Chapter Text
Chapter 10
The sunlight was warm on his eyes. Tony breathed in, inhaling the scent of Pepper from the warm sheets beside him, and relaxed, knowing she’d be meeting him out on the veranda of their Malibu home with their chef’s catered breakfast. He smiled. He never had been able to convince her to sleep in…
She entered the room then, in a formal dress he’d only seen her once before: the blue satin evening dress that had made him see her in a whole other light—not as his PA, not as the woman he’d long pretended he could live without, but as Pepper. He should have wondered why she was dressed this way, but in the odd calmness of dream, Tony didn’t even question it.
“I’m pregnant, Tony,” she said, coming to sit on the bed. “Before you say anything: I’m keeping it. And yes, Tony, I’ll marry you.”
He sat up so fast that gravity tilted a bit. This was not how that conversation had gone— Tony had proposed, but she had smiled softly and shook her head. “You’re not the marrying kind, Tony.”
“But you think I’d be a good father?”
“I’d say that’s your choice.”
“Tony,” a soft voice said. Steve’s voice, some part of Tony realized. “Hey, Tony.”
“What?” Tony asked without opening his eyes. He was not in Malibu and the veranda was lost, rubble under the Pacific Ocean.
“I know it’s early, but you’re going to want to see this,” Steve replied, looking awake and chipper.
It was the kind of thing that would have annoyed Tony once, but he’d seen that Steve was not naturally a morning person, which meant that he was up this early by choice. Tony sat up and rubbed his eyes. “See what?”
“Sunrise in Wakanda,” Steve answered. “You haven’t been able to see one yet for all the rain.”
“All right,” he agreed.
***
After Tony dressed, he followed Steve outside to where a ladder stood, leaning up against the house. Outside, it was still dark, but the light was gradually changing into the cool grey dimness of the minutes just before dawn. “The best view is on the roof,” Steve told him, looking up to the fading stars.
“And that ladder holds you?” Tony asked dubiously.
“Buck, me, a goat or two on occasions,” Steve said lightly. “And it’s the best way to see the view.”
“All right,” Tony replied, and began to climb.
It had somehow never occurred to him that the flat roof of their home was anything other than a roof, but the large telescope and the sealed basket of blankets and overstuffed pillows spoke of evenings and nights spent on this roof. “Buck and me, sometimes we sleep up here,” Steve said, understanding the direction of his thoughts in that perceptive, slightly eerie way he had. “Our home has climate control but it works too well sometimes, and then it’s too cold for us to sleep.”
Tony thought of what too cold might represent to James and Steve and nodded. He remembered too— as something he had noticed once and dismissed as a weird quirk—that Steve never put ice in his drinks. The signs of the other man’s hidden battles had been everywhere, Tony realized all over again, and there had been no one who had seen and understood. “Who uses the telescope?” he asked, so he didn’t have to calculate all the things he could and should have done.
Steve favored him with a fond half-smile. “Bucky, mostly. He always wanted to go into space.”
Tony tried to picture that, failed, but simply nodded. They’d never discussed what James did for a living, and he could only respect how much they’d managed to avoid the entire issue. “You must be able to see a lot with that telescope,” he said instead. “I’ve never seen such small amounts of light pollution.”
“It’s the way they build all their cities—the ideal is living with nature, not dominating it,” Steve told him as the skies above slowly brightened. “That was…comforting to us, when we first arrived.”
“What do you mean?” Tony asked, eyes on the far horizon as the dark began to lift.
“There are no…unnatural sounds here. When you’re…made like we are, everything has noise, a sound, a vibration. Those things exist here too, but they’re a part of nature rather than something made to exist in spite of nature.” He spread his hands. “I’m probably not explaining this right, but…Staying in your tower those few times? I could hear the electricity moving in the walls. And the lights were everywhere, even when they were turned off. They glowed, too bright.” He glanced over at Tony with a half-grin that was somehow embarrassed. “Looking back, I could have said something, I guess. But—”
“I was too busy treating you like a burden,” Tony acknowledged, seeing it only too clearly now. “And this….here, this home, this was easier on you?”
Steve’s eyes were made somehow bluer by the increased light. “In many ways, yeah.”
Above them, the sky was beginning to glow shades of copper and gold, intense and wild. Tony had never been one to study nature for itself but this sunrise would not be ignored. He closed his eyes facing into the steady warmth of a new day and felt somehow….reborn.
“Now you get it,” Steve said softly, as the birds began to greet the day.
They stood there for a time, the kind of comfortable silence Tony would never have expected between them. “You’re not half bad, Rogers,” Tony said, and was not at all surprised to hear Steve’s answering chuff of laughter.
“You’re not so bad yourself, Tony.”
***
When they came back into the house, James was up and feeding the cat. “I’ve got an appointment in the city tomorrow,” James was saying.
“Yeah,” Steve replied, “I need to go the art supply store—got a new class starting in a couple of days.”
“Wait,” Tony said, mystified. “What about the festival?”
“It’s over, as of sundown tonight,” James answered. “I— if you want to make your travel arrangements, we can give you a ride into town tomorrow.”
“Kicking me out, are you?” Tony asked lightly as Stella brushed up against him.
Steve leaned against the center island in the kitchen and folded his arms. “You can’t tell me you mind all that much,” he said, equally lightly.
“Nah,” Tony replied, and it was true. He missed New York and the comforting whirring of his electronics, the laboratory of his inventions and designs, he missed Pepper and Benjamin and a world where he knew where he fit, where he belonged. But just the same… some part of this place was going to stay with him. “It’s time I was headed back anyway.” He glanced down at his bracelet and remembered Deliwe’s warning. “I should probably return these.”
“Ah, right,” James said. “Take the bracelet off, and that will disconnect the interpretation device.” Tony followed his instructions and the little bead popped off from his neck into his cupped hand. “I’ll make sure Deliwe gets both,” James went on, taking the bead and bracelet from him.
Tony nodded, feeling suddenly adrift. He didn’t want to stay, he couldn’t stay, but he understood why this place had captured Steve and James so thoroughly. “So what are you two up to?”
“Well,” James told him, gesturing at Steve, “normally this one goes and runs a full marathon with Sam, but he won’t be back until late tomorrow. So I assume Steve will only be running a half marathon.”
Steve raised his coffee mug in a mock salute. “No running today. Figured I’d take my tablet and do some sketching.”
“A tablet?” Tony asked with a grin. “You finally moved into the 21st century?”
Steve rolled his eyes, but there was nothing but gentle mockery in the expression. “A paper tablet, Tony. Paper. I can’t teach my kids what I’m not willing to use myself.” A pause, then: “You could come with me, if you want. The actual sketching is boring to watch, I’d imagine—”
“Don’t listen to him,” James put in. “Seeing him create is anything but boring.”
“Says the man who griped about having to sit still from about 1930 onwards,” Steve retorted without any heat. Tony had the impression he was pleased, and he thought he understood why. To be seen, clearly, even over a century and after all they had been through. “There’s a place I go, a museum, that’s great for people watching. It’ll be open again, if you want.”
Normally, Tony didn’t like museums, or the crowds in them, but what Steve was describing seemed on another level entirely. “Sure,” he replied. “Why not?”
***
“So…wait, this is yours?” Tony asked, staring up at the metallic curved lines and outstretched bird-like wings of the flitter. The design was far, far beyond anything he could have imagined or designed. His hands itched for a pencil to capture the designs, but folded his hands instead. He had taken the NDAs seriously but more than that, he had achieved a measure of understanding with both Steve and James, and he wasn’t about to jeopardize their trust.
“Ours,” Steve responded, “in that it belongs to the community here, but yeah. It’s how most people travel into the city, if they have the option, though public transport is always available and reliable.” He tapped a bead on his bracelet and both of the wings opened to reveal an interior that was larger than it seemed. “Hop on in.”
Once inside, Tony understood the level of trust Steve was showing him. Steve could have taken them on public transit, or suggested some other location entirely, maybe even one that would have stayed within most people’s perceptions of Wakanda. But he hadn’t. “Why are you showing me this?”
Steve’s hands rested on the armrests of his chair for a moment. “You’re leaving soon. And while I don’t know how you ended up here—”
“That makes two of us,” Tony murmured. It was a mystery and he didn’t like mysteries.
Steve nodded. “Right. And if I’d taken you into the woods, or near the lake, you’d have been bored stiff. This? Is much more your speed.”
It was unexpectedly kind and gracious. Tony glanced around, lost for words. Everything he saw indicated a machine built for speed and ease of use. “So, tell me: how fast does this thing go?”
“Inside the city, there’s programming that limits the speed of any approaching vehicles. Outside it? It depends on how much air traffic there already is. Sh—one of Bucky’s friends— helped write the safety programs.”
The flitter could go fast, really fast. Tony could feel the echoes of its speed in his bones, even though it wasn’t even moving. “How fast do you fly it?” It was a shot in the dark, but Steve’s slightly wicked grin was all the answer Tony needed.
“How fast do you think?”
***
“Jesus Christ,” Tony muttered while he waited for his lungs to resume their normal position. Steve had never, not once, flown unsafely, his touch light and sure with an ease Tony would hardly have expected once but— “Where on earth did you get your driver’s license?”
“Driving a motorcycle during World War II, if you want to be precise,” Steve answered, bringing the flitter to a gentle stop at what looked to be a parking lot.“The license to fly this thing? A few years ago. Turns out once I…was able to move past a few things, I like flying.”
Diagrams of the Valkyrie had been pinned on a wall in his dad’s office for decades, and maps of the Arctic wastes where they’d tried and failed to find him. Tony swallowed. “Therapy?”
Steve nodded as he shut down the relays with a focused tapping of the beads on his bracelet. Some lit up, flashed green, and subsided. “Lots of it. And time. And my own desire to learn.” He touched a button and the doors opened. “Come on. The museum is just over there.”
***
The museum was a revelation on yet another level. Tony had bought and donated art to museums for years as a tax write-off, or just because having the ability to do so was a display of power and influence all on its own. But it had been Pepper who possessed the real appreciation for the art he’d bought, who curated his purchases and knew the actual value of the art. “I bet you and Pepper had a lot of conversations about art,” Tony said lightly as they walked towards the entrance.
Steve slanted him a glance. “Mmhmm. She was the first person in this century who understood when I talked about art.”
“That’s good,” Tony replied, and surprised himself by actually meaning it. “I was never any good with that kind of thing.”
“But you bought art, enough pieces that Pepper said you could fund your own exhibition,” Steve said, clearly perplexed. “Why? If you didn’t want to talk about it, if seeing it didn’t move you?”
Steve said the words in front of a large mural, populated by people and what Tony assumed were mythological figures. The display card next to it gave a brief description of the events it depicted, but lacking all of the cultural context forced Tony to actually look at the mural, at the skill of even the smallest figures, the shading of light and shadow. The artist was listed as anonymous, as were many of the paintings in the gallery. He cleared his throat. “Dad was…if something was an investment, if it could make money, Dad was all in. If it didn’t, he wasn’t. Mom was the one who appreciated that kind of thing, and guided his first purchases.” Tony shrugged. “Art is a good investment, ask any of the robber barons. I just…never learned to see them any other way.”
Tony was relieved that Steve’s next words were not a comment on his own perspectives, shifting as they had during his unexpected visit. Some part of him still recoiled at the idea of being caught out by Captain America— except that neither Captain America nor Steve Rogers was who he had once thought. “So Rogers, any of your art in this place?”
To his astonishment, Steve’s ears turned pink. “Um, no, not here but—”
“Where?” Tony asked.
“A few years back, my art was in an exhibition in Safreni— that’s an artists’ colony south of here,” Steve admitted. “This museum? I’m not in here.”
“But you will be,” Tony stated, knowing it in the way he’d once known his suits would fly. “I’ve seen your art.”
“These artists are famous, now recognized world-over,” Steve went on, rubbing the back of his neck. “And…”
Tony saw the shape of what he didn’t say. “Ah. You’ve had enough of being famous.”
Steve’s smile was relieved that he understood, and Tony filed that away for later. “I don’t know who I’d be if I wasn’t recognized for being Tony Stark.”
“Well, maybe it’s time you found out,” Steve replied lightly. “Come on, there’s more to this museum.”
***
When they returned to the house, James was talking to a tall, gangly boy in the Wakandan that Tony no longer understood. James grinned when he saw Steve. “Ah, there you are. Thukile came by to ask if you were still teaching his art class after the festival ends.”
Steve nodded. “Of course, Thukile.”
The boy turned to look at him and Tony—not used to being sized up by teenagers of any stripe—forced himself to hold the boy’s gaze. “But I thought, Aunt Deliwe said—”
“He’s leaving tomorrow morning,” Steve answered.
“Right,” Tony said. “Robots to build, world domination to plan—”
“Well, maybe not that,” Steve retorted with just a slight amount of acid.
Tony let that one pass as no more than deserved, given Ultron. “No, probably not that. So, what’s he like as a teacher?” he asked, turning to Thukile.
Thukile started a bit at being directly addressed but met his eyes squarely. “He’s a very good artist. I like coming here. We all do,” the teenager finished, almost shyly.
Tony had the sense that there was a whole other story with Thukile, and it spoke in broad gestures—his ease with both men, the obvious respect he held for Steve and James. And it wasn’t hard to see Steve as a teacher, a mentor now. Peter should have met him first, Tony thought, the regrets piling up, and kept the words behind his teeth with an effort. He had gone out of his way to convince Peter that Captain America— of all people— couldn’t be trusted, and he swallowed hard now, ashamed. “That’s…good. I’m sure he’s got a lot to teach.”
“Did you need help with something, Thukile?” Steve asked.
“I have a question about my portfolio,” Thukile replied.
Steve nodded. “Of course, the deadline is tomorrow. I’m sure it’ll be just fine to submit, though. Meet me out in the studio and I’ll take a look at it.”
Thukile grinned, and with a small bow of his head, darted out the door. “He never walks when he can run,” James said, smiling.
“How long has he been your student?” Tony asked.
“Seven or eight years now, I think,” Steve responded. “His aunt signed him up at first and when he went to live with Deliwe and her family, she encouraged him to continue. He’s hoping to take part in a program at the local university for aspiring artists.”
“I never thought of you as a teacher,” Tony admitted. “But it looks good on you.”
“To be honest, I never thought of myself as a teacher either, but living here”— he shrugged— “I had to decide who I wanted to be, without the shield, without being Captain America.”
Tony tried to picture what the process must have been like— the man he had known had been so tied to the Captain America role that he’d barely seemed alive outside it. But back then, he saw now, the role had been one of the only things—maybe the only thing—holding the man together in a world where he’d lost everything and everyone. “Well, whatever you’re doing, keep it up. It obviously works for you.”
Steve grinned and placed a hand to his chest. “A compliment? From Tony Stark? Bucky, mark that on the calendar will you?”
Tony couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Oh, fuck off, Rogers.”
***
After Steve left to work with Thukile, Tony found that James was studying him and he seemed…uncertain, which was odd coming from a man who rarely seemed to be of two minds on anything or anyone. “What?” Tony finally asked.
Jame set his mug of coffee down on the counter. “While you and Steve were at the museum, Deliwe sent word that a flitter will come for you tomorrow morning to take you to the airport.”
“That’s…good,” Tony replied, logistics and scheduling details crowding to the front of his mind, the rhythms of life in his world.
“So,” James went on, “if there’s anything you want to know, now would be the time to ask.”
“Just like that?” Tony managed, stunned.
“Steve’s not the only one who went to a lot of therapy,” James stated softly. “I can’t change what happened, what I was made to do, the harm I caused, but if there’s anything you want to know, I’ll tell you.”
James poured him a cup of coffee. Tony took a sip, thinking. “Do you… know who gave the order?”
James shook his head. “I don’t. But I can tell you how your dad ended up a target. He was working on recreating the serum.”
Tony remembered the dead bodies in the Siberian silo. “He figured it out,” he said, appalled and impressed by turns.
“He did,” James confirmed. “Howard was…about to be investigated by HUAC after the Vanko mess. Nobody would fund him, or work with him once word got out but—” his mouth twisted and his metal fist clenched. “Zola had contacts..”
“I never knew about the House Un-American Activities Committee,” Tony stated, and it was true enough. “Dad…Howard was a room with a lot of locked and bolted doors. And he didn’t encourage questions.”
“Sounds like him,” James replied with a forced lightness. “Anyway, years later, when he realized who Zola’s contacts were, who Zola was actually working for, Howard decided to turn his research over to the US. Notes, serum, everything. He was on his way to do that when…”
“When they sent the Winter Soldier,” Tony said.
James blinked. “Yeah. When they sent him. Me.”
“Him. Not you,” Tony replied very firmly. “I see that now. I should have seen it earlier.”
“I don’t blame you,” James replied as firmly. “I’ve said that, and I mean it.”
Tony nodded once, accepting it. “How…how did you find all this out? I looked in the SHIELD files a few months back and there were a lot of rumors and verified reports claiming an assassination by parties unknown, but nothing definitive.”
“Howard worked on one of the iterations of the arm,” James said. “I was helping a…friend here with her upgrades to my arm. One search led to another and…”
And Tony recalled the blueprints in the Stark Industries’ archives for advanced prosthetics and medical equipment that had been nearly complete, nearly ready for testing, but had then been mysteriously abandoned and the prototypes destroyed. “Did he know that it was for you?”
“Only once, before I…” James swallowed. “Howard liked to talk when he was working, and I think he knew who I was. But as far as I was ever able to find out, he didn’t do anything with the knowledge.”
It was a quality Tony recognized from the perspective of adulthood—Howard’s absolute ability to compartmentalize things and people that were too difficult to deal with. He tried to reason it out— what might have happened if Howard had told someone that Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes was not KIA after all, but was alive and being brutalized on a regular basis by Hydra. “Whomever Howard told…would have wanted to know how he came by the knowledge,” Tony said quietly. It was not an excuse and to his relief, James didn’t seem to take it as one.
“I figured as much,” James replied, and the weight of it, seventy years of torture that had been entirely preventable due to one man’s cowardice, lay heavy in the air between them. “There’s no changing it now,” James went on. “The past is past. But I wanted you to have the answers to your questions.”
***
Tony left Wakanda shortly after dawn the following day. Steve and James stood with him while they waited for the flitter to arrive and once it did, Tony took a moment to study the faces of the two men. They were not the same people he once thought he knew- they wouldn’t fit into the old categories any longer and the knowledge was at once comforting and unnerving. But looking at them as the doors of the flitter closed around him, Tony decided that it didn’t much matter who he thought they were—- they fit together in a way he might never fully understand, and he was thankful that he’d had the chance to know them a little better.
His last glimpse of them as the flitter took him away was Steve and James standing close, unbreakable.