Storm ≛ Tony Stark ≛

82.

Sue tried her best to listen to the rundown. But with Tony sat next to her with an IV drip in his arm, it made it difficult to keep her eyes on the hologram. The team barely gave the Stark a moment of peace when he stepped off the spacecraft and into the compound. There was a flurry of Bruce running to get Tony hooked onto anything that would help his severe malnutrition, before he was whisked into the living area for a meeting. Sue wanted to intervene to at least give him a day's rest, but Tony himself rejected her proposal.

'I've spent the last month in space. I want to know what's been happening on Earth,' he fought and gestured for Sue to guide him to their next destination.

He had the mind to ask Sue to grab him his glasses and some new clothes, which he needed help changing into. It allowed the woman to see the toll his time in space took on his body. She almost didn't recognise him, and it hurt her to think about what she had spent the last month doing. While Tony was dying for a hot meal and some warmth in the cold depths of space, she was pushing away Steve's freshly made cuisine while moping in her bedsheets. But she had to remember what she had lost. Not giving credit where credit was due was a toxic trait of Susan Storm's, and she had to learn to fight against it. But when it cropped up into her chest at the sight of Tony's bony figure and thin face, she couldn't stop the guilt from building inside of her.

'It's been twenty-three days since Thanos came to Earth,' Rhodey stood with the hologram next to him. A list of all the casualties that occurred from the blip showed along with their faces. It put into perspective the nearly four billion people that were gone, along with half the Earth's ecosystem.

The team was numb to it at this point. The ones they had lost were small in comparison to the half of the universe's disappearance. Tony was yet to see the full extent, as he only saw a handful of people disintegrate into specs of dust. However, with one being Peter Parker, it's effect wasn't without pain. But seeing the countless names in the list of people who were no more, he saw the true horror that was now the new normal.

'World governments are in pieces,' Natasha continued with a heavy heart. 'The parts that are still working are trying to take a census. And it looks like he did... he did exactly what he said he was gonna do. Thanos wiped out fifty percent of all living creatures.'

Sue held Tony's thin fingers from her place in the armchair. He was sat in a chair that was separate from the sofas, as he needed to be upright in order to be comfortable. The clear liquid that ran down the IV tube and into his veins was hung in a bag next to him. With his shirt sat open, now too big for his small frame, Tony did his best to focus on the situation at hand. He couldn't let the thought of Morgan or anything else hinder him just yet. He had time to mourn, but if there was a plan, he had to have a hand in it.

'Where is he now?' Tony looked to Steve.

'We don't know,' the Rogers gave a pathetic shrug of his shoulders. 'He just opened a portal and walked through.'

'When it happened...' Sue spoke up with her eyes staring down at her hand that held Tony's. The team's heads swivelled around to her in surprise. They hadn't heard many words from the Storm in the past few weeks, so it was strange to hear her voice. Although shaky and croaky, Susan continued as she looked to meet Tony's sad stare. 

'Everything just stopped. Thanos was gone and we had nothing,' she blinked her bloodshot eyes with a clear of her throat.

Tony nearly teared up. He had seen Sue upset before, but nothing could have prepared him for this. She had attempted to clip up her hair to hide the birds nest that it was, but he could see the indented lines that extended from her tear ducts to the middle of her cheeks. Through the tint of his glasses, he could see that her plump lips were frayed with dead skin, and her cheekbones were more prominent than usual. What little words she did speak lacked the hum of her strong personality. Susan Storm was a shell of her former self, and Tony didn't like it. But he knew that losing Johnny and Morgan had taken a toll on her, as it would to anyone. It upset him to know that he wasn't there for her, but was grateful that he had survive for her sake. If he had stayed dead like everyone thought he would, there was no guarantee that Susan wouldn't crumble for good.