Chapter Text
Tony had always been a little unsettled around Director Fury. He’d never been afraid of him, just… wary. He’d always gotten the feeling that he could trust him somehow, though. He’d read up on the Erinyes, the Furies, after Phil had mentioned them, and he could understand why that was, maybe. He’d never really thought he had done anything… wrong. At least, not wrong enough that he should be hunted down and berated, perhaps to death. He wondered if Directory Fury was one of the three described by name, or if perhaps there had been more that had been lost to history.
Still. Director Fury had never come to haunt him. And he knew all about monsters. So Tony figured he could trust Director Fury with his Last Will and Testament.
“What the fuck is this?” Fury asked immediately after reading the first ten words.
That was not a strong start, Tony thought, hands clenching into fists on his lap. He took a moment to gather his thoughts, then haltingly answered, “I need— …I need you to take care of my… family.”
Fury looked up at him, scowling. Somehow, he managed to put two eyes’ worth of ‘hell no’ into one. “And what makes you think that’s a thing that I’d do for you?”
Tony fiddled with his cufflinks, feeling small, almost like a child in the principal’s office. But this was important, he reminded himself, setting his jaw stubbornly as he looked back up at him. “Because they’ve been wronged, all of them, and that’s what you do, isn’t it? You protect the wronged?”
“I have literally never done that,” Fury deadpanned, but there was something… menacing simmering under the surface.
Tony faltered, but then he doubled down. He could not afford to fuck this up. “Listen, I have it so Pepper and Rhodey take care of the estate when I die, but they’re gonna die eventually too. The monsters aren’t. I need them to be safe after I’m gone. I’m the reason some of them are even alive right now. They need to know that my home will always be their safe space, even if I’m gone.”
Fury’s face didn’t show any emotion in response to Tony’s impending demise, but his eye did flick down to Tony’s chest and back up to his face. Somehow, that was more disconcerting than any other reaction. Tony was used to curiosity, confusion, even disgust from the monsters. Fury gave him absolutely nothing, and he didn’t know how to react to that.
Tony gripped his hands together until his knuckles went white and bit his bottom lip. This wasn’t going like he’d hoped. Everything was riding on this. It wasn’t like he could bequeath his mansion to the monsters. He needed someone official (and ostensibly human-looking) to take care of everything. After a moment, he whispered a quiet, desperate, “Please.”
Fury was silent for several minutes, until finally he let out a sigh that was more world-weary and tired than any even Clint had uttered after centuries of dealing with humans. He leaned back in his seat, resting his elbows on the armrests and steepling his fingers together. “It will be handled.”
Tony’s shoulders instantly went loose with relief. He hadn’t even realized how much stress he’d been carrying over this—how much he’d had riding on Fury saying yes. He looked up at Fury and hoped he conveyed just how grateful he was when he said, “Thank you.”
“Get the fuck out of my office, Stark,” Fury ordered, and then sighed loudly when the brunet didn’t, clearly still too relieved to get up immediately. His gaze softened almost imperceptibly. “Are you dying? Is that why this is so important right now?”
Tony shrugged and turned to look out the window. It was a really shitty view of the street outside. Normally, people higher up in an organization had better views, he thought idly. “I mean… I probably won’t die in the next few years. But I’m not an idiot, either. I’ve seen and understand my x-rays. No matter what Loki and Thor did, they can’t fix the damage that was already done. The human body isn’t supposed to have a hole this big in it. Just because the reactor will keep going doesn’t mean my heart and lungs will. They were damaged. …Are still being damaged, really.” He smiled sadly, shaking his head. “Not to mention the palladium poisoning. I’m lucky my liver’s not completely shot, trying to deal with that. As it stands, I’ll probably be recovering from heavy metal poisoning for a few more years. I’m not going to live to a ripe old age.”
“Not everyone does,” Fury allowed when he stopped. It wasn’t unkind; just a statement of fact. It wasn’t like Tony’s parents had gotten to live to a ripe old age, either.
Tony was silent for a long time, just sitting with Fury’s acknowledgement, before whispering, “But maybe it’s better this way. Not even Bruce has shown a sign of aging. I’m going gray and getting wrinkles. The doctor said it was possible I was starting to get arthritis in my hands in my last checkup. I don’t want the monsters to see me lying on a bed, unable to move, nothing but skin and bones. I want them to see me like I always have been.”
“Fifty is not that old, even for human standards,” Fury pointed out, voice taking on a surprisingly gentle tone.
Tony turned to look at him, that sad little smile back on his lips. “No, I don’t expect it would be to you. It’s certainly not to any of them.”
Fury leaned back in his chair, looking at him, contemplating. Tony couldn’t help but wonder what he saw, what he was looking for, but he could admit to himself that part of him was too afraid to ask. Fury might tell him, and he might not like the answer. Finally, he said, “You’ve got plenty of time. It probably won’t seem like enough to you, and it definitely won’t be to them, but… you’ve got time to ease them into it.”
Tony tilted his head, acknowledging but not really believing him. Sure, the others would probably understand, might even actually prepare themselves for his eventual demise, but Steve and Bucky… every time he tried to bring up his mortality, they wouldn’t let him finish. They’d argue, or talk over him, or snarl. One time Steve even looked him in the eyes and said, “I’m not going to listen to this,” and just slithered away. It killed him a little every time, knowing that Steve and Bucky were going into this as stubborn assholes, refusing to acknowledge that he was not immortal, that there would come a time where they would look for him for company and he would no longer be there.
From what the other monsters said, they hadn’t had any luck in reaching out to them about it either. In fact, one of the few times Bruce had come out, he looked at Tony with sad eyes and explained, “They’ve been with you since the beginning, haven’t they? They already know there’s an end. They just want to love you through it.” Tony hadn’t been able to think of a way to respond back then. Still hadn’t, if he was being honest with himself.
And he probably still had time, Tony recognized. It wasn’t like he was going to die next week, next month, or even next year. He could even have a couple of decades left. But he was pretty sure that Steve and Bucky would double down on their denial. He was unwillingly impressed with the thought that he could be more wrinkle than anything and incontinent and Steve and Bucky would still just hold his hands and tell him he was beautiful before cleaning him up. It was a sad type of impressed.
“You’ve got time,” Fury said again, more like a promise than an assurance this time.
Tony sighed and stared at him for a very long time, finally taking him in behind ‘guy I desperately need help from.’ It took a moment, but he realized that Fury looked just like Loki did, like Thor: old, and wise, and somehow seemingly endless. Like he’d watched the rise and fall of civilizations and couldn’t be surprised by anything. He wondered what Fury really looked like, whether it was a glamour or if he’d taken the time to change his (her?) body physically. Whether he’d done it slowly over time, or had been able to change it in an instant that suited him. “Are you—” he began to ask.
“Stark, didn’t your mother ever teach you to never ask a lady her age?” Fury deadpanned, and the question dried up on Tony’s tongue, mortification flooding his body with heat. “Now get the hell out. I’m done with you.”
.-.
Something in him settled with the monsters’ futures taken care of. Tony had been worried about them ever since he’d gone to the doctor when he was thirty and been told he had high blood pressure. (He owned a multi-billion dollar company. It would make anyone stressed. But it did make him start to think.) It had only gotten worse with the reactor. But now there would be a safe place for his friends, for his—for his family, when he was gone. They could come and go as they wished, but his home would always be there for them, even if he couldn’t be.
“You look happy,” Sam commented, hopping after Tony as he passed through the living room. “Lighter. Something good happened, didn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Tony admitted, grabbing the StarkPad he’d left on the couch. He offered Sam a smile. “Yeah, it did.”
“I’m happy something good happened to you,” Sam said with sincerity. “It’s way better than all the times you’ve been kidnapped.”
“Sam,” Clint snapped from the back of the couch. “What the hell.”
Sam’s head twisted, birdlike and strange, to give him a scowl. “Well it is.”
Tony covered his mouth to try and smother his laugh. Sam was the youngest monster here, and sometimes it was hard for Tony to remember that when Sam was talking about ‘Ruth Hamilton and Claudette Colvin were first, I remember the hubbub, why’d they make a pregnant lady move? Why did Rosa Parks get the limelight for that? Why not the pregnant lady?’ Then Sam said things like this, guileless and happy, and it was telling how young Sam was compared to the others, who had seen war and suffering in the trenches, had put dying soldiers out of their miseries when it was clear no help would come in time.
“I’m glad that you’re happy for me, Sam,” Tony said kindly, because sometimes he worried about the how curt and cold Clint could be sometimes. He laughed when Sam puffed up proudly, feathers seeming to expand with smugness. Clint rolled his eyes in disgust, shuffling his claws on the back of the couch. Tony shook his head, amused. “What? Sometimes I need the words more than I need the cuddles, Clint.”
“Liar liar pants on fire,” Clint chanted, and then very deliberately turned his back on him and sniffed in disdain.
Tony laughed again, and laughed harder when Sam hopped around the couch to look up at Clint disdainfully and inform him, “Tony’s pants are not on fire.”
.-.
Tony arrived home with several buckets of cooling theater popcorn and almost as many two-liters of soda. He always forgot how heavy soda could be when it was multiple bottles until it was time for a movie night. “Help me bring these in if you want them!” he called out, struggling with a bag filled with boxes of Twizzlers and Raisinets.
Bucky appeared in the doorway, shoving Steve off of him from where he’d been wrapped around his waist. “Get off,” he sighed, stepping out into the garage so he could grab some more bags from the trunk. “You’re not gonna be able to help.”
“But I can!” Steve whined, puffing himself up in defense, before letting out a startled ‘blergh?!’ as Hulk delicately grabbed him in one fist and set him aside as easily as if he was a child’s toy, so he could take several of the bags Bucky handed him.
“Steve, you’ve got three broken ribs. You can’t help,” Tony agreed gently, with all the kindness he could muster. It was getting difficult with how combative Steve was being about resting and healing.
“WELL MAYBE IF CLINT HADN’T THROWN ME SO FAR,” Steve began indignantly, drawing himself up. He flinched a little as his ribs twinged, but he refused to acknowledge it and give anyone the satisfaction of being right. “It’s not my fault I—”
Tony rolled his eyes and sighed. He pulled a single two-liter of root beer from one of the bags he was still holding and gently set it into the monster’s arms, as if it was an infant. “Here, Steve.”
“You’re patronizing me,” Steve sniffed, still clearly annoyed, but this time he couldn’t help the way his face twisted with another twinge of pain. He cradled the root beer close to his body and turn to gingerly carry it into the mansion without another word, giving off the air of someone deeply wronged.
“Fucking dumb ass, deliberately forgetting that he told Clint to throw him as far as he could just to see how far it was,” Bucky muttered, rolling his eyes, but he was smiling a little. He was much more used to Steve’s reckless antics. Or, Tony was too human not to worry, maybe. It could be either. He worried about the monsters a lot.
“Did you get extra butter?” Natasha asked from the ceiling as Tony stepped inside. He didn’t answer, just kept trudging along the hall, so she followed him along the ceiling. She considered dropping a line just to listen to Tony shout as he got stuck in her webbing, but there was a chance he might drop his bags, and human movies were boring without snacks. “Tony. I want extra butter.”
“The buckets with extra butter are marked,” Tony replied, exasperated. He didn’t know why she always got so worried. There were only ever two unbuttered popcorns, and they were for Loki and Hulk.
Natasha slanted him a cold look as she reminded him, “I can’t read.”
Tony paused, startled, then slowly answered, “Okay. Well, when you all get settled, I’ll give you a bucket.”
“Hmm,” Natasha agreed, obviously trying not to sound excited, and skittered on ahead of him into the theater room. “If you don’t share that ginger ale with me, I’m going to eat your face.”
“Not if I eat yours first!” Clint snapped back immediately.
“I got two,” Tony sighed as he passed through the door. “I know you both like ginger ale.”
Loki watched Natasha’s guard hairs bristle and quickly looked through the bags to find the second bottle of ginger ale. Once he had it in hand, he passed it up to her. The last time there’d been a fight over snacks, Natasha and Clint had destroyed most of the seating, and Tony had spent days fixing the projector.
Natasha took the bottle and delicately flipped down onto the ground as if she hadn’t just been poised to spit venom all over Clint. The soda probably wouldn’t even fizz when she opened it, Tony thought sourly as he dropped the rest of the bags where Hulk had set his on the table. Clint smugly tucked his wing around Sam, foot wrapped around his own two-liter, and let out a couple of jeering crows. Sam crowed as well in solidarity. Natasha ignored both of them, unimpressed, focusing on her own soda.
Tony spent the next ten minutes fussing over making sure everyone had the proper bucket(s) of popcorn and sodas and candy. It was just easier for him to move around and hand everything off, rather than have all of them lumbering about and possibly picking fights over Starbursts. Finally, though, Bucky grabbed him by the back of the belt and tugged him down onto the couch beside him. “Ack!”
“We’re big monsters, Tony,” Steve teased, patting Tony’s knee, and offered him some of his root beer. “If we want more popcorn or candy, we can grab it ourselves.”
Tony grumbled petulantly, scowling, but eventually reached out to grab a handful of Raisinets from the box Bucky was holding. “What did you guys decide on watching, anyhow?”
“We agreed on a double feature of Disney’s Snow White and Robin Hood,” Steve answered. “Cartoons just seemed best tonight.”
“Saps,” Tony said idly, because those were ones he’d loved when he was young. He relaxed between the two monsters, squirming so that he could get comfortable between cool scales and warm fur.
Bucky, as Tony expected, fell asleep halfway through Snow White, his muzzle slowly sliding down Tony’s chest until his head fell the last few inches into his lap. He was never one for cartoons, especially one with so little action in it. Tony ran his palm over the lupine monster’s head, one slow stroke after another. When he was sure that Bucky was deeply asleep, he carefully drew a fingertip down the fur of his muzzle, following the odd whorl and curl of the hairline to keep it smooth.
He barely noticed the movies changing over, but he did notice when Steve sighed, tail coiling up on the couch, body slouching toward him. Tony took a moment to sit up straighter, then carefully lifted his hand to cradle Steve’s cheek. Steve followed his gentle urge to keep moving, coils sprawling out further down the couch as he laid down next to him.
“Who were you calling saps,” Natasha asked smugly after the movies were over and JARVIS brought the lights up, Steve had also fallen asleep, head pressed to Bucky’s, and both making soft noises of content every once in a while.
“Still you, for choosing kids’ movies,” Tony retorted. He didn’t lift his gaze from Steve and Bucky though, lips managing a small, shy smile. “But maybe I’m a little bit of a sap, too.”
“Maybe,” Sam scoffed, looking offended. “You’re the sappiest of all.”
Tony tilted his head, mouth dropping open to argue. But then Steve made a sort of… cooing noise and turned, pressing his face into Tony’s belly. “Yeah,” he finally sighed, conceding, then looked up at them, frowning in confusion. “I mean. Wouldn’t I have to be, to let you all stay here?”
The monsters had nothing to say to that, apparently. They mostly just stared at him, stunned silent, before wordlessly turning to slip from the from. As they passed the doorway, they began muttering amongst themselves, sounding distinctly embarrassed. Tony decided he wouldn’t bring it up again, instead focusing on this moment, no one there to judge him as he let Steve and Bucky sleep on his lap.
Well, except for Clint. But Tony had come to expect that.
“Are you a fucking idiot, they want time alone,” Sam hissed, tugging at him ineffectually.
“I’m comfy,” Clint complained, not even bothering to pretend that he was struggling against Sam’s grip. He wasn’t even rocking back and forth under the effort. Despite Sam’s furious hopping and snapping, he settled down to roost properly, feathers fluffing up as curled his talons into the chairs beneath him.
Tony settled back in his seat, slanting a wide smile in his direction as he carefully dug his fingers into Steve’s hair with one hand while he ran idle fingers over one of Bucky’s ears with the other. “So am I.”
Clint immediately changed his mind, face twisting with disgust. He spread his wings and hopped off the back of the chairs as if he’d meant to all along, then tucked them back in so he could hobble through the doors. “Gross. Affection. I’m leaving.”
“We cuddle all the time!” Sam exclaimed, exasperated, but followed him out without much fanfare.
Tony waited until he was sure they were gone, ears straining for the shift of webbing or the sound of feathers fluttering. Once he was sure he heard nothing, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to both Bucky and Steve’s foreheads.
.-.
“What are you doing?” Steve asked curiously, watching as Tony set out pads of paper with wide lines on the table nearest the couch, along with several big, cardboard books. Normally, Tony didn’t ask them into the library, so it was already odd to be invited. He’d never seen any of those things before.
“I think,” Tony began, then paused uncertainly, carefully keeping his gaze on the table. He straightened a couple of books to do something with his hands. “I think it’s time I taught you and Bucky to read and write.”
Steve stared at him for a moment, surprised, before letting out a snort. They’d gotten along without reading this long. They could both recognize some words on sight, but they didn’t actually have to know what the letters meant. He offered Tony a bewildered smile. “Why would we ever need to learn to read and write?”
“I—” Tony started, brows furrowing together, then stopped himself. He frowned down at the books, straightening them in a different direction before he continued, softly, “…I just thought it might be nice.”
Steve would have continued to laugh, because why would he try to teach them now of all times? But then he took in Tony’s hunched shoulders, the way he looked so dejected, like Steve had turned him down instead of just laughed. He’d mentioned teaching them all to read before, but they’d all brushed him off in some way or another. He’d seemed to shrug it off at the time and told them that JARVIS could always help them download audiobooks if he was unavailable to read to them. Had they been hurting his feelings this entire time?
“Ow-ow-ow-ow-ooooowww what?!” Bucky exclaimed as Steve towed him into the library by his ear.
“Oh,” Tony said, standing up from the couch in surprise. He blinked. “Um?”
“We’re gonna learn how to read and write and you’re gonna like it,” Steve insisted, letting go of Bucky’s ear so he could slither over to the table, where the pads of paper and books were still sitting.
“Why?” Bucky whined, reaching up to rub at his ear and scowling at him. He approached the table slower than Steve had, eyeing the papers skeptically.
“You like that show with the aliens, right?” Steve said over Tony’s confused sputtering, and when the lupine monster made a vague noise of agreement, he continued, “Tony says he has tons of books with aliens that he thinks you might like.”
Bucky looked skeptical, but he did sit down at the table. “I guess we have been putting this off.”
Steve picked up his pencil and held it like it was a knife and he was ready to stab someone. “Alright! Let’s go!”
“Steve, I’ve seen you draw—” Tony said, torn between laughing and crying. “Why are you—why are you holding your pencil like that? No.”
Steve looked honestly surprised that holding a pencil to write was the same as holding it to draw. He looked at the pencil in his hand suspiciously, as if it might transform if he shifted it properly.
Honestly, the things he put up with for these guys, Tony thought fondly.
.-.
Natasha and Clint continued to decline reading lessons. Tony supposed that was alright. Clint wasn’t one to sit and listen to stories; he’d heard lifetimes of stories during his imprisonment in the circus, and he genuinely seemed to prefer the mindless entertainment of reality TV. ‘No one ever shot a watermelon into their own face with a slingshot in the circus,’ he’d said the one time Tony had asked him to try and understand. He’d decided then that he wasn’t going to worry too much about it. There was always going to be reality TV. And audiobooks, if he ever decided he ever wanted that to change.
Natasha’s reasoning was much different, although Tony sincerely doubted that she’d ever actually admit to it. For as much as Clint hated listening to stories, she seemed to love it, and Tony figured that part of it was that unlike the other monsters, she’d been largely solitary until she found her way to the mansion. She’d sounded begrudging when he’d asked if Bucky and Steve could practice reading aloud to her, but she looked absolutely enthralled as Bucky read her Stranger in a Strange Land, no matter how halting or stilted it was. Sometimes Bucky would have to admit defeat and shuffle over to ask how to pronounce something, but Natasha was surprisingly patient about it, waiting for Bucky to come back and continue the story.
Steve favored reading to Hulk, even though Hulk was easily capable of reading. Tony thought it was because Hulk didn’t like having to worry about the structural integrity of the book he held all the time. He was still in the habit of placing the book he was reading on a table and waiting for others to turn the pages for him. Steve liked classic literature rather than sci-fi, too, which Hulk seemed to prefer. (Tony figured it made sense, since it was some sort of fucked up science that had changed Bruce into Hulk.) Hulk even made requests, although he’d stopped suggesting Jane Austen after Steve had struggled with the wording in Pride and Prejudice.
Tony had offered to teach Sam to read, too, of course. Sam had shrugged, talons curling into the back of the couch just like Clint’s did when he was thinking, and said, “I know all the important words. I’m not interested right now, but thank you for offering. I’ll probably ask Bucky to teach me later so I can pick on him ruthlessly for being a bad teacher no matter how good he is at it.”
So Tony took the time when the monsters were practicing to sit down at his desk and write all of the letters he could think of: letters to Natasha and Clint, about how thankful he was for their care and love, how he appreciated how they took care of him from his teenage years all the way to now, how he knew they’d take care of him as he aged further. He wrote about how he liked their hugs and brusque but warm affection. He wrote about how they were scary and that was what had made him love them in the beginning. How that love had changed and grown as he’d gotten older and understood them better. How he hoped their love for him stayed the same even after he was gone.
He wrote letters to Bruce and to Hulk about how he loved them differently but equally, and how he thought perhaps that it was the same way they felt for him, and while he adored how Hulk protected him, he also loved talking science with Bruce. He wrote about how sorry he was that they had had part of their lives stolen by being kept in a government cell, but it was the one kidnapping he didn’t regret, because it had helped them escape. He wrote about how he hoped that someday, even if it was very far in the future, a future without him there, that Bruce would get the courage to go out into the world of humans again, and until then, he wished that Hulk would take care of him.
He wrote letters to Loki and Thor, telling them that they terrified him but he trusted them all the same. He wrote about how he knew they weren’t responsible for the others, but they were very old, and had watched humans die, maybe even some they cared for, so perhaps they could give the other monsters some guidance for the new experience of loss they’d feel when Tony was gone. In a letter to Thor, he said that he suspected Loki might even struggle with his death, too. So maybe he could be nearby for a while. Just in case. And if he needed to move the humans he currently cared for into the mansion to do so, well. It had plenty of rooms. And clearly they were used to monsters.
He wrote letters to Sam, too, with preemptive thanks for helping the other monsters. They weren’t as close, but Sam seemed to know the experience in mourning Riley (a mate of sorts, Tony had been able to gather) would have to be used to help the other monsters mourn him. He also apologized, because it shouldn’t all be on Sam, but Sam seemed to have the healthiest relationship with loss out of everyone in the mansion, so. He hoped Sam understood.
Those were the kind of things Steve, Bucky, Bruce, and Loki probably wouldn’t mind reading aloud to the other monsters that couldn’t read, anyway. He didn’t want anyone to be too uncomfortable. He wanted these letters to try and ease the pain, not hurt them more.
Once he was finished with those, he wrote letters to Steve and to Bucky, sappy ones that they probably wouldn’t want to share, lurid ones that they definitely wouldn’t. He wrote about how loved he felt with them, and how sorry he was that it took so long for him to believe they loved him in any way other than family, and how he wished he had more time—always that he wished he had more time. It wasn’t even to make himself feel better; he was greedy, and he wanted more time to savor their love for him. He had been so lucky to find people who loved him like Steve and Bucky, and it didn’t even matter that they were monsters. He was loved. Steve and Bucky had always made him feel loved, even when he felt like he didn’t deserve it.
It became a sort of weekly ritual for him after that, to write another letter and carefully file it away in boxes carefully labeled with each monster’s name in his blocky engineering script. Once a box was packed too full for more, he’d hand it over to Pepper or Rhodey for safekeeping. They’d go in a special storage safe that was fireproof so the letters were safe, and then once he passed, the safe would be moved to the mansion so that the monsters could access it whenever they wished.
Pepper and Rhodey always looked so sad when he handed them a new box. The significance wasn’t lost on them. Tony expected them to outlive him. There were plans in place on the off chance that they predeceased him, but he never acted like that was a possibility. Tony didn’t know how to tell them that he’d kept a lot of the horror of what happened to him in Afghanistan from them, that the sparking car battery had caused lasting damage, that the hole in his chest made him more susceptible to illness. He’d run the numbers. Even though Rhodey was older than him, Tony would almost certainly die first.
“I have plenty of time,” Tony insisted as he handed over another box of letters to Rhodey for safekeeping. “I just want them to know all these things. I’m not—I’m not dying. I have plenty of time.”
“Sure,” Rhodey answered dubiously, carefully setting the box in the trunk of his car. He shut it so that Tony could see that it was locked, then turned, tugging Tony into a hug.
Tony liked hugs, so he didn’t understand why Rhodey would jerk him around for one. But then he noticed the smallest of tremors in Rhodey’s hands. He let his eyes drift closed with a sigh. They had been friends for forty years. He couldn’t imagine a life without Rhodey. It hadn’t occurred to him that Rhodey might think the same thing about him. “I have plenty of time,” he repeated, quieter, this time all for Rhodey. They’d come through a lot together. He still remembered the first time Rhodey had seen Bucky and Steve and taken it in stride. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Fury had said so, after all—he had time.