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[ingeniar]

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[ingeniar]

[ Tempting as it is to argue that he's not just anyone, thank you very much, Tony takes one look at Stephen's face and the retort gets balled up and tossed into the proverbial wastebasket. There's something vaguely familiar about the set of the wizard's jaw and the pale cast to his cheek -- it takes Tony a minute to place it before he gets there.

The spaceship on the way to Titan. Fresh from some particularly nasty torture, facing down the end of the universe. Tony had spent some time wondering when Stephen had decided to give up the Time Stone. Not then, he'd decided. At that point, he'd probably still been scared.

Tony meets Stephen's gaze, frowning but he doesn't offer any sympathetic words, which in itself might be its own kind of compassion. The understanding, one broken and put-together-again man to another, that there are some things for which sympathy is useless. It's like being back in the cave. Back in New York, in Sokovia, on Titan. The times when the only thing you can do is get through it.

Instead, he reaches out to put a hand on Stephen's shoulder as he passes him by on the way to the bar cart, a brief firm squeeze that says I'm not going anywhere. ]

All right.

[ He uncaps the marker with his thumb. ]

Let's go.

[rehandle]

[ It's time, then.

He's a detached and pragmatic consultant through the opening plays: the cleaning of the incision sites, the track of pen over skin. He interrupts only when necessary, instructions clear and precise, and when almost all preparation is done and Tony lifts not the tourniquet but the bottle, Stephen raises his chin and opens his mouth to obligingly drink down what he's given.

There's a moment of pause before the tourniquet's pulled taut. Eyes met, breath held. Once this is done, it starts. And once it starts, there's no going back.

He'd once called pain an old friend - one of the longest, most consistent relationships he's had. But as the scalpel cuts in, as skin gives way to muscle gives way to tendons, pain reminds him that it's often the oldest friends you've made the most allowances for.

He keeps it together as long as he can, mouth stubbornly empty of anything to bite down on so he can contribute if he needs to, trying to swallow strained sounds before he can make them, but before long it's only the weight of his own stone limbs and the sudden weakness of his muscles that keep him where he's needed. Feet kick, stamp impotently against the table he lays on, but he begs not for an end to it but for something to shut him up, something to stop his tongue before it can make this harder for them both. And when Tony makes quick work of the last sinews keeping his hand connected to the bones of his wrist and he feels the joint slip open, a whole now two parts connected only by lingering muscle and a sliver of skin, something in him shorts out, and he's gone. ]