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

[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.

[starkingenuity]

“Once we get this settled, none of this will have happened,” Tony replies, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the first aid kit. “And if we remember any of this, then yeah, sure. We come back here and make them do something about Blonsky.” He’s only partially aware that he’s using the plural, that he’s offering his help. It’s been all too easy to fall back into the standard ways of operating when it comes to being around Steve, even if it’s been years since they’ve seen one another. Tony won’t be taking any time to analyze that, however. It would be much better to ease back into this as if they’d never had a rift.

Not that Steve will let him. Talking is, unfortunately, something Tony only excels at when bullshitting and Mr. Red-Blooded American seems to have forgotten isn’t what men his time did. Steve’s never been some paragon of the 40s, though. He’s inclusive and kind, he took right away to traversing racism and sexism too, as if he’s more like an ideal Millennial than actual Millennials are.

“If we’re even speaking after. If we’ve even met,” he continues, watching Steve hunt for the white painted metal box. “I guess it depends on When we decide to go back.” And that When is with a Capital W. “You said Maximoff destroyed the gem in Vision’s forehead right?”

Asking her to destroy Vision just after his birth might not work, though, but there are other stones out there. Strange’s, for instance. They could just head over and crumble the Time Stone. Thanos can’t destroy them if all of the gems aren’t there, right?

“That bullshit in Siberia never has to happen.”

[shieldborne]

Steve is just the kind of guy who can't keep his mouth shut. Usually. It was actually difficult, before the disaster in Siberia, to not talk to Tony about his suspicions with respect to his parents' death. Even now, he's not sure how the waters got muddied there, except that anything related to Bucky hits so close to Steve's emotional center, and his guilt complex. There would never have been a Winter Soldier if he had finished the job he meant to, and destroyed Hydra. There would never have been a Winter Soldier if he hadn't failed to keep his friend from falling out of that train.

Where he's capable of being the strong silent type is where it comes to his own emotional state. It's easier to be guarded about his own mental wounds. It's impossible not to be.

He opens the med kit and gets out antibacterial wash, dripping it carefully into the gash. "Theoretically," he corrects Tony quietly. "It ain't like either of us has ever time traveled before, except for forward the hard way. It may not work how you expect it to. And I don't even know what to expect. I think we better face the idea that we may have to do this more than once before we figure out where the crucial changes have to be made. Assuming we can manage it more than once."

He packs gauze over his hip and tears a piece of medical tape with his teeth, quiet for a long moment while he considers Tony's next words. Swallowing with a click in the back of his throat, he doesn't look up again to respond.

"I've spent a lot of time asking myself what I would do differently if I had the chance. I was never going to sign the Accords. I can't. And I was never gonna turn my back on Bucky. But I really, really fucked up with you, on a bunch of levels. I promised if this came--when it came--we'd face it together, and I broke that promise. And I don't know if it can be un-broken, but..."

The strain in his voice is audible. "But if you're going to offer the opportunity to try, I can't say no to that. Not unless it would ruin everything else we're trying to do."

[starkingenuity]

Tony doesn’t have time to explain the myriad of theories that are most likely in time travel scenarios because he’s not at all that kind of nerd and, Jesus Christ, he truly would be talking out of his ass. He’s not a theorist by nature. He’s not prepared to offer the finer points of string theory, nor would he want to. Banner’s the guy who specialized in theoretical physics and even he can’t help but get his hands nice and dirty whenever the chance happens to arise.

He’s quiet for a moment, letting Steve have his say with minimal eye rolling. The guy has never been short on passion and this time doesn’t prove an exception to the rule. The cursing is different though. Evidently growing some balls to express yourself verbally comes along with the lumberjack beard and the hair dye. Tony finds himself painfully attracted to holding eye contact at the moment, and with FRIDAY piloting them away from the site, he has no pressing reason to look elsewhere.

“Yeah. Yeah you really did fuck up. You should have been there with me, you should have forced your self-righteousness onto me. Those Accords— They should have been better. And I need you there to make sure I didn’t sign away the rights of everyone we knew. The Accords are the right way to go. But they’re flawed. And I get that. But Jesus, Rogers, you left. You were always just leaving.”

He’s tired and he’s heart sore and his head isn’t in the right place at all here. He’s saying too much and not explaining enough.

He hadn’t wanted to do this— But that’s a really shitty defense. “I could have helped you find him,” he blurts out stupidly. “You know that, right? If you asked, if you told me...?”

But that’s not fair. They hadn’t been friends. They barely knew each other. They barely liked each other, and it’s not like Tony ever asked for help on his end either. But the engineer has a way of forgetting the anti-arguments. If it doesn’t prove his case, it means nothing to him.

[shieldborne]

“Everything happened at once,” he says. It would take weeks to try and explain to Tony what went on in Steve’s head back then, but on the other hand if they spend that much time together, it’s probably destined to spill out one way or another, because he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it and picking his own actions apart since. If he had just, if they had only, if if if--

“I wish you had come to Peggy’s funeral,” he says. “I guess you were wrapped up in business. I didn’t ask. I should have asked.”

He grimaces and forces himself to look into Tony’s face. He owes him that much. “There was no salvaging the Accords as they were presented to us. If the powers-that-be had meant for us to have any input at all, they wouldn’t have thrown them in our faces with only a few days to read, no amendment process, and no right to a fair trial for violating them. They backed us into a corner on purpose, and the only thing I know to do when my back is to the wall is to fight. Maybe…maybe that was wrong this time. In retrospect, I think I understand a little better, what you were aiming for, but…”

He sighs raggedly. “You can’t reason with the unreasonable. Besides, Hydra thrived right under SHIELD’s nose for decades. I worked for them. We all worked for them. How can I trust—anyone? Any organization, any government? How am I supposed to know whose orders I’m following?”

“Look, my problems go back to before you were born. I got no right to drag you into them. Bucky was my problem because he was my friend, and I failed him. If I’d done my job right in the first place, none of it would have happened. You know, I put that plane in the ice for nothing. Everything I’ve done, it never meant a damn thing, it’s all spangles and no substance. Tony, I…I see you doing penance. I know it hurts, and I know you can’t stand failing, and the idea that someone died because of your decisions is even worse—I didn’t think the two of us self-flagellating together would help anybody.”

“Besides, if he hadn’t gotten his memory back at all, it was a suicide mission. He almost killed me on the helicarrier, and I didn’t have the heart to fight back. If I’d brought you along, I was afraid I’d have to fight the Winter Soldier to keep him from killing us both. How’s that for irony?”

[starkingenuity]

There’s so much to unpack there and Tony wants to address everything that’s being said to him. He wants to stop Steve from continuing and he wants to confirm or to interject, but in the end, Tony is strangely silent through the unloading process.

He doesn’t even make fun of or twist some of the things Steve says. Even if it would be so easy. And so amusing. Making Steve blush or blink, confused, had been his favorite pastime during the stops in New York he made before he moved back and every visit to the compound thereafter.

“You’re too much the lone soldier. I can and have taken care of myself, I just want to point that out,” Tony says the moment that Steve gives him a place to do so. “He did actually try to kill me. And I was ready. I would have been ready before too. You’re so damned infuriating. You always need things done your way. You have to give a little.”

No. Tony doesn’t see the irony in any of those statements. He never does. He has blinders for his own faults.

“Let me just... Back up here, Rogers. If you didn’t freeze yourself, Barnes would have been used to kill us all. Or HYDRA would have killed us all. I don’t know when this is going to work out. Or how far back we’ll go. I don’t know how long it’s going to take, or what’s going to happen to us, but we need to scratch out the last two years here. We have each other now. Okay? There’s not too many of us left so we need to hold onto that.”

[shieldborne]

Using a phrase like 'self-flagellating' was probably asking for teasing, but Steve's too far gone into guilt and depression for wordplay right now. He's never been quite as innocent as he comes across, of course, but the war dampened his sense of humor a little bit. Best that Tony doesn't test him right now, all things considered. But he doesn't come back at Steve with anger or recrimination, which is more or less what Steve expected, and some of the tension in his neck and shoulders eases gradually.

"It's kind of a blur," he says. "That fight. I remember images the way I usually do--perfect snapshots, because of the, you know--" He taps his head with a fingertip. "Memory thing. The pictures are out of order, though. I remember falling and I thought he was screaming. He swears he wasn't, and it didn't sound like you, so maybe I'm crazy."

Or he's got some shell-shock, PTSD, whatever, to deal with. He's heard the term. He tries not to think about it much. "I'm kind of a basket case, but there's no stopping to recover, you know? When he was about to punch my skull in on the helicarrier, I remember feeling--"

No, wait, that's too much information. He shakes his head and drags his focus back to the present. "I'm fucking tired, is the problem."

Still, what Tony's saying sinks in slowly, and if anything, it gives him a few grains of hope. Which is amazing, because Tony's style has in the past been more along the lines of humor to slice through drama and tragedy, rather than gentle pep-talks. Steve can at least take what he can dish out, in the inspirational speech department, and while he looks at Tony like he's never seen anything quite like him for a moment, a little smile shows up on his face, and he nods.

"I missed you," he confesses.

[starkingenuity]

“I would have missed me too, if I had to spend time away from me,” Tony replies with the humor that Steve had been expecting. Tony can only be in Dad Mode, something he’d honed with Parker during their small interactions over the last year or so, for so long. Trying to give pep talks to an all too optimistic and talented and stubborn and enthusiastic teenager had been trying but a little trial and error did give Tony some insight into how to deal with a stubborn kid.

Like Steve Rogers... and that crazy depression he’s battling. Yeah. Tony doesn’t need any more evidence to decide that’s the case. The wild blue fire in his eyes had been doused, and that tells him everything. Couple it with the mournful singing on the deck of the Raft, the constant pausing and far away looks, and the small verbal flinching he gives paints a very somber picture.

Steve is broken.

Tony gets that. He’s broken too.

Turning back around, Tony taps in a code to check on FRIDAY’s progress, both in the journey back to New York and with the global population profile she’s building. His words are quiet, voice softer than most people get to hear when he’s not being a sarcastic, bullshitting asshole.

“Don’t make me miss you, Cap.” It’s subtle. If Steve doesn’t pick up on Tony trying to tell him that he’s vibing on the suicidal thread shooting through their interactions, that’s all right.

[shieldborne]

He feels like he's seeing a side of Tony he didn't know existed. Which is not that surprising; they've spent a lot of time working together, but Steve knows they're both very guarded. He would be the first to insist he did and does think of Tony as a friend, but there have been some pretty rugged barriers between them, too, among them pride, history, and a few conflicting personality traits.

He's consistently underestimated Tony, or at least mis-estimated him, Steve thinks. Not his intellect or his stubbornness, this time, not his analysis or his physical strength, but maybe his kindness and sensitivity. And his perceptiveness.

In short, Dad Mode is new, and that gentle note in his voice is new, too, and something in Steve cracks and shifts and he feels a sudden, wild desire to just...confess everything, cry and beg for forgiveness or...something. He doesn't even know what, but it hits him hard enough to take his breath away for a long moment.

"I'm too old for this bullshit," he chokes out a moment later, and it's clearly meant to be funny, even if it comes out a little stilted. "But, um. Yes. If you wanna keep trying, I'm with you. I-i hear you."

Hope the time skip is all right.

[starkingenuity]

“You’re too old for everything, Grandpa,” Tony says to remind Steve that he is well aware of his age and how stupid it is that he even brought it up. Tony is nearly twice Steve’s actual age and while he hadn’t fought in wars or been sick and poor for the majority of his life, he sort of literally is too old for any of this. At least his dad gave him some good genes, though Tony is pretty sure most of the thanks goes to his mother.

“What I said about letting things out— I’m right. I’ve been through a lot of therapy in my life. You’ve got to figure out a way to work that stuff off.” Tony is my no means suggesting that Steve work it off with him. But punching stuff seemed to have helped at least a little and working towards a goal is something they can both get behind as a form of release. “I’m going to need you level headed for this, for as long as it takes.”

And that will be the end of that discussion.

Besides, Steve will have some time to himself. When they return, Bruce and a talking raccoon are back at the compound and Tony gets to work making new enemies and catching up with old friends as they put their heads together to figure out how to turn the Ant Man suit into a time traveling device.

There are only a few explosions, and two heated shouting matches followed by death threats, but before the following day is over, Tony is ready to fill everyone in on what they’ve come up with.

It gives Nat the time she needs to finally sit with Steve, too, should he need that shoulder to cry on.

Tony gathers the group individually, or rather, he follows the familiar halls in one of the buildings on the compound to a room he had been in many, many times. It had been left like a shrine, like parents do for dead children. He hadn’t wanted to touch anything, save for flipping through sketch books when drunk.

And maybe putting an Iron Man bobble head on the window sill.

“Cap? Are you decent? I’ve been through too much to have myself emasculated by your nakedness,” Tony says, knocking on the door.

absolutely!

[shieldborne]

They're both too old for this, in Steve's opinion, in their various ways. Tony's physical age is older, but there is something to be said for the time-displaced mentality. Steve has adjusted fairly well to cultural trends, but that doesn' t mean he doesn't still feel lost on a regular basis. The surreality of where he started and where he's ended up still gets to him. It's nothing anyone could have predicted, least of all a poor artist from Brooklyn.

"I'm trying," he tells Tony, and opts not to elaborate, for now. Everything is raw and too-present, and if he lets himself get worked up here it will make for a horribly long plan ride home. But really, what better can he say? Steve's always tried, always trying, and on the rare occasions he doesn't succeed, it isn't through lack of determination.

It's just that trauma is so insidious. Depression is so quiet. An ailment that saps an indefatigable will is hard to combat. But he's far from over, and when he smiles at Tony, there's an element of honesty in it. A secret shared, a promise that he's down but not out. Not yet.

He is of course no help whatsoever in working out how to alter the Ant Man suit, but he hangs around behind the scenes for a couple hours anyway, to make sure no one gets bitten, punched, or otherwise injured. Rocket's temper rivals that of humans several times his size. It's obvious from the way Steve reacts that the little furry guy is growing on him, though. Small, mouthy, potentially doomed to a short and uncomfortable life--there are some obvious parallels between him and Steve's past self. Still, he does his best to operate as a conflict mediator rather than choosing sides. Choosing sides hasn't worked out well in the past.

It's Natasha that undertakes to drag him away and talk him into eating and resting, mostly by convincing him he's getting on the nice mad scientists' nerves, let them do their work. She's gotten very clever at Steve-wrangling these last few months, and gets him talking the quickest way she knows how: asking his advice about how she should approach Banner. She in no way needs it, but as a ploy, it works. The catharsis is quiet and incomplete, but it's there.

"I'm wearing my favorite chicken costume, you won't feel emasculated," he calls back when Tony knocks. "It's unlocked."

In point of fact, he's in sweatpants and a sleeveless black shirt, and he hasn't shaved or cut his hair but he looks much cleaner otherwise. There are a couple light scars on his bare arms that weren't there before. They're probably from the recent battles; his skin will swallow them up in time, leaving no visible external marks. The only scars he's held onto since the serum are from bullet wounds.

He's been looking through the old sketchbooks. The one open on his lap has a new doodle of the bobblehead in it, in progress.

"I'm keeping that," he tells him seriously. He's put Redwing on the windowsill next to it. Sam wouldn't mind. Tony made the drone for him in the first place.

Re: absolutely!

[starkingenuity]

Chicken suit? Tony’s pretty sure that Steve’s cracked. He opens the door slowly, peeking in, only to be disappointed by the lack of fluffy yellow feathers. Unless that crazy beard counts.

There’s evidence of dishes and a few crushed water bottles, evidence that Steve hadn’t entirely been alone for most of the day. That does a lot to make Tony feel better still. If Steve Rogers crumbles, then there’s probably no hope for the rest of them and that scares Tony to even think about.

He decides that the clean space on the low dresser is good enough for a seat and Tony perches there, glancing down at what Steve’s sketching. It’s an old book, and Tony knows the orders of the drawings in there by heart. His gaze wanders over to the window sill and he smirks. “If I would have known that, I’d have outfitted it with a camera and a recording device,” he comments. “Rhodey and I have a bet going on if you actually need to sleep or not.”

He's not here to poke fun, though.

“FRIDAY’s finished her inventory. There’s more world leaders still around than what statistcs would have told us. Not sure if I’m relieved or annoyed.” He doesn’t bring up Pepper. “Not that I’m looking for permission for what we’re about to do. Ready, or do you want a second to put on some socks?”

[shieldborne]

He would have gone with 'bunny outfit', but that would have been asking for innuendo.

"I only need about ten hours a week, based on how I operate in the field," he says, blowing graphite dust off the page and then setting the sketchbook aside. He's got one pencil in his hand and another tucked behind his ear, like an absentminded schoolteacher. "As long as I have enough food, anyway. Which is great when I'm working but not so much during downtime."

It's incredibly frustrating to be up alone night after night.

He frowns thoughtfully. "Relieved or annoyed might depend on which world leaders we're talking about. If T'Challa hadn't died, we would all be in better shape. And he'd be all for this plan."

He wants to ask about Pepper, about Happy, but the fact that Tony hasn't brought them up is telling. He doesn't want confirmation of his guess, here. Rather than ask, he gets up and grabs not only socks and shoes, but also a hooded sweatshirt with the old Brooklyn Dodgers logo on it."Where are we going, and who's coming with us?"

[starkingenuity]

“Just us.” Tony’s eyes follow the graphite as they fall from the page, his mind actually wrapped up in Steve’s confession. He’d been joking. He had no idea that Steve didn’t sleep. He had no idea that he himself actually got more sleep than someone else here. He knows that Vision hadn’t been one for sleep, and he’s always had an inkling that Banner rarely slept either, but he’d thought that the latter had just been part of the tortured genius syndrome he himself suffers from.

Banner had to have more PTSD than Tony did, even if he rarely shows it because those teddy bear smiles of his.

Tony finds himself leaning back, though the lampshade pushes against his shoulder blades as he crosses his arms. He tries to be mindful of making a mess, since they don’t need anything else to break honestly, enough so that he doesn’t mention his own lack of ability to sleep. It does, however, dawn on him that he needs a new boxing instructor since Happy seemed to be a pile of dust right now. Maybe he can mention it if they get stick in some Doctor Who-like Time loop.

“In case we don’t make it back, Banner and Thor’s pet bunny rabbit are going to have second and third chances. I was going to see if Rhodey will come with me for the first shot, but you’re better at keeping me on the rails.” And Steve needs this, Tony knows that intimately. He needs the task and, most importantly, he needs the win.