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{2} I just want to flee from this nightmare and never return.
It's the only way, then they can all forget me. I got too big, Dorium, too noisy. Time to step back into the shadows.
-The Doctor in The Wedding of River Song
Tony shut his eyes for a brief moment. This was it. I'm sorry, Steve.
With that last thought he sped forward and fired at the blue-clad form in front of him.
*
When the registration act had first been brought up, Steve never thought it would escalate to this.
Then again, he never thought Tony would side with the politicians and turn against everything they stood for, either.
A blow to the back of his leg threatened his stability and he whirled from facing Tony to catch his surprise attacker with his shield. Steve felt like there were combatants everywhere, constantly catching him with small glancing blows and keeping his mind everywhere at once. If he could just pin Tony down for once and make him listen—
A blast caught his opposite shoulder, turning him back around. Dammit, those repulsor blasts hurt and that Tony kept aiming at Steve's weakest points—that they were in this mess at all because of Tony—infuriated him past the point of thinking. Steve had never lost his head in battle but enough was enough. That repulsor blast had caught the same shoulder Tony had hit two minutes ago and Steve had had it.
He let out a shout as he turned, aiming the shield's edge where he guessed Iron Man's shoulder would be.
But Steve didn't have Extremis or JARVIS planning his trajectory.
With a sense of horror he watched the sharp edge crack into Iron Man's armor—into the clear protective container above the arc reactor. The result tossed him clear off his feet and back against a pile of rubble. For a moment his head seemed to clear of everything, thoughts abandoning so there was just a dull sound and a slow-motion film playing in front of him. Then the super-serum set things right and he looked at form across from him. He didn't consciously tell his body to move before he was suddenly next to the red suit, shaking the casing once as he looked at the dull spot in the center.
"Tony!"
He looked at the crack that started mid-torso and traveled up through the reactor to the spot where the neck piece melded into the chest armor. He pried his fingers into the crack at the base of the neck and peeled it away, uncaring of the screeching sound of metal, intent on the too-still form inside of it.
"Tony, Tony, come on sweetheart. Don't do this to me." He ripped at the metal, grunting as he finally was able to make the plates connecting the helmet to the neck release. The closed eyes spiked his heart rate and he brought a hand to Tony's cheek. "Tony, sweetie, now's not the time to play Let's Scare the Bejeezus Out of Steve." He tapped Tony's face with his fingers, looking at the matching scrapes around Tony's cheek and eye from their traded punches earlier.
"Would you stop hitting me?" came a grumble, and Steve choked out a laugh.
"Look around, Mr. Stark-Rogers. I don't think that's going to happen any time soon." He swept the fringe from Tony's forehead as he leaned in. "Tony, I don't want you to panic, but you need to tell me how to fix the reactor."
Tony smiled sadly. "Sorry babe, no-can-do."
Steve blinked, face blank. "What do you mean? Tony, you need to tell me now, or use JARVIS to tell me what to do in the meantime until someone else can fix it. Don't you have spares?"
Tony chuckled and stroked a hand down Steve's face. "Sorry Steve. Looks like the good guys won this round."
Steve blinked at his husband. "What? Tony—what?"
His husband of nearly ten years chuckled again, this time a little more strained. "'t had to be this way. For everyone to make it. The world needed to see an underdog win. Everybody loves an underdog."
"What are you telling me?"
"What I tried to tell you this morning before you blew your gasket. I never wanted the registration act to work. That was the plan. We would decide—the both of us—which side was more likely to make a bigger difference when they won. If Pro won, I would be able to minimize the damage. Looks like the Anti won. Hurray for the underdog."
Steve blinked rapidly. "You were planning this? It wasn't Extremis, you were planning this?"
"Tried to tell you."
Steve pressed a bruising kiss to Tony's lips. "You stupid, stupid, stupid genius." He leaned back and then searched for anyone who could get them somewhere fast. "We still have ten minutes. I'll find someone to get us to the spares."
But Tony already knew what Steve was just realizing. Their personal fight had taken them far away from the rest of the battle and it was just the two of them.
Steve turned back to Tony and his hands hovered over the reactor, then cradled Tony's face. "Tell me how to fix it."
Tony smiled softly, his eyes clear of the liquid pooling in Steve's. "Sorry, honey, I guess I won't be making that acceptance speech after all."
The blond shook his head, a little wildly. "Not funny, Tony. Tell me how to fix it."
But his husband just took his hand and kissed it. "It's alright. Not your fault, babe. Nothing you can do."
Steve's eyes and throat burned as he blinked and tried to swallow past the lump in his throat. "Not acceptable. There has to be something to buy us time."
"It had to be this way. If the anti-registration wins, everyone goes home. It's the only way."
"So you set yourself up to be served on a platter? No. This is not something I'm willing to lose in order to win. Look at me, Tony. It's not worth it. This is not worth you." He smothered a sob and pressed Tony's hand to his cheek. "You can't ask me. What about Peter?"
Tony winced and for the first time his breath hitched and he arched his neck, as if trying to get away from something.
Christ, no.
Steve pressed his free hand to Tony's cheek, tears dropping down onto it. "Think about Peter, Tony."
"He's got his dad. He'll be okay. You'll both be okay."
"He needs both of us. I need you. You can't ask—not like this, Tony. Please, not like this."
He cradled Tony's face as his husband's breathing hitched and he struggled to even it out. Tony's thumb brushed over his cheek and the darker man smiled—a lopsided, held-up-by-sheer-willpower smile—and dragged words past the way his body spasmed. "Love—you. Love you, Steve."
Steve shook his head and he struggled against the feeling building in him. "Don't—not like this."
Tony huffed a laugh. "Still trying to—"his eyes squeezed shut and then opened wide, "—fight a lost cause, Cap."
"Tony, please."
"Love—"
The shudders quit abruptly and Steve stares down at the still body of his husband. He shakes him, once, with a choked, "Tony?" before it sinks in and a wild sob escapes. He drags the shell that used to be Tony to him and buries his face in the dark hair. He might be saying something, it might be a repeated, "No, no, please, Tony, no," or it might just be the way the sobs seem to pull the heart from him and tear at his insides.
If he had known that morning where he would be at the end of the day, he never would have walked out that door. And the thought that he could have stopped this from happening—stopped reacting and talked to Tony, angled the shield differently, said I love you—
Steve holds Tony after the other supers realize what's happened and the fighting halters to a stop. A solemn medical team tries to talk to him but he's not listening. His mind replays their last moment from that morning, and this time Steve would say IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou and hold on instead of shoving Tony aside and slamming the door on his way out.
"Dad?"
Steve looks up and feels the final shoe drop and his throat clenches. "Peter—"
"Dad, Dad what—" he breaks through the restraining hands of the medical personnel and stumbles forward. His poor brain doesn't seem to be able to register everything at first and he stares at the cracks leading up from the dull arc reactor. Steve thinks it's the only time in Peter's life he hasn't seen the glow from Tony's chest and that he had punched the light out—
Peter's cry broke him from that thought and he watched Peter shake Tony—the body—and shout at him. Steve caught an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close, burying Peter's head at his chest. "He's gone, Peter. He's gone," and the two cling to each other, and to the too-still form between them, as they weep.
*
"So, I guess if you're here and I'm here, then I'm doing the Brother's Grimm—or whatever came before Disney—Sleeping Beauty and you're in my workshop moping."
Steve jerked his head up from his hands and blinked. "Tony?"
"Close enough. An AI with a hologram, in case things turned sour—today? Yesterday? Hold on, what day is it? Checking—ah. A week ago. So... funeral. Please tell me there wasn't a casket."
Steve nodded. "I know you don't—didn't—like closed spaces."
Hologram-Tony nodded with a, "Great, perfect," and snapped his hands together to make that noise that had always signaled Tony's unease, usually the kind that came with a Serious Talk. "So... how did things go down?"
Steve looked down at his hands. "I broke your arc reactor with the shield."
Tony nodded again and float-walked closer. "I figured something like that might happen."
Blond hair flew as Steve's head flew up. "You—you figured it might happen? Tony I killed you! Everyone thinks I'm a fucking hero and our son is upstairs watching videos of his science fairs and birthday parties and your expos because that's the only way he can see you and how can I tell him that I was the one that—"
Hologram-Tony held his hands up. "Easy, honey. I know, I get it. You're upset, he's upset, and I'm sorry."
Steve snorted and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "You're sorry. Forgive me if that seems too little, too late for either of us."
Hologram-Tony nodded again. "Fair enough. What if I told you I had figured it was the most likely event and had planned for it?"
A shiver ran up Steve's back before it stiffened. "Planned?"
"Yup. Planned."
Steve looked up to the grin on the projection's face. "How?"
"Well, with myself as the poster-super for the Superhuman Registration Act, I was the biggest target. So, what's the biggest chink in my armor? Technically speaking it's you and Peter, but no one was going to touch Peter because that would bring both of us on down on them, and they weren't going to touch you since you're Captain America, not to mention the fact that you were on their side. So, that leaves the literal kind of weakness, and that's the armor. Pull the plug and the power dies, right? It was bound to happen at some point." His eyes held Steve's, but the steady gaze held regret and sadness. "I'm sorry it was you. It wasn't your fault, Steve."
The blond blinked blinked roughly. "Don't—"
"No, not listening is what got us into the whole fight to begin with, so this time you're going to listen to me. It wasn't your fault. I'm willing to bet I flew into the shield. There's no way you would have KO'd me with it if I were down. That's not your style. If you were distracted enough and angry enough then you would have led with it, but otherwise there's not a chance in hell you would have even thought about it. It wasn't. your. fault."
Steve sniffed and rubbed at his rubbed at his eyes. "How did you plan, then?" he said, neither accepting nor denying Tony's words.
Tony sighed and ran a hand over Steve's hair, a gesture that would have made the strands fall back into place before. He looked at Steve with serious eyes, so serious Steve didn't know if he'd ever seen this look on Tony before. "I had been working with Extremis, you were right about that. But it wasn't taking over. Not then. I prepared for it to shut down my heart in case energy readings from the reactor were disrupted. In this scenario, in case the reactor was broken. Extremis was to place me in sort of technologically-supervised coma until the reactor could be replaced and all systems had been repaired. Has Pepper been here yet?"
"Pepper?"
"Or Natasha, in case Pepper wasn't feeling up to it. Did they go to the funeral together? How's their kiddo? Anyway—" he waved his hands and had a change in mood that was so Tony. He grinned—grinned— at Steve. "Pepper. Here? Probably said she needed to grab some things?"
Steve felt incapable of keeping up. "Tony, are you saying—"
"Pepper. Pe-pper. Peeeeeee-peeeeeerrrrrr," he dragged the word out and accompanied it with hand motions for the segmented parts. "Nevermind, what am I doing? I'm an AI, I can just check the JARVIS' logs myself. I'm a travesty, look at me." He looked spaced out fora moment and then nodded. "Sweet, she was here the day after—what exactly do you call it when it's not an actual funeral?"
"Wait—what?" Steve was too confused to laugh at how similar this was to their actual conversations. "Pepper? She—yeah, she was here the day—the day after. Tony, go back to the part about—"
"Oh, never mind. Long story short, she grabbed one of the spare reactors in case Extremis couldn't locate the metal fragments and remove them by the time I woke up, which reports from the lab say I'm stable enough to do. I swear, Steve, I'm not a Skrull or any other sort of alien. I'm already sending Pep a note, she'll be here in ten."
"Tony?"
"Yeah?"
"You're an absolute bastard."
Tony looked solemn at his tone and stepped forward. "This was the only way everyone made it out. I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier." He stroked a non corporeal hand down Steve's cheek. "If you believe nothing else, please believe that I never wanted you to be hurt. Did you know that Richards found an alternate universe where we got married to stop all of this?" Tony chuckled. "Must be the honeymoon phase." His eyes grew sad again as he touched Steve's chest. "In another one you and I were just friends, and the pro-registration won. You were assassinated. Peter wasn't out son and he ended up hurt because I didn't have enough factored into my plans." He looked at Steve with such a haunted look Steve could have sworn he was real. "This was the only way I could think of, Steve."
They sat there in silence, Tony making holo-spirals on the table and Steve stuck in memories.
"I thought I had killed you," he said finally, and the words sounded strangled.
"And I will spend the rest of our lives making up for it." The projection looked up at something Steve couldn't see and then back down with a small smile. "Natasha just used her code, but Pepper's with her. Go grab Peter, sweetheart. I'll see you soon."
"I love you."
"Tell me that to my face, Steven Rogers-Stark."