Usually when his ghosts call out- it's nowhere near polite. Echoing tendrils of recriminations, of insults, of reminders of every possible way he's failed despite years of work to ensure the contrary, a long itemized list of names wrapped up in the unspoken implication that their injury or death is on his hands. Always. Occasionally it's less coherent; a quavering voice in a cave, a scraped raw scream over roaring flames, the panicked lilt of all failsafs failing- and a thready thing wrapped around a sob on a dusty planet, stuttered, panicked.

I don't feel so good-

Over and over, a near infinite loop and he hadn't said anything, had he? Shock's a bitch but it was his job to keep the kid safe. For the fifth or sixth time since he sat down Tony scrubs at his hands like that'll get rid of the phantom film of-

Ashes? Dust. The texture entirely unlike anything he'd ever felt, a body going from weighty and solid to nothing but flaked particulates whisping in the wind. Times when he hates his memory- that the voice, the texture, the sensation of that kid clinging until he wasn't rolling around in high definition, with perfect clarity. This is on him. From the first time he showed up at the kid's apartment to that dead planet- it's on him. More red in his ledger, more failures to the pile.

And it starts up again, that voice but- not quavering. That's not how it was on Titan. It's.


Confused? Not panicked. Slowly Tony uncurls from his hunched over posture, turning his head rather than his ribs because he's got a healing hole in them still- and...stares. Health. Whole. What the fuck? Too ratted around by everything, by the fallout, content in what he'd been assuming was a safe place to not scrape on any of the older masks? For a moment his misery is achingly apparent, grief black and bitter in his eyes, lips pressed thin against the multitude of options to say- something? Anything. "...Peter?"