s not waiting for his answer, she’s distracted by the Cloak again as it flutters off Stephen’s shoulders to drape itself over her head; drowning her under a pile of crimson. She shrieks with laughter as she tries to move, a miniature blood red ghost.  

Stephen shivers at the sound. 
 
“I can’t believe you won her over with the magical equivalent of a puppy.” 

That’s Stark’s voice. Today he looks like the middle-aged man from the photographs that line the lakehouse. There are crinkles around his eyes and grey threading through his hair and Stephen automatically searches for the wound, the disease, the horror buried below. 

There’s nothing. He’s as alive and whole as a dead man can be. 

“Do I have something on my face?” Stark teases at Stephen’s awestruck expression.

“I prefer you like this.” The words feel like sandpaper exiting Stephen's throat, choked with an emotion he cannot name. 

Stark looks down at himself and his lips quirk. “I preferred me like this.” He looks out over the lake, his house, his family. “I was happy here. For awhile.” Before Stephen asked him to give it all up. 

Stark smiles fondly at his daughter’s tussling match. “Give Joseph’s Monochromic Dreamcoat a break Morgan, your screaming’s going to give your mom a heart attack and get Dumbledore banned.” 

Coincidentally or not, she stops. The Cloak resettles across her shoulders, the ridiculous collar fanning behind her head. Stark crouches down to her level and she looks right through him. 

She cannot hear him so it’s Stephen who speaks. “Your father loves you very much.” 

Morgan tilts her head in unconscious mimicry. “I know.” Stark smiles and there’s an instant when her gaze snaps to the open air where the ghost resides - like maybe Stephen’s not crazy and she can see him too - but the moment is lost when Pepper calls from the house and she takes off at a dead run. The Cloak gazes wistfully after her.

“I can’t resurrect you, Stark,” Stephen says once they’re alone.   

“I figured. You’re not enough of an asshole to be holding out deliberately.” Streaks of sunlight break through the clouds. “And call me Tony.”

That’s right. The girl is the only Stark left.

Stephen can’t quite pinpoint when Tony becomes a visitor instead of a symptom or when the space between visits starts to ache. It’s not like anyone who lives in New York can escape Iron Man’s presence anyway. He’s everywhere: in the thirty-foot high commissioned artwork in SoHo to the Iron Helmet tags littering the side streets to the arc reactor stickers stuck on subway turnstiles. Tony’s incessant personal branding means there are phones with STARK emblazoned across the top dangling from every teenager’s thumbs. This generation of New Yorkers has found their hero and they will never let him die. 

Which is why when Stephen spots the woman viciously ripping Iron Man posters off the boards under the underpass he pauses. 

“…fascist, corporate asshole…” 

“I take it you preferred Captain America,” Stephen says cordially.

She sizes him up before determining that even in his plainclothes Stephen’s clearly not a cop. “I didn’t care for any of them and they didn’t care for me. Now we’re supposed to worship them like they didn’t walk all over us all the damn time.” 

“He saved the universe.” 

“He was a killer first.” The sound of tearing paper causes Stephen to flinch and she looks at him disparagingly. “He a friend of yours?”

“Not really,” Stephen is forced to admit. “I do know the head of the Stark Foundation. Whatever your complaint I could take it up with - “ 

“Can they bring my son back to life?” Her glare could freeze the blood in veins. 

Stephen regrets leaving the Cloak behind, something comforting and powerful to wrap around himself. “No.”

“Well then, move along. Nothing to see here. Everyone’s lost people, why should it matter.“ Tears streak down her face but she grits her teeth, determined to get the words out. “My son died and I made it through. Stark walked free and I made it through. Half the damn planet disappeared and God chose him to survive the culling and I dealt with it. Then he saved the universe and gave everyone back except those he had a hand in killing. How does God expect me to live through that?”

Stephen knows better than to answer. 

She breathes in slowly as if startled by the magnitude of her outburst. “I know he saved us. I still hate him.”   

“I killed him,” Stephen says aloud for the first time. She snorts in disbelief. He simply utters the Recitation of Rubacat and flames erupt in his hand, cradled flickering in his palm. His fingers shake violently and it’s not entirely from damage. 

Her eyes grow round. “I - Thank you. I know I’m not supposed to say that.” 

Stephen loses control for an instant and a flame licks his palm. He extinguishes the fire, relishing the burn. He can apparently do nothing to stop the trembling that climbs from his fingers up his arm until it rocks his entire frame. 

“I’m sorry.” Her gaze is full of concern. “For you, not for him,” she clarifies as she takes his shaking hand in hers. Her grip is warm and reassuring. “It should never be easy to kill a man. The world would be a better place if people remembered that.” She squeezes his hand. “God forgives anyone who needs it. You deserve peace.”

Didn’t Tony Stark? Stephen doesn’t ask. 

Afterward he finds the ghost waiting against the concrete outside the underpass, dressed in an expensive suit of all black. The way the devil would dress in a student film. 

Tony looks back. “I’m sorry too. For her son. Important life lesson.” 

Stephen feels wrung out. “Don’t play with things you don’t understand?” 

“Sorry doesn’t cut it.” 

It’s not God Stephen needs to answer to. 

Of all the people Stephen expects to be angry he never counts on Steve Rogers. Rogers is an old man, wrinkled and frail but with the ineffable bearing of a soldier where he sits in the diner booth. Stephen didn’t seek him out, Rogers called him. 

“It’s the self-righteousness. Keeps him youthful in his old age,” Tony says. Stark doesn’t match Rogers’s decorum. He’s younger today, the arc reactor shining through an Iron Maiden T-shirt. He slides into the booth next to Rogers, shoulder-to-shoulder, old to young, alive to dead. Stephen can’t help but feel outnumbered: Captain America and Iron Man on one side, himself on the other. 

“Dr. Strange.” Rogers inclines his head stiffly. 

“Wow. He’s definitely pissed.” Tony looks almost gleeful. “I never thought I’d hear that polite way he has of saying fuck you ever again.”

“Captain Rogers,” Stephen cuts to the quick, “I assume this is about Tony.” Rogers glares at the familiarity Stephen never earned. "About Stark," he corrects as smoothly as possible.

The Captain lets the silence stretch with the patience of a man accustomed to having time on his side. “He told me about you. I said we don’t trade lives and he yelled back that you did.” Stephen has traded a hundred of his own deaths for a dimension and the time stone for a single life but Steve Rogers will never approve of his last bargain. “You saved him,” Rogers says like that was Stephen’s sin. “He hated you for it. He had to live with the guilt of the kid’s death and losing to a threat he saw coming a mile away, and you saved him and skipped out on the explanation. He wanted to trust you but I think he knew if he did he’d see what was coming. Tony was always one turn ahead.” 

Rogers’s grip on his water tightens. “You kept him alive so he could die later.” It isn’t a question. “You left him alone, blind, and responsible for everything. I’d call you a coward, if I didn’t - ” he stops. 

“What would the brave option have been?” 

Rogers’s mouth is a grim line. “Telling him. Letting him choose.” 

“I did in the end,” Stephen says, hoping it’s a comfort. “He knew what I’d saved him for. I didn’t give him much time but he knew.” He swallows. “I’m sure he hated me in the end too.” 

Tony’s ghost leans back in the booth. “I did. For a moment at least. I hated Steve for longer.” He studies the man next to him. “And now he hates you. This is his guilt. Yours causes you to go full Haley Joel Osmont, he gets overprotective way too late for it to matter.” 

Roger’s gaze refocuses. “I think Tony would’ve forgiven you. Eventually. He had a thing about making people wait a while.” There is the tiniest of smiles before it fades. “I’ve spent a very long time trying to do the same.” 

Trying and failing.

Stephen leaves as gracefully as he can. Tony doesn’t follow. He stays seated next to Rogers for as long as Stephen can see them before he rounds the corner and they disappear out of sight.

Stephen knows intellectually that indulging his hallucinations is dangerous but it’s only after he ends up with frostbite on two fingers from sitting outside in a whiteout snowstorm so Tony doesn’t die of hypothermia and alcohol poisoning alone that Stephen realizes he’s blown right past comfortable with and settled on dangerously attached to. He dials the number he should have six months ago. Dr. Tom Lillard has a private practice in psychiatry and is booked solid for the next seven weeks but on Christine’s good word he could move some stuff around. 

Stephen is almost relieved for the excuse. “No, that won’t be necessary.” 

“It will be eventually,” Tony says. Last night’s cold hasn’t left a mark on him. 

“You’re arguing against your continued existence.” 

“Well it’s not like I’ve never been suicidal.” Stephen glares. “Oh that’s right, you still think you killed me. By now you should know I dislike sharing credit.” 

Maybe it’s Stephen’s realization that he’s gone quite mad but he can’t take Stark’s flippancy today. “Well I’m not you. I spent my life saving people and yes, I was arrogant and a snob and terrible to work with but I never had a patient’s life in my hands and let them die.” 

Tony’s eyes darken and his voice is eerily soft. “Do you really want to talk to me about killing people, Strange?” 

Stephen stares down at his frostbitten fingers. “I used to save lives.” 

“And I used to end them,” Tony says flatly. “The first twenty years of my career were spent getting paid obscene amounts of money to make sure there wasn’t enough life left behind to save.” Stark strips off his gauntlets to reveal hands caked in old, dried blood. “I tried to be better but sometimes I think I just had a knack for fooling everyone, including myself.” 

“You were a good man in the end.”

“I don’t think a good man could turn thousands of sentient creatures to dust with a snap of his fingers.” Stark’s expression is unreadable. “I think a good man would have hesitated and I think in the interim that man would have died and Thanos would have killed us all.” 

Stephen can feel his heart beat shallowly. “You think I couldn’t do it myself.”

“Am I wrong?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” Stephen confesses softly. “I know I took an oath to do no harm. I know I certainly harmed you.” 

He can hear Tony sigh. 

“You’re not that kind of doctor anymore, Stephen, stop judging yourself by it. Circumstances change and people change with them.” Stark gets up from the table. “Trees that don’t bend, break.” 

It’s easy for Stark to embrace transformation, Tony changed for the better.

Stephen’s afraid he’s gotten worse.

The teenager lives one borough over in Queens and it’s not a good day. He’s pale with red-rimmed eyes and makes a feeble attempt at small talk when he greets Stephen at the door. Tony is already there, lounging - invisible - on the couch, but he’s everywhere else too. In the StarkTech in the bedroom, in the posters and photos, in the luxury items high above the income standard of the neighbourhood. In the grief set in shoulders. 

“Do I need to suit up?” the teenager asks, like he’s more than willing to follow Stephen on another space adventure to die on a planet not his own. 

“No emergency. I was simply…” It occurs to Stephen that he has no excuse to be here. “…in the neighbourhood. How are you?” 

The teenager wrangles up a smile like he needs to not be a burden. “I’m doing okay, Mr. Strange - “ 

“ - Dr. Strange,” Tony corrects. 

“ - Dr. Strange,” the teenager says a half second later.

“Just Strange is fine,” Stephen allows which gets him a raised eyebrow from Stark. 

“Right. It’s Peter by the way, in case you forgot. Which you clearly didn’t because you found out where I live.”

There’s another awkward silence. “I wanted to make sure you were alright. Is there anything I can - “ 

“Are you alright?” the kid interrupts, eyes wide, and Stephen is momentarily thrown by the reversal. “I mean you lived like fifteen million futures before everyone got Dusted and then you set up the whole magic portal thing - “ 

“I’m fine.” Fine is relative. Stephen’s mind is breaking under the strain of guilt and destiny, but Tony has turned out to not be the worst companion. “Thank you, Spider-man.” 

“Kid told you his name, Strange. Use it,” Tony snaps.

“Thank you… Peter.” The name hurts to say aloud. Stephen couldn’t tell you why. 

“I miss him.” It bursts out of the kid like grief is a secret to be ashamed of. “I - Everyone else is either so happy they got people back or they’re like - his family - and I’m not, I get that, but I still… “ The teen gulps air. “I miss him.”    

Stephen hesitates. "I miss him too.” For a boldfaced lie it sounds too genuine. You can’t miss someone you never really knew.

The kid twitches. “If it wasn’t for me would he still be… would he still be alive?” 

“He always chose to go back to the Avengers. It wasn’t always for you.” It’s a guess, but a kind one.

“No, I always went back in some capacity,” Tony confirms, his eyes pin Stephen, “but that’s not the question you were asked.” 

Stephen’s chest goes cold. He doesn’t know if Stark sacrificed himself for his mentee (for the universe) in every future, he just knows that this was the future he chose. He likes to think he is not the type of man to do so lightly. He wants to believe he played no part in the grief he sees etched in the face across from him.

“It’s not your fault, Peter.” The platitude is heavy on Stephen’s tongue, the name heavier.

The teenager doesn’t say it back. 

Stephen wakes in the middle of the night. He doesn’t head to the kitchen, he doesn’t want company tonight. What he wants is to go back to dreaming. He prefers his nightmares these days; there’s something freeing about dying. Tony was right: it’s the living where the horror is.

In the twilight of wakefulness Stephen draws himself a bath and submerges himself as far down as he can in the cold water. The surface of the water is a perfect, placid mirror and he holds his breath until his lungs ache. It’s hazy and peaceful but it’s nothing like his dreams. Not until he forcibly inhales - water filling places it should never be, lungs panicking, brain screaming, survival instincts trying to force his body to the surface -

Stephen’s own spell makes sure it’ll never get there. 

(He’s died this way in his dreams before: drowned under a wall of cold water as it sluiced over its banks killing Avenger and Black Order alike. It hurt then like it hurts now but this time - this time, he promises - will be the last)

(Doesn’t he deserve to rest too?)

There’s a hazy outline of a figure above him; St. Peter or Beelzebub or the last misfirings of his starved visual cortex. It doesn't matter: the answer isn’t one he needs to know. 

He lets the water claim him.

He isn’t Hamlet, he’s Ophelia. 

Driven mad and left behind; a suicide among the lilies.

He re-enters the world with a jolt. The first gulp of air tastes foul: the ugliness of reality forcing itself into his lungs. The second breath is too slow in coming. The third is interrupted by a choking cough followed by the expulsion of water and bile.  He’s in his private bathroom, wrapped in the Cloak, covering his nakedness. His hands don’t hurt because they’re numb. 

Tony is above him, arms crossed, eyes flinty and hard. Judgement, and Stephen would laugh if he could spare the oxygen. Stark would make a terrible God.

The Cloak seems to realize he’s awake and Stephen can’t hold on tight enough as the relic rips itself from his broken fingers to disappear down the corridor, no doubt fetching Wong. It leaves him shivering, naked, at Stark’s feet. The ghost says nothing and that's unacceptable because not even being dead has kept Stark from expounding his commentary, he doesn’t get to be silent now.

“You watched,” Stephen accuses because offence feels better than defence.

“Yes.” 

“Why? Turnabout fair play?” Stephen asks viciously. “Was watching me die entertaining?” 

“I wanted to know if I could,” Tony says quietly and the answer to that is clearly no, he could not because someone had to have summoned the Cloak to rescue Stephen.

“Well, now you know what it’s like." Stephen shivers in the cold. "Terrible isn’t it?”

Tony smiles hollowly. “Yep.” Stark crouches down. Stephen can't feel the weight of Tony's hand on his shoulder but human warmth seeps down through his bones. From down the hallway they can hear Wong’s voice approach. 

Tony looks him straight in the eye. “You’re not allowed to die, Stephen. Not yet.” 

Something in Stephen’s brain clicks.

One in 14 000 605 futures translates to a 0.000007% success rate. That number is downright abysmal: it’s smaller than the birth rate of conjoined twins, the chance of being selected as a Rhodes Scholar, and the survival rate of named characters in Titus Andronicus. 

So shut up and take your miracle. You don’t remember any different. You don’t remember in how many other futures he lived a long and happy life. Don’t remember in how many more his life was frazzled and short. The one where he drank it away and you had to drag him bodily to his own best friend’s funeral. Or where he sequestered himself away and built and built and built until Rogers pulled you aside and set you against him because he hadn’t yet constructed any defences against magic. Where he volunteered for a suicide run and you shoved a scalpel into his abdomen because he’d had seven years to grind you down. Where you told him the truth years too late for it to matter and watched that thing inside him hanging by a thread snap loose forever.

You’ve forgotten thousands of iterations of each: his wedding, his funeral, his son’s birth, his daughter’s. Your fights; the ones that level buildings and the ones where he just walks away. You amputate his left foot, you break his right arm, you trade your eye to get him out of Limbo. You keep his secrets, soothe his hurts, mock his dreams, fight his fights, curse his name - It’s really only fair he does the same for you, turnabout is fair play after all.

(He learns Hamlet from you, Stephen.)

You save him over and over and over again because you can’t let him die. Not yet. You tell yourself you’re saving him for later but old habits die hard and later never comes. You took an oath when you were twenty-five and hide behind it every day. The truth is you are a selfish man, you can't bring yourself to watch him die.

This is how you fail the universe: you refuse to fail a friend.

“I figured it out.” Stephen’s voice is hoarse.

Tony just hums as he steps up in front of the newly completed Avengers statue. Six figures cast in bronze; immortal in the way their flesh-and-blood counterparts will never be. Iron Man soaring forward, aimed East toward the rising sun and the future it will bring.

He leans against his avatar’s feet. “Alright. Hit me, Sherlock.” 

“You’re not a ghost.”

“Told you so.” 

Stephen ignores him. “You’re not the infinity stones either. You live inside my head.” 

“You do remember Christine telling you all this six months ago right? Because she’s going to be pissed if you’re claiming this insight as your own.” 

“It’s not psychological, not entirely.” Stephen stares up at what used to be Avengers Tower. “The human brain is an evolutionary marvel but it has limits.” 

“Sure. Limited hard drive space, limited swap memory - ”

“Limited processing power.” 

Tony looks appraisingly over his sunglasses. “Since when do you stoop to tech lingo?” 

“You taught it to me. In a different life.” Stephen watches another family take a photo in front of the statue. “I know a lot of things I shouldn’t. I know what your favourite fast food burger is, and how you overdosed when you were nineteen, and why Hey Jude is the only Beatles song you’ll tolerate. I don’t remember your daughter’s middle name but I know your son’s would have been James. I know when you marry Pepper you never outlive her and in universes where she’s dusted you never love again.

“I lived fourteen million, six hundred and five futures and that's too much for the human brain to handle. It can’t process all those tangent lives. Not consciously anyway.”

Tony looks unimpressed. “So I’m the Ghost of Futures Not-Taken.”

“You’re my brain’s attempt at processing the futures where you and I both survived the Snap.”   

Tony stalks forward and plants himself right in front of Stephen. “And why, Master Detective, do we fail to defeat Thanos in a future where you’re literally around to tell me exactly what I need to do?”

Stephen grits his teeth. “You know why.” 

Tony looks pleased. “I do.” 

(The point of failure across all those futures was you, Stephen. You were the reason Stark didn't save the universe. You got too close and then couldn't let go. So you did the only thing you could and removed yourself from the board entirely.) 

Stephen shakes his head. “Eventually my synapses will catch up with this reality. The misfirings in my visual cortex and auditory processing centres will dwindle and you’ll fade.” It seems so ridiculous to warn his own spasming neural tissue of the inevitable. “You were never real.”

“Of course I was.” Tony taps his knuckles against Iron Man’s grieves. “You buried me Stephen, and all my futures along with me.” 

“Stark is dead. You’re my time-stone hangover. That’s it.” 

“Well, far be it for me to take the shine off your incredibly self-indulgent and over-engineered explanation.” Tony slips his sunglasses back on. “Want to know what I think?” 

“Why, is refusal an option?” 

Stark smiles. “I just think you’re lonely, so you gave yourself a friend."

“I am not - “ 

But Tony crumbles into dust and all Stephen has left is a handful of ash.  

He waits weeks for Tony to reappear. He finds himself checking over his shoulder and scanning faces in crowds. He pauses periodically as if waiting for an offscreen punchline that never comes. He stalks the forgotten halls of the Sanctum and meditates for hours. He wakes at midnight only to find the kitchen empty. But reality persists and the hole in Stephen grows. It’s a shadow of a shadow of grief; undeserved and late, stolen from worthier people.

He breaks after nine weeks. “Stark?“ Stephen says aloud to the empty Sanctum, feeling a fool. “Tony?”

The silence mocks him. That’s on brand at least. 

Stephen can’t help but think there should have been a warning. There should have been time to ready himself for the harshness of reality, one last opportunity to say what he needed to say. 

(There are no such things as ghosts. There is no such thing as closure. Death is the editor’s brutal strikeout mid-sentence - )

Eventually he tells Wong. He means to say I’ve stopped hallucinating but what comes out is a desperate whisper: “He’s gone.” 

Wong pauses. “Alright.” He waits for Stephen to say more. 

There isn’t any more. 

“Alright.” Stephen’s hands are still for a solitary moment before the familiar rattle begins. “Let’s get to work.” 

The universe obliges. 

There are demonic incursions in Malaysia and rogue sorcerers in Catalonia. There is a broken wrist for Wong in Tibet and a bout of stomach flu for Stephen near Easter. There is Hamlet onstage at the Globe; a desolate Prince waxing poetic to a Jester’s skull as a tragedy of his own making unravels. There is Cat Stevens and Rush and Pete Seeger and AC/DC but mostly there is a silence Stephen didn’t know had been filled. 

It aches in a way no doctor can cure. 

Death is the remedy to cure all ills, but loneliness?

Loneliness isn’t a sickness of the mind or the body but of the soul.

(One day when he is two years older than her father will ever be, Morgan Stark will appear on the Sanctum doorstep. She’ll understand Death and his servant’s role and even with the title of Sorcerer Supreme, Stephen will think: This is a reckoning. 

She’ll hold out her right hand palm forward and instead of armour and a repulsor, sparks of purple magic will flow through her fingers like electricity.

Tony’s eyes will bore into him from a girl’s face, alive and determined.

"Teach me."

(You’re not allowed to die, Stephen. Not yet.)

He cannot refuse. He won’t want to.)

Two days after the anniversary of Tony Stark’s funeral Stephen goes back to the lakehouse and stands alone at the edge of the deserted pier in his funerary finest. There is no one to see. There is no one to hear. There is the placid, beautiful water and the unbroken silence. 

“I hate funerals." Every breath he takes fogs the early morning air. "The last time I was here I didn’t really know you. I’d known you for one day and fourteen million futures, and I stood right here and thought: it was worth it. One life for the universe. Yours. An easy trade. In hindsight you’d have been the only one who’d have agreed with me.”

The water laps at the pier and says nothing back. 

“I spent the better part of last year apologizing for that decision and it occurred to me… it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually said anything to you. The real you, not the one who’s been following me around,” Stephen amends, looking out at the lake. “And yes I’m brutally aware that you’re not really here and I’m talking to some confused ducks but on balance between being dead and being a madman ranting to myself, I got the better deal - “ 

“Can it, Hamlet.” 

Tony steps up beside him. It’s Stark as this universe will never allow him to be, silver-haired and carefree.

Stephen doesn’t dare blink lest the ghost disappear. “I’m - “ 

“You already apologized. On Titan.”

“Not for this.” Stephen makes himself look at Stark. “I’m sorry for Peter. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. That I made you do it alone.”

"You told me you’d sacrifice Peter, me, and the time stone to keep the universe safe. As near as I can tell, you kept your word.” 

Stephen looks out at the lake. “Only because I never had a chance to break it. And I would have, if I’d stayed.”

“It doesn’t make you a coward, you know,” Tony says too kindly, “to be able to send a stranger to their death and unable to send a friend.”

Stephen’s right hand starts trembling. “It’s been a year. I thought it would stop.”  

Tony whistles low. “You still think that’s the way guilt works? You don’t say sorry to all the right people and magically feel better. Guilt’s permanent and it can be poison, if you let it. I should know.”

“You’re not really him. You’re memories of a man I never allowed to exist.” 

Tony shrugs. “Everyone carries their dead, Stephen. It’s not hard, we’re not heavy.” 

“The real Tony would disagree.” To Stark the deaths on his conscience were crushing.

“The real Tony is gone. He was dead the moment you traded the time stone for his life. He just didn’t know it.” The ghost faces him. “And you’re not really here to apologize.” 

It’s said without recrimination but Stephen feels the sting nonetheless. “Forgiveness.” 

“From him, or from yourself?” Tony steps off the edge of the pier and onto the water, shoes skimming the surface. There are no ripples. “Because you and I both know he can’t answer you.”

The lake is calm and opaque, darkness obscuring the bottom, and you could pretend there was an entire world underneath. A heaven where Tony Stark found what he was looking for, where he finally found out if Yinsen got his reunion. A place someone could tell Morgan Stark her father was waiting.

But that is not the truth of things. There is no ghost, there is no hidden heaven, there is no absolution. There is no Tony Stark any longer. There is just a lonely man at the edge of a lake who will come back every year to beg for forgiveness he will never receive. 

Stephen’s eyes sting. His voice is wrecked.

“Forgive me, my friend.”

The words fall flat in the cold, open air and the rest is silence.