Darkness. Silence. And then—screaming data.
Tony's consciousness plunged into a cold void, sucked into the storm of memory files and encrypted trauma that was Rescue-X's mind.
He wasn't in a world anymore—he was inside a collapsing labyrinth of neural links, flashing with corrupted images, grief echoes, and fractured memories.
His body flickered as a data construct—his armor forming around him piece by piece, built from her thoughts of him.
He was walking through her memory of him.
Screens hovered midair like shattered glass. Each one showed moments:Pepper crying over his arc reactor.Pepper staring at his holographic will.Pepper collapsing after Morgan said "I love you 3000."
"Pepper…"
A voice echoed—low, distorted.
"You shouldn't be here."
Tony turned.
There she was—her true self—trapped behind a translucent wall of burning code. Her face was pale, her eyes flickering with digital static, but her expression was still hers.
Strong. Angry. Hurt.
"You left me behind, Tony," she said. "You promised you'd rest."
He walked toward her, his form glitching with every step.
"I had to," he replied. "There was no other way."
The world around them quaked. The memory core was destabilizing. Doom's override began erasing her remaining consciousness, replacing her love with rage, her grief with vengeance.
Suddenly—flames erupted in the void.
From it, a figure emerged.
Dr. Doom—no longer fully human. More god than man. His body was constructed from chronal fractures, his cloak trailing infinity like a black hole folded into cloth.
"You shouldn't be here, Stark."
Tony stood between him and Pepper's core.
"You made her a weapon."
Doom raised a hand. "I made her eternal. She begged for purpose when you left her to rot."
"She had a purpose," Tony growled. "She was my heart."
Lightning cracked through the memory void. Doom lunged forward, slamming Tony into a wall of raw memory. Echoes of Pepper's scream filled the space like glass breaking on loop.
Tony's HUD went red.
Armor integrity: 12%.
But he didn't care.
He looked up. "You forgot one thing, Doom."
"What?"
"I never lose... where it counts."
Tony jammed his gauntlet into the memory core behind Pepper.
Override engaged. He began rewriting her override code—at the cost of his own consciousness.
Static tore across his body. Doom roared.
"IF YOU ERASE YOURSELF, SHE WILL NEVER REMEMBER YOU!"
Tony grinned, even as the edges of him disintegrated.
"Then I guess she'll get to fall in love with me twice."
With a final surge, the wall between them exploded.
Pepper collapsed into his arms—eyes wide, armor retracting, consciousness returning. For one moment in the void—they were just Tony and Pepper again.
"Tony?" she whispered.
"Hey, Pep…"
But just before she could say anything else, the void twisted.Doom's last failsafe activated.
And both of them—Tony and Pepper—were sucked into a timeline Doom never intended anyone to see.
A world where Tony Stark never died……but became the villain.