Pepper sobs, pressing her hands harder into the unforgiving wound, her hair matted to her face with tears as dawn threatens to break in the ever-present distance.

“Take-“ Tony wheezes, his eyes on the far off, barely peaking sun-rise. There are slithers of gold curling along the fringes of clouds still heavy with night. “Take-the-out-put-“ he gasps for breath, lunges rattling and Pepper shushes him; her eyelashes clumping together with tears.

“Don’t talk, Tony,” she pleads. She can’t see her hands through the blood. There’s so much blood. “Save your energy, save your-“

“The arc reactor,” he spits out, eyes clenched shut in pain. “Take it out- throw it into the-into the late.”

Pepper stares at him: willing comprehension to come. The lake? What lake? What- she looks around, before seeing, for the first time, the muddy bank they’re on. Tony had begged her to drag him here, she thought it was to keep them safe, but now- she doesn’t even know where they are. There’s a lake a little way off, and Tony’s half slumped in her arms. He feels heavier than he’s ever felt. She ignores him, for now, instead racking her brain. There has to be something they can do. The suit’s gone, but maybe she can run back to the battlefield, get it back- wear it, if she has to. There’ll be a medical kit embedded into the metal-

“The reactor!” He grits out, immediately yelling and arching from the pain of speaking. She moves her hands frantically to his face in an attempt to reassure him, but that makes the wound ooze afresh.

“Tony, I’m not taking it out,” she swears, hands falling back to the wound and applying pressure. How can she go back without letting him bleed out? “You’ll die-“

“I’m dying anyway,” he hisses, and she lets out another sob, and his eyes finally seem to see her. They finally drag away from the horizon. He softens. “Pepper,” he whispers, “please. Listen to me.” He’s summoning all his energy- they could be his last words to her- “take the reactor out, throw it in the lake, or I will die.”

“You’ve gone crazy,” she weeps, but her hands are already going to his chest. Her fingers tremble as she pulls the blue-core out. It burns her palms. It’s cracked in places. What will this do? This is stupid, he’s dying-he’s dying and she can’t do anything-

He’s looking up at her desperately.

She nods, struggling to her feet. She feels suddenly drained of energy- the shock and adrenaline confusing her system, but she runs like a colt born in the aftermath of nuclear war; clumsy and deformed, to the lake. With all her energy, she hurls the reactor.

It doesn’t go very far, and she screams when a second after the splash- the reactor shoots back out-

Attached to a hand.

She falls into the mud, scrambling back in fear and disbelief- eyes trained on the water. It’s murky and stagnant. A cesspool more than a lake as the mud encroaches into it. But it seems to be clearing rapidly. It’s lightening, turning a brighter, lighter blue. Arc-reactor blue.

The hand rises out, connected to a shoulder, connected to a head and-

The water shimmers azure.

A boy, but he’s not a boy, Pepper knows that. He looks like a boy, but he’s not. She can feel it. He’s adorned in pearls and topaz; he glitters like crystals and gems. He has ivory skin and lips of amethyst, and he’s wearing white robes. He comes to stand at the edge of the lake, his feet still in the water, and he looks at her, and then beyond her to Tony’s motionless form, and then he turns his eyes to the sunset.

“Bring him to me,” the boy whispers, and Pepper nods.

Tony is heavy as she drags him through the mud. His eyes unfocused, his words slurry. “”unrise?” He asks, despair thick in his tone, and she curses as he slips from her fingers. She grabs him bruisingly tight, and yanks him through the sludge towards the water’s edge. “Sunr…” he tries again, and she pants, frustration in her blood and she turns to look at the horizon to appease his delirium. She doesn’t understand.

The first rays are starting to dawn.

“Almost,” she answers, and he looks sick.

She doesn’t know what any of this means. She drags him to the water, and as soon as she does, the boy is grabbing Tony, and easing him a few feet in. The water laps over the older man hurriedly, beautiful blue and serene. The arc reactor is gone. Tony’s skin seems to flush slightly with life, and his eyes open, and he jolts.

“Peter,” he whispers, reaching a hand up to touch the boy’s face.

Pepper stares.

“Oh, Tony,” Peter hiccups, his eyes glitter like midnight stars. “Why did you wait so long? Why have you left it so late?” His hands skitter along Tony’s wounds in dismay. The water is washing into it. Pepper wants to say, it won’t stop bleeding if water’s on it, but she doesn’t think science applies here.

“”m too late?” Tony asks, his smile half-dazed. The pain is gone. Euphoria and the final chapters are upon him. “At leas’... got to see you, again…” he mumbles, and his dirty, bloody, muddy fingers, stroke across Peter’s perfect lips.

Peter shakes his head, diamond tears trailing down his cheeks. “It is not too late. I won’t let it be too late.”

A beam of sunlight breaks over the pink horizon.

Peter seems to startle into action, and he starts easing Tony further and further into the lake- deeper and deeper, and Pepper startles, reaching forward to grab her best friend’s ankle. “He’ll drown!” She cries; voice breaking, and Peter looks for one moment like he’s going to send her sprawling back into the mud, but then he doesn’t.

He reaches over Tony’s body to cup her face in his hand.

He can’t leave the water, she realises. Before she feels it: energy, warm and healing seems to flow from him into her. She feels stronger. “He’s special,” Peter whispers, voice thick with feeling, “He’s precious.”

Pepper knows that. But Peter’s the one in all the diamonds who rose out of a lake-

“I gave him the core all those years ago. His name is written across the universe. He is greater. His soul is more. I have to taken him. He is my love. My heart.”

“But…” tears spring afresh, and Peter pulls away, leaving her with strength and faith and grief.

“He may return to you someday.” Peter promises, hooking his hands under Tony’s arms as though the man doesn’t weigh a thing. “I will take him to my land and I will heal him. He may come back to you. I hope he does not.”

“Pepper’s smart,” Tony says, and it’s a visceral relief to hear how much stronger his voice sounds now. He’s still bleeding, but the water isn’t red with it. He looks weak, but alive. “You don’t have to explain everything- hurry up, the sun’ll burn you-“

A sunbeam on cue strikes across Peter’s face and Pepper can smell ash.

“Pepper,” Peter whispers, heedless of the way his twinkle seems to dim in the light. “I am grateful to you for keeping him safe, but he is my heart.”

She nods, almost pushing him away so he doesn’t turn to dust, and as Peter goes back into the lake, into the shadows of water: the scent of ash disappears and his twinkle returns.

She watches as the two of them submerge.

Tony gives her a smile and a wink. Clumsy and bloody, but Tony.

It’s a goodbye.

She passes out as the sun rises.

When she wakes up there is no lake. She’s on hardened mud; alive and healed, but dirty. Happy staggers out of the shrubbery and demands to know where Tony is- frantic and worried, and Pepper stares at the noon-day sun and shakes her head.

“I think…” she whispers, “…he’s with his heart.”