Chapter Text
Tony would understand.
Probably. Flagrant theft for the purposes of need and kindness was his thing, after all. War Machine wouldn’t have become a superstar if Tony hadn’t let him walk away with it back in the day.
Was a burner phone any different? Was a—
Rhodey glared down at the burning green screen in his hand, the flip-phone backlit like something from the nineties. Old model. Less likely to be traced accurately via GPRS mapping, but definitely not impossible. Steve had left more than one map for Tony to find him, obviously. The anonymous number in the contacts list. The letter—god, that letter. And the phone had to be a twin for Steve’s own burner. Buy two, get a reunion someday. After Tony told himself all the things he needed to get himself through the days, the weeks, the years. However long it was going to be before they looked each other in the eye again.
What a goddamn mess.
Rhodey had once sat back, a scotch in one hand and a tablet in the other, reclined on the daybed on his hotel balcony, watching the stars and wondering if Steve would replace him soon as Tony’s closest friend, his partner. Nights when he’d been half a world away on missions for any number of bigwigs in the white house. The top brass. He’d always been a military man, generally on the straight and narrow, though Tony used to do his damnedest to drag him into trouble. Seeing someone like Steve Rogers, Captain America himself existing in close quarters with Tony, as part of a team, yeah…he could see himself being replaced. How did anyone measure up to a living legend, let alone one that had had real face-time with Howard Stark during the war? Tony had reviled and admired Steve’s ghost since he’d been in his school shorts.
And look what had happened.
The image of Tony’s face when he’d stumbled into Rhodey’s hospital suite after getting home from Siberia was something out of nightmares. He’d still been shaking hours after getting out of the suit. Nothing dramatic or overblown, but his fingers had been cold when Rhodey had reached out and gripped them tightly, and the tremor racing through him was faint and furious and devastated.
The only thing Tony managed to say was, “Mom.”
It had sounded like a curse, some terrible malediction. Or maybe it was a plea.
It didn’t matter.
Rhodey had hit the duress button on his bed without ever taking his eyes away, but it hadn’t been for himself.
Shock, the nurses determined, brows creased in consternation as a superhero and a celebrity stood in their grasp and barely saw them. Shock and a bruised sternum, bruised chest in general. Rhodey barely bit back his own questions about Tony’s heart.
He knew all he needed to. Tony had raced out to save Steve and his friend Bucky, and came back damaged worse than ever.
Two weeks later, when he’d been released into Tony’s care—and there wasn’t enough time in the day to talk about that—Tony had already buried himself in his newest project and emerged with leg braces that could use subsonic frequencies to activate nanites injected into Rhodey’s spinal cord, repairing the damage even as they allowed him to gain his mobility back. The injections hadn’t been fun, but the alternative would have been worse. High tech prosthetic, isn’t that what Tony had called his suit in the senate hearing? The brace was more focused, but Rhodey saw the guilt and self-recrimination in each minuscule screw and titanium joint.
Time and again he’d tried to get Tony to open up about what happened with him and Steve, what Maria had to do with it. Tony shut him down each time, too invested in Rhodey’s legs, in fixing what he thought he’d done. Guilt after guilt after guilt.
One day they sat on the training mats beside the parallel bars, Rhodey breathing hard from the exertion and Tony trying not to hover beside him, and it had all just come pouring out.
First had been Rhodey’s personal ownership of everything that had happened. His lack of regret when he made his decision to stand by the accords. It had been right then and his resolve hadn’t crumbled in the days after his injury. If he didn’t blame Vision, how the hell could he ever blame Tony? How the hell could Tony blame himself?
A couriered package had arrived to interrupt the dawning light in Tony’s eyes, but it had been okay. One wall had fallen away, at least.
Then Tony had scanned the letter in the cardboard envelope he’d received and blanched so fast Rhodey had actually staggered forward to catch his elbow, just in case. He’d see Tony reading that letter at least five more times in different parts of the compound later on, but in that moment he had no qualms about snatching the paper from his fingers, leaning hard on his crutches, legs barely locked and tingling in their braces.
Tony,
I’m glad you’re back at the compound. I don’t like the idea of you rattling around a mansion all by yourself. We all need family.
The Avengers are yours, maybe even more so than mine. I’ve been on my own since I was eighteen. I never really fit in anywhere, even in the army. My faith is in people, I guess. Individuals. And, I’m happy to say that for the most part, they haven’t let me down. Which is why I can’t let them down either. Locks can be replaced, but maybe they shouldn’t.
I know I hurt you, Tony. I guess I thought by not telling you about your parents I was sparing you, but I can see now that I was really sparing myself, and I’m sorry. Hopefully one day you can understand.
I wish we agreed on the accords, I really do. I know you’re doing what you believe in, and that’s all any of us can do. That’s all any of us should do.
So no matter what, I promise you, if you need us—if you need me—I’ll be there.
Rhodey put two things together in that moment, staring at the slanted handwriting on the paper that felt strange in his fingers.
One, Steve knew that Tony was back home in the compound, from wherever he was holed up. There were eyes on them.
Two, Steve had been keeping secrets. The kind of secrets that had sent Tony into a tailspin, had him shipping back a suit with a devastating gouge in its chestplate and a shield that had claw marks in it that only refined vibranium could dole out.
Rhodey had lifted his eyes to Tony’s, and nothing else had needed to be said.
It would be over three hours before they’d leave the training mats again; the sun gone down at their backs and Friday activating the interior lights by soft, almost imperceptible degrees as Tony talked himself hoarse and Rhodey listened.
As he listened, his eyes wide and mouth twisted at the tale, something in his chest turned cold and hard. Turned ugly and mean and god, for a second he knew Tony’s first protective instinct to attack far too intimately. Feeling the steel of his anger gather like a fist around his throat he listened and nodded, giving Tony everything but the knot of rage that he tried to quell with every slow breath he took. It wasn’t about him. Those hours had been Tony’s alone.
Later, what felt like days and weeks and centuries later, Rhodey stared up at the stars from the balcony daybed at the Avengers compound and wondered if he could make Steve Rogers pay.
It started with a phone call, and a burner phone stolen from Tony’s bedside drawer. Friday’s sensors had been a watchful glint the entire agonising way, but she’d said nothing. There was a bit of JARVIS in her code, he was sure of it.
The phone call had been on Rhodey’s own personal cell, and it had been to someone in an area of the military that knew a little something about intercepting devices manufactured before 2004. The results had been rapid and direct, and that had been that, really.
A week later, with it all said and done, Rhodey stared at the burner phone’s backlit screen, glowing green in the dim light beneath third-storey eaves, seeing the sunset blaze red and give way to lavender and blue, and hoped Tony wouldn’t mind that much.
Some things a friend was just better equipped to do.
Rhodey’s thumb hit ‘Call’ on the anonymous number. The dial tone hitched and bleated out a re-routed series of beeps: international prefix dial tone. Then it purred the sound of an attempted connection.
And he waited.
Behind the wall at Rhodey’s armoured back, there was a curse and a frantic rustle of paper and a drawer being ripped open. Fool had left the balcony door open.
The click of connection was deafening.
“Tony?” a familiar voice said, striving for tones of cool confidence.
Smiling grimly, Rhodey pushed his armoured suit off the wall of T’Challa’s palace and released the reflective cloaking that had been visually and electromagnetically hiding his suit.
Tony had called the prototype ‘Ghost’.
Rhodey rather liked the poetry of it.
Steve’s blue eyes widened as Rhodey walked in from the balcony, faceplate up and burner phone in hand. The connection was still live.
“Surprise, motherfucker,” Rhodey said cheerfully, but that steel was still a vice around his throat. The look in Steve’s eyes said he knew it.
“Tony can’t come to the phone right now.”