Imagine If You Assembled The Avengers: Volume 3

This Isn't Real (Dad!Tony x reader)

Okay, this idea is too close to something that I'd done before in Book 5 of ITYWD, so I used that characterization and an excerpt from that.  Angst.

Pain.

So much pain...and so cold. Body shaking, mind numbing cold.

Everywhere.

Tony was afraid to open his eyes; afraid of the fate he was left to, but if he was to survive whatever hell this was, he had to. The last thing he remembered was running...no, crawling from the bullets and debris flying from every direction, barely seeking shelter behind a boulder before seeing his own blood and passing out. He remembered those soldiers...those kids who he had barely met, and he could almost see their faces still if he could bring himself to concentrate on anything other than this pain radiating from his chest. His breaths had become quick and rasping, his chest barely rising and falling with each one. He tried to regain some semblance of control, feeling that he had none, but his fear was greater than his determination and control was a loss he needed to accept.

Tony stopped the grating sounds of his own breaths, holding them and keeping his eyes tightly shut in the new, even more terrifying silence. He had to still his mind, because there was one thing left that was sure to win out over his fear. There was one thing that he counted on and trusted like nothing else in the span of his lifetime thus far.

You.

It was a struggle for Tony to retrieve his memories at first, the pain stealing his rational mind, but he was a man driven to desperation. He continued to search the caverns and corners of his mind until he found a hazy memory of your face beyond the shroud of pain, the look on your face as he left for this particular trip feeling like a fresh wound that hurt more than any he had now. Oh, how it tore at his soul to walk away that day, only made so much worse by this moment. He should have stayed home. He never should have chosen work over you, and if he survived this, Tony swore to himself that it would never happen again.

His inner visions began to shift to a happier time, because this wasn't working; he needed you to pull him from his mind before it consumed him. His eyes were still squeezed shut so tightly that they hurt, but the pain was nothing compared to that in his chest. It wasn't the pain of injury now, but rather pure, unadulterated, welcomed heartbreak.

Once he had the perfect picture of you in his mind, he could feel his body relaxing to his will; or maybe more accurately, yours. It was a well-known fact to anyone paying attention that your relationship was tumultuous. Pepper had done her best to try to bring peace between you, but she wasn't your mother, nor was she his wife, and you were both too damned stubborn to hear her anyway. She knew that the day would come when one of you would see a life without the other, and the destruction of it would be immense.

But right now, none of that mattered to him; after this, he would be different. He would be the dad that you needed and deserved. With his mind honed in on a happy memory, and his nerves beginning to soothe under the spell you held on him, Tony opened his eyes.

~~~

Tony hated moments like this, standing at the door with a bag packed and in hand, looking at you with pain in his eyes that you refused to believe was really there; you never once believed that he felt as bad as he really did when he had to leave, and he didn't know how to convince you so he didn't bother to try anymore. His life was full of business trips, meetings that extended into all-night sessions, and experiences around the world that he wished he could share, but the chasm between you both had grown too wide.

"I'll be home in two days," he called out to you, looking up to where you stood on the level above in your Malibu home. "Is there anything you want me to bring back for you? I'll be in a desert and all, but I might be able to find something-"