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Tony had developed a daily routine.
He got up, first of all. He did this when day broke now. Sleeping in was a waste of time.
Then he checked the Geiger counter. This was followed by air toxicity, daylight brightness, and reports of unusual activity from around the world.
He performed his daily ablutions. For some reason, he still trimmed his beard the same way he had for the last decade. There was something peaceful in the routine.
He ate. His farming plans were finally working out; he was getting fresh fruit and vegetables from his workers now. According to JARVIS, the produce was radioactive and toxic, but it didn't matter. It wasn't like Tony could ever die.
At this point, dying for a fresh nectarine was almost worth it. When one had infinite life it lost meaning.
Once he'd sorted himself out, Tony headed out to address his people.
The candy people, like nearly other life form on Earth Mark 2, were continuing to mutate out of control, mostly through magical means, but partly through the radiation. Fortunately for Tony's sanity, they were getting smarter. Most of the larger ones (some were the size of children now) were sentient and could understand Tony, even if their mouths weren't yet developed enough to talk much themselves.
There were three candy people in particular that Tony relied on. These were: a large candy corn, simply named Candy Corn, who was good with her hands and could follow orders, but couldn't talk; a weird blob of predominantly pink bubblegum, named Bubbles, who was very clever by candy standards and spoke well but couldn't move properly without being carried by other candies, and a lollipop man called Poppy who could speak fairly clearly and somehow managed to communicate easily with the other candies. He made an excellent ringleader.
Their names weren't innovative, but neither were the candy people, so that was okay.
A lot of the time Tony hated dealing with them. But they needed him as a leader and trailed him around, so he had them farming and cropping for him, and in exchange he helped them build themselves their own little city further inland. Bubbles was learning all about structural engineering while Candy Corn and Poppy mustered the masses into making gingerbread.
They seemed to want to live in candy, despite the fact they were candy themselves.
So every day Tony either broadcasted through the projector in the candy city or visited them himself. Without daily checkups, they were bound to do something stupid.
Then he checked JARVIS's cataloguing. Tony had created drones for him, capable of breaking into libraries, removing books from shelves, and scanning each page without damaging anything. In the absence of air conditioning, and, well, walls, books were rotting worldwide, and so was information in them.
After that, the daily processes were checked. So he went exploring, or worked on his projects, or did something or the other until the sun went down and he went back to bed.
On one particular Autumn day, however, he managed to deviate from this routine. It all started during the daily address, which he appeared for in person.
Poppy raised a question for him. "The other candy people have been thinking about name. Where we're live?"
Tony was about to answer Earth. But he'd made a decision when he started caring for the candy people - that his new world would hopefully carry over none of the old world's bullshit. And he intended to uphold this. So he didn't have an answer for them.
While avoiding the question, he started looking over the assembled crowd thoughtfully.
"Ew," Tony mumbled to himself, watching a gumdrop man throw up.
"Ooo?" Someone repeatedly clumsily.
"Ooo!"
"Ooo!"
The shout went out. This new world was to be named after the sound Tony made while watched a mutated candy puke.
So the morning started badly.
Tony was about to continue exploring - he was currently charting central South America, trying to find where the Hulk was nesting, because he still hadn't reverted back to Bruce and had seemingly gone to ground - when JARVIS warned him of a magical flare.
"Disregard. Come on, Jay, we have those twice a day," Tony said.
"That is depersonalised magic," Jay told him. He'd become quite the expert on magic. "This is specific to a certain energy signature."
"Wait, what? There's a person making it. Oh my god, there's a person. A person. Who the fuck is it? Do you know?" Tony said.
Jay didn't bother pointing out Loki's - the Ice King's - energy spikes anymore. There were a lot of them.
"Doctor Stephen Strange's, sir."
"That fucker survived? Where is he?" Tony said excitedly.
Another human being. He could see another human being.
"Estonia, sir. Might I advise-"
"No. No more advising. Let's go," Tony said. "Sorry, candy kids, I got to go. Emergency overseas. I'll be back later."
In an instant, Tony's faceplate was back down and he was soaring away.
Another human being.
Tony had never really actively felt himself to be lonely. To him, lonely implied there was another option, like seeking company with others. He wasn't lonely. He was just alone, as a state of being.
But now there was an alternative, and Tony was lonely as fuck.
It took him less than an hour to get to Europe. The new upgrades to the suit worked well.
"Where to, Jay?" Tony asked.
"Tallinn, sir. Old Town," Jay said, then kindly provided a map.
JARVIS was alright for a conversation. But he wasn't a human, and he couldn't really bring anecdotes to the table.
Tony could've kissed Strange right about then. Hell, he'd kiss Justin Hammer if the man was alive.
When he finally reached the city, it didn't take him long to find where the magical event had occurred. A perfect semisphere of soil, sewer, and buildings had been scooped out of the ground weirdly tidily.
In the middle of it was the first human life sign reading he'd seen for a decade.
Tony landed at a dangerous speed and actually sprinted down the lip of the massive crater, then tripped and rolled down, nearly hitting the person at the bottom.
Persons. Two people. Two humans.
One was Stephen Strange, all tangled up in his ridiculous cape. He didn't look a day older than when Tony had last seen him.
The other was Natasha Romanov, similarly unaged, and still clad in her SHIELD jumpsuit.
"Nat?" Tony said in shock.
Both of them were unconscious and unmoving. JARVIS scanned both of them and pronounced them hale and hearty, but warned him that radiation levels were toxic in their current area and they would have to be moved.
"Jay, you know when they're gonna wake up?"
"I do not know, sir. There remains a dense magical field around them that makes all assumptions null and void."
"Well, fuck. You summon a quinjet; I'll just sit here and watch."
And Tony did just that, plopping himself down on the dirt and watching them breathe.
Inhale, exhale. The red of Natasha's hair. The stubble on Strange's cheeks. Their hands. The fact they weren't made of candy.
Tony wanted to cry. There were other humans.
So he just sat there and looked.
The quinjet arrived in an hour or two. Tony lifted the still-unconscious Strange and Nat onboard into the non-toxic atmosphere of the ship.
He'd had a lot of time for engineering in the last empty decade. The ship is eons ahead of anything on Earth. It's the technology of - what did those little shits call it? - Ooo.
The flight was perfectly smooth and Tony didn't have to do anything, so he got JARVIS to perform a hugely comprehensive scan on both of them.
Neither of them were any older physically than they were ten years ago. They were in excellent health. The amount of magic surrounding both of them was phenomenal, but he couldn't tell much more than that.
He didn't know how they got there, and neither did JARVIS. One second, ordinary satellite footage of a damaged but not destroyed Tallinn, and the next everything was just gone and Nat and Strange were there.
He wondered how they survived.
Once he made it back to Malibu, he moved the two of them to the house's sickbay, one of the new additions he'd made. Basically, it had all the medical equipment he'd created or stolen, as well as extra interfaces so JARVIS could scan thoroughly.
They didn't wake up all evening. He got one of the robots to cook and bring him some food, and settled down in a gurney to stay with Nat and Strange. He wasn't going to leave the room until they woke up.
This meant he was in there for another day. He woke up midway through the next night when JARVIS alerted him to magical activity.
There were blue and purple sparks dancing around the room, emanating from both unconscious people.
"This is awesome. Please tell me they're waking up, Jay," Tony said.
"I believe so, sir, though I would advise you maintain a safe distance until the activity ceases."
"Nah, I'm immortal. Safe distances are for mortals," Tony said, stepping into the magical field and heading for Natasha.
Her eyelids were flickering rapidly and she was shuddering roughly. A quick glance over to Strange told him the same thing was happening to him.
After a minute or two, the magic swirled away to nothing and both of them blinked awake properly.
Strange let out a groan. Natasha sat up instantly and looked around.
"Stark?" she said, clearly disorientated.
Tony bundled her into a hug before she could do anything about it. "God, Nat," he said, and loosed a few tears before he could stop himself. She smelled human, and like that sweet perfume she always wore, or maybe it was deodorant.
"Where is this?" she asked.
"Malibu. My house. Only house there is, really," Tony stuttered. "How the fuck are you still alive? What did you do?"
"Ahm," Strange coughed. "The world was dying. Ms Romanov forced me to create a state of artificial hibernation, to be broken when radiation levels reached survivable levels. For how long have we been unconscious?"
"Years," Tony choked out, finally letting go of Nat. "Years and years and years. Everyone's gone. Everything. I was the last human."
-O.O-
Tony, in short, jumbled parts, explained everything to the pair of them.
Except why he was still alive.
Nat, of course, picked up on it.
"Did Loki make it?" she asked.
"Yeah. Yeah, it was just the two of us. But I got radiation poisoning, nearly died. He had to use this thing of yours, Strange, this Serpent Crown, to get some magic and heal me," Tony said.
"The Serpent Crown?" Strange asked. "Did he resist it?"
"He tried. Oh my gods, did he try. But he couldn't. He went nuts, killed a bunch of human survivors in LA. They would've died anyway, but still," Tony said haltingly. It was so long ago. It still hurt. "He ended up leaving so he wouldn't hurt me. He's still healing me, keeping me young; I can feel it in my chest."
"Is he still alive?" Natasha asked.
"Physically, yeah. Mentally, he's long gone. He lives in Canada, calls himself the Ice King, and is nuttier than squirrel shit. He's trying to find me, only he doesn't remember anything about me at all," Tony said. "I just keep out of his way. I got work to do, anyway."
"I'm sorry," Natasha said. It sounded honest.
"So am I. Seems a bit selfish to be upset about a living person when seven billion people died, but hey, the heart wants what it wants," Tony said. "Besides, I make the rules of morality now. It's just me and my candy freaks."
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't go mad with power," Nat said. That almost sounded like a joke.
Strange was looking around the lab curiously.
"Oh, yeah. You guys poke around, get settled in," Tony said. "Bit of shock waking up like this."
"Thank you," Strange said, and made his way out the door.
Nat nodded and made to follow him, but Tony stopped her and added "Enjoy the house, by the way. Safest place on the planet, literally. Clean water, fresh food - so long as you're not a carnivore, canned meat's all I got - and all the luxuries of Earth. Just remember, you're on Ooo now. Earth's long gone."
-O.O-
Against every instinct, Tony managed to leave them for the afternoon. He headed back over to the candy people city to check nothing awful was happening there. Nothing was.
He had briefly been considering building himself a home there to save the commute, but he didn't want to live in a gingerbread house, even if it didn't rain much anymore.
That was one phenomenon Tony had not yet been able to explain: the weather. It had taken a long time for the ash to clear out of the atmosphere, and since then, it had been a beautiful sunny day nearly every day. Rain was scarce despite the few puffy clouds in the sky. To add to the oddity, the ground wasn't drying out.
Once Tony got home, Strange and Natasha seemed to have gotten themselves together a little more and had questions.
"We're definitely the last living humans," Natasha stated.
"Yep. There were other survivors of the Swarm, but they all died of radiation poisoning or something," Tony said. It didn't hurt so much anymore. It was just kind of a fact. "Hey, Nat, have you ever said to me that you wouldn't touch me if I was the last guy on Earth? 'Cause that statement is so ironic right about now."
Nat tsked at that. "Somehow, I don't think the pair of us would be enough to restart the human race."
"You don't know 'til you try," Tony said lightly. "Besides, humans weren't so great. Almost glad they aren't fucking things up anymore. It gets lonely, though."
That was when Natasha realised that Tony had been kicking around by himself for a really long time.
"We have a score to settle, Ms Romanov," Strange butted in sharply.
Natasha turned to him. "We're both alive. That should mean we let bygones be bygones."
"I was going to escape to another dimension," Strange said.
"And then I would have died. That goes against my goals," Natasha replied.
"Do not try something of that nature again."
Natasha smiled wryly. "Like Tony said, I don't think the old rules of morality apply anymore."
"So when you vanished back during the invasion, you headed for him?" Tony asked, pointing a little rudely at Strange.
Tony was used to pointing at things however he liked.
"I thought that my only chance of making it was by magical means," she shrugged.
"You had alternate sources," Strange said.
"None as competent as you. Strange - Stephen - it doesn't matter. If you had escaped to another dimension, everything would be the same, only I would be dead. Accept my actions and move on."
Tony chuckled. "You know what? Humans are full of so much indignation and bitchiness. You should meet the candy people. They're like hippie stoners all the time."
"Quiet, Stark!" Strange finally snapped. He took a moment. Then he said "I am going to return to New York, restore the Sanctum Sanctorum, recover my belongings, and move forward from there. I may encounter you in the near future. I may not. Thank you, Stark, for your hospitality."
And then he became a mass of blue energy that promptly vanished.
"So," Natasha said. "Candy people."
"Yeah, you wanna meet them? You'd probably like Bubbles," Tony said. "Hey, I'm gonna build you your own Iron Man suit. I can't really get around without mine. Plus, you're mortal; you need a Geiger counter and toxicity metre and all that."
"That would be a good idea," Natasha said. Then she sighed deeply. "This is all a bit much."
"Trust me, you get used to it," Tony said. "How'd you and Strange end up in Estonia?"
"We tried escaping to Europe first. I originally went to him because he can teleport," Natasha said. "Then the Swarm crossed the Atlantic. He tried to head to another dimension, I wouldn't let him."
"You go, girl," Tony said. It felt strange to him, actually having a conversation. He was quite enjoying it, peppering it with cliches and having to make facial expressions. "I'm not too worried about Strange. He'll come back. And besides, I have you, at least. I have another person."
"Stark, I don't particularly mean to offend you, but you have gone a little bit insane since the Swarm," Nat said bluntly.
"Can you blame me?" Tony asked with a skittish laugh.
-O.O-
It made a difference, having Natasha around the place. None of Pepper's old clothes fitted her, obviously, so Tony had to sent out drones to find her new clothes. He had to convince the candy people to deliver a little more food. They didn't mind, because they all thought Natasha was awesome.
She was gentle with them, and oddly caring.
But having another person around sort of gave Tony more of a mental grounding in life. He could make light banter, something original every day. She accepted her Iron Man suit and headed out exploring all day, amazed at the new world. They discussed it at night, theories and plans.
For whatever reason, she was getting more open with Tony, less secretive, and she smiled a little more than she had in the past. He found out why after a week or two; she told him that she finally felt like she had no secrets to keep and no one to trick.
It was the first time in her life when her reputation could never precede her and she didn't have anything to hide. It showed in her demeanour.
As such, the slight apprehension Tony had instinctively felt around her in the old days dissolved into nothing. She was his best and only friend now.
-O.O-
Tony was ashamed at how long it took him to think of it. But Nat suggested something to that effect, and then he'd had the idea, and before he knew it he was flying back to the shredded remains of New York.
New York was one of the most badly destroyed cities in America. Some places in the world, like North Korea, China, and Eastern Russia, had nothing resembling cities left to them. They were just mulched ground and so much rubble, interspersed by new volcanoes and blotchy lakes.
But America hadn't fared too badly, even if New York had been mostly levelled.
The Sanctum Sanctorum, a mansion, looked oddly pristine. Tony could only assume that this was due to magic in some way. Or maybe Strange had repaired it in the last few weeks. Tony didn't know or care.
He knocked on the door politely. That was mostly because Strange upped his security with a lot of magework.
Strange opened the door after a little while.
"Let yourself in if you come," he said. "I removed the human-repelling magic."
"It's fine. You get back to your mage shit," Tony said. "I just wanted to ask. Can you help Loki? With the crown?"
"I'm surprised you didn't ask earlier. Maybe. Perhaps not. I removed the crown from my possession because of its' possessiveness and volatility. It was inciting its' fellow artifacts to rebellion."
"Can you try?"
"Not now," Strange said. "It would require a lot of energy and even more willpower. I am drained of both. We would have to beat him in a fight, and then I would be forced to duel Set's spirit for dominance."
"But can you win?"
"Doubtful," Strange said.
"Don't doubtful me. I just want to know," Tony said impatiently.
"Now is not the time. There are affairs bigger than the affair you were conducting with Loki Laufeyson, you know. Earth has gone ten years without a Sorcerer Supreme; balance must be restored."
Tony suppressed the urge to hit Strange. "Yeah, whatever. Get back to me when that stick's out of your ass and you can help me bring another person back into the world."
With that dramatic statement, Tony left.
-O.O-
To his surprise, when he got home, his three candy deputees were in his house.
"We're having a meeting," Natasha explained. "You can't just stick up a few houses and call it a safe haven for the candy people. Predators will evolve quickly."
"Aw, Nat, you do care. Isn't that nice, Bubbles?"
Once the meeting was over, Natasha revealed that she'd cooked dinner.
"JARVIS's recipes are bland," she said, presenting him with the odd but delicious-smelling food. "You should get creative."
"Nat, if I didn't know better, I'd say you liked it here," Tony said.
"It's relaxing. Properly relaxing, for once in my life. It's also my only alternative. I might as well enjoy it."
But Tony was enjoying it too. She was surprisingly fun to be around, now that she'd lightened up; the last few weeks with her there had been some of the most memorable in the last few years.
He could, strangely enough, actually see them living like this for an extended period of time.
But it'd be better if Loki was here, Tony thought stubbornly.
That he could envision easily: Loki sitting at the table with him, joking with Nat - whom he'd always liked, because she could keep up with him - and caring for Tony in his rude ways, and getting snarky with the candy people.
Tony had healed from every injury that the Swarm had dealt except losing Loki. That still hurt every day.