2008 – Malibu, California
The arc reactor was gone.
Tony could feel it — the cold absence in his chest, a void where light had once burned. He was on the floor of his lab, gasping, trembling, reaching for air that would not come.
Obadiah's betrayal hadn't been theatrical or loud. It was quiet. A whisper of apology, a flicker of regret that felt like mockery. Then the paralysis, the hiss of machinery, and darkness.
Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, futurist — left to die on the polished floor of his own creation.
His thoughts became fragments. The scotch glass he'd dropped weeks ago. The cave. The hammer. The heat. Yinsen's smile.
Then silence.
The world dimmed, but Tony didn't see death. He saw the dream.
The light was softer this time. He wasn't on a balcony or floating over water — he was nowhere, and yet everywhere. The lines of his lab blurred, becoming an endless plain of light and shadow.
And from that quiet, he heard a voice he hadn't forgotten.
"Then you build again. And maybe, this time, you build something worthy of the dream."
Tony tried to speak, but the breath wasn't there. The words still echoed, though, clear as if they'd just been spoken.
He remembered him — the pale man, the calm voice, the impossible stillness. Dream.
The world around him flickered, like memory made visible. He was back in the cave for a moment, watching himself hammering the Mark I into existence, the sparks of creation flying like newborn stars.
"You defied death," Dream's voice said again, softer now. "Do not stop now."
Tony clenched his jaw. I can't.
"You can," the voice answered, not spoken aloud but known. "Because you always could."
The memory shifted again — Yinsen lying on the ground, smiling through blood and smoke.
"Don't waste your life."
Tony felt the tremor of those words deep in his bones. He had thought Yinsen meant it figuratively. But now, lying on the floor, his heart literally empty, it was all too real.
"Not like this," he muttered. "Not here."
His body twitched. The paralysis was fading — maybe adrenaline, maybe something else. Maybe someone else.
He crawled toward the workbench, his hands shaking violently. His breath rasped like sandpaper. The workshop lights flickered, the arcane hum of technology surrounding him like ghosts whispering ideas.
His fingers found the old reactor — the one Pepper had framed in glass, the one he'd meant to keep as a relic, a reminder. Proof that Tony Stark has a heart.
He smashed the glass with what little strength he had left. Shards scattered like frozen light. His hand trembled as he pressed the arc reactor against his chest, wires fumbling in his grip.
Sparks burst. The smell of ozone filled the air. And suddenly, there it was — the thrum.
A heartbeat of metal. A pulse of light.
Tony gasped, his lungs expanding like they hadn't in hours. The light in his chest flared, flooding the room with a faint blue glow. He slumped against the bench, chest heaving, staring at the ceiling.
Alive.
Barely. But alive.
He laughed — sharp, breathless, desperate. "Guess I… rebuilt again."
The light from the reactor caught the edge of a nearby surface — and for a fraction of a second, he thought he saw movement.
A reflection in the glass.
A tall, dark silhouette standing just behind him, hands clasped behind his back, eyes like endless twilight.
Dream didn't speak. He didn't need to.
Tony just stared at the faint outline, chest still burning with artificial light. "Still watching, huh?"
There was no answer. Only a warmth that wasn't from the machine — a sense that the world itself acknowledged this act. That creation, not survival, was what truly defined life.
Dream's reflection lingered a moment longer, and then the lab returned to silence.
Tony sat there, light glowing beneath his shirt, eyes unfocused.
He didn't understand the being he'd seen. Maybe he never would. But he understood the lesson now — one Dream hadn't said out loud, but had shown him all the same.
He wasn't alive because of the arc reactor. He was alive because he refused to stop building.
And that was enough.
Outside, dawn crept over the horizon. The ocean shimmered gold. Tony watched it through the glass walls, chest rising and falling in rhythm with the tide.
For the first time since the cave, he didn't feel like a man running from death.
He felt like someone running toward something.
⸻
Far beyond Malibu, in a realm of silence and silver light, Dream stood in the Dreaming, watching the ripple of the mortal world from afar.
Death appeared beside him, the soft rustle of her presence as natural as breathing. "You're getting attached again," she teased lightly.
Dream's lips curved in that almost-smile he reserved only for her. "Perhaps. But mortals are curious things. They stumble, they fall, and still, they dream of standing again."
Death looked down at Tony Stark's glowing heart, reflected faintly in the rippling ether. "And this one?"
"He builds his own redemption," Dream said quietly. "And when he sleeps, I will remind him that even light born of metal can shine like a soul."
Death leaned her head on his shoulder, smiling. "You really do like them, don't you?"
Dream's gaze lingered on the small, glowing arc of blue beneath the mortal's ribs. "I like what they might become."