Not Even Death Can do us Part by starks-spareparts
“Then I’ll make you,” Stephen spoke, quite softly yet still keeping his stern demeanor from behind Tony. The smaller man’s back was to him; they had gotten into an argument.
“You’ll make me what?” Tony retorted, his arms folded and a sad scowl painted on his face. He ignored the feeling of Stephen’s hand on his shoulder before the sorcerer passed him.
Stephen didn’t answer Tony’s question with words, but instead gestured with a flair of his arm and cloak, to face an empty area about a meter off the ground. Orange sparks appeared, creating a portal unlike any Stephen had ever before; It didn’t have a destination. Inside, a familiar place with an unfamiliar scene appeared. It flickered through, like a television losing signal, but nonetheless, Tony saw.
He saw himself singlehandedly take down the titan Thanos, sacrificing himself over all the other lives in the universe.
“That’s…” Tony breathed in disbelief. No one else but Stephen had seen the possibilities before.
“You. Possibility 1 out of 14 million.”
There was a pause as Tony thought, he looked over at Stephen to see his face twitch into an uncomfortable sorrow as he watched the future on repeat.
“But…we didn’t win, Stephen.”
“We didn’t need to win for me to see your strength.” He bowed his head, refusing to look again at the vision.
Stephen, with a flick of his wrist, showed Tony another possibility. It was him protecting Peter, using his body as a shield to keep the boy safe. He couldn’t see what happened next, for Stephen was already onto the next future. He was skipping through them faster, not looking at them as they flew by.
He flicked through futures like pictures in a phone’s camera roll, showing off that in every future Tony sacrificed everything.
“Even then, I kept falling for you, Tony. In nearly every timeline, when we thought we had won but hadn’t, I saw this,” Stephen spoke, his tone an odd sincerity to it that Tony hardly ever heard from the sorcerer. His head was no longer bowed.
It took him a moment to stop looking longingly at the sorcerer, his heart warming as his self loathing was whisked away by Stephen’s profession of love, and to look back at the fizzling portal. The image of the men slow dancing at a formal event shone through. They were both dressed in dark tuxedos, Stephen’s accompanied by the cloak that made itself into the form of a cloth in his breast pocket. Tony’s mouth hung open in awe for a moment, looking for the words.
“Are we-?”
“This is our wedding.” Stephen said, smiling.
Truthfully, Tony didn’t know if he was smiling, it just felt like he was smiling. Tony never took his eyes off the vision in front of him. Stephen’s arm hung loosely over his shoulder while his other hand was firmly in his own. Tony could feel it- the soothing chill of Stephen’s hands against his palms and his lean body pressed against his in a romantic dance.
The men enjoyed the vision for a bit longer until Stephen spoke up,
“I’ll make you believe I’ll always love you.”
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