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Tony’s hands tremble as he reaches up for the arc reactor in his chest. His fingers press against familiar warm metal, and his nails clatter against the casing, the familiar staccato beat a small comfort.
“Are you sure this will work?” Nebula asks, looking concerned and dubious. Her eyes flicker to the fuel readout on the dash, dangerously low flashing reds.
Tony heaves a deep breath. “Only one way to find out,” he says with more bravado than he feels. He curls his fingers around the reactor and pulls.
…
They land with explosive force just outside of the New Avengers Facility, kicking up a storm of dry dust that blocks out the windshield and coats the ship in grime. In the singular moment when the particles of dust hang suspended in the air, Tony thinks about his friends. For that brief morbid second, the memories of Titan flash before his eyes, the sharp acrid smell of smoke burning his nostrils as they all turned to dust. He has to forcibly keep his mind from tumbling down that rabbit hole again, not when he’s yanking desperately at the unresponsive controls, and Nebula is yelling next to him.
The thoughts come unbidden anyways.
He thinks of Quill, whose grief and rage cost them everything, and Tony wonders if he can even blame that sorrow for its destructive fault. He thinks of Strange and the look in his eyes when he handed over the very thing they were all willing to die to protect, his hands shaking as they all sighed in defeat. He thinks of Peter’s last moments, and he can still feel Peter’s ashes clinging to the beds of his fingernails. He still doesn’t know what he’ll find at the compound, if he’ll be met with silent halls and empty rooms.
The edge of the facility’s grounds is barely an acre to the north, and Tony thinks oh thank fuck, because if they had gotten any closer with no working comms, the Compound’s security system would’ve read the Benetar as an invading threat and shot it out of the sky.
The Benetar is a hackneyed Frankenstein of a ship, desperately cobbled back into functionality with parts begged and stolen from planets Tony never thought he would see. It’s barely any better than a junkpiled plane and it already took damage passing through the strato and atmospheres. One more hit from anything would’ve killed them. The landing was more crash than landing, and Tony is amazed they even survived.
In the copilot’s chair next to him, Nebula sighs a soft gasp of relief. They’re alive. Somehow, impossibly, they’re alive.
Tony’s first step off the ship is unsteady and painful, the badly healed wound in his waist lancing a sharp pain through his side. The second step floods him with relief, and he could cry for the feeling of Terran gravity and packed earth beneath his feet. Tony breathes for what feels like the first time in days, inhaling the sharp cold air. It smells of pine and grass, with a bite of autumn chill.
He turns in a stumbling circle as uncontrollable laughter bubbles up in the back of his throat, disbelieving that the plan worked, it fucking worked . He’s alive somehow, Nebula is alive. They made it. They’re alive. Beside him, she laughs too, loud and grating like metal scraping against metal and it’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard.
A second sound, one that instantly sets him on edge and immediately silences their laughter comes comes from the cover of trees to their left. Footsteps crashing through the brush.
Tony turns unsteadily to see someone running out from the clearing of trees behind them. There are black spots crowding the edges of his vision but he fights for consciousness, in case he and Nebula might have to defend themselves. His legs are unsteady even as his tries to plant them firmly.
He waits, vibrating with tension, Nebula equally tense beside him, her arms up and ready in defense. There will be little they can do to defend themselves if they’re faced with danger. Any guns and weapons they had were broken down and rewelded into parts for the ship.
It’s tense seconds before the tall figure clears the shadows of the tree line and steps into the light of the wane moonlight and Tony falls to his knees then. The unexpected relief floods him so strongly, he doesn’t have the strength to hold himself upright.
Steve.
Tony doesn’t realize he whispers the name until Nebula relaxes marginally next to him as he slumps down, the black dots seeping into the forefront of his vision. Her strong hands are gripping his shoulder, fingers digging in painfully, but all Tony can focus on is Steve.
Steve who jogs up to them with wild disbelieving hope in his eyes and tears shining on his cheeks highlighted by the wane moonlight above. Steve who looks inexplicably older and sadder and so, so broken, with furrows in his brow and lines around his mouth Tony has never seen before.
Steve who looks absolutely devastated as he whispers, “Tony,” the sound deafeningly loud in the silent clearing. Steve who kneels down in front of Tony and reaches out with shaking hands as though to touch before he hastily withdraws, remembering he no longer has that privilege when Tony flinches. Tony doesn’t pay any attention to that when there’s the low cautious hope burning in his chest that if Steve survived, maybe, maybe—
“Pepper?” Tony manages to rasp, shaking. “How’s Pepper? Rhodey? W-where's Rhodey? D-d-did Rhodey—”
Steve steps back a little and Rhodey comes into view, panting as he runs forward, the joints of his leg braces whirring quietly. He’s followed by several others Tony cannot make out in the dim light, but if Rhodey and Steve are here, that means he’s safe. They’re both safe.
All Tony can think is thank god before his tenuous hold on lucidity finally gives and he slips down into the darkness that swallows him whole.
…
“This is the only way.”
…
He drifts in and out of wakefulness for an eternity. There are flashes of color behind his eyes as he struggles to blink them open.
There’s a familiar sunspun gold. A swath of forest green. The warmth of pale skin. And almost always there, in the corner of his eye is deep blue, warm and achingly familiar. That’s what he wants the most, and he finds himself reaching towards it. But he’s always falling just short of touching.
…
The first color Tony sees when he wakes up is white. The light is white. The ceiling is white. The walls are white. The sheets tucked around him are white. The noise that buzzes around him is white, staticky and rhythmic.
It takes him almost a full minute to realize he’s in the medical wing of the Avengers facility, and he must be on the good drugs because it’s the first time in a month he hasn’t woken up screaming. There’s a bandage wrapped around his chest and beneath them, he can feel the tight pull of new skin, but he doesn’t feel any pain. The clear lines running into the veins on the back of his hand explain the slight pinch there. He blinks fully awake and turns with great effort to see someone sitting in the chair next to his bed.
Steve is asleep, curled up in a small ball with his broad shoulders tucked inwards and hunched in the uncomfortable plastic seat. His hair is longer than when Tony last saw him and and he wears it pushed back now, fingertrailed furrows driven through the wheatgold strands, mussing the top of his head. The deep lines Tony thought he saw earlier are softened slightly in slumber.
Before Tony can work past the rising lump in his throat to say anything, Steve wakes up with a start, his eyes darting wildly across the room before they settle on Tony. First, they’re panicked and frightened before they settle into forced bleary calm. There’s an edge of relief in the endlessly blue and infinitely sad, filled with silent wonderment. He looks slightly astonished, as though he’s just seen a ghost and he thinks Tony might disappear in the next second.
That creates a swell of anger in Tony. Sure, they haven’t spoken in the years before—before Everything, but Steve doesn’t get to look at him with that much sorrow. As though he wasn’t one half of the original divide. As though he didn’t drive his shield through Tony’s chest and left him in Siberia. He doesn’t get to look at Tony now like this, as though—as though he thought he would never see Tony again.
Tony struggles to be fair, because he’d spent nearly a month in space with no communications, and everyone understandably probably thought he didn’t make it. But, he’s here now. He’s—home.
They’re staring at each other in a long stretch of silence while the monitors and machines beep and hiss around them when Bruce walks in.
Tony almost does a double take when he sees Bruce. Bruce, for lack of a better word, looks haggard. There are grey streaks in his temple, and the normally warm eyes behind his glasses are dark ringed and glassy with exhaustion. There are furrows around his mouth and lines in his forehead, deepening when he looks from Steve to Tony, but he doesn’t say anything when Steve gets up silently from his chair and leaves the room.
“Hiya, Tony,” Bruce says softly, and his voice is so tired.
“Hey, Brucie,” Tony says, finding his own voice to be hoarse and sandpaper rough. He clears his throat. “Give it to me straight, doc. How long have I got?”
Bruce chuckles, a small spark of light jumping back into his dull eyes. He takes the seat Steve vacated and removes his glasses to wipe the lens with his shirt. “You’re recovering well if you’re so dramatic as always. Helen Cho looked over your charts before she left for the night. We had to use the Cradle to regenerate that nasty wound in your side, but aside from some malnutrition and dehydration, you’re doing pretty well after spending so much time in space.”
Tony frowns slightly. “And Nebula? How’s she doing?”
“She’s fine as far as we can tell,” Bruce says. “She wouldn’t exactly let us check. The only person she’s willing to talk to is Rocket, and that usually devolves into screaming matches. She’s been spending most of her time pacing the door outside your room the entire week while you were asleep, only leaving when Steve comes in—“
“A week?!”
“I—yes, Tony, you’ve been in and out all week and honestly I think you should spend even more time on bed rest. Your body needs to recover.”
“I’m fine,” Tony insists, not thinking about Steve. “It was just the chest wound. Everything else is just par the course.” He balls his shaking hands into tight fists and curls them into the sheets to stop the tremors. “I’m fine.”
Bruce frowns as he peers up at Tony above his glasses. “Tony, what happened out there?” he asks gently.
Tony doesn’t want to talk about the way Strange sacrificed the Time Stone to bargain for his life. Or the way the Guardians disappeared one by one, turned into dust. Or the way Peter had felt disintegrating in his arms, leaving nothing but ashes in his hands. He doesn’t want to talk about how he failed to protect all of them, and how he had somehow survived but stronger, better people didn’t.
“Who?” Tony asks instead.
Bruce, to his credit doesn’t push. “Bucky went first,” he says softly.
Tony thinks maybe he should feel some kind of spark at that, satisfaction maybe. Vindication perhaps. But all he feels is empty. He squeezes his eyes shut.
“And then Sam, T’Challa, a lot of the Wakandans who helped us. Then Wanda went, and Vision with her after Thanos took the Mind Stone. And Rocket’s friend Groot. We lost T’Challa’s sister. We lost Fury, and Hill and—“
“Pepper?” Tony asks, the word choking in his throat.
There’s a beat of silence before Bruce replies. “Pepper is fine,” he says.
Tony nods and he consciously tries to loosen his fists where they’re curled into the sheets. “T-that’s good,” he says. He doesn’t ask why he still hasn’t seen her, or where she is now.
The look Bruce gives him is sad and sympathetic.
“You should get some rest, Tony,” Bruce repeats and makes to get up. Tony’s hand on his wrist gives him pause.
“What’s going on, Bruce?” Tony asks, cutting straight to the heart of it. “You’re tiptoeing around me. What aren’t you telling me? What happened in the month while I was gone?”
Bruce sucks in a sharp inhale. His eyes become wild and panicked, darting from one corner of the room to the next. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, his eyes not quite meeting Tony’s as he chews on his bottom lip.
“It hasn’t only been a month, Tony,” Bruce finally says.
Tony looks around the room, following where Bruce’s gaze went. He stares at the new tech he’s never seen before, the gleam and glow of machines he doesn’t know the functions for. The window outside shows the grey sky, old and new all at once, the skyline in the distance that was once as familiar as the back of his hand now looks like a crumbling line of jagged broken teeth, a stranger he’s never met. His eyes land on the chart at the foot of the bed and the date marked at the top makes his blood freeze cold in his veins.
The equations suddenly line up in Tony’s head and the numbers fall into place. Time dilation. He knows before Bruce murmurs softly, “it’s been four years, Tony. You were gone for four years.”
…
Steve doesn’t visit him in the medical wing again. The chair sits empty for the next three days Bruce forces Tony to stay in bed.
By day four, cabin fever sets in and Tony clambers his way out of the medbay despite Bruce and Rhodey’s protests. Because he’s fine. Really. All healed, spic and span. Good as new. He just needs his own bed.
…
Four years. He lost four years. He shakes with grief in the hours before dawn in his old room.
…
It’s useless to think about it, but Tony grapples with the sorrow of loss anyways. Four years. He’s missed so much.
He thinks about what could’ve been done in four years, when he was drifting through space fighting to get home. He thinks about what steps they could’ve taken to defeat Thanos, what they could’ve done to avenge their friends. It spirals him in circles and while he realizes the futility of the thought because lost time can never be regained, he aches with the hollowness of failure.
He spends a day feeling sorry for himself before he climbs out of bed and wanders around until he finds Steve and Natasha in the gym. He watches them for several long minutes as they circle gracefully around each other, more dance than fight, both lethal in different ways, perfectly matched, beautiful and deadly.
Steve doesn’t look like he’s holding back his punches, but Natasha is fast and agile, dodging around his fists and deflecting his blows like they’re nothing. Tony watches wondrously as Natasha twines her legs around Steve’s neck and takes him crashing down onto the mat. Not for the first time, he wonders if she has some super soldier serum in her veins. He watches as they smile at each other, soft and almost intimate as Steve gets up first and then helps Natasha up too.
She runs inquisitive hands up Steve's arms, shaking her head in admonishment when he winces away from her. “You’re overworking yourself, dorogo moi,” she says.
“I’m fine,” Steve rumbles quietly even as she frowns and gently tilts his face back up to look at her.
It lurches something in Tony’s stomach, wrenching and aching, and he can’t watch for any longer. Before he knows it, he’s walking again, heading down to the labs to find Bruce.
Tony isn’t avoiding Steve. He’s not. He just wants to talk to Bruce about time dilation.
…
“Why isn’t Pepper here?” Tony finally gathers the courage to ask Rhodey a week after he wakes up.
Rhodey stops in the doorway of his workshop, hesitating.
It makes Tony irrationally angry to see Rhodey tiptoeing around him too. Of all people, he had thought his best friend would be willing to be honest with him.
“Just tell me,” Tony says sharply.
“Pepper has a little one to take care of,” Rhodey finally replies after a long heavy silence.
Tony sucks in a sharp breath. A child. Is it his? If it is, why hasn’t Pepper brought them around to see him? Does he have a kid he’s missed nearly four years of their life running around? His head is spinning as he croaks, “how old?”
“Just turned one,” Rhodey says quietly and the guilt and horror and panic screeches to a halt in Tony’s head.
Not his then. The new revelation cuts deep anyways, even as he’s flooded with relief that he hasn’t missed out on the first years of his own child’s life. He can’t exactly blame Pepper for moving on when he’s been gone for so long. She had thought he died in space, after she begged him not to go.
Tony has already put her through so much—she deserves every happiness in the world. She deserves everything he was never able to give her.
He nods and doesn’t ask anything else. He doesn’t bring up Pepper again.
…
Tony still carries the flip phone with him, hidden in his pocket and within easy reach. The small weight of it comforts him, especially when he feels unmoored, as though the vacuum of space dogs his steps, waiting for the right moment to sweep him back up into the black nothingness.
It’s a force of habit for him to reach for it whenever he feels the claws of anxiety grip his throat and the smooth plastic centers him a little. Even now that he’s back on earth, the thing feels like a lifeline.
The soft blue glow is a comfort in the dark of night when he wakes gasping for breath, hands immediately flying to his ribs, looking for a wound that’s already healed. His hands find the empty space on his sternum where his arc reactor had attached, gone now into the guts of the Benetar to power them home. He breathes harshly in the pitch black as he fumbles for the flip phone on the nightstand and his panting breaths don’t slow he feels the familiar plastic between his fingers. He curls his grip around it, tight enough to hear the casing groan as he breathes.
His hands shake as the glow cuts through the darkness of his room. It comforted him when he had to give up his arc reactor to power the ship, and along with it the light he couldn’t sleep without. Now it settles him as he goes through the familiar routine. Flip. Scroll. Voicemail.
“You have one new voicemail. Press one to listen.”
He flips the phone closed. He still doesn’t want to hear it.
…
First, Tony stops being able to sleep for more than four hours.
Then three.
Then two.
He stops trying.
…
He starts going to the gym. At first, it’s to watch everyone else train. He watches as Natasha shreds paper target after paper target with precise shots. He watches Thor’s unrestrained rage, his only true match Steve when he’s gone that far with pain, howling like a wounded animal as he goes berserk on the reinforced mat. He watches Nebula jog the indoor track until her legs give out and Rhodey on the bars until his knees buckle. He watches Rocket clean his guns over and over again without shooting any of them and Bruce collapse in exhaustion when the other guy wears him out.
The new Avenger, Carol is a streak in the sky outside, a miraculous blaze that makes Tony ache for the embrace of one of his suits and the hum of repulsor fire beneath his feet, but the thought of encasing himself in metal even if it’s his own armor makes bile rise in his throat.
No one can sleep, not really, and they all take turns sparring, venting their frustrations in uncontained punches and kicks and battle cries that echo of pain beyond the blows dealt. Tony refuses every time someone offers to spar with him. Steve doesn’t offer.
…
Natasha disappears for a week and comes home with Clint. His presence is a happy surprise but wholly unexpected, and Tony has long since thought maybe—maybe he didn’t make it. But there he is cradled protectively in Natasha’s arms, looking for all the world like a different man. His once sharp eyes are shadowed and his clever mouth clenched shut. Heavy sorrow dogs his steps, and Clint walks like he’s lost the world.
Clint spends his days crouched in the vents and his nights prowling the halls, a silent watcher. He and Thor haunt the halls of the compound like aimless spectres, footsteps leaden with their losses.
They’ve all lost people, but out of all of them Clint and Thor feel the grief and regret the heaviest. Clint because he lost his children, something none of them can fathom. Thor because not only has he lost his brother and his people, but because he came so close and he’s held onto his failure so personally, it drags him down like a weighted stone.
Tony knows that same shame of failure. He was close too. He drew first blood on Titan, and yet. And yet.
He should’ve done more. He should’ve protected them. He should’ve saved them. He should’ve saved Peter.
It should’ve been him.
…
Tony starts spending every waking hour in the labs. Sometimes, Bruce is there with a cup of tea quietly working at his station, mumbling about the possibility of interdimensional travel if they can somehow go down to the subatomic level, there was this study he read once, what’s the name again, Hank something.
Tony spends all his time building one armor after the next. He pulls up the schematics for the Mark L and he almost cries the first time he sees her again. He reuses that same nanotech and builds armor after armor, trying to get it just right. Soon he has twenty nine new suits. None of them are right. He starts over again.
Somewhere between Marks LXXII and LXXIV, a presence quietly makes itself known in his lab. Steve is a quiet shadow in the back, ever silent as he sits at one of the crash couches with a sketchbook or tablet in hand and draws. The scratch of pencil is lost beneath the heavy guitars of AC/DC, and Tony’s back stops prickling after LXXX.
…
He finds catharsis in Mark LXXXIV. The manic panic dissipates a little.
Mark LXXXIV almost perfect. He marvels at the way the nanobytes crawl from the new arc reactor up his arm, fluid like water and tensile as Kevlar. The canon that forms around his hand blasts a hole nearly through the reinforced wall of the testing lab. Almost there.
He starts on LXXXV.
“She’s beautiful,” Steve says when he’s done. Tony startles. It’s the first time Steve has spoken to him since his return.
Tony makes a decision, just as the silence hangs for a moment too long. “She is,” he replies, and the relieved smile that hesitantly curls Steve’s mouth is enough to make his chest ache anew.
…
They start finding each other in the early hours of the morning. The first time it happens, Tony had just stumbled from his lab into the kitchen after tinkering with Mark LXXXV to make her better, perfecting her code. Steve is sitting at the counter with a plate of peanut butter sandwiches at his elbow as he scrolls through his tablet.
Can’t sleep? they don’t ask.
Steve wordlessly stands to pour Tony a cup of coffee that he slides over, and Tony sits.
“So,” Tony says, cupping his hands around the mug.
“So,” Steve replies, his knuckles white as he grips the counter.
…
“You never came back,” Steve whispers, his words sounding guilty like a confession.
Tony thinks of the open eye of space above New York years and years and a lifetime ago, the closing oculus that would’ve swallowed him alive. Almost did swallow him whole. He thinks of the guts of the alien ship that took him lightyears from home, and the orange planet that lives behind his eyelids late at night. He can still taste the grit of red sand, a metallic tang between his teeth. He thinks of the endless tapestry of space, and realizing after fearing it for so many years, it’s quite beautiful after all and maybe it won’t be so bad to die out there in the black.
“I always thought if we had enough time,” Steve continues, “we could’ve gotten past this thing between us and maybe one day I could earn your forgiveness. But then—you didn’t come home. We had no choice but to think the worst.”
Tony laughs, the sound ringing as hollow as he feels. “No choice. It’s never a choice with you, is it?” he asks bitterly.
Steve pauses and turns away. “What happened in Siberia wasn’t a choice either,” he says quietly. “It was never a choice between you and Bucky. It was stopping you before you did something you might regret later, and keeping you from killing him.”
“Something I might regret later,” Tony intones mockingly. “Are you making choices for me too now?” He knows he’s being petty, but he’s always pushing things when it comes to Steve. He’s always pushing, pushing, pushing, trying to find the weak spot, trying to get Steve to crack. Even now he can’t help himself.
Maybe especially now because he hates how quiet Steve is with him, as though he’s afraid if he so much as raises his voice, Tony will disappear and be gone forever. It’s stupid and ridiculous and Tony hates it. He hates the hollow look in Steve’s eyes. He hates the quiet tone of his voice. He hates the way Steve treats him like fine china, fragile and breakable. But most of all, he hates the way he misses the way they used to fight.
“That’s not what I mean,” Steve says, sighing in frustration. “I—I just know you’re a better man than that, Tony. You would’ve regretted killing anyone. Especially since you’ve given so much to protect people. You would’ve regretted killing a brainwashed man who wasn’t himself when he—did what he did.”
Tony spent a lot of dark nights in space with the universe crushing down on him while he drowned amongst the stars thinking about that day. Would he have regretted killing Barnes? At first, he had thought he wouldn’t, because he had thought it would’ve been justified vengeance for his parents. But the more time he spent with Nebula, the more his feelings on the matter shifted.
Nebula had dedicated herself to seeking vengeance against a titan who had taken away not only her family but her life and her limbs, and she had nothing to show for it but bitterness and the regret of having aimed that bitterness at her sister.
Now Tony doesn’t know anymore if he would’ve regretted killing Barnes, but it seems as though Thanos had done it for him anyways. And seeing Steve’s devastation over the loss of his best friend brings nothing but a hollow ring of emptiness for Tony.
“That’s not for you to decide,” Tony says anyways.
“It’s not,” Steve agrees. “But I would’ve still protected my friend. Just like I would’ve protected you if it was you on that end of the battle.”
Tony breathes a sharp inhale and doesn’t say anything else.
They lapse into a silence that stretches long and heavy. Outside the Compound, the city looms in the far distance, a small speckling of lights. Tony remembers them being far brighter and much more abundant. Everything is too dark and too quiet, and both hang heavy, physically weighing on Tony’s conscience.
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, shattering the oppressive silence.
Tony hesitates. “Me too,” he finally whispers. He finds that he means it, and in the space of the next breath, he forgives both Steve and Barnes. Understands them for who they are, and in the face of imminent death, what really is the point in holding such a grudge?
“I’m sorry for everything,” Steve says, insistent. “I’m sorry for what happened between us, and I’m sorry for not listening. About the invasion. About what was to come.”
You never did listen, Tony wants to say. That’s nothing new. I’ve been saying it for years. I’ve known for years. But no one would listen. Cassandra, daughter of Priam, he thinks, gifted with prophecy and doomed to disbelief.
There’s the flash of the red skies on Titan and the words that never left Tony’s head.
“Stark.”
“You know me?”
“I do. You’re not the only one cursed with knowledge.”
He sighs, rubs his forehead in a futile attempt to clear the memory and forward, he reminds himself. They must always be moving forward. There is little point in dwelling on the foregone past.
“You never were very good at listening,” Tony says, trying to keep his voice light. “Not one of your stronger traits.” He almost regrets the words, he’s not sure how Steve would take them.
Are they there yet? Can they say these things to each other again? Can they be like they were a lifetime ago when this kind of bantering came as naturally as breathing for the both of them, Steve matching Tony’s sharp tongue wit for wit?
When Steve startles and laughs, it feels a little like victory, and Tony can feel a little bit of his heart beginning to heal. He had forgotten what it was like to have Steve on his side, how heady and powerful he felt to have Steve’s strength and righteous conviction reflected back at him. Maybe they can get through this after all.
Tony smiles, and breathes.
…
“My first memory of you,” Tony says one night, “is not of you. Not really.”
Steve gives him a bemused look but doesn’t say anything, waiting patiently for him to continue.
“Contrary to what people might think, Howard didn’t keep anything of yours in the house,” Tony continues. “His mission to find you was always top secret, but he would tell me about it. About how his greatest failure was never having been able to find you. He left it in his will that there would be a trust set aside to continue funding the search for your body, so you could be brought home. Howard wanted to at least give you that last service, so you could be buried in the country you fought so hard to protect.”
Steve’s brow is furrowed and his eyes haunted. Tony doesn’t expect anyone to take their own deaths lightly. It must be painful to hear all of this, and he wonders if he should continue when Steve nods, asking silently.
“It wasn’t about propaganda or accomplishment for him, to have you home,” Tony continues. “He wanted to do it for you, and for Aunt Peggy, so she could have that closure. It was the one thing he wanted to do right.”
“Thank you,” Steve says in the lapse of silence that follows.
Tony’s brow furrows in confusion. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You found me,” Steve says simply and the words feel heavy.
Tony doesn’t correct him that the search team had found him, Tony had nothing to do with it personally. He had spent his whole life resenting his father for caring more about finding a dead body in the ice than he did about his own son, but he doesn’t tell Steve this. He thinks Steve knows, if Tony can still read him as well as he once did.
“I met you first through Aunt Peggy,” Tony says quietly. “Not Captain America, but Steve Rogers. She had so many stories about you. It was hard to reconcile the real you with the legends Howard told.”
“Do I live up to the legends?” Steve asks softly.
“No,” Tony replies. “You’re more.”
…
Steve kisses him first.
Tony balks.
Steve pauses, his hand still outstretched and reaching for Tony. The look in his eyes are determined.
“We’ve suffered enough,” Steve says. “We deserve this. We deserve to be happy, even if it’s for a second in between everything else.”
Do we deserve this? Tony wonders. Steve deserves to be happy, that much he knows, because Steve has only ever been good and righteous and strong. But Tony himself has done more than his fair share of harm, and he doesn’t know if he deserves to ever be absolved of the guilt and pain and the weight of his own consequences. He sighs and raises his arm, palm upturned.
Steve smiles, and pulls him in.
…
There was a time in his past life, in a farmhouse, when Tony realized he could’ve had everything he’d ever wanted. It was splayed in front of him, sprawled starfish across the narrow shared bed, broad chest rising and falling in steady breaths. Tony had watched and ached as the flutter of golden lashes brushed across high cheeks and his fingers itched to reach over and touch.
Everything was an arms length away. All he had to do was extend his hand. A whole world just inches away.
He had been too scared then.
…
He’s not scared anymore.