Sparkles / Iron Deficiency Man
There it was. The utter sadness that had gone on too far and too deep that Steve had been talking about. Tony got it. God, he got it so well and he was sorry that he hadn't come to Thor sooner. Not really because he knew how to fix things like that, but because solidarity was important, sometimes.
"That's not just on you," he said, and it wasn't meant to be an oh, it's not your fault sort of blank reassurance, because Tony simply wasn't that sort of person to give someone false platitudes just for the sake of it. "Before that, before he ever made it to Earth, before he had all the stones, I could have stopped him, too. We were so close. Seconds away from it. And I failed-- couldn't keep everyone in line, couldn't stop the plan going to shit. I could have done -- a dozen different things or more, all relatively easy, and things would have turned out differently. So. It's my fault too. If I'd have done my job right, you never would have even met him on the battlefield."
His point was, there was no one single person at fault here. There just wasn't. And god, they all just wanted to take credit for how bad everything was, for all those deaths, for failing everyone. It was practically ridiculous. Or it would be if it wasn't so fucking sad. "If we were smarter men, Thor, we'd be able to come to terms with the fact that it's neither of our faults. It's Thanos', and Thanos' alone."