The sun came up over Ogygia like it was auditioning for a postcard—all gold and glowy and annoyingly consistent.
Percy Jackson stood ankle-deep in surf that was, no joke, the exact temperature of a really good bath. Which should've been relaxing, except he knew tomorrow it'd be the same. And the day after. And the day after that.
Assuming there was a tomorrow. Or a yesterday. Time on this island was screwed up in a way that made his brain hurt if he thought about it too long, so mostly he didn't.
Could've been here three weeks. Could've been three years.
Honestly? He'd stopped giving a shit about six "todays" ago.
"You're doing the thing again."
Percy didn't turn around. Didn't need to. He could hear the smile in Calypso's voice—that specific mix of *you're being ridiculous* and *but I kind of love that about you* that made his chest feel weird and warm.
"What thing?" he asked.
"The brooding hero thing. Very tortured. Very dramatic. Your jawline's getting a real workout."
Now he turned. Calypso was walking toward him from their little shack—which, okay, calling it a shack was generous, but they'd built it together out of whatever the island had lying around, and Percy was weirdly proud of it. She had two bowls of fruit, her hair was doing that thing where it looked like someone had dipped it in honey and sunlight, and she was wearing the kind of smile that made him forget he was supposed to be sad about something.
"I don't brood," Percy said. "I'm... thoughtfully considering the ocean."
"Uh-huh." She sat down next to him, close enough that their shoulders touched, and handed him a bowl. "You've been thoughtfully considering it for an hour while breakfast got cold. Which is impressive since breakfast is literally just fruit that grows on trees here."
"The ocean's worth considering."
"Percy."
He picked at a piece of mango, suddenly finding it very interesting. "You ever think about—"
"Every single day," Calypso said quietly.
And just like that, the air got heavier. *Annabeth.* Her name hung between them like smoke. Beautiful, brilliant Annabeth Chase, who'd died bringing down Kronos with Luke. Who Percy had loved so hard it had felt like drowning and flying at the same time.
He'd loved her. Still loved her, if he was being honest.
But she was gone.
And Percy had made a choice. When the gods had offered him literally anything—immortality, power, a really nice apartment in Manhattan—he'd asked for Calypso. Asked to come back here and break her curse. Get her off this island that had been her prison for, what, three thousand years? Four thousand? Time was weird for titanesses too.
The gods had said yes. Shocking, right?
What they'd *failed to mention* was that once he came back, neither of them were leaving.
"I don't regret it," Percy said. "Being here. With you."
Calypso's fingers found his, tangling together in a way that felt as natural as breathing. "I know. But you're allowed to miss her, Percy. Miss all of them."
His throat went tight. "I loved her."
"I know."
"Like, *really* loved her."
"I know."
"But she's dead, and you're... you're here, and I—" Percy stopped, trying to find words that didn't sound like he was the worst person in the world. "I feel like I should feel worse about being happy. Does that make sense?"
Calypso leaned her head against his shoulder. "You're asking the woman who's been in love with half the heroes in Greek mythology if complicated feelings make sense?"
"Fair point."
"I loved heroes who left," she said softly. "Every single one. They'd show up, we'd fall for each other, and then they'd sail away because of course they would. That's what heroes do. They save people and leave." She squeezed his hand. "You're the first one who stayed. So yeah. I get complicated."
Percy kissed the top of her head because he didn't know what else to do with all the feelings currently trying to strangle him. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Geographically impossible," Calypso agreed.
"Literally trapped in paradise with a beautiful immortal woman. Life's so hard."
She punched his arm. Hard. "Idiot."
"*Your* idiot."
"Unfortunately."
They finished breakfast while the sun did its climbing thing, and Percy felt the familiar itch starting under his skin. The need to *move*. To hit something. To do literally anything that wasn't sitting still.
"You want to fight me, don't you," Calypso said. It wasn't a question.
"Is it that obvious?"
"You've been twitching for the last ten minutes. It's like watching a caffeinated squirrel." She stood up, stretching in a way that was definitely calculated to be distracting. "Come on, then. Let's see if you can last more than three rounds today."
Percy scrambled to his feet. "Three rounds? Yesterday I had you on the defensive for—"
"For about ninety seconds before I knocked you on your ass four times in a row," Calypso interrupted, already walking toward their makeshift training area. The way her hips moved should probably be illegal. "But sure, tell me more about your amazing combat skills, *Perseus*."
"Oh, we're using the full name now? Somebody's feeling confident."
"Somebody's about to kick your boyfriend's ass."
Percy jogged to catch up with her, grinning like an idiot. This was the routine. Had been for... however long. When paradise started feeling like a prison, when his ADHD brain started screaming for stimulation, they'd spar.
And gods, was Calypso good at it.
At first, she'd been rusty. Three thousand years of forced isolation didn't exactly keep your combat skills sharp. But she was the daughter of Atlas—literal Titan of Endurance—and once Percy started teaching her, once she started remembering what she used to be?
Terrifying. She was absolutely terrifying.
Also hot. That was probably inappropriate to think during training but sue him.
The Curse of Achilles meant Calypso could go full-strength without worrying about actually hurting him, which was good because the woman did *not* hold back. Percy's skin was invulnerable everywhere except the small of his back, and Calypso had gotten scary good at exploiting the fact that he had to protect that spot.
She grabbed her practice staff—smooth driftwood, perfectly balanced. Percy picked up his wooden sword, roughly the same weight as Riptide used to be.
*Used to be.* He'd given up his actual sword to come back here. Part of the deal. No divine weapons in Ogygia, even if the prison was being opened. He'd handed over his pen without thinking twice, but sometimes his hand still reached for a pocket that was empty.
"You ready?" Calypso asked, settling into a stance that was all coiled grace and barely contained violence.
Percy felt the Curse hum through him—that constant awareness of every inch of his body, every possible angle of attack. "Born ready."
"You were born a C-section baby who nearly drowned his mom. Try again."
"How do you even know that?"
"You told me. Extensively. When you were drunk on wine that one time."
"This island makes wine?"
"Focus, Jackson."
They moved.
Calypso came in fast—a testing jab that Percy deflected, but she was already flowing into the next strike. Staff spinning toward his knees. Percy jumped, twisted, brought his wooden blade around toward her shoulder.
She wasn't there.
Her staff cracked against his forward ankle, buckled his stance, and suddenly Percy was stumbling. He rolled with it—thank you, Curse of Achilles—and came up with his blade at her midsection.
"Point," he said, breathing hard.
Calypso's eyes glittered. "Best of five?"
"When is it not best of five?"
Round two: Percy attacked first. Quick strikes, keeping pressure on, trying to overwhelm her defenses. But Calypso had learned to read him. She gave ground like water—flowing, deflecting, conserving energy. Waiting.
Percy overextended on a thrust. Just slightly.
She took his opening like a shark smelling blood.
Her staff was suddenly everywhere—cracking against his knee, his wrist, flowing around his desperate parry to stop a hair's breadth from his throat.
"Point," she said sweetly. "Want to surrender now or after I embarrass you three more times?"
"Big talk from someone who I beat four-one yesterday."
"Your memory's as bad as your footwork."
They went three more rounds. Percy won two. Calypso won one. The fifth round ended with his blade at her ribs and her staff pressed against his back—right over the vulnerable spot.
Mutual kill.
They collapsed onto the sand, both breathing hard and laughing. Percy's body was already healing—perks of the Curse—but he let himself feel the burn anyway. One of the few things that felt *real* on this island.
"You're getting scary good at this," Percy said.
"I've had a lot of practice." Calypso rolled onto her side to face him. "Also, you telegraph your strikes. Your shoulder dips right before you commit."
"It does not."
"It absolutely does. It's adorable."
"There's nothing adorable about my combat technique."
"If you say so." She was looking at him in that way that made his heart do stupid things. Like she could see all the broken pieces inside him and decided they were worth keeping anyway.
Percy reached out, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Hey."
"Hey yourself."
"I'm glad I'm here. With you. In case that wasn't clear."
Calypso's smile was soft and real and gods, he was so gone for this woman. "I'm glad you're here too. Even if your footwork is terrible."
"My footwork is—"
She kissed him. Cut him off mid-protest, her hand sliding into his hair, and Percy forgot whatever he was going to say. Forgot everything except the taste of her, the warmth of her, the way she fit against him like she'd been designed for it.
When they broke apart, both breathing harder than the sparring had made them, Calypso's eyes were bright. "Still think your footwork is good?"
"I don't know what footwork is," Percy admitted. "Words are hard right now."
She laughed and kissed him again, softer this time. They stayed like that for a while—tangled together on the sand, the surf washing over their legs, the sun warm on their skin.
Paradise. Actual paradise.
Which is of course when everything went to shit.
Calypso stiffened against him. Pulled back, her expression shifting from relaxed to alert in a heartbeat. "Percy."
"What?" He sat up, following her gaze down the beach. "What is it?"
"Someone's here."
Percy scrambled to his feet, his hand automatically reaching for a sword that wasn't there. His heart kicked into overdrive. In all the time they'd been here—weeks, months, years, whatever—nothing had changed. No one had visited. Ogygia was isolated. Cut off.
Until now.
There—at the far end of the beach. A figure. Not walking. Just... appearing. Like reality had glitched and copy-pasted something onto their island.
The figure was on fire.
Not *on* fire, exactly. More like fire was leaking out of them. Flames licking off bronze armor that looked like it had been through a war. Through several wars.
"Oh gods," Calypso breathed. "That's—"
The figure collapsed face-first into the sand.
Percy was already running. Calypso kept pace beside him, both of them sprinting down the beach. As they got closer, details emerged: massive bronze armor, dented and scorched. A leather apron, shredded. A beard caked with ash and something that looked suspiciously like gold blood.
A face Percy recognized.
"Hephaestus?"
The god of the forge looked like he'd been thrown into his own volcano and then kicked around for good measure. His ichor—golden god blood—was leaking onto Ogygia's perfect sand, turning it black and crusty. When his eyes opened and found Percy's, there was something in them Percy had never seen in a god before.
Fear.
Pure, absolute, pants-shitting terror.
"Run," Hephaestus rasped. His voice sounded like grinding metal. "It's coming. He's... eating everything. The gods. All dead. Every pantheon. Greek, Roman, Norse... all gone. Used the last of our power to send you here. Last safe place. Won't be safe long."
Percy dropped to his knees. "Whoa, whoa, slow down. What's coming? What happened? What do you mean all the gods—"
But Hephaestus was already moving. His massive hands dug into his ruined armor, pulling out objects that gleamed with impossible light. A pen. Armor pieces. Weapons.
"Upgraded your sword," the god grunted. "Took Riptide. Added Imperial Gold. Uru from the Norse. Mixed the metals. Made it better. Stronger." He shoved the pen into Percy's hand. It was heavier than he remembered. Warm. Humming with power that made his teeth ache. "Pen to sword. Sword to trident. You'll need it."
"Need it for what—"
Hephaestus was already turning to Calypso, shoving more items at her. "Armor. Weapon. Coin—flip it. Heads, sword. Tails, staff. Enchanted. Best work I ever did. Sorry it's rushed."
"Hephaestus," Calypso's voice was steady, but Percy could hear the fear underneath. "What's happening? Who did this to you? To the gods?"
The god's form was already starting to fade. Golden mist leaking from his wounds. His eyes were going dim. "Galactus," he whispered. "The Devourer of Worlds. He came. Ate the Earth. Ate the gods. Consumed everything. Everyone."
Percy felt like someone had punched all the air out of his lungs. "Everyone? My mom? The campers? Chiron? Grover—"
"Gone." Hephaestus's hand shot out, grabbed Percy's wrist with desperate strength. "All gone. We used everything we had left. Every pantheon. All our remaining power. To send you two somewhere else. New world. Different universe. Portal's coming. Leave Ogygia. Leave now. Before it falls."
"Wait!" Percy shouted. "How do we—where do we—"
But Hephaestus was dissolving. Literally turning to gold dust that scattered across the sand. His last words were barely a whisper: "Survive. That's all that matters. Survive."
Then he was gone.
Percy and Calypso knelt there in the sand, surrounded by god dust and divine weapons, staring at the empty space where Hephaestus had been.
"Holy shit," Percy said.
Then the sky started to crack.
Not a metaphor. Not symbolic. The actual sky—perfect blue Ogygia sky—was breaking. Lines of darkness spread across it like someone had taken a hammer to reality. And through those cracks, Percy could see *nothing*. Not space. Not stars. Just... absence. Hungry, terrible absence that made every cell in his body scream RUN.
"Percy." Calypso's voice was tight. "That's him. Galactus. My father told me stories. The Devourer of Worlds. The thing that even Titans feared. He's found us."
The air in front of them tore open. Not gracefully. Not smoothly. Like someone had grabbed reality with both hands and ripped. Through the ragged portal, Percy could see darkness. Sand. Rock. Definitely not Ogygia.
Calypso grabbed his hand. "We have to go. Right now."
Percy looked back at their shelter. Their training ground. The beach where they'd finally found peace. "But—"
"NOW!" Calypso yanked him toward the portal. "It's falling apart!"
The cracks in the sky were spreading faster. The ocean—Percy's ocean, the one constant in his entire life—started to boil. Steam rose in massive clouds as reality itself began to break down. The island was screaming. Actually screaming. The sound was like nails on a chalkboard mixed with metal grinding and something dying.
Percy grabbed the armor. Grabbed the weapons. Clutched Riptide—new, improved, upgraded Riptide—in one hand and Calypso's hand in the other.
They ran.
The island was tearing apart behind them. The shelter collapsed. The trees burst into flames. The perfect sand turned to glass.
Together, they jumped through the portal.
Behind them, Ogygia died.
And ahead of them?
Nothing but darkness and the unknown.
—
# Desert Landing
Percy hit sand.
Not beach sand. *Wrong* sand. Hot sand. Gritty, nasty, get-in-every-crack sand that had no business existing after the perfect beaches of Ogygia.
He rolled, came up coughing, one hand still death-gripping Calypso's wrist and the other clutching the pen that used to be Riptide. Behind them, the portal sealed with a sound like a vacuum imploding. Then—nothing. Just silence and heat and the smell of sun-baked rock.
"You okay?" Percy gasped.
Calypso was already on her feet, scanning their surroundings with the kind of tactical awareness that came from being a Titan's daughter. "Define okay. We're alive. The island is gone. Reality as we know it has ended. But sure. Peachy."
Percy stood, his legs shaky. The adrenaline was starting to fade, leaving behind the horrifying reality of what Hephaestus had said. *Everyone's dead. All gone. Galactus ate the world.*
His mom. Sally Jackson, who'd survived Gabe and monsters and wars and everything the universe threw at her. Gone.
Grover. His best friend since forever. The satyr who'd literally been through Tartarus with him. Gone.
Annabeth—but no, she'd already been gone. Dead taking down Kronos. At least... at least she hadn't been eaten by some cosmic horror. Small comfort.
"Percy." Calypso's hand on his arm brought him back. "I know. But right now, we need to figure out where we are and what we're dealing with. Grief later. Survival first."
She was right. She was always right. Percy hated it.
He looked around properly for the first time. They were in a desert. Like, *aggressively* a desert. Sand dunes stretched in every direction, broken up by jagged rock formations that looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the world. The sun was brutal—high and merciless. Different from Ogygia's gentle warmth. This sun wanted them dead.
"Okay," Percy said. "Inventory time. What'd we manage to grab?"
They'd dropped most of Hephaestus's gifts during the mad sprint through the portal, but they'd managed to hang onto the important stuff. Percy had his upgraded pen. Calypso had grabbed what looked like a coin and some kind of folded fabric that shimmered with divine power.
"Let's see what the god of the forge made for us," Calypso said, carefully unfolding the fabric.
It wasn't fabric. It was armor.
As soon as Calypso touched it properly, the "fabric" responded—flowing over her body like liquid metal. White and gold, form-fitting but clearly reinforced. Shoulder pauldrons etched with designs that hurt to look at directly. A breastplate that gleamed like captured sunlight. Gauntlets that wrapped around her forearms with intricate patterns that looked Greek but also... not. Like Hephaestus had mixed divine smithing traditions.
"Holy—" Percy started.
"It's beautiful," Calypso breathed. She flexed her fingers, testing the movement. "It feels alive. Like it's responding to me. I can feel the magic in it. Protection enchantments. Strength enhancement. And something else. Something I can't quite..."
She trailed off, staring at her gauntlets. A soft golden glow was emanating from them, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
Percy looked down at his own pile of gear. Armor pieces, dark blue-green like the deep ocean. Without thinking too hard about it—thinking led to anxiety, and anxiety led to standing still, and standing still in a desert seemed like a bad plan—he started putting it on.
The armor recognized him.
That was the only way to describe it. As soon as the chest piece settled against his torso, Percy felt something *click*. The Curse of Achilles hummed in response, and the armor seemed to mold itself to his invulnerable skin. Blue-green metal covered his chest, his shoulders, his arms. Not restricting. Enhancing.
When the gauntlets slid onto his hands, Percy felt his entire world shift.
Water.
He could feel *water*.
Not nearby water. Not ocean-within-walking-distance water. ALL water. Like someone had turned on a cosmic GPS that pinged every drop of H2O in a thousand-mile radius. There—three miles northeast, underground. An aquifer. Four miles south, a river cutting through rock. Moisture in the air, in the sand, in the morning dew that would form on rocks come dawn.
"Percy?" Calypso was staring at him. "Your gauntlets are glowing."
Percy looked down. She was right. The gauntlets pulsed with blue-green light, and he could see designs etched into the metal now. Waves. Tridents. Horses. All the symbols of Poseidon, but rendered in multiple styles—Greek, Roman, and something else he didn't recognize.
"I can feel it," Percy said, his voice rough with wonder. "The water. All of it. It's like... like the armor is connecting me to every source. Making sure I'm never cut off from my powers."
He clenched his fist, and somewhere underground, he felt the aquifer *respond*. Waiting. Ready.
"Hephaestus really did upgrade everything," Calypso murmured. She was examining her own armor more carefully now, running her fingers over the golden accents. "This isn't just protection. It's a gift. His last gift. He used the last divine power he had to make us weapons that could survive whatever's out there."
The thought made Percy's throat tight. Hephaestus—cranky, limping, usually-ignored Hephaestus—had spent his final moments crafting them survival gear. Had used the last dregs of godly power to give them a fighting chance.
"We're going to honor that," Percy said firmly. "Whatever's happening, wherever we are—we survive. We figure it out. We don't waste what he gave us."
"Agreed." Calypso pulled out the coin Hephaestus had shoved at her. "He said this was a weapon. Flip it—heads for sword, tails for staff."
Percy meanwhile was examining his pen. It looked like Riptide. Same size, same weight—no, heavier. Definitely heavier. He uncapped it.
The sword that materialized made him suck in a breath.
Riptide had been beautiful. Celestial bronze, perfect balance, deadly and elegant. This? This was Riptide's terrifying older sibling. The blade was longer—not by much, but enough to notice. And the metal... gods, the metal. It shimmered. Bronze, gold, and something silvery that seemed to shift in the light. Three metals forged together into something that *hummed* with power.
Percy gave it an experimental swing. The balance was perfect. Better than perfect. The sword moved like it was reading his mind, anticipating every strike.
"Celestial bronze, Imperial gold, and..." Percy squinted at the blade. "What's the third metal?"
"Uru," Calypso said quietly. "From the Norse. Hephaestus mentioned it. It's what they forge in the heart of dying stars. Indestructible. Capable of channeling any kind of power."
"So basically this sword can kill anything."
"That appears to be the idea, yes."
Percy re-capped it. The pen felt heavier in his pocket now, weighted with responsibility. "Okay. So we're armed. We're armored. We're in a desert. Any idea which desert?"
Calypso flipped her coin. It spun in the air, caught the light—heads. When she caught it, a sword materialized in her other hand. Sleek, deadly, with a blade that looked like captured sunlight. She flipped the coin again. Tails. The sword vanished, replaced by a staff—the same staff she'd been training with, but real now. Divine. Etched with symbols that glowed faintly gold.
"Heads: sword. Tails: staff," she confirmed, making the coin vanish into... somewhere. Percy had stopped questioning where divine artifacts went when they weren't being used. "As for where we are..." She scanned the horizon again. "Not Ogygia. Not Greece. The sun's wrong. The sand's wrong. And I can't feel my father's presence. Can't feel any Titan presence, actually."
That was weird. Calypso had always had a low-level awareness of Titan power—legacy of being Atlas's daughter. If she couldn't feel anything...
"Different world," Percy said. "Hephaestus said different universe. Maybe the gods sent us somewhere Galactus hasn't found yet."
"Or hasn't eaten yet."
"You're just a ray of sunshine, you know that?"
"One of us has to be realistic."
Percy was about to respond—probably with something sarcastic that would make Calypso roll her eyes—when the world exploded.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
About two miles north, a massive column of fire and sand erupted into the sky. The shockwave hit them a second later—a wall of heat and sound that made Percy's teeth rattle even through the armor. The explosion bloomed upward, mushrooming into the sky, and Percy could see *colors* in it. Reds and oranges, sure, but also blues and greens and something that looked like purple lightning.
"That's not a natural explosion," Calypso said.
"You think?"
Another explosion. Smaller. Followed by what sounded like... thunder? But wrong. Metallic thunder. Like someone was hitting a giant bell with a freight train.
Then—screaming. Faint, but definitely there. People screaming.
Percy and Calypso looked at each other.
"We should probably check that out," Percy said.
"We absolutely should not check that out," Calypso countered. "We just escaped cosmic annihilation. We're in an unknown location in an unknown universe. We're armed, yes, but we have no idea what's happening. The smart play is to find shelter, gather information, and—"
Another explosion. Closer this time. And the screaming was getting louder.
Percy was already moving.
"PERCY!" Calypso shouted behind him. "This is exactly the kind of impulsive hero nonsense that gets people killed!"
"Then stay here!" Percy called back. "I'll be fine!"
He heard her curse in Ancient Greek—some truly creative combinations that would've made his mom wash his mouth out with soap—and then she was running beside him, staff appearing in her hand mid-stride.
"I hate you," she panted.
"You love me."
"Those things are not mutually exclusive!"
They ran toward the explosions. Toward the screaming. Toward whatever fresh hell this new universe was throwing at them.
Because that's what heroes did.
Even when the world ended. Even when everything was gone. Even when survival meant running toward danger instead of away from it.
Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, survivor of Tartarus and two wars and cosmic annihilation, gripped his upgraded Riptide and ran toward the unknown.
Calypso, daughter of Atlas, immortal titaness and the only thing Percy had left from his old life, ran beside him.
Together.
The desert sand crunched under their feet. The armor Hephaestus had forged gleamed in the brutal sun. And ahead of them, something was tearing reality apart with explosions that tasted like battle.
Paradise was gone. Home was gone. Everything was gone.
But they were still here.
And that had to be enough.
—
The Mark I was dying.
Tony Stark could hear it in every grinding servo, feel it in every stuttering hydraulic. The suit was held together with literal spit, determination, and welding that would make any engineer weep. It was a monument to desperation. A middle finger to physics rendered in scrap metal and car batteries.
It was also the only reason he wasn't dead yet.
"COME ON!" Tony roared, his voice distorted by the helmet's speaker system. He squeezed the flamethrower trigger again. Fire belched from his gauntlet, turning three more terrorists into screaming torches. "COME ON, YOU WANT SOME? EVERYONE GETS SOME!"
The rage helped. Kept him from thinking about—
*No. Don't think about it. Keep moving. Keep fighting.*
Another group of Ten Rings soldiers rounded the rocky outcropping, AK-47s chattering. Bullets pinged off the Mark I's armor plating. Most of them, anyway. A few found gaps in the metal. Tony felt impacts against his legs, his side. Pain, but distant. The adrenaline was doing its job.
He activated the suit's rocket boots—if you could call them that. More like "controlled explosion boots." The thrust was uneven, violent, sent him lurching forward in a trajectory that was fifty percent flight and fifty percent barely-controlled falling with style.
Tony crashed into the terrorist group like a wrecking ball in a suit.
Three went down under his weight. The others scattered. Tony grabbed one by the vest, lifted him with the suit's enhanced strength, and threw him into the others. Bodies collided. Guns clattered on rock.
The flamethrower came up again. Tony tried not to think about what he was doing. Tried not to think about the fact that he was burning human beings alive. Tried not to think about—
*Yinsen.*
The name hit him like a physical blow. Tony staggered, caught himself against a boulder. His breathing was too fast inside the helmet. Hyperventilating. The air tasted like smoke and copper and death.
*"Don't waste it."*
Yinsen's last words. Spoken with blood on his lips and light fading from his eyes. While Tony had knelt there in this stupid metal coffin, unable to do anything but watch a good man die.
*"Don't waste your life."*
"I'm TRYING!" Tony screamed at no one, at everyone, at the universe that had taken a man who deserved to live and left Tony Stark—weapons dealer, merchant of death, destroyer of lives—still breathing.
More explosions behind him. The cave system. The munitions he'd rigged before the escape. Stark Industries weapons—his beautiful, terrible creations—tearing apart the mountain that had been his prison for three months.
Three months of torture. Of drowning. Of a car battery wired to his chest to keep shrapnel from shredding his heart. Of watching Yinsen work miracles with spare parts and hope.
Of planning this escape.
Of succeeding too late.
Tony forced himself to move. The Mark I's power gauge was in the red. Maybe ten minutes of operation left. Maybe less. And he had no idea where he was. The cave opened onto desert. Just... desert. Sand and rock and heat that made the suit's interior feel like an oven.
A bullet ricocheted off his helmet. Tony spun, servos screaming in protest. More Ten Rings fighters, these ones smart enough to aim for joints in the armor. He could see the camp now—the terrorist stronghold where they'd held him. Where they'd made him build weapons.
Where Yinsen had died buying him time.
The rage came back, hot and clean and simple.
Tony raised both arms. The repulsor prototype—barely functional, more likely to explode than fire properly—charged with a whine that set his teeth on edge. The magnetic field generators Yinsen had helped him calibrate hummed in his chest.
"For Yinsen," Tony whispered.
He fired.
The repulsor blast was nothing like what the technology would eventually become. It was crude. Unstable. A wave of force and heat that tore through the desert air like a drunken hurricane. It hit the weapons cache—Stark Industries missiles, Jericho prototypes, crates of ammunition—and the world turned white.
The explosion was biblical.
Tony was already running. The blast wave caught him anyway, sent the Mark I tumbling across the sand like a tin can kicked by a giant. He hit rock, bounced, rolled, the suit screaming at him through warning klaxons that were barely audible over the ringing in his ears.
When he finally stopped moving, Tony lay there for a second. Just breathing. Just being alive when Yinsen wasn't.
The guilt was worse than the pain.
*Get up,* he told himself. *Get up get up get up. He died so you could live. Don't waste it.*
Tony triggered the suit's systems. Half of them were offline. The left leg hydraulics were shot. One flamethrower was completely dead. The power cell was at four percent and dropping.
But the right leg still worked. And he had two arms. And the desert stretched out in every direction, which meant if he could just get far enough from the explosion, far enough from the Ten Rings, maybe—
Movement on the ridge.
Tony's head snapped up. Two figures, running toward the explosion site. Toward him. And they were *fast*. Too fast. Moving with a grace and speed that made his engineer brain sit up and take notice even through the grief and adrenaline.
Not Ten Rings. The Ten Rings didn't have people who moved like that. Didn't have armor that *glowed*.
Tony struggled to his feet. The Mark I protested every inch of the way. He raised his one working arm, the flamethrower coughing and sputtering but still technically functional.
"Stop right there!" His voice came out distorted, threatening, mechanical. Good. He needed threatening right now. "I don't know who you are, but I'm having a really bad day and I'm wearing a metal suit full of weapons, so maybe think twice!"
The figures didn't stop. They did, however, slow down. Got close enough that Tony could make out details.
A guy. Young—maybe early twenties? Dark hair, Mediterranean features, wearing armor that looked like someone had taken Greek mythology and given it a budget. Blue-green metal that seemed to shimmer with ocean colors. And his gauntlets were *glowing*. Actually glowing. Blue-green light pulsing from them like they had their own power source.
And a woman. Stunning in a way that made Tony's brain stutter even through the trauma. Long wavy hair, armor of white and gold that seemed to capture and reflect the desert sun. In her hand—a staff that hadn't been there a second ago. It just... appeared. Like magic.
Magic.
Tony's brain, already stretched thin, tried to process this. Magic. People who could run that fast. Glowing armor. Appearing weapons.
"Okay," Tony said slowly. "So I'm either having a psychotic break from trauma, or I wandered into a Renaissance fair populated by Olympic sprinters. Either way, I'm—"
He cut himself off. Because the guy had just pulled out a *pen*. A pen. From his pocket. Like he was about to take notes on Tony's mental breakdown.
Then the pen turned into a sword.
Just—transformed. Mid-air. One second: pen. Next second: three feet of metal that looked like someone had melted down three different types of bronze and forged them into something that *hummed* with power Tony could feel even from twenty feet away.
"What the—" Tony started.
"Are you okay?" The guy called out. His voice was younger than Tony expected. Concerned. "We heard the explosion. Saw people running. Are you hurt? Do you need help?"
Tony stared at him. At the magical sword. At the glowing gauntlets. At the woman who was scanning the area with the tactical awareness of someone who'd seen combat. Real combat. Not the kind Tony had manufactured and sold, but the kind where you bled and died and lost people who mattered.
"Am I okay?" Tony heard himself laugh. It sounded unhinged even to his own ears. "Am I OKAY? I just blew up a terrorist camp after escaping three months of torture. I'm wearing a suit I built in a cave with a box of scraps. My chest is being held together by a car battery and prayers. My friend just died. And now I'm being approached by Aquaman and Wonder Woman with magic weapons. So no. NO, I am not okay. I am the OPPOSITE of okay. I am comprehensively, definitively, catastrophically NOT OKAY."
The words came out in a rush. Tony's breathing was ragged again. The panic attack he'd been holding off was coming back with a vengeance.
The guy and the woman exchanged a look. Some kind of silent communication.
Then the woman spoke. Her voice was calm. Steady. Ancient, somehow, even though she couldn't be older than mid-twenties. "You're in shock. Combat shock. I've seen it before. You need to breathe. Can you do that? Just breathe."
"I'm BREATHING," Tony snapped. "I'm breathing and I'm alive and Yinsen is DEAD and—"
His legs gave out.
The Mark I collapsed. Tony went down with it, the suit's remaining systems failing all at once. Suddenly he was just a man in a metal coffin, trapped in the desert, breaking apart from the inside out.
He could hear the two strangers running toward him. Heard them calling out. But it all seemed very far away.
*Don't waste it,* Yinsen's voice echoed in his head. *Don't waste your life.*
Tony Stark, genius billionaire weapons manufacturer, knelt in the sand of a desert that had taken everything from him and tried to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do with the life he'd just bought with a good man's death.
And two impossible people with magic weapons ran toward him through the smoke and heat, bringing with them questions Tony didn't have the capacity to answer.
But that was fine.
He had plenty of questions of his own.
---
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