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Tony blasts the door from its hinges with more force than is necessary. He charges through the crumbling hole into a room that seems utterly divorced from the rest of the sterile science centre that the Avengers are dismantling. This room is quiet and homely with wine-coloured wallpaper and a selection of warm lamps. There is a pocket-watch ticking on the mantlepiece.
Behind the impassive mask of the Iron Man suit, Tony’s attention is instantly riveted to the only figure in the room. Steve is sitting on the edge of the couch, his legs angled together, his hands resting passively on his knees. For all of the destruction that Tony caused getting in here, he hasn’t so much as glanced towards the door.
“Hey, cap, are you in there? We could do with a hand out here,” he says, but even as the words come out in the blank voice of the suit Tony knows that something isn’t right. He doesn’t get the reaction he wants; he doesn’t get any reaction at all. “Time to wake up, sunshine. C’mon.”
He moves towards him and kneels down in front of the couch, but Steve’s gaze doesn’t register his presence. Empty pools, Steve stares ahead, right through Tony, at nothing at all.
“Steve,” Tony snaps. With a mental command, the mask pulls back from his face. He’s able to look right into Steve’s eyes, but it doesn’t help. He rests his hands on top of Steve’s; it is like touching the dead. The suit scans Steve’s body for him, taking in everything from heart beat to blood pressure. All normal. Everything is fine.
Yet as he kneels in front of his partner it is like talking to a shell. The sounds of the laboratories being dismantled echo behind him, but he makes no move to help his colleagues. Only Steve matters right now. The rest of the world can wait.
It might be an hour or it might be an eternity, but the others come to find them when the deed is done. “He hasn’t moved since I got here,” Tony says before anyone can try to ask any questions. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
He wants to shove Steve or knock him across the head, anything that might bring him back. He still holds onto Steve’s hands with the superior strength of his suit, but the sensors tell him that there is no corresponding grip. He’s alone in this one.
Even as Black Widow comes to his side and promises him that they’re going to fix Steve, it doesn’t matter.
Without Steve here, he really is alone once more.