Chapter Text
I’m sorry, the note says.
The paper it's written on is thick, good quality. The blue ink doesn’t bleed through, but there’s an impression in the unmarked spaces between the ornate official letter head of the Wakandan Royal Family, the two words, and it’s footer; an echo of more.
They’re nothing but squiggles on ivory sand, though. Like half muttered prayers whispered beneath the whirr of Rhodey’s chopper so many years ago, shifting the ground under Tony’s feet before raising him from purgatory.
Tony remembers the relief that flooded him, the grief.
And though the desert receded the further they got from the site of his salvation; it still grappled and clung to his skin. Gritty and insistent, he carried the displacement of his world in crevices he didn’t know he had, but kept finding, even as he attempted to wash himself clean again and again.
The note was the same, in that way.
Tony couldn’t guess what became of the words left on the proverbial cutting room floor, only that they existed.
This was not a first attempt. It wasn’t a second, either.
His look is sharp with a sudden blinding offence that does little to disguise his surprise, his confusion. But the king is serene.
The past six months have aged him, but back when they first met, T’Challa hadn’t been so different from the man Tony had been himself when his parents had died – been killed – murdered – assassinated. He had been angry then too.
But the weight of reality eventually won out for them both. Because there was duty, family expectation; a legacy to maintain. Boys who lose their fathers and gain kingdoms with the same sweep of fate’s hand aren’t afforded the kindness to mourn.
What you want isn’t as important as what still needs to be done.
“I wouldn’t have given it to you if he hadn’t meant it,” is all T’Challa can offer.
There’s no puzzle around who the ‘he’ is. It’s certainly not Steve, the man’s pointed absence at today’s global meeting is a bruise Tony hasn’t stopped poking at.
With a gusty exhale, he mutters, “Who even writes letters any more?”
“Sergeant Barnes is old-fashioned like that,” in a tone equivalent to a hand wave. By that alone, Tony knows they’re friends. Or, at the very least, friendly. T’Challa’s sincerity wounds. “He doesn’t want forgiveness, let alone a response. Only to know that the message was given, and that you know that he means it.”
A childish part of Tony recoils from it, and snarks, “Are you a mail man now?” No one ever said he had particularly healthy conflict resolution skills.
From the corner of his eye, he catches the slightest movement of the Dora, a restrained defence of their king.
“He could’ve just sent a text,” he continues with forced nonchalance, pushing through the dissonance of the warriors hovering around him, and Barnes looming over him as he held Tony down. Of metal fingers prying at the star in his chest like a scab. “God knows his message would’ve gotten to me sooner.”
T’Challa’s raised brow says everything and nothing at all.
Eventually, with a put-upon sigh, “How is he?”
“He wants to be put into cryo-freeze.”
“Is that so.” Tony doesn’t think about the Bunker: the chambers of frozen bodies, the single bullet through each glass. The soft exhale of snow beneath the Winter Soldier’s boots. The cold panic in Barnes’ eyes. The snap of bone, like a gunshot in the hush.
“Rogers disagrees.”
A scoff, “Shocker.”
If it were possible to give a regal shrug, T’Challa does. “Regardless, it is the Sergeant’s decision.”
Tony doesn’t think about the other clips they’d found in the Bunker: Barnes opening existing wounds to get away from the Chair – and then the Chamber – baring his teeth when the sedatives would take affect and screaming around the gag in his mouth. The vulnerable arch of his throat forcibly exposed as he’s pulled taut by his restraints within his own version of an iron maiden. The shudder of revulsion as the cold began to settle against his skin.
It’s a fitting imprisonment, Tony admits, but even disregarding that, “Barnes deserves to make his own choices. We all do.”
In his ear, Friday intones politely, “Boss, it’s time.”
With an acknowledging nod to his girl, he continues, “Barnes doesn’t want my forgiveness, but that’s not his choice. It’s mine.” Slipping his sunglasses on, Tony adds, “I’m not there yet, I might never be, but I appreciate the thought.”
He doesn’t have to wonder if T’Challa delivers the message. He receives an email a few days later with enough encryption to recognize Shuri’s work.
Like the note, there are only two words: Thank you.
Tony doesn’t intend to open lines of communication between them. Just because T’Challa and Shuri are friendly with Barnes doesn’t mean Tony is.
Besides, for all he knows, Barnes is in the freezer. And even if he weren’t, who’s to say he’d even read Tony’s message, let alone write back?
“His response isn’t important,” his therapist says. “Allow yourself to express how you feel instead of letting it rot in your head. The email itself isn’t the point. Write it on a piece of paper and burn it after, if you want. The exercise gives what hurts you a shape. It’s you telling the monster what it looks like, so you can recognize the parts that make it up.”
“The sum of the whole.” He’s familiar with the concept, banal though it might be. No one said cognitive behavioural therapy was groundbreaking in its methods.“Give it a name, so it doesn’t have power.” Acknowledgement without blame: this happened to me, this is how it made me feel. “What would I even say?”
They shrug. “It doesn’t matter, does it? This is about you purging yourself of things you’ve thought and felt, letting them exist and letting them go. It’s what Mr Barnes has done.”
“He just said he was sorry.”
“What is he sorry for specifically?”
Tony makes a face. Everything. Nothing. “It’s too broad a scope. If he’d said he was sorry for what happened in the Bunker, sure, yeah. I can empathize. I can forgive it. But...” He can still hear his mother crying. He can still hear the snap of her neck.
It wasn’t his fault. That wasn’t Bucky.
“In situations like these, other people can afford to rationalize, sympathize, and be done with it. However, this was a traumatic event for you. You’ve cast aside your emotional response for an intellectual one, a subjective opinion, as if how you feel is irrelevant to the equation. It’s not. Suppressing your feelings doesn’t make them go away, only disconnects you from yourself.”
Tension draws him tight even as he drawls, pointedly careless, “What’s the diagnosis then, doc?”
Their chair creaks as they lean back. “I think you’re afraid of your own vulnerability.”
“Hey, now,” he weakly defends. It’s not an act he often bothers to put up any more since this whole therapy thing started. After all, Tony’s paying them to state obvious conclusions like this. Knowing and *knowing* are two very different things. C-B-fucking-T.
He can practically hear them take a metaphorical step back. “At the time, you worked with the information you had. Is that fair to say?”
“...yes.”
“And you do this often, don’t you? In other areas of your life? You make the best decision you can with what you know?”
“Yes...”
With raised brows and a leading tone, “And when you get new information, you...”
Aggrieved, “I adapt, I try to avoid making the same mistake later.”
“That’s all anyone can do.”
At its core, survival is simple: fail, learn, recover, improve. But Tony feels like he never learns; keeps having to take the same test over and over again, and never gets a passing grade. DadYinsenJarvisMom. He would say it stings at his pride, but he’s too alarmed by the sand and blood beneath his nails that refuses to come out.
“Your former team-mates were good people who made choices you didn’t agree with,” his therapist continues, “but they are not bad people in themselves. Can we agree on that?”
“Yes.”
“They made choices they thought were best at the time with the information they had, same as you. From what you’ve told me, they’re nothing like Obadiah.”
No, they weren’t. They hadn’t manipulated him. They hadn’t set him up as a patsy. They didn’t plan on killing him.
His name was Charlie Spencer.
He’s my friend.
It just turned out that way.
You murdered him.
To Stane, Tony was someone to be disposed of once he’d depleted his usefulness. To the Rogues, what happened to Tony was an unintended consequence, an afterthought.
You think you fight for us. You just fight for yourself.
Nothing but collateral.
I could do this all day.
Tony’s breathing stutters, and from a great distance, he hears his therapist drone an instruction to take “a deep breath in, and a slow breath out.”
Whether seconds pass or minutes, when he’s put himself more or less back together, they continue speaking as if never interrupted, “Is there a way to live without hurting other people?”
It’s a rhetorical question.
Nothing exists without impacting something else. What can be made, can be unmade. What is given can be taken, an ebb and flow. People have yet to accept that balance is different from fairness. That justice and morality are in the eye of whoever’s lens views the judgement. Genius as Tony is, in this he’s not much different to anyone else.
“No matter how unintentional, we have the power to harm everything we touch. Especially each other. But the same can be said of repairing what is in our reach. We only need to be willing to try.”
“They haven’t,” his throat clicks on a swallow.
With Project Insight leaked to the public after its initial unveiling, alongside the footage at the German airport and the Bunker uploaded online, they know what happened – everyone knows what happened – what kind of position Tony was in, what he had to do.
Tony knows that they know – but Steve still hadn’t –
“You’re only responsible for your actions, not theirs.”
He throws an irritated look their way, but their smile is sardonic. Their “I know” loud and clear in the silence that follows. “So, what now?”
Their returning look is laced in apology, “Coming to terms with what happened isn’t just limited to the Rogues.”
Another month passes while Tony considers writing a pseudo-response to Barnes. In his defence, his therapist wasn’t kidding about having more than just his emotional trauma to work through.
He’s got amends to make, and a world to save. Not particularly in that order.
Tony practically lives in the quinjet, arriving to a new country and city on any given hour, taking meetings and attending summits with his flight suit beneath his Tom Ford. He has to deploy the Legion for back-up without anyone else to call on for the magnitude of assistance he requires, and he’s so goddamn tired it’s a miracle he’s still conscious.
Rhodey isn’t happy. Neither is Pepper.
Between catching up on reports and mainlining coffee, his two closest friends take turns pleading, berating, begging and bartering to get him to rest.
He much prefers Happy’s methods.
In cahoots with Friday, Happy delivers food to wherever in the world the quinjet lands. Sometimes it's local fare, other times it's a Tupperware of Happy’s dinner leftovers. (Tony’s particularly fond of Chilli Tuesdays.)
“You’re not even eating properly,” Pepper, who subsists off rabbit food, despairs, “for heaven’s sake, Tony, you’re not a machine.”
On his fifth day scarfing down hospital food, Rhodey adds, somehow even more exhausted than the last time they spoke, “I’m not saying you stop completely,” something Pepper vehemently disagrees with. “But you need a break. I’m not the only one who’s had surgery recently. You’re gonna get hurt.”
“I’ll be fine,” which is more of a goal than a statement, but at least it’s not a lie.
Five hours later, after an instruction to Friday to let them know he’s alive – the bar is in hell – Tony ignores their calls.
Not because Rhodey would lord over being right at him (he totally would), but Tony doesn’t want either of them to see him like this, especially if this is how he’s going to kick the bucket.
Overhead, Friday reads out his vital signs, and he pulls himself together enough to take stock of the damage: He’s pretty sure he’s dislocated his shoulder. His collarbone is definitely broken. He can’t move his neck. He can’t feel his fingers –
The last thing Tony sees before he blacks out is the flickering glow of the arc reactor.
The next thing he sees is his reflection on the ceiling.
It’s not a pretty sight, if he’s being honest. Granted, what he remembers last didn’t exactly give him much hope of things turning out better.
The bottom half of his suit is still on in a patchwork of stubborn plating, damaged circuitry and exposed hydraulics; like broken bones and spilled veins between torn flesh and what remains of his flight suit.
Almost optimistic, he thinks, it could be worse.
But then his gaze trails further, and oh, his chest is open.
The arc reactor clings to the shoddy scaffolding of his torso. The design that holds it in place is skeletal, hastily put together, but primed for the essential function of keeping the star that ripped him open, suspended in its cage.
In his growing panic, he imagines he sees his lungs flutter against the frame of it.
Blood pounding loudly in his ears, he almost misses Shuri’s presence. “I think my brother is making a habit of bringing me the most broken white boys he can find.” Strained, she adds, “I think you’re the winner.”
Despite himself, he huffs a laugh, which is more a ragged breath that pulls something tight in his gut. (Jesus, that can’t be normal.)
He doesn’t ask how he got here – how she saved him – when – it doesn’t matter. Instead, he slurs, “’m I gonna make it?”
Shuri’s always been proud of her ability to devise marvels through sheer ingenuity alone, but in this, she’s hesitant, “That depends on you.”
Ah.
Shuri’s staff and her tech painstakingly separate the organic from the inorganic, the man and the machine. Bitterly, Tony thinks it’s an unnecessary hassle given his options.
They can’t knock him out for this, he might not wake. Not that he can entertain sleeping in this noise. Around him, the equipment beeps steadily, louder than it has any right to be, but making up for the weak pulse of his heartbeat.
The nanobots Shuri has engaged for the operation to repair what they can of him is only to buy him time – to keep him alive; a band-aid over a bullet wound.
Helen is en-route to Wakanda.
He almost tells her not to bother, that there might not even be a point.
Bruce is on his way too, and unlike her, he isn’t travelling with the Cradle. He’ll get here first, and then – well.
“Are you sure?”
Around the operating table, Shuri’s team are silent, though the minutest pause in their work is audible.
“What choice do I have?”
Sharply, she retorts, “You always have a choice. You don’t have to do this.” A moment passes, then, softer, “We can’t tell you how long you’ll have, but we can make arrangements. We can get your family.”
Don’t waste your life.
Is there anything you want to say, before I go?
“You can say goodbye.”
What you want isn’t as important as what still needs to be done.
Tony’s exhales rattles, burns. “I can’t leave you to save the world on your own.”
“I’m not alone,” Shuri refutes, but when he catches her eye, he can see through the stubborn bravado.
You’re just a kid, he remembers his mom soothing, Edwin and Ana comforting, Rhodey sighing. Whenever Tony took too much on himself, whenever he struggled to rise to the impossible standards set before him, that was the go-to phrase: You’re just a kid, don’t be so hard on yourself.
Who hasn’t heard that?
Everyone struggles to carry the load they’re given, but that doesn’t change the facts: no one should do it alone, especially not this.
Shuri may be a genius, but she’s still just a kid.
With T’Challa leading Wakanda and rectifying the mistakes of their elders within their own community, what the Black Panther represents would fall to her. The gap Tony would leave behind, with no one else with nearly as much recognition or resources, Shuri would be expected to fill.
She would be the billionaire, princess, genius, philanthropist, and anything less (and in certain circles she’d always be viewed as such regardless) she’d be undermined, vilified; forced to swim against the current, and do it alone because she felt she needed to.
They would break her with her own resolve to rise to the occasion.
Tony knows what that’s like. He’d done it alone and barely survived it, and while there’s still a way to spare her from the inevitable, he’ll do what he has to.
*What you want isn’t as important as what still needs to be done.*
Her eyes narrow as if she knows, and she clenches her jaw.
When Bruce’s arrival is announced, the princess eventually speaks, “Ask for something. Anything.”
“I’m not -” gonna go, I’m not gonna die, he doesn’t say.
She hears it anyway. “You’re going to try not to,” she corrects, expression fierce. “But if this is the last time, ask for something. Not for me or your family or the rest of the world. Ask for you.”
It’s been seven months since the Bunker, two years since Project Insight. Tony’s not sure whether Steve knew what happened to his parents as far back as then. Or before even that.
“He’s my friend.”
Tony wants it not to matter, but it does.
“So was I.”
It sounds pathetic, hearing it back, that Tony really thought – He pulls away from the simulation BARF created, zooming out just enough to absently notice Barnes’ cryo-chamber, a real thing, beside the dead Super Soldiers in their own makeshift coffins.
He ignores the memory of Barnes, tossed before the wall of monitors to watch Howard beg for his life.
That footage doesn’t play, though.
This is Tony’s construct, and in this version of the memory, he never hears his mom cry.
But the growing horror on Barnes’ face is the same, still watching himself kill Howard in the snow, and then reach inside the car and – It’s different to remember doing something, and seeing yourself do it.
The construct refocuses, blurring away the Bunker as a whole and replacing it with the sleek interior of the Wakandan palace.
The rest of the memory isn’t important. Tony’s taken this scene apart a dozen times.
Now, he’s doing something different.
The projection he’s sent into BARF, unhindered by his myriad of physical injuries, goes to stand in front of Barnes’ cryo-chamber. Unlike the Super Soldiers on ice at the Bunker, the glass is reinforced, and unlike the chamber that used to house Barnes while under Hydra, there are no restraints holding him taut.
Still, Tony can see that Barnes is tense, even with the peaceful expression on his face.
He may have wanted this, but it wasn’t an easy way out. This prison, just like the others, holds the possibility of him waking to a new world, of being reactivated, used, and hunted once more. The sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
Tony’s intimately familiar with the feeling.
Taking a breath, he closes his eyes and says, “Her name was Maria, and you murdered her. You put your hand around her throat and -” Almost choking on how his own tightens, he swallows hard. “You killed her, and the outcome doesn’t change just because you didn’t mean to do what you did.”
“Is there something you want to say,” the spectre of his mom coaxes behind him, “before I go?”
The weight of Yinsen in his arms feels like barely anything at all, even as his words crush Tony beneath them, “My family is gone.”
“You took them from me,” Wanda tells him, in the same breath that Mrs Spencer says, “You murdered him.
With a shaky exhale, Tony pushes the ghosts away, banishing them from the construct. He catches his breath, but his voice still trembles, “I’ve read the files. I’ve watched the – the fucking snuff films. I know what you’ve done, but I also know what they’ve done to you.”
Hair standing on end, he feels the press of the construct change around him. Tony doesn’t turn away from Barnes to witness it. He knows what he’ll see.
He’s had nightmares just like this.
The HUM-VEE exploding. Barnes’ unit being ambushed. Tony having a car battery strapped to his chest. Barnes getting strapped down to a table. The lines between them blur. They’re both tortured. They’re both pumped with drugs. They’re both saved. They both fall.
They both die more than once, but they always wake up, and they’re terrified of what that means.
In the midst of it all, they’re mindfucked, manipulated and betrayed. Their lives run in discorded parallel until they collide in one act of violence after another.
First his parents, then himself.
Even in the years between those events, their worlds are so altered by the other that neither of them are ever the same for it.
I remember them all.
In fundamental ways, Barnes has changed his life, and Tony, in turn, has changed his.
Clinical, Helen notes from far away, “He’s crashing.”
From where Tony’s actual body lies on the operating table in the other room, he can make out the faint, rapid beeps of the equipment he’s still attached to.
In BARF, the construct doesn’t waver.
Seamlessly, he wipes the slate clean of the simulation, and leaves behind only the projection of himself and Barnes, in the cryo-chamber.
Barnes’ reflection and the projection of his own transposed on the glass that separates them, Tony thinks this is a poor substitute regardless of how fitting it is, but it’s what he’s got.
It’s all they have. It’s strangely poetic.
“We’re more alike than we are different,” he begins, deciding against telling Barnes he forgives him because he’s not sure that he does. However, Tony thinks Barnes deserves to be told, at least once, with full knowledge of who and what he is, “I’m sorry.”
For everything. For nothing. For too much to fit in a two-word sentence could possibly encompass. It’s not enough. It’s wholly inadequate.
Strangely enough, he thinks with a quirk of his lip that he doesn’t think Barnes would mind too much.
“It needs to happen now,” Shuri urgently murmurs.
Despite the heaviness that Tony feels, Helen is calm, “On my count...Five, four...”
“Whatever happens, I know what it feels like,” he tells Barnes at last, smile crooked and heart sore. “What it felt like,” he amends, just in case he doesn’t make it out of this – just in case this is the last thing he says to anybody, “You aren’t alone. You never were. Everything’s gonna be okay.”