Missing Faces In Empty Pictures

Chapter 5

Tony's eyes snap open with a gasp; breaths pounding sharp and ragged in his lungs. Blinking hard, he forces his eyes to adjust to the darkness surrounding him; re-orienting himself with the present. He's lying on his back, in bed, with Pepper curled up at his side. Wearily, he sucks in a deep breath then releases it slowly, grounding himself as his mind chases away the last wisps of sleep. He'd been having that dream again. The one where he is back on Titan and everyone is turning to ash around him. He'd tried to save them, but couldn't. He'd failed. They all had failed. Tony carefully sat up and ran a hand over his face. This wasn't the first time his dreams had forced him to relive that dreadful moment. Rather, it was a memory that had haunted him like a ghost for five long years; each night waiting to greet him with the same scene over and over and over again.

They'd started before he'd even gotten back to Earth. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw ash falling through the orange sky of a planet he never should have found himself on in the first place, and no matter what he did, it didn't stop. After the first few weeks, he'd decided to stop sleeping altogether-reverting, instead, to locking himself in the lab with a bottle of whiskey until a very angry and worried Pepper dragged him out the next morning. She'd tried to get him to go to therapy, to talk to someone, anyone, about it, but Tony-never being keen on emotional cleansing-had adamantly refused.

He was in a bad place back then; his PTSD reaching a level of intensity that rivaled the fallout from both Afghanistan and New York. Everywhere he went, he was faced with constant reminders of his failure, and each second of every day he was left to carry the weight of knowing that, despite all his suits and weapons and strength, he was absolutely powerless to fix things. To make the world whole again. Families, friends, and lovers on every corner of the globe had been torn apart because he was too weak to protect them. He was supposed to be an Avenger, one of Earth's mightiest heroes, but he sure didn't feel like it.

It was his daughter that ultimately pulled him back. Pepper's pregnancy reignited a sense of purpose inside of him, and he'd been determined to get his act together for his baby girl. He'd still had the dreams, but, with his wife's help, he found other, healthier methods of coping with them. Still though, after bringing everyone back and eliminating Thanos for good, he thought that they'd finally cease to exist altogether. That he could put the past behind him once and for all and move on with his life.

Well so much for that bright idea.

With a sigh, he stares up at the wooden ceiling above him; eyes doing their best to trace the lines between the boards in the dark. Usually, the panic would have died down by now, but something about the dream tonight has him more on edge than usual. He's not sure how he never noticed it before, but for the first time, he realized that the dream didn't actually exhibit the entire memory of that day. Sure, it never failed to replay the very moments in which-one by one-Strange, Quill, Drax, that creepy lady with the antennas turned to ash, but not Spider-Man. Never Spider-Man.

The realization is disconcerting, and he doesn't understand why it never struck him as odd before, or why, after all these years, he just picked up on it now. Afterall, he very clearly remembers that Spider-Man was there that day. The masked hero had followed him to space despite his direct orders to stay on the ground, and he definitely knows that Spider-Man was one of the billions of casualties to result from Thano's snap-why else would his only company on the return trip to Earth be that cyborg, Nebula? But as he racks his brain for the memory of Spider-Man's final moments, he finds that he draws a blank. Actually, now that he thinks about it, he can't remember any of the specifics relating to Spider-Man's presence on that trip. He was present, of that he is certain, but everything else is clouded; vague.

Odd. I should remember this, right?

He reaches deeper, trying to grasp any trace of the memory he's seemingly forgotten, but, again, comes up short. Frustrated, he looks over at the digital clock on the nightstand next to him: 4:36am.