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.

Comments

[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.

[shieldborne]

Steve really wants to question further, because as much as he always liked and respected and even cared about Tony (after that first rocky 12 hours), he didn't figure he was his closest friend even among the Avengers. And he figured that was mostly because of Howard; if he'd grown up feeling compared to some dead guy and found wanting all the time, and then said dead guy showed up in his backyard not dead at all, he'd be a little bit cranky about it, too. He figured Tony wasn't his biggest fan, but it was never really personal, and the fact that they worked so well together in spite of it was a testament to the man's hidden grit and the inherent goodness in him that he seems so reluctant to admit to.

If anything, he'd have expected Tony's nightmare vision to be of Rhodey or Banner dying, specifically. Or Pepper, if it was particularly unkind.

One of these days, he's going to pursue this line of questioning. Why him? Why me? But that day is not today, and Tony's lack of response reinforces that conclusion. They can have a heart to heart after they save the world (isn't that always the way? and then the heart to heart keeps getting put off for later).

Steve is on high alert as he follows, and he seems to have taken his duty as rear guard very seriously. The arm-shields that T'Challa commissioned for him are quietly opened, but he relies on Tony for light. That, and his own enhanced senses. It strikes him that it's far, far too quiet in here, but he has nothing more concrete than that mild misgiving to voice until the lights come on.

Then, he begins swearing under his breath, just barely audible but unusually vehement, and including a few words Tony has most certainly never heard him use before--and not because they're in the Xhosa dialect he's been learning on his visits to Wakanda.

Tony may have Rogers pegged as a bleeding heart, and he kind of is, but he's also very keenly aware of the protocols of military prisons, high tech or otherwise. And he's broken into this one before. "We need to get out of this room right now," he says in his battlefield voice, the one that brooks no argument, as he lunges to guard the door they came through. "Put the suit back on, move!"

Clearly, the place is not as decommissioned as Stark was led to believe. And an operational prison's emergency systems do not include the whole power grid going down in a disaster. There should at least be emergency lighting and air circulation, and if half the guards in the place are dust, the other half should have been active enough to come ask what the fuck they thought they were doing landing an unauthorized aircraft on a restricted-access base.

Something's bad wrong here, and Steve's first assumption is a prisoner breakout. The Avengers weren't the only people locked up in here, and while they may not have been the only relatively innocent ones shoved away without due process, there are almost certainly some dangerous individuals in this facility.

[starkingenuity]

All it takes is Steve’s tone for Tony to realize that he’s overlooked something very, very important here. It’s not the prisoners in their cells that are the focus, it’s the obvious lack of non-dusted personnel here. The moment Tony had seen the dust, he should have run the math in his head. It would not be impossible for all of the former workers to have been part of the random and arbitrary culling, but it’s still highly unlikely. It’s also not impossible for the Raft to function with a dead man’s switch either, but there had been no evidence of shut down… And no evidence of backup security.

With all of the power out, in fact, there is no security. Though he hears Steve’s words, his eyes drill into the screens, looking for inconsistencies. He finds one immediately. There’s no sign of someone roaming the hall, but there’s also obvious distress in the people in their cells. And there’s one very, very bizarre scene in what looks to be a cafeteria. There’s a lot of debris there. No, not debris. Bodies. Bodies torn limb from limb.

It takes Tony’s face more time than his brain to figure out that they had just strolled into a situation heading towards the upper reaches of FUBAR. Tony turns to do as he’s told, rushing through the door just before the Iron Man armor goes into defensive mode. It’s not so much the sound of repulsors and heat-missiles engaging whatever else had moved into the hallway outside of the control room that worries Tony, though.

It’s the roar of the giant, Hulk-like creature that sustains the damage the armor throws at it.

[shieldborne]

It's both better and worse than Steve's immediate fear. He doesn't have Stark's intellect, but he thinks in strategy and his brain has already made several skips and jumps forward. If he were a prisoner here and suddenly handed the opportunity to break out of a cell and overwhelm his guards, he would do exactly this: he would sit quiet, do whatever it might take to keep from alerting anyone in the outside that something was wrong, until the right moment. He would wait for a relief shift or commanding officer to arrive via air--because of course this thing has life rafts, but the chances of getting far from here fast in a life raft are nil. He would corner them, and take their plane, and get the hell out.

So, as he rushes to guard the door, his primary concern is that they must not get trapped in the control room. He misses what Tony spies on camera, and that says a lot about the two of them, about what each one prioritizes and how their M.O.s compliment one another. Tony hangs back to gather more intel. Steve reacts at breakneck speed, and he's usually able to survive and sustain his own recklessness.

He could have seriously gotten into trouble without the suit standing guard, though, this time. He was expecting an organized rebellion with a stealthy mastermind, not a raging monster.

(Maybe he's not giving the raging monster sufficient credit, though. It was clearly quiet enough to stalk them, even with the tremendous size and bulk. He's going to have nightmares. Like, extra ones. If he ever sleeps again.)

"Holy CHRIST, is that Blonsky?!" He's scrambling, off guard and horrified, but already making a point of putting himself between Tony and the creature. "He's supposed to be in Alaska, in cryo!"

Well, it kind of makes sense. If the Raft is a higher security prison and can normally sustain power for a cryo chamber, SHIELD might have moved the man there. Might have been fine if the power hadn't gone down (but then, who shut the power grid off?). The other possibility, of course, is that this is a completely unknown quantity of monstrous strength and psychosis, which might be even worse.

All Steve knows is that whoever or whatever it is, Tony is frighteningly vulnerable to it without his armor on, and whatever else happens here he has to live and get back safely.

[starkingenuity]

Sometimes, Tony forgets that Steve had been in a lot of the loop when it came to SHIELD. Tony’s information usually came through low level technological espionage, but he also consulted a great deal with governmental agencies and SHIELD and the Department of Defense had always been good clients. Technically, SHIELD woke up Steve and Steve worked for them even through the HYDRA incident, so why wouldn’t he be briefed on where Blonsky was?

“Yeah,” Tony pants, scrambling back, grasping Steve’s forearm as he does so, briefly. “Yeah, I designed his cell myself,” Tony complains. “If they’re just stockpiling king crab, I’m going to be pissed off.”

Why the hell is a decidedly evil version of Bruce Banner allowed to just hang out at the Raft? Ross has a lot of explaining to do. Uh. If Ross is around to do any explaining at all.

The exoskeleton more or less just absorbed the repulsor blasts, and Tony grabbed at his phone to direct the armor to shoot around and not at Blonsky. They needed cover, something to run through and distract the Abomination without being caught up in either.

“I miss your old shield,” he grunts at Steve as the hallway fills with dust from drywall and chunks of ceiling. “Go!”

((i can edit if you don't want Tony picked up and carried, just let me know))

[shieldborne]

Oh, Steve always has had a keen interest in anyone dosed with a version of the serum he'd been given by Erskine. He has yet to find anyone who came through it completely unscathed. Bucky's knockoff Hydra version hasn't destroyed him, arguably (the brainwashing did that), but he's the exception that proves the rule. For every gain in strength, stamina, or intellect, there seems to be a terrifying drawback. Erskine may have meant well, may have been as pure of heart as he hoped Steve would be, but he sure as hell opened a Pandora's Box. The arms race shouldn't be fought at all, but particularly with human bodies as the raw material.

But also, Steve had an added advantage within the loop, so to speak. He was the guy a lot of SHIELD agents grew up wanting to be. He figured out quickly he could ask a question and get at least a partial, off-the-record answer even if he didn't technically have clearance. Because Captain America would never do anything wrong or careless with intel.

God, he wishes he were as good a man as people seem to think he is.

Case in point. He should have been working with Tony all this time, somehow. He thought he was giving him space, letting him reach back out to Steve when he was ready. Of course, he also thought he should wait for the right moment to tell Tony about Hydra's role in his parents' death, and that turned out effing terrible. And instead of giving him space, he's clearly left Tony in the lurch, because this is not something that would have slipped past him if he'd had backup and time to keep an eye on what Ross was doing behind the scenes. Tony always knows what Tony wants or needs to know at a given moment.

This is Steve's fault.

"I miss the Hulk," he fires back at Tony, although, yeah, it would be nice to have something to throw (but also let's be real, next to Abomination, Hulk looks like a big cuddly green teddy bear). He hates to run from a fight, but this is one they don't have time for, even if he thought they could win, and he's not sure they can.
If you're going to run, though, best to do it as quickly as possible. He'll have to apologize later for getting handsy without permission, but Tony's getting picked up and carried through the cover fire at top speed.

No way! This brings me such joy.

[starkingenuity]

“Cap!” The word is actually less of a sound and more of a yelp, but if Steve ever asks, Tony is going to say that the other man misheard him use his shortened title and nothing more. Rubble behind him did not make him feel better and while Tony is all for high speed amusement rides, being thrown, fireman style, across the ample shoulders of one Steve Rogers makes him feel more like an injured Jeff Goldblum at a dinosaur theme park than Iron Man right now.

Must Go Faster even pops into his head, but he doesn’t say it, grasping at Steve’s waist instead as he listens to the roar of that great, red beast turn it’s full attention towards his poor armor.

He really liked that one too. Damn it.

“Where are you going?!” Tony finally hisses, words that actually mean something and form the basis of conversation rather than a pop culture reference or a whimper. “We need that suit!”

Or the mission is done. Peter and Bucky stay dead.

Tony’s not willing for that to happen.

“And don’t touch my butt!”

XD Awesome.

[shieldborne]

Tony can no doubt sprawl alluringly with his shirt hanging open, as well. And talk about chaos theory, if the occasion calls for it. Actually there are a lot of parallels there; it's sort of alarming.

"Gotta go down a floor," he grits out in response to the question. Tony, you should know better than to think he's giving up on a mission just because there's a horrific genetically-altered being in the way. Most of his life since the serum has consisted of horrific genetically altered beings of one kind or another. And aliens. And robots. And Tony Starks.

"Storage was on the bottom level before. Can't be sure it's still in the same place, but it's the safest bet. If I get you to a security station, you can seal off this hall, right?" Because if not, they're probably fucked. The armor can't hold Abomination back forever.

Actually, even sealing off the hall is unlikely to hold him back forever, and it risks trapping them, but Steve doesn't like their other options.

He's not going to dignify the butt comment with a response, but on some level it makes him just a little bit happy. Just like old times, at least for a split second.

He seems to know where he's going, darting into a hall, kicking open a door and hastening down a narrow maintenance passage, which ends in a flight of metal stairs. Not until they're at the bottom of these does he set Tony down, alert and tense, listening for sounds of pursuit. "The Quinjet. You update the security systems all the time, right? If Blonsky's not the only one that's loose--and I'm not sure how he could be--someone's going to want to be on the next flight out of here."

[starkingenuity]

Normally in horror movies, the pretty girl about to get slashed runs up the stairs like a moron, trapping herself away from the path needed to get to safety and invariably putting the deranged murderer between that path and herself. They might be going in the opposite direction right now, but they’re doing the same damned thing. He blames that on Steve’s inherent prettiness, despite the lumberjack-hobo offspring he’s currently pretending he is. Of course, even his beard is soft and luxurious, and Tony knows this because he can feel it from time to time on the stretch of skin between the riding up/falling towards his armpits shirt he’s wearing and the edge of his jeans. It’s disconcerting and jealous inducing, but Tony’s mind snaps back to the task at hand.

Suit. Quantum manipulation device. Survive to alter it.

As they hurry down that narrow corridor, Tony shields his head with his hands. The ceilings are low and up on Steve”/ shoulder, he’s pretty high. Of course, his head isn’t the highest portion of his body now and his lower back does just clear the overhead piping, but humans often react protectively of their most important parts and despite what magazine journalists often claim, he is indeed human.

By the time Steve sets him down, only a few moments have fully passed. Steve moves fast and Tony needs a few moments to really get his bearings again.

“The quintet is on lockdown the moment I leave it. The ones we use all require vocal authorization. Too many teenagers taking joy rides.” So it’s safe, short of being shoved into the ocean or pulled apart. That’s not all too comforting really.

Tony brushes himself off and stalks into the darkness. He’d managed to get a few systems working in the control room but emergency lights aren’t known for their brightness and he has to squint. There are storage lockers all along the walls here, most with keypad or scanning locks. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem but they’re on borrowed time with a barely stoppable creature upstairs.

[shieldborne]

Let's be real, pretty or not, Steve is more the Final Girl type. As long as Tony stays close to him, they ought to get out just fine.

In any case, failure is not an option.

Steve is too focused on the danger behind them to observe (enjoy?) the bare skin brushing his cheek, but he does have an eidetic memory. He'll probably be able to recall the moment later. He does, at least, try not to grab Tony's butt, as requested.
He's out of breath when they stop, and that's unusual for him. The stress may be taking a toll; he's only running on adrenaline and determination, too, and he should probably try to eat when they get out of this. "I want pictures of teenagers taking joyrides in the quin," he huffs. "But that's good. Hard to tell what we're really up against in here."

Just Abomination is plenty to be up against.

Steve makes an effort to move quietly as he follows Tony, but right about here is where his usefulness as a guide begins to wane. "I know they use serial numbers and file under a terminal-digit system," he says. "But without knowing the number they've assigned, we may have to just break down the doors and hope for the best. Unless you've got a better idea."

Tony usually does have a better idea.

[starkingenuity]

Though Tony might have other ideas, they’re not always better. He might think otherwise, however. Tony’s thoughts for this one, especially because he knows he hasn’t completely reconnected power, is more physical than mental. He’s not going to hack the system locks, but bypass them. And that requires a little help.

Taking a multitool from his pocket (because he isn’t some amateur), Tony marks an X a few feet above where the locker units start by etching the metal. “Punch here.”

He’ll do the manual overrides by hand once he can get them on the wires, and that shouldn’t take too much time at all. At least his shoes are rubberized. Again, this isn’t his first rodeo and he’s pretty much the sort of person who manages to invoke Murphy’s Law at each and every opportunity.

He doesn’t have any of his scanners with him, but he’s pretty confident in his eyeballing ability. And indeed, once Steve exposes the wiring for him, it takes very little time for all of the doors to pop open on each side of the hall. Tony doesn’t need praise, but he smirks knowingly anyway.

[shieldborne]

The best idea is the one that works first, as far as Steve is concerned. Particularly when they're in a time crunch. The roaring noises from above have quieted; it's hard to be sure whether that's because they've put distance and walls between them and Blonsky, or whether it's because he's finished with the armor and gone quiet to stalk them again. Steve doesn't like the quiet. His nerves are frayed; the awareness of danger feels like a constant scrape of sandpaper against his brain.

Sometimes danger and fighting are exhilarating. He'd be lying if he claimed he never got an adrenaline rush. At least some of his more reckless behavior is ascribable to that (self-medication; when you can't get drunk you have to figure out a different outlet). There's a point where it's too much, though, and he's feeling it, irritation and restlessness and hurt and anger. He wants to break something.

Ah, and how convenient that Tony has something for him to break! He doesn't even question it, just hauls off and puts his fist through the X on the wall, brushes away some of the resulting debris, and steps back with a little bow to let Tony do his stuff.

Steve paces almost silently from one end of the hall to the other as Tony picks at the wiring, checking for anyone lurking, and listening for indications of movement nearby. Nothing yet. Seems too easy. Then again, having Iron Man and Captain America show up here together was probably unexpected. Blonsky and whoever else is on his side might well be reformulating their plan.

He starts visibly when the doors pop open--that adrenaline again--but then he shoots Tony a little smile. "Nice. You good? Let me play lookout while you find what you need."

[starkingenuity]

“We need,” Tony corrects, already riffling through the closest locker and shutting it when he discovers nothing of use. He has no reason to be a thief and no time to satisfy his curiosity about the sorts of things that the Raft might have in it’s compartmentalized vaults. He does, however, have time to remind Steve that they’re in this together before he goes off to use eyes with probably the best sight possible for a human to made sure that something big, red and ugly isn’t slithering down the hallway in the direction they had fled from.

It’s going to take some time, he realizes almost immediately, to find what he needs. The whole thing is incredibly annoying and Tony isn’t known for his patience.

A few things do land on the floor as he’s working through the mounds and mounds of confiscated items. Wilson’s wings, for instance. He doesn’t know if Steve will want them back and he assumes that Sam had managed to get his hands on the upgrades Tony had made during his absence. There had been several bays at the compound that were missing doors and Tony just assumes that was Rhodey’s doing.

Good. Better use the stuff than just leave it holed up in Tony’s sad little mausoleum for the team that picked Steve’s side.

It’s coming on ten minutes when Tony finally gets to Pym’s suit, but he’s too busy messing with it to let Steve know. Fortunately, he doesn’t really have to. Not when he hears a roar painfully close by. “Rogers?!”

((sorry for the lag. long day, long week))

[shieldborne]

We sounds way more hopeful than Steve expected. He abandoned the idea of forgiveness a while back, hence the stilted quality of the letter he sent ('maybe some day you can understand'--he didn't mean for that to sound condescending, he just thought 'maybe you can forgive me' would be too presumptuous). At this point, it's probably moot. They need one another, need to work together, and whatever either of them feels is irrelevant.

But even Steve can't exorcise or repress his own emotions completely. "We need," he repeats quietly, and then he's in motion again, sharp eyes and sharp ears focused on watching Tony's back.

He has to make a detour, though, the moment he sees Sam's old wings. The ones he had been wearing dissolved with the rest of him, which begs a few questions, but this pair has something the upgrades didn't. Steve's fingers fumble with a compartment at the back, extracting the tightly-folded form of Redwing, which he promptly tucks into a pocket in the top of his own suit. It's an awkward fit; the drone is really too big to be carried in a clothing pocket, but Steve doesn't care. There are no bodies to bury, no remnants of any of the lost left behind, but Sam had loved this fucking thing, and if they get out of here alive, Steve will bring it with him and it will be Falcon's monument.

He wants to cry right about now. He won't. Maybe later. Maybe they can both afford the luxury of a full breakdown later.

Tony's warning shout comes several seconds after Steve is already reacting to Abomination's proximity. Damn him, he's a lot more cunning than Hulk; he's not coming from the hall Tony and Steve entered through. Rather, he's gone down a level and he's coming up at them, through the goddamn steel floor. Fists first.

The second roar Tony hears is Blonsky's reaction to Steve going right for his nearest wrist with the jagged ends of the vibranium bracers T'Challa created for him. The chances of breaking bone are slimmer than Steve would like, but as tough as the creature's skin is, it's not impenetrable. There's blood, and it sounds like it hurts.

"Move fast!" he yells at Tony. "I don't know how long I can slow him down!"

Although, he was pretty much born to hold out forever against opponents several times his size. And he's prepared to stand his ground for as long as he has to, at any cost.

Completely understand!!!!

[starkingenuity]

“Don’t rush me,” Tony calls as he scoots through a row of half open lockers. At least Ross had his guys slip the suit into a bag and the bag fit neatly into the helmet, held under his arm as if he’d given up super heroics to join a football team. Tony knows what to expect when he sees the pair, he’d heard the crunching and the tone in Steve’s voice, but he’s still not fully prepared to run into the two. Blonsky takes up the entire damned hallway and though Steve is doing a really admirable job of keeping him at bay, there’s not a lot of room for escape here.

Tony pauses, as if waiting for the huddle to be called, and gawks for a moment before he zig-zags to the small space between Steve and the wall. There’s a good chance he’ll get himself squished, but there’s not much choice on places to go.

Thankfully, he only brushes Steve’s back with his shoulder as he runs towards the other end of the hall, away from the two locked fighters. It doesn’t help that the Abomination is really not happy about letting prey escape and does his best to beat down Rogers to get at Tony. The engineer has no idea what Blonsky’s motivations are. He doesn’t know if he’s like Banner, but he does sort of guess that it isn’t the case or else they’d probably find a way to keep Bruce under lock and key too.

All he remembers about the guy, short of the videos he’d seen, is that his psych evaluations are through the crazy roof.

“Rogers, leave him alone and hurry up!”

[shieldborne]

It helps that Abomination has effectively pinned himself partway inside the floor. The whole Raft is triple-hulled, and the frames between floors are no exception. There's a lot of material he's punched through, concrete and steel arranged like the layers of an exceptionally ominous cake, and Steve has managed to catch and engage him before he's emerged onto his feet. So he's waist-deep in rubble and lacks the use of his powerful legs as leverage.

That may be one of the major reasons Steve hasn't had his rear handed to him as of yet. That, and the close quarters give Steve more maneuvering room than the giant monster just in general. And Steve knows that, knows his advantage might be fleeting here, and he's going to do his damnedest to keep Abomination stuck where he is. He's clearly doing some damage, but he's pretty tapped out from previous fights, as well.

When Tony moves to push past, Steve flings his weight forward as hard as he can, trying to make sure Blonsky is engaged with him. "Go, go, I'll catch up," he yells back.

Neither of them included the alarming bony spikes the monster has in their calculations, though, and at this crucial moment, he manages to swing one elbow in and catch Steve across the hip with one, wringing a brief yell of pain from him. It's a gouge, a nasty one, and Steve is awfully happy to be immune to tetanus because who the hell knows where those elbows have been? His counterblow goes right for Blonsky's throat, because this is no time to play nice. Still, it's going to take him a minute to disentangle himself and catch up. He can't just cut and run, or he'll get grabbed by the leg and smashed against the floor like a certain deceased god of mischief.

[starkingenuity]

Slower and much more frail than the good Captain, Tony doesn’t argue or hesitate. Steve says he’ll be right there? Fine. The inventor won’t be leaving his teammate behind but he also isn’t going to stop along the way to wait for him to get to the quinjet. Navigating the Raft, even if he helped to build it, is difficult. Especially trying to get around the rubble left by their first encounter with Blonsky. His poor armor is approximately the same quantity of dust that Peter had become on Titan.

Or maybe that’s just Tony’s guilt trying to remind him of how messed up he is and how much this is going to hurt, even after they manage to reverse time and bring their group back.

There’s no if for Tony. It will happen.

He’s still fighting his way up the stairs when Steve gets injured, but the crafty hand-to-hand fighter is a little more capable than Loki had been. The Abomination is too large and too uncoordinated to get his hands on the Captain as he springs and twists away, though a roar or fury fuels him to try and pull himself up in the space the Captain had once been.

It’s very lucky that the connections between corridors are too large for Blonsky to move through easily so there’s no speeding freight train behind Steve as he finds his way onto the deck.

Tony’s just switched everything on inside the cockpit of the quinjet when he spots the Captain and turns the headlights on to let the other man know that he’s arrived safely inside. A roar beneath him causes Tony to stash the suit beneath the seat and start the take off proceedings. “Hurry up,” he shouts, unsure if Steve will hear through the quinjet’s hull or the stormy seas around them. The engines, however, rev noticeably. They’ve got to go. Now.

CW for brief suicidal ideation

[shieldborne]

It would be so easy to just...stay. Just keep going at this until he runs out of steam and loses, trusting that would well and truly be the end of things this time around. No one would ever know he threw a fight. It would just be one more tragedy in a chain of tragedies on a really dark day.

He's tempted, more so than he has been for a long, long time. But that would be a shitty thing to do to Tony, and he's failed him enough for a lifetime.

The wound on his hip is long but not deep, and the blood is already clotting by the time he dodges free of Abomination's violent grasp and makes his bid for escape up the hallway. He emerges onto the landing pad with a mild limp, but even that doesn't make a dent in his impressive speed. He's relieved beyond words to see the lights, even more so when he scrambles up into the cockpit and finds Tony alone there, rather than a hostage at gunpoint. Maybe he's been at war for too long, anticipating twists and entanglements and hostage situations that aren't actually there.

He drops into a seat, winces, and angles his body so he won't bleed on the upholstery. "He's going to tear this place apart," he says quietly. "There's not going to be enough military personnel free to come stop him."

They're pretty much sentencing the people still in cells to death--unless there's some hidden talent in there that can stop Blonsky in full rage mode. It's not right. There's also nothing they can do about it.

"You better...have Friday send out warnings, anyway." It's a bare minimum, and Steve would bet money, if he had any, that nothing will come of it. But sometimes you have to do your duty, even if it's futile.

[starkingenuity]

((No worries about triggers. I don’t have any. We could play something utterly terrible and disgusting and I’d be okay with it. XD))

Tony might not have the eyes or the nose to notice immediately that Steve’s been hurt or in pain, and he’s much too distracted to really pay attention to anything after FRIDAY confirms that Steve is on the ramp, but he’s not a monster. As soon as they’ve taken off, Tony drops onto the seat, oblivious to the arm below barely missing them as it punched through the hull below. The chair creeks a little as he looks back at the lumberjack. Relief turns to a moment of abject concern. It’s just for a moment, but it’s there.

“Yeah, I’ll get our a transmission.” Little good it’s going to do. “Where’d he get you?”

There’s a hundred and one other things to talk about. Steve is fine, Steve will always be fine. Tony knows better than to worry too much about a super soldier who bruises for half a second before his skin clears up.

Below, though FRIDAY is warning the survivors to play duck and cover, there are people that they can not save. Tony had warned Steve about it. He’d mentioned the morality clause that they needed to step away from.

A few dozen people versus the universe? It’s an easy choice.

[shieldborne]

((I don't either, except for pet abuse, which doesn't usually come up in RP, but I do try to warn for touchy subjects. Otherwise, I'm good to get as dark as the plot calls for.))

"It's only a flesh wound," Steve says, unaware he's channeling the knight from Monty Python. Except he isn't, really, because the bleeding is pretty sluggish at this point. What he means is that the muscle is torn and it hurts, but no major arteries have been clipped, he can walk on it, and unless there's some kind of venom or bacteria that Abomination carries that Steve's serum can't handle, he'll be good as new by dinnertime. "Do you still keep the med kit in the back compartment?"

Super-healing factor notwithstanding, it'd be smart to clean it out and put some gauze over it.

It's just that at the moment he's more interested in craning his neck to look out the window to watch the Raft vanish behind them. He hates this. Utilitarianism is not his preferred ethos. "I'm coming back once we get this settled," he says, promising himself more than informing Tony. "It'll most likely be too late, but..."

But it's the only thing he can promise at the moment to give himself the peace of mind to go on. Triage. They can't save everyone; they're doing triage.