Chapter Text
The newspaper stand has another magazine with Tony's face splashed across it.
Another day, another new missile. Another leap into the future.
Steve wishes he had a coat to wrap around himself. Singapore's humid weather means he's wearing a light jacket, but he longs for the sense of safety that comes with warm coats in a cold winter.
He skips the newspaper stand.
All that's important about Tony is in his head already - the rest of the scandals, rumors and indiscretions are not for Steve to think about.
More than ever, Steve is glad the world has been told that Captain America has retired, that his identity remains a secret. He still has faith for his country, but he doesn't think he can be Captain America when there is little in him that hopes for the future.
They were children in boarding school when Tony had dreamt about flying cars and rockets to reach the stars. They were fourteen when Tony had admitted quietly into the night: I don't want to make weapons.
When Steve had promised that Tony could be anything he wanted.
Steve never thought that so much would change, and yet, he's here, halfway across the world from home, scouting for HYDRA bases in the area.
It's been nearly ten years since he last spoke with Tony. But he wears Stark tech that SHIELD provides him with. He knows he can trust his weapons, but he doesn't know if he can trust his heart.
Bucky is waiting for Steve to come back to their hideout, and Steve lengthens his strides, uncomfortable with leaving Bucky for too long alone. He's more worried than usual with this being Bucky's first mission in three years, the first since Bucky had gone off radar for a year, captured by HYDRA until an anonymous tip had led Agent Carter straight to the newly named Winter Soldier.
His communicator - the one reserved for emergencies - buzzes in his pocket.
Steve frowns, slipping into a deserted alley.
"Captain Rogers. 35-45-55-1967," he confirms his identity.
"Steve." It's Agent Carter, but the crack at the edge of his name tells him she's calling as Peggy. "We need you."
He braces himself. "Why?"
"Tony is missing."
The wall Steve is facing is grey concrete.
There are watermarks from the recent rain, the ticking down of time and life marring it. Steve clenches his fist, nails digging hard into his palm. "Where's the plane?"
"The Madripoor airbase," Peggy's reply comes quick.
If you need somebody and there’s no one else to turn to, Steve had promised Tony that last night years ago - a lifetime ago. If you come through a rainy patch and you need a shield, you can always find me.
For Peggy to be so terrified to pull Steve off this mission means something went horribly wrong. It might mean that they need Captain America, or at the very least, the supersoldier beneath the stars and stripes.
He thinks back to the magazine stand from earlier, the new weapons printed beside Tony's face, and all the truths he knows about Tony. He doesn't know who he'll find at the end of this - because he will find Tony. He will.
But whether it's an old friend who smells like home or a stranger who tastes like a hundred different women, Steve doesn't know.
It isn't fair for him to question it either.
"We'll be ready for take off in twenty minutes," Steve tells Peggy.
None of it matters, anyway.
Steve's heart can have nothing to do with the mission.
Fifty one times.
In the last ten years, Steve has stopped fifty one assassination and kidnapping attempts on Tony. There was one particularly bad month with seven attempts, right after Tony announced the newest line of repulsor tech satellite targeting missiles, but Steve had stopped them in time and Tony went on walking to the next party without knowing that a sniper had been pointed at his head.
Part of SHIELD's elite STRIKE team, Steve spends his nights hunting down HYDRA and his days keeping tabs on the people most important to him. If those people also happen to be among the most important people in the world, it's an extra perk that lets him keep Tony safe without too much interference from SHIELD.
He had ramped up his efforts to keep watch over Tony after the dreadful years when Bucky had gone missing - no one else should have to fall into HYDRA's hands, least of all Tony.
He's made too many mistakes, and he doesn't want Tony to be one of them.
They might not have talked for a decade, Steve might not recognise the person Tony is now, but he has to believe that there is more good than bad in Tony, has to have faith that the kind boy who was once his friend from a long lost childhood still remains, even if Steve might never meet him again.
Fifty one times.
How did he fail this time?
There had been no chatter on the underground radios, no hint that something would go astray.
Steve stares into the expanse of light blue sky, the world moving on and uncaring.
He closes his eyes, and doesn't let himself break.
He doesn't deserve the luxury of falling apart.
The Jericho launch, an ambush.
Rhodey calls in when Steve's plane is above Myanmar. His head is wrapped in bandages, medical staff milling in the background of the video feed.
"We had decoys," Rhodey repeats shakily, with red-rimmed eyes. "Someone leaked the security details. They knew exactly which Humvee to attack."
"We've always known there was a leak in Stark Industries," Steve nods.
On the other screen, Peggy points at Bucky beside him. "You're dropping Barnes off at the Gulmira airbase. Then you're coming to New York, Captain."
Steve balks. "I can do more good on the ground."
"Agent Wilson is flying over the desert. With Rhodes and Barnes on the field, I need you at headquarters," Peggy insists. "You're going to finish what we started before Howard Stark's crash."
"Is Romanoff being called in?" Bucky asks, metal arm squeezing Steve's shoulder. A silent plea to stand down.
"Yes," Peggy confirms. "We're taking this problem from two sides." More softly, she adds, "Steve, we need your head for strategy. Your memories, too."
"Listen to her," Rhodey says. "I sure as hell want Captain America here, but whoever fucking leaked Tony's location? I want them caught."
They'd retrieved the bodies of everyone in Tony's humvee except for Tony. Tony's phone had been found a behind an outcropping of rock, screen cracked, in a pool of blood that was a match for Tony. The desert winds mean Agent Wilson is on site collecting any evidence they can before the winds carry all traces away in the dust and merciless sands.
An almost perfect crime.
Steve aches to go down when Bucky leaves the plane at Gulmira, but he doesn't. He gives Bucky a hug. "Don't you go missing too."
"I won't, punk. Once is enough."
That earns a wan smile from Steve. Something fiercely bitter claws at him that he clamps down. Better to put his anger and resentment into finding Tony.
All Steve wants is a chance to breathe: he's become a supersoldier, fought on hundreds of battlefields, protected Tony from a bombing at the Ritz, let go of the sweet comfort of Tony's arms, saved his best friend from being tortured, and hunted down HYDRA bases. He wants to rest. To put down all the war staining his hands red.
But there is always the next mission, always HYDRA rearing its ugly head.
His chest feels full, threatening to burst with everything he's tried to lock away.
The jittery fear when he straps on his shield, knowing the day has to end in blood. The longing when he calls his Ma and her gentle acceptance that means she never asks when he's coming home. The hot need when he sees Tony's smile plastered on the side of a bus, the need to touch, to know what he had done to make Tony push him away. The grief, the hurt, the sleepless nights - they build up, making his chest tight.
If they don't find Tony - Steve remembers that final conversation with the man that he loved, that he loves now, in spite of everything. For the record, Tony had held his head high, I love you.
Steve refuses for an argument to be the last thing - the last time he ever sees Tony.
He had tried to move on. Had spent four months dating Sharon Carter, had gone out twice with the lady from Accounting and spent a week working out his frustrations in bed with a man in Johannesburg.
When the sun rose, however, he would find himself preparing too-sweet coffee and searching for the nearest donut shop and it wouldn't have been fair to anyone.
How do you let go of the sun once you've let it burn you, mark you?
Steve had always thought - hoped - that his paths would cross with Tony's again, one day. Whether it was when Tony was happily married with a child or when they were both old and grey and as lonely as they had been when Tony had snuck into Steve's dorm room lifetimes ago - it felt impossible to move on when they had hurt each other so much.
When they had healed each other too.
Steve takes a deep breath. Then another. And another.
Until his hands don't shake and his back can stand straight beneath the weight of his regret.
He will find Tony.
He's lost too much, been through too much to stomach another blow, another loss.
Twenty nine days, twelve hours, and forty seven minutes.
Rhodey and Bucky has made no progress. Steve counts not punching Stane as progress.
The table beneath Steve's hand cracks.
He's in Stark Industries' Los Angeles office. Obadiah Stane wants control over the company to handle the fallout from the company losing not just leadership, but also the brilliance of Tony's genius.
Steve had worked with the equally brilliant Pepper Potts to seal the vacuum of leadership, issuing a government order to freeze any legal proceedings that gave company control to Stane.
The bulk of SI's stock is Tony's, so it counts for little that Stane almost desperately wants to roll out the rest of the Jericho line to raise company performance. Stane can't do it.
And it's taken Steve's utmost self-control to not rage at Stane for not putting Tony first.
Pepper offers Steve a drink. Coffee.
"We don't have anything else except Stane's whiskey," Pepper says apologetically.
Steve lets go of the table. He can smell the sugar in the coffee, and it's so Tony that his legs buckle for the briefest moments. "Tony always said tea is leaf juice," he finds it in himself to smile.
"And he drinks less than people believe," Pepper pulls out the chair next to Steve, sitting down. When put together, she had spent more time with Tony than Steve ever did. She knows well enough that Tony never drinks anything but coffee in the workshop. "Tony talked about you, Captain. He wouldn't want you to run yourself ragged like this."
"He's one to talk," Steve huffs. "He runs himself ragged more than I do."
"Tony likes to say we're similar. We badger him too much about taking care of himself," Pepper fishes a key card from her pocket, passing it to Steve under the table. "But I take chaos and try to shape it into order," she continues. "You, Captain, you take chaos and find the good in it."
The key card, Steve discovers in the privacy of the SHIELD-issued car, gives access to Tony's Malibu Mansion that Stane has so far barred any investigators from entering.
Flipping it around, he sees Pepper's penned a message onto the card: Stane talked to Tony before awards @ Caesars.
Tony's last night before leaving for the weapons demo was spent... well.
Steve is familiar with Christine Everhart's blonde hair and admittedly stellar journalism. Before that, however, Tony was supposed to receive the Apogee Award, but Stane had been the one to take the stage.
It's more than normal for Tony to forget appointments - god knows how many dates Tony had nearly missed with Steve.
Still, if Pepper thinks it deserves further digging, Steve isn't about to leave a stone unturned after nearly a month of no useful leads.
Steve treads lightly over the marble stone of the Malibu Mansion, wincing at the loud echoes of his own footsteps.
Glass windows stretch from floor to ceiling. The grand piano sits in the corner, a thin sheet of dust covering it. The sofa is the same one that Steve had fallen asleep on a decade ago as he waited for Tony to come out of the workshop, wondering, worrying until whatever they had between them had snapped.
How many more people have fallen asleep on the sofa?
The potted plants have changed, though. Somehow, Tony has managed to make edelweiss flowers grow beneath the glass waterfall, with a shrub of blue forget-me-nots tucked beside it, hidden away from view if you didn't know where to look.
Steve brushes away the dust gathering on the staircase railing to the workshop.
"JARVIS?" he tries.
The lights overhead turn on. Their brightness is exactly how Steve preferred them a decade ago - too dim for him, now. "Good afternoon, Captain Rogers. It's 3.49 PM. The weather in Malibu is 72 degrees with scattered clouds - "
"It's good to hear you," Steve pats the wall beneath one of the cameras he remembers. "Will Pepper's card give me workshop access?"
"Your biometric accesses to the workshop remain functional."
Steve frowns at the camera, suspicion making him sick. "Did he - " his throat is dry. "Did Tony never erase them?"
"Sir anticipated a day where you might require my assistance."
How many years had Steve wasted by staying away from Tony? Tony had been the one to push him away, but if he had cared about Steve all along, then why?
Taking the stairs down, Steve calmly keys in his code. Compartmentalize.
The workshop's chaos is achingly familiar. An unfinished coffee cup by the holotable. Several cars in various states of dismantling. And of course - DUM-E, rolling happily to Steve. Another bot that Steve doesn't recognise rolls over, on its arm a massive letter U.
"Hey buddy," Steve gives both bots a pat on their claws. "I miss Tony too." There are some truths easier to say to metal and steel and machine, who won't judge him for having a heart.
"If I might direct your attention to Sir's latest project, Captain?"
Well, except for JARVIS who is most certainly judging him. The bots follow him to the holotable that flares up with various machine parts that Steve tries to piece together in his head. He thinks he's looking at the schematics of the newest Jericho missile, and there's a collection of - "Was Tony planning to launch a new line of health tech?"
"Indeed, Captain. However, the need to divert funds from the Jericho II line development meant the project faced roadblocks. Sir met with Mr. Stane to discuss the issue multiple times. The last was thirty seven hours before Sir's disappearance."
Before the award show at Caesars Palace, then. "JARVIS," Steve taps on one of the holograms, watching it expand to become a prosthetic arm, the exact kind Bucky has. "I need logs of all of Stane's contacts in the past year, and I need all of Tony's records on me."
"Commencing log retrieval. Unfortunately, you do not have access for the latter request."
"Who has access?"
"Ms. Virginia Potts and Mrs. Sarah Rogers."
"My mother?" Steve's frown grows. "She doesn't - "
"I assure you my records of Sir's security protocols have been regularly updated."
Steve files that away for later. The most important things first. He knows Rhodey has been using JARVIS' satellite help to scan the deserts, but Steve can't only sit here not doing something concrete to actually find Tony. "JARVIS, can you do a scan of smoke in the area around Tony's last location? Especially at night time, any particles associated with smoke."
The deserts are cold, and the smoke from campfires at night must go somewhere.
"Of course, Captain."
"Can I see Tony's phone data?"
The prototypes disappear from the holotable, morphing into a new interface. Tony's last contact was a video call with Stane, then an aborted call to Pepper Potts. Most of it isn't very useful: he ignores the fact that his number - his newest number from a year ago, that nobody except six people should have - is on Tony's speed dial. That's another SHIELD security breach that Steve can chase down later.
He pauses as he sees the folders in Tony's gallery. This was - this felt wrong. No doubt Rhodey has gone through everything, there isn't anything for Steve to double check here. This is just his inability to wait quietly as JARVIS finishes compiling Stane's logs. Steve has no right to barge even further into Tony's life, especially when he hadn't been brave enough to come back here before Tony had gone missing.
"Captain, do you require any assistance?"
"No, I just - " he taps on one of the pictures. A selfie with a supermodel. He scrolls down a few days. Snapshots of some welding gear. A newspaper report about veterans and Captain America's legacy. Steve swallows. He scrolls down some more until he reaches the last picture. "JARVIS, is this what I think this is?"
The timestamp is a second after the failed call to Pepper, and it's - there's fire in the background, on the right edge is the back wheels of what must be the humvees, and there's a man in uniform that is decidedly not the Air Force's rangers. With a large beard, the man is holding a Stark gun.
Peggy was right.
It's time they solved this old case, root out all the rats hiding behind the towering riches of Stark Industries.
"Have you run facial detection?" Steve asks JARVIS, who replies in the most disgruntled tone an AI can have.
"Of course, Captain. The man is shown in official records to have died four years prior."
"Then fetch me all of the man's contacts before he died, please."
"With pleasure."
Day forty is when things start to crumble. Stane is tired of waiting, and the government is tired of expending resources in a strict war zone.
Steve is tired of all their leads turning to dust.
They find base after base full of stolen Stark weaponry and a new underground group calling themselves the Ten Rings, but never the right one. Or perhaps they've found the right one, just never realised Tony's body was in it.
No. No. After all that Tony has been to Steve, Steve owes it to him to not give up.
And yet, Rhodey is saying otherwise. Rhodey is -
"The government wants to declare him dead. The Air Force is sending me back to New York."
Steve sucks in a sharp breath. Rhodey's face looks ragged in the video screen, tired with deep shadows that reflect the hollow pit of Steve's stomach, the gnawing, aching emptiness stretching on.
"Peggy can pull some strings," Steve scrambles for anything to hold onto because Tony cannot be gone.
"Agent Carter is... she didn't tell you?" Rhodey asks. "She's stepping down as Director of SHIELD."
"Agent Fury is replacing her, yes." That's a thought. Fury has a direct line to SHIELD's most classified, last resort asset named Captain Danvers. "But Peggy will still have her contacts, people she can call in favors."
Rhodey rubs his temples wearily, the video feed blurring for a second. "If the Ten Rings think we're not searching for him, that might make them less cautious."
"So you're fine with them declaring Tony dead," Steve woodenly says.
"I don't like this any more than you do," Rhodey reminds him through gritted teeth, "he's my friend. And I stayed by him through the worst and the best. That's more than you can say, Captain."
There are a thousand and one excuses on the tip of his tongue. He says none of them.
"I'm sorry. I was an ass," Steve sighs. "I should have come back earlier, I shouldn't have let him push me away."
"I hated you, you know? Tony would have given you the world if you asked for it, the stars if you wanted it," Rhodey quietly confesses, the fierce anger receeding into cold fact. "And you walked away from him."
"Because I didn't want the world. He was destroying himself trying to give it to me." Steve bows his head, eyes closed against the memory of those last weeks he had spent with Tony: the empty beds, the way Tony's face would twist at Steve, unhappy and afraid. "He wouldn't listen to me, and I couldn't watch him burn himself any more."
Steve watches as something in Rhodey's expression twitches, and on screen, Rhodey's hand fiddles with a pen. "Tony wouldn't have let you come back. He was trying to find himself, and he needed to do it alone." The truth stings, but Rhodey goes on, "I don't think he was ready for you. I don't think you were ready for him either - and I doubt any of us can be ready for him."
"We were young and stupid."
"You were young and learning. And Tony is special."
Steve's lips twitch up. Special is an understatement. "You love him," Steve says. There's no jealousy, only a kindred feeling.
Rhodey shrugs. "Not the way he loves you."
"I doubt he loves me now, after everything wrong I've done."
"We don't choose who loves us, or why. I hated everything you did that hurt him," Rhodey takes a drink from a flimsy paper cup, and Steve swallows down the guilt. "But you never really forget your childhood home. The streets, the rooms, the paintings on the wall - they don't quite leave you like everything that comes after."
Steve knows. It's etched in him, all the small things about Tony: his favorite flower, the piano lullabies Tony loved most, the constellations he wanted to visit, and the way Tony snored in his sleep. If Tony is gone - if they really never find Tony - Steve doesn't know what to do with himself, with the universe of tiny memories stitched together to make the bright ball of want, of regret, of home lodged irremovable in his chest.
"I was afraid that he would push me away again if I came back. I don't want to hurt him more," Steve admits. Then, "I'm done being afraid."
"Let's hope you get the chance to tell Tony that."
"Thank you for being there for him, Colonel," Steve hopes the truth of his words are clear through the call.
Rhodey bows his head. "I'll be back in New York in two days. I expect you to be there for the reading of - of Tony's will."
The two words - Tony's will - send a sharp cold down Steve's spine, heavy and impossible to process. "I'll see you then." His voice comes out choked.
Steve spends the next two days studiously avoiding the Stark Mansion in New York. There are far too many ghosts there that he isn't prepared to face yet. Rhodey was right, after all. Neither Steve nor Tony had been quite as ready as they thought they were to try push their friendship in a new direction. Their edges were too rough, and Tony would've argued friction meant heat and heat was good, but they were in their twenties with the world on their shoulders.
Tony had the future to carry, and Steve was doing his best to hide Captain America, carrying a legacy he didn't know how to hold together, searching for a purpose other than war.
With very few people to turn to, Steve finds himself standing in the doorway of his Ma's apartment, his last safe haven that he hasn't messed up in his stubbornness and blindness.
"My darling boy," Sarah pulls Steve into a hug. "I heard the news."
"I'm sorry for not calling sooner," Steve leans gratefully into it. Sarah Rogers is a small woman, but she holds him up as easily as ever.
"You're here now," she says with a cough, "you have better things to worry about than me."
Steve smiles wanly. "America forgets her founding mothers too often. I won't make the same mistake." He takes in her paler than usual skin. "Have you taken your medicine?"
"Of course I have. And it's my job to worry about you. Not the other way 'round."
"I wish I could give you my serum," Steve leads her to sit down on the couch. No matter how hard Steve had tried to give her a bigger, more comfortable home, she insisted on staying in their tiny Brooklyn flat. He can't quite blame her: he got his stubbornness from her, after all. But he can wish that his mother wasn't getting sick more often, wasn't coughing every five minutes or so, her lungs giving her trouble.
The serum could have saved so many others. It saved Steve instead - another burden that he has to carry, all the hearts and dreams of everyone who could've been him.
"No," his Ma pats his cheek, grinning. "America isn't ready yet to have me as her Captain."
Steve barks a laugh. Heading to the kitchen, he rummages through the fridge to get her favorite lime juice, pouring two glasses of it. "I don't know if I can be her Captain either."
"You'll find Tony," she cuts right to the core of it. "Or Tony will find you."
"Not even you can know that."
Sarah tuts at him. "I know both of you, and I know how bullheaded you two get. Tony isn't one for giving up."
"I wish I could believe that. I really do."
"Tony visited me," she sips her juice innocently. "How many years has it been since you last saw him? Ten? Every December 16th, he visits me and promises me he'll keep you safe."
That's the date of Howard and Maria's crash. Suddenly, despite the serum, he finds it hard to breathe. How - why - "Why are you telling me this now?"
"It wasn't my secret to tell," his Ma says, putting down her glass of juice with a thud. "But if it helps you to find him, you should know that he gave me this for safekeeping." She reaches into her pocket, fist opening up to reveal an unassuming flashdrive. Black, non-descript. Ms. Virginia Potts and Mrs. Sarah Rogers, JARVIS had said. "Tony promised me that if I needed help, this should do the trick."
Oh god. His hand shakes.
"Ma," Steve grabs onto it like a lifeline. "Ma, this is - I need to go."
"Bring Tony home, you hear me?" his Ma kisses the top of his head. "Stay safe."
"I will. I - thank you, Ma."
"Anything for you both."
Steve sits between Rhodey and Peggy. The lawyers and notary sits across them. At one head of the conference table is Pepper Potts - she was named Executor of Tony's will - and at the other head is Stane, seething but doing his best to hide it.
There's the small mercy that the will reading hadn't taken place in the Stark Mansion, Pepper choosing the more neutral New York Stark Offices. He swallows down the wave of nausea that had hit him when Pepper had taken the remarkably plain piece of paper out of the envelope.
I, Anthony Edward Stark, being of sound mind and body, wilfully and voluntarily make known my desires that my moment of death shall not be artificially postponed.
To her credit, her voice doesn't crack even if her eyes are red-rimmed, the mascara doing nothing to hide her grief.
Forty five days, now.
Funny how easily life could crumble, how quickly.
Most of it is simple: all of Tony's shares and assets in the company goes to Pepper. All of his patents and machinery to Rhodey. His properties go to Peggy to be turned into assets for charity, and -
"I hereby give, devise, and bequeath all the property and land of the address Malibu Point 10880, 90265 to Captain Steven Grant Rogers, absolutely and forever, on the condition that he learn the difference between Beethoven," Pepper frowns, "and a dying cat. Don't leave the piano unplayed, don't let DUM-E feed you smoothies."
Steve snorts, loud, and Stane glares daggers at him, but he laughs anyway, his cheeks wet - why are his cheeks wet? Oh, he's crying. He shouldn't be crying now. Crying is useless. Captain America shouldn't be crying in front of lawyers.
But the lawyers don't know he's Captain America, and, God, how long has it been since that night? They hadn't even been fifteen - a different time in a different world when Tony would hammer out his frustrations on the piano instead of on hard, unforgiving metal.
Children. Not ready yet for what life would throw at them.
He misses what Pepper says as he wipes the wetness on his cheeks away, thankful for Rhodey squeezing his shoulder to ground him. He must've missed something pretty important, though, because there's a - that's a velvet ring box on the table in front of Steve.
"What?" he whispers, afraid.
Pepper bites her lip. "That was in the envelope, marked for you."
Steve feels the weight of everyone's gazes, but Stane's is heaviest, and Steve understands without having to open it. No.
But he has never been able to back down from anything.
The box flips open soundlessly -
No, his mind screams again, no. There's a gold ring. Simple. Plain. Inlaid with only one stripe of dark sapphire. And there's a folded up piece of paper with Tony's too familiar scrawl.
For when you find the right partner. I hope they make you as happy as you've made me.
Fuck. Steve can't. He can't think. He can't look at Stane's sour face. He - he takes the cold metal of the ring out of its soft resting place. It's small in his palm, but with so much weight that Steve can't carry. Not this. Not this regret on top of everything else.
If Tony were here, there would be a joke about life being short, and Steve might've teased him back about shortness.
The sharp lance of fear returns, the stretch of days leading to an infinite hollowness if Tony is never found. If these are truly the last words he gets from Tony -
I've found the right partner, Steve wants to rail at the universe, wants to beg Tony to forgive him, but there are no gods and Tony is lost to him. He has only himself to claw at.
"Steve."
"Steve."
The second voice is Rhodey's.
"Yes?"
"Do you need anything?"
Tony. I need Tony.
"No," Steve says. "No."
Steve's only consolation is that Stane didn't win. Not a single dollar of Tony's belongings fell to Stane's hands, and Pepper's new control of the company's ownership let her freeze the new weapons production.
Well. He has another consolation.
The flashdrive his Ma gave him has all of Tony's research on the missing weapons, a backup of an AI named MARIA, dating as far back as when Steve was still involved in the mission. It fuels him on, the need to find Tony, and it lets him forget about the ring he had left with his Ma.
In the safety of the Malibu Mansion that Steve now calls his safehouse, JARVIS collates everything, sounding as surprised by the data as Steve - stored in a remote private server that even JARVIS had no access to. It speaks of paranoia. Steve wonders if he's opened a pandora's box by letting all this out, but he knows there's no going back - not if he wants to find Tony.
He flicks through the other files as JARVIS works to triangulate locations with their current search data. While the government may have chosen to move on, Peggy had made it her last act as Director of SHIELD to keep the search going, Bucky and Sam scouring the deserts for any sign of life.
Steve tries his damnedest to wrap his head around the schematics in Tony's private servers, shifting through something that resembles a new repulsor-tech vehicle called a 'Helicarrier', a flying medevac bay for disaster relief. The Tony Stark I loved would never have let this happen, Steve had thrown the accusation at him ten years ago.
Swallowing down the guilt, Steve flips through another batch of files, hesitating only the slightest bit when he realises that they're hacked from SHIELD - details about a strange blue alien cube to do with clean energy, all of Steve's personnel files, analysis about the weak points of Steve's body armor and notes on upgrade requirements.
Why had Tony pushed him away when Tony cared this much? The thought comes as a punch. How many years had they spent loving each other in the wrong ways? Steve keeping assassins at bay and Tony adding shields to protect him? How does he move on after this?
Absolutely and forever, the will had dictated, forcing another legacy for Steve to carry on. He had stood on these cliffsides before Tony had built a home here, and something in him fears that he might stand on this cliffside long after everything Tony built has crumbled to dust.
"Captain, I have isolated the two most likely locations," JARVIS cuts through his wallowing. "Data from MARIA's archives show an uptick of missing palladium-based weapons making their way through the coordinates."
Steve takes a deep breath. The holotable in front of him flashes with two images. He taps on the left one, with an extensive network of old caves.
"Can you call SHIELD for me, JARVIS?"
A dial tone, and then, a very disgruntled voice: "this better be fucking good, Rogers."
Frowning, he glances at the clock. Oh. It's two in the morning, and with Peggy retiring, the more prickly Agent Fury is on the phone. Steve forges onwards.
"I have a possible location on Tony Stark."
"Then call Barnes or someone who can do something about it," Fury grumbles. There's a small 'meow' in the background - does Fury have a pet cat?
Steve files that question for later. "I also need one of your agents to contact Pepper Potts. Tell her you suspect Stane of fraud, but don't let her confront him."
A loud sigh comes from Fury. "Rogers, you better be sure as hell you know what you're doing."
"Commander Fury, I have nearly all the evidence I need to implicate him."
"You're asking for a lot."
"I'm asking less than SHIELD's asked of me."
"Whoever said Stark would be the most difficult to handle certainly hasn't met you."
"Will you help me or not?" Steve looks out into the dark seas crashing at the cliffs outside the windows, the ticking of the world fighting against itself.
"Your quinjet was ready to take off five minutes ago."
The line cuts off. Steve has one more call to make.
Rhodey would normally have piloted the chopper, but this time, he sits across Steve. Coming here had been against his commanding officer's orders. Steve is sure, however, that as much as Rhodey believes in the system, his oldest, strongest loyalty doesn't belong to the government.
A knock comes on the chopper's window: Sam, flying next to them in his Falcon gear, the Afghan sand dunes stretching beneath them.
"Three minutes out from the explosion site!" Sam shouts over whirring of the chopper's blades, just loud enough for Steve's enhanced hearing to pick up. Steve gives him a nod, strapping on the last of his gear. Their radars had spotted a large explosion this morning in the vicinity of the location Steve found, and they won't risk anything.
"Tony better be down there," Rhodey mutters, "otherwise, when my C.O. gives me a dressing down for gallivanting with an Army Captain," he gives Steve an approximation of a grin, "I'm gonna put all the blame on that Stark tardiness."
Steve starts to reply, but another knock on the window stops him. Sam is pointing down, his words urgent. "I see someone!"
"A friendly?" Steve shouts back, all too aware of everyone staring at him, waiting tensely.
The soldiers on the chopper with him had volunteered to come. The closest friends of those who had been in Tony's ambushed convoy - they're hungry with the need to find whoever had caused so much needless death. Steve understands the burning need for closure. He can only be grateful that these soldiers hadn't been on scene to witness the ambush.
Slowly, Steve watches Sam nod. Rhodey's back stiffens immediately, orders to land shouted out by reflex. The words ring in Steve's ears.
A straggler in the middle of a vast desert. It has to be, it - don't hope.
Red sand dust puffs up as the choppers descend, obscuring Sam from view, and Steve resists the need to move, to bounce his legs, waiting for the slight thump that signals a proper landing. Rhodey already has his hand on the door latch -
"Weapons ready," Rhodey commands the soldiers, "it may be a friendly, or it may be a trap." The chopper lists to one side, then another, and then, the thump Steve is looking for. Rhodey pulls open the hatch, "go, go, people!"
They jump off into the cloud of dust that's starting to settle down, and Steve hears some soldiers coughing. He follows Rhodey's lead, the faint sound of lone shouts guiding them both.
It sounds like -
There! Over the sand ridge to the east -
Rhodey runs.
Steve freezes, a soldier bumping harshly into his back.
Ten years. Ten.
"Next time, you ride with me," he hears Rhodey say even from this distance, and that's - that's Tony in his arms. Unmistakably Tony.
Steve braves a step forward. The sand makes his boots heavy. He takes another step.
A laugh, high-pitched and raspy, reaches Steve.
How can Tony be laughing?
Tony's bare shoulders are covered in sprays of blood, a jacket wrapped around his head - it lodges something in Steve's throat, the unsaid words, the regret, the ring, the... the sheer, selfish relief.
Someone else bumps into Steve's shoulder, more gently this time. "Go on," Sam's voice comes to him as if from far away. "
In the end, it's Tony that comes to Steve, stumbling across the sand beside Rhodey, teeth gritted in a distinctly stubborn look that Steve had feared he might never see again. This Tony is vastly different from the man splayed across magazine cover - Steve scans his face quickly, desperately, noting down the unruly stubble, the afternoon sun making Tony's eyes squint in a grimace like he would when waking up in the morning, and the - the bright light?
The bright light in Tony's chest.
It makes Steve freeze again.
They're barely ten feet away, now, and Tony's squint becomes more pronounced. Steve watches numbly, uncomprehendingly, as Tony adjusts his grip on Rhodey's shoulder. In sync, Rhodey's hand moves around Tony's waist to prop him up.
"Rhodey," Tony mumbles, the cut on his lip a dark red, "he's not really here is he?"
Steve watches Rhodey frown. "Who?"
"Ste - Rogers. I can't - I need water if I'm seeing mirages," Tony's hand grips Rhodey's shoulder tighter.
Taking a step closer, Steve shakes his head. "I'm here," he tells Tony.
"Yeah, well, you've been telling me that for three months now," Tony snaps out, which makes Rhodey cast a questioning look at Steve, and which Steve returns with equal confusion.
"Steve is here," Rhodey tries, motioning with his free hand for Steve to come even closer. "Do you mind if he helps me get you in the chopper?"
Tony squints at him uncertainly, silently, and in the end, it's Steve who gives Rhodey a small shake of his head. He wants to touch Tony, to hold him and to ask what the hell that light in his chest was, but this isn't about what Steve needs right now. Three months in the desert - his first priority has to be getting Tony to the closest airbase for a full medical check.
Signalling to Sam, Steve calls him over to help carry Tony the last few feet into the waiting medevac chopper.
Together, Sam and Rhodey lift Tony into the chopper, and Steve climbs into the chopper next to it, eyeing the sand separating them. He's done his part. He's found Tony. He's lost any right to be on the medevac with Tony, especially when his presence seems to be making Tony confused.
Through the chopper's open door, Steve watches with a tight chest as Tony collapses into the stretcher laid out for him, and God, Tony tries to sit up, lashing out against the doctor trying to push him back down.
Rhodey shouts something - and suddenly Sam is back, tugging Steve out of the second chopper towards the one Tony is in, half dragging Steve's feet through the sand.
"He won't listen to me," Steve warns.
Sam flips up his flight goggles, meeting Steve dead in the eye. "He's not listening to Rhodey, so do your best to calm him or that chopper's not going to be able to take off safely."
The passenger space that Steve climbs up to is cramped, half the floor taken up by Tony's stretcher, a doctor, a nurse, and Rhodey scrambling desperately to get Tony calm. The jacket that had been wrapped around Tony's head has been tossed to the floor, filthy with grime, and through the thin shirt he has left, the bright light whirrs loudly.
"You're not taking it," Tony snarls, "I'm not building you a single damn thing."
"We're not asking you to build anything," Rhodey moves to dodge Tony's swinging fists. Then, to Steve, "he's having a flashback, I think it's the stretcher."
"Or the doctor," Steve kneels low to be level with Tony. He knows better than to touch someone in a flashback without permission, and he swallows down his guilt and fear to shove away the tremor in his voice, keeping his words firm and steady. If Rhodey can't bring Tony out of it, he doubts he'll be of any help. But he has to try. "Tony, you're safe. We found you."
"You're not real," Tony tells Steve through gritted teeth, eyes flashing wild. "You're not real. Steve wouldn't be here, so whatever the fuck you're trying, Raza - "
"If you need a friend," Steve repeats his promise from a decade ago, his words a whispered prayer, "if you come through a rainy patch and you need a shield, you can always find me. I will always find you."
"Steve?" Tony eyes shift into focus, hand making an aborted move towards him.
"I keep my promises."
"Technically," Tony says through gritted teeth, finally lying down on the stretcher, a bead of sweat running down his hairline, "I found you."
"We found each other."
"I'm still angry at you, Rogers."
A gentle thud behind Steve signals the door shutting close, the chopper ready for takeoff. "I'm also pissed at you for making me worry," Steve smiles back at him, "we'll talk when we get you checked up."
Tony visibly swallows, gaze darting uneasily at the doctor and nurse seated next to Rhodey. "Don't let them take - my heart. It's - "
"The light?" Steve frowns.
"Fancy pacemaker."
Pacemaker? Not the time for these questions. "Will you at least let them put an IV in?"
A second of hesitance, and then, "yes."
Steve gives a nod to the doctor, who starts moving, wiping an antiseptic across the back of Tony's thin, thin hands. There are splotches of red where the skin seems burnt from more than just a sun - had Tony been too near a fire?
"No more fun-vee for you," Rhodey comes around to settle on the chopper's floor beside Steve. "You're in for one hell of a debrief."
Tony winces. "I'm sick. Dealing with bureau - bureaucracy makes me crazy."
"You're healthy enough to argue with me," Rhodey points out, with a softness that makes Steve look away, a pang hitting him.
He feels like an intruder, awkward, as Tony grins up at Rhodey, bruised cheeks and all. "I missed you, honeybear," Tony says.
Rhodey laughs, taking Tony's hand to stop him from picking at the medical tape keeping the IV needle in place. "I don't envy what Pepper's going to do to you when you get back."
"Ugh," Tony groans.
There's something off about it, though - but Steve wonders whether he still knows Tony well enough to spot when things are off. A certain heaviness in the tone of it, the restless fidgeting of Tony's fingers beneath Rhodey's grip.
"We're four minutes out from base," Steve reports.
That makes Tony turn to him, coughing. "I didn't know you were in the area, Captain."
Captain. Not Steve, certainly not sweetheart. "I had JARVIS triangulate locations using MARIA," he tells Tony. "You should be meeting with a Commander Fury soon."
"I burned everything," Tony says quietly, "Fury won't find anything in those caves that I haven't destroyed."
In the tired heaviness of the question, it suddenly clicks in Steve. 'Who did you lose?' he wants to ask, 'who did you leave behind?'
And then, a more jarring realisation. It's not just grief behind the heaviness. It's war, and the weight of firing a gun, of putting your hand on a pulse and finding nothing.
It's a weight that Steve has to carry every day.
"You rest, first," Steve tells him. "You sleep, and you eat."
Next to him, Rhodey nods. "We'll get some burgers flown in for you, if you can keep some food down."
The doctor makes a noise of disapproval. "I recommend soft foods for Mr. Stark - "
Tony flinches at the name, harder than usual. Had his captors called him that? Steve gives the doctor a warning look before promising, "we'll get you pudding then. And some warm, sweet coffee."
"I knew there was a reason I loved you," Tony mutters drowsily.
Steve jerks back, the words stinging. He tries to come up with anything to reply, the jerky landing of the chopper distracting him. Compartmentalizing doesn't seem to be working, not when he's far too compromised.
But by the time Steve comes up with a semblance of a coherent sentence, Tony's eyes have fallen shut, his breaths coming in and out with a slight wheezing.
"I'm not letting you walk away again," Steve sighs to himself. "I'm not letting myself walk away from you."
Rhodey gives Steve's shoulder a quick squeeze as the chopper lands in the air base.
For this, for loving Tony, they didn't need words.