You know everyone talking about how badly Mantis would react to touching Tony with her empathy-powers or whatever….but I was talking to @bardingbeedle and I had A Thought.
What if she just…doesn’t feel anything.
For the first time in her life, she just goes completely blank. Empty. And she’s so confused, because Tony Stark looks like a man of sadness, a man with many scars in both mind and body.
And yet. There’s such an emptiness in her as she touches Tony’s hand that it feels like…
like she’s not alive at all.
And that’s when she realises.
Tony Stark has become so detached from the world, so disassociated from his pain- that now there’s just nothing left. He just works. And fights. And goes through the motions, because anything other than that would mean he’d start feeling and-
Mantis really doesn’t want to be touching him when he lets himself feel.
this is the worst fucking thing okay :)))))
everyone would expect mantis to idk break down or cry out in anger or REACT IN SOME EXPLOSIVE WAY as soon as she touches tony with the slightest, the barest brush of her fingertips. but the moment she does, and nothing happens? everyone’s ???? as all hell, mantis especially. this has never happened before. ever. even with people who have never outwardly showed emotion, she’s felt something. even an echo of something. but tony? nothing. she’s caught off-guard and feels unbalanced, unsure at first. is it…her? is it her abilities malfunctioning somehow? (she knows that’s an irrational thought, they’ve never before. so why now?) and then it dawns on her, and she understands. she understands and it physically pains her to know just how broken tony is, has become.
I like this. I imagine her whispering “He’s dead” and everyone being confused but only she understands that even though he’s alive physically, his emotions have been killed over and over, so he just feels dead inside.
Someone please tell me that there’s a fic for this. And if there isn’t, can someone please write one already??
Yall asked for a fanfiction, and I’m in an angst sort of mood so…
–
Mantis knew pain. She knew all types of pain. She knew the guilty, age-worn pain that plagued Peter from his mother’s death. She knew the angry, brittle pain Drax wore from the slaughter of his family. She knew the twisted, confused pain from Gamora’s hatred of her father. She knew the blinding, rage-fueled pain of Rocket’s own making.
Mantis knew pain too well, for someone who was lucky enough not to experience too much of her own. At least in comparison to others, anyway.
She knew everyone felt pain. It was hard to compare who felt more than others, even impossible in some cases. Pain, pain was different. It was felt in a multitude of ways, impossibly hard to quantify. Everyone experienced pain differently. But they always felt it. Pain was simply a part of life. A twisted part that burrowed it’s way into a soul to take and take.
Mantis grew to expect pain when she touched others. Especially warriors. Fighters, the soldiers on the front line, they felt it worse than others. Mantis knew that was what made a hero. Someone who forged their pain into something else. Something of a battle cry, Mantis supposed.
Tony Stark was a man of troubles. He was a man with skin worn with battle scars, eyes worn with troubles, a past worn with loss. Mantis only knew of him from what others told, but she still knew enough to piece together an awful tragedy. A tragedy of a man whose entire life seemed to be defined by pain. A man who knew pain so well it would be a piece of his very soul.
Mantis didn’t want to touch him. She was afraid. Afraid of feeling so much pain all at once. She didn’t think she’d be able to handle it.
So when Mantis brushed sides with Tony Stark, she doubted herself.
Nothing.
There was nothing. No pain, no anger, no happiness. No emotion at all. Simply nothing.
Mantis was so startled, so doubting of her own ability, she’d grabbed his arm.
There wasn’t even so much of a glint of confusion as he glanced at her.
Nothing.
Tony Stark felt nothing. Had nothing.
Mantis was stunned. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she knew she was stunned. But that didn’t lessen her reaction. Nor her understanding. Realization crashed down on Mantis, nearly suffocating her.
Tony Stark might not have pain. But what he had was so much worse.
He had nothing.
“You’re dead.” Mantis had barely been able to force the words out with her heart in her throat. Tony Stark said something, but she didn’t quite hear it over the static building in her ears.
Life had taken and taken from Tony Stark. It had taken until he simply had no more to give. It had taken until his pain didn’t register anymore. And in losing his pain, he lost everything else. Life took his most precious thing.
His heart.
Tony Stark was his machinery more than he’d ever know. He was a machine, only going through rote motions that his brain told him to. He fought, and he marched on, forcing himself through a life he barely registered anymore. Fueled by and living on logic and nothing more.
He had nothing more to live on.
But all machines broke. Mantis knew that she’d seen it with her own two eyes. Machines broke. They always broke.
Tony Stark would break.
And Mantis didn’t want to be there when it happened. She didn’t want to be touching him, didn’t want to even be near him when it happened.
Tony Stark would break. And when he did, he would take the universe with him.
Mantis breathes again. She’s standing next to Quill, who stands still in shock, but when he notices her his eyes soften with relief and he doesn’t even think before pulling her into a hug.
She feels joy. They are alive again. Peter is radiating it.
Drax joins them, on this copper-tinted dust-planet, and wraps his arms around the two, and the joy doubles. It is great and overwhelming, and Mantis laughs.They are a family, these Guardians. They will return to Earth and find the others, and they will celebrate.
Quill breaks away and narrows his eyes as he gazes at the place where he’d punched Thanos. His hand is still resting on her shoulder. She feels a sharp stab of regret and blinks up at him.
“Yeah. Okay. I just wanna say, from the bottom of my heart, my bad.”
They laugh, because it’s okay now. They laugh, because there’s a deep blossoming of hope within them all; somehow, they laugh, because they know Gamora and Rocket and Drax are okay, too, out there in the universe.
The whirring of ship engines causes them to break apart. Mantis watches Nebula’s ship touch down, and open, and Tony Stark rushes out past them all. Nebula walks calmly down the ramp, her eyes scrutinising the planet.
As he passes, Tony’s arm brushes against hers. That cold, dead static rises in her ears again. Tony has fixed the world, but he hasn’t fixed himself.
He stops, gazing into the darkness. His chest is heaving for desperate, panicked breaths. He stands and he waits and he waits.
“What happened to him?” asks Quill.
Nebula narrows her eyes. “His son.”
Mantis takes a tenative step forward. The man suddenly tenses, not because of her but because of the dust in the air, twirling on a wind that didn’t exist mere seconds ago. Mantis puts a hand on his shoulder, but there is still nothing, and Tony doesn’t have the energy to jolt away.
And then the kid’s standing there. The kid, who Tony traversed the universe for. The kid, for whom Tony wielded the strength of all the stones.
“Jesus Christ,” Tony sobs, and as he pulls away from Mantis, she feels his walls crashing down-
There is love, and fierce protection, rising from the heart of a father; there is pain and heartache; there is fear, overwhelming, and it crushes her. Tony Stark feels with more power than the gauntlet he had wielded.
To the world, the image of Tony Stark hugging Peter Parker on a dead planet, their words drowned out in their broken sobs, may not be special. Throughout the universe, this is happening over and over and over again.
But Mantis is an empath. And for once, for one kid, Tony feels everything.
fadeslikewhispers 