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“And I needed you. As in, past tense. That trumps what you need, buddy…. I said we’d lose. You said, ‘Then we’ll do that together too.’ Well, guess what, Cap? We lost. And you weren’t there… I’ve got nothing for you, Cap! No coordinates, no clues, no options. Zero, zip, nada—
no trust, liar .”
*
The arc reactor is a dead weight on his fingers. Tony tore it apart from his very chest at the heat of the moment, every fiber of his worn-out body livid with outdated fury.
They’d lost. And it was his fault. He was the one who tore apart the team who could almost certainly outbeat any intergalactic dangers when fully assembled. Two separate battles taken place universes apart, and they’d lost both.
Liar , Tony had viscerally hissed.
The arc reactor’s cool smoothness does nothing to ease his anxiousness as he absentmindedly runs his fingers over the machine. Tony’s unconscious; when he’d first collapsed on the floor, Steve had a moment of fleeting panic as he thought that the absence of the arc reactor was what had caused it, but then was reminded that the reactor no longer aided Tony’s heart into beating. It’s more like a portable weapon, if you will.
It was what he told himself as he smashed his shield down to shatter the reactor all those years ago.
Just demobilize the suit, he’d thought, ripping away Tony’s faceplate in a frenzy of anger, adrenaline pumping through his veins and obstructing his eyes, Just break it, so he can’t hurt Bucky any longer.
Tony’d been so, so ill.
They’d lost. Again. The stones were gone, there was nothing to reverse. The damage was done, completely irreversible.
That up there? That’s the endgame.
He sighs before carefully putting the arc reactor down on his bedside table so as not to wake him. Tony’s face is hollowed out from weeks of malnutrition and injury and the bitter imposition of failure. He looks… he looks utterly worn out, eyelashes brushing against sharpened cheeks and a tiny crease between his eyebrows.
Steve stares at it. Then he stares into the window across the wall, greeted with the obscene reflection of a tired man against a serene night time scape. And it’s true; he’s so, so tired. A bone-deep fatigue that can’t be satiated with physical relaxation. He both knows what he yearns and is greeted by a surge of gross odium when thinking about it.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. Everything, it seems, has slipped out of his hands. From the hollow shell of a man before him, to the limitless night sky above his head. What does he want? What does he need? Hell, where should he find a bed for the night? The agonizing queries of introspection floats around his mindscape, tantalizing him with answers that he knows are impossible to obtain. He doesn’t belong anywhere . Not to Iron Man, not to the liquified America, not to the universe, not to an unchallenged conviction that he’s been believing as right all along.
Steve slides down and wearily places his head against the bed. Tony, Tony… Tony, man of the future, give me a goddamned answer.