Archive of Our Own

The bottom of the ocean was shallower than Tony Stark expected.

He had had this dream, once or twice, descending endlessly into the darkness, never quite reaching rock bottom.  It was like flying, inverted—he flew backwards, very nearly upside-down, helpless to save himself. 

Falling.  It was like falling. 

No matter how high up you started, eventually, you would hit rock bottom.  Rock bottom was as advertised—dense matter at his back, preventing him from traversing any deeper and entombing himself in silt.  He was grateful for that much—death by quicksand seemed like a truly miserable way to go.

He struck the underwater ground hard enough to crater the earth above—a one-hundred-meter fall in a one-hundred-kilogram suit of armor would have displaced a substantial amount of dry rock—but the oceanic bedrock barely cracked.  Turbulent, silty clouds stirred the water in front of him, blinding him.

Blindness underwater was death underwater.  Panic swept over Tony; he strained against the cord wrapped around his neck, the rock at his back—that’s down, go up. 

Two hundred meters down, the ocean was pitch-black; courting one-fifty, it was impossible to see the shimmery surface far above.  It was daytime up there—twilight down here. 

Tony breathed deeply and frantically, gulping recycled air, insistent that he would not die down here.

The longest free-dive in the world was two-hundred-and-fourteen meters.  That was an encouraging margin of error for a man with a lung capacity of seventy-five percent normal.

I am going to die, Tony thought, suddenly and hysterically, kicking his feet desperately, thrashing for his life.  The cord on his neck wasn’t giving way—and why should it?  It was hooked to the cement block behind him.  He had the disarming visual of the cement block sinking abruptly through the rock, taking him with it, and heaved against the visual as much as the reality.

Then a cement block came down on top of him.  It landed oddly gently on top of him, crushing him not with inexorable but arguable force.  He kept his hand up, automatically shielding his face.  Cold water drenched the suit—the seals weren’t tight enough, and the fact that he could feel water across his neck was deeply disturbing, like he was already drowning—but it was the image of rock slowly, slowly pummeling him that sealed his fate.

He was being buried alive, and nobody was going to find him.

If he was very lucky, maybe he wouldn’t drown, first.

. o .

Onshore, Pepper Potts stared into the maelstrom, reeling.

She knew what to do in every kind of emergency.  From the mundane tornado to the one-in-a-million terrorist attack, she was trained—drilled relentlessly, because these things happened around people like Tony Stark—to respond accordingly.  She knew how to negotiate, how not to negotiate, how to make a life-or-death choice in a hundred different scenarios.

Looking into the watery abyss, she realized she had absolutely no idea what to do.  The Mandarin hadn’t tried to kidnap Tony or persuade him with a mixed drink, hadn’t threatened an attack or postured further on television, hadn’t invoked foul weather or play.  He had enacted the nightmare scenario—struck faster than Tony’s arrogance could parry.

As a career, Tony enjoyed waving red capes in front of bulls, but he was quick on his feet, avoiding catastrophe nearly every time.  But nearly wasn’t every, as his time in Afghanistan attested. 

Pepper would have taken the goring scenario over her present reality any day of the week.  At least bulls could be subdued; the ocean could not be drained.

Get help, she thought, staring at the churning water for a precious moment longer, hoping beyond reason that Tony would appear.  Pepper.  Get help.

Her phone was secure, and she didn’t hesitate to make the call.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Pepper.  Potts,” she added, her voice not cooperating, shaking audibly.  “Please.  It’s an emergency.”

“Tell me where.”

“10880 Malibu Point,” she replied.  She didn’t finish ten-eight-eighty before the line went dead.

She called Romanoff next.  Romanoff stayed on the line.

. o .

Steve Rogers really hated planes.

They were temperamental creatures, waiting to crash with cataclysmic force, fickle to nature, oblivious to human entreaties.  They were monsters—fire-breathing metal monsters, better kept in a box, unopened.  At best a wartime necessity, at worst, an oversized coffin for hundreds of people.  There was nothing good about planes.  Trains were more scenic, cars were more personal.  Planes?  They had just one advantage.

Speed.

Flying at sixty thousand feet, Steve defied the plane to fight him, take him anywhere but where he wanted to go.  The Quinjet was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s prized property—it was the tool accredited with more lives saved and more missions completed than any other.  Field agents often joked that the only tools they needed were Quinjets and duct tape.  Everything else was optional.  Hell, everything, including duct tape, was optional, to hear the pilots talk.  They’d give up a lung before they surrendered their favorite ‘jets.

Planes were like cars, Steve thought, angry about it.  Taking one out for a drive was hardly a matter of consequence—S.H.I.E.L.D. already tracked his every move, and he’d have Fury to answer to for his unauthorized joyriding, but the kids on the tarmac saluted and handed over the keys like he owned the ‘jet.

Damn kids.  They’d have Hydra all over them, with that level of trust.  Just because I look nice, doesn’t mean I am.  Some of the most charismatic, interesting, conversational people Steve had ever met were blood-red Hydra agents.  The best ones were trained to be your best friend, no matter how radical or tame your own beliefs were.  Steve had learned to side-eye everyone, looking for that hint of teeth, that cutting edge that would kill everyone in the room if the Hive demanded it.

He really hated Hydra.

Hadn’t been for Hydra, he’d have his life back together.  No plane in the ocean.  No Bucky on the train.

No super-soldier serum.

Who would you be today, if it weren’t for them?

Sitting back, looking at the empty skies ahead of him, Steve replied, Somebody else.

. o .

Nick Fury called the only man for the job.

“Director.”

“You seen the news?”

There was a noticeable pause.  “I’m en route,” the man for the job replied.  “Unless you mean—”

“No,” Fury assured, glad for Rogers’ sixth sense, or whatever the hell it was that got him moving before half of S.H.I.E.L.D. realized there was a better than fifty-fifty shot Tony Stark was dead.  “Get there.  Call me.”

“Understood.”  Rogers hung up.  He was unbearably brusque, even in good company—Fury knew, because he was good company.  Rogers actually talked to him, at times candidly.  Fury was lucky: it was nothing short of a miracle that he had jelled with the Avengers; nobody had gotten more than ten words from the man since they’d unfrozen him, typically of a yes, no, kiss my ass, variety.

To observe him, Rogers appeared to be both a man with better things to do and a man with absolutely nothing to do.  Fury couldn’t pin him down.  He could pin Stark down: Stark was a loose cannon, who would happily expose government secrets for the sake of keeping them accountable.

Same guy that told terrorists to come and get it.

Some days, Fury didn’t know who was the bigger headache—or loose cannon.  For a military background, he’d never met a less orderly soldier, and Pierce was up to here with it.

He’s dangerous, Nick.

I’m well aware of that, Alex.

. o .

Alexander Pierce really had had it up to here with Steve Rogers.

He signed the man off on the most dangerous missions Rogers was willing to chew, then sat back and watched as Rogers ignored the red flags, scooped up whatever target Pierce had ordered him to, and returned home bleeding and asking for another assignment.  No matter how hard Pierce cracked the whip, Rogers returned eager for more, easy for violence.

If Pierce had ever had a soft spot for Rogers, he would have appreciated Rogers’ sir yes sir attitude.  But aside from Pierce’s, Rogers didn’t take orders—put him on a team below leadership level, and there were complaints.  Pierce had almost taken pleasure shifting him to the S.T.R.I.K.E. team, letting him cut his teeth on Rumlow’s immovable leadership.  Rogers had yet to complain, but Pierce suspected it was only a matter of time before he snapped and asked for reassignment.

Pierce looked forward to grounding Rogers.  Actions had consequences.  If he didn’t want to work, then he wouldn’t work.  Cut his teeth on that.

Who knew: isolate a vulnerable man long enough, any offer of companionship could be met with amicability.  Pierce was good at shuffling cards, ensuring that the so-called Avengers were as far apart as logistically possible: Romanoff was on assignment in Bucharest; Barton in Cairo; and Banner, inexplicably, was up North, somewhere in the Arctic circle.  The most dangerous threat was off-world, and hopefully would stay there.

That left Stark.  Pierce wasn’t particularly worried about him.  Stark and Rogers weren’t merely opposites—opposites could be complementary—they were incompatible.  Rogers was out-of-date, stubborn, prone to anger, loyal only to extinct causes and dedicated to a distinct fault.  Stark was flaky, modern, self-absorbed, and neurotic, if not outright insane—a celebrity turned into a soldier, who had no interest in either the public or his image.  Their exchanges on the helicarrier were already infamous; it was treated as fact that Rogers would sooner break Stark’s hand than shake it.

Imagine, then, Pierce’s surprise as Rogers flew closer and closer to the Pacific coast, a rogue if Pierce had ever seen one.  Rogers was technically on some form of medical leave, at least in his file—another reason he would never fit in; he’d get himself killed before he ever found anything like roots, in the twenty-first century—and Pierce pulled up said-file to see if there was a way to intercept the bird.

There was tragically little Pierce could do to put him down in the air, shy of launching a missile at him.  He entertained the idea—he could launch an intercept plane from the opposite coast, meet Rogers before he got to his destination—before dismissing it as too radical.  Rogers might be abrasive, a chemical mixture best left in a vial, but he wasn’t stupid enough to believe the timing was coincidental.  He would look deeper, and even if Pierce covered his tracks perfectly,  Rogers would be wary.

Maybe, Pierce mused, seated at his desk, reaching for a report from Rumlow, he’d luck out, and Stark would take care of the problem for him.  The idiot had already drawn fire from yet another terrorist organization—it wouldn’t surprise Pierce if he was dead inside the month, at the rate he was going.

. o .

Natasha Romanoff had a headache.

A nasty, skewering, I hate all lifeforms on this planet headache.  Lying on her tiny bed in the sweltering room, she thought about its roots—the vodka she’d drank to ignore it, the lack of sleep, the complexity of playing a character for three weeks.

At least the mission had been going well.  She’d ingratiated herself early on with the banker, which had led to private events, which had yielded valuable information.  It had almost been enjoyable—her mark had been lonely and shallow, an easy target.  Best of all, he spoke Russian.  It was practically a reward-for-good-behavior mission.

Then she had caught wind that Barton hadn’t met two of his check-ins.  After pinging Banner—who could hack any computer he wanted to, if his paranoia about men in suits chasing him down could be sufficiently assuaged—for details, she’d come to the grim but not unlikely conclusion that Barton had been captured.

She wished she could say she was surprised, but Barton had been off his game, lately, distractable, irritable, not the same steady hand as he was, prior to New York.  She worried about shellshock as much as she worried about what organization knew enough about S.H.I.E.L.D. to kidnap one of its agents.  Retirement didn’t exactly suit their line of work, and she was profoundly sure that Barton would sooner kill himself before he quit his job.

They weren’t partners often, but a world without Barton was grim.  Without Barton, she’d end up leaning on Rogers for company.  And Rogers was famously poor company—reclusive, snappish, mournful, locked in his own head.  He was like a rabid animal they insisted on keeping around—one look at him and Natasha gave up on any hopes of a reliable partner, recognizing trouble when she saw it.  He would snap and cut loose as soon as it suited him; she had no idea what the impulse would be, but one day, it would come, and he would go.

She had no idea that when Pepper Potts called, that day had arrived. 

All she knew was that she had a headache, and Barton was missing, and she wasn’t supposed to speak English in earshot of potential listeners, but she didn’t want to walk twenty miles away just to hold a conversation with a woman halfway across the world.

So she listened, made appropriate noises of sympathy—and she did, truly, want Stark to be found; if there was anything less hopeful than her potentially inevitable partnership with Rogers, it was losing Stark as a person to commiserate with—and tried to keep her own contributions minimal, certain that, no matter how dire it sounded, everything would be fine.

. o .

Clint Barton had fucked up real bad, and he knew it.

The worst part was, he’d taken off his hearing aids before bed—as he was wont to do; sleeping with them in was uncomfortable—and awoken to hands violently pinioning him.  Still blinking interrupted sleep out of his eyes, he’d been hauled off.  And he thought he’d been doing damn well—except he’d forgotten to watch his own back, and now, standing in a filthy, overcrowded cell, he wondered if this wasn’t the time when he couldn’t Houdini his way out.

You’ve earned this, Barton, he thought, the fuzzy melody of groggy conversations otherworldly to him.  You fucked up.

It wasn’t the first time he’d fallen down on the job, but he usually went more than three months between mission-failures.  S.H.I.E.L.D. kept a close eye on the timing of events, even more so than their volume: an agent in the field for thirty years might have dozens of mission failures, but one that had mission-failures back-to-back was more likely to capture the brass’ attention.

Abruptly pissed off, he shoved the guy next to him, who swore back and attempted to return the favor.  The noise reached a pandemonium, jumbled beyond all recognition, but he didn’t need to hear to know that it was the good kind of trouble, the trouble he started.

That’s more like it.

. o .

Bruce Banner was freezing his ass off.

His entire ass was completely numb.  Thanks to downy cold-weather gear, his core temperature was stable, but his ass was still frozen, and so were his hands, despite the gloves he kept on.  Even with gloves on, the arctic freeze was almost more than he could bear, clinging to the radio, listening to Jameson repeat that Tony Stark—yes, Tony Stark, S-T-A-R-K—was missing and presumed dead.

Bruce said loudly, “Keep me posted.”  Jameson complained, I just did.

It wouldn’t be the first time that he’d gotten a bad call, and the big guy growled once in warning.  I heard him, Bruce snapped back, annoyed.

The big guy growled louder, and he could feel the metamorphosis beginning before he assuaged it, I’ll check again.  So, he contacted Jameson, who said bluntly, “Our pilot can’t fly in this weather.  I’m sorry.  Earliest he can come out is three days’ time, assuming this weather pattern holds.”

Bruce grimaced, even as the big guy growled louder still, vehemently denying the remark.  Now.  Now.  Now.  Now.  Agitated, Bruce said, “There’s gotta be a way.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Jameson said.  “I really am.  This is part of the job.”

The job had been to measure ice; the job wasn’t to sit around, stranded in the polar north, while bad things happened beyond his control.

He didn’t need a mirror to see the green in his eyes; he could see his hands flexing, bulging, growing.  Pain built in his bones.  “Gotta go,” he told Jameson urgently, aware that he didn’t have enough control—damn you, damn you, fuck you—to tell the others, camped nearby, what was happening.  The big guy was already splitting the seams of his coat, and he roared in frustration as cold washed over him before heat surged through him, crumpling inside the tent, tearing through it.

He shouted at the big guy, South, south! as the animal stood, beating its chest and roaring at the snow, loping westward with intent.  South!

Hulk loped on, banging his fists on the ground, and Bruce could only holler and roar back at him, instructions that were barely heeded by a beast that didn’t speak a lick of English and couldn’t care less that they were supposed to be one symbiotic being.

Goddamn animal, he told it.  Let me do it, let me do it!

Hulk ignored him, and Bruce could feel the physical force of his consciousness, ill-defined, not entirely interdependent, an id fighting an ego.

Freud would love you, Bruce sneered as the monster charged across the snow.  Goddamn you.

Trapped in the proverbial backseat, Bruce could only absorb the animal’s impulses as his own, trying to accept them, no matter how ludicrous, no matter how terrible.

. o .

The world record for voluntary breath hold was twenty-four minutes, three-point-four-five seconds.

Tony Stark did not exceed the record, nor was anyone present to witness it.  Regardless, after fifty-nine minutes underwater in nothing but a suit of armor, it would have made a hell of a story for the grandkids, assuming he lived to have any.  Or wanted any.  His parents had been in their fifties when they had considered an heir to their fortune.

Closing in on fifty, Tony feared his obituary would say something rash, ergo: He lived a long and happy life.  He had most certainly not.  Not for the last five—ten—give-or-take years.  He was forty-two-years-old, and slowly freezing to death.

That, that was the irony.  Water was seeping into the suit, yes, but not in the helmet.  His oxygen regulators would run out eventually—he had a mere five hours left in the combined tanks.  But the thing that would kill him, that would surely steal his breath from his body, was the cold.

At the bottom of the ocean—at least, the bottom of his shallow continental shelf, a mere one-hundred-and-fifty meters below the surface—it was not eighty-seven degrees Fahrenheit, like it was in the open air.  It was fifty-two shivering degrees.  Enclosed in a heat-conducting suit of armor, water pooling slowly around him, Tony had already lost two precious degrees of his own body temperature.

He would not drown.  He would freeze to death.

Tony could not stop his teeth from chattering.  As he passed the woozy, nauseating one-hour submersion mark, he thought about hypothermia, again.  Encased in a suit of armor—which thankfully retained its integrity just enough to keep the wall of water out—he could do little but shiver in the water that had pooled inside it, bleeding out, inverted.

How terribly ironic, he thought, flexing his hand just to feel it move, somewhere above the rocks.  His right arm was completely numb from holding the awkward position; he felt sure that a strong current would whisk the whole thing away, and then water would flood in, and that would be that.

It was incredibly dark, underneath the rubble, drowning not in air or water at the bottom of the ocean.

He had, at best, another good hour left in him—then things would start to get dire, as he slipped, somewhere between now and then, into sub-ninety-five core temperatures.  It wouldn’t be long after that tipping point before his body began to shut down.  He could not even curl into a ball to protect himself; nor would it have helped, even if he could.

A sob worked its way unexpectedly out of his throat; he ruthlessly suppressed further emotion, refusing to break down.  He already knew he was trapped in a watery tomb, already knew that no help was coming and no help could help him, anyway. 

Would they find a crane with a line six-hundred-feet long, capable of lifting the rubble of his own mansion off him?  Were they already on shore, asking that very question?  Divers could find him, but no one possessed the strength to dislodge the rubble around him, never mind to find him in time.  It could take hours.  Days.  By then, even the drip-drip of the ocean would have submerged his corpse completely.

It seemed, all at once, like a very mundane way to die.  He thrashed just once, weakly, pinioned as strongly as he was, only his hand outstretched.

The suit did not have the sensitive touch of human hands.  He could only tell, by flexing his metal hand, that there was at least an air pocket immediately surrounding it.  Whether there was more rubble above, further hiding him from view, or open, dark, twilit water, was impossible for him to detect.  He was not sure if it mattered, much.

He was not going anywhere.

This is the worst mistake I have ever made, he thought, a strangled not-laugh escaping him, a sound he had never made before.

How proud his father would be, knowing how wretched his death was.

. o .

Happy Hogan awoke at the whims of otherworldly bodies. 

As the medications waned, he waxed: one eye slid open, and fixed on a dark television.

Maybe that awoke him.  It was certainly a source of unease—the hospital room seemed more ominous, alone and dark and quiet.  Everything was wrong—he was sore and his mouth was dry and he was too far from the principal, and then an image of Tony Stark flashed through his mind’s eye and he struggled to sit up.  He pawed around for the remote, pain zinging through his right arm, and used his left to pick it up, squint at the diagrams.

It seemed so confused, at first, and for long seconds, he was tempted to give up, to lie down again and rest, until he awoke and everything made sense again.  He had gotten his bell rung, but that was the price for a job well done, he supposed.  He didn’t remember exactly what went down—which was disturbing—but he was in a hospital and well enough to be left alone.  That meant something.  I’m alive.  I have to find out if Stark is.

Finally, at random, he pushed a button.  It wasn’t the call button, but it did nothing discernible, so he tried another, and the bed rose.  Pain lanced through him, and he paused to suck down a shallow breath.  His throat was so damn dry.  What the hell had happened to him?

I got my bell rung, he dismissed, pushing the button again, jabbing it until he was sufficiently elevated.

His phone was on the table beside him.  He almost sobbed in relief.  Call. – T.S.

He fumbled for it, but it was farther than the remote.  A strain on healing muscles, wounded bones.

Grasping the cell phone, Happy jerked it towards himself.

He dialed in Stark’s number by memory and waited, heart pounding.

It rang, and rang, and rang.

An alarm began to sound off—his heart rate was too high. 

Something’s wrong, Happy thought, despairing.  He debated trying again before carefully pulling Potts’ number up, instead.

He needed answers.  Now.

. o .

On every channel, they were talking about it.

Colonel James Rhodes sat in an airport looking up at the silent screen, fuming with dread.  The damn plane could not arrive fast enough, delayed by weather in Detroit.  Only Detroit could have plane-delaying bad weather in May.

Hardly anyone seemed to notice the television reports.  Certainly, no one would have recognized Jimmy’s relationship to Tony Stark, even if they had noticed the report.

As the closed captioning showed presumed dead, Jimmy experienced a profound sense of déjà vu. 

He remembered sitting in the back of a military van, heart pounding as they spun across the desert.  He remembered thinking, So help me God, over and over, like anything would come of it.  He didn’t beg the Almighty for assistance; he threatened whatever forces of nature were out there to take one more thing from him.  He had protected and served his country for years, loved and lost and come back from it all, and here, now, Jimmy would lose?

He had never accepted his fate, not once, not even when the brass told him to leave it, not even when they threatened to take away his uniform and leave him stranded in his search.  He had fought for a better ending.

He knew exactly where he needed to be, watching those television screens, and it infuriated him that he could not be there, already.  If he had been in the right van all along, then Tony would not have been taken.  He was sure of it.

It was like a very bad dream, to watch it all happen again.

. o .

The man for the job arrived on the scene exactly ninety-six minutes after receiving the call from Pepper Potts.  He wasn’t the only one on the scene, but he knew better than to land within fifty miles of the hubbub, parking the ‘jet, engaging its cloaking shielding, and setting off at a brisk run for the hills.  It cost him twenty minutes.  If you’re still alive down there, Stark, he bartered, you can hang out a little longer.

Dressed in civilian gear, Steve Rogers approached the water carefully, giving the circus in the driveway a wide berth.  He made it to the cliff’s edge.  Looking out at the ocean, he could not deny how peaceful it looked, the slowly sinking sun casting pretty orange light across the water.  It was at least a hundred feet to the water, but instinct encouraged him to make the climb.

He was about to kneel and grab the stone’s edge when a voice he didn’t recognize said, “Steve?”

Steve replied, more reflexively than anything: “Ma’am.”

“Oh, thank God,” what could only be Pepper Potts said.  “When did you—please.”

That made him turn.  The desperation in her face was so very plain that he offered with real gentleness, “Tell me where.  I’ll find him.”

He already knew, but she still warbled out, “He’s—the water.  The water.  The house, they—”  She started crying, hiding her face in her hands in misery.

He grimaced, then schooled his expression back into neutrality.  There was little lost love between him and Stark—he doubted Stark would even thank him for coming, once he emerged from whatever magician’s hat he was hiding in—but he felt the profound loss in Pepper Potts’ weeping, the realization of a woman who had, with no apparent irony, watched a man die.

It also confirmed Steve’s worst fear: He’s already dead, Rogers.  Go home.

He hadn’t come this far to quit, he told his inner Colonel Phillips stubbornly.

Conclusively, he said, “I’ll find him,” and then, without a care for what he would really find at the bottom, took a few steps back, and flung himself over the edge.

. o .

Standing in front of a console reporting live on the scene, Maria Hill said seriously, “He’s fine.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Maria asked dryly.

Fury gave her the worried look, the same one he’d given her after the misfits became the last line of defense against New York’s impending doom.  Those misfits could be damn resourceful.  She kept the faith that they were nigh unkillable.  “I do,” Fury insisted, although his expression didn’t change.  “Where’re we at on the Mandarin case?” he asked, deliberately putting his back to the screen.

“Well,” Maria said, “we know he hates America.”

“Really,” Fury deadpanned.  “What gave that away?”  His gaze flicked back to the screen briefly.  “Where the hell is Rogers?” he asked impatiently.  “He signed off the ‘jet hours ago.”

“Nick.”  Fury grimaced.  “He’ll be fine.  What’re we doing about the Mandarin?”

Truth be told, Maria never even entertained the possibility that Stark was dead or dying.  They couldn’t afford to worry over every lost agent—even lost Avengers.  It disrupted their line of work, drawing eyes that needed to be on their time-sensitive tasks into never-ending news cycles.

It was proof that Fury played favorites that he was chuffed about the Mandarin incident.  Maria had no such fears—she knew Stark was spitfire and at times prone to big entrances.  He’d turn up.  He always did.  Besides, with the whole world watching and at least one Avenger on the hunt, a handful of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on the scene already, how could they not find him, alive and well?

“Nick,” she said, to make him grimace again.  “It’ll be okay.”

Maybe, she conceded, she would be glad to see him alive and well.  It wasn’t the same as fearing he was truly gone.

. o .

“We’ll find him.”

Potts drew in a deep breath, nodding as she accepted the Kleenex Sharon Carter handed her. 

“Are you okay?” Sharon asked.

Potts nodded, then shook her head.  “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted.

“Leave it to the professionals?” Sharon offered, shepherding Potts away from water’s edge.  “Hey.  You wanna sit down?”

Potts hesitated, looking out over the water.  “I,” she started.  “Maybe,” she conceded.

Sharon guided her to a large rock, conveniently placed in a garden area.  “Take deep breaths,” Sharon advised, standing in front of her, partially blocking her view.  “Can you tell me what happened?”

“He—he was wearing the suit,” Potts whispered.  “He was wearing the suit.”

“Good,” Sharon said, “that’s good.”  Mentally, she flung a triumphant fist in the air, resisting the urge to turn around and shout into her comms, He’s alive!  She hated bringing home a body, and Aunt Peggy did speak fondly of Stark’s father.  It seemed only right to bring home the kid, even if he was an outspoken, at times cantankerous, Braveheart hero. 

The fact that she’d been off-duty when she’d been called to the scene had only crossed her mind peripherally—S.H.I.E.L.D. was the city that never slept, any of its 33,000 members could recite—but now it seemed like destiny, that she would be in the right city to help pull one of Fury’s kids out of deep water.

Was she technically one of Fury’s kids who had been pulled out of deep water in years prior?  Classified.

Paying it back, Sharon thought, coaxing more of the story out of Potts, shooing away a second—legitimate—EMT with a wave of her hand.

She had this.

. o .

Peggy Carter didn’t like to watch the news, much. 

She restricted herself to a small segment every evening, and so, it was nearly two hours after the Stark Mansion was destroyed that she first heard about it.

Her first thought was, Oh, I hope the boy’s okay.

Howard could be a stick in the mud, but he had survived wartime events that culled younger, more fitting men than him; surely, he would survive the catastrophe that had befallen his mansion.  Peggy just hoped the boy was okay.

What was his name again?

. o .

Steve dove as far down as the light would reach, scanning the debris field.

He was mere feet from the bottom when a sonic boom seemed to rattle his consciousness, enemy fire and shouts to get down flooding his peripheral, ready to take action, to fling himself into the mud, when—the phantom of memory, he thought, reaching out and closing the gap, the rough concrete scraping his hand, reminding him where he was.

It was colder down here, a curtain drawn across the warm ocean currents circulating above.  He longed to return to them, to continue his search from above, but the water was too dense, and not much warmer a few feet above him, besides.

He hovered near the minefield, sifting slowly, confident in his own abilities.  On record, he could hold his breath for nearly eight minutes.  It was a far cry from his days of crippling asthma.

Truth be told, he didn’t know how far he could go, nor how long he would need to.  He began his search in the deep, gray-blue, his night-vision kicking in.  On the upside, it distinguished shadowy dark edges, outlined everything, like a cannon blast, briefly illuminating the night.  He could navigate easily, but he could not see colors, only their outlines.  A red suit of armor—please, let there be a suit of armor—would be invisible to him.

And so he swam right past the armored hand punched out of the concrete, ten feet to his right.

. o .

Could Tony detect the man in the water—the man for the job, the only man for the job—passing by, near enough that Tony could have shouted underwater and been heard?

No.

His shivers had turned erratic in the last hour, and he knew, quietly and with surety, that he was either drowning or freezing to death, and too out of his mind to distinguish between the two.  His neck was damp, but it was blood from a cut from the metal loop around it. 

You are why I will die, he thought at the chain, in a moment of clarity, before his slowly thumping heart took over his consciousness once again.

He flexed his fingers weakly in the water, but no one came, no one saw them.

One hundred minutes came, and went.

. o .

“You called for me?”

“I thought you would like to know,” Heimdall replied.  “Your friend appears in danger.”

Thor frowned.  “Which one?” he asked.  All his friends were accounted for, on Asgard.  Which could only mean:

“The Midgardian.”

“Jane?”  Thor swung his hammer ‘round, building up momentum.  It would be difficult to fly across the emptiness of space, to land exactly where he needed to, but Heimdall could guide him, and he could endure the journey.  If he needed to.  If he needed to.

“No.  The metal one.”

“Stark,” Thor said.  He did not mean to sneer.

But Heimdall saw all: “You do not like him.”

“I have no qualm with his people,” Thor said, then, more affirmatively, “or him.  What of Stark?”  He let his hammer rest at his side.

“He is in grave danger,” Heimdall said.  It made Thor want to say, The mortals are often in danger.  It is how they live.

“What kind?”

“Trapped.  In a . . . cave, of some kind.  I do not believe he will survive much longer.  If you wish to deliver his last rites.”  Glowing golden eyes fixed upon him.

The death of a warrior-brother was sacred.  “You say he is alive?” Thor pressed.  “Have not the Midgardians noticed?”  Have not they heeded his cry?

“They have,” Heimdall assured, answering both questions, returning his gaze to the cosmos.  “I simply thought you would like to know,” Heimdall said, washing his hands clean of the incident.

It was up to Thor, then, to decide.  The future King of Asgard, Guardian of the Nine Realms, had much to do—and he witnessed death every day, on a scale that defied comprehension.  Death was merely a passing over, nothing to be feared or dreaded.  There was a time when he would have laughed at himself, worrying over a Midgardian.  They were such short-lived creatures; it was asking for pain to care for them.

And that is where your heart is, for Jane?

Slowly swinging his hammer, Thor conceded, “I will be there.”

“As I thought,” Heimdall said, with endless patience.  “I will keep my eye on you.”

“Thank you, Heimdall.”  Thor meant it.  It was treacherous, to cross between the two worlds without the bridge.  But—it was a brother.

He needed to be there.

. o .

The world record free-dive was two-hundred-and-fourteen meters.

Seven-hundred-and-two feet.

Imagine, for a moment, being in an elevator, descending, not one floor, or two floors, or ten floors—but almost seventy stories, underwater. 

One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand . . . two-hundred-thousand, two-hundred-one-thousand, two-hundred-two-one-thousand . . .

Two-hundred-and-sixty-four seconds elapsed in that record-setting span.  When Herbert Nitsche surfaced on June 14, 2007, he had expanded the possibility of human limits, pushing the edge that much farther.

One year later, Tony Stark would vanish, nearly two weeks to the day, in the Kunar province, in Afghanistan.  Seven million, seven-hundred-and-seventy-six thousand seconds would elapse before he would be found.

And somehow, that unfathomable time, where he knew only that he had to keep going to keep breathing, seemed almost briefer than the seconds he spent trapped underwater, head not in icy Pacific coastline but in warm camel water, smothered, half-drowned. 

It was ironic, he thought warmly, no longer afraid but simply exhausted, that all those painful hours had coalesced into this moment, where the only part of him not drenched was the very part of him he could least stand to be watered down.  His helmet was spared.

It was kind of the universe to grant him that much.

. o .

Lungs on fire, Steve Rogers resurfaced.  He had not been timing his descent, so he had no idea when he had given up on it, but he was lightheaded when he broke through the surface, heaving for breath, thankful to have passed through the barrier between life and death.

He felt a profound sense of dread at the thought of returning to the deep, aware that he had made a very foolish mistake by resurfacing at all.  Ashamed and desperate, he paddled towards shore, urgently desiring to flop on the sand and gulp down enough air to bring feeling back to his extremities.  He’d never felt more desperate for one thing than to get out of the water and breathe.

Then he remembered the ugly truth: Tony Stark was still down there, suffocating, while he was upstairs, gulping air.  It wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t fair.

It’s not my job to find him, he thought, a brief, bitter notion, because whose job was it, if not his?

The future was amazing, and perhaps they had machines that could do the job.  But where were the machines?

Are you all he has? a voice asked him, not meanly but plainly.  Will you abandon him because you are tired?

Sucking down one last huge breath, Steve turned around and turned over, descending into the deep, arms burning from the anoxic exertion.

Like hell would he give up on this mission.

. o .

It was like hell, startling awake at moments, frantic to escape, thrashing in his imprisonment, cutting his neck deeper, before finally subsiding.

Tony almost wished he would simply drown, so it would be over, sooner.  It seemed to take forever to freeze.

One-hundred-and-eighty-five minutes elapsed.

He was surprised to still be alive, after three hours and twenty-five minutes in the deep.  Maybe it was the residual warmth from the suit, he thought, that had bought him time, even as cold water filled the entire main cavity, drop by drop.  Maybe it was the undersuit, skin-tight and insulating—except, no, he hadn’t been wearing it when he’d called the suit to him.  It couldn’t have been the undersuit.

He was impressed the helmet was still sealed, its oxygen online.  But he’d designed the suit to function at eighty thousand feet.  The principles were rather similar: if all else failed, he needed air.  His metal lungs were external, on the back of his shoulders, protected by more cushioning than any other part of the suit.  Had they shattered, he would have been dead some time ago.

It was a humbling thought. 

. o .

One-hundred-and-ninety-two minutes after Tony Stark went under, contact.

Steve was ready to give up, heartsore with the task—no man could survive, and his own thoughts were sluggish, not quite there as he fanned his hands around, searching for something, he knew, but not entirely what—when, all of a sudden, he saw a thing flex in his peripheral.

He jerked sharply towards it, and there, there.

Swimming over, he grasped the metal hand hard enough to nearly crush the metal.  There was a startled twitch, and then, with far less force, the metal fingers curled around his own.

Oh my God.  Oh my God.

Elated, horrified, and relieved, Steve nearly drew breath, squeezing the hand urgently, trying to communicate, I’m here, I’m here, I’m coming back, before pulling away.  The hand grasped, held onto, panicked.

I’m here, I’m here, I’m coming back, he repeated, squeezing and then tugging away, and it broke his heart, the way the metal hand strained after him.  He looked around—find a landmark, find a landmark—and feared his lungs would burst before he saw a huge protrusion of wire, thought, Good enough, and lunged for the surface, kicking mightily.

He broke the water, gulped frantically, and dove again, gripping the hand powerfully and pulling.

The hand clung to him at first and then, abruptly, went limp.  Terror electrified Steve, and he tried again, pulling, but the weight of the rock—

God dammit, of course.

He repeated the same pattern as before—here, here, don’t go—before breaking loose, swimming to the edge of the rock.

It was trapped under more rock.  Dammit.  He braced his hands on it, feeling a wave of giddiness and dread.  I can’t lift this, he thought, and tried, anyway.  He heaved, using the water to his advantage, planting his feet, but the rock would not give an inch.  It was embedded in the ground, he realized, despairing and furious, that he could get so near and be so thwarted.

He tried from all kinds of angles, approaching every boulder and heaving, heaving, trying to break the suction between the silty bottom and the unmoving concrete.  He even tried punching his way through a section, anything to get it loose, but the concrete was stronger than he expected, and his hand broke. 

Furious at himself, he returned to the searching, desperate metal hand, grasped it with his one good hand, and squeezed it urgently, not caring what message he sent as he heaved for the surface.

Help.  He needed help, he needed—he couldn’t do this alone, he realized, he needed tools, a shovel, anything, and he bellowed, Help! and only a thin cry came out, barely a word.  Dragging himself shoreward, unconsciously aware of what he needed, he scraped onto the sand and fell on it, dropping on his bad hand and heaving water from his belly.

He didn’t even know how much he’d swallowed until he’d vomited his throat sore, struggling to catch his breath in between.  It was very near sunset, the reddish tint on the horizon the only glimmer of the passage of time.  Straining his vocal chords, he tried to bellow, to scream, to make any kind of sound project across the distance.

Nothing came out.  Strangled, he did the only thing that made any kind of sense.

He gulped down a handful of breaths and plunged back into the water, refusing to give up.

. o .

After his last mission resulted in two deaths, they had put Rogers on medical leave. 

Fury had hoped it might even do him some good, to take him out of the field.  Rogers had been killing himself, after New York, like the only way he could find his place in the world was to brand it into his identity. 

Pierce thought working him to the bone would clear his mind, but Fury saw it for what it was.  A coping mechanism—and an ugly one.  The twenty-first century was a strange new world, but throwing Steve Rogers into deep water wasn’t the way to acclimate him.

Maybe Pierce just wanted to see if he’d break, the invincible man.  But Fury didn’t play around with lives the way Pierce did.  Fury issued second chances, forgave, even forgot, when it suited him.  He preferred to work with people, rather than shaping them into who he needed them to be.

He liked to think it would save more lives than it took, in the end.

. o .

Tony clung to the hand, gripping it as firmly as his armor would allow, grateful, terrified, relieved.

Who are you? a part of him had space to wonder.  He amused himself imagining the two of them, scuba diver and Iron Man suit, two aliens separated by the insurpassable space between them.  Why did you come?

Tightening his grip, he thought desperately, Don’t go.  If someone had found him, then there was a chance he would live—and he couldn’t let that chance go, no matter how desperately his breath came, how heavy it was.  He would beg to be rescued. 

He did.  Please.  Don’t leave me.

I’ll be good.  I’ll be good.  Please.

I’ll be good.

. o .

The first divers entered the water nearly two hundred minutes after Tony Stark went under.

No sooner had they slipped into the surf than a crack of thunder and lightning lit up the skies.

To his stunned audience, the god of thunder growled, “Take me to Stark.”

. o .

Steve held on as tightly as he could.  And he prayed.

I need help.  Please.  Someone.  Anyone. 

That was, very approximately—his mind was swimming, hypoxic thoughts losing all sense of time, except the twenty-two-minute, three-point-four-five second mark had long since passed—the moment when a light appeared in the darkness.

It was huge, almost alien in its dimensions, more animal-like than machine.

He turned towards it, blinded himself on it, aware that if it was there to do him harm, the last place he wanted to be was right in front of it.

He curled around the metal gauntlet, shielding it.

The light stayed where it was.

A shadow approached him, indistinct.  Hands landed on his shoulder, tugged briefly.  He held steady as a stone, and before he could quite understand that the animal beside him was not an alien but a human being in some kind of suit, Thor landed on the ground nearby.

He actually glowed.  It took Steve a fuzzy moment to realize it was Mjolnir’s light.

The hands tugged at Steve’s shoulder again.  The metal hand in his own gripped tighter as Steve’s own grip went loose.

If he—floated off into the deep, then Thor would take care of it, surely.

. o .

Midgardian water was heavier than anything on Asgard, but Thor—was—mighty. 

. o .

When Thor emerged, carrying Iron Man in his arms, Pepper Potts breathed again.

. o .

The whole world breathed a sigh as Tony Stark was reported to be alive—in intensive care, but alive.

No one was more relieved than Colonel James Rhodes, who sat at his bedside, ready to shoot the first person to enter the room who came with grave intent.

. o .

It was Nick Fury who asked, not for the first time, “Where the hell is Rogers?”

“Don’t you have a tracker on him?” Pierce replied, sounding weary of the whole incident.  To be fair, it was officially after-hours—the Secretary wasn’t used to all-nighters like Fury was.

Shaking his head, Fury admitted, “He pulled it off.”

“Pity.”  Looking at the television advertising the good news about Stark, Pierce said congenially, “I’m sure he’ll turn up.  He always does.”

. o .

“What do you mean, Steve Rogers was here?” Sharon Carter asked incredulously, starving and gratified that things had gone half as well as they’d gone, with no small assistance from Thor.  “I’ve been on grounds since—”

“Find him,” Fury ordered, hanging up.

Sighing, Sharon did the rounds, quizzing the first responders who had stuck around, the media, her fellow agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  Nobody had seen anyone resembling Rogers’ description.

Feeling more anxious than before Fury’s call, Sharon returned to the scene of the crime, navigating the cliff with the dexterity of a professional rock jock.

Two divers huddled around a body.  Confused and alarmed, Sharon drew her gun.  “Step back,” she ordered.

Both divers turned to her, one reaching automatically for his belt, unaware that he didn’t have a gun on it.  Sharon shot him first—in the leg, she wasn’t an idiot.  He could be useful, later.  Heart pounding, she turned to the other guy and asked sweetly, “You wanna be next or you wanna get those fucking hands up?”

He was two seconds, too slow, gawking at her: she shot him in the throat, and he fell, gargling in pain.

“Step back, get down,” she ordered the survivor, pointing her gun at his throat.  He limped aside, cursing.  She got a clear look at the body, and—

God, damnit.  That was Steve Rogers.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

“Hail Hydra,” the survivor sneered, crushing something between his teeth.

Well, Sharon thought, heart pounding, that was an answer.

Pumping Captain America’s chest, Sharon huffed, “C’mon, Rogers, c’mon.”  She didn’t come here to lose a goddamn Avenger.

. o .

With a gasp, Steve Rogers lurched back to life, sitting up and coughing up even more seawater.

“Oh, thank God,” a woman said, as he retched and coughed and tried to breathe in the middle.  “Thank God.”  Then, before he’d finished refilling his lungs with air, she chivvied him upright with surprising strength and ordered, “C’mon, soldier, we’re outta here.”

Here was a sandy shore by the sea, darkening with nightfall.  He wobbled, nearly fell on his face.  Disoriented.  She ducked under his arm and forced him to follow her.  He caught sight of a stranger on the shore, croaked out a word that was meant to be who is that and only succeeded in stumbling over his own water-logged shoes.

“I’ve got him,” the woman was saying.  “Could use a little help, here.”

He had so many questions and a pounding headache.  He surmised that he’d nearly drowned, and that he’d failed his mission, if he was being extracted.  What the hell was the mission?

Slipping along after the woman, he blinked as she pointed him at a cliff-face and told him to climb.

Easy enough—except the pressure on his left hand was staggeringly painful, and movement at all seemed frankly overwhelming.  He heaved in a breath, forcing himself to ignore the throbbing, red-hot injury and climb.

If they needed to get out, there was no time for questions, no time to explain.  It wasn’t a particularly difficult climb—he could have done it with one hand, and all his wits about him—but he was exhausted by the time he reached the crest, too exhausted to stand.  He simply crawled onto the grass and laid there, heaving for breath until the woman appeared, told him, “You’re a fast climber,” like she was surprised, and then hauled him once more to his feet.

Embarrassed at how much he was leaning on her, he tried to support his own weight as she chivvied him along.  You’ve done worse.  You’ve done harder.  Pull it together.

A sense memory came back to him, someone pulling him away from the light, holding his arms behind his back.  Even as he tried to thrash loose, his movements were slow, impeded.  Water was heavy, and he was tired, and neither set of hands would let his arms go. 

Something had gone wrong, he sensed, but not particularly urgently.  Something had gone wrong, and that was fine, because it was rare in life or war to get everything he wanted, and at least they’d gotten—

Tony.

He broke free in an instant, looking around, scanning towards the ocean, then the circus, thinned to a handful of onlookers, watching him.  Shit.

“Cap,” the woman said, and then, louder, “Cap!” as he bolted into the hills, very aware that he could not be spotted, because—because—

He’s safe.  They’ve got him.

He froze at the property line, well past the circus, and, huffing, the woman caught up to him.  “Listen to me,” she said.  “You are in danger—”

“Where’s Tony Stark?” he asked instead.

. o .

Tony awoke warm, dry, and miserable.

Every inch of him was sore.  “Take it easy,” Rhodey said.  He let out a breath, then pawed blindly in his direction, barely lifting his own hand.  Rhodey grasped it immediately.  “Everything’s okay.”

Everything’s okay.  The words were a balm.  He wanted to weep, to laugh, to leap to his feet in gladness.  I’m alive.  The invincible Tony Stark.

Invincible Iron Man, more like, and questions bubbled to his consciousness even as he became deeply aware of how tired he was, how sore and cold, despite the warm blankets.  “Where?” he managed.

“You’re in the hospital,” Rhodey said, his voice pained but relieved.  Tony squeezed his hand gently, reassuringly.  He wondered, almost idly, if it wasn’t Rhodey’s hand in the darkness.  “It’s okay now.  It’s okay.”

It couldn’t be, if he was in the hospital, he wanted to prickle dryly, but it seemed like too much exertion.  He scanned the room.  “Pep?” he whispered.

“Waiting with Happy.  They wanted to give you space,” Rhodey said, holding onto his hand like he would not be pried from his chair, and Tony smiled his eyes closed.  He was alive, and in good hands.  He was alive.

Tilting his head to look at Rhodey, he winced as it tugged on the skin on his neck, bandaged but not stitched—thank God, he thought, shivering.  Rhodey tugged the blanket higher with his free hand, nearly to his chin.  “Don’t do that,” he ordered.

“Do what?” Tony rasped back, unable to help himself.  “Terrorize the terrorists?  S’like you don’t even know me.”

Sighing, Rhodey stood, grabbed Tony’s remote—Tony made an affronted noise—and pressed the call button.  “Shut up.  You’re on rest, anyway.  Pretty sure Happy’s supposed to be, to look at him, but he might shoot anything that tries to remove him from the lobby.”

Happy.  Happy.  Pain lanced through Tony’s chest at the memory, of a man lucky to be alive when so many others were incinerated, a man badly wounded.  “He okay?” he rasped.

“Yeah.  You seen him?  He’s ready to shoot someone over this.”

“Don’t shoot me,” Tony murmured, but it came out, Don’ shoo’ me, and he knew he was slipping under again.  He squeezed Rhodey’s hand to ground himself.  “’m sorry.”

Rhodey lifted Tony’s hand to his own forehead for a moment, holding it there, eyes shut.  The unexpectedly emotional display caught in Tony’s chest.  “Y’okay, ‘bear?” he murmured.

“I lost you once,” Rhodey said, and then seemed unable to finish.  He drew in a steadying breath, squeezed Tony’s hand, lowered it back to the bed.  “Go back to sleep.  You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Tony mumbled, obliging.

. o .

Given the hour and the fact that Tony was sound asleep, it would have made sense for the hospital staff to refuse visitors.  Yet they were gracious about it, allowing Pepper to step inside the room—Just for a few moments, she assured them, exhausted and aware that she had a long night ahead of her. 

The easy part—finding Tony—was over.  The hard part—fielding S.I. investors who needed to know what the hell had happened, and setting up a protection plan to keep them from being bombed as soon as they were spotted outside the hospital—had only just begun.

Still, for a few, indulgent moments, Pepper Potts stepped into the room, let the door shut behind her, and listened to Tony Stark breathe.  “Thank God,” she whispered, to herself, stepping forward and resting a hand on Tony’s knee.  “Thank God.”  She slipped a note onto the table, briefly encapsulating her own thoughts—tears were shed; don’t you dare do that again.  Then she pressed a kiss to his forehead.

He tilted his head towards her, not quite there but no longer asleep, either, as he blinked fuzzy half-open eyes at her.  “Pep?” he murmured.

“Shh,” she replied.  “It’s okay now.  You can rest.”

He hummed, shut his eyes, and fell back asleep without another word.  If he even remembered the encounter, he didn’t bring it up.

. o .

Maria mixed two Moscow Mules, in Stark’s honor.  “See,” she told Fury, who was tense as a wire.  “I told you.”

“It’s not over yet,” Fury murmured, staring at the board of information.  He accepted the Mule, anyway.  “Cheers.”

. o .

Happy was simply—well, eponymously happy to see his client, again.  It didn’t matter that he was fresh off the ventilator and battered to hell.  He was back with his principal, back to looking at golden eyes, warm and full of mischief, regarding him as he promised, over and over, that he would do his job not just to the letter but above and beyond.

No harm would befall Tony when Happy was around, Happy promised.

Exhausted but listening—it was, after all, almost two in the morning—Tony just said, “Thank you, Happy.”  And it made him feel warm, like all the misery in the moment, not knowing—not being able to act even when he did know, what was happening—worth it.

Still, he did admit, “I might turn you over to Rhodes, for the night,” and, at Tony’s regal nod, begrudgingly retreated to his own bed.

. o .

At four in the morning, Tony moaned in plaintive exhaustion, “Tell me this can wait.  I’m begging you.”

Whoever it was, they hesitated in the doorway.  Nurses didn’t—and that was what made Tony open his eyes.

Steve Rogers looked almost wolfish in his silence, lingering in the threshold.  He looked caught out, a night vision that only appeared to sleeping children.  Tony was no child, and he was not sleeping, either.  Slowly, he invited, “You gonna stand there all night?”

Steve Rogers inched further into the room.  It was hard to place his expression.  Tony had ridden the wave of euphoria after surviving his fall from the sky, but he’d caught a glimpse of a real smile on Steve Rogers’ face, and it had made him look every bit as young as his years suggested.

He looked older, now, pushing a hundred as he stepped carefully into the room.  Tony joked, “If you’re here to kill me. . . .”  And then trailed off as the weight of those words sunk in.  “It was you.  In the water.  Wasn’t it?”

Rogers—Steve; he’d saved Tony’s life, he got to be a first name in his book—let the door shut behind him, quiet, gentle.  More apparition than man.  “Somebody,” he began, his own voice wrecked, and then, pushing on, quieter but just as stubborn as always, a distinctly Brooklyn accent creeping into his tone, “wanted to kill you real bad, Stark.”  He sat down in the chair against the wall, keeping his distance.  “Why’d you do it?”

Intimidated by the distance between them, Tony said, “What, we can’t hold hands, anymore?”  He’d meant for it to be more jesting, but it was four in the morning, and he felt painfully alone, again.  Rhodey wouldn’t be far, but the immediacy of being tethered to a hospital bed, cold and alone in the dimly lit room, hit unexpectedly hard. 

He didn’t expect Steve to tolerate his jibe.  He expected Steve to snap at him, to tell him to take something goddamn seriously.  Everyone knew that Steve Rogers was not a man to be messed with: he could handle just about any foe in the field, a reputation that somehow included Norse gods—so long as divine intervention was forthcoming.  No matter how human he looked, there was something of the divine in Steve Rogers’ veins.

Something angry, too.  He was quicker to anger than anyone on their team, prone to lashing out when problems got hard.  He didn’t laugh, didn’t joke, didn’t seem to see the humor in life, like it was all life-or-death, all the time.  Tony asked him, “Isn’t it exhausting?”

Steve frowned at him, not sure what he meant.  “Being a prick all the time,” Tony clarified.

Steve blinked once, absorbing that.  Then, shrugging, he said with unexpected dryness, “You tell me.”

A long beat hovered in the air between them.  Then, shamelessly, Tony laughed.

Steve—grinned.  He ducked his head, trying to hide it, but Tony didn’t miss it, and, yes—it did make him look younger, more approachable.  “Yeah,” Steve said gruffly.  “I’m a real tough guy.”  Flicking his gaze up at Tony without lifting his head, innocent and earnest, he mused, “I don’t see it.”  He lifted a shoulder forlornly.  “You just can’t win in this world.”

Still giggling airlessly, Tony managed to curb his own amusement long enough to say, “Jesus Christ, that was so optimistic, it cured my cancer.”

Somberly, Steve asked, “You have cancer?”

Wiping a tear of mirth from his eye, Tony said, “No, you idiot.”

Expression soft, painfully open, Steve said, “I’m glad you’re okay, Tony.”

That—hurt.  Right in the sternum, where he reserved all his reservations for his father’s obsession.  Uh, we’re not friends, we’ll never be friends.  Frenemies.  At best.  Nick—God, he hated Nick sometimes, always hovering, always demanding—had given him such an unimpressed look Tony had been tempted to tear Steve a new one just to prove it. 

Tony Stark would never be friends with Captain America, because that would be a betrayal of everything he’d become to spite his father.

Well, the old man is dead.  Maybe it’s time to be someone new.

Soberly, Tony repeated, “It was you.”

“Yes.”  Simple.  Unembellished.  Strangely emotional—like he couldn’t fathom why Tony would ask, and that made a lump form in Tony’s throat.

“You didn’t have to do that.”  It was a total lie—if that hand hadn’t reached out across the darkness, Tony didn’t know where he would have gone, if anyone—God, if anyone would have found him.  Steve was a walking miracle, capable of extraordinary things, and when it wasn’t turned to spectacular violence—“Saved my life, Cap.  I owe you.”

“No, you don’t.”  Soft, wounded. 

“No, I don’t,” Tony agreed, erasing the ledger.

Steve’s posture relaxed.  He looked almost as bent out of shape as Tony, slouched in his chair.  “I’m glad you’re here, Tony,” Steve repeated, like it hadn’t weighed in the first time, hadn’t been enough.

Tony helplessly deflected: “I’m devastated, actually.  I was really hoping to see what all the fluff about the great beyond was.  So damn close.”  His voice petered to a whisper.  God dammit.

Steve stood, and, in two smooth strides, took Rhodey’s chair.  “That’s Rhodey’s,” Tony told him, or tried to.  His voice was definitely softer than he meant it to be, tired.  So damn tired.  “If I close my eyes, I’m gonna see water,” he said, beleaguered, almost but not quite amused by the tragedy that was his life.

Slowly, gently, Steve rested a hand on the edge of the bed.  Palm up.  Tony took it, gratefully, and he was with the alien again, in good hands.

“He’s called the Mandarin,” Tony explained softly, and laid it all out there, eyes slipping shut so he didn’t have to see anything in Steve’s face, only had to keep the words in order so they made sense.  “He’s been hurting a lot of people.”

And on it went: the justifications, the bitterness.  He shared perhaps more than he meant to—I don’t think my dad ever loved me, did yours love you?—and might have lost the thread once or twice, but, in the end, he made his message plain: “I really do believe I’m gonna nail this bastard to the wall.”

“I’ll help you,” Steve promised, three simple words that took ten thousand tons off Tony’s chest.  He breathed easily, offering nonsensically:

“I’ll help you.  Team that stays together, plays together.”  He yawned, big enough to crack his jaw, and added, “Dream team bullshit.”  He hauled the hand closer to himself, pressing his cheek against him, a human hand, a human presence, a miracle of existence.  Realizing what he was doing did not change his actions; it only enhanced how lucky he really was.  “Not many people, do what you did,” he murmured.

“I’d do it again.”  Steve squeezed his hand gently.  “Any time you need me, Tony.  You call.”

“Who called you?” Tony mused.  He wasn’t sure he was awake for Steve’s answer, or if Steve simply declined.  “Hm?” he pressed, yawning.

“Ms. Potts,” Steve said simply.

Tony sighed.  “Bless her.”

“Good woman,” Steve agreed.  “You got good people, Tony.”  His tone was too hard to read.  Tony squinted at him, but he wasn’t quite with it enough to make out his expression.  He looked away from Tony, just for a moment, but Tony still asked:

“Why the long face?”

“I don’t belong here, Tony,” Steve said, a weak confessional.  “It’s never gonna be—home, here.”

“And?”  Not unkindly but pointedly, Tony pressed, “So, what?  It’s not home.  It’s an alien world.  You gonna get out there and flamingle or—”

“Flamingle?” Steve repeated blankly.

Tony smirked, quietly, to himself.  “Saw it on a t-shirt once.  ‘Single and ready to flamingle.’”

“Oh, God, Tony.”  The grimace was audible.  “That’s horrible.”

“I didn’t make it,” Tony huffed.  “Be quiet.  I’m resting.”

Good as gold, Steve shut up.  Sighing, Tony said, “Not really.  You idiot.”

“I’m gettin’ mixed signals about my role here,” Steve said softly.

“You,” Tony said, squeezing his hand.  “Are here.”  He yawned, again.  “To be with me.”

And that was the earnest truth of it all.  Tony forced his eyes open, looking at Steve.  There were no more rocks between them, no more murky water.  It was comforting to overwrite the memory of Steve’s hand grasping his metal one, touchless, senseless, with the warmth of his palm, steady, real.

“Any time you need me,” Steve said, and nothing else.

No more needed to be said.

. o .

“It is good to see you again, my friend,” Thor said, clasping Steve on the shoulder.  “We will meet again soon.  Send my regards to Stark.”  And then he was gone, in a blaze of furious light.

(“Couldn’t even say goodbye in person?  Rude of him.”

“Said he had business elsewhere,” Steve replied.

“Saving other defenseless heroes from the trappings of fate?”

“Something like.”

“It’s Jane, isn’t it?”

“Who?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”)

On the phone, Natasha admitted, “It would be a lot harder if you weren’t around.”

“Well,” Steve said, characteristically brusque, “maybe that’s the way it was supposed to be.”

(“And did Romanoff send hugs and kisses?”

“What?”

“It’s like a thing.  No?  How rude.  You’d think we never almost-dated.”

“Tony—”

“I wouldn’t have said yes.  That would have been very unprofessional of me.”)

Clint Barton showed up in person with an entire bouquet.  “I’m allergic to flowers,” Tony lied.

Without missing a beat, Clint shoved the bouquet into Steve’s chest and gave Tony a very firm hug, then announced, “I’m going on vacation.”

(“Swell guy, though.”

“I thought you didn’t like flowers?”

“Can’t deny they brighten up the room.”)

Bruce didn’t make an appearance until Tony was discharged from the hospital.  He showed up at the safehouse, wearing oversized shorts and a t-shirt that said, I heart Montana.  He looked like he’d been on quite the personal journey as he asked Steve plaintively, “Is Tony here?”

“Security breach,” Tony announced, appearing behind Steve’s shoulder.  “Call me crazy, I thought you were in—”  Tony blinked as Bruce simply wrapped both arms around him and held on.  “I missed you, too,” Tony said, patting him on the back firmly.  “Hey, why don’t you—”  And somehow Steve found himself with an armful of Bruce Banner, clinging to him, like a lemur.  “Great.  You two catch up.”

Steve sighed, and let him.

. o .

Just before sunset, Tony asked, “Did I hurt you?”

Steve flexed his broken hand gently.  “No,” he said.  Then: “No.  I woulda done it again.”  He sat on the porch steps, insisting, “I woulda done it a thousand times, if I thought it’d work.”

“But it didn’t,” Tony prompted, leaning against a support beam.

“No.”  Steve was silent for a long moment.  “Woulda been easier, if it did.”

“Maybe we’re not destined for easy,” Tony said, unintentionally philosophical.

Looking up at him, Steve said, “I wish it was easy for you, Tony.”

Swallowing back a jest—what’re you, crazy?  The world has to be hard, or this wouldn’t be a fair game—Tony replied plainly, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You, too.”

Steve blinked once at him.  His eyes were very blue.

“I,” he said, very simply, “am just glad to be here.”

He meant alive.  “Me, too,” Tony replied.  He stepped forward, took a seat on the porch steps beside Steve, and exhaled.  “We got this.  It’s fine.”  Setting a hand on Steve's broken one carefully, he insisted, “You and me, pal?”  He waited until Steve turned his hand over, palm up, not squeezing but reciprocating: “We’re goddamn invincible.”