Chapter Text
The gentle breeze hit him like an avalanche. Where was he? What was happening? He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to recall his last memory, to know where to go from… well from wherever this was.
“I am Iron Man.” A few breaths, panicked and forced. Glimpses of people. Rhodey, Pete, Pepper.
Oh god, Pepper.
When he opened his eyes again, he was able to process where he was, pupils constricting as the light came in. Earth and grass and pine, as well as sweat, wafted through the air. The trees around him dwarfed him in multitudes, the needles under his bare feet scratching and itching his skin. He was in a forest. He was alive and in a forest. He was alive. Tony Stark was alive.
This place seemed almost familiar. To be fair, he’d been living in the woods ever since the snap and the one thing he’d learned on walks with Morgan on his back was that trees looked very similar everywhere if you looked up and he shouldn’t veer off the path so much that Pepper had to get F.R.I.D.A.Y’s help to find him.
Still, there was every chance he wasn’t too far from home. He stumbled through bush and undergrowth, feet wincing at every step, legs unused to walking after so long… doing whatever they had been doing. He wasn’t really sure what had been done with his body… after, the memories of his final will fuzzy and muddled, not much except bequests to friends, a college fund for Peter as well as a million to be held in trust until he turned twenty-one, everything else for Pepper and Morgan.
He wondered if Peter had turned twenty-one already. He had no idea how long it had been. A year? Five? Twenty? Hell, it could be a hundred for all he knew. Time was so batshit already, why not? Coupled with necromancy or whatever had restored him from the dead, it could be any time. At any point in time ever might be a stretch, but his point remained.
The sun was getting low in the sky and his cotton t-shirt and shorts weren’t doing much for the change in temperature. It felt like early autumn, he could see evidence of it in the few deciduous plants around, turning the colours of sunset and drifting to the forest floor in turn. He’d take the chance to look and admire when he wasn’t absolutely freezing and trying to figure out where he was. In the distance, he saw the sparkle of a lake and hope rose in his throat. Tony ran towards it, his bare feet burning on the harsh ground, calves and ankles whipped raw and bleeding. A house was in sight now. His house, his home.
He barged right in the front door, all alarms blaring him almost deaf.
A woman’s voice called from upstairs, “The police have been called. Leave now or face prosecution. I am armed in the interest of self defense and protection.”
“Pepper! Pepper, it’s me! It’s Tony.”
She came down the stairs cautiously, holding a steel poker in her right hand, almost unnoticeably shaking. “My husband is dead,” she said in a low, level voice. “I have no idea what is wrong with you to try impersonating him but believe me I know you are lying .”
“What? No, no, Pep. It’s me.” He tried to find a way to confirm his identity. “Ask me, ask me anything.”
“Who did you date in college?” She still wasn’t looking at him, not his face at least, her gaze looking through him, refusing to acknowledge him.
“Trick question, I was so drunk the whole time that I wouldn’t even remember if I was dating someone when I had the time and the rest of it, I was working to finish work or mess around with Rhodey. I seem to remember telling you though that I had a fling with a woman called Vivienne Walsh once.”
The poker shook further. “Who was the first person you were romantically serious with?”
“Richard Parker,” he countered clearly. “He dumped me because he wasn’t out as bi to his family and didn’t want anything more than a light relationship.”
“Who did you want to name our daughter after?”
“My uncle.”
She was looking at him in the eyes, scared and angry. “How?”
He shrugged. “No idea, I just sorta appeared a few miles from here, How long has it been?”
“A year. I saw you die. I saw your body, I had it cremated and the ashes scattered. I saw all of that happen.” She raised her hand to scratch her cheek, Tony remembered her doing that when Morgan was going off to preschool for the first time: she was nervous.
“I’m- at least I was - friends with a god-alien, a super soldier born in 1918, a kid with spider-powers,” her forehead wrinkled at that one, “a guy who bonded with the internal part of him that was a giant green rage machine, I’ve time travelled, half the world population has disappeared for five years and come back, is it really so hard to believe?”
“Tony.” She said his name reverently like a prayer, the poker tumbling out of her grasp, clanging on the floor, her sinking body joining it. He ran over, kneeling to embrace her, hold her close to him, let her know that he was real , he was here .
A voice came down from the stairs. “Mommy? Daddy? Daddy! You’re home, I knew it, I knew you weren’t gone!”
“Morgan,” he lifted a hand to his eyes to feel it come back damp. “I’m back. I’m back.”
She rushed down the stairs so fast that Tony almost got up to catch her if she fell, bounding into his arms. “They said you were, they said you were dead .” She didn’t sound like she understood the word. “Happy and Mommy and Rhodey, they said you weren’t coming back ever. You wanted to but you couldn’t.”
He bit his lip and brushed her hair away from her face. “I did want to come back, and I was dead. I’m not anymore. I’m back and I’m never leaving again.” He booped his nose, “I promise to the best of my ability.” Pepper looked up and gave him a knowing look. She was crying too, her eyes red rubbed and nose running down to her chin, wiped away hastily with a sleeve.
Morgan wanted to stay with him all night but she needed to get her sleep so he put her to bed with promises of playing with her for all of tomorrow and headed down to the kitchen with Pepper.
“I’m sorry,” she started, “I’m still trying to process all this. It- I don’t even believe in god but I prayed for you, I prayed to have you back.”
“I’m here, Pepper.” His thumb brushed against hers, she snatched hers back to grip her mug of tea. He tried to hide his hurt.
“How is everyone? Rhodey, Happy, the Avengers, Peter and May?”
She looked at him, naked confusion painted on her face. “Who’s Peter?”