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”Who was it?”
Not a hello. Not a ‘God, I’ve missed you’. Not an apology.
It had been four months since anyone had last seen Tony Stark, and Steve’s first words to him didn’t even acknowledge it.
He didn't know why he didn’t even utter a 'welcome' before he asked the engineer such a raw question.
Maybe it was the way he was poised, leaning to the side to clutch at the granite of the counter until his knuckles were white.
Maybe it was because Steve couldn’t quite tell if the smudges under his eyes were made of dirt or if they were a product of his obvious disregard for his own health.
Maybe it was both.
Maybe it was ash.
Maybe it was because of the glasses sitting on the bridge of Tony’s nose and the fact that the hand he wasn’t using to stand was frozen in the air, reaching out at something invisible.
Steve maneuvered himself around the edge of the glass door to stand in the room, stopping a couple of metres in front of Stark.
On the wall behind Tony a projector was casting a video of him with some kid in the back of a car. It had been paused on a scene where, if the affronted look on the kid’s face and the smirk on Tony’s were anything to go by, Steve guessed Tony had just cracked an inappropriate joke.
“What do you mean?” Tony’s arm moved up to remove the glasses before dropping weakly to his side.
“Who’d you lose, Stark? You’ve been missing for what? Four months?” Steve let out a small incredulous chuckle, “And you get here a week ago to shut yourself in your lab? I wouldn’t have even known you were back if Pepper hadn’t called me.”
Tony set the glasses on the table gently, and used his other hand to push his weight back onto his legs.
As the man raised his gaze, away from the empty spot he had been staring at, to fully meet Steve’s, the soldier realized what prompted him to ask the question so bluntly.
He had seen it before, that look Tony wore. Completely expressionless. The same face he always had, just with paler skin and more grey hairs. More wrinkles on his forehead and fewer around his eyes. He recognized those bruised lips, sore from constantly pursing them.
“Why would you care?” Anger laced his every breathy word.
He had heard the same weak accusation a hundred times, uttered with the same brittle distrust that was somehow both barely audible and able to roll off every wall of the room to coat every square inch in something thick, and solemn, and indecipherable.
Clint had dropped of the radar. It took six weeks to track him down, and it took Steve under ten minutes for the archer to allow a quiet, “It was Nate. He’s-, he was-, Steve, he was just a baby-,”
He still hadn’t found Scott, but a Christmas card had been sent to the Avenger’s compound a few weeks earlier. There were three identical smiles on the front of it, each of them the picture perfect definition of longing. A tired mother stood between a police-man and a crook, and between the glossy sheen on the card and the cheap reindeer antlers they all wore, Steve almost missed their red-rimmed eyes. A small chalkboard with a wish of ‘Happy Holidays!’ was nestled underneath the three, only there to fill the space of a ten-year-old girl with light brown eyes and a pet ant the size of a dog.
“Bucky was one of the first ones.” Steve answered after a careful pause. “He’s died a hundred times over,” He continued with a pained, stretched smile, “And every time, it hurts a little bit more.”
Tony stayed silent and watched him with steel eyes, but Steve saw the way he bit the inside of his lip, unsaid words begging to escape.
“Fri,” he said instead, “cast B.A.R.F..”
His A.I. complied, and a small light in the corner of the glasses Tony had been wearing projected the hologram of a teenager into the space between the two men.
The boy’s eyes were brown, a color with such subtle simplicity that the force of the beaming grin almost knocked the breath of Steve.
“Hey, Mr. Stark!” The kid waved. The only tell that it wasn’t a real kid was the fact that Stark stood rooted to the spot he was in instead of running and embracing the child. His eyes shifted and his fists squared along with his jaw as the picture crumbled, the beads of light that had made it up flickering out as they touched the concrete floor.
“His name was Peter.” Tony said, voice unwavering and thin, as the glasses shut off.
Steve glanced up at the wall again. The kid in that picture had looked offended at whatever Tony said. Steve could see a small red flush at the base of his neck that implied that Tony, knowing him, had probably called the kid’s mother ‘hot’. The blush was probably brighter in real life. Here, it was washed out by the beige paint on the wall.
“He was sixteen, and his favorite holiday was New Years because his aunt always took him to see the ball drop.” His voice was still hard and controlled, but he paused to take a breath after glancing at the clock on his desk that proudly flashed '6:12 P.M. 12/29/18', “He was a complete idiot, and he’s the reason I have grey hairs. He crashed my plane, and, uh, he hates carrot cake.”
Steve didn’t point out that Tony had switched to present tense as he offered the engineer a silent nod to continue.
It was all Steve had in him to not flinch as that familiar tone of bitter resignation exploded the room with a single whisper.
“He-,” Tony’s voice finally cracked, “He’s my kid.”
He had seen that look before, that one Tony wore.
It was the face of a grieving father.