Archive of Our Own

“Imagine . . . falling into a black hole.

“You start from—a ways away.  And at some arbitrary moment, you cross the point of no return.  There is no line.  No sign.  No inkling that it’s already too late.  Once you reach this point—you have begun falling, and it is absolutely too late to stop.”

Tony Stark paused at the center of the stage, gazing out at his phantom audience, hundreds deep.  He could distinctly make out the shadows of people sitting in their chairs, but none of them had distinguishable features.  None of them had faces.  Yet he detected their subtle inward leaning, listening hungrily as he stood before them.  On stage, he began to sweat.

“You don’t know you’re falling.  It doesn’t feel like it.”  He drifted closer to the stage’s edge.  “It all happens in a static environment.  No point of reference to gauge the thousands of miles you are passing between heartbeats.”  Another, inexorable step closer.  “If you could see trees flying past you, or maybe just—watch the ground rush towards you,” he nearly stumbled forward, overcome with the vertiginous sensation of looking downward, into the crowd, halting near the edge, “then you’d have a better sense of what is about to happen to you.  You would get it.  Instead, you just . . . drift closer.

“Closer to emptiness; closer to deletion—closer to—”

Tony noticed for the first time steps leading to the auditorium floor.  He arrested himself at the very edge of the stage, looking outward at the shadow people, all of them looking back at him with an intensity bordering on obsession.  Sweat gathered under his collar; he felt vaguely ill, before them. 

“And you know this,” he told the damned, “you have experienced this,” as they listened mutely, rendered mute by the universe, “you have been deleted.  People don’t get that; there is no water at the base of this well; there is no hope for salvation.  This is an animal that will eat you alive.”

Swaying forward, Tony yearned to look back, but he could not.  He had passed the point of no return.  “The black hole isn’t true emptiness,” he rhapsodized.  “The black hole contains information, every bit of every thing it has swallowed.  It has to.”  The overhead lights were blinding, but he chose his step very carefully.

This was to be no empty demonstration.

“Nothing can come into this universe or leave it,” Tony ordained.  “It all has to go somewhere.  And that somewhere—is a cosmic graveyard.  Beyond emptiness, it is . . . diminishing.”

He took one step down. 

The individual faces suddenly lurched forward, far closer than he expected them to be, yet slightly outstretched, alien.  There were thousands of shadows scattered between apparent, former separations; millions filled the bandstands, all bodiless shadows listening desperately to his speech. 

He jolted down another step, and the faces vanished into a vast multitude of eyes. 

The last cosmic bits of information left from a celestial massacre.

“Black holes are full of the dead,” Tony said, swallowing against his own trepidation, fighting the urge to step forward, surrendering the desire to flee backwards.  It was already too late to run.  “Full of the forgotten, the beautiful things no one ever had time to lay eyes on.”

There was only one step between him and the ground floor.  A pair of heavy hands landed on his back and shoved him onto it.  With a gasp, he tumbled forward.

His heart began to beat so hard the scene blurred.  He strangled a scream, afraid of what would happen to him if he admitted he was afraid, if he let them know the power they held over him, a truly captive audience. 

They all listened to him, waiting for him to deliver their salvation. 

I am their rope.

I am not here to save you.

“Forget the cure to cancer—this is, this is more,” he said, voice trembling, yet powerful, evocative, blaring out into the darkness.  “This is the scale of stars being lost.  Imagine what our lives would be like without the life-giving sun.  Now imagine what black holes may have deleted, long before we arrived.  Eerie.”

He took one voluntary step closer to the crowd. 

Hands latched onto his sleeves, reeling him in.  No more future choice.  There is no return.  His stomach broiled.  His breath came in strangled gasps.  He had more and less time to live than he could possibly imagine, each second about to elongate beyond reckoning.

He expressed no fear in his voice.  “I ask you,” he implored, as they dragged him forward, his heels scrabbling at the carpet, feet beginning to burn underneath him, “what is a nearer glimpse of Dante’s Inferno than this?  Than to die, not on this Earth, but in this godforsaken sandbox Universe, eaten alive by its indifference, consumed wholly in the most abysmal, terrifying fashion imaginable?”  He flinched as his sleeves were ripped from his arms, yet the clawed hands did not let go, digging deeper, sinking into skin, pulling him farther into the crowd.

It’s too late to turn back, voices whispered, everywhere.

Tony Stark made his last stand.  “There is no air to rush by, no ground to push against, no way to fight your annihilation, it is just happening to you,” he cried out.  His limbs began to burn intolerably as, in front of his very eyes, they stretched unnaturally, like toffee, except they were filled with bones.  “You’ll last at least a few seconds,” he managed, straining against the crowd of monsters.  “Maybe a few hours; it’ll certainly feel like years, as you fall faster and slower than the speed of light, and in those last tenuous moments of existence, you are going to be alive enough to feel yourself rip in half—”

With a gasp, he tore in two.

And then Tony Stark awoke.

He lurched upright, heart pounding in his chest.  At first, he could not muster the courage to feel below his hipbones, certain that his legs had been torn away, that his body had already been divorced from itself.  In the back of his mind, he heard the mob whisper, It’s already too late.

Tony thrashed at the entangling sheets.  A voice nearby caught his attention before the sheets disappeared.  He flinched from the absence, then cowered as a human weight settled on the bed next to him.  “Tony,” he heard Steve say.  “Tony, it was just a dream.”

Tony shook his head frantically.  You don’t understand, you can’t understand—

“It was just a dream,” Steve insisted, sliding closer, hip pressed against Tony’s.  Tony howled in anguish: Don’t touch it!

The weight beside him mercifully disappeared.

Tony gasped for air, chest burning with the effort. 

Alone on his island, he reached for his own legs, trembling hands digging into cloth-covered flesh deep enough to bruise.  Intellectually, he knew his limbs were still attached to him, but until he felt them, until a relieved sob hitched in his chest at the weight of them, he could not believe it.

An ice pack landed near him.  Tony flinched from it, then reached for it in desperation, gasping in relief as its sharp cold dug into his hands, more real than the mob.  He pressed the ice pack against his legs, then clutched it to his face. 

The cold was real.  The cold was proof.

I’m still here.

His shoulders slumped in mute gratitude, desperate weariness.  A wave of vertigo made his head spin on its hinges without ever moving his neck.  He pressed the ice pack against his forehead to quell the dizziness. 

For a few long seconds, he stabilized, mute and residually terrified.

At long last, shaking with the courage required to reach out into the darkness, he flicked the switch and bathed the room in soft yellow light.

Steve stood nearby, dressed for a run, looking at him with greatest sympathy, quiet apprehension.  Tony let his eyes soak in the room, relish in the reality: the mob was gone.  So were the Chitauri.

Gulping, Tony dropped the ice pack next to himself.  Steve sat down near the foot of the bed.  Tony shuffled towards him, voluntarily approaching his own gravity well, before slumping into his side.  Steve wrapped an arm around him, heart beating steadily under Tony’s ears.

For a few lingering seconds, Tony thought he might be ill, gripping Steve’s shirt for balance.  Then he exhaled as the residual pain passed, leaving absolutely nothing behind.

No marks.  No scars.  No hint of the mob that had come for him.

Steve kissed the top of his head.  Tony breathed steadily, grounded by him.  Warm, heavy, as compact as marble yet softer—malleable, capable of being bruised.  Like David come to life.  As endangered as the rest of them.  Shuddering, Tony leaned away from him, still dizzy.  He pressed a hand to the side of his head, feeling his sweat-damp hair.

“They’re going to eat me,” he said, a soft confessional that he almost hoped Steve would erase from his picture-perfect memory as soon as he said it, cringing from the cowardly.  “They’re absolutely going to eat—”  He swallowed against the shout that wanted to rise out of him.  It was just a dream.  It was just a dream.  He had nothing to fear, if his demons stayed in his head.

Shaking, he stood up, paced the room.  Steve stayed where he was.  Tony wrung his hands, squeezing the blood out of them, yearning to get his hands on the mob. 

Nothing curbed the terror of the mob.  Even nightmares of dangling upside-down in wells hadn’t clung to his skin the same way, although the vivid reminder of drowning in millimeters hardly put him at ease.

Pressing both hands to his temples for a moment, he willed himself to calm down.  He could not let them get to him.  Or they would eat him alive.

“I need—something,” he said, already moving towards the door.

Steve ghosted after him, slightly more than human.  (People floated the word inhuman around, describing the supernatural, but Tony had seen “inhuman” and it wasn’t Bruce Banner, it sure as hell wasn’t Steve Rogers.) 

When Tony yanked open the kitchen drawer, Steve was already there, a shadow he didn’t want to shake.  Steve stood by as Tony pulled out a bottle, shook out a couple diazepam pills.  Tony dry-swallowed them, then gripped the counter for a few seconds, willing himself to get out of his own head, to stop thinking about the damn mob.

“I’m not wrong,” he muttered, shifting his grip on the counter, shifting his grip on the situation, from a white-knuckled stranglehold to a cold, deliberate offensive.  “The threat is—”  He drew in a breath, then finished, “Real.”

Steve regarded him steadily, unblinking.  “Which one?”

Tony latched onto him in a hug.  Steve was stiff for a moment, confused, then, consciously, relaxed, projecting everything is okay energy.  Tony soaked it in, let it sink into his skin like the sedative, cooling the heat of the nightmare to a stillness he could assess, fight.  “I love you,” he told Steve, almost blandly, like, My favorite color is aquamarine, actually, but ‘blue’ is encompassing.

Steve pressed a wordless kiss to his temple.  “Come sit with me,” he murmured, and so they went to the couch by the windows, and sat.

It was just before sunrise.  They watched the jet black sky yield to midnight blue, then slowly warm up to its iridescent orange.  Tony felt quiet, not tired but wrung dry.  The diazepam always made his head a very still and empty place, like a museum.  He could still find what he needed, but the vibrant noise of his garage was absent.  It was a peaceful place, in the morning light.  It felt a bit like being remade, reminded that he was the universe experiencing itself.

The universe is an awful place, he thought, even though he was comfortable, lounging beside Steve, who was restless as a jaguar, never quite perfectly still.  “I don’t trust Fury,” Tony murmured, just to gauge Steve’s reaction.

Steve drew in a steady breath, then sighed it out.  “His heart’s in the right place,” he said evasively.  “That means something.”

“Accidents that lead to good outcomes are still accidents,” Tony warned.

Steve digested that.  “My gut feeling says he’s good,” he said at last.

“We’re placing eight million lives in the hands of a gut feeling?”  Steve looked at him pensively.  Then his expression smoothed, from open curiosity to quiet realization.

“He fought them,” Steve said levelly.  “He tried to stop them from launching the nuke.”

“And failed,” Tony pointed out.

Steve sighed a little.  “And failed.”  He squeezed Tony gently, arm curled around him.  “You didn’t.”

“As I am . . . helpfully reminded, often and at my expense,” Tony said, sliding down so he could hook his legs over the arm of the couch, rest with his head propped up on Steve’s leg.  He shut his eyes, not sleeping, merely shutting out the light.  “You ever dream?” he asked, an honest question.

Steve rested his palm on Tony’s shoulder lightly.  “No,” he said, surprising Tony, both with the honesty and the answer.

He peered up at Steve, his face difficult to read.  “Must be nice,” Tony said.

Steve made a so-so nod.  “Good and bad,” he evaded.

“You miss it?”

Steve swiped his thumb back and forth against Tony’s shoulder.  “No,” he decided.  “No, I don’t.”  He looked out the window, blinked once.  “Nothing good ever came of ‘em.”

Tony nodded in agreement, shutting his eyes again, dragging Steve’s hand off his shoulder so he could hold it instead.  He squeezed it tightly, more for his own assurance than anything.  You are real.  “Gotta say, I have—the mother of all bad feelings about S.H.I.E.L.D.,” he said.  “Tell me why.”

Steve was silent.  “Hm?” Tony prompted.  “I didn’t catch that.”  Diazepam—Valium—made him less afraid, too.

“I trust the Director,” Steve said at last, an answer and a non-answer.

Tony hummed.  “So, you’re saying I should sleep with one eye open.”

“No,” Steve said, calm and self-assured.  “I’m saying, I trust Nick Fury.”  He could afford to, Tony thought, smoothing a thumb over the back of Steve’s hand.  Steve had already died once.  Tony had shaken hands with the Reaper, but he had never taken a seat in that mortal crowd, never known what it was like to be voiceless, faceless, for nearly a century. 

Tony would have been a little out of sorts at his own revival, but despite his best efforts, he couldn’t draw out the old Steve Rogers.  S.H.I.E.L.D. had resurrected him; they had not brought the old Steve Rogers into the modern world.  He was like a walking ghost, and Tony felt equal parts comforted and unsettled by him, a walking reminder of everything he dreaded.

“You trusted my dad,” Tony said.

“I did.”

“My dad was a bastard.”

“Hitler was a bastard,” Steve responded.  “Your dad was—”

“That must be exhausting,” Tony murmured, “zero to sixty.  All-or-nothing.  It ever get tiring?  Of course not—you don’t get tired.  I’m gonna be honest, I don’t get it—why you do it.  I wouldn’t.  I’d go out in a blaze of glory.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Steve defused calmly.

“No, I would,” Tony insisted.  “Sometimes, you just gotta take the loss.  That’s the sane response.  What’s wrong with you, huh?”

Steve pressed down on his shoulder, then relaxed.  Tony waited him out.  Steve finally indulged him: “I never knew when to quit.”  Another, briefer pause.  “You wouldn’t.  Give up.  You think you might.  Faced with the unbearable, you might want to.”  Tony blinked up at him, but he was looking out at the city, looking out at a different crowd as he said, “But that’s not our choice.  We play the cards we got.  And that’s all we got.  All we can give.”

Tony squeezed Steve’s hand.  Steve didn’t look at him.  “You know what really pisses me off?” Steve murmured.

“Pineapple on pizza?”

A furrow appeared between Steve’s brow, but he just shook his head and said, “Anybody was supposed to take the loss, it shoulda been me.  I’m the only one with nowhere to go.”

“Not true,” Tony said, squeezing his hand.  Steve set his jaw.  Tony squeezed his hand as hard as he could, barely turning the knuckles white.  “I’m serious.  You think we don’t need you?”

“You pulled me here,” Steve said, grimacing a little at his own word choice but plowing on, “least I can do is earn my damn keep.  I’m right here.”  He looked down at Tony, who blinked back at him innocently, and sighed.  “It’s stupid.”

“Not really.”  Tony shrugged a shoulder, brought Steve’s hand to his lips for a kiss.  “I’d do the same thing.  It’s the only way home, right?”

Steve frowned at him, unblinking eyes still full of open wounds, just beneath the surface.  He wasn’t like the ghosts at all; he really had been frozen, one foot off-stage, fighting against the pull of gravity until somebody yanked him back. 

Sometimes, Tony himself couldn’t believe how quickly they’d pivoted from animosity to—calling it deep friendship seemed like an evasive maneuver, but it also felt like the perfect description of their immediate, easygoing dynamic.  There was something comfortingly open about Steve, for all his sharp edges.  And he yearned, like Tony—for a greater life than the one he was living.  They bonded over the intrigue of the team, among other things.  It worked for them.

“Home ain’t a place,” Steve said unexpectedly, looking out the window, “it’s a people and a time.”

“You read that on the back of a cereal box?”

“Fortune cookie, actually,” Steve deadpanned.

Tony smirked, hiding it behind Steve’s hand, warm in his own.  Then he shut his eyes, basking in the morning light, a gift for the passengers on Spaceship Earth, the friendliest little rock in the cosmos.  “I have gazed into the abyss,” Tony recited, “and it has gazed back at me.”

Steve squeezed his hand and said nothing.

. o .

Tony awoke drooling into a pillow.

Scrunching up his nose, he quickly realized pillow was the wrong word, muffling, “I’m sorry,” against Steve’s leg, so the admission could not be used against him in a court of law.

Steve just dropped a hand gently onto his head, scratching lightly.

Keeper, that one.

Tony squinted up at him, holding an open book and incongruously dressed to impress, which made the drooling about five percent more embarrassing.  Didn’t really matter—Tony’s embarrassment threshold was unusually high, as social shame was just code for inside-the-box thinking, which he detested.  Still—guy was Captain America.  Tony reserved a little shame.

“Time is it?” Tony muttered.

“0700 hours,” Steve replied, gaze on the book, which, Tony realized, was written in French.

Tony raised both eyebrows until, still without looking away from his book, Steve clarified, “7:35.”

“Thank you.”  With a groan, Tony heaved himself upright, reaching up to cup the side of his head, unexpectedly dizzy.  Steve looked at him briefly, then looked down at his book when Tony scowled.  “I’m a god for my age,” he told Steve.

“Not that old,” Steve muttered back, turning the page.

Tony swiped the book from him, aware of the fractional resistance before Steve released it.  “Candide?  Really?”

“Light reading,” Steve said dryly.

Tony shook his head, snapped the book shut, and tossed it back.  Steve caught it neatly, then set it on the table next to him.

“Jacques said I should read it,” Steve said.

Tony asked, “Who’s Jacques?” while pacing towards the kitchen area, desperate for caffeine.

“Guy I used to know,” Steve replied, which only made Tony pause a moment before he resumed his hunt.

“Sounds like every guy you know,” Tony told him, aiming for light.

Steve said, “Something like.”

Tony stared down at the coffeemaker, willing it to go faster.

“You okay?” Steve prompted.

“Uh, no, no questions at this time, Your Honor,” Tony said, sighing with relief as, two whole minutes later, he got to pour out a piping hot cup of coffee.  “Okay,” he said, turning to face Steve again, “fire away.”

Steve eyed him, looking for some give, some tell, but Tony felt—good.  Not great, definitely not that, but how many forty-two-year-olds with a magnetic heart parasite felt great?  “I shouldn’t be alive,” he told Steve, intending it to be casual but sounding serious instead.  “I shouldn’t be here.  This,” he tapped the metal parasite informatively, “isn’t for show.”

Steve frowned grimly.

“I shouldn’t be alive,” Tony said again, shaking his head before taking a ginger sip of his coffee.  Heaven.  If space was hell—this was heaven.  He sighed with pleasure.  “You know a bit about that,” he acknowledged.

Steve replied, “Not like you.”

“No,” Tony agreed, slipping around the counter, perching on a chair at the bar.  “But you, mister, were supposed to be dead.”

“I was dead,” Steve corrected.

“Your heart beat three times per minute,” Tony replied.  “That’s not dead, that’s torpor.”

“What’s torpor?”

“I just told you,” Tony replied, gulping down a mouthful of hot coffee.

Steve looked at him a moment longer, expression full of doubt, before looking pointedly at his phone and its many answers, perched on the table.  “You should really keep that on hand,” Tony told him.  “This is the twenty-first century.  There’s no such thing as off-the-clock.”  He grinned laconically.  “I’d call it the ‘the best thing since sliced bread’ but you pre-date sliced bread.  Wow.  What’s the opposite of cradle-robbing?”  Wincing, he added, “Don’t answer that.”

“Grave-robbing?” Steve answered anyway, arching both eyebrows at him.

Shaking his head emphatically, Tony pointed at him and said, “See, this is why I told them to leave you in the ice.”

“Thanks,” Steve said, dry but almost warm.  Appreciative.  Steve was the kind of guy who would rather Tony shoot him in the foot with a nail gun than not express his true feelings.  Odd duck, that one, but a keeper.

“Technically, you aged . . .”  Tony squinted.  “What’s your resting heart rate?”

Steve smiled an impish smile.  “Classified.”

“Thirty.”  Steve rolled his eyes, stood, and started to walk away.  “Twenty-eight.  Twenty-six?”

“You’ll get there,” Steve assured him.

Tony pouted after him.  “You’re leaving me?”

“Some of us have day jobs, Stark.”

Affronted, Tony said, “Fuck you, I am my day job.”

Steve ambled off-course, circling the table before halting in front of him, prim and proper in his civilian uniform.  “Something you wanted to say, Stark?” Steve prodded.

Tony set down his coffee mug deliberately.  “Yes,” he said, then grabbed the front of Steve’s shirt and pulled him in for a quick kiss.  “Rogers.”

Steve lingered in his airspace, nosing his cheek.  “Call me,” he offered openly.

“On your nonexistent phone,” Tony agreed, shutting his eyes, firming his grip in Steve’s shirt.

He could almost hear Steve roll his eyes.  “You know how to reach me,” Steve reminded.

Tony let out a mock beleaguered sigh, then pulled him close, burying his face in Steve’s chest.  “I hate your day job,” he muttered.

“I know you do.”

“Go,” Tony grumbled, giving Steve a push that wouldn’t have moved him if Steve didn’t let it.  Theirs was a careful dance.  Until Steve Rogers, Tony had never met a person he could not move, in some way.  It was part of the appeal, he could admit—Steve couldn’t be bribed.  “I love you,” he offered, squinting up at him, the sunlight a little overwhelming, in full force.

Steve kissed his forehead, a handy excuse to shut his eyes against the sun, and when he finally opened them, Steve was gone.

Tony sighed, shaking his head to himself as he spun on his chair.  “J.?  What’s his resting heart rate?”

J.A.R.V.I.S. responded from the counter: “That’s classified, sir.”

Tony groaned.  “It’s for science.”

. o .

Each night, the mob returned.  “You’re gonna do great,” a faceless stagehand informed him, hands on his suit, adjusting it for him.  “Just go out there, give them what they want.”

Be myself? Tony thought, reaching for the tie that was too tight around his throat.

“Really sell it,” the stagehand insisted, tightening his unpinned sleeve.  “Make sure they know this is for them.  All right?  They need this.  You need this.”

I need this.  They need this.  Tony looked around, trying to figure out what he needed, but the faceless figure shoved him forward, and he was back in the spotlight.

He looked around warily, feeling his heart pounding in his chest as he tried to find what he was supposed to need to badly.

Impatience built in the crowd.  Tony felt his anxiety racket up, knowing they would devour him if he did not entertain them, searching the empty room for answers.  “I know you’re all wondering why I’ve brought you here today,” he began, as he turned and spotted a loaded gun on the stage in front of him.  He swallowed hard.  “Well, I’m here to teach you what a one-in-a-million chance looks like,” he said, leaning over and picking up the gun.  It shook in his hand.  The mob whispered impatiently.

Ever the showman, Tony lifted the gun, pressed it to his own chin, and fired.  He winced, but the crowd began to cheer.  “That’s one.”

Tony was up to seven when he felt hands on his arms, half a second before awakening.

He inhaled sharply, twisting away, and choked on his breath, covering his chin with both fists, desperate to protect himself.

Steve’s hands settled on his shoulders, then retreated.  “I can’t breathe,” Tony wheezed, crushing himself into a ball, more terrified of the mob than he was of his own shadow.  “I can’t—”

The blanket disappeared first.  Then strong arms pulled him upwards, locking him against Steve’s chest, protecting him from the faceless stage manager, the faceless mob.  He kept both fists pressed to his chin, the feel of metal underneath his t-shirt enough to drive him half-mad with frustration, shaking hard with leftover adrenaline, rage.

“Fucking fuck,” he declared, emphatically and furiously, shaking in Steve’s arms.  “I’m so goddamn sick of this.”

Steve held onto him, let him rage against the universe from the safety of his armor, better than a suit because they could freeze the suit, lock him in and approach, peering in at the monster in the metal suit. 

He shuddered at the memory, twisting to bury his face in Steve’s shoulder, anything to get away from the fucking mob.

. o .

“Modern medicine is a miracle,” Tony said, lounging on the floor at two in the morning with a pillow behind his head, both feet up on the couch, watching Steve, who was sitting on the floor nearby, bent over his sketchbook, quiet and somehow harried.  “Hey.  Focus up.”

Steve flicked a glance over at him, judged his condition not to be serious, and returned to his sketchbook.  Huffing, Tony folded his arms over his chest, wincing at the metal parasite, and grumbled, “The service around here is terrible.”

Steve’s pencil traced quiet patterns against his notebook.  Despite himself, Tony felt his eyelids growing heavy.  That would be the Valium, he thought, stifling a yawn.  “Build a suit of armor, they said,” he muttered.  “It’ll make you safer.  It will not,” he said, lifting his hand to drive his fist into it, making a point.  “The only thing that’ll make you safer is a key to oblivion.  That make sense?”

Steve kept sketching, not bothering to look up.  “Right,” Tony said triumphantly, shutting his eyes against the dizziness.  “Shoulda brought Bruce.  He’s a night owl.  He doesn’t go to bed ‘til sunrise.  That’s God tier.”

“Be quiet,” Steve recommended, his tone so unreadable Tony couldn’t tell if it was a rebuke or a suggestion.

Tony said, “My tower, my rules.”

Steve got up.  Tony whined, “Hey.”  He looked over as Steve slid the balcony door open and stepped outside, shutting the door behind himself.

Pouting, Tony looked at the ceiling, then groaned as vertigo hit him.  Shuffling his legs off the couch, he grumbled and followed Steve into the night.  It never ceased to amaze Tony how cold the city could feel at night, shivering as he wrapped his arms around himself.  “Noisier out here,” he complained, dropping into a chair apart from Steve.  “Geez.”

He looked out at the city lights, the city noise, and, weirdly enough, felt more like a resident in his own skin as he took it all in.  The sights, the sounds, the smells—all of it was home, louder than any ice pack or pill.  He sighed in relief.  Steve said gruffly, “Feel better?”

Tony grunted, arms folded across his chest, holding in body heat.  “No,” he said, just to be contrary.

Steve waited him out, sketching quietly.

“Maybe,” he allowed, the closest he would come to concession.

He was actually cold by the time they returned to the great indoors, letting out a pleased sigh as the warmth blanketed him.

He tensed as Steve neared the far door.  “Where’re you going?”

Steve paused, turned to look at him, eyes soulful, almost imploring.  “To bed?”

I was only on—but Tony couldn’t remember which round he was on, anymore.  How many shots his invisible gun would fire before it would all go dark.

He shivered.  Steve’s expression softened.  “Come with me,” he offered, and there was so much wordless promise in his tone that Tony couldn’t do anything else.

. o .

Steve’s guest room was stripped to its foundation.  Even the bed had just one sheet on it.

It was such a relief not to return to his own room, no matter how safe Steve’s presence made it, that Tony almost cried.  At least if he had, he could have blamed the momentary lapse on the diazepam.

He slid gratefully into place next to Steve, back to the headboard.  The latter opened his sketchbook again.

Eyelids already heavy, Tony still managed to look at the image, displaying a broad field of dead soldiers, distant, anonymous individuals.  Then he saw the writing in the top right corner of the page.  He focused on it, instead.

1/7/45  c.2300  Mori&me

M.  Captain?

S.  Jim.

M.  We making it out of this one alive?

S.  We’re going all the way through.

Steve smoothed the page back.  It was a broken down cart, a horse tumbled beside it, with more dialogue, Falsy&me.

As Steve flipped through the pages more quickly, Tony realized they were dreams.  Awake, remembered—real.

Steve paused on a page with Stark&me, letting Tony see the sketched shield sitting on the table.

H.  This cost 10 mil. in scrap alone, my friend.

S.  You’re serious?

H.  Dead serious. Try not to lose it.

“I didn’t lose it,” Steve murmured, almost more to the ghost than the man beside him.

Tony wrapped both arms around Steve’s waist, anchoring them both.

. o .

Tony had a very strange dream. 

He was sitting on stage with his faceless manager, technically backstage but still in plain view, slightly in front of the curtain, as a caricature of Captain America paraded across stage.

He paced back and forth, back and forth, talking all the while, words Tony couldn’t quite make out.  Occasionally, he crouched, leaning forward and reaching for shadowy arms reaching back, small enough to be children.  Without fail, a long cane looped around his neck and yanked him in line, his posture slumping a little before he resumed his cheerful march, back and forth, wearing a hole in the floor.

The mob tired quickly of the routine, casting first tomatoes, and then stones at the masked showman.  He kept up the same pace, painting the floor in red, until, finally, the cane looped around the poor bastard’s neck and yanked him offstage.

And then Tony’s stage manager said, “Okay, bud, you’re up,” and Tony jerked awake just before he was shoved forward.

He gripped a pillow that smelled like Steve, inhaling comforting reality over tortured non-reality.  Slowly, his heart stopped pounding.  At last, a tired sigh escaped him.

There weren’t any windows in Steve’s room—a personal choice; even Tony craved the feeling of a fortress every once in a while, hiding somewhere others couldn’t follow—but he didn’t need sunlight to confirm the hour when a digital clock told him it was just after six a.m.

Burying his face back in Steve’s pillow, Tony sighed, folded his arms over the back of his head, and stayed like that for a good long while.

. o .

“It’s called Imagery Rehearsal Therapy,” J.A.R.V.I.S. recited while Tony tinkered with the Mark VIII helmet.  “It’s often used for nightmare treatment for patients suffering from PTSD.”

“Really?”  Tony finished sliding the panel into the webbing, then turned it around to look back at him, like Hamlet.  “Only one problem with that.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t have PTSD.”

“Patients have found it is useful simply for chronic nightmare management,” J.A.R.V.I.S. said.  “A way of—”

“Ah-uh, that’s good.  I’m good.”

. o .

No, Tony Stark did not have PTSD.  Or anxiety.  Or paranoia.

He just dreamed he was being watched and one very slightly wrong move would lead to his slow and ugly demise.

Next question?

. o .

The worst nightmare in a while began like every other nightmare.  He was on stage.  The spotlight was blinding overhead, making him sweat.

And a sniper was perched in the rafters, gun trained on his back.

Tonight, Tony Stark had to beg for his life.

“Please,” he told the unmoving, unflinching, unfeeling crowd of monsters, “I am a good person.  I can make life-saving technology.  Medicine.”  He could feel the red dot burning a hole in the back of his neck, warning him that his fate was inescapable, no matter how badly he begged.  “I can make tools that will prolong your life.  Maybe not mine.”  It was meant to be a joke.  He was almost certain his shirt said HELP ME in huge red letters, but it was hard to read in dreams.

The mob stared back at him, unmoved.  Almost bored.

“I know this is not easy for you to watch,” he said, sweat beginning to stick to his shirt.  “I know no one likes to see a man beg for his life.  But I—”  He swallowed hard.  “I want to walk away from this.  This has to be a bad dream.”

The crowd did not budge.  The sniper’s gun clicked conspicuously.  “Oh, please,” he entreated, the words guttural in his throat.  “Please.  I’m just a human.  I don’t want to suffer.  No one wants to suffer.”

He didn’t feel the impact, but he saw the red spot appear on his shirt, slightly above his navel.  “Please,” he begged the mob.  “They’re going to kill me.  You don’t want that!”  He tried to scream it at them, but they did not react to him at all.

“Please!”

The next bullet caught him somewhere higher in the chest.

Tony Stark thrashed awake, desperate to get loose, away from his dreams.  “Don’t!” he shouted, when a hand appeared near him, a hand that was ready to yank him into a van and drive off into the desert.  “Don’t touch me,” he gasped, chest burning with the exertion, his own trembling hands fumbling to get loose.  Sweat dappled his shirt; his heart pounding like a drum.

A short eternity later, there was an odd rattling noise near him, so incongruous he reached for the source and sobbed once with relief at what he found.

He uncapped the bottle and swallowed two pills.  Then he grabbed the nearest pillow, hugged it to his chest, and screamed.

As his chest shook with sobs, a hand rubbed his back.

It’s okay, it assured with every heavy brushstroke, it’s okay.

It didn’t feel okay.  In some ways, it felt like it would never be okay again.

. o .

“Nothing’s been the same since that day,” Tony muttered, drowsy and exhausted, two very separate things, as he hugged the pillow to his chest, protecting himself.  “Nothing.

“I was fine.  I was good.  And then—”  He heaved in a breath.  Steve rubbed his back very slowly.  He sighed.  “Nick Fury had to come into my life.  And ruin it.”

He drew the pillow closer still, hunching further over it.  “Is it so wrong to want the parasite to kill you?” he whispered.  “Who wants to live with it forever?”

The hand completed its stroke and paused, just resting at his hip.  Tony sighed.  “I don’t want to die.  I never did.  I didn’t when I got blackout drunk and fell in a pool and no one even noticed except Rhodey.  I’d be a very different person,” he chuckled, mean and unhappy, “if he’d been at a different party.”

The hand resumed its slow sweep, from hip to shoulder.  He sighed.  “I never wanted to die, I wanted to live.

“I wanted to see the world, to climb mountains and run rapids and feel things you can’t get at home.

“And I did so much stupid shit,” he chuckled, not quite hysterical but not quite able to stop the laughter, either.  “I crashed a bike when I was twenty and nearly shattered my hip.  And if it wasn’t for Jarvis—the real one, not the one I made to stop being lonely—if he hadn’t forced me to go to physical therapy, I wouldn’t be able to walk straight.  Me.”  Shaking his head at his own stupidity, Tony said, “I owed that man everything.  I gave him hell.  Just like Dad.”

The hand paused again, this time at his shoulder.  “You are the best of him,” Steve said quietly.

“And the worst,” Tony muttered, forever mutinous, forever too chatty for his own good.  What was the saying—a genius knew when to keep his mouth shut?  Any fool could speak his piece?  

Tony was so tired that more breathless laughter bubbled out of him.  “A drunk, a c-coward, a mortal.  But h-he was in-capable of love.  All he ever felt was desire.  And he used that to get exactly what he wanted.

“He made people desire him.  Why?  Because he would make their dreams come true.  He made yours come true.  And what—”  Tony sat up straighter, even though his chest was sore, because he needed to look Steve in the eye, to see his face as he said, “What is the difference between a man who does good for his own selfish reasons versus a man who fails to do good just because he loves his fellow man?”

Steve looked at his own lap, hands folded loosely on his knees.  Tony spat at him, “This world doesn’t care who you could have been; it cares who you are.  That’s it, that’s the difference between a headline and an unmarked grave.  What you did.”

“You’re more than Iron Man,” Steve said, which caught him off-guard, actually stopped his tirade in its tracks.  Tony blinked at him, surprised.  His heart was still pounding, his breath still shaky.  But Steve looked up at him and said very seriously, “You are.  I know you do good.  I know you’re doing everything you can—really, I do.  But the act of doing good?  It depends on somebody wanting to do good.  And you are that guy, Tony.  You’re not the suit.  You are the guy who was willing to give up his life for this city.  That’s you.  Not the suits.  Not what you do, what you are that allows you to do that—”  He paused as Tony wrapped both arms around his neck, holding onto him instead of the pillow.  Then he turned his head a little and rubbed his cheek against Tony’s, a mute gesture of comfort that put an unexpected lump in Tony’s throat.  “I love you,” Steve said.

“I’m keeping you so hard,” Tony mumbled, holding onto him.  “Fair warning.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Steve said, like a promise.

. o .

“Who’s the kid?” Tony asked, nodding at the portrait of the dog on the wall.

His therapist followed his gaze and grinned.  “That’s Bingo.”

Tony tried hard to maintain a perfectly straight face.  “You named a dog Bingo.”

“She’s a Border Collie,” Dennis explained.

“Right,” Tony said.  “Of course.”

“Do you have a dog?” Dennis prompted.

“Named Bingo?  No,” Tony said, leaning forward, hands clasped over his knees.

“Are you considering one?” Dennis asked.

“At the moment?  No.”

“What brings you in today, Tony?”

“Are you in the habit of referring to clients by their first name, Dr. Swan?”

“Sometimes,” Dennis said.  “Would you prefer—”

“No,” Tony said.

“Very well.”

“Dennis,” Tony mused.  “Like ‘Dennis the Menace.’”

“I was more of a ‘Garfield’ fan,” Dennis admitted.

Tony said, “It’s the name, isn’t it?  Off-putting when it’s your own.”

“I just really liked cats,” Dennis said.

Tony looked pointedly at Bingo—the tongue-lolling Border Collie.

“Must we choose sides?” Dennis asked.

“Good answer,” Tony replied.  “Why do people ever come here?”

“To find answers,” Dennis replied.

“Isn’t that what Google is for?”

“The personal touch of a fellow human being can be helpful,” Dennis said.  “Just speaking your truth can make it more concrete.”

“And what if you don’t like your truth?”

“Well.  Then you can change it,” Dennis said.  “Sometimes, that’s a very kind thing to do.  To look at the same thing in a different light.  Take fireworks, as an example.  Lots of children are frightened by them; others are delighted by them.  As adults, we might know more than a small child, but we can still feel helpless and uneasy like one.  Giving back some control can be lifechanging.  Whether it’s tolerating firework displays or simply being at peace in our own homes while our neighbors set them off—we can rewrite our truth.  My truth is, blank.  My truth is, ‘Fireworks are going to harm me’ or ‘Fireworks are not going to harm me.’  The fireworks don’t change, but the way I view them—”

“The mob is going to eat me.”

Dennis paused, seeming momentarily surprised.  Tony relished off-putting people; he suspected it was at least part of the reason his own dreams were such demons.  Make your great expectations, and I will elude them.

“I know it’s not real,” Tony continued, speaking calmly, clearly, and composedly.  “None of it is.  But I believe this completely, Dennis: the mob, in my dreams, is going to eat me.”

“That sounds very hard, Tony,” Dennis said.

Tony tapped his chest over the reactor.  “This was hard.  And I got used to it.”  He flattened his hand over the metal parasite for a moment, then set his hand back on his knee.

Dennis smiled sympathetically.  “Most people would have a very difficult time getting used to it.”

“I’m not the one percent, Dennis,” Tony said, as if his private shrink needed the reminder.  “I’m the one percent of the one percent.  I’m not most people.”

“No,” Dennis agreed, and there was, admittedly, something stupidly comforting in the simple affirmation.  “No, you’re not.  And that’s been a tremendous feat that you’ve carried on for a long time.  Could you imagine a friend in your shoes?”

Tony thought of Rhodey.  “No,” he said.  “I couldn’t pay him enough.”

“Yet you’ve held up incredibly well.”

“And I would like to keep it that way,” Tony said, a little too honest, revealing the underlying opposite, because I’m not.  Happy trusted this guy.  Probably wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to reveal his cards a little too much on the first date.  He’d already said what he’d come for.  I’m not scared of this.  I need to kill these demons.

“That’s the goal,” Dennis told him, oblivious to his inner monologue.  “It’s okay if you need to fall apart, Tony.”

Tony stared Dennis down, then looked at the portrait of Bingo, unexpectedly emotional.  The dog looked—so damn happy.  Tongue-lolling joyfulness.  He’d give a lot just to be a little bit happier.  “I’m okay,” he told Dennis, a blatant lie.  “I just haven’t been myself, lately.”  He smiled, a lot more brightly than he felt.  “And I’d like to get back to that, if it’s all the same to you.”

“I want to help you get there,” Dennis said.

Tony just kept smiling.  “Good.  Then you’re hired.”

. o .

“Hey.”

Tony did not look up from his work bench.  He murmured, “Unless you brought coffee, I don’t wanna hear it.” 

Wordlessly, Steve slid a mug of coffee onto the table in front of him.  Tony stared at the mug.  “Is my book really that open?” he asked at last, reaching for it, curving a hand around it.

“You do look tired,” Steve acknowledged.

“I used to pull all-nighters all the time,” Tony grumbled, drinking deeply.

Steve didn’t rise to the bait.  You used to be younger.  It was an easy parry—so did you, big guy—but it was also a pointless argument.  Tony was tired in a way coffee couldn’t fix.  “I wanna get rid of the parasite,” he said, indicating the metal in his chest.  “Soon.  Tried to kill me once, God knows when it’ll try again.”  He drew in a sharp breath, then reached up to grip one of the arms around his neck, both of Steve’s draped loosely around Tony’s shoulders, chin resting on Tony’s head.  He set down his coffee.  “Um.”

“Hi,” Steve said for him.

Tony slouched in his chair, bringing Steve with him.  “I hate how my mind works,” Tony growled.  “My mind is a prison.

“And I am the captive audience,” Tony said, straightening, voice a little strangled.  “I am the executioner and the executed and the one who is forced to watch it.”  He pushed himself out of his chair; Steve let him go.  Pacing the lab, he gesticulated wildly, barking, “There are too many to fight, you could never dream of killing them all, and it just goes on and on.  And why would you?  They’re just people,” he whispered, one hand tangling in his hair desperately.  “They’re just people, why would you—”  Shaking his head, he gripped his shirt near his collar, granting the illusion of open air.  “I can’t kill them all,” he howled.

“. . . What if you killed just one of them?”

Tony stiffened.  He turned to face Steve, standing neatly at attention.  Gripping the metal parasite in one hand, he swallowed and asked, “How the hell would you do that?”

Steve shrugged.  “You’re a smart guy,” he said.  “I’m sure there’s something.”

Tony stared at him.  He wanted to fling words at him—you don’t know a goddamn thing about the mob—but it just seemed too damn effortful.

Shaking his head slowly, Tony turned away, returned to his workbench.  “You’re insane, you know that?  Kill one.  Give me a break.”

Steve left him alone.  Tony shook and refused to acknowledge the shaking.

. o .

“Oh, yeah, all the time,” Bruce said, unexpectedly candid, sitting on a plush chair and smiling in that pained way of his.  “I don’t—much care for falling asleep.”

Tony clicked a bottle against his in wordless appreciation.

They watched the sun set slowly.

“You tried Valium?” Bruce asked.

Tony fished around his pocket, then showed him the half-empty pill bottle.  “Don’t mix those,” Bruce said, indicating his own beer.

Tony popped the cap on the pill bottle defiantly.

Bruce sighed, then looked out the window pointedly.  “Your funeral, Tony.”

“Easy for you to say,” Tony muttered, shaking out a couple pills.

“Yeah.  ‘Easy.’  I love not getting drunk.”

Tony pocketed the bottle and stared at the pills in his hand.  His fingers shook a little.  “It’s been—seventy-two hours.”

“Most people would’ve given up at forty-eight.”

“I’m not most people,” Tony whispered.  He crushed the pills in his hand, then cursed himself for wasting them.  “Dammit.”

“I’m worried about you, Tony,” Bruce said, still looking out the window.  “Have you—talked to anybody?”  His voice hedged other than me.

Tony waved the bottle, took another gulp.  It took less to get him drunk, these days; he had to be more careful about it.  His voice was still a bit slurred from exhaustion as he said, “Honestly, who would I talk to?”

“There’s people who specialize in PTSD, Tony—”

“I don’t have it.”

Now Bruce looked at him.  “Really?”

Shaking his head firmly, Tony explained for the umpteenth time, “I came home.  I beat the shit out of my demons.  And then I killed the bastards who hurt me.”  He smirked humorlessly.  “Can’t fear what you killed with your own hands.”

Bruce stared at him.  Tony looked away, brushing powder onto his pant leg, grimacing at the result.  Should’ve just taken the damn pills.  “I’m not crazy,” he gritted out, suddenly angry about it, that the world didn’t get how no sane man could survive what had happened to him without a paradigmatic shift in his worldview. 

The world is out to get me and I can’t let it. 

But he had taken on the world, and he had won.

Why his demons were back was a question he didn’t want to ask, let alone answer.  Because he’d survived Afghanistan.  He didn’t want to face it again and again until he snapped under the pressure.

“I’m not sick, I’m not crazy, they gave me this and I killed them for it.”  He gripped the parasite over his chest compulsively, twisting the shirt around it.  On the best days, it was a neutral symbiote, keeping him alive; on the worst, it was his worst nightmare, one he couldn’t wake up from.

He threw the bottle as hard as he could across the room, not caring where it shattered, what it broke.  Fisting both hands in his hair, he hunched over his knees, a tight ball of human sinew and muscle and beating heart underneath the metal parasite.  “I can’t do this,” he made the mistake of whispering aloud, making it real.  “I can’t—I can’t do this.”

. o .

“Five days.  I haven’t slept in five days.”

Dennis frowned sympathetically at him.  “That’s a long time.”

Tony stared at the floor, unable to muster the will to meet the man’s eyes.  It was a nice tile, very neutral, very middle-class.  He lived on another planet from middle class.  “If I don’t sleep, I don’t dream,” he explained wearily, voice a little breathless.  Every exertion was costly; from the car to the office, the front door to Dennis’s room.  How he would fight the next Chitauri invasion was a question his conscious mind ignored.  He was a consultant, not a combatant.  Steve was a combatant, and Steve didn’t even dream.  He scowled.  “It’s unfair.”

“What’s unfair?”

Tony was quiet for too long.  “My life,” he said at last, leaning back, narrating flippantly, “I’m a genius.  Billionaire.  Trust fund baby.  One that used a dime to make a difference.”  Listing slightly to one side, he planted an elbow intentionally on the arm of the couch and said, “I won the genetic lottery.  That’s unfair.”

“Does it deprive you of the right to suffer?”

Tony frowned at him.

“Does it?” Dennis pressed.

Tony shook his head, not in agreement but simple bewilderment.  “I don’t follow,” he said, as near to an admission of I am deeply unwell as he would make.

“You are a human being with extraordinary wealth, yes,” Dennis explained.  “But you are still a human person.  No amount of material good—or lack thereof—can change that.  Rich or poor, you are still Tony.”

“And I am still very tired,” Tony finished for him.

Dennis asked gently, “How long do you plan to go without sleep?”

Tony smiled.  “Question of the hour.”  He felt bone-weary, leaning on his own elbow.  “I don’t know.  I’ve heard of people surviving for months without sleep.”

“Fatal Familial Insomnia.”

Tony nodded.  “You’ve done your homework.”

Dennis shrugged.  “I work with clients with insomnia.  It’s an extreme example.”

“What a way to die,” Tony muttered.

. o .

Sometime in the middle of day six, Tony simply collapsed.

He found himself in front of the mob, seated in ascending rows on a hill.  It was a different kind of arrangement—an amphitheater, as opposed to a closed auditorium.

Pacing the stone floor, Tony recited, “Auribus teneo lupum.”  He paused, looking upward—the sky was gray-blue, late in the day, or maybe extremely early.  “‘I hold a wolf by the ears,’” he explained.

A low-to-the-ground shadow blitzed across the stage, startling him, and he grasped it, lofting the wolfish outline up by the scruff, high enough for the crowd to see.  Its snapping jaws and twisting body could not reach him.  He felt both powerful and helpless as he shouted, “You cannot fear death because you cannot escape it.  Fear will not save you.”  He flung the wolf to the stone; it landed oddly, bent.  Tony knelt next to it, but the shadow did not rise.

The mob watched Tony scruff the dead wolf around its neck and hips and lift it again.  It was unbearably heavy, but he could not let it fall.  He clutched the wolf to his chest, its claws scraping his arms even after its own demise.

And then he wept.

. o .

How his enemies would prosper to see the great Tony Stark, clutching a pillow desperately.  He did not move or make a sound for a very long time, willing the shadow-wolf to live, to undo his mistake.  He was no God, casting judgment on the Earth.  He was just a man, exhausted by his lot in life.

Steve didn’t bother turning on the light, dancing on silent footsteps around him.  He had near perfect night-vision; even the slightest hint of moonlight was good enough for him to navigate a dangerous forest.  Hidden as it was against the pillow, Tony’s arc reactor provided no moonlight, but Steve didn’t need it.  He could navigate the space in true darkness, if need be.  Tony did not say a word, but he did not shy from the kiss Steve pressed against the top of his head.

It was only when Steve retreated that Tony painstakingly released the shadow-wolf pillow and rolled over, catching Steve’s shirt in a hand.  Steve slipped easily into the space beside him, still fully dressed, and allowed Tony to huddle against his bulk.  He never asked what Tony dreamed of, and Tony never told him.

Are you afraid to be seen as a monster? Tony asked himself, as Steve brushed his knuckles down Tony’s back.  Or afraid to speak them into existence?

Tony did not know.  Steve never asked.

There was peace in the quiet between them.

. o .

“What would change the narrative?”

Tony frowned at Dennis, itching for his diazepam.  “What?”

“What would change the narrative of your dreams?” Dennis repeated calmly.

Tony scratched his knee, an impatient movement.  “I don’t know.  A blue gorilla.”

“Would that help?” Dennis pressed.

“Of course not,” Tony snapped.  “What do you think?  It’s a blue gorilla, give me a break.”

“The goal is to neutralize the threat.  Changing how you perceive the story is part of that process.  So.  How would you change the story?”

“I would get rid of the mob,” Tony said.  Compelled almost outside his own conscious decision-making, he said, “I can’t get away from them.  But I want to get rid of them.  They’re—”  Judging me.  Hunting me.  “The problem,” he finished.

Dennis nodded.  “How might you get rid of them?”

Tony felt a bitter taste in his mouth.  Kill them.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “A blue gorilla.”

Dennis did smile.  “That might work.”

Blinking, Tony demanded, “How?”

“If it dispels them,” Dennis said with a shrug.  “If you can challenge their immovability, you can challenge their presence in your dream.  As long as you believe they are immovable, they will be.”

Tony pondered that.  “You want me to out-logic my dream.”

“Essentially—yes.”

. o .

Shaking his head, Tony said, “Absolute nutjob.  Know what I mean?”

Rhodey took another slice of pizza, dripping with grease.  New York’s finest.  “I’ve met one or two,” he allowed.

Tony made a face at him.  “And where were you, huh?” Tony asked him.  “World was caving in, I didn’t see you.  Whatever happened to having my back?”

It was Rhodey’s turn to make a pained expression.  “It’d be a lot easier if you’d give me a heads up, Tony.”

“Well.”  Tony brushed off his hands on a napkin, then promptly greased them up again on another slice of pizza.  “I gave you exactly as much warning as S.H.I.E.L.D. gave me.  I am not in the wrong, here.”

“Still can’t believe you did that.”

“You think so little of me?”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

“Pizza?” Steve said from the doorway.  “Didn’t know we were having a party.”

“Club members’ only,” Tony said, twisting on his barstool to face him.  Steve actually looked briefly disappointed.  Tony rolled his eyes, then waved him over, saying, “I’ll make an exception.  You’ve met Jimmy?”

Steve nodded at Rhodey.  “Colonel.”

Tony spun back to Rhodey.  “Meet the only guy in this world crazier than me,” he introduced.  “See, on a scale of well-adjusted,” Tony indicated Rhodey, who maintained his perfect composure, “to this guy,” Tony nodded at Steve, who gave him a very unimpressed look from the doorway, “I am here.”  He picked up his chair and carried it over to Steve’s side of the room, about two feet in front of him and more than ten feet away from Rhodey.  “See the problem?”

Steve stepped around him and calmly retrieved a slice of pizza.

“Yeah,” Rhodey said.  “I see it.”

With a huff, Tony picked up his chair, scowling when he saw Steve now sitting in his former spot, across from Rhodey.  “Real mature,” Tony grumbled, setting his chair down uncomfortably close to Steve’s and reaching over him for his own slice.  “We were just talking about nutcases, were your ears burning?”

“What the hell is a nutcase?” Steve asked.

Tony actually paused mid-bite, then looked pointedly at Rhodey.  “Your word, you explain it,” Rhodey said, as Steve waited on an answer, cool and patient.

Tony swallowed his last bite, sighed, and said, “Forgot I was talking to a fossil.  All right.”  Looking at Steve, he said earnestly, “It’s like a briefcase for pistachios.”

Steve looked at Rhodey, who betrayed: “Synonym for ‘crazy person.’”

“That makes more sense,” Steve said, before folding up his pizza slice and consuming it in two bites.

“I just want the record to show I am preemptively sorry if I ever piss you off,” Tony told Steve earnestly.

Steve frowned at him, reaching for another slice when Rhodey slide the box towards him.  “What for?” Steve asked.

Tony just shook his head.  Steve folded up his second slice of pizza.  “Remind me again why we haven’t enrolled you in competitive eating,” Tony asked.

Steve swallowed and asked seriously, “Competitive what?”

“You’d smoke the competition,” Tony said.  “I’m not crazy,” Tony added, meeting Rhodey’s eye before the latter shook his head in mute wonder.  “Get a whole wall of t-shirts.  I survived the Man Killer—”

“How’d it go today?” Steve interrupted, gently but in mere fact firmly deflecting the conversation.

Tony shrugged, reaching for his own pizza.  “Well.  Dennis the Menace thinks I should act out sword fights with the figments of my imagination.  Seems sane and normal and good.”  He snapped his fingers sharply when Steve and Rhodey shared a look.  “Don’t do that.  Jedi mind tricks.”

Another, briefer look passed between the military combatants in the room. 

“It’s called Imagery Rehearsal Therapy,” Rhodey started to explain to Steve, but Tony cut in ferociously:

“Dammit, I will explain it in due time.” 

They both looked at him.  Scowling, Tony shoved away from his chair, intending to stalk off, but Steve caught him around the waist.  “Let go of me.”

Steve said simply, “I can go,” and let go.

Tony frowned, straightening his shirt aggressively, looking at the two of them like the co-conspirators they were.  Then he sighed, reclaimed his chair, and shook his head.  “Don’t bother,” he muttered.  “What’s the point?  I’m clearly losing my mind, the whole world should bear witness.”

Steve slipped an arm around Tony’s waist again, this time purely for support.  “Is this a civilian thing?” Tony demanded, squinting at them.  “Is that what they teach you in boot camp?  How to handle the end of the world?”

Steve looked at Rhodey, conceding the floor.  Tony leaned into Steve.  Rhodey responded, “Yeah.  It is.  Stay in line and you’ll stay alive.  That kind of clarity keeps you going, when the going gets tough.  Doesn’t let you think about the landmine next to you.  And after you’ve done it enough times, run enough missions—it’s all second nature.  You don’t worry about what might go wrong; you just plan it out.”

“It’s strange, living outside the line,” Steve added.  “Finding a way.  But you gotta find a way.  Gotta find a way.”

Rhodey nodded in agreement.  For a moment, Tony felt like an outsider, listening in on a private conversation between the eighteen-year soldier and eighteen-month veteran.  Then Rhodey said, “We’re kind of basket cases, too.”

Steve said carefully, “You step up or you wash out.”

“Washing out must’ve been hard,” Rhodey said.

Steve kept one arm around Tony’s waist, reaching for the pizza box with his free hand.  “I wouldn’t know,” he said dryly.  “None of my kids washed.”

“How many were there?”

“Hundred and ninety-eight.”

“That’s a big company.”

Steve nodded elusively.  “Big company for a rookie.”

“Must’ve done something right.”

“Didn’t do much wrong,” Steve evaded.  “Couldn’t.  The Colonel—Phillips—was always on my ass.”  He smiled fondly.  “He would’ve hung me out to dry if I wasn’t Captain America.”

“Kind of hard to skin the national sweetheart,” Rhodey agreed.

Steve nodded in agreement, then finished his pizza.  Tony pawed around for his drink, wishing it had even a trace of alcohol in it so he could blame his lack of participation on something other than the mixed blessing of benzos.  “Started out with thirty-six men.  They kept asking for transfers.  Decorated guys begged their commanders for the opportunity to be on my team.  Not the guy with five years of experience—my team.  Why?  I had a zero-fatality rate.  Not one guy died in the first year.”

“Damn,” Rhodey said, with real respect.

“It was hell,” Steve said simply.  “Knowing how much they believed in me.”  He fell silent, then shifted away from Tony, fetching himself a beer from the fridge.  “You know, you think, it’s a blessing, to be in charge of something, when nobody has an ounce of control.  It’s not.  Because then it’s on you.  And every kid you turn away is still somebody’s kid.  It’s never fair.”

“Amen,” Tony said, toasting his own drink as Steve grimly downed the entire bottle.  “Those grow on trees.”

“I can’t get drunk,” Steve complained, a rare mention of something actually bothering him in a world always under his skin.  “I’ve tried.  Doesn’t work.”

“Not even a little?”

Steve shook his head grimly.

“Suppose it’s only fair,” Rhodey said, surprising both of them.  “Paragon of American virtue and all.”

“Tell that to St. Paddy’s and the Fourth of July,” Steve said dryly.  “Every red-blooded American celebrates with a drink.”  He pulled another beer out of the fridge and rejoined them, leaning against the opposing side of the bar in the kitchen itself.  “You guys don’t know what it’s like to live, in the mud, in the wreckage of a city.  We didn’t have air conditionin’, no hot water, no television, even.  You had a song you liked, you better learn it quick, or it was gone for good, you couldn’t just go out and put it on, any ol’ time you liked.  And nobody talks about the war.  The greatest war in history.”

“No war is good,” Tony submitted solemnly.

Some of the strength in Steve’s shoulders deflated.  “No, no war is good,” he agreed.  “No war is good.  All my kids are dead,” he said, so plain and emotionless it would have been impossible to discern what he was actually feeling.  “Every last one of them.  And you know what?  That’s life.  The whole farm burns down, you lose it all, you march farther west and move on.  I am as far west as anyone could dream of going.”  He uncapped the bottle and drank it down, too.  “And that’s that,” he finished, looking down at the empty bottle.  “That’s that.”

Tony watched him, wondering if he would ever understand a person like Steve Rogers.  If Steve understood him, his nuance, his eccentricity.  So few people even tried to keep up with Tony, smiling politely and backing away slowly once they reached their limit.  Steve never backed down.  He feared no challenge half as much as dwelling, lingering in a dead place.

“You kind of make me want to be better,” Tony admitted, grudgingly but truthfully.

Steve shrugged loosely, clasping his hands around the bottle, almost bashful in his innocent gratitude.  “Good,” he said.  “That’s all I want.  You to be the best you can be.”

And Tony understood why so many people begged to be on his team.

. o .

“Imagine . . .”

Tony Stark paused, then took a seat on the edge of the stage—back to the ever-familiar auditorium style—and finished, “Imagine we are alone together in this universe.  Just you, and me.  No one else.”

The mob coalesced into a single shadowy figure, seated in front of him, attentive but not particularly frightening.  It could be his own shadow, actualized.  He looked down on it with almost beneficent good will, you, and me, and this cold, dark, empty universe.  “No shouting voices, no screaming words,” he murmured.  “No grand revelations or cosmic uncertainties.  Just this.  Quietness.  Emptiness.  Darkness.”

The stage lights went out.  The shadow glowed almost blue, almost white, like aerogel.  “We have to experience the universe,” he said, addressing his audience of one.  “Whether we want to or not.  We have to experience thunder and lightning and all kinds of earthly storms.  We must sway with the tides and fight Earth’s gravity just to walk.  To jump.  To fly.”

He kicked his feet.  The light-shadow mirrored him.  “A great man once said, ‘We are the universe experiencing itself.’  Which man?  I haven’t the faintest idea.  But he was right.  We are made of stardust; we are the eyes and ears and wagging tongues of the universe.”

A cigar box appeared next to Tony.  It was his father’s; he could still taste the cigar smoke as he lifted the box and held it on his lap.  “We weren’t made to think small,” he said.  “Like children who would sell their souls for a lollipop.  We were made to be big.  To explore every single fathomless corner of the universe.”  He opened the box.  And pulled out a cigar.  He offered it to the shadow, which leaned forward and took it, putting it in its own mouth.  The tip began to glow a familiar orange.  “We are the entire universe.  Why would we be happy with so little?  Why should we?”

The shadow plucked the cigar from its mouth and blew out a smoky breath.  Tony said, “You aren’t so bad.  You’re like me.”

The shadow placed the cigar back in its mouth.  And then it said simply, “I’d say, you’re more like me.”

. o .

“I saw him,” Tony said, as Steve sketched.  Steve paused to look up at him.  Tony couldn’t bring himself to say the words.  My dad.  I saw my dad.  “Just a—dream,” he finished, already turning towards the door.

“I’m happy for you,” Steve called after him.

“You shouldn’t be,” Tony called back.

“Can’t stop me.”

Tony held up the middle finger, letting the door shut behind him.

As Tony stood over the coffeemaker impatiently, Steve dropped a kiss onto his clothed shoulder.  “I am happy for you,” Steve insisted.

Tony rolled his eyes, reaching up to scratch his hair briefly, affectionately.  “Your standards are criminally low, I can’t even accept them as legal tender.”

“My standards aren’t that—”

“You think dish and hand soap are interchangeable.”

Steve actually rolled his eyes, pulling away to steal the coffeepot.  “They are.”

“Animal.”  Tony pouted as he spirited the coffee away.  “That’s mine.”

Steve offered him a mug.  Tony frowned at it.  “Did you water it down?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” Steve said.  “I watered down the coffee.”

“I knew it,” Tony said, accepting the mug and leaning up to press a kiss to Steve’s cheek.  “Thank you.”

“For watered down coffee?”

Tony sighed.  “For being you.  Asshole.”

. o .

Tony awoke abruptly at his workbench, gripping his shirt over his heart.  He did not speak, fumbling to his feet, an overpowering sense of dread racing through him.  He tracked down his diazepam, swallowing two before flopping down into a chair.  His gaze darted mistrustfully around every corner.  “J.?” he finally gritted out.

“Yes, sir?”

“How many people are here?”

J.A.R.V.I.S. took no time at all to respond: “Just you, sir.”

“Check—run the scan again.”

J.A.R.V.I.S. obliged.  “Scan complete,” he announced, twelve agonizing seconds later.  “One lifeform detected.”  Paranoia gripped Tony by the throat, but then logic kicked in, and he blew out an annoyed breath.  “Were you expecting someone, sir?”

“Yes,” Tony managed.  “Where the hell is Steve?”

“He left for S.H.I.E.L.D. at one-thirty.”

“What time is it now?”

“Four-thirty.”

“Dammit—in the morning or—”

“Evening, sir.”

No wonder Steve used military time, Tony thought, shutting his eyes against the budding headache.  “Okay,” he said at last, interrupting J.A.R.V.I.S.’s would you like me to contact him, sir?  “Wait, no,” he corrected, but, as always, too late.  His phone started ringing.  Cursing colorfully, Tony said, “Dammit, J., I said no.”  He turned off his phone without answering it.

Well aware that he had minutes before an involuntary wellness check, Tony said quickly, “Blackout mode, zero translation,” and waited three precious seconds for J.A.R.V.I.S.’s confirmation, Blackout mode, zero translation engaged.  Then he cuffed on the Mark VIII and made his escape.

. o .

Zero translation—no recorded audio, no GPS tracking, no footprints in the sand to follow. 

Blackout mode was active cloaking.  The suit was a bright light on radar that he had spent years turning into a dim bulb.  The tech wasn’t perfect, but it was still a hell of a lot better than nothing.

Ninety minutes of flight time later, Tony Stark landed in rural Montana.  It wasn’t exactly the densely-populated metropolis he was known for inhabiting, and the wide open spaces gave him room away from prying eyes. 

He retracted the suit into its briefcase form, then sat on top of it and caught his breath.

. o .

Took him four days.

It took Steve Rogers four days to find Tony.

Tony was returning from a morning stroll when he spotted the motorcycle parked against a tree.  Paranoia had him draw his own gun, patrol the perimeter of the cabin, and miss what would have been a damn good headshot at the figure sniffing around his living room.  Rolling his eyes, Tony resisted the urge to fire his gun into the air, holstering it and slipping around the front of the cabin.

“You got a lot of nerve,” he told Steve, who stood at the table, flicking calmly through a newspaper.

“You’re lucky I didn’t tell Rhodes,” Steve replied, his voice very level.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Tony replied, letting it be sharp-edged and unappreciative.  “I call that ‘trespassing.’”

Steve continued to thumb through the newspaper, but there was an equally sharp edge to his voice as he replied, “You sent out a distress call and dropped off the map.  You want me to assume the best?”  He looked up, his eyes almost crystalline blue, icy.  “Coulda been rotting in a sewer.”

“And this is the first place you checked?” Tony couldn’t help but ask.

Steve’s eyes narrowed.  Tony felt his heart rate kick up.  “Yeah,” Steve said, very dryly, a bit of the meanness in his eyes creeping into his tone, “this is the first place I checked.  Fuckville, Montana.”

Eyebrows in the vicinity of his hairline, Tony couldn’t think of a proper witty response to Captain America deeming any city in America “Fuckville” before Steve went on, “You don’t get it.  Do you?”

“Get what?” Tony asked, arms folding protectively across his chest.

“Just because your friends can’t find you doesn’t mean your enemies can’t, either,” Steve snapped.

A chill crawled down Tony’s spine.  He masked it with every fiber of his being.  “Don’t lecture me on kidnapping,” he grumbled.

“Then don’t get fucking kidnapped!”

“I didn’t!” Tony said, exasperated.  “You couldn’t find me.  I think I did pretty okay!”

Steve turned away, stalked off.  “Hey,” Tony called after him.  Then: “Hey!”  He followed Steve out the back door, scrambling to keep up.  “Where the hell are you—”

Steve stopped, but he didn’t turn or acknowledge Tony.  Sighing, Tony said, “Look.”

“No.”

Well, Tony thought, dry-mouthed with trepidation, a strong start.  “I’m sorry.”

Steve stayed perfectly still, back to him.  Then he drew in a deep breath and said, “I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”  Turning, he met Tony’s eye and insisted, “But dammit, Tony, you—”  Reigning in the rest, he shook his head, said simply, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Me too,” Tony said, quickly, agreeably.  “Also glad I didn’t blow your head off.”

“I knew you were there,” Steve dismissed.

“You trust me that much?” Tony joked.

Steve’s expression shifted from serious to solemn.  “I do.”

Throat tightening, surprising himself with how glad he was to see Steve, even spitting mad, Tony said, “You’re crazier than I am.”

. o .

“Not too bad for Fuckville, Montana,” Tony said for the umpteenth time, making Steve sigh, also for the umpteenth time.

They sat in front of the fire under a silver moon.  “I never thought I’d miss the great outdoors,” Tony admitted.  “Never thought I’d miss the texture of sand.  It’s coarse.  Rough.  Irritating.  And it gets everywhere.”  He smiled humorlessly at his own joke.  Steve watched him across the flames.  “But when you—spend time in it.  Live outside, twenty-four-seven.  You miss it.  It’s like—coming back from Mars.  Everything’s different.”

Steve did smile, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth before he suppressed it.

“You’d know a bit about that,” Tony acknowledged.

Steve said nothing, looking into the fire, inviting Tony to carry on.  Tony did: “It’s the last place people would look for me.”

Steve made a so-so nod.  “Had a few other places,” he murmured, barely an interjection.

“Of course you did.”  Tony used a stick to prod the fire absentmindedly.  “I just—I need my space.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Steve cut him a look that was more exasperated than sharp.  “Your lab.  It’s more than just a garage.  It’s . . . you.”

Feeling unexpectedly exposed, Tony shrugged, then poked the still-hot stick against Steve’s boot.  “Don’t get all mushy on me.”

“You need that space,” Steve said, ignoring him.  “I want you to have it, Tony.  And this.”  He looked around, then looked up, paused for a moment.  “I missed this, too,” he admitted.

Poking at the fire again, Tony mumbled, “So, it is a universal truth that spending too much time outside fucks you up.”

Steve sighed, but he didn’t argue with Tony.

“I didn’t come here to meditate,” Tony admitted.  “I just—picked a direction.  And this is where I fell.  Landed,” he corrected, at Steve’s concerned look.  “Landed.”  He indicated the metal bracelets around his wrists.  “Suit’s getting better.  Still an Avenger,” he added, with a very weary sigh.  “There’s no unsigning up from it.  You’re in, you’re in.”
Steve frowned at him.  “You can always quit, Tony.”

“No, I can’t,” Tony said.  His tone brooked no argument.

Steve nodded once, looking into the fire again.

“We need a code,” Tony said suddenly.  “A way of . . . actually calling for the cavalry.”

Steve nodded again in agreement.

“Sort of a—blackout two,” Tony said.  “It’s a work in progress,” he sighed, at Steve’s questioning look.

“No, I think it’s a great idea,” Steve murmured.  “Just thinking about how Fury was right.”

“. . . About what?”

Shrugging, Steve picked up his own stick, nudged the log until it fell on its counterpart in a shower of sparks.  “Everything,” he said elusively.

“Can’t leave it there,” Tony pressed.  “No, I’ll think he knows my fetishes.”

Steve rolled his eyes.  “No.  No—just—he said you were a runner.”

Tony blinked at that.  “Really?”

“Mm-hm.”

“And he said I’d be stupid to chase you,” Steve went on.

“He said that?”

“‘You can’t keep people like Stark.’”

Tony prodded the fire a little.  “Well,” he said at last, “historically, he’s not wrong.”

They were quiet for a long time.

. o .

Tony awoke before sunrise.

Not particularly unusual—he kept odd hours, and he slept odd hours.  What was unusual was Steve, still as the dead, beside him.

Panic seized Tony before rational thought could say, No, wait, stop.  He shook Steve by the shoulder.

Steve scrambled.  Tony braced himself instinctively for a blow, but Steve fell out of bed, then lurched to his feet, looking around frantically.  When his gaze alighted on Tony, Tony held up both hands a little, as if to say, Hey, hey.  He couldn’t make a sound.

Steve stared at him uncomprehendingly for a very long minute.  Tony did not dare move, aware that he could not react faster than a super-soldier, and one mistake could be the very last mistake he ever made.

Then Steve blinked twice, and asked with some alarm, “Tony?”

“Yes,” Tony managed.

Steve swallowed visibly.  “Did I hurt you?”

“What?”  A little thrown himself by the encounter, Tony took a moment to sit up, then assured, “No, hey, I’m fine.  It’s fine.  Just—”  Startled me.  That’s all.  He shrugged.  “Should not have done that.”

Steve stared at him, strung like a bowstring, light on his feet but ready to pack a wallop.  “It’s okay,” Tony assured.  “Really.”

Steve looked at the door, then moved towards it.  “Hey,” Tony insisted, but Steve was already gone.  Tony heard him prowling around, footsteps heavier than normal but decidedly brisker.  He sighed privately in chagrin.  Steve often moved somnolently, but when he needed to, he could devour, he could dismantle, he could destroy in a matter of seconds.  When Steve reappeared, he looked no less harried and decidedly more frustrated.  “What’s going on?” he asked, voice heavy with the edge of sleep.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said.  “Come here,” he invited.

Steve looked at him, then the space next to him, and then the door.  He firmly shut it, then checked the window, before finally obliging, sitting on the edge of the bed like a moody big cat, barely at rest.  “Look at me,” Tony insisted.  Steve glared at the window, ignoring him.  “Look at me,” Tony repeated.

Steve scowled but obeyed.  “We’re fine,” Tony said.

Steve actually shook his head before he caught himself, more bobblehead than conscious.  Tony took a chance, reaching out and resting a hand on Steve’s calf.  It twitched out of his reach; for an absurd moment, Tony thought he really would launch himself out the window, check the entire perimeter.  Windows could be replaced, but he hated to see what untempered glass would do to a skittish super-soldier.

Running quickly out of ideas, Tony said, “Here,” and shrugged off his shirt, the blue light from the reactor much more pronounced in the pre-dawn room than it normally was.  Steve stared at it like a moth to flame, his pupils contracting against the light.  He squinted, then finally looked up at Tony’s face, asking quietly, “Tony?”

Tony nodded.

Steve looked at the reactor for another moment.  He followed the movement as Tony reached for his shirt and replaced it, covering the metal parasite.

“It’s fine,” Tony said, flippant, friendly.  “Everything’s fine.”

Steve looked at him mistrustfully, then around the room.  Nothing caught his eye.  He nodded in grudging agreement. 

“Chin up,” Tony advised.  “Today’s gonna be a good day.”

“Why?” Steve asked.

Tony shrugged.  “Because I said so.”

. o .

“Are you aware of the availability bias, Dennis?”

Dennis said, “Aware, yes.  I wouldn’t say familiar.”

Tony looked at the picture of Bingo, the tongue-lolling Border Collie, cheerful, frozen in time.  He said, “It’s what it sounds like.  You make snap judgments based on what’s available to you.  Recent.  Memorable.  Few but only.”  Shrugging, he said, “Can you believe we named our irrationalities?  That’s like naming colors on a spectrum we can’t see.  Radio-red.  Radio-green.  Radio-blue.”  He covered the parasite unconsciously.  Pang zinged across his chest, unconscious, unintentional.  He said swiftly, “I haven’t been dreaming much, lately.  What did you do to me?”

Dennis explained that actually, that was fairly normal.  “We tend to forget our dreams,” Dennis said exactly.  “Like yesterday’s newspaper.  It’s only the particularly troubling or exciting ones that stick with us.”

Thunder grumbled impatiently outside the window.  Tony said into the computer lens, “And what if you couldn’t forget your dreams?”

Dennis said sympathetically, “You’d have a very strong window into the unconscious.  And perhaps some dread.  All that remembered helplessness.  It’s why it’s handy to recognize, as you said, our own irrationalities.  Acknowledge, assess, and prepare for them, before they come knocking at our door.”

“Everything you have just said is nonsense, Dennis.”

“But helpful nonsense,” Dennis said with a smile.

. o .

Tony turned over the notion of helpful nonsense as he trekked the rain-soaked ground, a jacket zipped up firmly to his chin.  The metal parasite wasn’t sensitive to water—all the electrical bits were covered twice over; he could pour a glass of water on it and not feel a thing—but he still remembered the sharp shock of water on exposed wire. 

Remembered helplessness.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s raining,” Tony announced.

Steve paused in his sketch, graphite blotted across the page, and said, “Well, shit.”  He said it in such a flat, unimpressed way Tony snickered.

“C’mon,” Tony insisted, holding out a hand and yelping when Steve pulled him down onto the wet ground next to him, groaning in dismay.  “God dammit.  Oldest trick in the book.”

Steve tapped the sketch insistently, showing him the wormhole, the little tin man inside it.  Tony’s ears disconnected; Steve’s words seemed very far away as he said, “That was the moment.”

In the blurry patch of rain-stained paper, Tony saw, That’s a one-way trip.

He asked, very calmly, “Can I see that?”

Steve hesitated.  It was his sketchbook.  He handed it over.  With a casual violence that surprised even him, Tony ripped out the page and crumpled it into a tight ball.  Steve did not even try to stop him.

Handing back the rest of the book with shaking hands, Tony pushed himself to his feet, tossing the paper ball aside, to be devoured by the rain.  “Let’s go,” he said gruffly.

Steve followed without a word.

. o .

Steve didn’t show him sketches after that.

Tony felt briefly bad about it, then angry about it, angry at the way it shoved the memory to the forefront of his mind.  He felt jittery as rain pattered against the roof.  He wanted to yell at somebody, but he didn’t want to yell at Steve.  He yearned for a sense of normalcy, in a world that never would be normal again.

Moodily devouring a cold sandwich, he downed two more Valium just so he wouldn’t snap at Steve, relaxing into his chair as the drugs did their work.

“We should put this in the water supply,” he told Steve, passing through.  He tossed the pill bottle in Steve’s vague direction.  Steve caught it neatly.  “I think we think more clearly when we’re not thinking at all.”

Steve said, “Pretty sure I read that in a comic, once,” as he set the bottle next to Tony.  “Don’t think it ended too well for the evil mastermind.”

Tony made a vague, disgruntled noise.  “Innovation isn’t evil, stagnation is,” he yawned.

Steve said, “You should go lie down.”

Tony replied, “I just ate.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

Shaking his head, Tony said, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

He ended up on the couch, anyway, after making at least three arguments to the contrary.  He scrolled through his phone, set it on the metal parasite, and shut his eyes absently.

He yelled in surprise as something buzzed on top of his reactor, flinging it across the space in automatic alarm.  Steve actually caught the phone before it hit the floor.  Tony scratched at his own chest in furious discomfort, willing himself not to yank out the metal monster under his skin.

The phone kept buzzing.  Incoming call.  Tony tried to stop himself from pawing at the reactor, but he was human, he was scared, and he hauled up the shirt and got his fingers around the metal without ever thinking about what he was doing.  He pried the top layer loose.

And then he did the very stupid and extremely rational thing—he yanked it totally free.

The odd thing was, it didn’t feel like terror, like a mistake.  It felt—freeing.  At last, the metal scarab was gone.  Its thrumming energy was absent, a constant noise deceased.  The sudden, golden silence made him take a breath, a long, luxurious inhale, and even though his lungs did not have the room to expand like they wanted to, it was glorious.

Then came the pain.

With every steady beat of his heart, the pain sharpened, knives scattered throughout his bloodstream.  He thought, Arterial bleed imminent, and panicked, scrambling blindly to fit a round peg back into its round hole.  Then there was a second pair of hands, and Tony refocused, digging nails into marble wrists as they tipped the reactor over, acknowledge, assess, and then flipped the reactor back over and, ignoring Tony’s prying hands like the brushing branches of a plant, clipped it back into place.

The humming inside his chest was unbearable. 

Tony screamed in frustration, squeezing the blood out of Steve’s wrists in a misguided attempt to get to the parasite underneath.  Seconds ticked by.  He kicked his feet, gripped Steve’s wrists, and cursed colorfully.  Get it off of me, get it off of me.

Sweat-soaked and panting, Tony finally pried his hands off Steve’s wrists, gripping his own hair instead.  He could not touch the reactor, no matter how badly he wanted to.

Steve got him propped up and seated.  That helped—less devastatingly horizontal.  Tony leaned against the couch, curled forward, afraid to unfold, to assess the damage for himself.  One wrong move felt like the end of the world.

Steve sat behind him.  Tony leaned against him.

Time ticked by.

. o .

“They broke me,” Tony said, more disappointed than angry, both hands curled over the metal parasite in his chest.  “They actually turned me into pieces.”

Steve sat at his back like a ghost, silent.

“I picked them all up,” Tony whispered, “and I kept going.  And then a stiff breeze knocked me down.”  At last, he turned, shuffling until he was seated hip-to-hip with Steve.  Still the latter did not speak, looking determinedly at unmarred hands.  Tony covered one anyway, taking a risk, but awake, aware, Steve would never hurt him.  “Please tell me it ends.”

Steve pulled Tony’s cold hand into the warm grasp of both his own, squeezing it gently.  Tony rested his cheek against Steve’s shoulder.

“It doesn’t.  Does it?” he whispered.

Steve shook his head.  A lump lodged itself in Tony’s throat.  Then Steve tipped his head against Tony’s, offering a mute rebuttal. 

You won’t be alone.

. o .

Five months later.

“You look good, Tony.”

Tony looked up from his desk, cocking his head at Pepper.  “Thank you.  If I say ‘you look ravishing,’ will you hold it against me?”

Pepper gave him a look.  “Yes.”

“Terrific.  I won’t say it.”  Standing, Tony gestured at his new digs.  “What do you think?”

Pepper looked around briefly.  She lingered on the little bobbing heron on his desk.  “It’s very you,” she said at last.

Nodding, Tony said, “I’ll take that.”  Clasping both hands in front of himself, he asked, “What brings you?  Not that you’re not welcome anytime, but—”

Pepper said simply, “I had a redeye.”

Tony consulted his watch and frowned.  “It’s three-thirty in the afternoon.”  Then, looking up, he beamed a little, unable to help himself.  “Oh.  You wanted to catch up.”

Pepper shut her eyes, a smile at the corner of her lips.  “Yes.”

Tony made a point of consulting his tablet.  “Luckily for you, I . . . am free for the rest of the afternoon,” he said, swiping the screen closed.  “Wanna get coffee?  I’ll spring.”

. o .

“You’d be surprised,” Tony was saying, sitting at a little corner table and stirring his Americano.  “Or, maybe you wouldn’t be—how is life at the top of the pyramid, anyway?”

“Exhausting,” Pepper said, nursing a shot of espresso.  “But our numbers are good.”

“How good?” Tony asked, arching his eyebrows innocently when she gave him the unimpressed look.  “I’m not gonna start a rival company,” he said, affronted.  “It’s literally got my name on it.”  Brightening, he added, “Now, if you changed the name, that’s as good as a declaration of war.”

“I’m not changing the name,” Pepper said, very dryly.  “And 2003 good.”

Tony’s eyebrows jumped.  “That’s—”

“Choose your next words carefully,” Pepper advised.

Tony smiled wolfishly.  “Go team.”

“Once we merged with H. Tech, trust really rebounded.”

“That’s good.  Really good.”

“Better than we hoped,” Pepper admitted.

“Gotta take in the crazies before they start a rival company,” Tony explained.  “Rule number one: eat your enemy.”

Pepper rolled her eyes and drank her espresso in one gulp.  “Is that what you call it now?”

Tony’s brow furrowed in confusion.  “Call what?”  When she raised her eyebrows at him, it clicked.  “Oh.  No,” he said emphatically.  “No, we’re—friends now.  Just friends.”  He shrugged, then added, insouciant as ever: “Who say I love you and sleep in the same bed and schmooze.”

“I’m happy for you, Tony,” Pepper said, and she—actually sounded it.  It was almost weird, how the end of their relationship had made space for them to be friends, again.

“Me, too,” Tony said honestly, taking her hand briefly and giving it a squeeze.  “I missed you.”

She squeezed his hand back.  “You seem well, Tony.  You really do.”

“I am,” Tony assured, releasing her to reach for his coffee.  “Very near godly.”

“Don’t push it,” Pepper said, but she smiled, and he smiled back.

. o .

“How’s Bingo?” Tony asked, sitting on Dennis’ new and improved West Coast couch.

“About that,” Dennis said, and Tony gripped his chest in only half-feigned alarm before Dennis stood up and said, “I thought, after all this time, you might like to meet her.”

Tony said at once, “Bring me the dog.”

Dennis moved over to the adjacent office, opening the door and retreating inward for a moment.  When he emerged, he had a tail-wagging Border Collie on the end of her leash.  “She’s very excited,” he apologized, while Tony held out both arms, welcoming the Border Collie straining towards him, tail wagging at full velocity.

“You should know, this was your very last piece of leverage,” Tony told Dennis, as Bingo lounged on his leather boots, the perfect farm dog.  “Now, I have gotten everything I came for.”

“And elsewhere?” Dennis prompted.

Tony shrugged loosely, reaching down compulsively to pet the dog along the shoulders while her tail lashed the couch in joyful acquiescence.  “Win some, lose some,” he said.  “Definitely winning.  Some.”  He leaned back, allowing a slight smile to cross his lips, blaming it entirely on the dog.  “Time heals all wounds.  Any other cliches?”

“I’m very happy for you, Tony,” Dennis said, and it actually made him warm inside.  All very easy to blame on the dog.  “How was your week?”

“Where to start?”

. o .

“Look,” Tony instructed.

“Tony,” Steve warned, but he did watch as Tony leaped onto the monkey bars.  “Get down.”

“You’re just jealous,” Tony said, swinging from bar to bar.  “That I am fitter than you will ever be, old man,” he finished, hopping down and holding out his arms for applause.

Steve just shook his head, indicating the path with a jerk of his chin.  “I thought you said you wanted to take a walk,” he pointed out.  “Not hurt yourself.”

“A walk?  With my lung capacity?” Tony huffed, pulling himself onto the bars and saying, “I could definitely get on top of these, give me a boost.”

Steve hooked an arm around his middle and pulled him down.  “No.”

“Killjoy.”  Stretching his arms over his head, Tony luxuriated, “Just because I’m twice the fitness guru you’ll ever be—”

“I am happy for you, Tony,” Steve said dryly.

“Thank you.”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Well.  First, I have to do something I could get hurt from,” Tony explained, eyeing the monkey bars hopefully.  He tensed to leap, but Steve anchored him with an arm around his waist.  Tony sighed.  “Fine.  Fine.  I’m being good,” he grumbled, fishing a bottle of hand sanitizer from his pocket and snickering as he applied it.  “This habit dies hard.  I’m not a walking Petri dish anymore.”

Steve steered him back towards the trail.  They followed the mountain path for a while, enjoying the oceanfront vista at dusk. 

At some arbitrary moment, Tony arrived at his highwater mark.  “I’m tired,” he announced.

“Still gotta walk back,” Steve reminded, but he only frowned politely as Tony sat on the gravel trail, shaking his head.

“Nope.  Leave me out for the coyotes.  I’m game.”

“Tony,” Steve said, almost a sigh.

Tony looked up at him, then hooked an arm around an upraised knee, looking out over the water.  “That is one hell of a view,” he admitted.  Looking back at Steve, he added, “You’re not half bad, yourself.”

“C’mon,” Steve encouraged, holding out a hand for him to grasp.

Tony had a very odd sense of déjà vu as he looked at it.  For just a moment, he thought he heard—almost a memory.  Then he reached up and clasped it, groaning dramatically as Steve hauled him to his feet.

“C’mon, tough guy,” Steve said, arm around his waist, steering him along.  “Let’s go home.”

As night began to fall properly, there was no white-blue glow from Tony’s chest to match the moonlight overhead.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, just a little breathless from the walk, but still—happy.  To be out, to be in the world—to be pushing his own limits, again.  “Let’s go home, Steve.”

. o .

No, theirs was not a perfect life.

Some nights, the only peace to be found was in a bottle.  Some nights, even Tony missed the reactor, the blue-white light that had been part of him for five years.

But it was still a damn good life.

Tony loved his life.  Rough edges and all.