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Steve’s knees kiss earth on a smoking battlefield as oxygen fills Tony’s lungs for the last time.
Time splits into this: Before Tony’s Death (BTD) and After Tony’s Death (ATD).
After Tony’s Death and after Tony’s funeral and afterafterafter, he dances—with Peggy—only once. Red lips; curving hips; hair curling glossy, brown, and too long.
(Not Tony’s.)
When he returns, he helps with clean-up and counseling. The Compound is a ruin of concrete, steel, spilled blood, his deferred dreams buried beneath.
When he has to sleep, he does so there, hunched in a sleeping bag under an indifferent sky. The ache in his bones echoes the one in his chest. One night four or five weeks ATD—Steve doesn’t know exactly when because his days and nights have blurred into an endless grey smear— he falls asleep clutching a sketch he drew of Tony wearing sunglasses and smiling as he fished Captain America’s shield out of his Audi’s trunk.
When he wakes, the sketch is gone. In its place, pressed under Steve’s palm, is a bouquet of pale blue forget-me-nots loosely tied with electrical wiring.