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snowdarkred) wrote2010-09-30 10:46 am
Avengers fic: i am eternity, lost in the silence
Author:
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snowdarkred Pairing: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Universe: 161ish
Rating/Warning: PG, none but some angsty thinky thoughts.
Word Count: ~1.3K
Beta: me, myself, and I.
Author's Note: One day, I will quit writing crap like this. Maybe.
Summary: It might be a dream, it might be reality. It might be his mind playing tricks on him. It might be the wind whistling through the nothingness, or it might be the secrets of the universe, spilled softly into his ears.
i am eternity, lost in the silence
It might be a dream, it might be reality. It might be his mind playing tricks on him. It might be the wind whistling through the nothingness, or it might be the secrets of the universe, spilled softly into his ears.
The point is that he can't tell the difference, and it's driving him insane.
---
Really, he thinks true insanity would be more enjoyable – interesting at least. So far it is just unbearably boring, with an endless stream of nothing floating through him and around him. There is nothing, in this vast emptiness around him, that defined him as a person. He can't move an object, because there is nothing to move. He can't talk to anyone, because there is no one to talk to. He can't slam his hands against a wall to feel pain, to remind himself that he could still feel anything at all. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
He is used to assuring himself of his existence through physical things: his armor, his alcohol, his friends, his belongings. He clothes, his cars, his labs. His company, his home, his city. Now there is nothing, and he has no idea who or what that makes him.
I think therefore I am.
But what does that really mean? What is that worth, in an existence that is nothing but thoughts? Can there be action with no reaction, no physical representation of change done to the world? What is he, without the people, places, objects that make him him?
---
He doesn't remember a beginning to his entrapment, just that there was one. He remembers a fight, with shouting and explosions and a dire sense of urgency, but a large portion of his life has involved just those things, so it doesn't distinguish anything in his mind. He remembers a voice, yelling a warning that came to late, and then there was nothing, nothing at all.
There is a beginning to this hell, so there might be an end, but with no sight, he can't see it coming.
---
He thinks he dreams sometimes. Or remembers. There is no real difference here, no distractions from all the things in his head he doesn't want to know about himself. He remembers drinks and drugs and loud, uncomfortable laughing, forced from him by the burning underneath his skin. He's shaken off one puppet master after another, and now all that's left is him and his withered self-control.
The dreams, or not-dreams, are confusing and ultra-clear in turns.
His first bike ride.
His first computer system.
His first kiss.
His first fuck.
His first love, who came far later than the others.
His first bullet wound, his first suit, his first fall, his first flight.
His life, lined up in firsts.
---
Steve is never far from his thoughts, as wandering and chaotic as they are. He slides through his memories with an easy grace that defies classification. Only enthrallment.
A lot of his firsts were Steve, and that makes him even more special than he already is.
---
Tony, Steve says, come back. Come back to us.
How? he wants to ask, but there is no one there, no one around, no one at all. Just him.
---
Being nothing, being in nothing, gives him a lot of time to think about his life. The bad times, the worse times, the rare good times. The always too brief and fleeting excellent times. There is plenty to think about. His life has taken many twists and turns over the long years, and it seems like he remembers all of them, even the parts he shouldn't. Even the parts he doesn't want to.
He remembers blood. His. Other people's. Mostly his. Shouts. Screams. Sirens. A pulsing, pervasive pain that stretched through his body from head to toe. Time and perception jumping in random stops and starts, the world fading in and out like a car radio losing its signal. Then the nothingness took him, and he was here, in this ceaseless, boundless void, trapped in the space between breath and no where.
---
Tony!
---
He floats, or flows, or whatever it is he is or isn't doing, for an unknown amount of time – a second, an hour, a lifetime. An eternity.
His mind travels in circles, but it always comes back to Steve.
---
Tony!
---
He's in the middle of a very vivid dream (memory?) of a fierce redhead scolding him like a particularly unruly child. He can feel a smile tugging at his lips, feel a chuckle in his throat. He can feel sunlight against his skin. The smooth material of a cotton button up over his torso. The faint familiar buzz of Extremis in his head. Over the redhead's shoulder (over Pepper's shoulder; her name is Pepper; she is his friend) he can see a man, grinning at him from the doorway. Blond hair, tall. Gorgeous.
Steve.
Warmth floods him, drawing him in, addicting him—
And then pain knifes through him, and the memory (dream?) dissolves into an impossible kaleidoscope of noise and color. He's thrown from the void and left to fight his way back to consciousness on his own.
---
Tony! Tony, breathe! Don't die, dammit. That's an order!
He wants to say, Well, I was never very good at following orders. But he doesn't because this is one command he really, really wants to obey. Because it's Steve. And if Steve is here, than everything will be alright. Tony knows who he is with Steve.
---
There's blood running down his face, through his hair, from his mouth. There's blood everywhere, along with the hard press of metal, and it takes him a minute to realize that he's in his suit, bloody and dying.
The Iron Man armor looks like a tin can torn apart by a demented can opener, then pounded by a sledge hammer. And he's in it, trapped in what he designed to protect himself. There's broken asphalt under him, and the sun is glinting off of scarred skyscrapers and into his eyes. Sirens shriek closer, setting of the dull roar of pain in his head. Someone nearby is screaming. It's like a horrible dream, and Tony thinks that it might be a dream. A memory, a dream, an illusion created by his madness, brought on by his entrapment in the awful nothingness.
But Steve is there, and he doesn't care as long as he gets to see Steve's perfect blue eyes.
---
Focus, Tony. Stay with me. Stay—
Where else would I go?
---
The world fades in, then out, then in, then out. But while the nothing void is tugging at the back of his mind, Steve keeps him grounded, holds him tight with both hands and makes him stay. Makes Tony stay. And it works. Gloriously, it works.
He can sleep without fear, because Captain America is watching over him.
---
Someone is holding Tony's hand. He opens his eyes and sees Steve, head resting on his crossed arms, sleeping in an uncomfortable hospital chair. He smiles at the sight and lets the drugs drag him back under. Just before he slips back into unconsciousness, he squeezes Steve's hand.
Steve squeezes back.
I almost lost you, he says, apparently not sleeping after all. You—Tony, you weren't breathing. You died.
Oh, Tony chokes, thinking of the awful nothingness. (He think, Was that Hell? Then he remembers the Pepper dream – memory – and the happiness that pervaded it and thinks, Maybe Purgatory.)
I'm alright, he tells Steve, and Steve nods slowly, squeezing Tony's hand again.
Don't you dare do that again, Steve commands, like a promise is going to stop the next bad guy from putting Tony through a wall. Even though he knows it's foolish, he promises anyway.
I won't.
---- ----
I'm not going to lie; I don't really like it. But I'm tired of fighting with it, so here you go. *kicks fic*
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<3
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Ah well. Like I said, I just got tired of fussing with it, so here it is! :D *hugs*
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(Pst. Typo I believe: "...next bad guy from through Tony through...")
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Typo fixed! Thanks!
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Thank you for sharing this, it's really very lovely.
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But while the nothing void is tugging at the back of his mind, Steve keeps him grounded, holds him tight with both hands and makes him stay. Makes Tony stay. d'aww!
thank you for sharing!
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Great fic!
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I could tell you that there was some deep hidden meaning behind the italics in the last segment, but really, I just use any excuse I can to have them in there. I use them as dialogue, sometimes, in fics that go like this, with the passive lyrical thing. <3