Chapter I

NEW YORK CITY: DECEMBER 2049

"HELLO, Mr. Slaven, how are you today?" Zia's smile inched upwards across her face in a friendly, nonthreatening way. Her fine cheekbones moved like glaciers across her face as the fineness of her smile pushed them upwards.

There were a few laughs from the surrounding audience, while the jurors couldn't help but offer a few smiles at the joviality of the young woman before them. It was rare for lawyers to be so very cordial and cheerful to the client they were about to cross-examine. "Well-enough, Miss. Carter, how are you?" Robert Slaven smirked in such a way as if her overly-friendliness was a bit unnerving to him, yet there was a need to keep a confident demeanor.

"Excellent, actually. I just graduated from New Hampford Law School about six months ago, so I am rather extraordinary." The young lawyer chirped to the grey-haired man who sat behind the stand, before her. Her bright green eyes were incredibly lightened, almost naively so.

"Objection, your honor, how is the information posed by councilwoman Carter relevant to the case?" Wizened defense attorney, Michael Treager spat in a bit of bold exuberance. He had awaited a whole three lines of conversation to interject with an objection. Zia found herself fighting back a smile at Treager's banality. She could hear Dr. Harmon's voice in her head "he will literally try to rape you from behind the very first chance he has. Don't be afraid to play the naïve little, sweetheart here. Allow him to madly romp along your pretty little arse, darling, but in the end, you're the one who's going to bloody castrate him."

"Your honor," Zia turned to face the judge above her with a candid smile, "I'm simply making conversation." She spritely asserted. "I don't believe there's anything wrong with a prosecutor attempting to loosen a defendant up for a cross examination. In fact, a 1967 article by famed U.S. attorney, Christopher Harletz, titled Principalities of Court Etiquette states that, if an opposing attorney sees fit: 'he or she may spend at least the first three to five minutes of cross examination attempting to converse with witness.'"

The judge sighed in annoyance, palming his face with his hand. "Louis Harmon…" He grumbled under his breath. "Overruled. Miss. Carter, please continue, but do speed things up."

Zia's eyes burned right into Treager's with a righteous smirk slipping across her lips like a sheet. "Right. Thank you, your honor." She remarked while instantly dropping the smirk and faced the judge with a warm smile, before then, facing back to Slaven to look him in the eyes. "So, Mr. Slaven, as I was saying: You're a New Hamford graduate as well, aren't you?"

Slaven's smirk faltered a bit with the strangeness of her question. It was personal, but conversational. He chuckled breathily and swallowed, fixing the button on his Armani suit. "Yes, yes, I am. Class of 10', actually."

"Impressive." Zia flipped through some files on her desk, as if she wasn't actually listening. "And your advisor—funny thing—was my advisor." She said sweetly, her voice still carrying a bit too much bubbly energy. "Mr. Howard Shallaway, do you recall him?"

Slaven actually chuckled genuinely at the mention of the old man. "Yes, I recall old Howie quite well, Miss. Carter. He was a bit younger when I knew him, though, he's probably an old crankshaft, now." His haughty features were brightened and collided back into full confidence with the offering of a solid point of information he could cling to. He knew Howie Shallaway—that was a fact, a stability.

Zia's own bright laugh met his with a dazzling smile coming across her face. "No, he's still brilliant, actually. Funny enough, I was talking to him on the phone the other day and he mentioned that he had gotten you into a similar program to the one I was placed. A job placement program for recent college graduates—you would have been working in a rather, large company at a rather higher-up position right out of college. Is that correct?"

"Yes, that's correct. I was employed at Hope Springs International—the corporate side to a nonprofit water purifying company which provided clean, drinking water to poor, African countries." He spoke with a look of fatherly pride. A look that infectiously grabbed at the young woman in irritation, as she knew that Slaven's employment that had followed with Hope Springs had been anything but something to be proud of. But Zia had learned from the best: "keep your cool, at all costs, darling. It's the ice that freezes them, not the fire."

"That is the company that you now own and are the established head chairman of, correct?"

"Well, yes." Slaven chuckled presumptuously. "CEO for another month until the ownership is passed to my son, Robert Slaven II, who is currently the chief financial officer of the company."

Zia turned to flip through some notes while Slaven was speaking, before answering: "Oh, excellent. Well, congratulations on your retirement, Mr. Slaven." She cheerily smiled at him, her warm green eyes meeting his.

"Thank you, Miss. Carter, I truly appreciate that. It's been an honor to work with so many great and wonderful people the past thirty years."

"Great and wonderful people like my client—Mr. Demetrius Freeman?" Zia moved her hand to the hunched, grey-haired, and dark-skinned old man looking up in such a pitiful, decrepit manner it could have made the hardest heart soft.

For a split-second, Slaven simply shockingly gawked at Freeman. Freeman's poor shape and appearance, unfortunately, wasn't enough of evidence for the American Justice System, but Zia knew it should have been. His arms, legs, face, and chest were marred by scars and burns from hard, hot days in the African sun, while completing back-breaking physical labor. His left eye had been stained and blinded by harsh chemical acid that Slaven's purification plants had been using to "purify" the water. It would have killed him, had it not been for Dr. Harmon who found him on one of his annual trips to the Safari.

"Mr. Slaven, I believed I asked you a question." Zia said with a sharp smile striking over her face like a bolt of lightning across a hot and heavy sky.

"Y-Yes… M-Mr. Freeman, the product of an excellent industrial career in one of my plants, I believe?"

"Precisely, sir. He worked in your facility in Kenya. Which leads me to the question, Mr. Slaven, were you unaware of Mr. Freeman's claims he's filed against your company on—" Zia turned to the files she held in her hands, beginning to flip through them, and taking note of each one— "one, two, three, four—five accounts?"

"Well…" Slaven, for once, had lost his confident demeanor, and his face was draining of all color. "Well, no, Miss. Carter… We… My company employs many, many people across the world. It's not likely that any fairly minor complaints will reach me."

"Right. Minor complaints." Zia smiled brightly, gesturing to the bailiff standing on the side of the room awaiting her signal. "If your honor would appeal to the defense, we have Pictorial Account A we would like the jury to view for proper consideration of a verdict." She turned to glance at the judge, whom only begrudgingly sighed and gave a grunt and nod of his consent.

The bailiff flipped off the lights and proceeded to press a clear button on the side of the wall, causing a wide glass television screen to descend from the ceiling. It flickered with glossy power as an emblem for STARK INDUSTRIES glittered translucently for a moment across it, before a picture of a large and beautiful estate on a hill in Santa Barbra, California appeared across it. "Mr. Slaven," Zia hooked her hands behind her back and began to slowly walk across the wooden floor. Her heels clicked against the wooden tiles like that of a lioness slinking through the tall grasses of the African savannah, awaiting the chance to pounce on the unaware prey. "Would you mind telling the court what we are seeing?"

Slaven squirmed in his seat uncomfortably, clearing his throat. "That is my home in Santa Barbra, California."

"But, if I'm not mistaken, sir, this is not your only home, correct?"

"N-No… It's not, but the other ones are fairly small. Dim in comparison." He weakly tried to get a few laughs from the court, but no one answered. Every eye glued on the young attorney before the court, the one who seemingly had absolutely no trail or end in sight.

"Dim in comparison?" Zia giggled and bit down on her lip to keep from laughing further. She turned to the glass screen hanging behind her and flipped to the next image with her clicker—another exorbitant large mansion atop a picturesque cliff in northern Spain. "Your summer cottage, I assume?" The young woman raised a golden eyebrow with an overly friendly smile coming to her face. "Your thirteen-million-dollar summer cottage?"

"Objection, your honor!" Treager shot straight up from his chair, his face red and sweaty with anger. His eyes were mad with frustration and his hair was slicked back from fingers constantly raking through it. "Relevance and contempt, sir! Miss. Carter cannot possibly know how much my client, Mr. Slaven, paid for his houses—nor is that relevant to the claims posed for this courtroom and jury."

Judge Browne was beginning to look entirely interested in the case, a small smile beginning to pull at the corners of his lips at Treager's exasperation. It was a rare sight indeed when Michael Treager, nationally known attorney from a nationally known firm was losing patience. "Miss. Carter?" He asked the young prosecutor with a ghost of a good-natured smile beginning to peel at his expression.

"Your honor," Zia feigned a look of pure innocence, "Mr. Treager must be aware that the prices of his client's homes are, in fact, placed online and under the website and billing of his personal accountant, Mr. Richard Northcut. The information is public and open to anyone's viewing pleasure." She finished with a wide close-lipped smile directed towards Treager—the kind that caused eyes to squelch up in obnoxious little slits. He groaned and his eyes widened at the sheer stupidity of his error.

"Overruled, y'all got me interested now. Continue, Miss. Carter."

"Thank you, your honor." She turned back to Slaven, directing the court's attention back to the screen which was still glowing with the expansive image of the CEO's Spanish summer home. "Now, how much, sir, did you end up paying for the Californian house, then?"

"Erm… If I recall correctly, it was somewhere in the area of twenty-million-dollars."

"Twenty-million-dollars? Wow, that's… Impressive, sir, truly. Well, without looking at the other two homes, you've purchased we've already entered the price range of about thirty-three-million dollars spent on simply houses, correct?"

"Y-Yes, that's…that's correct."

"Now, sir, my client, Mr. Freeman, stated in a private witness account—" Zia picked up a sheet of paper and began to read from it—"'the plants they had us working in were dirty, the filters for the water—which should be changed every day—had been expired for three months, the wages were unreasonably low, and finally, we were never allowed emergency care if injured or harmed on the job.'"

Freeman, hunched over with his squelched together face, finally raised his head to look at the stunned silent Slaven, a triumphant little half-smile coming across his face. The wrinkles around his eyes wringing out as he did so, his milky, blind eye and the sharply-focused good one were both visible, then. It was clear who was about to win this long-winded battle.

"OBJECTION, YOUR HONOR." Treager shouted. "That is leading the witness—leading him! The state of the plants is open entirely to interpretation. How are we to believe Mr. Freeman is telling the truth in his account simply from a few statements printed on paper?"

"Miss. Carter?"

For a moment, Zia swallowed and looked a little unsure. She glanced at the jury sitting before her, there were twenty different emotions expressed across their faces: confusion, intrigue, horror, disbelief, contempt. "They'll all have their opinions, love, but only one really matters in the end: the right one." She turned to meet Treager's eyes, a small and delicate smile began to weave itself across her face. "Well, of course, one man's trashy interpretation is another man's golden one, right, Mr. Treager?" She turned to the bailiff to flip to the next image on the screen.

The final image was of a Hope Springs' purification plant—the very one Freeman had worked at for forty-five years. It was perhaps the most dilapidated building one could have ever seen: with the falling-in-roof, the filth-encrusted floors with smashed cockroaches, the sludgy, black water that plopped down into bright green "sterility liquid." It was a sad and horrifying image.

"…overruled." Judge Browne muttered quietly.

"Mr. Slaven, how much do you make a year?"

"Erm… I… I don't think that's really—"

Zia had him exactly where she wanted, she wasn't about to lose momentum on the case simply because the confident asshole's balls were shrinking as he spoke. "Mr. Slaven, what is your estimated annual income?"

"Fifty million dollars." One of the juror's, whom had been taking a sip of water, coughed on her drink in shock.

"And of what percent of your income is derived from the company's?"

"It's hard to say… I haven't handled financial matters since I was first hired, Miss. Carter."

At this, Zia's sweet and innocent smile caked back across her face like a fresh stamp on a foreclosure contract. "Not to worry, Mr. Slaven, these are several charts of Hope Springs International's income and spending last year. This was spending spent on paying employees—" she pointed to the large yellow block in the pie chart enlarged on the screen—"which, when broken down, an estimated 67.4% goes to paying the corporate board of officers. Now, this," she gestures to the next block which was rather miniscule and tiny in comparison to the other yellow piece pictured in the chart, "is spending on repairs, making sure all employees' codes and rights are up to date with the current conditions by federal law. This is about 15% of Hope Springs' spending for employee work conditions. If you make an annual fifty million dollars a year, while Mr. Freeman hardly makes .01% of that in two years, and your company's spending which is biasedly managed by your son, Robert Slaven II, would you please explain to the court, sir, how that is, in all circumstances, fair or healthy for anyone involved with your company?"

JAMES tapped his fingers against the tinted glass of the Audi RT6. The purr of the hydraulic engine grew louder as the sport car zipped down the street, crossing through the hectic street traffic of Brooklyn. "Here's what I don't understand," he said after a long minute. "Why the hell does your mom still let you drive? I mean, two DUIs, six charges for drugs, two for sexual harassment, three for use of narcotics while driving. You're impressive, man, really." He turned to look at Tony with a smirk pulling at his handsome, dark features. "I feel like that's gotta be a record."

Tony's expression lightened at the mention of his felonies and the classic Stark smirk coiled across his lips. He looked, in that moment, as if a thirty year-old Tony Stark had manifested beside him. "Everybody breaks the rules, James. I just have fun while I'm doing it." His voice was smooth, yet solid. It was as if anything spoken from the man's lips could have been believed—but one would be a fool to believe every word that passed through Tony Stark's lips.

James' laugh chuckled off his tongue like husk on a piece of corn, with a very dry and distinct sound. "Yeah, winding up in jail after slamming your mom's million-dollar Porsche into a telephone pole—that's a fucking ball game."

"Yep, next time, you get to bring the ball."

"And what does that entail? You smashing my car into a telephone pole?"

"Only if I get to do it with the windows down. I like the feeling of the wind in my hair."

"No, you like the feeling of being higher than the fucking Empire State Building."

"Eh. Debatable. I think it was closer to a Chrysler Building."

"Tony, admit it, last New Year's Eve, when you got taken in, you were a—"

"Fucking mess—I got it. But the truth is, I could have been messier. Another shot or two and I would have been dog shit smeared on your Grandma's carpet." His expressionless blue eyes suddenly sharply looked into James', narrowing in on his friend's like he had a microscope built into them. "One more after that and I could had turned into the series finale of Hoarders. Three or four after that: a body bag in the bottom of the Hudson. I know, I fucking know, I'm a mess, James, but I could always be messier."

"No, Tony, being dead… That's not being messy… That's just being fucking dead, man: simple, uncomplicated—and certainly not fucking messy when it's all said and done." He said softly, watching his friend with a saddened gaze. He knew it was hopeless to try to speak reason to him, Tony was an irrational, stubborn asshat.

But at his words, James knew Tony was livid. It wasn't his voice that gave it away—that never changed. It wasn't his expression—he was the CEO of a company; he knew how to keep a straight face. It was his hands. For as long as James had known Tony, he had used his hands for a conduit of his own pent up emotion. He needed his hands more than any common man because his hands tinkered and worked, they had a mind of their own—thoughts of action and deliverance. They breathed life into androids, sculpted masterpieces of design and architecture, and they reached deeply from within the lost man to create things of brilliance and clarity. But with such brilliance, his hands spoke a language that only James seemed to have any understanding of through years and years of getting to know Tony. If it was one of the rare times when he seemed angry, as he was now, they clenched tightly into themselves, showing the white bony knuckles beneath the peachy skin of his hands. His entire body still seemed relaxed against the Italian leather of the seat, but the hands—as always, gave the tenseness of his mind and body away.

His anger wasn't unfounded, though, as many things Tony Stark believed. James had promised him a night of fun and not being 'stick-up-your-blackasshole condescending,' (as Tony would say). Now, here he was, being more or less the condescending black asshole with a superiority complex, but a lot of the time, James couldn't help what he said. In his home, honesty—the blunt and hard truth—was held to a higher level of necessity than any other lesson his parents had taught him. In fact, the day he learned about the "divinity of honesty" was the day he broke a 20,000 dollar Wakandan vase that had been a gift from the late King T'Challa.

Steve had been mowing the front lawn, while Tony and James—despite his father's constant warnings to stop—had been playing baseball in the house. James had been adamant about practicing for the new traveling league he had just made the team for, and Tony, as he always did, wanted to make him better. If he recalled correctly, his old friend had said: "make it to the majors so you can marry a supermodel and play with her titties." Yeah, it had definitely been something like that. But it wasn't the future supermodel wife or the erotic fantasies of Tony Stark Jr.'s thirteen-year-old mind that had captured James' attention that day—it was working on getting his pitch perfect. He would wind up his left arm, cranking it around like the backwards second-hand on a clock, locking it into place tightly against his then-gangly frame. He would put his head down then, remembering that Babe Ruth had done a similar stance, locking his knees a shoulder-width apart until he was tightly nailed to the ground, and then he would unleash the tension in his arm, striking the ball into the air like a bullet out of a pistol. The ball flew through the air as it always had, but something was wrong, Tony was blocking the vase, but as he moved to catch it…that's when James had known.

"TONY, NO! GET BACK!" He shouted at his friend to get back into his original position, hoping to block the course of the ball from the vase. But it was too late. As Tony moved to leap back into position, the ball smashed into the vase and the bright colorful artifact smashed into a million pieces.

For a moment, Tony and James just stared at it. "So, um… I don't think that's how it's supposed to look." The Stark boy stated with a small and nervous break in his voice. He had been trying to lighten the mood, but that wasn't working for James.

A harsh and heavy knot of dread settled into his stomach, winding itself tighter and tighter within like some constrictor had wrapped itself around his innards—cutting off all blood circulation. "Oh, God… Dad is going to kill me, Tony." James turned to look at his friend with wide terror-stricken brown eyes.

Tony bent down and picked up some of the brightly-painted pieces, pushing two mix-matched pottery pieces together. "Okay, so maybe this is bad, alright? But we can fix it. Trust me." The young Stark ran into the kitchen and grabbed a dust pan along with a broom and started to sweep the pieces of priceless pottery into the pan, while James stood by, nervously, and even a bit obsessively, chewing on his knuckles. He felt like time was whizzing by and the world had suddenly become so much more breakable. At any moment, his father would walk in and see the broken vase, and that would be the end of James Rogers… He could see it on his gravestone: "here lies James Buchannan Rogers—terrible son—bludgeoned to death by his father's massive fist." He felt like he was going to throw up.

"Okay." Tony said with a certainty in his tone. James looked over, swallowing hard to conceal the fear that was forming over his face. "Okay, here it is, James. This will work." He pointed to a large and obvious lump beneath his mother's Persian rug.

James had a heart attack and felt a hot lump begin to form in the back of his throat. "Tone, that's not going to work! My dad will see that the minute he walks through that-"

And as if on que, the backscreen door slammed as Steve came in from the yard. Tony and James exchanged terrified looks, and though he couldn't read his friend's mind, James was pretty sure they were both thinking something along the lines of: HOLY CRAP. WE ARE ABOUT TO GET OUR ASSES GRILLED.

"James!" Steve yelled from the kitchen.

James felt his vision go dark for a second as he nearly blacked out with fear. "Y-Yeah, Dad?!" He quavered.

"Did you put your laundry away like Mom asked you to?" His father came out into the living room, then. He was drenched in sweat, his greying-golden hair was plastered against his forehead with body fluid, and his shirt hung against his impressive abdominal physique. His father's massive biceps seemed to quiver with mini semi-trucks built into them… All of his father's exquisite, yet abnormally large muscles pointing to the fact that he could have beat his son to a pulp.

"Well, I uh… Mom uh… Mom did it…for me…because she uh…said I uh…don't fold it right…" James awkwardly stood over the measly covered pile of pottery, trying desperately to look calm and nonchalant. His father was used to reading people, and he was good at it. It was his job. Suspicion and premonitions on his father's part were usually based on a very right profiling of something about to go wrong.

Steve stared at his son for a long moment. His sharp blue eyes analyzing every movement of James' body: his breath, his nervous eye movements. He knew something was going on—he wasn't an idiot. But he also knew how to get James to tell him without advertently asking him. He'd go for the neck of the operation, which just so happened to be Tony Stark Jr. "Tony, what did you do?" He turned sharply to look at Stark with that same terrifying sharp and cutting look in his eyes.

Tony froze at the directedness of the Captain's question. "Well, I uh… I um… James and I were playing baseball in the house and uh…" Oh, no… Tony was going to take the hit for him. No. He couldn't let him do that.

"Dad, there's something you should know…" James squeaked out, moving his foot half an inch to draw attention to the lump in the rug. Steve's observant blue eyes moved to study the bump in the rug, and he turned back to look at the empty end table where the vase had been sitting.

"James Buchannan Rogers." Oh, fuck. James' heart soared into his throat, closing up his esophagus from any further use of words. The use of his full name only meant one thing: premature death. "What. Did. You. Do?" Steve was looking at his son with sort of a "looming eminent doom" type expression.

"Well, uhm… We were playing baseball like Tony said and uh… I threw the ball accidentally at the vase."

"Were you trying to hide it from me?" Steve looked beyond livid. His face was warped into all mean lines and harsh wrinkles, his commanding blue eyes looked slightly betrayed and even a little hurt.

"N-No...Dad… Well, yes…but I… I was going to tell you l-later…" He stuttered out with his heart racing around his chest in obsessive disorder, trying to reorder itself into a calm rhythm.

"James, that is a lie." His father's blue eyes were wide and slightly crazed, like he was ready to take hold of his son's neck and strangle him.

"Not telling you something is a lie?!" He cried out, trying to reason with his father.

"Yes—a lie of omission."

"Dad, it was a tiny little lie, I would have told you and mom eventually… It's not a b-big deal…"

"Not a big deal?! James, what you're honest about and you're not—the shit like this—has to deal with everything!" He shouted at him. Steve's massive fists curling into strangled balls of anger. "If you're not honest, everything falls apart: accountability of your word, the responsibility trusted within you, your reputation, and your respect. Everything goes right down the shitter." He grabbed his son sharply by the arm, shaking him slightly so his eyes rattled up to meet his, as if he was shaking the honesty loose in his head. "Covering up a lie isn't going to do anything for you, if anything, you'll feel worse in the end. You stand by your actions with honesty, with truth—because within that: that's everything, son."

Of course, that hadn't been the end of it. Steve had prattled on for another hour or so about honesty and truth, responsibility and power, but James didn't remember the rest of that… He remembered the moment when Steve Rogers grabbed hold of his shoulder and shook some goddamn sense into him. That moment had been the foundation of who he would become: a journalist—a revealer of the truth, no matter how vicious or hard it was to hear.

"Look, man," Tony broke through the thick waves of nostalgia James had piled on himself in those last few minutes. "Let's just forget the whole thing and go to this party to get ass-over-hat wasted, alright?"

James tried to smirk a bit for Tony's sake. "I think you mean hat-over-ass wasted."

"DAMN it." Steve tugged at his red and white tie with an irritated sigh escaping through his lips. "Why the hell do they still make ties?" He snapped and started to retie the knot, finding the markdown Banana Republic tie—"Christmas Special!"—to be not all that special. He fingered it, his large fingers attempting to lace the intricate silk through the hole, but they clumsily slipped and the tie grew crooked. "Damn it!" He ripped the tie off and threw it onto the bed with heavy exasperation.

Sharon sat on the bed fixing her heel strap, her eyes moved to look at Steve with an amused smile crossing her face. "A hundred-twenty-years-old and he still can't tie a tie right." She breathily chuckled and stood up from the bed while her hands reached to straighten the crinkles caught in her elegant blue ball gown.

"I can tie a damn tie! It's this damn fancy trash you keep trying to stuff me into that's frustrating." Steve shot her a "I don't really like you" look, but it was obvious he was encapsulated by her beauty. Nearly sixty and she still looked like she could have won the Miss Universe Pageant instantly. Her thick blond curls had refused to grey, instead, preferring to wash out into a dishwater golden that fell in smooth waves around her round face beautifully. Her bright brown eyes enigmatically were of an ageless quality with only small wrinkles beginning to outline her eyes, and the deep blue of her dress sharpened them, making her appear to be of some transcendental time period. She was too pretty—in Steve's opinion, too pretty for him, too unreal for him to accept she was his. But she was…completely and utterly his.

He must have been staring at her with that same clueless boyish look he was still capable of reciprocating even being sixty years old, because Sharon began to laugh at him with her brown eyes glittering like polished stones. "Steven Grant Rogers, we've talked about this: staring isn't a good habit to get into." She teased him as she walked over to him, gently placing her hands on his broad chest. Her delicate fingers slid up his undershirt to the crinkled tie that hung limply around his neck.

"Well, when you stop looking jaw-dropping beautiful, I'll stop staring at you like some simple-minded idiot." A half-smile began to pull at the left side of his lips as his blue eyes met hers.

Sharon shied away from the question, her eyes moving away from his and to her hands that were working on tying the intolerable tie. "Beauty is open to interpretation." She replied quickly, as if wanting to be done with the conversation.

Steve grabbed hold of her chin and lifted it up to meet his eyes. He wasn't surprised when he saw a stubborn resolve to not believe anything other than what she had set her mind. "Paintings and poems—those are open to interpretation, honey. But how you look to me…that's…well, you're like an SOS message."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean, Steve?!" She snapped at him. The bright orange specks that floated deep within her brown eyes flared up like fire as she met his.

"Well, you're uh… When a plane sees an SOS message in the sand, it's clear, bold, and undeniable…just like how you look…right now… Clearly, undeniably beautiful." His wife's resolve cracked within her brown eyes and she blinked hard with a little intake of breath rattling through her lips. She closed her eyes and pressed her face into the comforting fabric of his suit, feeling the soft, yet strong vibrations of his heart shivering beneath his warm skin. Steve responded to her touch by enclosing her in a tight embrace, his head bowing to rest his lips in her elegant updo.

For a long time, they simply stayed like that, and Steve could only think back to the last time she had so desperately clung to him. Tony Stark's funeral. They had hung onto each other in urgency and need as if they had lost all feeling in touch, needing to feel something familiar in that cold and foreign world where his good friend was suddenly absent. "What are you thinking about?" Sharon asked him softly from beneath his neck.

"Stark." He whispered as if he hadn't really wanted her to hear.

A sharp intake of air softly escaped her lips and she moved her eyes up to meet his. "It was my fault…" She spoke through a cracked voice, emotion escaping through her words.

"No, it wasn't. It wasn't anyone's." But his own. He wouldn't say that out loud, though, or Sharon would have worked herself into a frenzy over nothing. Tony had been dead for six years, there wasn't a point in overthinking it anymore.

"If you thought that was true, you wouldn't have disbanded the Avengers." Sharon said tightly, finishing his tie finally.

"I disbanded the Avengers for Tony, not because of how I felt." Steve snapped back at her, he could feel a tight tension settle over the room. A tension he could neither control or stop, but Sharon must have felt it too because she pulled away and fixed him with a sharp glare. She turned on her heel and walked to the other side of the hotel room where the mirror was and began to reapply her lipstick. "Shar, can you imagine what Tony would have gone through if I hadn't disbanded the Avengers? What it would have been like for him to watch us go and fight without the leadership of his father?"

Sharon icily ignored him, her walls had built themselves back up again, refusing to allow even her husband to see what she held within those brown eyes of hers. She popped her lips together, making a little puh, puh sound as she did so, and moving her eyes back down to the lipstick in her hand. Steve sighed in aggravation, feeling a new wave of frustration wash over him.

"Fine, honey, what do you want me to say?" There was a crack in his voice when he spoke me as he felt a large welt of emotion thicken in his throat. "T-That I…" He stopped speaking, trying to find the right words to fill the hugeness of the loss of Tony Stark in his chest. "I disbanded the Avengers because I couldn't afford to go through it, again." He said quietly. "Pepper lost a husband… Tony lost a father—the man who's supposed to show a boy how to be a man." His voice quavered and he closed his eyes to keep the tears from escaping down his cheeks. He felt the full onslaught of his guilt cloud his mind, the storm of emotions raging within him as he thought back to that night when Tony had died. "How could I…? Sharon, how could I, the man who's supposed to lead them, let that happen to Clint or-or Banner or Nat…or… Jesus…you… How could I go on without you?" He desperately asked her, his eyes snapping open to meet hers.

"Yes, I know it was a selfish decision…but the world has heroes… They don't have to pick up a goddamn spangled shield and spandex to be a hero, they just have to care. People would go on without us…but me, I wouldn't have been able to go on without us…without you… I couldn't live it, with the shoulder-crushing guilt that I let something happen to you." His voice was full of heartbreaking resignation, and it was clear that Steve did blame himself entirely for what happened to Tony Stark—a pain in the ass, sure, but he was the best pain in the ass he could have asked for.

He stood there with his shoulders slumped and guilt written across every part of his body. Sharon's eyes filled with tears and she rushed to him, grabbing his face, obviously not having meant to upset him. "You have nothing to feel guilty for… Tony died in a terrible accident while trying to protect the people he loved most."

"Because I told him to." Steve spoke softly, avoiding her eyes completely.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you, dammit." Sharon snapped at him, jerking his face to meet her eyes. "You gave that man everything you could have, and none of this, none of his death gets to fall on you. I was a part of it just as much as you were—we all were. Besides, if he were here, hearing you moan and cry over him, you know he would have laughed and said you had an obsession with him." She finished with a small smile sliding over her lips.

Steve watched her for a long moment, something in his eyes that had long been tormented and conflicted, old and heavy finally released itself from his expression and he gave her a pained look that was both grateful and sad. "He would have said: 'Got a crush? Join the rest of the world, Capsicle.'" He chuckled weakly, his chest felt lighter than it had been in six years. His eyes moved like they were on an orbit back to hers. "I woke up out of the ice all those years ago, Sharon, and thought I had lost everything..." He frowned a bit, his eyebrows coming together in a knot in the middle of his forehead. "But it turns out," his eyes shifting to focus distinctly on her bright black pupils, "I found everything." Sharon didn't let him finish as her lips slammed into his in a collision of urgency and love.