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the-faultofdaedalus · 5 years

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Tony and Nebula! in SPACE! Bonus points if Tony quotes Yinsen, plz MURDER ME

Nebula’s afraid of him.

Tony can see it, where most others would see anger, would see cruelty, would see coldness. She’s snappish and withdrawn in moments, acting as robotic as she looks.

Tony doesn’t know why.

He’s... well, he’s human. He’s not augmented, not in any way, not anymore. He’s got a hole in his gut that’s barely being held together with the nanites he didn’t use to patch up the ship.

Nebula is a fighter. Tony has no doubt that if she wanted to, she could kill him in a second, in a variety of different ways. She has weapons, she’s made of weapons, and she has training in a way that he doesn’t.

And yet, she’s scared. Of him.

It doesn’t make sense, but Tony’s too busy with other things - grieving, planning, trying to keep this patchwork ship from falling apart around them - to try to figure it out.

In the grand scheme of things, fear is not important until you let it control you. Tony knows this better than most.

(mind the cut!)

It’s some kind of sisyphean task, trying to keep the ship moving. Trying to keep it together.

It’s falling apart almost as fast as the nanites can repair it, almost as fast as he can weld together seams with Nebula’s help, almost as fast as he, himself, is falling apart.

He thinks she’s noticed, has noticed that he’s slower and slower to react to even the smallest things, the fact that his movements are pained and stiff, the fact that his shirt is spotted with blood.

Nebula doesn’t comment, doesn’t point out the obvious weakness, and he’s glad for it. The only weaknesses that matters right now are those in the structure of the ship.

The thing is, he doesn’t want to die.

The thing is, he’d thought he’d finally found something to live for.

The thing is, none of that matters.

There’s a leak in the hull, nearly two weeks - by Tony’s count, which has been thrown off by exhaustion and pain and endless, tedious work, by restless sleeps and even more restless periods of nothing - after they’d left Titan.

Tony isn’t the one that catches it. All he knows is that over the course of an hour he grows steadily more and more tired, the kind of tired that sinks into your bones and does not let go.

The kind of tired that he’s felt for almost his entire life.

He wishes he could sleep, and he almost does.

“Stark.” Nebula says, jostling him out of his doze, “Stark. Something is wrong.”

Almost for the first time this entire trip, Tony’s angry. “The only thing that’s wrong,” He snaps, “Is that you are waking me up. I’m tired, Nebula, can you just-”

“What amount of oxygen does your kind need for survival.” She asks, still shaking him, and all he wants is to sleep, God, he’s so tired and no one will let him sleep, but something in her tone, in the words, pings something in his brain.

Reluctantly, he stands, and nearly falls over, and that is when he starts feeling afraid. “More than what’s in the air,” He guesses, “What’s the air pressure-”

“Dropping.” She says, succinctly, and Tony wonders why nothing can ever go right in his life. Hell, he’d settle for things not going wrong for more than five fucking minutes at a time.

“So it’s not the recycler,” Tony summarizes, “There’s gotta be a leak, somewhere, we need to find it before-”

“Yes.” She finishes, is already at the computer, checking- checking-

Tony falls over. His vision is going cloudy, fading into grey. He’s hypoxic. He knows this. He can’t quite muster up the ability to feel fear about the inevitable outcome.

Time.... slips.

"Stark,” Nebula is shaking him awake, again, “I’ve found the breach, but i cannot seal it, not without risking combustion-”

“Where,” Tony says, and he knows what he’s going to have to do, and it’s going to kill him anyways. He’d laugh, if he had the air. “I can- I just-”

Everything spins around him, and it takes him until Nebula puts him down beside part of the bulkhead - the piece they’d just repaired, Jesus - to realize that she’d carried him.

Tony puts his hand over the crack, where he can feel the coldness of space leaking in, the whistle of air leaking out, closes his eyes, and tells the precious few nanites he has left, the ones that are acting as biological scaffolding as his broken body tries desperately to repair itself, to seal the breach.

They flow out of his stomach, across his arm, flowing and red like blood, and the hissing noise stops.

The air recycler starts chugging again, taking carbon dioxide and turning it into breathable oxygen, and the red keeps coming. It is blood, this time. He thinks he can feel his liver collapsing in on itself.

And then he doesn’t feel anything at all.

That, in itself, is a relief.

He wakes up.

That, in itself, is a surprise.

A bigger surprise, is that...

He doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. He feels... better, than he has, in a long, long time.

"Good.” Nebula says, from somewhere beside him - he can’t pinpoint direction, it sounds like there’s dozens of her, speaking in perfect synchronicity, and it freaks him out - “You’re awake.”

“What.” Tony says, sits up - again, painlessly, which shouldn’t be possible, he hadn’t not been in pain for nearly a decade - and stares at his stomach.

There’s no hole.

There’s not even a scar.

What there is, is metal, folded in seamlessly around where the hole used to be, about an inch on either side. “What did you do to me,” He chokes, tearing at his skin, because he can’t, he can’t do this again, he can’t, he can’t-

Nebula looks at him. “I saved your life,” She tells him, like he should already know this, like this should be something easy for him to accept, and he won’t, he can’t accept being more metal than human, he can’t-

“You ruined my death,” He snarls, trying to catalogue whatever she’s done to him, trying to figure out which parts of him are now less than human, because nothing hurts and that means that more than just the stab wound has been repaired, and he’s still tired and no one will let him rest-

“You can’t die,” She says, with more emotion in her voice than he’s ever heard from her, “You are not allowed-”

“And who are you to decide that,” Tony snaps, “Who is anyone to decide that but me, It’s my life-”

“Not anymore.” She says, flatly, in a tone that sounds sympathetic, or, as close as it as Tony has heard from her, “You forfeit that when you made yourself known to Thanos.”

She stands up, from where she has been crouching beside him, and walks away.

Tony is alone, once again.

The ship is too small to sustain any degree of seperation, but they make a decent enough effort of it. For the first day, Tony is so incandescently furious that he refuses to risk seeing Nebula.

It doesn’t take him very long to realize that Nebula is not who he should be angry at, that she’s just as desperate, just as furious, as he is, and younger than him by years.

They’re the same, patchwork people held together by metal and stubbornness and rage.

He is, at the very least, self-aware enough to realize that he’s reliving Afganistan almost to the second. He was furious at Yinsen, too, in the spaces of time when he wasn’t just tired.

On the fifth day, he takes her rations to where she’s been holed up in the cockpit. He knows she doesn’t need to eat - knows that she hasn’t been eating, not really, - but...

It’s a peace offering, and she takes it, after a long look at him, wary and angry and resigned by turns.

He wishes he knew why she is still so afraid of him.

He uses the helmet, one of the only pieces of the armor left, to scan himself. To see the extent of the new modifications she’s made to him.

The sliver of metal on his stomach, the arc reactor, now, once again, attached to his chest, as expected, go deeper than that.

Once again, he’s a patchwork of a human being.

Once again, none of it was his choice.

“Why,” He asks, when he’s too tired to not, “Why couldn’t you just let me die,”

Nebula doesn’t look at him, keeps her eyes fixed on the open portion of her own torso, where she’s having to reach in with a pair of pliers to remove the corroded piece of wiring that has to be hurting.

That’s the thing he doesn’t understand. Yinsen, at least, had only theoretically known what he was doing to Tony, when he’d put in the battery, carved out his sternum and ribs and parts of his lung to get it to fit.

Nebula is part machine. She should know what it’s like, why no one should ever be forced into that horrible half-life, she knows and she did it anyways and does she really hate him that much-

“You know why,” She says, tugs the wire free with a shower of sparks, and the panels on her stomach fold back over themselves. “You have to end this first.”

Why me, he wants to shout, why does it always have to be me.

He doesn’t.

She looks at him, still wary, still afraid, and walks away.

The rations are running out.

Well, they’ve always been running out. They’ve been in a constant state of running out since they got on this damn ship.

Only, now, it’s starting to be a problem.

Nebula isn’t eating anymore, sits still, like a statue, to conserve energy, whenever she can.

Tony’s cut his own rations down to the point where he’s barely taking a bite each time in an effort to make them last longer. It’s not going to matter.

The nearest civilized planet - hell, the nearest life-supporting planet - is still further away than even the most meagre of rations would allow.

“You are going to die.” Nebula tells him, and something in her voice is resentful. Tony’s mostly just glad that she’s gotten the balls to speak to him in a way that isn’t robotic, a statement of fact over all else.

“You should’ve let me.” He retorts, bitter, and angry, and tired. “At least then it would’ve been quick.”

“You can’t die.” Nebula continues, “You are the only one who can fix this-”

“Why do you think that?” Tony snaps, finally, “I’m not special! I’m just a guy! Why is everyone putting the fate of the entire goddamn universe on me? What have I ever done for anyone to think that I’m some sort of cosmic saviour? What-”

“Because Thanos is afraid of you.” Nebula tells him, her voice, her tone, more alive than it’s ever been, “Because you made him bleed. He was afraid of you, because he knew that you could-”

“That I could do what,” Tony wants to cry, “So fucking what, daddy dearest had some sort of complex about me for no goddamn reason aside from that I was in the right place at the right time and because I was stupid enough to try to make a sacrifice, because I was stupid enough to think that anything I did would matter-”

Nebula is leaning over him, on her knees, fire in her eyes. “He spoke of you,” She says, “Before he ever spoke of earth.”

Tony blinks. “That’s not-”

“It is.” She says, “The stones told him of you. He was angry, because they wanted you, because you were theirs. Because they were yours.”

“I didn’t even know they existed,” Tony says, baffled, “Not before New York - uh, the invasion he sent to earth, and even then, i didn’t know their names, how- I don’t understand.”

“Neither do i,” Nebula admits. “I only know that you cannot die. We have to fix you.”

Tony closes his eyes, and says goodbye to his death, once again. “Make me like you, you mean. Ok.” He says, “Just... give me a minuite.”

He sends a message in a bottle, and he hopes it’ll reach someone. That it’ll reach anyone.

And then he lies down, on the flattest part of floor they can find, and closes his eyes.

Nebula looks worried. He thinks it’s the first time he’s seen her worried. Sympathy comes from experience, after all. “I am sorry,” She tells him, “This will hurt.”

“I know,” He says, closes his eyes. “I know.”

“I am sorry.” She tells him, after it’s done, “I know you did not want this.”

“Life doesn’t seem to be very keen on letting me get what I want.” Tony replies half-heartedly, and there’s something on her face that makes him continue. “I know,” He says, “I don’t- i don’t blame you.”

“You should.” Nebula tells him, has curled up on herself, arms around her knees, and Tony’s reminded that in the grand scheme of things, she is very, very young. “I did to you what Thanos did to me. That is unforgivable.”

Tony hadn’t asked where her modifications had come from. He can’t say he’s surprised, but nevertheless, his stomach roils in horror. “Well, that’s not true.” He says, voice soft, “Because I forgive you.”

It’s easier to say than he’d thought it would be. It’s easier to say than it had been, all those years ago.

“How,” She asks, “I made you into a monster, like me, I took your death from you, I-”

Tony’s well aware that doing this could earn him a knife in his shiny-new gut, but he scoots over closer to Nebula anyways. “You’re not your father, Nebula.” He tells her, “You’re not a monster. You’re not what he tried to make you.”

“I am exactly what he tried to make me.” She says, but she doesn’t stab him, actually leans towards him, just barely. “You should hate me.”

"I did.” He admits. “But... you did what you thought you had to, you did what you thought was right, and... I didn’t really want to die.” He says, “I was tired, and I was being stupid, and you saved me. So, thank you.”

She doesn’t respond, but they sit like that, two barely-people, lost in space.

It’s the first time Tony hasn’t felt lonely this entire trip.

“Why are you afraid of me,” He asks, because she is, she still is, even after everything, even after near a month, by his count, in this tiny, patched-together ship.

Nebula doesn’t answer him, for a moment.

They’ve been sitting together more, and more. Tony recons that she’s lonely, too. “Thanos spoke of you.” She says, finally, “He was obsessed with you, with destroying you. He was scared of you.”

“And because you were scared of him,” Tony finishes, trails off. “I... I understand. I’m sorry, i’m not-”

“He was right, to be scared of you.” She cuts him off, “You are everything he is not, and you will be his downfall.”

“I’m not that powerful-” Tony protests.

“You don’t need to be.” Nebula says. “The powerful have stood against him before. You’re the only one who’s survived.”

“I’m not,” He says, “You survived too. You survived years of him.” He pauses, looks side-long at her. “How do you know that he’s not scared of you?”

Nebula cocks her head, considering that.

“He hurt you,” Tony continues, “He tried to break you. He picked you out, from hundreds of others, to take as his child. Why would he do that, if he wasn’t afraid? Nebula,” Tony says, takes a breath he doesn’t need, not anymore, feels something warm sparking in his chest, “My father, he tried to do the same. He wasn’t- not like Thanos, he wasn’t bad, not like that, but... he knew I was smarter than him, and that scared him, and he took it out on me. My godfather tried to have me killed because he was afraid. I don’t think it’s me he should be looking out for.”

Nebula looks at him, eyes narrowed, like she hasn’t ever considered that.

“I think he’s afraid of you.” He tells her, “I think he was afraid of Gamora, too, of what she meant to him. I think,” He says, and forces his face into a smile, “That I can’t do this. But I think we can.”

Nebula looks at him for a long second, and bares her teeth in a mirror of his smile. “Yes,” She says, “We will.”

#alksdjfasdkfas i dont know what this is #endgame #avengers endgame #tony stark #nebula #my writing #i dont.... know? what this is?#fucking. Enjoy i guess #a-salty-alto

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