Archive of Our Own

Steve stands at the edge of the wreckage with the taste of ash in his mouth and nothing inside him but a hollow exhaustion. He knows how this ends before the light ever blooms across the battlefield and silence swallows the cries of death.

Tony snaps his fingers, and Steve is consumed by the deep, cavernous absence that has already carved him out from the inside. He doesn’t even bother to move. There’s no point; he’s too late, every time.

And still, the sight of Tony burning alive rips through him anyway. The glow under his skin, the smoke curling from his armor, the terrible look in his beautiful, scared eyes. The image will be engraved behind his eyelids forever, branded there like his own personal atonement.

He knows what comes next because he has already walked this path too many times. When he wakes in his bed and the clock reads the same familiar time, Steve stares at the ceiling for a long moment. Today is day twenty. Twenty mourning rites, twenty battles, twenty failures.

Maybe Steve should just stay in bed. Tragedy will come whether he gets up or not, and he’s starting to think the loop will only end once there is nothing left of him to punish.

—⎊—

Scott Lang’s return to the compound hits like a shock wave. Five whole years felt like hours to him, he says, like time is a jacket he left on a chair somewhere and is mildly surprised to find unchanged when he puts it back on. The room goes quiet after that, heavy with the realization that Scott has somehow done the impossible. Time is supposed to work one way — a line that can’t be bent or interrupted — and he came back proving it doesn’t. And for the first time in years, Steve feels something bloom inside him that isn’t grief.

Hope comes to him carefully, almost painfully, like his body doesn’t know how to hold it anymore. It doesn’t wait for permission, and it settles in with a kind of fragile insistence that makes him want to reject it purely on principle, not because it isn’t real but because it is, and that makes it dangerous in ways he doesn’t know how to navigate.

Then Natasha says Tony’s name, cutting clean through Steve’s thoughts.

His heart drops at that, the reality of what Scott is proposing settling into place. Of course, they need the one person everything in Steve’s life ultimately circles back to. This insane idea can’t go anywhere without him; if there is even a chance this could work, they will need his brain to shape the equation. But Steve feels the pain and panic immediately. He can’t ask that of Tony. He can’t ask anything of Tony. There has been absolute silence between them, long enough for everything to rot in the absence of words.

In Siberia, everything had broken in a way that neither of them came back from cleanly. Steve gave him a phone that never rang, and somehow, years passed by. Thanos’ people came, and Steve was too far and too late, because he’s always too late, and couldn’t stop Tony from going to space to face them alone.

Tony had come back from nearly dying on that ship a month later, malnourished and barely holding himself together. Steve saw him then, for the first time in so long, and it had cracked something open in him he hadn’t been able to close again. After that came the fight; Tony had yelled at him, the same fear underneath it all, then handed him his heart and begged him not to fight Thanos. Steve had gone anyway. And when the mission was over, when they failed in fixing it, Steve couldn’t face Tony. Not at the compound, not with Pepper there, not with Tony barely alive in front of him and still somehow further away than when he’d been gone.

And then they simply never talked again.

So who is he to ask anything of Tony now, after failing him in every way that mattered, over and over?

—⎊—

When Steve finally agrees to the plan, it’s only because they’ve exhausted nearly every other possibility. And it doesn’t help his case when Natasha makes it clear — bluntly, without leaving room for argument — that whatever stands between them doesn’t matter anymore in the face of bringing everyone back.

So they go. And, as expected, they’re shut down. Until three days later, when Tony shows up with a time-space GPS and Steve’s shield, like he’s bringing donuts for the team picnic.

“I just want peace,” Tony says. “Turns out resentment’s corrosive, and I hate it.”

Steve looks at the shield in his hands. It feels heavier than he remembers, or maybe just heavier with everything it’s been through. Everything Steve hasn’t fixed. Everything Tony has somehow kept anyway.

“We’ve got a shot at getting these stones,” Tony says. “Bring back what we lost? I hope, yes. Keep what I found? I have to, at all costs. And maybe not die trying, would be nice.”

“Sounds like a deal,” Steve says.

Tony just nods, quick, like it’s already decided, like trust is a thing that still exists the way it used to between them. Like he’s handing something over without looking too closely at what it costs. And that’s the problem.

—⎊—

The compound is full of life for the first time in forever, in the crowded sense of systems forced back online after too long in silence. Plans form in overlapping rooms, voices cut across corridors, and Steve moves through it without finding anywhere that feels like it belongs to him anymore, as if the building has shifted slightly out from under the version of himself that used to know where to stand.

Tony, Bruce, and Rocket take over one of the rooms almost immediately. Steve passes it more than once without going in, catching Tony’s voice through the doorway — loud, focused, already stripped down to function. Each time he slows, each time he almost steps inside, and each time he stops before it becomes something he has to follow through on.

Until he walks into the kitchen to find Tony alone, late in the night.

He’s turned with his back to the door, but Steve can see his side profile. He’s holding something small in his hands, turning it over without really looking at it, as if his attention is somewhere else entirely. Steve just stands there for a moment without entering.

Tony turns around, and their eyes meet. He startles, just for a second, like he hadn’t heard Steve’s footsteps.

“Hey, Rogers.”

“Tony,” Steve replies awkwardly.

A beat passes, then Steve feels compelled to divert his gaze.

“Not sleeping?” Tony asks.

“I sleep some,” Steve replies honestly. “Wanted to work on some plans with Nat. You?”

Tony gives a small, noncommittal sound that isn’t quite a yes or no. “Yeah,” he says anyway, after a moment, as if correcting the record. “But we’re behind schedule, so we all need to put in some OT today.”

He reaches for the steaming kettle — it must have just stopped boiling before Steve walked in — and pours water in a cup that already has a tea bag in it. Steve wonders how long Tony had been there, lost in thought.

Steve clears his throat slightly, uncertain where the need to ask this question comes from. “Since when do you drink tea?”

“I gave up coffee a few years ago,” Tony answers with a small smile.

It should be nothing. It isn’t, really. It lands wrong in Steve’s chest anyway, small and acute in a way he didn’t expect, like a detail that proves a larger truth he hasn’t been willing to name. Coffee had always been part of the version of Tony he still carried around in his head and his heart — constant, overused, ritualistic. Something invariable in its own way.

This does not match that version. And Steve realizes, with a quiet, uncomfortable clarity, that he doesn’t know which version this is anymore. And how could he, after all this time?

Caught in his own head, he almost doesn’t notice Tony trying to slip by him, tea mug in hand.

“Work’s waiting. It was nice seeing you,” Tony says, and Steve takes a step forward to make space for him to pass.

He doesn’t get to reply. Right as he looks up, he notices Tony has left something on the counter. He knows it’s Tony’s not because the counters are tidy by any means, but because within the mess, he recognizes it immediately. Because he has the same object upstairs, in his bedroom, in a drawer he opens every day.

His mouth goes very, very dry as he picks it up. It’s in pristine condition. He knows for a fact that it was damaged and barely working when Bruce used it to call Steve years ago. But it looks brand new now. He runs to the corridor before he can change his mind.

“You forgot your, um—phone.”

He swears he can hear the moment Tony’s heart stops. His steps falter, but when he turns around, his face is undisturbed.

“Oh, thanks,” he says, already moving toward Steve with his hand extended. “Steve? Can I have it back?” he adds with a chuckle when he’s right in front of him, and Steve still hasn’t moved.

“Why do you have this?”

“A phone? Well, Cap, you know, there’s so many things one can do with such a thingamajig. For example, long-distance calls—”

“Tony,” Steve interrupts, his voice betraying his nerves. “You told me in 2012 that flip phones were for grandmas. You had a see-through half-inch-thick piece of glass that could project holograms even back then. You pranked me, remember, and made me believe everyone has phones like that and made me ask SHIELD for an unreleased Stark Phone? So tell me, why do you have the burner phone I sent you seven years ago?”

“Don’t make this into a thing, Rogers,” Tony says, already shifting his weight like he’s halfway out of the conversation, one hand still in the air, the other holding the tea yet still gesturing vaguely behind him. “Just give it back. Prof and Paddington are waiting.”

“I have mine too, Tony,” Steve confesses. “I need to know—”

“Your needs are not my concern right now,” Tony cuts in, sharper than before, the hand that had been extended finally dropping as he looks at Steve properly. “You asked me to come here, and here I am. What else do you need from me? Haven’t I proven my undying devotion to Captain America yet?”

What about Steve Rogers?, he wants to scream. He wants to push and prod, to force the question into something that can’t be avoided, but he can’t do that. He’s lost these privileges long ago, and all he’s doing now is overstepping. Tony’s right; he doesn’t owe him anything.

Steve hands him the phone and walks away without another word.

—⎊—

Pepper brings Morgan over to the compound the day before they’re set to make their time travel attempt.

Nobody says it out loud, but the logic sits there anyway, obvious in the way people avoid looking at it directly. One more day, one more hug, just in case. Steve thinks it without meaning to, trying to imagine how this risk must feel for a parent, and the thought immediately turns on him, sharp with shame. As if even imagining a ‘just in case’ where Tony doesn’t make it through is already a betrayal of the promise he gave him.

How can he be a good man if he knowingly lets that risk exist?

Then his mind goes where it always does when morality starts to fracture into too many competing versions of itself — Scott, Clint, everyone else who has already lost, everyone who has already paid the cost. Risk is not theoretical, and it never has been. Steve has lived inside it; he knows what it takes from people, knows what it leaves behind.

And still, standing there, watching Tony hold Morgan like she is the only thing currently anchoring him to any version of a future, Steve realizes he doesn’t actually know what Tony is carrying right now. Not really, not in any way that matters.

Steve watches from the edge of the room, unmoving, because stepping closer would mean interrupting something he has no right to touch. But Nebula approaches them with a familiarity that leaves Steve confused. He knows, of course, that she was with Tony on that ship in space. He will never be able to properly articulate what that means to him, how grateful he is to know that Tony wasn’t alone out there and that someone kept him company when there was nothing else. But he also doesn’t know what that time made them. Maybe they are friends now. He’s hit with an unwarranted flash of jealousy, thinking others have been privy to Tony’s life over the past five years in ways Steve never could be.

“I wanna play again. I been practiced,” Morgan declares instead of hello.

“Been practicing,” Tony corrects without looking up, already down at Morgan’s shoes, fingers working the laces loose.

“Have been practicing,” Pepper adds softly.

Tony rolls his eyes, but there is no real heat in it.

“I have been practicing,” Morgan repeats, careful and pleased with herself. “With Harley. We can beat you now.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Nebula says. Then, after a silent conversation with Pepper, “C’mon. Let me show you around.”

“It’s so big!” Morgan says immediately, looking up at the space like it is a different kind of planet.

“It really is,” Tony says. Then, like it is an afterthought he can’t resist adding, “You’re gonna love the kitchen. I just stocked up on all the things mommy doesn’t like.”

“Tony,” Pepper starts, already resigned.

“What? Rules were about what things I can’t have at my house,” he says, straightening slightly. “We never stipulated workplaces. You have a background in law, Potts, you should know.”

“Workplace, huh? You’re a team again?”

The shift is subtle, but Steve feels it. Tony bristles, instinctively. Steve should leave, that much is clear. It is becoming more obvious with every second that nobody here registered his presence in the first place. He should turn around, give them space, let Tony talk to his wife without this quiet intrusion at the edge of the room.

And yet… my house?

“Don’t know what we are. I just know we’re here to do the right thing, Pep.”

“You are,” she agrees. “How’s it looking?”

“It’s passed all the tests. I feel hopeful, if you can believe it. Terrified, but hopeful for the first time in so long. If we could bring them all back…”

“I know you’re doing this for him, Tony. I am worried the guilt will kill you if you don’t succeed.”

Tony sighs, straightening. “That’s a low blow. I’m not doing this for Rogers. I thought I made myself clear, I asked for your blessing before coming here—”

“I meant Pete,” Pepper says. “But that makes a lot of sense, actually,” she finishes, looking directly at Steve from across the room. Thankfully, Tony doesn’t notice, but Steve’s heart is in his throat. “Do me a favor and talk to him before you go on a suicide mission, will you? I have a feeling he might want to know we’re divorcing.”

Steve startles at that, taking several steps backwards and running into a table on his way out. His hearing is good enough that he gets to hear a faint “Oh, fuck, Pep, really?” as he flees.

—⎊—

They don’t talk about it. Not that night, not the next day. There’s never a good moment, and Steve isn’t sure there would be one even if they had all the time in the world.

That doesn’t stop him from thinking about it. The flip phone, the divorce, Pepper’s strange insistence that Tony talk to him. He turns the pieces over and over in his head, searching for a shape that makes sense, and finds none he can believe in.

Eventually, he forces himself to let it go. They have bigger things to worry about than whatever is brewing between him and Tony. They’re about to attempt time travel, and he needs to be as focused as he can be. There are too many ways this can go catastrophically wrong.

Of course, it does go wrong at first. But Tony is smart, and together they pull it off.

Steve fights an old version of himself in 2012. A young, stubborn, naïve version. Later, in 1970, he sees Peggy, his Peggy. He also sees Howard Stark and Edwin Jarvis and his own face reflected back at him through a decades-old photograph he wasn’t supposed to touch. Somehow, after everything — the aliens, the gods, the impossible machinery of the last decade — this is what leaves him feeling untethered.

Time had always felt abstract before. A concept, a measurement. Suddenly, it has hallways and offices and familiar voices behind closed doors. Suddenly, the past isn’t behind him at all. It’s right there, close enough to touch. But Steve has a mission to complete.

Against all odds, they return with all six stones. Then Clint crumples to the ground, and whatever fragile triumph Steve had been holding shatters instantly.

—⎊—

The day unfolds too quickly for Steve to ever properly hold onto it in his memory. There is a moment for Natasha on the deck, clumsy and insufficient, the kind of silence that tries and fails to contain what she meant to all of them. No one really knows what to say, so they don’t, until they start fighting.

Then, because they can’t waste any time, Bruce dons the Infinity Gauntlet and snaps his fingers. For a brief, impossible second, it feels like it might have worked. But the relief doesn’t have time to form into anything solid before everything breaks open again.

Thanos and his army arrive in a warship. Not the same Thanos — not the one Thor killed — but the one from the past, fast and immediate and violently certain. The compound turns into rubble almost instantly. Steve loses track of people in seconds, loses structure, loses anything that resembles a plan. By the time he drags himself up again, it’s with the slow, heavy realization that they are losing anyway, that all of it might have been for nothing.

He stands alone for a moment he can’t measure properly, surrounded by ruin and noise, and thinks this is how it all ends. Not cleanly, not meaningfully or heroically, just on a Tuesday afternoon.

When Sam’s voice comes through the comms, Steve almost doesn’t believe it at first, doesn’t believe that they’ve done the impossible, that his best friends are back, that everyone is back. Then the air tears open.

Portals bloom across the battlefield and familiar faces step through one after another. The dead return in motion and noise and color. For a moment, hope becomes something physical again.

Steve sees Spider-Man stumble straight into Tony and get pulled into a hug that looks too tight to be anything but desperate relief. It lands somewhere strange in Steve’s chest, complicated and raw, but there’s no time to name it.

He wishes Nat were here. She deserved to be here.

The battle swallows everything after that. Wanda tearing through entire lines. Clint shooting like grief sharpened his focus. Thor crashing through the chaos like a force of nature. Sam cutting through the air above them, wings flaring as he dives and rises through fire. T’Challa pushing forward with controlled precision. Carol Danvers lighting up entire stretches of the fight in a single pass. Tony, everywhere at once in flashes of armor and light and impossible timing. Steve himself, somewhere in the middle of it, shield and hammer raised until he can’t feel his arm properly anymore, all of it blending into motion and impact and too much noise to separate cleanly in hindsight.

But none of it can stop Thanos from getting the stones.

Time slows in the way it only does when the universe is about to make a decision no one can undo. Steve feels it immediately, the weight of it, the certainty that they are about to lose again, even worse this time. Everything, everywhere, fully wiped out.

Then Tony tricks Thanos and saves the day.

“And I am Iron Man,” he says as he snaps his fingers.

Thanos, along with his loyal army and ships, turns to ash and disappears completely. Half his body burning alive, Tony collapses onto the rubble of the battlefield.

Because that’s what it is, at the end of the day. A fight bigger than anything the Avengers have ever had to deal with. A war. Looking around, Steve is pulled right back into Austria — the smell of burning flesh, dirt and blood in his mouth, watching men he knew die without ceremony.

We're not soldiers, Tony had said. And yet, here he is, dying in a war.

Steve drops to his knees, too knocked sideways to scream, as Jim Rhodes, the Parker kid, and Pepper crowd in around Tony to say their goodbyes.

Nobody on the entire battlefield says a word as Pepper tells Tony he can rest now. Steve hears it all — the change in Tony’s breathing, the way it catches, falters, then stops. The Iron Man suit’s faint systems wind down into silence as the nano case loses its light. It all happens at once, and then, just like that, there is nothing left to listen to.

Steve blinks, and he’s no longer on the field. He’s in his bed, clean and uninjured.

“What the fuck?”

He’s running out of his bedroom in an instant, too fast, too unsteady, like the ground itself is no longer trustworthy enough to stand on.

The second his eyes land on Tony, alive, just standing in the common room with Bruce, his body moves before his brain can even comprehend it. His hands come up without permission, catching at Tony’s arms, then his shoulders, as if touch is the only way to confirm anything is real.

“You—you died. You—”

“Pretty sure I’m right here, buddy,” Tony replies awkwardly as he pats Steve on the back. “You okay? Bad dream?”

“No, we—we fought him. Thanos, we fought him again, and it killed you. This whole building, it was gone.”

Tony exchanges a glance with Bruce over Steve’s shoulder, a look that is meant to be subtle but isn’t, because Steve can’t look away from him long enough to miss anything.

“Did you touch the space stone at any point, Steve?” Bruce starts immediately. “This isn’t a known effect, and the Tesseract is one thing we actually have decades of studies on—actually, this sounds more like the mind stone, but even Loki’s scepter didn’t cause such intense hallucinations—”

“I know what I saw,” Steve cuts in, sharper than he means to. “I know what happened. It wasn’t a hallucination.”

“He didn’t touch it,” Tony says quickly, still watching Steve. Then, softer, “Maybe it’s shock. It’s not me we lost, Steve. Do you remember? Nat? Maybe you need some breakfast—”

Is it morning? For how long was he out?

“What’s today’s date?” Steve asks, already knowing before he hears it.

“It’s the 17th,” Tony says.

“Not for me, it’s not. God, this can’t be happening. I went back in time.”

Steve lets himself sit down on the floor before his legs decide not to cooperate. The nausea hits late, hard, like his body is only now catching up to what his mind is refusing to settle. He can’t erase the image of Tony dying from his head.

“Back in time? Maybe this is an effect of the stones,” Bruce says. “We need to check your head again—”

“But wouldn’t that mean another Steve is walking around here? FRIDAY?” Tony asks.

“No abnormality detected.”

“And we scanned everyone yesterday,” Tony continues. “We were so careful, and we all—those of us who did come back, we all came back whole. We tested that machine a thousand times, Bruce, you know we did.”

Bruce is quiet for a second, though the pounding in Steve’s head is louder than anything they might be saying.

“The guys are waiting on the deck,” he says after a moment. “I’ll tell them—”

Tony shakes his head. “No, go ahead. We owe it to Nat. We’ll come out in a sec.” Then, to Steve, “How about we get dressed first, big guy?”

Steve looks down at his lack of clothes and realizes for the first time that he jumped out of bed and ran to find Tony before he even had a chance to consider what he was doing. But he has bigger things to worry about than Tony seeing his underwear.

“Tony, you died. I saw it. Not just Nat, you too.”

Tony watches him for a second longer, then speaks again, and this time there’s no flippancy in it at all.

“I saw the same thing years ago. Felt so real. You were telling me I’m the reason you’re all dead.”

“I—what?”

“Wanda,” Tony replies with a shrug. “Look, I don’t know what happened to you last night, but I didn’t die. It wasn’t real. But I believe that it was real to you.”

“But I lived a whole day, I really did. Started just like this. You have to trust me, Tony. Thanos, he’s coming back.”

He feels it then, the sense that if he lets go of this, even for a second, everything will split into versions he can’t hold together. Tony alive in front of him, Tony dead in his memory. Both insisting on being real, and Steve, stuck in the middle, unable to prove which one is supposed to be true.

Steve rubs his eyes, disoriented. Tony sighs and puts a tentative hand on his shoulder.

“Okay, so Thanos returned. How did he come back?”

“He just… appeared. His ship attacked the compound. I don’t—it’s right after Bruce snapped. He brought everyone back — I saw them all, Tony. It worked, it really worked! Sam and Bucky and Peter Parker, and so many more, they were all there. They came straight to the fight through these… shiny portals made by Stephen Strange. And then we all fought him. We nearly killed him a few times, but then he got all the stones, again and, and—” Steve’s voice breaks.

“He snapped everyone away again?”

“No, he didn’t get to.”

“You woke up before it happened? And I had died in battle?”

“No, you—”

It dawns on Steve that he doesn’t want to tell Tony what happened. He doesn’t want to give him the idea, doesn’t want to plant anything that could lead him toward it. In fact, there’s a sharper feeling underneath that, an urge to grab him, to shake him for even considering it, for ever getting close to that choice at all.

Tony mistakes his silence for confusion. He slides down, sitting on the floor next to Steve.

“The week after Jarvis died — the human Jarvis — I didn’t sleep. I drank to cover the silence but I could still hear him in it, like he was just in another room instead of gone. Then I went into my lab at SI and started to work on the data I had on him. Everything I could remember — his voice, his phrasing, the way he’d answer me like he’d already solved my problem before I finished asking. I was drunk out of my mind half the time I was building it, and sleep-deprived the other half, but I kept feeding my computer more of him anyway. Video recordings, notes, fragments of conversations I had in my memory. I kept trying to make something that would speak back the way he did, like if I got it close enough, it would stop feeling like he was dead. And when it finally answered me like he would, I named it JARVIS.”

Tony clears his throat and looks away.

“I don’t regret making my AI and honoring Edwin Jarvis’ life. But I did it for selfish reasons. I did it ’cause I was going crazy. All this to say… I know how it feels.” He looks back at Steve, steady now. “And I know you know how it feels too, ’cause you’ve lost people. But you don’t get to choose how it hits you. She meant a lot to all of us, and you guys spent so many years together in this stupid building and got so close, and I—I’m really sorry for your loss, Steve. But we need to finish this. We need you here, mentally, and we need to finish this, or she died for nothing.” Tony exhales once, controlled. “And after, you can get drunk on Thor’s mead and break as many gyms as you want, or disappear on one of your road trips for a year, or hell, give making an AI a shot. But for today, we need you, Cap. And if Thanos comes back like you say he will, then we need to prepare, don’t we?”

Steve nods, then goes through the motions, silent. He gets dressed, he mourns Natasha with the rest of the Avengers, he watches Thor try to convince them he should be the one to snap. He’s unsettled and disturbed, the déjà vu making him dizzy. He wants to figure it out, understand what’s happening to him, but there’s no time, there’s no time at all because war is at their doorstep and nobody believes him.

When Thanos arrives mere minutes later, Tony looks at Steve in pure shock.

“You were serious,” he says, almost disbelieving.

“We didn’t win,” Steve answers, voice tight but steady. “I don’t know what we need to do differently, but this is a chance to fix it.”

Tony holds his gaze for a moment longer than Steve expects. Then he nods, slow and solemn, like something final has already clicked into place inside him.

“I will do anything in my power,” he promises.

That’s what Steve is afraid of.

When the time comes, Steve moves immediately, trying to stop it, trying to rewrite the trajectory of the moment. He’s calling his name, already too late in a way he can feel in his bones even as he runs. But Tony already has the stones, and his face shows a clear realization as the weight of it settles, the belief that this is the only move left.

By the time Steve reaches him, it’s already done. And Tony looks right at Steve when he does it.

—⎊—

It’s funny, looking back. Steve thought he was stuck in a loop for five years, living the same day over and over and feeling more helpless than ever. Useless, even. What had been the point of anything, what had been the point of having this poison in his veins and a star on his chest if he couldn’t stop the world from ending?

He thought that was hell. He wanted nothing more than to be in a position where he could do something, where his actions mattered again. Something more than a support group. Something more akin to a redo. He didn’t know what he was asking for.

—⎊—

The third time Steve wakes up on the same Tuesday, he resists the urge to run to Tony when he spots him in the kitchen. He grabs himself a cup of coffee, then asks Tony to round up everyone and join him in the meeting room. His tone must be serious enough, because he obliges without much protest.

Steve tries to keep his emotions under control as he tells them the truth.

“You have to believe me,” he finishes. He stares at Tony, who stares back, mouth set in a firm line. It’s unlike him to be silent. Once upon a time, he knew what this meant.

“Tony? You’re being uncharacteristically non-hyperverbal,” Natasha had said.

“That’s ’cause he's already made up his mind,” Steve replied, which only irritated Tony.

“Boy, you know me so well. Actually, I’m nursing an electromagnetic headache. That’s what’s going on, Cap. It’s just pain. It’s discomfort.”

He wants to know if Tony has a headache now. He wants to know what he thinks, if he believes him. He wants the ability to read him again.

He wants Natasha back.

“Repeating a day? Like Groundhog Day?” Jim says, rubbing his head.

“How do we know he’s not the other Rogers from where you guys travelled in the past?” Clint asks Tony. “He said he fought his clone. Maybe it’s not our guy who won.”

“FRIDAY can confirm I’m the only Steve Rogers here. And you can scan me, you can check the effects of time travel — it’s not like I don’t wanna know what’s going on — but we don’t have much time until Thanos comes. We really don’t,” he pleads. “We have to crack the code, see what we can do differently. What I can do differently.”

Rocket approaches Steve, eyeing him up and down. “Maybe he’s a Skrull.”

“What’s a Skrull?” Scott asks.

“Lemme make him bleed, and you’ll find out,” the raccoon responds, already drawing a knife from his pants.

“You will do no such thing,” Thor says. “Asgardians can see through human skin. His blood is red. This is no cheap clone of our Captain.”

“Well, that’s highly disturbing,” Tony says.

“Thank you, Thor, but also, what the hell?” Steve says at the same time.

“What’s a Skrull?” Scott shouts.

“I believe it is him,” Thor continues. “Captain, time spells are not uncommon, but you do not seem to exhibit the energy of common spells I have witnessed at the hands of my brother.”

“We need the Sorcerer Supreme,” Bruce adds. “He’ll be able to tell us.”

Or you can just believe me, Steve wants to say. But he knows he’d be reacting all the same.

“Okay,” Steve concedes. “FRDAY, call Wong. Tell him it’s an absolute emergency and he can portal in.” He looks at the time. They don’t have much left. “And let’s not snap until that’s dealt with.”

“Captain—” Scott starts.

“It can wait. We don’t know yet if that’s what brings Thanos back, somehow. Maybe someone else can do it this time. Thor was insistent.”

Silence takes over the room. “Man, it’s creepy when you do that. Talking about the future in the past tense,” Jim says, eventually.

“’Cause it really happened. We all time-travelled; is this really such a hard thing to believe?”

“It is not,” Nebula says. “If my father is coming, we need to destroy the stones. We are wasting time.”

“We promised we’d return them,” Bruce says. “We have to. We can mess up so many timelines—”

“We need to worry about ours,” Tony says, and only at this moment does Steve realize that the emotion he couldn’t read on his face was terror. “Steve said—Thanos changed his mind. He’s coming and he’s killing all of us. We can’t snap.”

“Tasha didn’t die for nothing!” Clint says, pushing himself into Tony’s space. “You selfish asshole, you get to keep your family, but what about us? What about her? Did you even know she had a sister? A sister she died to bring back!”

His volume is rising with every word, but Tony just stands there, quiet, taking it with his head bowed and fists clenched. Before anyone can push further into the fracture that Clint’s words have opened, the space behind Steve begins to distort, and then a circle of orange light forms cleanly in the air.

Wong steps through and, without hesitation, lifts one hand. FRIDAY must’ve briefed him on the entire situation, because the air around Steve responds as though it is being gently pulled apart thread by thread, until Wong lets his hand fall and the sensation dissipates, leaving only the faint aftertaste of having been touched even though nobody did.

“No active magical influence. No binding, no alteration, no sustained external spellwork.”

Steve exhales, relieved by the validation, while also reassessing what kind of problem he is still inside of.

“But,” Wong continues, and the word alone tightens the room again, “there is residue. Very faint. Not structured magic, more like a trace disturbance, from something really strong. It’s unlike anything I have ever felt.”

Tony’s head turns at that.“Is he gonna be okay?”

“I need to investigate further—”

Wong doesn’t finish the sentence. He stops mid-thought, gaze snapping upward toward the ceiling as if something happened in a way only he can sense, his expression tightening into concern.

“What’s going on?” Jim asks.

“He’s coming,” Steve says, and a second later, the first missile hits the compound.

What follows is the same nightmare Steve has already lived through twice.

—⎊—

Some days, all Steve can think about is how Natasha and Tony and every other life Thanos took might never get anything like a funeral if he doesn’t manage to break the loop he’s trapped in, and it’s that thought that hits him hardest when everything else has already gone numb. It’s not only the scale of loss that breaks through so much as the absence of closure, the idea that there might never be an endpoint where grief is allowed to settle, and for reasons he can’t fully explain, that is what finally makes it spill over.

It feels almost disorienting when it happens, the tears arriving as confirmation that something inside him is still responsive, still capable of registering emotions beyond strategy and survival, and in a strange way, that realization is what hurts and comforts at the same time. Because if he can still feel this, then he’s not only what this endless fight has been reducing him to; he’s still someone who remembers, still someone who endures, still someone who can fix this. He’s still Steve Rogers.

And for a moment, that is the only thing that makes any of it bearable.

—⎊—

On the fourth day, Steve hugs Tony properly this time and doesn’t let go for a long time, despite his protests and Bruce’s confused looks.

When he finally releases him, he leaves the room without saying anything.

He goes back to his bedroom, turns on the shower, and stays under the water until he starts screaming, letting it all come out where no one can hear it.

After, he goes through the day as usual, deciding against telling anyone the truth. He can try again tomorrow.

—⎊—

It’s on day seven that Steve brings up the flip phone again.

He tells Tony that he kept it on him all that time. That he used to listen for the faint static in his pocket like a heartbeat. That he would imagine it lighting up, buzzing against his palm, as if everything could suddenly be okay between them.

Once he starts, he cannot stop. He confesses to the messages too; thousands of them, drafted in silence, written into the dark like prayers that never learned how to be heard. Some were desperate. Some were embarrassingly sad. Some were angry. Some were confessions. Some just said are you there over and over until the words lost all meaning.

Steve also admits that he still touches it every night before sleep, like a habit his body refused to unlearn. Like if he presses hard enough, Tony might feel it. He asks him if his own phone means the same to him, if that’s why he repaired his and kept it all these years.

Tony is speechless for a long time, visibly uncomfortable. Steve pushes on.

“I know about the divorce, too. I heard Pepper. I know it’s not just me, Tony. This is something we gotta talk about—”

Tony’s eyes snap up at that, anger obvious in his voice. “Great fucking timing, Rogers. Today, of all days?”

Steve can’t tell him that today is all they have. He decides to lie instead: “Nat dying, it made me think of all the things I might not get to do before I die, all the things I wanna say—”

“So you pick now,” he adds, quieter but worse for it, “to unload that on me? Your epiphanies are so urgent? You had five years. Hell, you had eleven.”

“I didn’t… know. Didn’t realize it, until it was too late—”

Somehow, that’s the wrong thing to say. “Well, lucky you, Cap. I had my heart broken in more ways than one in that bunker. Wish I could’ve been unaware of my stupid feelings for you. Why would you—Christ, Rogers, why bring any of this shit up now? I wanted us to be on good terms. What’s wrong with you?”

“Tony—”

His hand drags through his hair once, hard and impatient.

“I gotta go, Thor is trying to snap the fucking gauntlet. Unlike you, I didn’t forget the thing we gotta do today, you know, the actual reason Romanoff died? But glad to hear her death made you realize things about yourself. Make sure you use that in your next support group.”

And then Steve is left alone, understanding now that he can always hit lower than rock bottom.

—⎊—

Another thing Steve hates about this loop is the lack of sleep. He keeps waiting for a moment where exhaustion finally wins, where he can close his eyes and drop into something quiet, but it never really happens. His eyes close only to open again.

On day eleven, he doesn’t get out of bed for a long time. It’s Tony who comes to check on him. Once upon a time — or yesterday, by the calendar — it would have been Natasha.

“Hey, Cap, you decent? I’m coming in.”

There’s a softness to Tony these days, a gentler way of moving through the room that feels tied to being a father, like it has changed how he sees the world. Or maybe it’s the years of grief and living in a new world that have left no one unchanged.

“Wow,” Tony says, glancing around. “It looks exactly the same.”

He’s been living at the compound for five years, but the room stayed unchanged. When Steve moved into his first apartment in New York, following the mandated prison SHIELD had called a transitional retreat, he was too overtaken by grief and shock to really oppose the decor they had picked for him, something designed around the 40s zeitgeist in a way that felt unfamiliar to Steve, more like a movie set than his own experience. When he relocated to DC two years later, he tried to fix it — to reclaim control, to give the emptiness shape — by filling it with objects to patch the gaps the decades of ice had left behind.

Then, his apartment got half destroyed during the fall of SHIELD, and Steve lost most of the belongings he had accumulated in the new century. Luckily, he had been smart enough to keep a few important things in a fireproof safe. He never really bought anything new after that.

Not that Tony hadn’t tried to get Steve to decorate this room. He’d tried everything — Rothkos and Pollocks on the walls, expensive linens for his bed, war memorabilia offered with the intensity of someone who didn’t know how to stop giving. Pepper had whispered to him that he should accept it, that some of it had been sitting in storage since 2012, when Tony had tried to assign each Avenger an entire floor of the Tower and filled them with curated lives that none of them moved into.

Even with that guilt, Steve never accepted Tony’s gifts, leaving it as bare and sterile as he felt on the inside.

“I’m a little under the weather,” Steve says after a moment of silence. “I’m sure you can understand. You can go ahead without me.”

Tony’s brows furrow, already halfway into reading him. “You wanna miss Nat’s… well, I don’t even know what to call it. But we should, I mean—”

“I said you can go ahead, Tony.”

There is a pause after that. Steve keeps his eyes forward, fixed on nothing in particular, because looking at Tony feels like it would invite explanation, and explanation feels dangerously close to breaking.

Watching him for a second longer, Tony gives in.

“I have a feeling I should push,” he says, voice lower now. “But you and I… I don’t know how to do this whole feelings thing, so I can send someone…” He trails off, like the sentence gets heavier the further it goes. Then, quieter, “Guess she was the only real friend you had left, huh?”

Steve swallows, keeps staring at the wall. Tony’s not wrong, but the comment is still cruel and unexpected, like a slap across the face.

“I’m not gonna off myself ’cause I got no friends, Stark,” he says, and he’s glad the edge in his voice comes out sharp and not desperate. “Give me some space.”

He finally looks up. Tony’s expression changes slightly, like he’s recalibrating. “Is that an order, Captain?”

“If that’s what it takes, yes.”

Tony nods once and leaves the room. After, Steve has enough time to consider his plan. Telling the team only wastes time, every single time. Every explanation turns into a debate, every debate into a delay. He needs to act alone, needs to do something differently. While the rest are still outside, maybe he can go check on the gauntlet. Maybe he can take it. Maybe he can snap it himself.

He knows it might kill him; it was a clear consensus that only Bruce can do it, that he is the only one who can handle the gamma radiation. But maybe this is what needs to be done anyway. Maybe the loop ends with his death.

Mind made up, Steve walks into the room and finds Nebula staring at the nanogauntlet. She jumps when he enters — a small movement, but uncontrolled enough that he notices it immediately.

“What are you doing here? We agreed nobody can be in here alone.”

He looks up, wonders if FRIDAY has a protocol for this.

“I could ask the same of you, Captain.”

Her tone is dry, accusing. Unfamiliar. It is only then that Steve realizes Nebula had left the room at some point, during that third day when they had called Wong. And that’s not the only time; he tries to place her in his memory and can’t. He racks his brain and can’t remember seeing her in this room during any of the times Bruce snapped his fingers. And yet, here she is, alone.

Could she be working for her father? After all these years?

Tony trusted her with his daughter. That betrayal is enough to make something in Steve snap, fast and urgent, before he can fully form the thought into anything else. He launches across the room and tackles her to the ground.

His shoulder slams directly into her midsection with the force of a speeding truck, but instead of bending, her torso feels like solid vibranium. Nebula doesn’t even yield an inch; she absorbs the impact, her mechanical eyes glowing a cold, menacing blue. Before he can reset his stance, her left hand clamps onto his collarbone, crushing through his armor.

Pain detonates through Steve’s back in a blinding wave. The impact drives the air out of him in a ragged gasp, and for a second his vision fractures at the edges, the room tilting in and out of focus as pressure builds behind his ribs. He tries to breathe and finds nothing cooperating, only the echo of impact repeating through his bones.

With a sickening metallic whir, she effortlessly lifts his frame off his feet with one arm and slams him spine-first into the floor. As he gasps for air, Nebula unleashes an energy blast from her wrist gauntlet straight into his head. He blacks out before he can do anything else.

He regains his consciousness when the compound is already under rabble, and he’s too injured to properly fight. The day ends as it always does.

—⎊—

By day twenty-three, Steve has tried everything. Tried derailing it at key moments; letting Thor snap instead of Bruce, snapping first thing in the morning, even managed to steal the gauntlet and snap his own fingers. All that did was kill him.

Death came slowly due to his healing powers fighting it, and it resulted in another image he cannot ever forget. Tony, crying over his body, telling Steve he loved him. The worst possible way to hear it for the first time, and Tony won’t even remember saying it.

Didn’t matter anyway, because the second his heart stopped, Steve woke up, in one piece, as if nothing had happened.

A few times, he tries to fight Nebula again, or to convince the team that she is betraying them. But somehow, it’s never enough to stop Thanos from coming. And the more he pushes, the more Steve starts to wonder if he imagined it all, if he’s wasting time on a hunch instead of trying to break the pattern in front of him.

After all, the only thing he found her guilty of was going into the room alone. Steve did the same thing. By that logic, it means nothing. For all he knows, she might’ve been there with the same plan; maybe she’s carrying guilt from her past role in Thanos’ plans and has the urge to correct it. Maybe she just wanted the gauntlet for the same reason Steve wanted it. Ultimately, he chooses to drop it, even though he keeps an eye on her.

In one of the loops, Steve even tried — and, of course, failed — to keep Tony from joining the battle. When he accepts that it will never work, he tries following him in the field instead, more aggressively than ever before: blocking him, steering him away, trying to steal the nanogauntlet from him before it is too late, or trying to convince Tony to let Bruce snap it for a second time. But it all moves too quickly, every time, and it always ends with Tony snapping his fingers.

Except for day fifteen. He does not like thinking about day fifteen, because that is when he managed to slam himself into Tony and stop him before he could steal the stones. He will never forget the absolute shock and betrayal on Tony’s face when Thanos held his fist up high, the stones loaded and shining. It is the last thing he sees before the snap happens, and Steve is so certain he is about to die forever — that they all are, because Steve caused it — when he wakes up in his bed, the same as always, on the morning of October 17th.

After that, he decides he got lucky, if you can even call it that, and that letting Thanos win is too big a risk to even consider replicating. So he doesn’t want to act rashly again, but every time he tries to explain rationally and ask for help, they never stop it in time. So, most of the days, he doesn’t say anything, and he tries to change things in small ways, big ways — anything he can think of to make the outcome different.

That is why this is happening, right? Because he needs to change the ending? Or is this just his personal hell, being forced to relive one of the worst days of his entire life, watching it loop over and over like a faulty movie reel with no real control over any of it and no chance of tempting fate?

Maybe Thanos’ snap was successful, not on day fifteen but on day one, and he is dead. Maybe they all are, and Thanos was cruel enough to send them all to hell. He made himself a god, after all.

Steve is ruminating over this, defeated, ready to turn his back as Tony kills himself once again, when he notices something. He has been so focused on Tony, on keeping his eyes glued to him, that he never noticed Stephen Strange signaling something to him. Unless this is the first time? Steve holds his breath, trying to understand if this is any different, if it will change something, but… no. Thanos announces himself as inevitable, and Tony tricks him, and it all resets.

The next day, Steve is itching to ask Tony about the sign, but he convinces himself that this should be one of the times he lets the day happen as usual. Once he hears Sam’s voice in his ear and turns around to see the portals open, he’s focused on his new mission. He watches Strange, but the sorcerer does not talk to Tony at any point, and it’s getting close to the moment, too close for his liking, so Steve does what he has to — he ambushes him.

“I need you to listen to me. This is very important. I’m stuck in a time loop and have relived this day many times. It all ends the same, no matter what I do. Then I wake up. But yesterday, I noticed for the first time that you signaled something to Tony Stark, showed him your finger right before he tried to steal the stones from Thanos. What did that mean?”

That is how Steve finds out that years ago, Strange visited fourteen million possible versions of the future, and determined that they only won in one. Tony snapping his fingers must be part of that plan, and that’s why Strange encourages him to do it. But what’s missing from the equation? If it’s the right thing to do, why is the loop happening?

“I can’t tell you what it is,” he says, and he has the decency to sound remorseful. “We can’t mess it up.”

“What are you talking about? The whole fucking problem is that I get infinite tries and nothing is working! You said Tony has to be the one to do it. I understand that, but he does it every time. So what do I have to do, save his life?”

Strange frowns at that. “He sacrifices his life? Successfully? Every time?”

“Yes. The army disappears, and Tony… he dies. It always goes like that.”

“That’s exactly how it’s meant to go,” he says, panic obvious in his voice. “Something changed. What could have changed—oh.”

Without wasting a second. Strange touches his head, and Steve feels the intrusion immediately; a presence pressing into his mind, something not his own sliding past the edges of thought.

“Wong already did this—”

“Wong wouldn’t know what an infinity stone feels like. This is the time stone’s effect.”

Steve shakes his head, lost. “I never touched any of them.”

Strange nods to Tony, all away across the field. Steve can tell by the familiar fight that the moment is close. “Stark did. Many times, according to you. Whatever he thought of, be it that first time or every time… He employed the stones for more than eradicating Thanos. Consciously or not, I do not know. But he did something, and it apparently has a lot to do with you.”

Why him? Why on Earth would Tony put all of this on him?

“I don’t know how to fix it,” Steve admits, eyes teary.

“He had enough faith in you to entrust you this failsafe. The answer has to be within you.”

And just like that, a series of thoughts comes to Steve so clearly he wonders how he ever missed them.

He thinks of all the signs he pretended weren’t there — the flip phone, the divorce, Tony’s confession when he thought Steve was dying. He thinks of all the promises he broke through the years, of everything left hanging between them.

He thinks of what he would reminisce about on his deathbed. All the regrets, all the what-ifs. He thinks of how he wished for just one more day with Peggy when he was crashing the plane, and of all the times he wanted to fix things with Tony and didn’t. How he wants nothing more than to end the loop and tell Tony the truth, to be brave, if he somehow gets that chance.

He thinks that Tony, as heroic as he is, must’ve been terrified at the idea of death — never seeing his friends again, never holding his daughter, never getting to tell Steve he loved him. He wished to live, and he wished to not be alone.

And now, Steve knows exactly what he has to do. So he starts running faster then ever before in his life. 

“I am Iron Man,” Tony says, but right before he gets to snap his fingers, Steve clasps his forearm with all the strength he can muster. Pain surges through him in sharp, radiant jolts, burning from within. He can taste the power, he hears the whispers of the stones, the temptation to steal it all for himself. But none of it is stronger than his desire to make things right, to end this battle and this loop and more importantly, to save his Tony.

“No,” Tony tries to protest, but his eyes betray him. There’s relief in them, and perhaps, even a shred of hope within the fear.

“Together,” Steve tells him, and he has no doubt that Tony is thinking of the same memory, the promise he failed to keep. Tony nods, face drenched in tears, and snaps his fingers.

And with this one final decision, with the chance he was granted, Steve hopes he just fixed it all.

—⎊—

Steve wakes slowly, and he is afraid to open his eyes. What if he's in his bedroom again, the same morning folding back on itself, the same ending waiting no matter how many times he tries to change it?

But when he does, the ceiling is unfamiliar — too white, too bright, marked by soft hospital light. For a disorienting second, his mind doesn’t know what to make of it. Then it starts to settle: the loop really is gone.

His ribs ache when he inhales too deeply, a reminder of injury, of consequences that stayed in place instead of undoing themselves. His shoulder pulls when he moves, bandaged and sore, his knuckles stiff with healing burns. Evidence that time is moving forward and not circling him back into the same ending.

He sits up faster than he should. More pain flashes through him — sharp along his side, and deep in his chest — but it feels almost secondary. Physical pain is so much easier than his soul aching. He swings his legs off the bed, pulling the leads from his chest without looking back. A nurse calls after him. He does not stop long enough to respond.

The corridor is too bright, too long, too full of rooms he has to check. He walks through it with a focus that feels almost fragile now; not the sharp survival focus of the last month, but something different. Something newly unanchored. The knowledge that forward motion actually leads somewhere, or that he might die and not wake up tomorrow. It’s oddly comforting.

He turns a corner and stops. Tony is there; in a hospital bed, seemingly unconscious, but there nonetheless.

For a second, Steve just looks at him, like his brain needs time to accept that he’s alive. Pale, thin, covered in bandages — but breathing, and alive.

He walks to his bedside and takes it all in. Tony’s breathing is uneven but steadying, his pulse tracked in soft electronic rhythm. Steve’s sharp senses can hear his actual heartbeat, faint beneath the machinery. He listens to both, like he needs to make sure the machines are not lying.

Because Tony is still here.

The damage is written into him. One arm held carefully in support, wrapped and stabilized. Permanent scarring already peaking at the edges of the bandaging. Half his hair has been shaved away, exposing the brutal reality beneath the armor he usually wears.

Later, someone says that if Tony had wielded the gauntlet alone, if Steve had been even a little late, the outcome would have been far worse — amputation of the arm, permanent loss of vision in his right eye, and possible paralysis along that side of his body.

Steve doesn’t tell anyone that he knows, for a fact, that even that scenario is a happy one. In reality, Tony wouldn’t have survived it at all.

After that, everything moves quickly. Sam finds him first, then Bucky. Steve doesn’t manage to stay composed when they reach him. It all comes to him — the relief, the exhaustion, the weight of everything that did not end the way it could have. He cries on their shoulders without shame, because there is nothing left in him that can pretend otherwise.

Pepper arrives with Morgan, and she doesn’t seem surprised by his presence in Tony’s room. Steve bends down when the child reaches for him, still crying and laughing at the same time without fully knowing where either emotion begins. Peter is quieter when he visits, watching everything like he’s still afraid it might dissolve into dust again. Happy Hogan looks like he has not stopped holding his breath in years. Jim stands steady at Tony’s side, eyes fixed for a long moment before finally meeting Steve’s.

They all thank him, for saving the world, and saving their Tony. They tell him Scott and Clint and everyone else got their families back. That it’s chaotic and messy, and it will destabilize global politics, but ultimately, it’s the best news Steve’s heard in years.

That is, until Natasha walks through the door, beautiful and alive. Steve’s just relieved he’s sitting down.

“What… how?”

“I assumed you’d be able to tell me,” she says with a small smile. “After I jumped on Vormir, I was just… gone. Drifting through space, or something. Hard to say. Unaware of any passage of time. Then all of a sudden, I feel this pull, and I find myself in the middle of a battlefield as you and Tony collapse to the ground. Thought you had something to do with it.”

Steve remembers feeling the power of the stones and thinking of that memory from years ago — how he told Tony they’d do this together. How together always meant him and Tony, yes, but more importantly, all six of them. Did he really do this? Did he really bring her back with his memories? Or maybe Tony thought of the same thing, or specifically wished for Nat to return. Doesn’t matter anyway; what matters is that something worked, and he can’t put any of his emotions into words.

Because she’s here. Not a memory, not a ghost lingering in the shape of old grief. Natasha Romanoff is standing right in front of him. His eyes begin to sting.

“Oh my god,” is all he manages before he’s on his feet. Then he’s crossing the room and pulling her into his arms.

—⎊—

Steve never leaves the hospital. He sleeps on a chair in Tony’s room, dozing off with his head against Tony’s mattress, ignores repeated suggestions that he should go home and recover properly himself. The bruising along his ribs is still healing. His shoulder still aches. None of it matters.

Tony is alive, but Steve has spent too long watching him die. So he keeps vigil.

What if this is just another cruel trick? Another nightmare wrapped in the shape of hope? What if he leaves for five minutes and comes back to find the universe has changed its mind?

When Tony finally wakes a few days later, Steve is right there.

“We won?" Tony asks, his voice rough from disuse.

Steve lets out a shaky breath. “We did. You did it, Tony. It's always been you. You did it.”

Tony's mouth twitches upward. “We did it together.”

“That’s true,” Steve says, smiling through tears. “But you’re the one who deserves the credit.” His voice catches. “I have… a story to tell you. But for now, I’m just so, so happy you’re alive.”

Tony smiles, and the expression is weak enough to break Steve’s heart. Then he coughs. Steve immediately reaches for the cup on the bedside table, helping him drink. Tony’s free hand shakes too much to hold it himself. He takes a few careful sips before settling back against the pillows.

“Are you in any pain?”

“Kind of feels like I’ve been hit by a train, yeah. But I don’t even care.”

Steve laughs, the sound escaping before he can stop it. He then presses the nurse call button.

Tony immediately looks offended. “Traitor.”

“There are a lot of people who worry about you, Tony. We need to let them know.”

The words seem to break whatever haze he’s been floating in. His expression shifts, suddenly alert. “Morgan? Where’s—”

“She’s great,” Steve soothes him. “Pepper, Jim, Peter — everyone’s just fine. They went home to rest. It’s 2 a.m. right now. But I’m sure they’ll be here as soon as possible. I’ll call.”

That seems to calm him down. His shoulders loosen, the frantic edge in his expression softening into something almost childlike. “No, no, let them sleep. So everyone really is back?”

“Yeah, Tony. Everyone’s back. Even Nat,” Steve says, voice full of emotion. “She’ll visit soon, and I probably shouldn’t have told you this because your doctor explicitly told us not to shock you with any news, but—”

“Oh, fuck that.” Tony lets out a disbelieving laugh that breaks halfway through. “Nat? Are you serious? How?” His eyes dart around the room as though the answer might be written somewhere. “Did Bruce do it?”

“No, apparently we did.”

Tony drags a hand over his eyes, chuckling wetly as more tears spill anyway. “Christ,” he mutters. “Am I gonna stop crying at some point?”

“I haven’t,” Steve admits. “It's different, though, crying because you’re happy. Don’t really hate it.”

“I just can’t believe we pulled it off. This isn’t usually how it goes for us,” Tony says, shaking his head.

“Maybe it was time we caught a break. I think we suffered enough,” Steve says, well-aware that a lot of Tony’s suffering in recent years has been a direct result of Steve’s own actions. Seemingly, Tony’s brain doesn’t go there.

“How come you’re here, though? Shouldn’t you be resting, or celebrating? Or recovering; I’m sure the stones took a toll on you too. Oh, shit, we have to return them. Are they someplace safe now?”

“Wanted to keep you company. Didn’t want you to wake up alone, and I needed to see you, monitor you, I—it’s hard to pretend we didn’t nearly die in that fight,” Steve says, and dares to push a hand through Tony’s hair, gently combing through the damp curls. He doesn’t mention the times Tony did die, or the fact that now that Steve gets to sleep, it’s all he dreams about. “And don’t worry about the mission. We have it all under control.”

“Okay, Doc,” he says. “But now that I woke up? Will you stay? Keep fussing over this old man?”

As if Steve could go anywhere else.

“From now on, I’ll always be right where you need me, Tony. I know I haven’t, and I know my promises don’t mean much—”

“Hey, none of that, Rogers.”

“Call me Steve, please,” he murmurs, feeling braver in the middle of the night.

Something softens in Tony’s expression.

“Steve,” he fake-whispers, “I think a nurse has been hovering at the door for a minute now.”

Steve clears his throat and takes a step away from Tony’s bed.

“You may come in.”

“Sorry for interrupting, Mister Rogers. Mister Stark, it’s so great to see you awake! How are you feeling?”

Tony shrugs his shoulders, then winces at the pain.

“No need to apologize, ma’am, I’m the one imposing outside of visiting hours,” Steve says.

“Well, you did save the world, sir. It’s the least we can do.” Then, to Tony, “My name is Jen. I’ll be taking care of you. Are you in any pain? I can call in the doctor if you’d like, but she’ll come by in the morning to speak to you. All you need to do now is rest. You are recovering very well.”

“No need, Jen, thank you. If it can wait, I think I’d rather sleep,” he yawns. “I’m not all that awake yet.”

After checking on Tony, Jen tells Steve that they can prepare a bed for him in one of the other rooms. Steve politely refuses, and points at the chair that’s been his bed for the past few days. She shakes her head, then shortly returns with a pillow and a blanket for him. He doesn’t know what the staff thinks about his insistence on being as close to Tony as he can, but he’s grateful he doesn’t have to explain himself.

Steve thinks Tony is asleep when he goes to put the second blanket over him, but Tony opens his eyes, full of emotion.

“I didn't think I was going to make it.”

Steve stills. 

“I was so scared to die,” he continues quietly. “And I was so happy when you grabbed me. Even though I was also angry with you, because what if you died? But I also—” His voice breaks.

“I know,” Steve says softly, because he really, really does know how it feels to watch your loved one die, and the complicated feelings that arise from having to accept their sacrifice saved the entire world. “I’m okay.”

Tony closes his eyes briefly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t save you sooner,” he adds, knowing Tony can’t possibly understand what he means yet. Knowing Tony doesn't know how many times Steve failed before finally getting here. “But we’re here now, and I have something to say.”

Tony opens his eyes again, visibly fighting exhaustion, and Steve can’t help but smile. “I love you too.”

Confusion flickers across Tony’s face.

“You don’t remember saying it, but it only felt right that I said it back.”

Tony stares at him for a long moment, a dozen emotions crossing his features too quickly to name. Finally, he huffs a weak laugh. “We have a lot to talk about.”

Steve wipes his teary eyes. For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, the future stretches ahead of him instead of ending abruptly in the middle of a battlefield.

“We have all the time in the world,” he says, before delicately kissing Tony’s forehead. “You rest now. I’ll be here in the morning.”