InsaneJournal

Who: Tony, Pepper
What: the nearing the end of a very bad dream
When: backdated, around June 1st-ish
Rating/Warning: yellow, language



For years, it was difficult for Tony to get a decent night's sleep. In college, he would only sleep well once he blacked out from bumming drinks off the older students. Once in a blue moon he would remember a dream.

After Afghanistan was when the bad dreams started. Sleep became even more elusive.

After New York was when sleep stopped mattering altogether. Other than getting a chance to be with Pepper at night, he hated sleeping. It was more common for him to wake up and go fiddle in the garage in Malibu with a new idea, than for him to be found in bed by the time the sun rose.

Then something changed.

Those dreams started, the night of Thor's thunderstorm. The pendulum swung the other way. Tony became obsessed with sleep. It was one thing that no one would associate with him, the sort of obsessive-compulsive restless type that was sucking down coffee and burning the midnight oil.

Over the past week, he began taking naps. He went to his physician, asking for sleeping aids that didn't have drastically impairing side effects. He stopped drinking coffee, and even cut down on any casual drinking. He put his dogged determination into trying to unravel what happened next in those dreams from another universe. One where he didn't know if the same events were going to happen here, or how those events eventually played out over there.

It was on his mind, constantly. Even during his attempts at lightening the mood on his birthday, while joking around with Pepper, or worrying about Parker being anywhere near outer space someday.

It fueled him to shore up the suits more. It meant he took more time to monitor the warning system he snuck onto a Stark company satellite, where RT powered mini-satellites were still heading toward the edges of this solar system to set themselves into an array. It wouldn't be enough, and it wasn't done soon enough to get the distance they needed for early warning detection. It was something, and something was better than nothing.





Earlier that evening, he took his med as prescribed and tried to quiet a mind that didn't ever want to shut up. Sometime just after eleven o'clock, Tony actually fell into a deep sleep by Pepper's side.

Normally, he would have been awake in four hours.

Six hours later, the Tony he became in his dream felt like he couldn't wake up from a living nightmare.

Now he knew what happened. He felt it. Every punch thrown at Thanos. Every kick. Every desperate moment of a final fight where he told himself that he was going to stop that purple moon-dropping Shithook if it was the last thing he ever did.

And when Thanos snapped the blade off the arm of his suit and drove it right through him, Tony felt that stop him in his tracks. He knew the last thing he would do, would be to die. As Thanos petted his head like he was a good dog in need of being put out of its misery, he thought to himself he didn't want to be done yet. What about the kid? What about Pepper? What about half of the fucking universe?!

He didn't care if anyone remembered him. He just wanted to help save it all.

There's gotta be something left. What did I forget? Didn't I put a self destruct in this suit? Something I can use to.....

He was bleeding out. Blood bubbled up his throat and trickled out past his lips. He actually blinked in disbelief when it happened.

So. There was nothing left. Nothing else, except that he expected to die.

"Spare his life and I'll give you the stone."

What he didn't expect was Strange to save him.

Inside that dream, as Thanos got the Time Stone and kept his word to let him live, Tony knew that sinking feeling in his stomach had nothing to do with internal bleeding. It was the knowledge that they lost another stone.

It was the sinking feeling of defeat.

After Thanos was gone, after he sealed the wound with the suit's nanites, he turned to Strange.

"Why would you do that?" he asked.

"Because we're in the endgame now," was the cryptic answer.

Whatever Strange knew about that endgame, he didn't share. The wizard sat there. Waiting. He sat in silence like someone who accepted defeat, and Tony hated that.

He hated waiting. He hated giving up. And he hated silence.

Almost as much as he hated Thanos.

With no other choice than to hope Bruce and Steve were able to stop what was coming at them, and still dealing with a near-death experience, Tony thought to himself: 'We could've won. We almost had it. This' a nightmare scenario that I'd like to wake up from.'

Only it wasn't a nightmare. Not there and then.

It was terribly, inescapably real.





Outside of the dream, still asleep, Tony's hands clutched at the pillow like he was trying to strangle it or rip it in two. It didn't seem like the sort of fear and anxiety of years past, of the post-traumatic dreams of seeing the Chitauri forces beyond the wormhole.

This was frustration and pain. As he clenched his teeth, Tony's body tensed up and jerked hard enough that he bumped back into Pepper's side.

Pepper suspected something was up. Tony was actually sleeping. The eyes she had on him told her that he took naps! Of course, he hadn’t been telling her why he was sleeping more often, which made Pepper more suspicious. She refrained from asking him what was going on. He wasn’t behaving like he was trying to hide something from her, and he was getting rest so she’d let it go. For now.

Just before it went on too long this night came. It was the tension that was practically vibrating through the mattress that woke her up. The lack of thrashing from Tony brought Pepper to full wakefulness. Confused and concerned she sat up, one hand pushing tangled strands of her hair out of her face.

“Tony?” This wasn’t like anything Pepper had seen him go through before. That worried her more than anything. “Tony, wake up.” She reached out to give his shoulder a small shake.

Oh god, I'm still stuck on another planet. We have to get off this rock. I gotta get back to Earth, so I can help them and....

Dimly, through some unseen veil, it felt like a hand was laid on him. It was Pepper's voice he heard from a distance, and she sounded the same as she had when she first asked if he was on that ship.

He jerked a little in the dream, chalking it up to a painful twinge in his side as the nanites tried to hold split tissue together and staunch internal bleeding.

Outside the dream, he twitched again before his eyelids flew open and he bolted upright, drawing in a big gasp of air. The sheet was flung back and his tank top pulled up, so his fingers could prod at his own stomach and along his side, where that wound was.

So those were the pieces he was missing. It was what Parker tried hinting about on the network, before. They lost, he lost, and was the reason Thanos got another stone. The universe was one step closer to being halfway wiped out.

He turned to look back at Pepper over his shoulder with wide eyes, shocked into a bout of uncharacteristic silence.

Pepper gave a startled yip when Tony was just suddenly awake and flailing at his shirt. “Tony what in the wor-” All she could do was stare in open worry as he pawed at his side. This was new. This was so terribly new, and Pepper didn’t know how to deal with it. She needed more information. It was just like the old days before Afghanistan. Before Iron Man. When he would end up in a new sticky situation that she’d have to bail him out of. Sometimes literally. Dusty habits came immediately back as he gave her that look over his shoulder.

“Hey,” she said gently. Pepper reached out to take one of those hands in hers, in hopes of grounding him to the here and now. “‘I’m here. Right here.” Once upon a time, Pepper had compared notes on the similarities between Banner’s lullabye and her talking Tony out of one of his nightmares.

Out of sheer reflex, Tony's hand tightened around Pepper's a little too tightly at first, but it only took a mere five seconds for him to realize that might hurt her. Top priority was never hurting Pepper, so his fingers went slack as he began blinking himself further back into what was real again.

At first, his expression was the same sort of blank thousand-yard-stare that he got during a particularly bad panic attack, where his breath was racing and his heart felt like it was hammering in his ears. He swallowed once like he was gulping down air and seemed to get himself slightly more to center as he stared at her.


"Hey," he finally replied and he drew in a shaky breath before trying to even cover what happened there. "I'm not on another planet again. Getting my ass kicked."

That was a pretty good summary, though.

She sucked in a sharp breath when Tony squeezed her hand that tightly, but she wasn’t going to pull away. She had never seen him like this. It was beginning to scare her. When his fingers loosened and he had that look on his face she scooted closer to put her arm around him. She trusted he was awake enough that he wouldn’t lash out. When he finally spoke it reassured her that was coming out of his nightmare.

“No,” she said. “You’re in our penthouse.” Pepper kissed his cheek to give him one more thing to focus on in the here and now.

Normally, Tony would have a lopsided smirk and a cheeky remark. This time he turned toward her to hug onto her, letting out a big breath that he didn't know he was holding in.

"I would've died, but our resident Time Lord gave up his stone for me," he said in a daze, chin resting on Pep's shoulder as he stared up at the wall of their bedroom. It was another thing to anchor him to the present. Notice things they owned, come up with a comment. Immediately he latched on to what was hanging over their bed, a pair of paintings hanging side by side. "God, I never noticed how fugly these are. I hope you didn't spend more than a million for them. As a set. Not each."

He felt marginally better already. Mission accomplished.

This was definitely new. Pepper felt fear grip her heart hearing the details of his dream, and she had a feeling it wasn’t just a dream. Her arms tightened around him as she rubbed his back. She leaned her head against his by way of comfort for herself and him. Damn it. She needed to know more about these memories. Was anyone piecing them together to form a picture? They needed to get ahead of this!

“What?” Pepper blinked as she pulled back to see what he was looking at. “The Lichtenstein?” She turned back to look at him. “You liked them when I bought them.”

"I did, but now it seems too punchy to try to sleep under. Can't we throw up something more bedroomy. That's like...that needs to be where the boxing ring is," he mumbled while side-eyeing her. After a moment of looking between her and up at the paintings, he let out a puffy faced exhale and began to untangle himself from the sheets and the embrace. "I can't sit on my ass after that. Sorry, honey? I know you're gonna hate this but...I gotta work."

“Too punchy?” she asked. Amusement was slowly replacing her worry. “What does that even mean?” Pepper looked back at the paintings. “What do the lithographs have to do with boxing?” When she looked back Tony was getting out of bed. “What?” Pepper grimaced.

That stubborn look came to her face then she swung her legs over the edge of the bed to get up herself. “All right. Then I’m coming too.” Her robe was within reach so she pulled it on as she walked around the bed to catch up with Tony.

"There's....bright colors and words and comic book...things," Tony said, waving a hand dismissively at the paintings. It wasn't so much that he hated them. It was more a focal point for negativity. He gave Pepper a cursory glance while doing a one legged pogo into some pants. It didn't seem like he was at all opposed. "Actually? Yep. I need you to come with me. I got to get your biorhythms logged again. So you can hop in a suit."

Pants on, he was out the bedroom door in a whirlwind of anxious energy.