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Title: A Million Shades of Blue
Author: Not Applicable
Pairing/Characters: Tony Stark/James Rhodes
Rating: Teen and Up
Tony felt himself being pulled backwards at breakneck speed, and suddenly he stopped with a horrible jolt, a jolt so horrible that it knocked him out cold.
He woke up an hour later still floating in the abyss. He was surrounded by the exploded debris of the Chitauri mothership, wiring and body parts and dishes and bomb fragments whirring past, dinging up his armor. He figured he should get out of the explosion's debri field so he fired up his boosters and moved a distance away, where the debris was a lot thinner.
He turned on his distress signal and then looked around. There were planets nearby, one of them thankfully blocking him from the burning heat of a nearby star, his suit gratefully providing climate control against the absolute zero of space. The planets looked close to him but he knew they were actually weeks away, even at Mach 5, the fastest this suit could go.
He didn't bother trying to talk to JARVIS. He looked around at the planet nearby. There was a pale blue ocean and green swathes of trees across it's continents. Maybe there were people there. Someone, anyone. He fired up his boosters and started traveling towards the rock.
Three hours later he felt he was no closer, and he looked to see that he only had eight hours of oxygen left. His stomach felt funny and he wished he had someone to talk to. “JARVIS,” he said, and immediately he felt stupid.
There was nothing around him. Just space junk whizzing by frightfully close. It was deathly quiet. He thought of turning on music but his radio worked through an uplink to his music library at home. There could be no music.
An hour later, Tony was starting to sweat inside the suit. He was going to suffocate in his armor in seven hours. He couldn't reach anything that could save his life in that amount of time. He thought of that failed phone call to Pepper and his conversation with Rhodey before he grabbed onto that fucking nuke. He'd told Rhodey to stay in South America, not to worry about it, but still he just responded with, “I'll be there in an hour.” He thought of the last human voice he heard, Cap telling him, “You know that's a one-way ticket, Stark.” He remembered the sound of JARVIS, “Powering down, sir.”
An hour later, Tony saw a little shuttle floating by, not traveling too fast at all, actually. He immediately fired over to it and found the hatch, and he was easily able to jimmy his way inside of it. It was a Chitauri scoutship and he knew the crew would all be dead, and he didn't know why but that made him horribly sad. He pressurized the airlock and entered the ship, and sure enough there were dead cyborg lobstermen all around him, guns still in their hands, walkie-talkies and alien clipboards and what-have-you. He was able to take off his faceplate then, gratefully breathing non-recycled air for the first time since he put the suit on back at his place. He walked up to cockpit and shoved the dead pilot away, and he pulled a wire out of his suit and hooked it into a port on the Chitauri ship. The interfaces didn't work together at all but he was able to eventually figure out the controls, and it turns out the ship was barely worthy of flight, basically drifting in the opposite direction of the planet below. The Chitauri breathed oxygen like humans did so he hoped that fucking place was habitable or even had people on it. People that could get him back to Earth, or at the very least, take him in and help him make a home.
Tony had no idea where he was. He tried not to panic.
He was able to direct the ship's drift towards the planet before him, and he used plain old pen and paper to determine that it would take him a week to get there. He spent those days walking around the ship and learning it's systems, finding the oxygen stores and replenishing the ones in his suit, preparing canisters that he could take with him when he would eventually have to leave this thing. He found food but most of it seemed unfit for human consumption except for a very sweet sort of tack, but luckily there was plenty of water.
After three days, the biological components of the cyborgs began to decay. Five days and they were starting to leak, running down towards the airlock door like a disgusting river. Tony pushed all of their bodies into the airlock and said a prayer, then jettisoned them all out into space. He cleaned up the smears on the floor with the rags of their uniforms, and he caught himself crying but didn't stop. They had been dead the entire time, but still. Tony was really alone now. There was no one. Literally no one to look at, to smile at, to talk to or fall asleep with.
Two days later, Tony suited up and packed his suit full of all the oxygen and water he could, and he even restocked his food stores with the weird Chitauri shortbread he'd found. The little shuttle entered the atmosphere at terminal velocity, and immediately Tony could see and hear the hull catching fire from re-entry. He used his repulsors to blow open the hatch door and he bailed at 2,000 feet, watching as the flaming shuttle splashed down into an ocean. Tony's only mode of transportation off of this planet was destroyed now. Tony had no idea where he was.
He flew over to a nearby beach and landed on soft white sand. The HUD told him that the air was breathable, and he stuck a hand in the water to find that the ocean was actually fresh (and potable) water. The temperature outside was 78 degrees Fahrenheit. There had to be living things on this planet. There had to be primates, or maybe even people.
Tony removed his helmet and the air smelled clean and salty even though the water was fresh. He could see vegetation nearby. Maybe there was edible food. He could see fish in the water.
*
Two days passed. Tony put on his suit and flew a total of twenty miles that day, and he found nothing. He flew straight up into the air then and looked down on the map of the planet below him, and near him he could see no cities, no towns, no villages, no tribes, not even one fucking person. He went into the woods and found fruit, and he knew he would have to use his wits to figure out how to fish. He still had his distress signal going, just in case.
*
A week passed and Tony had finally constructed a lean-to that would stay up through the night. He remembered hiking with Rhodey in Brazil and sleeping on the beach with him, drinking Cachaça straight and making love until the sun rose. Their lean-to was always designed this way, two sticks and one side that sloped all the way to the ground, and it provided enough cover while giving them a gorgeous view of the beach and the horizon before them.
Tony sat by the fire and roasted what he hoped was a banana, remembering ordering Bananas Foster all the time at Spago because Rhodey would get so embarrassed by the way the waiter would prepare it for them at the table. And he'd plate it beautifully and put two spoons in it, and then the waiter would say, “Gentlemen, enjoy.”
*
One day Tony found coconut trees, real Earth-style coconut trees, and he burst into tears. Something to remind him of home.
The same day, he figured out how to fish with a spear. He mastered it quickly and feasted on strange pink-fleshed things that were flaky and sweet like mahi-mahi when roasted over a fire. He drank coconut water and thought about the time Rhodey got pissed at him in Barbados for disappearing to flirt with some busboy. Rhodey dumped him when they got home from that trip, but Tony figured he deserved it. That was pretty rude. They were on vacation together, as a couple.
Tony laughed to himself. He and Rhodey broke up two more times before finally giving up when Tony was 22. He was getting serious about his career in the Air Force by then and he needed to shift his focus anyway. Tony made him the official military liaison to Stark Industries – “a gift for putting up with eight years of my shit” – but the truth was that Rhodey was perfect for the job. They both moved on after that, but Tony always asked himself how he fucked that one up so bad.
He wondered what happened when Rhodey got to New York. He wondered how Pepper and Happy were.
*
Two weeks and Tony was hiking in the woods now, searching for more flora and gathering up what he thought he could eat. He used his suit's urine filtration system to purify water for himself but he expected the fruit to make him sick, but it never did. He didn't understand. Why were there only fish on this planet? Where were all the people?
*
He knew he'd been declared dead by now. He knew his will had been read. He was confident in his decision to leave his family's legacy in Pepper's hands, and he hoped she'd at least adopt a kid one day and train them up, pass it down. He knew Happy would be glad to receive whatever he'd been given and he knew that Rhodey wouldn't care at all. Tony had secretly revised his will after he got back from Afghanistan and got rid of Stane, making sure that the most important people in his life would be okay after he was gone. He gave Rhodey everything. He'd always wanted to give Rhodey everything, anyway.
*
Three weeks and Tony thought about The Avengers. He thought of quiet Bruce and hoped he was still in New York and still surrounded by friends. He hoped the same for Barton, one that he unfortunately had never gotten to know very well. He hoped that Steve and Natasha were okay, that they weren't beating themselves up over this. He was mad at first – if only they'd left it open for just one more fucking second – but he couldn't blame Cap. It had to be done, and Tony had made a choice. He thought of Thor and suddenly became hopeful – Thor could travel between the Nine Realms, and maybe he had a way to find him. He desperately hoped that the team had thought of this by now, but by the end of the night he was writing out equations in the sand and crying, thinking of his mother and his father and wishing he could see that old bastard one more time.
*
Tony dreamed of the Avengers and Pepper and Happy and his parents and Rhodey. He dreamed of Rhodey all the time.
*
A month and Tony didn't think it was a good idea to hold on to hope. He had water and food and he did yoga and kung fu on the beach every morning, went running, and every now and then he'd put on the suit and set out in a new direction but he never found anything. Not even any birds or mammals. There was no technology here. Tony thought of those days he spent wandering across a desert, the nights getting so cold that he thought he'd freeze to death, and one day in the dizzying heat of the sun he just accepted it, just told himself, 'okay world, fuck you, too, eat me alive, let me die now please,' and then he saw helicopters whizzing over his head. And then there was Rhodey in front of him, and Rhodey stayed beside him, all the way to the base, and then Rhodey was inside of him, letting Tony cry and saying that he loved him, still after all this time.
Tony desperately wanted to go home, but he knew he couldn't. This was it. This was forever. He looked up into the sky and was thankful that it was blue, even though it had three moons in it. Reminded him a little of home, of hiking and sleeping on the beach, of not being alone. Tony napped in the middle of the day, the crashing of the waves near him sounding loud and harsh, almost like a storm.
He woke at sunset and made a fire, the wind rustling the trees around, and he sat and stared into the flames as night came quickly. He heard more rustling and thought of putting his shirt back on in case there was a storm coming, but then he recognized it: those were footsteps. Specifically, the foot falls of a biped. Tony immediately thought of Rhodey but this was an alien planet, and only one person could find him if he were lost in the Nine Realms, and that was Thor. Tony stood and stepped around the fire, and he asked, “Who's there? Thor?”
“Try again,” he heard, and he froze. This was an alien planet, not Barbados or the MIT science library or even Afghanistan. Still, Tony knew that he shouldn't have been surprised. If anyone was going to find him, he knew who that would be.
“Rhodey.”
Tony told him all of this around mouthfuls of ribs and green beans and enchiladas. They were under the lean-to, lying on a bed of elephant ears and eating it all with their hands while Tony spoke, his tone heavy but his eyes bright, and Rhodey knew why – because they both knew how this horrible story would end.
“I thought I was dreaming,” Tony said, lying back with Rhodey on his elbow over him. “I dream of you all the time anyway and I just thought, 'oh god, here it comes, I'm finally coming unglued,' but then I heard your voice, and then you walked up to me and I fucking touched you...” Tony leaned up and kissed Rhodey passionately, hungrily, their mouths still smoky from his first taste of earthly food in 38 days. “You found me,” Tony breathed. “Of course you did.”
Rhodey turned on the beacon Thor gave him and placed it in the sand. He reached into his rucksack and pulled out the flask, and when he showed it to Tony he was literally bowled over by hugs and kisses, Tony speaking into his mouth: “You are the greatest you are the best best best man I have ever known I will love you forever Rhodey do you fucking hear me?”
*
Thor arrived to find Tony suited up and Rhodey with his rucksack on. They'd taken down Tony's camp and used a knife to cut T.S. + J.R. into one of the coconut trees Tony had found. “Does that mean we own this planet now?” Tony had asked, and Rhodey smiled and said, “I wouldn't mind adding it to my collection of vacation homes at all.”
Thor hugged Tony and smiled with a heartbreaking sincerity, and he took them both by the shoulder as they mimicked the touch. Tony smiled at Rhodey as they were enveloped by a million shades of blue, and then they were gone.
*
Tony's disassembly strip sizzled beneath them and Rhodey immediately stepped away to let the machines disassemble the Mark 7 from around Tony. Pepper must have heard the noise because she came bursting through the doors in her robe and holding her toothbrush – Heimdall told Rhodey that she'd been sleeping in the living room ever since Rhodey left, that way she never had to take her eyes off of the strip. She had been waiting for their return.
She fell into Tony's arms and completely ignored his beard and the loss of weight, and Rhodey just continued to walk into the house and put his rucksack on the kitchen counter. The others began to emerge from the elevators and stairwells, and they all hugged Rhodey and patted his shoulders as they continued on their way to meet Tony. Steve stopped and shook Rhodey's hand, his eyes full of emotion when he said, “Great work, Colonel.”
Rhodey went to rest off the trip and was surprised when Tony joined him an hour later, sliding into bed and grazing his beard along Rhodey's neck.
“I thought you'd wanna stay up,” Rhodey mumbled, genuinely exhausted. “Catch up with everyone.”
“Later,” Tony said. “I wanna rest with you for a while.” He kissed Rhodey's neck and it made him smile. “I'm going to keep you this time. I'm not losing you again, okay? I mean I obviously belong to you but now you belong to me, too.”
*
Once they announced Tony's return and the press got wind of the story of his rescue, people began to call for Rhodey to receive the Medal of Honor. He wasn't sure he qualified for that, but he was humbled nonetheless. It turned out that in the court of public opinion, literally no one on earth had thought Rhodey would be able to bring Tony back except for Virginia Potts and Harold Hogan, but his feelings weren't hurt by that. He never doubted it for a minute, but no one out there knew their history, and no one knew that Rhodey always found Tony no matter what. No one knew that Rhodey would search forever for Tony if he had to, across all Nine Realms and into the blackness beyond if that's what it took.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Author: Not Applicable
Pairing/Characters: Tony Stark/James Rhodes
Rating: Teen and Up
Tony felt himself being pulled backwards at breakneck speed, and suddenly he stopped with a horrible jolt, a jolt so horrible that it knocked him out cold.
He woke up an hour later still floating in the abyss. He was surrounded by the exploded debris of the Chitauri mothership, wiring and body parts and dishes and bomb fragments whirring past, dinging up his armor. He figured he should get out of the explosion's debri field so he fired up his boosters and moved a distance away, where the debris was a lot thinner.
He turned on his distress signal and then looked around. There were planets nearby, one of them thankfully blocking him from the burning heat of a nearby star, his suit gratefully providing climate control against the absolute zero of space. The planets looked close to him but he knew they were actually weeks away, even at Mach 5, the fastest this suit could go.
He didn't bother trying to talk to JARVIS. He looked around at the planet nearby. There was a pale blue ocean and green swathes of trees across it's continents. Maybe there were people there. Someone, anyone. He fired up his boosters and started traveling towards the rock.
Three hours later he felt he was no closer, and he looked to see that he only had eight hours of oxygen left. His stomach felt funny and he wished he had someone to talk to. “JARVIS,” he said, and immediately he felt stupid.
There was nothing around him. Just space junk whizzing by frightfully close. It was deathly quiet. He thought of turning on music but his radio worked through an uplink to his music library at home. There could be no music.
An hour later, Tony was starting to sweat inside the suit. He was going to suffocate in his armor in seven hours. He couldn't reach anything that could save his life in that amount of time. He thought of that failed phone call to Pepper and his conversation with Rhodey before he grabbed onto that fucking nuke. He'd told Rhodey to stay in South America, not to worry about it, but still he just responded with, “I'll be there in an hour.” He thought of the last human voice he heard, Cap telling him, “You know that's a one-way ticket, Stark.” He remembered the sound of JARVIS, “Powering down, sir.”
An hour later, Tony saw a little shuttle floating by, not traveling too fast at all, actually. He immediately fired over to it and found the hatch, and he was easily able to jimmy his way inside of it. It was a Chitauri scoutship and he knew the crew would all be dead, and he didn't know why but that made him horribly sad. He pressurized the airlock and entered the ship, and sure enough there were dead cyborg lobstermen all around him, guns still in their hands, walkie-talkies and alien clipboards and what-have-you. He was able to take off his faceplate then, gratefully breathing non-recycled air for the first time since he put the suit on back at his place. He walked up to cockpit and shoved the dead pilot away, and he pulled a wire out of his suit and hooked it into a port on the Chitauri ship. The interfaces didn't work together at all but he was able to eventually figure out the controls, and it turns out the ship was barely worthy of flight, basically drifting in the opposite direction of the planet below. The Chitauri breathed oxygen like humans did so he hoped that fucking place was habitable or even had people on it. People that could get him back to Earth, or at the very least, take him in and help him make a home.
Tony had no idea where he was. He tried not to panic.
He was able to direct the ship's drift towards the planet before him, and he used plain old pen and paper to determine that it would take him a week to get there. He spent those days walking around the ship and learning it's systems, finding the oxygen stores and replenishing the ones in his suit, preparing canisters that he could take with him when he would eventually have to leave this thing. He found food but most of it seemed unfit for human consumption except for a very sweet sort of tack, but luckily there was plenty of water.
After three days, the biological components of the cyborgs began to decay. Five days and they were starting to leak, running down towards the airlock door like a disgusting river. Tony pushed all of their bodies into the airlock and said a prayer, then jettisoned them all out into space. He cleaned up the smears on the floor with the rags of their uniforms, and he caught himself crying but didn't stop. They had been dead the entire time, but still. Tony was really alone now. There was no one. Literally no one to look at, to smile at, to talk to or fall asleep with.
Two days later, Tony suited up and packed his suit full of all the oxygen and water he could, and he even restocked his food stores with the weird Chitauri shortbread he'd found. The little shuttle entered the atmosphere at terminal velocity, and immediately Tony could see and hear the hull catching fire from re-entry. He used his repulsors to blow open the hatch door and he bailed at 2,000 feet, watching as the flaming shuttle splashed down into an ocean. Tony's only mode of transportation off of this planet was destroyed now. Tony had no idea where he was.
He flew over to a nearby beach and landed on soft white sand. The HUD told him that the air was breathable, and he stuck a hand in the water to find that the ocean was actually fresh (and potable) water. The temperature outside was 78 degrees Fahrenheit. There had to be living things on this planet. There had to be primates, or maybe even people.
Tony removed his helmet and the air smelled clean and salty even though the water was fresh. He could see vegetation nearby. Maybe there was edible food. He could see fish in the water.
*
Two days passed. Tony put on his suit and flew a total of twenty miles that day, and he found nothing. He flew straight up into the air then and looked down on the map of the planet below him, and near him he could see no cities, no towns, no villages, no tribes, not even one fucking person. He went into the woods and found fruit, and he knew he would have to use his wits to figure out how to fish. He still had his distress signal going, just in case.
*
A week passed and Tony had finally constructed a lean-to that would stay up through the night. He remembered hiking with Rhodey in Brazil and sleeping on the beach with him, drinking Cachaça straight and making love until the sun rose. Their lean-to was always designed this way, two sticks and one side that sloped all the way to the ground, and it provided enough cover while giving them a gorgeous view of the beach and the horizon before them.
Tony sat by the fire and roasted what he hoped was a banana, remembering ordering Bananas Foster all the time at Spago because Rhodey would get so embarrassed by the way the waiter would prepare it for them at the table. And he'd plate it beautifully and put two spoons in it, and then the waiter would say, “Gentlemen, enjoy.”
*
One day Tony found coconut trees, real Earth-style coconut trees, and he burst into tears. Something to remind him of home.
The same day, he figured out how to fish with a spear. He mastered it quickly and feasted on strange pink-fleshed things that were flaky and sweet like mahi-mahi when roasted over a fire. He drank coconut water and thought about the time Rhodey got pissed at him in Barbados for disappearing to flirt with some busboy. Rhodey dumped him when they got home from that trip, but Tony figured he deserved it. That was pretty rude. They were on vacation together, as a couple.
Tony laughed to himself. He and Rhodey broke up two more times before finally giving up when Tony was 22. He was getting serious about his career in the Air Force by then and he needed to shift his focus anyway. Tony made him the official military liaison to Stark Industries – “a gift for putting up with eight years of my shit” – but the truth was that Rhodey was perfect for the job. They both moved on after that, but Tony always asked himself how he fucked that one up so bad.
He wondered what happened when Rhodey got to New York. He wondered how Pepper and Happy were.
*
Two weeks and Tony was hiking in the woods now, searching for more flora and gathering up what he thought he could eat. He used his suit's urine filtration system to purify water for himself but he expected the fruit to make him sick, but it never did. He didn't understand. Why were there only fish on this planet? Where were all the people?
*
He knew he'd been declared dead by now. He knew his will had been read. He was confident in his decision to leave his family's legacy in Pepper's hands, and he hoped she'd at least adopt a kid one day and train them up, pass it down. He knew Happy would be glad to receive whatever he'd been given and he knew that Rhodey wouldn't care at all. Tony had secretly revised his will after he got back from Afghanistan and got rid of Stane, making sure that the most important people in his life would be okay after he was gone. He gave Rhodey everything. He'd always wanted to give Rhodey everything, anyway.
*
Three weeks and Tony thought about The Avengers. He thought of quiet Bruce and hoped he was still in New York and still surrounded by friends. He hoped the same for Barton, one that he unfortunately had never gotten to know very well. He hoped that Steve and Natasha were okay, that they weren't beating themselves up over this. He was mad at first – if only they'd left it open for just one more fucking second – but he couldn't blame Cap. It had to be done, and Tony had made a choice. He thought of Thor and suddenly became hopeful – Thor could travel between the Nine Realms, and maybe he had a way to find him. He desperately hoped that the team had thought of this by now, but by the end of the night he was writing out equations in the sand and crying, thinking of his mother and his father and wishing he could see that old bastard one more time.
*
Tony dreamed of the Avengers and Pepper and Happy and his parents and Rhodey. He dreamed of Rhodey all the time.
*
A month and Tony didn't think it was a good idea to hold on to hope. He had water and food and he did yoga and kung fu on the beach every morning, went running, and every now and then he'd put on the suit and set out in a new direction but he never found anything. Not even any birds or mammals. There was no technology here. Tony thought of those days he spent wandering across a desert, the nights getting so cold that he thought he'd freeze to death, and one day in the dizzying heat of the sun he just accepted it, just told himself, 'okay world, fuck you, too, eat me alive, let me die now please,' and then he saw helicopters whizzing over his head. And then there was Rhodey in front of him, and Rhodey stayed beside him, all the way to the base, and then Rhodey was inside of him, letting Tony cry and saying that he loved him, still after all this time.
Tony desperately wanted to go home, but he knew he couldn't. This was it. This was forever. He looked up into the sky and was thankful that it was blue, even though it had three moons in it. Reminded him a little of home, of hiking and sleeping on the beach, of not being alone. Tony napped in the middle of the day, the crashing of the waves near him sounding loud and harsh, almost like a storm.
He woke at sunset and made a fire, the wind rustling the trees around, and he sat and stared into the flames as night came quickly. He heard more rustling and thought of putting his shirt back on in case there was a storm coming, but then he recognized it: those were footsteps. Specifically, the foot falls of a biped. Tony immediately thought of Rhodey but this was an alien planet, and only one person could find him if he were lost in the Nine Realms, and that was Thor. Tony stood and stepped around the fire, and he asked, “Who's there? Thor?”
“Try again,” he heard, and he froze. This was an alien planet, not Barbados or the MIT science library or even Afghanistan. Still, Tony knew that he shouldn't have been surprised. If anyone was going to find him, he knew who that would be.
“Rhodey.”
Tony told him all of this around mouthfuls of ribs and green beans and enchiladas. They were under the lean-to, lying on a bed of elephant ears and eating it all with their hands while Tony spoke, his tone heavy but his eyes bright, and Rhodey knew why – because they both knew how this horrible story would end.
“I thought I was dreaming,” Tony said, lying back with Rhodey on his elbow over him. “I dream of you all the time anyway and I just thought, 'oh god, here it comes, I'm finally coming unglued,' but then I heard your voice, and then you walked up to me and I fucking touched you...” Tony leaned up and kissed Rhodey passionately, hungrily, their mouths still smoky from his first taste of earthly food in 38 days. “You found me,” Tony breathed. “Of course you did.”
Rhodey turned on the beacon Thor gave him and placed it in the sand. He reached into his rucksack and pulled out the flask, and when he showed it to Tony he was literally bowled over by hugs and kisses, Tony speaking into his mouth: “You are the greatest you are the best best best man I have ever known I will love you forever Rhodey do you fucking hear me?”
*
Thor arrived to find Tony suited up and Rhodey with his rucksack on. They'd taken down Tony's camp and used a knife to cut T.S. + J.R. into one of the coconut trees Tony had found. “Does that mean we own this planet now?” Tony had asked, and Rhodey smiled and said, “I wouldn't mind adding it to my collection of vacation homes at all.”
Thor hugged Tony and smiled with a heartbreaking sincerity, and he took them both by the shoulder as they mimicked the touch. Tony smiled at Rhodey as they were enveloped by a million shades of blue, and then they were gone.
*
Tony's disassembly strip sizzled beneath them and Rhodey immediately stepped away to let the machines disassemble the Mark 7 from around Tony. Pepper must have heard the noise because she came bursting through the doors in her robe and holding her toothbrush – Heimdall told Rhodey that she'd been sleeping in the living room ever since Rhodey left, that way she never had to take her eyes off of the strip. She had been waiting for their return.
She fell into Tony's arms and completely ignored his beard and the loss of weight, and Rhodey just continued to walk into the house and put his rucksack on the kitchen counter. The others began to emerge from the elevators and stairwells, and they all hugged Rhodey and patted his shoulders as they continued on their way to meet Tony. Steve stopped and shook Rhodey's hand, his eyes full of emotion when he said, “Great work, Colonel.”
Rhodey went to rest off the trip and was surprised when Tony joined him an hour later, sliding into bed and grazing his beard along Rhodey's neck.
“I thought you'd wanna stay up,” Rhodey mumbled, genuinely exhausted. “Catch up with everyone.”
“Later,” Tony said. “I wanna rest with you for a while.” He kissed Rhodey's neck and it made him smile. “I'm going to keep you this time. I'm not losing you again, okay? I mean I obviously belong to you but now you belong to me, too.”
*
Once they announced Tony's return and the press got wind of the story of his rescue, people began to call for Rhodey to receive the Medal of Honor. He wasn't sure he qualified for that, but he was humbled nonetheless. It turned out that in the court of public opinion, literally no one on earth had thought Rhodey would be able to bring Tony back except for Virginia Potts and Harold Hogan, but his feelings weren't hurt by that. He never doubted it for a minute, but no one out there knew their history, and no one knew that Rhodey always found Tony no matter what. No one knew that Rhodey would search forever for Tony if he had to, across all Nine Realms and into the blackness beyond if that's what it took.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
