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Steve comes back from the milk run to find Tony cooped up in his lab, as usual these days. None of them need to sleep and Tony’s taking it as an opportunity to work round the clock.
Friday lets Steve in after a few seconds' delay, but he still catches the last ripples of the nanodome coming down over the fish bowl in the middle of Tony's lab. So Tony has been watching the kid again. Or talking to him. It's the middle of the night, but Steve doubts the kid has a normal sleeping pattern. Not since Tony brought him to base.
"Captain Flashman," Tony greets him. Steve isn't going to give him the pleasure to ask where this new nickname came from. He gathers this Flashman is also ‘a rotten bastard’, and that’s fair enough. "I hope the mission was a dazzling success."
"I wish. We rounded up sixty or so from the Chicago area," Steve says, coming to a stop next to Tony's work bench and the new falcon wing prototype that occupies most of the surface. He tries not to notice the way Tony's shoulders go stiff. They’d been counting on at least a hundred and twenty, based on radio transmissions and Tony’s drone sweeps over the area. "The shelter at the stadium was a bust. They blew themselves up while we were landing the jet. Some of them tried to make a run for it; the starving got most of them. We only picked up about two dozen meatbags from there."
"News about us must be going around, if they’d rather kill themselves than get captured," Tony points out. Steve wishes he could contradict that. "Too bad the larder isn’t as full as it used to be."
"We're not at starvation levels yet."
"Not yet. But let's make sure we never get there," Tony says pensively, laying a screwdriver carefully on the bench. The skin over the back of his hand is peeling a little, but his movements are as precise as they ever were in life.
"I know Doctor Cho hasn't had a breakthrough," Steve says, with interest. Tony wouldn’t be stating the obvious if he didn’t have a solution to offer.
"Oh, so you visited her before me. I'm wounded."
So was Steve. He needed some time in the cradle to fix a bullet hole in his shoulder and regrow the couple of fingers he lost to a machete blow, of all things. The meatbags that have survived this long tend to be good in a fight, and Steve made the mistake of going hungry on the raid.
He didn't lose control and go charging teeth first, thank God, but the concentration it took to keep himself in line took his mind out of the fight. But he's not about to admit as much to Tony; the third degree he got from Sam is enough for one day.
"If you've got an idea, Tony, spit it out."
"It's not my idea, for once." Tony leans his elbows on the table and fixes Steve with a serious yellow-eyed stare. "Doc gets the credit this time."
"Which doc?" Steve asks, frowning. The compound is at double recommended occupancy these days, and Tony's covering the science side of things. Steve doesn't know half the staff working in the labs.
"The strangest one of all," Tony says, and the corner of his mouth quirks with good humor and fondness. Steve marvels, not for the first time, how Tony's face has lost none of its previous expressiveness. How little he’s been affected by the change in general.
If anything, Tony’s happier like this. Less prone to self-doubt.
Still, it’s not to the point Steve can pretend nothing’s different. The virus hit everyone in a unique way. Unless he’s just eaten or had a stint in the cradle, Tony’s nose falls off. Steve wonders what Peter thinks of it. Is he used to Tony’s new face by now?
That question is going to remain unanswered. It’s beyond the bounds of their new equilibrium to ask after Tony’s protege. Tony might take it as a threat, or assume Steve’s interest is of the culinary variety.
Steve runs a hand down his own face, feeling the changes. It's fresh and whole now, but that's temporary. His lips keep rotting away like Tony’s nose, no matter how many times he undergoes Doctor Cho’s treatment. Steve's learned to speak with whatever mouth he has left, but he'll never get used to the feeling of his cheeks splitting along the middle when he lets himself crack his jaw open as far as he wants, while he eats or fights.
Meanwhile here Tony is, with his perfect hair and still charming smile, making new friends with wizards. Some things never change.
Steve mirrors Tony, resting his spread hands on the worktop and leaning closer.
"So what is Doctor Strange's idea?"
"Apparently, some of the naughty books he and Wong liberated from Taj Mahal..."
"Kamar Taj." Steve tries not to get distracted by memories of that fight. The sorcerers managed to stop the spread of the virus and hid from the masses of the starving, but they were naively unprepared for an attack from the Avengers. They all ate so much that night most of them didn’t even need healing. And a lot of the sorcerers were in a good enough condition to join their ranks when it was over.
"...detail the spellwork for ripping a hole into another universe," Tony finishes.
Steve bows his head and lets himself process this. New universes, places that haven't been ravaged by the virus.
Places that offer an unlimited supply of meatbags.
"What's the catch?" he asks, looking up at Tony.
For a fraction of a second, he catches a curious expression on Tony's face, remote but alert. That’s how Tony looks at his experiments when he’s uncertain of the outcome.
With a measure of amusement, Steve wonders if Tony expected him to object on moral grounds. But then Tony’s always had a better opinion of Steve than he deserved.
"For us, no catch,” Tony answers. “Doc tells me a universe that suffers too much interference from another might end up undergoing what he calls ‘an incursion’. Matter starts disintegrating, natural laws stop working reliably, that kind of thing. Sometimes the whole universe just disappears. But if we limit ourselves in how many meatbags we take and eat them quickly, we should be fine."
This time Steve doesn't look away from Tony as he thinks. A year ago, the suggestion to keep invading alternate Earths, infecting them with the virus, and kidnapping countless scores of ordinary people would have been unthinkable to Steve.
But things change. Their Earth is now a tomb for the restless dead and the hopeless starving. Steve knows most of the shambling masses haven't had anything to eat in months. They've lost all higher brain function, and putrefaction has progressed to the point even Doctor Cho couldn't reverse it. All that's left of humanity is the couple of thousand people in the compound, and a dwindling number of uninfected strongholds that will be able to sustain Steve's people for much shorter than he'd like.
They can't afford to be picky about food.
"Hypothetically, what happens if an incursion does start here?" Steve asks finally, and sees the last of Tony's barely perceptible tension melt away into equally subtle relief.
"We relocate. According to the Doc, it takes months to years for an incursion to get going. We can hop from a universe to universe indefinitely. Forever, if Helen's right and this thing makes us immortal as long as we have a steady supply of fresh meat," Tony says. His eyes flick towards the fish bowl, as if he can't help himself.
Which is good, because Steve needed the reminder.
"Sounds worth a try. But Tony, if we're going to do this, we have to be ready to evacuate in case things go pear-shaped quicker than Strange anticipates."
By Tony's sour face, Steve can tell he knows what Steve's getting at.
"You have to turn the kid. We can't move him safely like this, and I know you won't leave him behind."
"Damn straight I won't," Tony says, jaw muscles working under the gray skin of his cheeks. He closes his eyes, and for a moment he looks achingly like his old self, and Steve misses him with an irrational intensity. Steve has no reason to miss him; Tony's right here. If anything, since the virus they've butted heads much less often. That's the thing about becoming a zombie, it focuses your priorities.
But still, for a second, Steve misses Tony so much it hurts. Tony with all his gnawing sense of guilt that pushed him to become a better and better man. That’s all been replaced by a gnawing hunger now, that doesn’t allow for much else.
"I will turn him," Tony says finally. He looks normal again. There’s no pointless conflict in him any more. "I wanted him to choose this, but you're right. I can't contain him on top of everything else. He will understand, once it's done."
"Yeah. He will," Steve answers, and it's not a reassurance. It's a fact. Peter will understand, like the rest of them understood when they felt the hunger.
"Sure. Listen, I'm having dinner with the Doc tonight. Join us, and we'll talk through the finer points after the meal. My quarters, around eight. Bring your appetite," Tony says, rounding the table and clapping Steve on the shoulder. He leaves his hand there and shamelessly steers Steve towards the exit. Steve is too amused at Tony's usual cheerful lack of manners to mind. Why he thought there's anything worth missing about Tony, he can't imagine. The virus left intact all the best parts of him.
"See you tonight," Steve says, and Tony waves him off, already turning back towards his lab. Steve pauses at the door, and while it slides closed he can't help but observe the way Tony doesn't even glance at his work. He has eyes only for the metal lid of the fish bowl that houses his captive spider. Hermetically sealed from the lab, so Tony doesn't get a whiff of his living human flesh.
Tony stares at the dome with his back to Steve, but he doesn't order Friday to lift the cover off his treasure.
Not while Steve's still watching.