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Tony Stark pours himself a drink.
With time and distance between them the actions and choices made over the past few days finally begins to settle. The gravity of what has come to pass begins to take shape and the repercussions begin to sit uncomfortably somewhere in his chest.
The Avengers had been toppled, taken apart from the inside out. Earth's Mightiest, fractured in a matter of days. They truly had built a house of cards, and they had been summarily toppled by the vengeful vendetta of a single man.
How pathetic. How fucking embarrassing.
With time and space between them Tony could acknowledge now, in the privacy of his own thoughts if not out loud, that his attempts to murder Barnes had been a mistake. Barnes was no more responsible for his mother's death than Clint had been for any of the agents killed when he had attacked the Helicarrier under Loki's mind control. His own loss of control under the crushing weight of his own grief had led them to a confrontation that had perhaps permanently scarred the friendship between he and Steve. He could remember his own furious demand of Barnes, when he had wanted to know whether or not he even remembered them. Barnes' horrifying admission that he remembered all of them, every last one of the victims killed by the Winter Soldier, had not been enough to make him even hesitate. If anything it had only made him try harder.
The Merchant of Death, ladies and gentlemen. Take a bow for the audience, sir.
He could perhaps see, in hindsight, why Steve had chosen to keep the knowledge from him, even if that didn't mean he could entirely forgive him for it.
It also did nothing to stop him from feeling a sick lurch in his stomach every time he remembered that grainy video, the seconds that passed between one moment to the next in which his mother was alive and in pain, to the next when she was dead. Gone. Murdered. Taken from him by the coldly effective actions of the Winter Soldier.
Or, technically, he will admit now, by one fucking order given by Hydra.
Tony drains the glass in a single gulp, setting it back down upon the polished desk with a definitive clink, right next to the innocuous little flip phone.
He breathes.
He picks up the phone.
Steve does not leave for a while yet after Bucky's decision to reenter cryo. He stays, looking at the frozen face of his best friend and feels some immeasurable grief in the fact that Bucky looks untroubled and at peace.
He hates it, hates that Bucky has chosen this, though he understands why, can respect it even, but hates it nonetheless. He's just gotten him back and this is losing him all over again, though he reasons that at least here, under T'Challa's protection, he is safe.
Sometimes he cannot fully fathom how much has changed, how much time has passed, and he marvels at how the two of them are here now, after all that has happened. How much can a single life endure before it eventually reaches its limit of endurance? When does a man finally say enough and turn his back on it all?
At what point does he not get back up again?
That isn't him. Never has been. As long as he draws breath he will always get back up again, but right now he feels fractured, looking at Bucky, and he wonders. At what point is it too much?
He can see their lives separated into Then and Now, the Before and After. They should be old men right now, or dead. They should have lived out the length of their lives in their own time and instead, through the machinations of fate (in his case) and insidious intent (Bucky's), they live on as men made into Heroes, Villains, weapons, in a time not their own.
He thinks of Peggy and the life he should have lived with her. He imagines what it would be like to be a grieving widower right now, if he had not passed before her, and feels an ache in his chest for all that could have been, should have been, and wasn't. There is a wholly new wave of grief for her passing and Steve swallows past the lump in his throat, looks upon the serene frozen face of his best friend, and turns away.
Tony had tried to kill Bucky. He had tried damn hard to kill him, in fact, and Steve knew that he could never forget that desperate fight, the struggle to stop one friend from murdering another, and in so doing perhaps irreparably damaging their relationship.
He had been serious in his letter, had meant it when he'd told Tony to call him if he ever needed him. He wanted Tony to call. They had been team mates, friends, and though they had had their differences Steve did ache for all that had happened between them.
He tried to analyze all that had gone wrong from the moment this mess began, the moment Rumlow threw Bucky's name at him, and he had been struck frozen by the renewed hope of finding him again. Of fixing things between them. Of saving him, like he had when he'd first parachuted out of that plane on that dark night, his descent lit by the bursting light of artillery shells.
And then it had all gone to hell.
Steve slips his hands into his pockets, feels the oval shape of the little flip phone against his hand, and breathes.
It doesn't ring.