Prompt# 355 – Dust you are... - Room for Improvement/ extra - Tekia – Exalted/the Avengers

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Title: Room for Improvement (extra)
Fandom: the Avengers/ Exalted
Prompt: Dust you are, and dust you will return
Warnings: none
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After coming home Exalted, Tony has plans and ideas all but pouring out of his ears. Back in Creation, there was magic everywhere, and a little hard work wasn’t going to stop him from finding those wells of magic in his own world.

The world narrowed, white tinting the edges of Tony’s vision as he felt his stomach drop to around his feet. He swayed in his seat, and only realized Bruce had placed a steadying hand on his arm when it tightened when Tony didn’t immediately respond to his name being called.
He blinked rapidly and swallowed convulsively until a sudden stinging pain brought him abruptly back to himself. Iron Dust was leaning over the small table, his hand still raised from where he had struck it across Tony’s face. Dumbly, Tony touched his hand to his stinging face and stared with wide eyes at Iron Dust.
“Was the necessary?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He turned to Bruce, opened his mouth to say something, but closed it before any words could come out. He shoved to his feet and nearly knocked over his chair in his haste. “I have to see Pepper.”
Bruce nodded; his own eyes wide, and his skin ashen.
Tony walked toward the door with slow, deliberate steps, and paused with his hand on the cool glass. He glanced over his shoulder at the two men still at the table, both standing now. Bruce was watching him, a wrinkle between his brows, worry clear in his eyes. Iron Dust had his head bent, his hair falling over his features, hiding his expression from Tony.
Tony breathed a few deep breaths. He could talk with Iron Dust about all of this later. The urge to see Pepper, to know that she was alive and well, and to know that he hadn’t killed her was making his skin crawl and his hands sweat.
But.
“Pepper’s not my soul mate.”
Iron Dust’s head lifted achingly slow and turned toward him just as slow. His eyes were still that odd yellow that told Tony he had been dipping into his essence, but they were shuttered, hiding all emotion behind their glow.
“No, she is not.”
“How-“ Bruce started, eyes jerking between the two of them.
Tony shook his head. “I never felt like this while we were back there. This guilt, this sorrow, was never a part of me until we came here.” He swallowed and had to look away from Iron Dust’s steady stare. “It’s because when we were back there, my soul mate was alive. But now she- it’s not alive. And my soul, my essence, knows it.”
Bruce lowered himself to his seat and pulled off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “I’m sorry, Tony.”
Tony shook his head and shoved the door open. He moved through the halls and toward the elevator on auto. When he arrived at the glass wall of Pepper’s in-house office from the hall, he paused to watch her talk on the phone, a pencil in her long fingers thumping a rapid tattoo on the desk as she leaned heavily back in her chair.
For so long, she had been all he had in the world. She had been by his side, like a shadow, ignored for so long. When he had finally noticed her, he had thought he had never been more stupid in his whole life for overlooking her. When she returned his love, admitting that she was just as tied to him as he was to her, he had thought in that moment, that they would be together forever.
But his own fears had made him drive her away, made him make her retreat for her own protection.
When he came back from back then, he had to admit to himself, and to her, that it was her that he wanted at his side. He had admitted that it had been her he wanted lying beside him at night. Her that woke him in the morning by poking him in the side to tell him to quit snoring.
She… hadn’t been so agreeable.
He had done a lot of damage before he had left, and he was going to have to do a lot of repairing before she was going to let him back into her heart as fully as he had once been.
And he had been prepared for that battle.
But now, after hearing about what his past self had done? He wasn’t so sure.
It was one thing to put Pepper into danger because of his status as Iron Man, but it was quite another to know that he could possibly someday decide to kill her with his own hands.
She spotted him staring at her and smiled at him, her fingers moving in a wave. He returned the wave and leaned against glass.
He loved her and now knew that he would do anything to keep her at his side. And that scared him.
She was human; he: exalted. Her lifespan was so much shorter than his. She was going to die, and he was going to live on. Iron Dust had said that Solar exalts can live up to three thousand years. How was he going to survive that long without her?
She hung up the phone and waved him into her office.
He shoved away from the glass and pulled open the door, slipping a smile on his face. She lowered her brows.
“No, tell me what’s bothering you?”
He held out his hands. “What? What makes you think something is bothering me?”
“You were moping outside my office.” She uncrossed her legs and stood. A few steps brought her to his side and she cupped a hand around his jaw. He tilted his cheek into her touch and let his eyes slip close, covering it with his own hand to keep her touch on him for that much longer. “I haven’t seen you mope since before your trip through time.” Her smile was bright and happy. “You’re so much happier since you returned. It’s like you got a clean slate; left all your baggage behind in the past.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
She hummed in agreement and tugged her hand free, only to wrap her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Tell me.”
“I think I should buy you diamonds.”
She pulled her head away to glare at him. “What?”
“Diamonds. I don’t think you have enough. I like diamonds.” She gave him a look, and then pulled out of arms.
“If you don’t want to tell me, then go tell your new girlfriend.”
“White Song? But she’s not you. She doesn’t get me the way you do,” he said as he followed her back to her desk. She took her seat behind it, reaching for her keyboard as he sat on the surface. “And she’ll hit me if she finds me moping.”
“So you admit you were moping.”
He shrugged. “I was just thinking about stars.”
“Stars?”
“Stars. You know, big balls of gas billions and billions of miles away. You can see them in the sky when you look up at night. Also, the sun is one too.”
“Tony, I know what stars are. Why were you thinking about them?”
“You know they say that we’re all made of star stuff?” He plucked a pen from her desk and idly began making notations and corrections on the papers scattered on the desk awaiting her approval. She scowled but didn’t stop him. “When a star dies, it gives all its atoms and elements back to the universe, to be repurposed for something else. Like, in a way, we’re all made up of stars. I’ve always wondered, will we return to being stars when we’re all gone? Dust you are and to dust you will return, and all that.”
She leaned back in the chair, which gave a minor squeak of protest, her eyes as piercing and steady as Iron Dust’s. “I didn’t think you thought much about astronomy.”
“Kinda hard not to when you live with an astrologist who is teaching your best bud all about it.”
“Astrology?” She bit her lip, and that’s why he always liked Pepper. He didn’t have to spell things out for her. She just got them. And him. She got him. “What did they find?”
He scratched his chin and avoided her eyes. “What didn’t they find? Iron Dust is nice, and he didn’t tell all, but he sure as hell saw it all. I now have no secrets from him. If I ever had any to begin with.”
“But that’s not what’s bothering you.”
He slapped his hands on his thighs and stood. “We should go to Paris. You can’t see the stars from Paris, I bet. It’s the city of lights. I bet all the lights block out the stars. Iron Dust wouldn’t like it, so he’s not invited. Just you and me. That’d be nice, right?”
“Tony.”
She reached out and tangled her fingers with his. He clung onto her fingers far too tightly, but she didn’t say a thing, just let him have that contact. He couldn’t look at her, but he didn’t want to look away from her reflection in the glass of the window, drinking in the sight of the woman that meant so much to him, who had wormed her way into his life and heart without him realizing it until it had been nearly too late. And now, it is still too late.
He had never realized how little time they had together. Without his consent, his mind provided him with an equation of the average life span of a human living a high stress job like Pepper’s, plus the threats of super powered villains, minus the years he missed out on.
It frightened him far more than his father’s raised voice in the dark of night while he huddled in bed ever had.
“I don’t want to lose you.”