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Tony Stark knows that he’s not a good man.
He is 100% certain of this fact.
Tony Stark is barely a decent man. The man that Tony could be-- should be-- has been long lost to time. Instead of trying to move forward, he’s stuck in a loop he doesn’t know how to break. Any kind of progress, or change, or evolution that could make Tony Stark less awful is long lost.
He’s accepted that as long as he exists, people will be miserable because of him.
Someone shakes him. He’s not sure who it is. Pepper is gone, Bruce is gone, Steve’s a million miles away all of the time. “Tony?”
He looks up. It’s Nat. Something must really be wrong if it’s Natasha. He gives a noncommittal hum in response.
“I--” she falters. “We. We’re gonna watch a movie. All of us.” She looks around, knowing that “all of us” means her, Wanda, Vision, whoever else might be drifting in and out of a tower meant to bring the group together. “We want you to come with us. To watch.”
“What movie?” He feigns interest. They both know that he’ll say no.
"Rebel Without A Cause. James Dean.”
Fuck. James Dean makes Tony go weak at the knees with emotions that he’s long since shoved down.
“Sure, okay.”
Nat smiles, a weak, half formed thing, trying to keep together whatever it is that they have.
They start to make their way to the living room, when she takes a deep breath. Something bad is about to happen, Tony knows.
“They’re here.”
Tony knows exactly what that means.
He sees Steve and Bucky sat on the couch together, and Tony wishes with all his heart that he could bolt back to his lab. It’s too late now. He’s not a coward. He’s got to face his life, his shitty, fucked up life sooner or later.
He sees Bucky and it starts up again, chiming in his head, a song that he wishes he could erase from time itself.
“Try to remember the kind of September when you were a tender and callow fellow.”
He can’t follow, not anymore.
“Tony.” Steve stands. Tony thinks that he’s going to pass out. “I’m sorry.” A pause. “I’m being selfish.”
Tony just nods, for fear of what will come out of his mouth if he talks. His eyes flicker to Bucky, drained of any possible emotion.
Steve starts talking again, and he catches the end of a sentence. “--care about you both.”
“What?”
Steve’s eyes look at the floor. “I’m not expecting you two to ever be friends. I’m not expecting… anything.”
Bucky continues to stare at the floor.
“Aren’t you two still fugitives?” is all that Tony can muster.
“Yeah,” Bucky says.
“Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow.” Rings in Tony’s head.
“You risked everything to try and come here to do what? Apologize for something that I can’t forgive?”
Bucky stands up. Tony flinches. Steve looks broken.
“I can’t be here. You enjoy Rebel. But I can’t do it. I don’t know if I ever can.”
Steve gives a broken smile. “You knew it was us and still talked to us. It’s enough. It’s more than enough.”
Bucky says nothing.
Steve Rogers turned out nothing like Tony had ever expected. He was raised with the Golden Boy, the man who America adored, the stage version his father drooled over until.
Until.
But Steve Rogers wasn’t a Golden Boy. Steve Rogers was a human.
Sometimes it’s still hard to remember that.
“Tony.”
He would know that voice anywhere, anytime.
“Bucky.”
Bucky looks anywhere but at Tony. Tony doesn’t know whether to feel relieved or offended. He goes with relieved. He pushes everything out of his head.
“Does Steve know you’re here?”
Bucky looks over him and gives a look that seems to say that it’s the dumbest question he’s ever been asked. Like Bucky is the man Steve has spun countless stories about.
“Right. Then why are you here?”
Bucky looks like a glasses case, snapping his mouth open and shut, searching for words that might not exist.
“Try to remember when life was so tender that love was an ember about to billow.”
“For him.”
Tony understands. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to forgive. He knows the truth, always knew the truth, but whenever he looks at Bucky he sees every regret. Tony grimaces.
“Who else?”
“He wants you to come. With us. To find help together.”
“I don’t need help.”
Another look from a non-existent man. A chuckle. “You need more help than either of us do, Tony Stark.”
He knows he’s right. He doesn’t know if he can do it. If he can admit to anyone who isn’t himself that he’s falling apart at the seams, worse than ever before. If he can say those two words.
“Deep in December it’s nice to remember, without the hurt the heart is hollow.”
Bucky gives him a long look over, avoiding the face. “You don’t have to decide now. Steve doesn’t know I came.”
Right. Golden Boy doesn’t want him around.
Bucky, seeming to read his mind, says, “He misses you. He’d never admit it to me. But. He does.”
Bucky seems more human than any one of them.
He wonders what it says about the Golden Boy and his shadow.
He doesn’t know what day it is. Some day. No one’s tried to talk to him in a long, long time. They all have their own lives.
They’ve given up on him.
It’s okay. He’s okay.
“Tony.”
No.
No, no no.
“Steve.” He says, mustering up the ability to not sound broken.
“Please.”
“No.”
“I’m worried.”
“I know.”
“We’re worried.”
“I know.”
He hears the doors close, wondering what happened to the stubborn man that he meet years and years ago. What happened to the life that came back into him when his long-lost appeared.
Tony couldn’t’ve done this, could he?
His phone lights up next to him.
Unknown number, it says.
All the text says is, “See?”
He wills back a complete meltdown, trying to just break a few smaller things, instead of everything he’s ever put his hands on.
“Try to remember when life was so tender that no one wept except the willow.”
He doesn’t know how he got here. He really doesn’t. One minute he was in his lab, the next in his bed, feeling like he’s slept for longer than he has in years. No nightmares.
It should scare him that having a restless sleep is more unsettling than waking up enough that sleep is pointless.
He hears choked back tears. He knows who it is.
“They said-- they said you hadn’t slept for days and days, and if your body hadn’t broken down you would have died.”
A pity, really.
The look on Steve’s face shows that his lack of sleep might’ve given him a bit more motor-mouth than he’d care to have.
Steve pleads. “Come with us. I need you.” he looks to the floor. “We need you.”
Tony can’t deny Steve forever, he finds out.
“Where is he?”
“Looking.”
“For what?”
“For somewhere for us.”
Looks like Steve knew that, as well
Tony is the lowest he’s ever been. He can’t even bring himself to drink himself into a stupor, and is just wasting away. Steve deserves more than him. Steve deserves Bucky, and Bucky alone.
Tony will only make things worse. Tony always makes things worse.
Steve wants him, though. Steve wants them both. And Tony has to learn to live, eventually. He supposes that it’s never too late to learn how to live.
“Okay,” Tony says.
Steve’s face lights up, brighter than he’s ever seen it before. He figures that it’s the knowledge that both of his worlds-- old, and new, will be with him.
He thinks about having to be around Bucky. He wonders if he can ever make it go away.
Maybe not.
But it’s worth a try, he thinks, if it means that Steve looks like that. If Steve looks alive.
Not hollow.
All of them are hollow.
Maybe, together, they can feel like people again.
The screen next to him lights up, and all it says is, “Thank you. For him.”
Tony doesn’t really get it. He should be thanking him.
Steve Rogers isn’t the Golden Boy because of anything that was done to him.
Steve Rogers is the Golden Boy because he is golden, he’s a beacon of light that people naturally want to follow.
Steve Rogers would be the Golden Boy no matter what.
Steve Rogers makes them both want to try.
“Deep in December, our hearts should remember, and follow.”