Churches in Warzones

Okay so I don't really know much about terminal illnesses and stuff of the like so I kinda just did my thing.

Disregarding Iron Man 3 here.

Warning: contains swearing.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers.

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Churches in Warzones

It started off as a simple fever.

He was pale and gaunt with sweat clinging to his skin, making it sheen and clear that he was feverish. But it wasn't something out of the ordinary, and the fever was gone in two days.

Then one day, while having a friendly bout of roughhousing with his teammates, he collapsed.

Which is what brought Tony Stark to the hospital, sitting in the doctor's office with his head bowed down and Pepper and Bruce standing by his sides.

He recalled a faint buzzing sound in his ear, and he wasn't really paying attention, but he caught the phrases he needed to and that was all he needed to know before he shut himself out completely.

Fatal. Cancer. Inoperable. Two months. Incurable. Terminal.

Bruce sighed, heavily and tiredly, glancing at Pepper beside him when he noticed that her eyes were filled with unshed tears, and her hands were clenched around the back of Tony's chair so tightly that he thought it might break.

Then he looked at Tony, who he expected to have some kind of emotion flittering through his features when he realized that no, he didn't, he was as emotionless as Natasha Romanoff.

But Bruce faltered in his steps when the good old bad news bearing doctor finished his explanation, and he threw a sad 'thank you' look over in his direction, but the doctor merely nodded his head wearily, as if saying sorry.

Because really, as much as anyone would not want to believe, there was no way out of this mess.

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Pepper tried, Pepper tried really hard to get out of her meetings for the next week, and she spent five hours on the phone trying to negotiate a deal to reschedule, and she couldn't exactly say the reason why she had to, because keeping a billionaire's imminent death as a secret is a hell of a lot of work to do. So in the end, she had to board a plane to Washington and was forced to bid farewell to Tony in a heartfelt kiss and a promise to be back as soon as possible.

But Tony simply nodded, leaning into her kiss and her touch, as if there was nothing wrong at all.

But Bruce knew better. And so did Steve and Natasha and Thor and Clint.

And they hated it, hated how the world was still turning, forever turning and will never stop turning despite it being the end of the world. Because people were still walking, the sun was still rising, the stars were still shining and Tony was still dying. And nothing, no matter how much they wanted it to, would change that.

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The sun rose, and Bruce woke up to Tony tinkering in the workshop like every normal day, functioning on a lack of sleep and living on coffee when Bruce finally cracked.

"Why are you pretending like this isn't hurting you?" he asked, eye twitching and deep breathing to keep the Other Guy from appearing.

Tony stopped, his shoulders tensed and he placed his wrench on the tiles beside him. He took a long breath before finally, finally, looked at Bruce straight in the eye.