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Natasha counts her breaths as she stares at Tony’s unmoving chest. Unbidden, she moves closer to the window and curls her hand into a fist against the glass. God, it’s so unfair that after all they’d worked for in the past months he’d go like this. It’s so unfair that the man he loved would be the one responsible for his death. He can’t leave them like this. He’s never let anything beat him before. He can’t just fucking go like this.
“Come on, Stark,” she breathes against the glass. Fury is as tensed as she is standing next to her; his arms are crossed tightly over his chest. She can feel him holding his breath. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that behind that careless exterior is a man that has always looked after Tony as if he were a little brother. Maybe even a son.
Their eyes are glued to the monitor as they will it to start beeping again. They’re supposed to be close to the end of the surgery, they’ve been there for hours, goddamn it. They’re supposed to be wrapping it up and telling them that they’d gotten the fucking shrapnel to stop moving towards his chest. She sees the medics look up at one another, can see the indecision to whether or not keep working on a corpse, and her balled up fist strikes the crystal. They can’t fucking give up now. If they could save Fury when he’d gotten holes blown up in his chest, they can save Tony. God, they have to save Tony. The medics look from one another until the lead doctor turns to the reactor and gives a helpless sort of shrug. They take it, careful of the mess in the genius’s chest God, before pushing it in. They wait.
Beep.
Fury’s sigh of relief almost makes him sag. His arms fall from his chest to rest both palms against the crystal.
“That’s it,” Natasha whispers, and damn him for making her worry about him like this. Damn him for making her fear his loss. “That’s it, Stark. Fight, damn you.”
It’s with renewed vigor that the doctors continue the procedure. Through all of it, though, Stark’s heavy, solidly there heart beat doesn’t waver once. He’s fighting. He’s there. She hastily wipes at her eyes before she tells Fury to let her know how the surgery ends, and makes her way to the New Avenger floor. It’s about time she has a little chat with an old friend.
On her way to what had been designated as the super soldiers’ wing, she sees Rhodes sitting on the couch of the communal floor with his head in his hands. His whole frame is shaking, and she knows enough about suppression to know that he’s biting his lip bloody trying to muffle his crying. She thinks about telling him that, for now at least, Tony’s still fighting then thinks better of it. She has to go talk to him now, before they make a decision of whether or not they can stay. She can’t wait for Tony to come round, because he will forgive him in the end of that Natasha is more than sure. It will take time, and it will be incredibly painful, but he will. Natasha hasn’t seen that kind of love on the face of anyone she has ever, ever known before.
That doesn’t mean she has to as well.
Barnes is sitting guard just inside the Captain’s room. His neck is bent in an uncomfortable angle, and he’s still wearing his gear. His metal arm shines in the fluorescent lights of the room; she tries to think of why the lights might be on if they were sleeping, and redirects her eyes to the blond in the bed. She immediately sees the restraints on his wrists, as well as the bruised and bloody crook of his elbow. Now that makes more sense. He’s flushed and shivering; his mouth is forming words that she can’t hear, but can imagine just fine. Her mouth twists, and the pain in her chest flares again at seeing him in so much distress because of his own stupidity.
To distract herself from her sympathy, she looks down at Barnes and hits his leg with the toe of her shoe, and takes a step back. Predictably, Barnes snaps to attention immediately and brandishes a knife at her. He blinks a few times before focusing on her unimpressed look before turning to make sure that the Captain is okay.
“How long has he been out?” The roughness of her voice catches his attention again. His eyes snapped to her face and make a quick scan of her features. Whatever he finds there makes his eyes widen.
“He’s not--?” he snaps his mouth shut, swallows thickly. Clearly she hadn’t been able to hide her turmoil as well as she usually does. She tries not to berate herself. It’s her family suffering every second, after all.
“He died,” it’s a struggle to get the words out without her voice cracking. Bucky falls back on the chair behind him, a hissed jesus Christ leaves his lips. The Captain makes a whimpering noise on the bed as if he, even unconsciously, knows what they’re saying. “But,” his eyes snap back to her. It’s surprising, to say the least, the amount of concern that she can see in them. “But they brought him back. The reactor—his body accepted it back. They were flushing Extremis out when I left.”
“So he’ll be—he’s okay?” he asks quietly. Something in the way he’s staring at her, with so much damned hope in his eyes, makes her believe he’s sincere. She knows, after all, what it’s like to be twisted into a weapon; she knows exactly what it’s like to be stripped of her humanity and identity and be turned into a predator. With him, at least, she can sympathize.
Maybe that’s why she’s able to be more forthcoming with him than she would be otherwise. Or maybe she’s just so drained, and she can’t look at Clint right now without feeling betrayed, but for whatever reason she’s able to look him in the eye and say, very quietly, “I hope so.”
“Natalia—“he starts, but she stops him with a motion of her hand. They don’t have time for this right now. Tony would be waking up soon, and so will the Captain, and she needs to say her piece before they’re confronting each other again.
“Go get something to eat. I’ll sit with him,” he stares at her for a moment before letting out a breath and heaving himself off the chair. She goes to sit where he was, and scoots a bit closer to the captain. She hears Barnes hesitate in the doorway, and turns her head a bit to look at her.
“You won’t—“he bites his lip; she can see him weighting his words in his head. Thinking of how much he can say without offending her or making her hate him even more. Though she doesn’t, hate him that is, though she should. She really should for being the symbol they’re in this mess, but she can’t when it wasn’t a mess of his making. When he had been hunting for simply existing. She understands too much of that pain and desperation to begrudge his actions.
“No,” she tells him quietly, staring at the Captain’s face. “Killing him would be far too merciful for what he has done.”
Bucky swallows behind her, before his booted feet recede out into the hallway. Rhodes can deal with him for now, and Clint can intervene if he wants to. Natasha wants a few minutes alone with the Captain before Bruce makes his arrival. Nobody seems to have thought of the other scientist, but something in Natasha feels confident that he will arrive, and soon. He’s always been far more protective of Tony than anyone gives him credit for.
There’s a frown in the Captain’s face, but that doesn’t take away from the handsomeness of his features. Aesthetically speaking, Natasha can understand why Tony had been so enamored with the man from the beginning. Since the very last battle, it feels like, Tony had been trying to gain the other man’s approval. It might sound bad, if it’s stated like that, but it had been mutual. For every bottle that Tony had put down, Steve made one less trip around the country. For every hour Tony spent interacting with them, Steve destroyed one less punching back. For ever one night stand Tony passed up on, Steve smiled a bit more. For every good deed Tony did thinking about Steve, the Captain gushed poetic about Tony to the press.
“Why,” She asks his slumbering face quietly, “why did you have to tear it all down? Why did you have to destroy what you’d built him?”
***
Steve hadn’t been able to crack through Tony’s defenses from the beginning. They had butted heads from the get go like the emotionally constipated alpha males that they were. For every time Steve expected Tony to follow his judgement the genius would blatantly mock him for his “decrepit thought processes” and give Steve the metaphorical middle finger. It would have made her think that they hated each other if it wasn’t for the intoxicating sexual tension that she could feel emanating from them.
That time, the very first battle that they fought together, had given her enough insight as to what would later become of their relationship.
First had been that glaringly telling hand on the genius’s hip, keeping him steady. Then their partnership, how they immediately went with one another, and managed to work beautifully together. Natasha has seen and trained many soldiers and agents, and she knows how rare finding a pair like that is. A pair who instantly become so in sync with each other. Then, though she’d been so high up in Stark Tower when it happened, she could hear the wavering in his voice when he told her to close to portal. When she’d tried to remind him that Tony was out there, and he’d responded with a tired “close it” that seemed to say “how could I possibly forget he’s still up there?”
Things had… leveled off after that, though they hadn’t come out and said that they were trying. It was just subtle things that everyone seemed to catch up on, but nobody mentioned. Like the fact that, barring world crises and important meetings, Steve’s time was utterly and completely Tony’s. He’d check the clock every five hours or so to bring a snack to the genius. He’d sneak downstairs to the workshop whenever they had family bonding, and when Stark was too caught up in his head to truly be there Steve would capture a hand in his and stop the drumming of his fingers. Would sit close to the genius and just breathe, and the other man would calm down. He’d pad down from his room late at night, and once when Natasha had been back late from a mission, had seen him cradling the genius against his chest as he took him to bed. He’d given Natasha a what can you do? Shrug, and a blinding grin.
There had been the more secret things, though, that Steve had only confessed to her in the harshest of times when they were still friends. When they were alone in a safe house because SHIELD was targeting Steve, and they had no idea what the identity of the Winter Soldier was. When Steve would wake up in a panic because he’d see Tony as a victim of the ghost they were hunting. When his eyes would eye a phone booth or a public phone as they walked, and his hands would ball into a fist because he wanted to contact the other man so bad. When, late at night when Sam’s computer was so close by and skype had been so readily available, and he’d tell them how Tony had nightmares that wouldn’t leave him alone most nights, and he was worried of what the other man would do if he couldn’t cope. If he’d take to the bottle again or force Extremis to shut him down for a few hours. Natasha had seen his face when HYDRA’s plan had been discovered, and he’d immediately known that Tony would be a target, and the conflicting ideals he had had almost torn him apart.
She’d known of Tony’s insecure, cruel words when Steve had told him about Bucky. All of the Avengers had heard enough well fuck off with him then! What are you gonna do, Steve? Bleach the blood out of his clothes when he comes home?! To know that Tony had inflicted his own types of wounds on the soldier. Had seen Steve carrying a half-coherent stupidly drunk Tony up to the Penthouse; had heard Tony’s mournful crying at having slipped again. Had seen both of them defending each other to press. Had seen Steve, trembling and afraid, as Tony slipped further and further away until he’d almost collapsed. Had almost torn himself in half by giving up on Bucky for weeks until Stark had seen what he was doing. How he was hurting his lover. Things had begun to look up by that point, but Tony had been keeping secrets of his own. Had Ultron underway, and when that got discovered, well… It was everything Steve stood against.
You can’t fight a war by starting one, Tony, how many times had the inhabitants of the Tower heard that? How many times had they seen Tony flinch? God, enduring the sight of them walking on eggshells around each other again was painful for everyone. Seeing Steve regress into the depressive, out time man he had been. Watching Tony over work and starve himself as he tried to figure out how the fuck to stop what he had done. Watching them fight over the visions the Maximoff girl had given them alone rather than depending on each other was worse. Sometimes, Steve would be standing there, but not really be there. And sometimes Tony looked at Steve, and horror played over his features until he took a step in his direction only to remember that he wasn’t allowed to touch anymore. Then Tony had almost died, again, and Steve had had to see him drive away. Natasha had been observing them as they said their goodbyes; noticed the way Tony buried his face in Steve’s chest and the blond held on just a little tighter. Saw Tony lean forward, think better of hit halfway and then step away; saw him say something to Steve, and see the blinding smile the soldier gave in response.
The next few weeks were a mixture of sadness and elation. Natasha could almost predict Steve’s mood depending on what day it was. On the days Tony called, he’d be as excited as a puppy. On the days he didn’t, he’d become despondent and robotic. If he missed a call, a late night visit to the gym was guaranteed. Somewhere along the line, Steve's shy nature had given way to pride for the man he was then “courting.” He began to refer to Tony as his fella, or his sweetheart, and his face would lit up with a smile and a blush. It was nauseatingly adorable to witness, Natasha thought. It had only gotten much worse after the Extremis scare. Tony had needed to be looked after, and Steve had been more than willing to be his nurse. They began to depend on each other for almost everything; from eating together to Tony’s SI decisions, to sparring together. Steve went as far as asking Tony for his opinion on the team even if, technically he wasn’t part of it anymore. They had gotten comfortable with each other, and closer to one another than to the rest of the team. Though they were still fairly non-physical when in public, Natasha was… blessed enough, there is no other word, to be privy to some of their more intimate interactions. Had been the recipient of some of Steve’s most private confessions. About Tony’s deeply insecure nature, about Steve’s night terrors, about the fear of separation they both had, about their fierce protectiveness of the whole team, about… everything. She’d become as protective of them both, as a unit, as they were of one another.
Still, there was a shadow looming over them even as they found bliss with each other. If she’d been more wary, more cynical maybe, she would have noticed that happily ever afters such as the one they seemed to have then never lasted. She’d thought of it as a fluke, the first time it happened, and had missed the opportunity of stalling it or destroying it as soon as she could have. It had been innocuous enough, that first time, finding Tony staring at his phone with a frown. A hand was rubbing at his newly replaced arc reactor, and he’d looked up at her as she came into the room.
“Everything all right?” she’d asked him, yawning. She’d come back from a mission the night before and was only wearing sweatpants, a tank top and her robe. Tony frowned at her.
“I thought you were on a mission,” he told her. His eyes dropped to his phone and then back up at her as if his mind, genius as it was, was unable to comprehend her presence.
“Just got back last night,” she told him, making a beeline for the kitchen. He followed her.
“Steve not with you?” he tried to sound nonchalant, but there was worry in his tone. Her eyes snapped up to him, and she immediately noticed his tense posture. The crease between his brows, and the almost manic way he was tapping the reactor.
“I thought he was here,” she responded. Her mind snapping to all the different kinds of scenarios that could have taken the Captain out of the facility. Her mind, complacent as it had been made by their obvious love for each other, hadn’t allowed her to come up with the one reason that made sense. Instead, she imagined him captured or hurt. “I’m sure he’s fine. He’s probably with Sam.”
She had not been wrong, at least not completely. As she’d said it, Steve had been driving towards a garage somewhere near Brooklyn close to where he had grown up. She had no way of knowing that, as she told Tony this, Steve was coming face to face with his best friend and making a decision that would tear the foundations of what they had built. She had no idea of knowing, then, that Steve’s hand was being forced into a decision that would cost him even his sanity.
***
“I don’t know,” the quiet, thin voice of the Captain snaps her out of her reverie. She finds his usually clear blue eyes, now clouded with remorse, looking at her. He’s rubbing his wrists against the restraints and they’re making his fair skin turn an angry red.
“Stop doing that,” she snaps sharply. Her anger at him has returned full force.
“I thought you wanted me to hurt,” he tells her softly. There’s nothing but deep seated sadness in his voice. She’s never heard so much defeat in his tone, not even in the old reels from the worst months of the war. Not even in the private tapes she’s found in Stark Senior’s collection. “I thought you wanted me to be broken down till there is nothing left.”
“This is not the kind of pain you deserve,” she hisses at him. She knows he’s antagonizing her, for what purpose, she doesn’t know. She could kill him about sixty seven different ways with the objects contained in this room alone, in about three seconds flat, but she won’t so what’s the point of annoying her?
“Then what kind of pain is it? For me to feel like hell? For me to close my eyes and see what I did to the man I love more than anything? Do you want me to lay here,” his voice is rising with every word, the veins in his neck bulging. “And feel agony bite at me every time I take a breath? Do you want me to wish for you to torture me with everything you have ever learned rather than see his face every time I close my eyes?”
“Even that wouldn’t be enough for what you’ve done,” she tells him. She sees what he’s doing, now, he’s trying to get her to spit venom at him and make him hurt. He wants her to be judge, jury, and executioner so that he’s already dead when he sees Tony. His spirit broken down beyond reach or recognition. Well she won’t. She can’t, because damn him to all seven realms of hell, but she loves him as a brother. She hates what he’s done to Tony, but it tears at her to see him trapped in a hell of his own making.
“No, I imagine not,” he said with a hollow chuckle. His eyes travel across the room, his old room of Tony’s creation, and his breath hitches. “Do you know what I see when I look around this room, Agent Romanoff?”
“A very luxurious prison,” she snaps.
“Am I prisoner?” he doesn’t seem to have many compunctious about that. He seems relieved, she notes with a pang, at every punishment that is coming his way. He welcomes them, each and every single one, and that is unbelievably sad to her. “I thought I had been pardoned. That he’d managed to—even after—when I—he”
Ah, there’s the first sign of pain and not welcoming relief she’s seen of him so far. It appears that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, which could break Steven Grant Rogers but his own overwhelming love for Anthony Stark. She lets him sit in the misery he’s trapped in, his eyes unfocused and his breathing labored, before his pain starts hurting her. And damn him for that.
“You were. Both of you. It’s just a matter of you making an appearance with the press to reclaim your title,” he ignores this information as if it’s irrelevant. She imagines it is; he’s lost something far greater than his title after all. “But tell me, what do you see around this room?”
“Him, in e-everything,” his voice breaks before he manages to continue in a whisper. “It’s like he’s—he’s melted himself into everything. I can see, and feel him in everything in this god forsaken place, and I know that I’ve lost it. That I have no right to even feel him near me. Do you see, Agent Romanoff?” his eyes are half crazed. She recognizes that empty, hysteric look she’d seen in Bruce after the Maximoff girl had torn his mind to shreds in the Captain right then. Steve, she notes, is close to snapping.
“See what?” she asks quietly. Is she wrong, doing this? Feeding his pain? His self-hatred? Her eyes snap down to the restraints and the scratches on his arms and the bloody trail from his elbow. God, this is why Barnes had been standing guard, isn’t it? Not to make sure that the didn't Avengers come and took justice in their own hands, but to keep Steve from doing it himself. She feels sick to her stomach seeing him like this; a far cry from the man that had held and laughed with Tony. So, so incredibly lost from the man that had carried Tony to bed from a bender with the happiest smile in the world. This… this is a waif of what Steve had been. If Tony doesn’t forgive him… can they pull him back from that?
“I’m already in hell,” he laughs bitterly. There’s tears running down his cheeks, but it’s like he can’t even feel them. Or maybe he doesn’t care.
That lost helplessness snaps Natasha out of her fear. There is only one way to know how to move forward from here. She asks the recently installed FRIDAY if Tony has been moved to a visiting room yet, and she’s responded in the affirmative. She begins to work on Steve’s restraints, and urges him up off the bed. She takes his arm, and he follows her lead without question. He seems to be lost somewhere in his own nightmare, his eyes dart around but they’re unseeingly unfocused, and he keeps bumping into things. They pass the communal floor, where Rhodey has been joined by Barton and Thor who had recently come from Asgard. Thor looks mournfully at Steve before looking away. Rhodes tries to lunge himself at the Captain but Barton restrains him. That doesn’t, however, keep him from running his mouth. Steve’s breathing gets more erratic with every word Rhodey yells at him.
“You stay the fuck away from him, you piece of shit! Don’t you fucking touch him, you hear me?! Don’t you even look at him or I will kill you! He’ll never forgive you! He’ll wake up, and he’ll wish you were DEAD! Do you hear me?! He’ll hope you’re DEAD!”
Steve doesn’t make it to the medical wing before he’s hyperventilating so bad that he slips from Natasha’s grip and slides down the wall. He wraps his arms around his legs, and hides his face in them. He’s murmuring quickly as his hands tear at his hair. She’s left, for a second, standing in front of him feeling utterly helpless. There’s nothing she can do; she’s never been trained for this. She has no idea, not a single way in which she can give them back what has been taken from them.
Barnes appears down the hall and taps her arm lightly. Her eyes focus on his tilted head, a you okay? Written on his features, and she nods. He turns his attention to Steve, and the sadness there is plain. There’s determination in there, too, though, and he kneels down to talk to Steve.
“Hey, Stevie,” he tells his friend quietly. Steve stops murmuring after a few seconds. “You have to get to Tony, okay?”
“Can’t” Steve whispers wretchedly. “Don’t deserve to know if he’s okay.”
“No, you don’t,” Barnes replies honestly. Natasha is mildly impressed with his bluntness. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t find out eventually. This isn’t about you deserving him or his love for you, Steve. This is about begging for forgiveness every day, even if you don’t get it. Hey,” Steve’s head snaps up to look at him. His eyes are red rimmed and lost, Natasha notices. “You don’t get to walk away from this. You don’t get to give up on him. You don’t deserve forgiveness, but you don’t get to walk away either.”
Steve stares at him for a bit longer, Barnes words have obviously shattered whatever was left of him, but he’s stubborn. And determined. Natasha can almost see the I would go through hell and back just to appease him determination in his features. Together with Barnes, they get the soldier to his feet and the rest of the way to Tony’s room.
When they get there, they can’t see anything but Tony’s nose, eyes and forehead. He’s covered in a blanket, there’s gauze on his neck, a respirator attached to his mouth, and a bandage wrapped around his head. One of his eyes is rimmed black, but the steady beating of his heart is there. A constant beep, beep, beep that everyone in the room is grateful for.
Natasha can’t help the whispered, “oh my God,” that escapes her, but that’s nothing. Nothing compared to Steve’s reaction.
“Oh God, baby, what have I done,” he tells Tony as he stumbles towards his prone body. The way he says it makes Natasha think that it would have been kinder to gut him than to show him Tony like this. It burns at her to know he’s pain like this, but… he needs it. He needs to face what he’s done. From now on, he needs to be with Tony every step of the way if he hopes to be forgiven.
It’s strange, having such a thought being witness of such a helpless scene, but Natasha is surer now than she has been since this wretched war started that they will be okay. Most importantly, she think as Steve kneels next to the bed, cradles Tony’s exposed hand and sobs into the sheets, Tony will be all right.