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2008
“I wanted to wait for you to wake up,” Pepper says, through smeared eyeliner and lips that are wavering, just a little.
Rhodey wants to shake her. That’s stupid. But his voice isn’t working very well-crippled by intubation and an unconsciousness that has only just broken. There’s a pain hooked deep in the muscles of his thighs; distant echoes throbbing up a weak back still pressed against hospital sheets.
(He can feel the smooth-sticky scrape of the polyester seat under his thighs still, the sudden, eye-watering pain as it heated and deformed and stuck to his uniform pants in the space of seconds-)
The official standing at the doorway shifts on his feet, awkward.
Rhodey raises his gaze over Pepper’s shoulder, bobs his chin slowly. The man steps into the room in response, clearing his throat. Rhodey has never seen him before in his life.
He still lifts his neck, for all it feels brittle enough to snap. His voice is hoarse. “Where is he?”
“Mr. Stark was…is..” Come out with it, the words sound even and steady inside his head, incongruous against the yawning silence.
“Missing.”
(Nonsense, because how could one ever lose Tony Stark? He took your attention from you forcibly, tied it up with his very existence.)
“Bodies in the convoy?” Rhodey can see Pepper flinch out of sight, straight shoulders threatening to curl in.
“Charred, but none that can be conclusively tied to Mr. Stark.” The official seems outwardly relieved at the lack of hysteria.
Rhodey…there are parts of his brain shutting down. He doesn’t pay attention to those parts. He focuses on the words, one by one, everything except the objective meaning discarded. There’s something almost lightheaded about it, about the incongruous daylight shining straight into his eyes, the pain wracking his limbs that suddenly feels distant.
“Come straight to us if there’s a ransom demand.” That’s the most important part, Stane cannot be allowed to handle this. And there’s much….much, so much more, so much he needs to ask, to think of and plan, needs to organise search attempts once he can get off the bed and his body feels connected to his head.
(take a breath, pumpkin patch-and Rhodey shuts the door on that voice so swiftly that he barely hears it)
But there’s a glitch at the corner of his vision-a teeter in Pepper’s heels, she’s blinking too rapidly and her irises are glazed-and Rhodey’s voice cracks out, sharp and urgent (and literal, because it cracks through and his abused throat can’t seem to bear it anymore), “That’ll be all.”
The man stares at him confusedly, and Rhodey’s losing what remnants of control he has left. “Out.”
Two seconds and the man’s common sense thankfully takes over, a short nod precluding a rapid exit. He ducks out the doorway; and Rhodey extends a hand, fingers shaking.
“Come-” His voice gives out again, and Rhodey pulls in a tight breath, eyes pulling shut. He opens them, and tries again. “Come here.”
Pepper turns her head in his direction, curled lashes clumping together over vacant eyes. Several seconds elapse before she moves- agonisingly, caterpillar-slow. She sways by the side of his bed before hitting the mattress with a thud, the metal frame underneath creaking with the impact.
Rhodey brings up a hand to run through her hair, even as he propels himself to sitting-sides and stomach and back inflamed with something that had long surpassed the definitions of pain (everything was burning, sand and flesh and where was To-). His voice whispers over the air, over the beeps of the monitoring machines. “Hey. Hey.”
She’s gasping-long, breathless hitches that can’t seem to die down. He strokes a strand behind her ear, and his thumb catches on moisture. Rhodey steadies his voice further, even as his throat clamps down on itself. “Pepper.”
“Sorry. Sorry, sorry-” She’s mumbling into thin air now, red-rimmed eyes not meeting his own. “You’re…you’re injured, and he was your-you shouldn’t be the one-”
The was catches against Rhodey’s ear, so brightly painful that he refuses to listen to it at all. “It’s going to be okay. He’s a stubborn bastard, you know that. We’ll find a way. I’ll…” and maybe Pepper doesn’t have the wherewithal to even understand his words right now, but he isn’t making this promise to her. “I’ll find him.”
Another hitch, and Pepper expels it all out, breaths attempting for normalcy. She blinks at her lap again, as if to try and slow the onslaught of tears. “I know. I-” Another exhale. “Know. I’m sorry, it just caught me suddenly-”
No it didn’t, because Pepper waited three days to hear the fate of Tony Stark. Rhodey understands.
“You’ve known him for so much longer, I can’t even imagine what-”
“He’ll be fine.” Rhodey interrupts. Something on his face is contorting-he’s shooting Pepper a smile, pale and drawn, but comforting by its very presence. He feels disconnected from it. “Don’t worry.”
Pepper’s face smiles up at him in turn, watery but growing stronger by the second. “You’re right.”
And that does feel right, in the active, functional part of his mind. The one he’s concentrating on right now. Pepper is smiling. He will find Tony. Everything will be…the world will start spinning again.
He can’t accept any other outcome.
9:15 am
The sky is grey outside the windowsill.
“You had to have some idea.” Dr. Cho’s voice echoes in the office, quiet and regretful. “Since you didn’t accompany the rest of the Avengers, I thought you might already know.”
(Rest of the Avengers? It sounds like a fictional phrase, something conjured out of fantasy. There isn’t a team. Just a group of conscientious, guilt-ridden people who heard of the apocalypse, and were forced to leave. That they all left together, in one vessel, is incidental at best.)
But that isn’t the topic of the conversation now.
“I had hope.” Rhodey hears himself say. He raises a hand to the lapel of his coat, tugs it straight.
“I had my hopes too.” Dr. Cho confesses, and Rhodey’s fingers snag around the topmost button. For a second, it feels like the thread binding it to the smooth cloth might come loose. It doesn’t, and he unfeelingly prods the button into place. “The depression laminectomy removed all the tissue and fluid buildup around your spine, returning use of the legs, but the damage sustained by the cells themselves…we have made such leaps and bounds with the Cradle, but we still need access to the area affected and we can hardly cut out muscle to get it.”
Why not? Rhodey doesn’t ask. His hand slides slowly down to his lap, fingers curling into the meat of his thigh. The material under his touch is soft and of impeccable quality-but everything feels flimsy compared to his uniform trousers.
“Is…there any chance of natural recovery?”
“Recovery of movement or feeling inside a week or so does indicate a chance of recovering more function.” Dr. Cho folds her slender fingers together, the reflection of it distorted in her glass paperweight. “Losses which remain after six months are…likelier to be permanent.”
The grey morning light slants over her fingers, glinting off the little transparent ball on her desk. Rhodey stares at it, hands still and unmoving on his thighs.
“You’ve come out rather well, in comparison to other SCI patients.” Dr. Cho reminds him gently. “With the right physical and occupational therapy, you’ll be able to walk without help. Run, even. Physical fitness might take a cut, but there’s no reason why you should have any trouble engaging in everyday activities.”
He finally moves his hands, let them slide off the centre of his thighs and to the sides. His skin encounters metal, struts fixed parallel and inexorable to the slant of his femur, curving up the iliac crest of his hip. When he leans back, he can feel metal against his tailbone. The skin stretching over the area is rendered numb by the constant hum of Stark tech.
It still feels cold.
“I’ll send you a rehabilitation schedule. It should be fairly similar to your old one, but more factored into your longer-term needs.” She’s flipping through papers now, the morning light creating a patch down the long bridge of her nose. “Details of everyday care. SCI patients run the risk of pressure sores if routine care is not followed. Loss of bladder and bowel control is a common complication, so I wouldn’t stress in that scenario; but instructions for bladder care must be followed in the aftermath to avoid infections and damage to the kidneys. Catheterisation is always an option if things take a downturn. Your position within the Air Force leads me to believe all your immunisations are up-to-date, but we should still double che-”
He probably wouldn’t feel the chill, if he was wearing his uniform trousers. Even if the device would still clamp directly on to his skin. But he isn’t.
And this is the question that started it all off, but he asks again. Double checking. Being sure. Being careful. It falls within his general characteristics.
“And flying?”
Dr. Cho raises her dark eyes, expression unchanged. She’s good at her job. She repeats the words, nonetheless. “The strain is not advisable. Overtaxing your spine could cause setbacks. Permanent ones.”
“I wouldn’t recommend you getting into the pilot’s seat again. Of a plane, or a suit.”
She doesn’t apologise. She’s already done that in the beginning.
The sky outside her window is still grey. Carpeted by clouds, dull and dreary.
“Is there anything else I’d need to know?”
It looks beautiful.
“I can email you the rest.” Dr. Cho doesn’t attempt to smile, but her eyes are soft. “If I may say, you’ve been handling all of this with…your strength is really admirable, Colonel Rhodes.”
Rhodey barely blinks. “James, please.”
“James.” Dr. Cho’s lips curve up, just a sliver.
Rhodey straightens into a standing position in the same time that he always used to. It’s taken six months of rehab. The sound of his Stark brace snapping into place judders up his spine, but it’s probably loud only to him. “I could walk a short marathon, if I had to. Not many people in my place can do that.”
“True.” Dr. Cho acknowledges without the smile. Her neck turns to the side slightly, gaze following Rhodey’s own, past the glass and scanning the hoary clouds outside.
“Have a good day.”
Rhodey turns, and leaves. He shuts the door behind him carefully, wipes his loafers against the welcome mat. Walks down the corridor with a straight back, strides long and even. It’s brighter here, lit by electric lights instead of winter’s sun seeping through windows.
There’s something small and cold, sealed inside his closed fist. Rhodey drops his eyes, uncurls his fingers. There, nestled against the dry skin of his palm, is an engraved button.
He must have pulled it off without realising it.
2011
This isn’t what he was imagining.
Rhodey has thought of flying before, in the abstract kind of way every human who possesses a speck of imagination has. The lift of air underneath his heels, the drag of wind against his skin, the towering heights and adrenaline-fuelled falls, the view. Oh god, the view. Isn’t that why everyone dreams of flying in the first place? To get to see the world in a way no one has before?
Of course, when one’s best friend is Tony Stark, dreams become a lot less idle and abstract.
He’s watched Tony take to the skies with joyous whoops and carefree loop-de-loops. He’s seen Tony snake around missiles, flee drones and Rhodey’s own remote-controlled suit. Tony is a different man when he’s flying. Less lines on his forehead, more determination in his eyes. He’s rebellious and purposeful and erratic and driven, more Tony than he ever is on the ground.
So yes, Rhodey has thought about flying. It’s hard to imagine an experience that can top slicing through the horizon and executing tight barrel rolls in his beloved USAF fighter plane…but he’s willing to give it a shot.
(The first time he takes flight without wings, he careers through the night skies unseeingly. Tony’s reckless visage seems to have printed itself underneath his eyelids, slurred words pounding in his eardrums. There is no time for joy.)
But this time. This time matters.
This time is the thirty-fourth time in the War Machine suit, and he isn’t under the hawk-like gaze of a superior, or the envious stare of a peer. He’s flying in straight lines, and his thrusters don’t seem flaky or unsteady under his feet. He can still feel phantom warmth inside the suit, coaxing sweat to pepper his hairline, even though the thermoregulation system is impeccable. Zooming through fire will do that to you.
His passenger-an eleven year old ostensibly called Lou-has half his hair singed off his scalp, and smoke patches down his forehead and cheeks, but doesn’t seem too bad off, otherwise. His lanky arms have been tightly pressed around Rhodey’s torso for the past fifteen minutes, but Rhodey doesn’t ask him to loosen up, tell him he’s safe. The kid will feel safe soon enough on the ground.
Another minute elapses, and Lou opens his eyes for the third time during the flight. The last couple of times, he’d squeezed them shut immediately afterward, by force of the wind zipping past his face. This time, he keeps them open for longer.
“Wow.” Lou breathes. His eyes are clearly watering, but fixated on the evergreen tops of the Washington forests Rhodey is currently flying over. There’s a glint of a water body in the distance.
(To get to see the world in a way no one has before)
Rhodey glances at those reddened eyes, the burnt lip stretched into an exhilarated smile.
God, he loves flying.
1:30 pm
“The Avengers aren’t the only people on this planet with powers.” Ross insists, and he’s right as he often is, but he seems to excel in breeding a contrary spark in his listeners. “Just because they’ve conveniently zoomed off to space, doesn’t mean the Accords are null and void.”
There’s nothing convenient about it. But that isn’t a useful response. Not outside Rhodey’s head; even though he can remember with a clarity that pierces: the armada of alien ships that Tony’s sensors had picked up-the ones he’d embedded on NASA satellites and Russian probes and Chinese space stations, paranoia gone haywire. Or not, as it had turned out. The whispers of wars, once far beyond the scope of their galaxy, now infinitesimally growing closer. The name of a mad Titan.
The frozen look on his best friend’s face, once he really knew. Tony had never wanted to be proven right. Not this way.
“I’ll…I’ll still be working on your brace - okay? And don’t forget your exercises. And drop in on Happy once in a while, he gets worried. Don’t let Ross push you around. Make sure the Earth is still hanging around when I get back. You know us, our fights never seem to last longer than a week anyway. I’ll…I’ll come back - ”
No. It wasn’t convenient at all.
“Stark flew off, and negotiations with a third of the countries in the world are still dangling.” Ross isn’t even present in person-just an overly expanded video call version hanging in mid air. “The Australians seem to think taking off the costumes somehow bypasses the definition of ‘superheroes’. The Chinese aren’t even ready to publicly acknowledge the existence of powered people on their soil. We need a face to replace Stark’s, and his high profile best friend from the Air Force is the right option-”
Rhodey hears the mechanical tread on the concrete floor seconds before he feels the gentle thump against his leg. His gaze darts down, where a mechanised arm with attached wheels has crept up under the desk, camera cocked to the side in imitation of woeful peering.
“-sure you’ve been taken off active duty, but the title still counts for something and your background is nothing to sneeze at-”
Rhodey strokes DUM-E’s strut, lips flickering into the briefest of smiles. “Hey buddy.”
“The UN committee agree. Once your recovery is complete, we can send you in to meetings with the Asian delegations immediately-”
DUM-E rolls backward, and advances again to knock into Rhodey’s shin. Again and again, a series of little beeps and creaking wheels, till an area of faint pain blossoms into existence.
Rhodey’s palm moves back and forth along the strut. His words are quieter than a whisper, “He isn’t here. I’m sorry.”
“-a PR fly-down to the rebuilding efforts in Sokovia might not be amiss, we don’t exactly have a lot of star power to splash across a news channel at this point…Colonel?”
DUM-E wheels back, and keeps on moving until he’s turned around entirely, arm sloping dejectedly. He disappears from the little cubby below the desk, trundling out of view, and Rhodey finds himself incapable of movement.
“Rhodes?”
“I can’t represent the powered community for the Accords.” He picks up immediately, raising his eyes to Ross; not a word or beat out of place, not an apology to be spared. “It should be someone who actually-”
“Your suit counts, Colonel.”
“I know.” Rhodey doesn’t pause, not even for a second. “I can’t put it on anymore.”
He’s never seen Ross stop in his place, lost for words; except that’s exactly what happens now. The man stares at him for several seconds, before gruffly clearing his throat. “The injury?”
“Y-yes.” The word shouldn’t have been hard to force out. Not a simple statement of assent, not when he’s so bluntly laid out the words, not three seconds ago. But Ross is watching him with widened eyes, the self-assured mouth strangely solemn under his bristly moustache…and it occurs to Rhodey, unexpected and sudden. That…that is pity. Right there.
It smarts, is what it does, takes over every inch of Rhodey’s skin with a mortifying, painful sting for a couple of overwhelming seconds. Rhodey despises it almost instantly afterwards-fuck, he has no time for his own immaturity.
“You’re a level-headed man, Colonel,” says General Ross, now Secretary of State Ross, and how did he ever get over the loss of his uniform? How was he able to give it away, without them taking it away from him? Sure, he had the right to wear it if he wished, but not. Not really. “I can’t imagine a better person for the job.”
“I don’t have the right to represent their interests,” Rhodey says, and cuts off the call.
2008
“When I get up in the morning,” and he doesn’t even know what he’s trying to explain, except Tony understands such complex things, surely he could grasp this? “-and I'm putting on my uniform, you know what I recognize? I see in that mirror that every person that's got this uniform on got my back.”
Tony doesn’t understand. “Hey, you know what? I'm not like you. I'm not cut out...”
“No, no. You don't have to be like me.” Not after Howard. But.. “But you're more than what you are.”
2011
Tony slumps to the ground, and the heartbeat that Rhodey has trained-the one that doesn’t waver when he’s heading for the ground full throttle speed, brain-splattering crash impending-ratchets up his chest.
Catching his weight is a reflex, his voice the softest of murmurs. “Hey, man. You all right?”
Tony points out a cigar box and Rhodey slides it open, and Tony pulls out the metallic heart in his chest, running off of a toxic metal. “Is that supposed to be smoking?”
They exchange more words. Senseless, meaningless. They don’t matter, years on.
Except Tony’s disgruntled mutter, hiding away all that ache. “What are you looking at?”
“I’m looking at you.” The word catches in his throat, and Tony doesn’t even notice. “You wanna do this whole lone gunslinger act and it’s unnecessary. You don’t have to do this alone.”
2013
“So, what's really going on? With the Mandarin.” Tony’s near bouncing off the walls again. “Seriously, can we talk about this guy?”
“It’s classified information, Tony.” Of course, that just meant ‘try harder’ in Starkese. Rhodey released a sigh. “When's the last time you got a good night's sleep?” When you didn’t wake up your girlfriend with your nightmares, but that wasn’t fair.
2017
“Okay, tiny dude is big now. He’s big now.”
“Give me back my Rho-”
“…Tony, I’m flying dead stick.”
“Rhodey!”
1985
“Jim,” he says, Jim Rhodes, and the boy snickers.
“Sure, you look like a Jimmy,” and Jim bristles. The kid was an audacious brat, that was for sure. “Good little Jimbo, rational, sensible James.”
“But that guy can’t be my friend.” The fifteen year old midget surveys him shrewdly, mouth screwing up into a smirk. “You, on the other hand. You look like a Rhodey.”
10:10 pm
The door closes behind him quietly.
He feels around for the light switch for several seconds-living in a house run by an AI for so long has spoiled his habits. His fingers scrape over the bumps and bruises of plaster walls, eventually knocking into a familiar plastic-smooth slope. He presses down, and the room comes alight.
He's left a jacket on the couch, and there’s a stray sock dangling by his shoe rack, but otherwise his old apartment seems spic and span. Living room and kitchenette, at least. He minces forward slowly, nose twitching-there’s a bit of dust in the air, the kind that air con can’t clear, but it’s nothing that can’t be cured by some old-fashioned throwing open of windows and doors.
He retraces his steps, pulls the main door ajar by a sliver. Turns toward the balcony doors. Five steps in, and the curtains slide to the side with a faint rattle of rings, silk-cotton blend passing smoothly between his fingers. The bolt to the doors takes a bit more of a struggle-dirt seems to have jammed it up a little, but he manages to get it free with some tugging and effort.
He pushes them open and outwards. There’s the scent of night jessamine in the air, probably from the little, well-maintained pots of 3A two floors down. Rhodey breathes the thick fragrance in, the scattering notes of almond, honey and musk interspersed with the almost bitter tang of the leaves. His inhales sound loud, in the quiet.
He turns on his heels and walks into the house again, steps shorter and slower. The kitchenette is his next destination. The fridge breathes cool, dry air on his skin when he pulls the door open, blackened leaves of bok choy peering at him from the lowest rack, a sealed packet of shredded cheese stuffed into the farthest corner. There are two cartons of pre-prepared beef stock that haven’t been opened, either.
There’s a five hundred gram packet of Arborio rice stuffed into the overhead cupboard, and that settles it. Rhodey spends a good fifteen minutes scanning his kitchen for the red saucepan, the one whose non-stick lining hadn’t completely been scraped off with use. Soon, there’s nowhere to look but the bottom cabinets-and Rhodey winces when he bends, breaths puffing out harsher and louder. It’s startling, even over the backdrop of the buzzing fridge.
Chopped up garlic works the best, but he’d need to go shopping for groceries first. Pushing a cart around in emptied aisles at this time of night doesn’t sound appealing. So Rhodey lights up the electric stove, splashes canola oil into the sleek black-and-red pan. Spoons out some chilled garlic paste, more sour than anything else, bought maybe a year and half ago. It sizzles in the dim light of the kitchenette, little white particulates leaping back and forth in puddles of golden oil.
Rhodey watches them for minutes on end, the dancing garlic frothing on oiled flame- remembering to add the rice in time is a close call. It fries slowly, turning the palest of creams and browns, and thank god the bottle of fake Sauvignon Blanc had been too odious to drink, otherwise he wouldn’t have wine to season the mix now. The colourless liquid dribbles out, the acid tang steaming up to his nostrils within seconds.
He breathes in it in turn, eyes fixed unseeingly at some point over the exhaust, fingers fastened to the cold stone countertop. He doesn’t have butter. He doesn’t have butter. That….that isn’t very nice. The risotto won’t taste very nice, now. Quasi risotto. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have butter.
Rhodey can’t hear his lungs heaving out air, over the crackling….and damn, he’s forgotten to heat the stock. Never mind then. He pours it in; stirs it in patiently, waits for the grains of rice to slowly, but inexorably absorb the moisture in. Puff out in turn, become fluffy and flavourful. Or as flavourful as it can get, without butter.
He ladles stock in as the rice keeps cooking. Once, twice….he loses count. He stops when the carton is empty, and he’s just been shaking it uselessly over the steaming pan for a while, drops flicking in all directions messily.
Rhodey drops the carton into the trash. His trash is empty, otherwise. So is his fridge. He should restock his fridge. Someday. Tomorrow. He should do it tomorrow. Or…something.
The risotto is done.
He wants to glance at the time, but his phone is on the living room table, and it feels like too far away. Rhodey displaces the saucepan cover gently-and steam billows into his face, warm and wet and smelling like white wine. He sprinkles the shredded cheese over the heated container and stirs it in-parmesan usually works best, because of the added salt, but this should be okay too.
He ladles a generous helping into a bowl, cups his hands around the hot surface and places it on a small plate in turn. He doesn’t want to spill grains over. Grabs a spoon from the drawer, runs it under the tap and dabs it dry with a paper towel. Sticks it into the cheesy garlic rice/ maybe risotto and waits for it to cool.
Rhodey doesn’t know how long he waits. The seconds elapse from silence to silence. He takes hold of the stainless steel spoon eventually-scoops up a mouthful and brings it to his lips. The garlic flavour is actually quite pleasing. The cheese bursts at the back of his tastebuds, even while the salt levels are probably quite low. It’s nice.
Rhodey chews.
He swallows, throat pushing the thoroughly mashed material down. He sticks the spoon back into the bowl. The rice curves pleasingly-his mouthful barely having made a dent in the mound.
The chair creaks under his legs, as he stands. When his knees unfold, he can hear the brace snap into place, loud and jarring.
The bowl is still in his hands. Rhodey moves towards the tap where he’d washed the spoon, and empties the rest of the bowl down the sink.
2:30 am
Dear Steve.
You would not know the hours I spent over that sentence. Endless minutes eked out, over two words. Or perhaps you would. You lived in a time when each letter was something more than a push of the finger- carved out beneath the nib on paper that travelled thousands of miles. Each word precious, thoughtfully chosen. Clutched to the chest, read and reread, kissed by the salt of tears.
So maybe you would understand.
I wished nothing more than to write ‘Rogers’, scrawl dark and angry on the page. The period after being a darker, final statement. I call you Rogers in my head, because you left Captain America in Tony’s basement. It’s not an accusation.
But beginnings mean something. And I needed you to know that you were - are, Steve. That we were on the same team, loved and were loved by the same people. That friendships are forged with sweat and pain and sacrifice, and can’t just be tossed away under the guise of last names and past tenses.
So I call you Steve here, so you may remember what you were, and that were does not mean you can discard the responsibility of it all aside.
I’m writing to you about my best friend, Tony Stark.
I don’t know if we knew the same person, you and I. You didn’t like him when you first met him. You like honesty, and bluntness, and being forthright about the kind of person you are. Like Barnes, when you first knew him. And Wilson. You liked me when we first met - I could tell. We shook hands, and I didn’t drop your gaze and you called me ‘Colonel’. I liked you too.
Pepper didn’t like Tony when she first met him, either - and she was in love with him. Most people don’t. It was a little different with me.
I was stumbling back to my dorm when dawn was cracking over the campus sky; bleary and half delirious from having studied too long. I was an A-grade student - though you wouldn’t have known this, and it’s easy to overlook, standing perennially at the side of Tony Stark. It’s like M41 next to Sirius, an entire cluster that pales in comparison to the light given out by a solitary star. I never could bring myself to resent him. Felt too much like…I don’t know. Envying misery its pretty face.
So there I was, the straight-laced student who’d aced every humble class he’d ever been a part of, thrown into the playground of geniuses. Having struggled with concepts I couldn’t comprehend for hours on straight in the library, I’d finally given up and resigned myself to the prospect of flunking an assignment for the first time in my life. Pushed the door of my room open, and who should greet me but young prodigy Tony Stark, cossetted up in my bed with his latest conquest.
It was dark. Morning had barely crept in, and no one could see much. He took one look at my face, delirium and panic warring for prime position, barely holding back a breakdown over being so utterly dwarfed in this strange, cold place I’d found myself in.
He said something cad-like to the girl - I can never remember what. She stormed out. He smirked and offered to look over the assignment I was clearly losing my nads over, to make up for ruining my sheets. I blurted something about not wanting to owe him, and he waved a hand and said it was nothing for him.
They say that sometimes. People. That it’s nothing for Tony Stark to fly you over to Osaka in a heartbeat to eat authentically prepared puffer fish, or gift you a gigantic bunny for Christmas. That he can accomplish things with a snap of a finger, and it doesn’t matter as much.
I don’t know. But at that time, I thought that it didn’t matter how much brain was dribbling out of his ears. I thought that Tony Stark didn’t have to stay up all night to help a struggling senior earn his first A plus in MIT.
He waved it all away, and I thought he didn’t have a clue how kind he was. For all of his attested arrogance - that was the first thing that struck me about Tony Stark. His modesty.
You’d probably find that ironic. But I liked him.
I still don’t think Tony Stark needed to give his best friend the key to the skies. Show him that piloting a plane wasn’t the highest that he could soar. Give him a chance to save human life, make a physical difference, more than even the United States Air Force could. I don’t think he needed to make new gear for a team he’d been rejected for. I don’t think he needed to build them a home.
He spent nineteen hours on the nifty, three-inch-wide magnetic strip on your wrist, the one you used to use to call your trustworthy shield to your hand. It’s one twentieth of the time any other scientist would have spent. I don’t think that matters.
That was the first thing I wanted to write.
With time, I believed I wised up. Even at fifteen, Tony was destructive. Careless. He caught people with the careering, wild power of his gravity; sucked them in, and they’d spiral inwards, faster and faster, till they were obliterated by collision. I loved him, but I thought I did so sensibly. I had no desire to let my life be so eclipsed by his.
It would hurt him to know this, but there have been several times in our lives that I’ve sworn - ‘no more’. When he took down an American plane over Gulmira skies, every time he drunk in the suit, when he created a genocidal AI. Resolved to myself - this, and no more. I had a life without him. I had a career without him. Opinions that existed outside his, and often clashed. It’s the reason I opted for a career in the Air Force instead of the independent developer post he offered me in his own company. It’s the reason I never joined all of you in that Tower he constructed, hope and idealism forged in a steel spire touching the sky. I loved him, but I could only love him from a safe distance.
Six months ago, those beliefs came crashing down. In a way, I have you to thank for that, Steve.
Six months ago, I picked a side out of principle, not loyalty. Six months ago, his opinions and mine coincided perfectly, though you disagreed. Six months ago, I was pinned to the ground for life. Even though I didn’t know it at the time.
I know it now.
They’ve taken away my active status. The Air Force thinks I’d make a good diplomat. Ross wants me to take over negotiations. And I tell myself that everything is in order, and that humans can’t fly.
But you never realise when you’ve stopped believing that, when you’re the best friend of Tony Stark. You might have known that. Nothing seems impossible with him around, does it? Past, present, future.
I haven’t told him yet.
I think he’s stopped believing in his own flight. I think he’s starting to realise that genius can’t create solutions where there are none. Starting to grow up, and mature. It hurts.
I didn’t tell him, before he left. I think the little child in him is still expecting me, somehow. Emerge from a helicopter in a bright, desert sky and save him. Appear at his side in the barrens of outer space and say that I was just taking my time.
I think he already knows.
It creeps up on you sometimes, the knowing. It snuck up on me too, the knowing. Not about my legs…I didn’t really know, not till today. But about Tony, and how my resolutions were all for nothing.
We were at the Facility, the one he built for you guys. We were laughing, because the old delivery guy who brought over the package from you had bungled up Tony’s name. The sound echoed around us, round and round, for miles and miles. Nothing in the vicinity to give battle to the sound.
I’d stumbled, because even in the braces that he’d slaved over for me, my legs still hurt. He slung my arm around his shoulder, and started helping me towards the couch. And that’s when the knowing hit me.
I’d kept a perfect distance, all this time. But I’d never escaped. Round and round, in an orbit - though Tony would call it elliptical, such an ass. Radius perfectly maintained, making my revolutions around the centre of my path. Never straying, never deviating.
I never told Tony much about my girlfriends. I kept him far away from my career. I even dabbled in a bit of aeronautical research, from time to time. At a point, I was thinking of adopting a kid.
And then in the end, there I stood. All that excess sloughed off - no family, no kids, no significant others. Career brought to an end. Leaning on my best friend, and thinking I hadn’t done halfway bad.
He’s in space, now. With you, and your Avengers. The door to a nightmare opened above his home in New York years ago, and he’s lived terrified of it ever since. And now he’s gone into the closet with the monsters, and I can’t wake him up. I can’t even walk into the nightmare with him. My legs are broken.
They tell me you know what it’s like to lose everything
You cared for your friend, didn’t you? Barnes. Apparently that’s why you did all those things, six months ago. Then you’ll know. You’ll understand. How much I mean it, when I say that if I could take your place right now…kill you if I could, in spite of all the good you’ve done. Damn every Avenger that saved the world, if it meant I could fly by his side.
But you’re there. And you’ll return, with or without him. You did it the last time.
So I’m writing to you now, to tell you about the Tony Stark that you maybe didn’t know. He deserves better than you, but he has you. So I’m asking you, if it matters at all-Rogers or Captain America or Steve. Friend is or was or never had been.
Please don’t leave.
James Rhodes.