“If he’s going to let himself get captured, we’ll have the staff already,” the younger Steve points out. His mind is sharp like a tack, buzzing with possibilities. It was not wrong, in Tony’s opinion, to include him, but he also didn’t know how to explain to a goody-goody that having New York experience the invasion was vital to keeping Thanos off of their backs.

Taking a crack at it before the other blond can is probably the wrong way to go but he tries it anyway. “This had to look authentic because Thanos is pulling the strings here. Thanos is giving Loki an Infinity Stone to use in order to capture another Infinity Stone. We have to give him a show.”

“Over people’s lives?!”

Tony glances over at his Steve, eyes lingering on his mouth, though he’s looking to him for assistance here. “What do you want? A few thousand dead or roughly three and a half billion dead? And that’s just on Earth alone. There are millions of planets in this universe with millions of people—. I get it, kid. But you’ve got to try to tell yourself whatever you need to to get over this. We’re run the numbers.”

“These are people!” Steve says, stressing the people, his tone growing angry. “You’ve got to run the numbers again and keep that in your equation.”

“Little help, Steve?” Tony murmurs, unamused.