Oh, God...

[shieldborne]

Infinity War Open Post






THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Drop me a prompt, or ask me to drop you a prompt. Open to doomy pre-IW foreshadowing, fix-it AUs, post-IW angst, character interactions that should have happened but didn't on-screen, crossovers, and whatever else anyone can come up with.

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[starkingenuity]

The offered and is enough to flip a switch inside of Tony Stark. He’s not like Bruce, happy to see a friendly face after what he’d been through. It’s less to do with pride than it is to do with a wave of fear that sparks at the irrational, evolutionary part of his brain and tells him that the flight portion of the fight or flight response still exists for him. Steve’s hand might as well be covered in bees or be rotting, skeletal remains in that moment. Horror rises in Tony’s eyes before he can stop himself from reacting, scrambling to his feet with a shuffle of ash that very, very likely had once been a person.

It’s possible, it seems, to be actively relieved to see a person and to be scared of them at the same time. After all, the last memory Tony has of Steve in the flesh had actually been the edge of a shield heading towards his face (followed by a childish yell and the back of a blond head). His all too human brain fills in additional reasons for terror, such as the way Steve had thrown a massive container at a kid he hadn’t known could survive it, and the simple fact that he survived this.

Of course he had. Steve’s perfect in every way, so obviously the universe would choose to keep him alive and turn Parker into nothing.

He can’t get that kid’s voice out of his head. He can’t get the pleading-- Tony’s never been under the impression that he can save everyone. He’s never even believed that everyone is worthy of saving. But Peter is one of those people that is never, never going to be anything more than a missing piece in his life that he hadn’t even wanted to begin with and now is having trouble carrying on properly without.

“I leave Earth for a day and everything turns to hell,” Tony remarks, looking at Steve’s hand instead of his face. His body relaxes, at least, unwinds from a desire to sprint away like a rabbit from a pack of wolves. Steve isn’t here to hurt him. He knows that. He knows it.

Tony sets his hands on his hips and finds himself wetting his lower lip as if trying to stall for time. His next question is indelicate. They both have to know that.

“You can’t be the only one that’s left…?”

He could ask specifics. Rhodey and Banner fall very high up on a list of people Tony knows had to have been with Steve at one point. He’s figured out that Banner had been the one to call Steve for him anyway and Rhodes would be the logical first stop after that.

[shieldborne]

He should have thought that through better, maybe. Steve wants to help him up, maybe even hug him, wants to hope that after all this they can rebuild bridges somehow. Even if his lizard brain is pulling up memories of their last conflict and reasons to be mistrustful, Steve's wounds are different and it takes him a moment to wrap his brain around the concept that Tony is actually afraid of him. His expression contorts briefly, pain unmistakable, as if he's just been stabbed right through the place in his uniform where the star he scraped off used to be.

It's gone after a split second, because now isn't the time, and he has no right anyway.

"I'm going to have to ask about the leaving Earth part," he says dully, and folds his arms across his chest. The protection of his own biceps doesn't do much to dull the verbal blow that comes at him next, in the form of that question.

"Full casualty list not yet available," he says, almost mechanically. Well, it wouldn't be; half the planet's gone. Still, he knows Tony is asking about the team, not that nice Lebanese family that ran the shawarma restaurant (God, why did his brain have to go there? Are they okay? Did they all make it? Damn it.)

"Bruce, Rhodey, Thor, and Natasha are all alive. No serious wounds. No word yet on Barton or Lang." It's weird how he's mixing first and last names here. He used to be more formal, didn't he?

"King T'Challa is gone. The...the Wakandan infrastructure is compensating well, considering." He takes a deep breath. "We tried to save Vision. Mind stone's been taken. There's a...a body. A shell."

He's not dust, but there seems to be little they can do for a vibranium corpse.

"Wanda's gone. Dust. Sam's gone. Groot's gone...a little tree person. Alien." He's only aware of Groot's absence because of how hellbent and broken-up Rocket is about it, but it seems to bear mention. "Bucky's gone."

His composure cracks under the weight of Bucky's last word being Steve's own name, and he angles his face downward. Once again, though, there's no time for that, and he has no right.

[starkingenuity]

Even though Tony has registered the pain in Steve’s eyes, in his posture, and even though he’s not a huge asshole, he can not bring himself to be empathetic this time around. He understands the pain, he feels broken and alone, but he can’t show Rogers that. There’s a mental barricade up that Tony hadn’t noticed before. Despite carrying that dinosaur of a phone around for years, despite the many lonely and restless nights he’d had staring at the only number stored inside of it, despite keeping the damned thing charged up, he’d never expected to see or hear from Steve Rogers again.

The deepest parts of Tony revel in the anguish on Steve’s face and the parts that sandwich that joy are ashamed. There just isn’t shame enough for Tony to react any other way that cold and standoffish and austere. His eyes drift to a store window currently housing a mail truck because that’s easier to see that Steve’s frayed edges. “Bunch of people on Titan kicked it too. You didn’t know any of them,” Tony concludes.

If he hadn’t just been through a battle with a robotic blue smurf, a physic bug, a rock man, and the Rocketeer, Tony might question the sentience of a tree or what else it was good for other than sharp sticks and kindling. He latches onto the names he knows, eyes closing. Banner. Good. Very good. Rhodey—

So he’s lucked out. His friends are alive. Some of them. And Steve’s are ‘gone.’ Not dead. Just not here. Tony’s much more fatalistic. Peter isn’t gone. Peter is dead. Tony held the kid while he died. He felt him cease to be. How far can a person break and still be standing, he wonders, selfishly, before he glances around for any of the aforementioned individuals.

“So where’s the gang? Did they all go to get you a razor? That would be a good start.” He’s aware of how harsh he’s being, but tempering himself when he’s in pain is impossible. “I’ll shave you myself if I have to. After I get my hands on a sandwich and fill me in on Thanos. You’ve got some bruising, so you must have met the guy. Tall. Purple. Weird Michael Jackson-like single glove fetish?”

[shieldborne]

Broken and alone doesn't even begin to cover it, and as Steve regains his composure that may begin to become evident. Maybe he's partly still in shock, but it's all too easy to sink back into that battlefield mindset, where function is paramount and emotion and individual well-being are meaningless. He'll walk it off until he can't any longer. That's kind of what he does, even before the war and the serum. Stand up, brush yourself off, endure.

"I'm sorry to hear it," he says, in the same tone of voice Colonel Phillips told him about Bucky's MIA status decades ago; not devoid of compassion, not devoid of respect, but brusque nonetheless. "Whoever they were."

"Saw him. Got punched by him. I wasn't interesting enough to kill, I guess." Apparently the one emotion still creeping through the breaches in his soldier armor is bitterness. "They're all doing triage wherever they can get to. Banner's helping out in Wakanda, Romanoff is looking for her mideast contacts, Rhodes has a stop in Vienna but he's headed this way when he can be. Thor offered to gather up the others, if they're gatherable, but I don't expect him to stay on this planet long unless we can give him a better impetus than revenge. That, and he has what remains of his own people to look after, too. Asgard's been destroyed. Not by Thanos. Might be better if you wait for Thor's explanation on that one."

He's back to surnames only again. Battle etiquette. His eyes are empty. "You want me to get you home? You're the best chance we have of keeping the planet's infrastructure from self-destructing. The brains in Wakanda are good, but you have a knack for making something out of nothing. We need that now."

[starkingenuity]

Home.

Tony can see what remains of the home he’d lived in the last time he and Steve had a conversation. It’s austere, rising from the smoke like a reminder that everything you build eventually dies. Tony breathes in, the smell of carnage not a new one for him, and finds himself mirroring the way that Steve squares his shoulders.

“If Nebula is still around, I have a ship.” Obviously Steve had just come from Wakanda, or Vienna, or the Middle East, so he too had to have a plane. Quinjet maybe. He’s not sure he wants to just wander onboard a craft piloted by a guy who has proven that he’s got what it takes to drop a plane in the ocean.

They won’t be headed over water, but HQ isn’t exactly in walking distance and there are acres and acres of trees between the city and where Tony’s made his home.

He just hopes that Pepper is there. He hopes she’s there so that he can stop thinking about her and get some work done.

Turning, though he does keep the larger man in the corner of his eye, he can see the strange, bald and blue skinned woman standing just far enough away to overhear by not be intrusive. “Oh good. She’s still around. Meet you up at the compound. Live there now. Turned your room into a shoe closet, by the way.” That’s not true. Steve’s apartment at the Avengers Compound is exactly how he’d left it…minus a few sketchbooks left out and flipped through.

There are other people watching them too, gazing out of windows, objects in their arms that likely hadn’t been theirs a moment ago. Half of the country is gone. The other half isn’t sure what to do. And stealing just feels good. Who is it really hurting, anyway?

Nebula leads the way back to the Milano with Tony trying to make sure that Steve isn’t going with them.

He needs more time, he realizes, so much more time. A few minutes of air won’t give him everything he needs, but the Milano can still outfly a quinjet and so when Steve does make it back to the Compound, the remaining people there scrambling to reach their families and keep the facilities secure, and is directed to the building Tony had erected for himself and his fiancée to live in, he’ll find Iron Man looking more than a little rusty.

Pepper hadn’t been there to greet him.

Happy hadn’t either.

In fact, there had been nothing at all for him at the house but Peter’s aunt’s fifty odd voice mails. A true masochist, Tony’s got them playing on a loop. He’s never been a very large man other than in personal presence, and without that, he looks old and small. All it’s taken to strip away his larger than life persona had been the frantic yelling and crying of a woman he barely knew asking after a kid Tony had no right to feel so paternal over.

”I know he’s with you!” her voice shouts, filled with venom as Tony stands with his back towards the glass entry way. ”You took him with you, didn’t you? Just call me back and tell me he’s all right, damn it!” Beep.

[shieldborne]

Steve's pilot was Okoye, in point of fact, and he's managed himself on foot since landing. It's been...not therapeutic, per se, running full speed through the city, but it's satisfied that desperate adrenaline-fueled need for motion he can't seem to shake.

"Nebula?" he repeats, and his gaze drifts toward the blue-skinned woman. He gives her a sober, dead-eyed nod of greeting, and doesn't follow when Tony turns to go. He remains where he is until the ship takes off, in fact, and only as it moves out of sight does he start to run again.

Every person he approaches from behind reminds him of Sam. He makes a point of passing everyone on the right.

Steve has a few questions to answer once he does arrive, from the handful of people who recognize him. He pushes them off as best he can, advising people to stay put inasmuch as possible. Infinity stones and cosmic power are too much to try to explain. He doesn't know where to begin, except to suggest the disaster be treated like a sudden plague that wiped out the population, leaving no bodies behind.

That idea doesn't seem likely to calm anyone down, though. If Tony has any PR people left, they might be needed to put a spin on it.

At length, he arrives in the entryway, where he stands for a long while looking at Tony's back. Enough to hear several of the messages and get a clear picture of who they may be from, and who they may be referring to.

"Turn it off," he says quietly, evenly. "You need to decide if you can keep going or if you're going to lie down and bleed out right here."

He means that metaphorically, but hell, if Tony takes it as a threat, maybe that will snap him out of the grief anyway.

[starkingenuity]

“I’m still not a soldier.”

That can’t be his voice. Tony is surprised by it, more than he’s surprised how readily FRIDAY listens to Steve’s command and shuts out May’s pleadings. FRIDAY, and JARVIS before her, have never lacked the ability to pick and choose what commands they listen to, though both had been nothing short of loyal to Tony.

His eyelids feel heavy, like there are demons hanging from his lashes, and it takes genuine effort to lift them enough to see Steve reflected in the dark screen of a ridiculously massive television. Tony dips his chin forward before he turns his face, jaw first, towards a man with darker hair than he remembered him having. “But there’s nothing left in me to bleed. Don’t worry. You said I’m the only person capable of restoring infrastructure and normalcy to this country and you’re right. I am. I just need a god damned moment, Cap!”

Technically, Steve is no longer Captain America. Tony had been aware of the symbolism he’d been presented with when the man dropped the shield at the feet of a suit of armor he had effectively disabled.

Real anger sparks behind amber hued eyes, and while anger can be just as destructive as grief, right now the former is better than the latter. If Tony had known he was being manipulated, the way he feels wouldn’t have changed anyway. Steve wants him to snap to it? Fine. He’s snapped.

“I don’t run away. I don’t pick people over a cause—“ Tony doesn’t even know where he’s going with that. Abandonment issues are for another time and place. Not this one.

Bruce has his work cut out for him later.

He just can’t alienate Steve now. They have words that need to be said. But that will come later.

“If we cant protect the world, we’ll Avenge it. Or I will. Are you coming back out of retirement or am I doing this myself?”

[shieldborne]

"We don't get a goddamned moment!" Okay, he wasn't planning on snapping back, but the fact that someone is shouting at him is such an incredible relief, he feels himself latching onto it like a lifeline, reacting emotionally before he can consider the potential consequences.

"People like us, we don't get a break, we don't get a retirement, we don't get to grieve, and we don't get to apologize. Not while there's work. Not while there's anyone or anything left to save."

He takes a breath, pauses, and adds more quietly, "Half of the planet just lost someone they cared about. Friend, family, lover. Maybe all of the above. The other half of the planet's dead. We're not special."

"What do you want me to do? I'm here."

[starkingenuity]

Steve is close to half his age and yet the way he barks at him reduces Tony to a toddler. The inventor is entirely taken aback as he blinks up at the blue eyed Captain and he finds himself suitably cowed. There’s still a lot of pent up rage inside of him, but now is not the time to let it out. Tony has never been good at properly venting himself, but his melt downs are very rarely public. And when they are, they’re destructive. He can’t afford to channel that energy towards Steve right now, but he can’t just let this all go either.

Swallowing down emotion, Tony sets his jaw with a look on his face as if it’s physically painfully to do so. “I have a lot of things to say to you, Rogers.” Steve isn’t the only one that gets to formalize interactions with friends, former and current, by reducing them to family names. “And you have a lot to answer for.” As if Tony Stark isn’t solely responsible for attempting to back Steve into a corner to protect the damage he himself did to the world by spreading the blame. “But you’re right. You are here, now, and someone has to keep the peace while I figure out how to reverse time without a god damned Time Stone.”

Strange traded his ace for Tony’s life and then stupidly died before giving Tony the answers he needed to save the day. Steve is no annoying wizard, but he’ll do in a pinch.

“So if I need a fucking minute to get my head on straight, you’re going to give me a fucking minute.” There’s no apologizing for his language today. “Whatever is left of the world is going to give me a fucking minute too.” A little steam is let out of the valve on the lid of Tony’s pressure cooker and the mechanic can feel himself breathe again. “The half of the world that’s alive doesn’t need to be saved. It’s the guy you put first and the kid you tried to squish— It’s all of the friends and family and lovers that need us. You’re going to have to stand in for Banner until he gets back.”

God help them all.

Tony strides away from Steve to pour himself something to drink and chat to his AI like she’s as alive as Steve is. “What’s the status on the global sat network?”

“A few have been bumped out of orbit, Boss, but most of the grid is up.”

“Start compiling that list of casualties Captain Rogers hasn’t gotten around to doing yet,” Tony responds. It’s not fair, but he’s still reasonably certain that biting remarks to the guy that didn’t pick him for kickball because his 1940s best friend turned up alive is warranted in this and every situation. “And deploy the relief foundation. Start with New York.”

“We don’t have the resources for more than a handful of major global cities, Boss,” FRIDAY responds, and while Tony knows that, he’s not fond of the answer.

“Start with New York,” he repeats, finishing what’s left of the glass he’d poured for himself before he turns back to Steve and looks at him a bit too thoughtfully. “I need you to turn down the dials on your morality a little bit here, Cap, and think towards the greater good here. Can you do that? I need a Spock and not a Kirk right now.”

[shieldborne]

Finally, fucking finally. Something lights up at the back of Steve's eyes, like the prospect of having Tony attempt to rip him a new one is the best thing he's heard all day. Considering the day he's had, the day they've all had, it probably is. Maybe he should have sought out this bear and prodded it with a stick before now. They need to have this out. He needs to have this out, badly.

Maybe they can't rebuild bridges even after this, even if they talk (scream?) everything out, but they sure as hell weren't going to do it with awkward silence. Nonetheless, it still isn't the problem at hand. "I genuinely look forward to it," he says and it sounds a little grim, but weirdly sincere.

Meanwhile, he's reminded of exactly who he's dealing with, and the sheer audacity of Tony Stark's intellect. "Reverse time. You're going to...you mean that, don't you."
Steve's experience with time travel has only ever involved going forward at a sedate pace, while in a coma. He's read plenty of science fiction, and he's seen all the Back to the Future films (at Barton's insistence, for whatever reason), but he's pretty sure that doesn't qualify him as a lab assistant here. Then again, there probably isn't anyone qualified, so maybe that doesn't matter.

This is madness. Desperation. He would assume Tony has gone crazy with shock and grief, except he's always assumed Tony was a little crazy, just as driven and prone to recklessness as Steve himself. Sane and staid doesn't accidentally produce a murderbot while trying to develop a way to protect the planet. But Steve has nothing else to offer right now, except information and triage, and the sick, shaky urge to sacrifice himself to fix this. Irrelevant if it's unfixable. Terribly, terribly relevant if Tony can really come up with a plan.

He remains silent while Tony and FRIDAY discuss, seeing nothing to argue with thus far. The 'list of casualities' remark is a low blow, but he doesn't care right now. They can talk about Tony's tendency to twist the knife later, if later comes. When Stark looks back at him, Steve's arms are folded again, but the effect is less defensive than pensive.
"I can get you resources," he says. "Wakanda's best engineer is MIA, but their network is intact."

Shuri would have been a huge help. He has to assume she died, but they couldn't find dust in the lab where she last was, and in deference to the surviving Queen Ramonda, she's been declared missing, rather than deceased. "And they are willing to work disaster relief, under the circumstances, with everything they've got."

Remarkable generosity, under the circumstances. A country barely stepping out of its lifelong isolationism could have easily been knocked into an 'our people, first and ONLY' stance by a disaster like this. It speaks to the courageous spirit of the nation as a whole. There was a time he would have expected such behavior from America. There was a time it would have delivered. He can't be sure, right now, what will actually happen.

"This is going to sound nuts, but there's also a raccoon...uh, genetically enhanced alien raccoon? I don't know, but he's got some solid tech know-how and opposable thumbs. You might want him in on this too." Banner goes without saying, of course. As soon as he's available, they will get him here, unless he's better able to help where he is.

"I'm a little worried about the way you said that," he tells him, with respect to the greater good, "but I'm listening. If you think you can fix this, you're in charge."

[starkingenuity]

“A genetically enhanced alien raccoon-- Sure, why not. To go with Biomechanical Smurf Barbie and the talking tree, right?” Tony’s only half listening at this point, brain cataloging what Steve had said and then dismissing it out of hand. “I usually work alone but it’s probably a good idea to tap into anyone that understands quantum physics here. And since Banner’s chilling in Vienna, I’ll take a rodent and Avatar robot.”

Tony has absolutely no concept of caring if Steve can follow his weird references or not. He needs the sounding board. With FRIDAY busy using her feelers to tap into networks it’s probably illegal for Tony to have access to, satellites, and a scarily accurate facial recognition software Tony had written to relive the past when he was feeling sad about not having his mom around, Tony doesn’t want to disturb her. She’s got enough work to do trying to figure out which important world leaders are still functioning.

And if Pepper and Happy managed to survive the Great Dust Storm.

Title is a work in progress.

Anyway, Steve will do if his Wild Man appearance translates into a looser moral code than a strict pointing towards Truth North. Tony is pretty sure that they’re going to be doing some pretty terrible things over the next few days or weeks. He and Steve have a past and they rarely see eye to eye, but they both want to bring back the people that they’ve lost and selling one’s soul to the devil to achieve that is a nominal price.

“You’re not going to like the way I say anything from here on out,” Tony confirms, leveling Steve in a Wild Man gaze of his own, the kind of gaze that often frightened Pepper and would scare Banner too if he saw it again. Tony Stark On A Mission is dangerous and potentially unstoppable. “I hope your incredible shrinking and growing guy is alive. We need to steal his suit.”

[shieldborne]

"Yeah, well, if that group was the strangest thing I'd seen today, I'd fall on my knees and thank whatever cosmic powers exist," Steve half-growls, not at Tony. They're probably of a similar opinion on that matter, even if they have rarely, if ever, been on the same page with respect to anything else.

"I can radio back to Wakanda. Just give me an idea who you want here, and what you need from them," he says. He's pretty sure Rocket will find a way to get here himself, given the motivation. He seems easily that driven, and like Tony, he's lost a strange kind of adopted child.

Steve regards Tony with a dull, wary eye. The last time he saw Tony Stark On A Mission, that mission was to kill Bucky. There's a weird kind of symmetry to see him wild to bring back the dead now. Steve isn't sure he likes it. Actually, he's sure he doesn't, and his moral compass has not shifted an inch as of yet, but it's always been a shade more complex than most people, Stark included, are inclined to believe.

"You want him, too, or just the suit?" He asks evenly. "Because I'm pretty sure it was confiscated and locked up when he did his plea deal. Unless you have some kind of intel I don't, I would guess it's locked up in a high-security military base."

"In which case, yeah, I can get it for you." Wouldn't be the first time he's stolen high-profile equipment from a military base. He has also, technically, robbed the Smithsonian. Thus far, he's not seeing any challenge to his moral code here.

[starkingenuity]

Color Tony surprised. “Ross said you raided the place. Serves me right for believing him.” At least this makes their job a little easier. Tony won’t have to worry about the suit getting dusted right along with Lang. It’s safe, it’s secure. And it’s in an abandoned super powered prison that had been defunded the moment Steve Rogers, fugitive at law, broke out some of America’s ‘most dangerous people.’

Tony isn’t making judgements here on the purpose of the Raft. He’d helped to design portions of the technology used there, after all, and SHIELD had a few very dangerous and very unsavory people holed up there. That had included one of their own for a time. Wanda is— Wanda had been one of the most dangerous people Tony had ever encountered.

He lifts his eyes towards Steve again, that dark and wild force only intensifying. “Lang’s the accessory. I don’t have time to rifle through my dad’s stuff on Pym particles and it’s nothing I bothered to dabble in.” Because of course complex physics like those described in Hank Pym’s life work would be a mere dabbling for Tony Stark. “Let me get some things and we’ll go. And then I want to meet your new pet.”

Rocket and Tony have a little too much in common.

They’re not going to get along at all.

[shieldborne]

"I went in, took what I wanted, and left the rest behind." Which is to say, he took his people. What the hell was Steve going to do with the Ant-Man costume, anyway? He didn't want to screw up Lang's plea deal, or Barton's for that matter. They have kids, and he grew up without a dad at home, himself. (That's an old-fashioned way to look at things, maybe; some of Steve's anachronisms will stick with him until he's six feet under for good.)

Funny thing that the Raft has come up in conversation, because Steve has a few questions for Tony. It was up and ready so quickly, it had to have been there before the Accords were finished being drafted. It's logical; when you have superpowered aliens and dangerous AIs and enhanced humans running amok, someone--probably a lot of someones--will start working out ways to neutralize them. You have to. SHIELD did. Steve thought he might have recognized Tony's hand in some of the Raft technology, though, and that makes him wonder how much the man knew, and when he knew it.

Tony's motives, 99 times out of 100, are pretty pure, in Steve's eyes, except during the rare semi-psychotic emotional breakdown where he tries to murder Steve's best friend. They don't see ethics the same way, they don't see the world the same way, but in the end they generally both want to keep innocent people from getting hurt. So, to say he distrusts Tony after seeing the Raft setup would be an exaggeration. But he would love to know what was really going through the man's head, whether he was playing some kind of long con against Ross or whether he was truly just doing penance for the lives they all failed to save. The question will have to wait, as will any discussion about Wanda (who was, dear God yes, quite possibly the most powerful and dangerous individual on the planet until Thanos dropped in, and that's exactly why Steve wanted to help her), and Steve can only hope they both live to have it out.

"'We', huh?" Steve has to assume that means Tony doesn't trust him to go alone. Whatever. He doesn't exactly have a plane readily available anyway. "Is your new blue pal coming, too? You should probably try to be polite to the raccoon, by the way. I am dead positive he will bite you if he has a mind to."

Yeah, they're going to hate each other. It'll be fascinating.

[starkingenuity]

“Yeah. ‘We.’ Do you have a problem with that?” Tony needs to be hands on with this. And he needs to see what else Ross might have left behind in the Raft. SHIELD’s rise and fall in prominence, the Accords, and the rapid increase of super powered crime since the Chitauri’s initial invasion has left so much political turmoil that Tony’s ability to slap Band-Aids on the problem areas has more or less run it’s course. The guy has a lot on his plate, more than Steve will ever understand the reason for.

Atonement is just a small portion of it, but it’s one portion that will haunt him for the rest of his life because he can never fully give back everything that he’s taken.

An eyebrow arched and the jut of his hip leaves Tony looking more like a petulant college co-ed than a man in his late forties. “I know we don’t like each other, Rogers, but I don’t think we need a chaperone for this. And you don’t have to threaten me with rabies.”

It’s easier for Tony to believe that Steve’s break in trust, despite the hand-written letter, despite the offering of the phone, has everything to do with animosity. Why else wouldn’t Steve tell him? Tony had been willing to compromise himself, perhaps to a fault. And maybe Steve never anticipated a reveal of that magnitude to ever hit. Tony himself would never have predicted the way he freaked out.

But it happened. Tony tried to kill Steve’s only link to the past. Their friendship had evidently been one sided anyway, so it probably didn’t matter. Steve had been Tony’s friend.

But Tony had, obviously, only ever been Steve’s colleague. Ally at best.

That hurt’s scabbed over and a new kind of pain has all of his attention now anyway.

“I can go alone if you’re against getting your hands dirty.”

[shieldborne]

"Like I said, you're running the show right now," he tells him. "Just don't die on me and we're good."

On some level, he's afraid to go to a deserted military base alone with Tony, though. They're both at the edge of their emotional limits, and it's going to dredge up some very unpleasant memories. Is there even a tiny possibility Tony might attack him, he can't help but wonder, and concludes with a little internal shudder that if he does, all Steve can do is take it this time. He's got no one to protect and Tony is the only chance they have out of this.

"For the record," he says, not because he's nervous but because it's true, "I only disliked you for the first twelve hours or so of knowing you." And maybe a little bit before that, by reputation. You messed up his New York skyline with that building of yours, Stark.

"After you almost died saving New York, you kinda won me over." He huffs a sigh. "I guess I have some things to say to you, too, Tony. Let's try to get through this so we both get the chance."

"And don't worry about my hands. They're staying dirty until this is over." He literally has Bucky's dust under his nails, and Sam's, and Wanda's, and probably a few hundred Wakandan soldiers and Dora Milaje with it.

[starkingenuity]

There’s a huge sting in his chest from Steve’s words, and Tony turns away from the darker haired blond before any of that can register on his face. It’s easier to deal with Steve at an arm’s length and Tony intends to keep him at least that far away. He’d be utterly offended if he knew that Steve thought he might attack him (Steve had never been the subject of murderous intent, and Tony had never been prepared to actually kill Rogers to get to his mother’s murderer, or he would have shot him in the face with a palm repulsor when he had been certain that shield was about to disconnect his head from his shoulders). Thankfully, no one here is a mind reader and the two people closest to that title that he had ever met were now dust.

Tony makes no comment about Steve needing to talk to him, he doesn’t re-acknowledge the fact that he too would like to have some words delivered in short, jabbing, angry bursts. Their cards are on the table, played face down, and Tony has no idea if either will be left alive after this idiocy to see who will win the pool.

“FRIDAY, do you have an ETA on that list?” Tony’s hands are on both of his hips now, head bowed slightly as he examines the toe of his sneaker. He needs to change, badly, but there’s no time. He wasted it listening to angry voice mails from Peter’s real parent.

“Negative, Boss. Less than a day, more than half of one,” FRIDAY drolls. “Still no sign of Ms. Potts.”

Tony hadn’t asked her to, specifically, locate Pepper, but he hadn’t had to. Tony flinches and turns back towards Steve to lead the way out of his house. “She’s the only one you interrupt me for,” Tony growls under his breath. “When you find her.”

“Yes, Boss.”

They’ll take a quinjet this time and though Tony loathes to be stuck anywhere with Steve Rogers, they have work to do. Work that doesn’t involve talking and work that really shouldn’t involve either of them moving into one another’s space. The moment the blond does, however, such as when he glances over Tony’s shoulder as they near the Raft, the engineer immediately prickles. His breathing changes, the hair on his neck stands up and his heart thuds in his chest.

It’s nothing he can hide from a supersoldier, as much as it shames him.

[shieldborne]

They really do need to talk. They may have misinterpreted one another's body language in that last fight, not to mention actual words exchanged. 'Stay down, final warning' sounded like a death threat to Steve, for certain. As for the edge of the Shield aimed at Tony's head...well, he had to get Tony to leave the reactor in his chest unguarded somehow, in order to shut it down. Cracking open his helmet and aiming for his face seemed like the only way at the time.

In all fairness, Steve intended for that potential blow to be misinterpreted as an immediate threat of messy death, so he had this coming. And it would be too much for him to claim he wasn't off the rails by that point. He swears to God he heard Bucky screaming the entire time, but Bucky swore just as seriously he didn't make a sound, he's a trained assassin for fuck's sake, why would his instinct be to yell like a banshee when he's injured?

Screaming, ice, cracked metal, ozone, blood-smell. Falling. All three of them, falling. He's not sure when he hit the ground.

"Jesus Christ," Steve murmurs almost under his breath when FRIDAY mentions Ms. Potts. He hadn't dared to consider--but no news might just mean she got stuck in traffic away from the compound somewhere. He gives a little full-body twitch, as if he wants to run right out and check for her, because the idea of Tony losing literally everyone that matters is more than he wants to consider.

He can't, though. He can't, and FRIDAY is better equipped to search, anyway. Saying something to Tony seems like it might almost be insulting. Cruel. So he follows in silence.

It probably doesn't help Tony's nerves that in the Quinjet Steve can't seem to sit still. He sits for takeoff, fidgets, and rises to pace in a manner that's a bit more frenetic than his normal. And he does catch the shift in breathing and pulse when he looks over Tony's shoulder, glances at him with a soft sigh, and moves back.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm not going to hurt you."

[starkingenuity]

Tony’s got no intention of explaining the evolution of his relationship with Pepper Potts, why they had broken up or how they’d gotten back together, or the fact that they are now engaged and had been actively planning a wedding right up until Bruce Banner stepped out of a hole in the air to hug him a little too tightly and give a name to the person Tony’d been dreaming about for years. He’s sure that Steve’s been through a lot too, probably happily galivanting across the globe like an international Robin Hood with his merry band of followers. He hadn’t kept up on Steve’s whereabouts, though he certainly could have, nor did he do much of anything after he’d gotten Steve’s letter and the phone save for putting Ross on hold or being in meetings whenever he came to the compound. His break with Steve had been devastating and, in a way, it had been what brought Tony back to Pepper.

Uncle Obi turned out to be seriously evil. He’d lost Bruce. Rhodey had nearly been killed. Steve had left him with a few broken ribs and a note that just left him more depressed than he had any right to be. And then the kid decided that he didn’t want to be an Avenger after all.

Proposing to Pepper seemed like the best way to keep someone in his life. And it gave him a reason to start a family of his own now, a biological family that might not just disappear into smoke and fire like his nightmares spelled out for him.

Ha. It had worked until Thanos decided to ruin everything.

Everything had been tense, but fine again with Steve until the idiot opened his God damned mouth. “Why would you hurt me? I’m your only hope, Leia,” he mutters, bristling even further. “Just sit down and strap in. The place might not be as empty as I thought. Scans aren’t revealing any heat signatures, but it’s designed to blanket them anyway. You know that already. You’ll have to tell me how you broke in some other time.”

But not this time. Now is not the time for catching up over a beer.

Tony sets the quinjet down without much care for stealth or quiet and heads towards the armor bay. The suits he keeps on hand aren’t as advanced as the nano-tech one Thanos smashed, but this one will do. He’s not about to head into the unknown unarmed.

At least no one tries to contact them or swarm them when they head out onto the landing deck. The smell of the ocean doesn’t hit Tony in his pressurized armor but Steve can smell it, and hear the choppy sea around them too. But that’s about it. It seems that they’re alone.

“Any intel on where confiscated gear is kept these days, Cap?”

[shieldborne]

Steve sits again for the landing, with bad grace. He's shivering under his skin. Under normal circumstances, he's usually able to take a plane trip over the sea without batting an eye, but right now everything is all wrong, and they're going to have to go beneath the waterline to search the place. In a floating tin can, with a man who neither likes nor trusts him.

If they're lucky, the security systems in this hellhole have gone offline.

He follows Tony out of the Quin, but his steps slow down as the smell and sound of the waves hit him, and when Tony speaks, if he glances back, he'll see Steve looking pale and distant, giving that harsh thousand-yard soldier's stare to something invisible in the foggy waves beyond. He licks his lower lip to respond, tastes seasalt, and answers:

"There'll be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover, tomorrow, just you wait and see..." He's not a professional singer, but he can carry a tune. "There'll be love and laughter, and peace ever after, tomorrow, when the world is free."

Never has Vera Lynn sounded so funereal.

[starkingenuity]

It’s probably fitting for someone that looks like a choir boy to sound like one too, but singing is the last thing that Tony expects to hear through the filters inside of the helmet. A glance of his eyes is translated by the HUD to dissolve the armor away from his head so that he can look at Steve through something other than a projected screen. He’s about to say something snarky and a little mean spirited, but he doesn’t.

Steve isn’t taunting him or even looking at him.

He’s being a guy who just lost a returned brother-at-arms and a good friend, who has been running on empty, emotionally, and who was raised during a time that doesn’t really equate to anything remotely like now. Tony’s a little surprised that the guy’s managed to get this far without an emotional break this far.

A small turn of the wrist alerts the full armor to split open and Tony heads towards the steel barrier he had been trying to erect between them. “Contrary to the belief of this idiot I know… You can take a few damned minutes to let it all out. Men cry these days, Rogers.” The salty air causes his hair to fluff up.

it's the infinity feels war

[shieldborne]

Steve is aware of the places he's broken, although he's never figured out how to acknowledge or cope with them. Instead he pushes them aside and denies them at every turn, and Sam tried to tell him how unhealthy that was, but there's always been something else to focus on. So, here he is, facing down some old demons in the worst time and place. And there Tony is, displaying the extraordinary capacity he has for kindness, which he hides under his various layers of psychological armor.

Steve knows he's not forgiven. He hasn't even looked for forgiveness, under the assumption it's either a hopeless case or only to be earned inch by bloody inch, with actions and not words. But he tears his eyes from the sea and blinks blankly at Tony for a moment and starts to feel a little bit less cold. There's a ghost of a smile under the beard for a moment; a sad, thin, tattered little ghost.

"Kinda figured if I let myself get started, I'd never stop," he admits, worries his lip and says, "I hate the ocean anymore. And snow, and ice."

He feels a bit woozy, actually, but he imagines that has more to do with circumstances than seasickness. "You asked me about what Wanda pulled out of my head before," he says. "A long time ago. I didn't want to talk about it. I thought it wasn't anything that was news to me, anyway. Just wasn't sure why it hurt so bad at the time."

"It was an empty room, Tony. I was walking through a dance hall, and Peggy was there and she took my hand. There was red on a man's shirt, and I thought it was blood, but it was only wine. She said the war was over, and we could go home. 'Imagine it'." He breathes in raggedly--feels a little like the asthma of his youth.

"And then everyone was gone, and it was so goddamn quiet. The most awful quiet I ever heard. I figured, hey, I knew I couldn't go home again. I knew I wasn't going to really leave the war behind, ever. I'm not the first guy who had that happen to him.
There's a name for that."

"But it hit me just now...This is it, isn't it? This is the empty room. Fights lost, sacrifices made, and in spite of it all there's no one left in the room to fight or sacrifice for. I should have done...something. More. Different. I'm sorry, Tony."

[starkingenuity]

“The Big Bad might have cleared half of the room, Cap, but the last time I looked, the glass was still half full.” He’s mixing metaphors here, but seeing something really get to Steve is like seeing his mother crry. It isn’t familiar, he doesn’t consider the blond a sibling after all, but the way it hits him is still a gut punch. Tony doesn’t like it, not the feeling, not the cause of the feeling, and not that Steve is capable of generating that response out of him in the first place. “I’m also a little pissed off that you think you’re standing in an empty room with me right here in front of you.”

He’s deflecting. Tony is well aware of what Steve is saying, but he’s making light of it anyway. Tony Stark can’t be himself unless he’s painfully subversive at all times. Especially at Steve’s expense.

“If this works and I can do what we all know I’m capable of doing,” hurk, “then I’ll get them back for you.”

As much as he’d like to think that they had time for Steve to ugly cry into his gloves for an hour or so, Tony is as restless as the soldier had been in the quinjet. He doesn’t want to hang around on the landing deck of a crazy floating prison for much longer. And he isn’t planning on sharing what Wanda pulled out of his head, either, even if his big fat mouth opens up as he steps back into his armor.

“Anyway, I win on the shitty visions. Finding yourself in an empty room is a lot better than watching you die.” Steve has a way of pulling things out of him. Like how Tony, always antagonistic and at the other end of the moral rope from Steve, decided to tell the blond in a moment of self-pity that he thought he was his friend. Isn’t that always the way with Tony, though? He latches on, claws into people, and decides for them if they’re friends…or even more. Banner and Potts know that first hand. “And you’re still alive, Rogers, which pretty much goes to show you that what she made us see wasn’t real.”

[shieldborne]

Steve recognizes the deflection for what it is: merciful. Aside from needing him functional, Tony doesn't have any reason to coddle him, and--well. Normally, Steve wouldn't put up with coddling to begin with. Peggy's attempt after Bucky was lost in the war was the best he'd ever born witness to in his life, but even at that rate it was cold comfort. Wise, yes. Healing? Not so much.

For some reason, Tony's doing at least as good a job, with just a few semi-serious words. I'll get them back for you, he says, and they both know 'them' consists partly of the man Tony was at one point hellbent on killing. If Steve were a different person, if he was angrier and bitter and crueler, he could point that out. Could have sunk his fangs right in after admitting Bucky was dead, and asked Tony are you happy now?

Steve can't make himself be that mean-spirited, though. He has plenty of flaws and that just isn't one of them, and it's good it isn't, because that might have pre-empted Tony offhandedly restoring his faith in their chances of recovering from this just by being excessively glib.

He takes a few ginger steps in Tony's direction, keeping enough of a distance to telegraph that he's not going to reach for him, that he's not a physical threat, but his gaze is clearing, and focused on Tony now, and there's warmth kindling in it. "Guess I figured I'd already lost you in a different way entirely," he says quietly.

"I'm still alive," he nods, admitting to himself it's not for lack of trying. "Me, Tony? You saw me die in your vision?"

Me? He's struck by the implication that that would be so deeply upsetting to the man. He wants to ask whether Tony means he saw Captain America dying, or Steve Rogers, but that's probably too philosophical a question for the moment. "I'll...try not to do that."

[starkingenuity]

There’s no need to elaborate on what he saw. Even the Hulk has died. The Hulk and not Bruce Banner. They had all been dead, but only Steve had laid there as Tony gripped at him, trying to will him to stay with him and accused him of their destruction. It had flavored an already confusing relationship towards the sour end.

And then Ultron happened. The need to regulate people like himself became apparent. Tony needed rules, he still does. He needs laws in place to keep people like him, to keep people affected by the last eight years of mess caused by the Chitauri and their discarded technology, safely pushed away from normal people just trying to live their lives.

The Avengers helped people, but they also caused a colossal amount of damage, destroyed cities and livelihoods and families.

But that’s part of a discussion for another day.

They get below sea level fairly easily, Tony constantly scanning the area ahead and below them as they move for signs of movement. There’s nothing, just darkness illuminated by the reactor in his chest and the headlights in the helmet. Decommissioning this place had always seemed strange to him, but obviously SHIELD had gone ahead and done it. Secretary Ross hadn’t been lying.

At least the sound of the waves doesn’t breach the thick metal hull surrounding them and Steve isn’t taken by the need to sing again. They find the main power grid and Tony once more steps out of his armor, setting it to sentry mode so he can fiddle with the control panel.

“Lights, cameras,” he mutters to himself as the command center comes to life, monitors flickering on and the hiss of electricity surges across the electronics.

He’s not prepared to see the dust in the room. And he’s not prepared to see the people wandering around in forgotten cells.

“Shit. This place was shut down a year ago. Why are there still prisoners here?” It’s a question he doesn’t have an answer to. “I’ll have FRIDAY send some guys to round them up,” he continues, ignoring the fact that abandoning the people here could potentially be a death sentence if they can’t get the government back on line.

It’s not his concern and the people that are here, usually, deserve to be here.