Bits of debris fell from the ceiling to the floor, dust and chunks of plaster and marble that no amount of fine engineering could have prevented from falling apart when faced with such a mighty force. Before it had just been government guns, a million bullets smaller than Steve's fingers. Now?

A lump rose in Steve's throat. If Tony was here then he doubted that it would be long before some other problem, be it aliens, sentient and malicious robots, or superheroes would be there as well. Tony may have had a metal suit, but the only thing that Iron Man seemed to magnetically attract was trouble.

"Steve," Tony spoke. His voice was louder than any gunshot that Steve had heard, with twice the force of any bullet that could go through him. There was no playful bantering, no drunk flirtation, not even a joke to crack the ice.

But could he be surprised? Steve bit his lip. When Bucky had come back his whole world had changed, flipped over like a pancake and cracked like an egg. It was one thing to wake up after nearly a century of being frozen, and another thing to discover that someone else had gone through the same thing.

Someone who didn't deserve that pain.

Someone who had no choice, who hadn't gone down fighting before being embraced by the bitter and greedy cold.

If Steve knew anything, then it was that sometimes the majority's opinion was wrong. The world media was the one painting Bucky as the villain, vile and irredeemable; it was easy for them. They didn't know him, probably would never even want to get around him unless it could get them some major headlines and media buzz. The government? Steve believed in America, but sometimes America didn't believe in him. If he could be ignored as easily as a fly, swatted quickly and then forgotten, then why would Bucky be any different?

Tony raised his arm, a motion so quick and fluid that Steve almost didn't see him move. In the weak sunlight his suit gleamed. "I need you to leave here with your hands up and shield on the floor."

Steve waited, heart hammering against his chest, for the other to continue. Instead, the pause went on into forever, every moment of silence seeming to send them just a little bit further apart. How many nanometers were between them now that hadn't been there before?

"You know I can't do that." Steve raised his shield. Once, he had been glad to hold it up to the sky, back when it had actually meant something. Now? Now the reds and blues merely blurred together in his vision. "And you know that I wouldn't." His voice dropped.

It was best, he supposed, to stall him. Sam had gotten the getaway car fired up in the nick of time (whomever had suggested they use a Chevy was going to get a stern talking to later, at least once their butts were safe in bunkers a Cold War era civilian would have sang praises at), and he and Bucky had driven off with such a speed that a passing watcher might have thought the devil was chasing them. The longer that Tony and his government goons were here, the better.

"It was worth a try." The sigh that finished his sentence sent hairs rising up Steve's neck.

All of Tony's body, save his face, was covered by metal. The end of his hand began to glow with a piercing azure light, turning his suit light blue and making the sweat across his brow all the easier to see.

"And you know that I wouldn't do this either," he replied, "at least not unless I had to. What you're doing is wrong, Steve."

"I could say the same for you." Steve quickly dodged the attack, missing it only by a few moments. "I thought that you would understand me, Tony. We're a lot alike you know, willing to do whatever for the ones we love."

Tony's face tightened but he said nothing, just moved his glowing hand back towards him. "The people I love aren't wanted terrorists, Steve."

"Bucky isn't-" The rest of the phrase couldn't leave Steve's lips, as if echoing Tony's phrase would somehow make his words true. "Whatever he was before, he was first and foremost my friend."

"So was I."

Another narrowly missed attack, another break in the walls and ceiling. This building was the sole witness of their fight, yet it almost seemed as if the builders themselves, the tenants, everyone that had ever inhabited the building before was somehow watching the two, judging silently. More debris fell, bits and pieces of a structure once so powerful and reliable-once so different, onto the ground below.

Like everything, it was different now.

Tony was right, of course. People didn't call him brilliant for nothing.

Was the government, Steve realized, really who Tony was fighting for? Or was this just a continuation of their earlier dances, graceful and masterful movements that left the world broken and bruised as the duo continued their pas de deux?

"If you could just understand..." Steve continued. That was the root of the problem, he supposed, the one mountain that truly needed to be climbed. Things hadn't been as hunky-dory in the forties as some would like to believe, many under the illusion of a non-existent good old days, but at least that had been Steve's era. Maybe it was the ice that had done this to him, taken something from him that no medical doctor could have identified while he was thawing in the hospital.

But people did understand. Natasha's eyes glowed with it, and it was released by Bucky's ever movement. Sam, even a number of generations dispossessed from the other three, could understand, his body holding a certain sympathy that Steve had once thought was gone to this era when he awoke.

Sam proved it with each touch of his lips and stroke of his hands, a thousand times softer than Tony's had ever been. Tony always got what he want, and took what he wanted with a greedy and raw hunger. Bucky had been a lot like Sam, if a bit rougher around the edges. Things had been different in the forties, everything moving just a little bit faster. Those moments that they'd had together, cherished briskly, seemed even further back in time than any other moments, suspended across the furthest reach of time.

And yet he could still feel Bucky's hands on his sides and the sting of his teeth against his shoulder blades. There had been a fire inside of Bucky, one that the other man had greedily let himself be set aflame with.

"This fight shouldn't be about you and me." The words left Steve's lips again only moments before he was nearly vaporized. Was this how the two would go on, bantering in between missed blows? Both wasting all the time they could, yet relishing it all the same?

Steve was covered in sweat, his lungs filled with a hard ache that he hadn't felt in years, not since before he had an asthma attack in the thirties. The world was different than before, the colors brighter and sounds sharper.

Tony lowered his hand and walked forward. Half of him looked as though he would fall apart at any moment, collapsing under the collective weight of the metal surrounding him, and the other shown with a strength that Steve had never seen in another human.

Steve's heart raced all the faster, reverberated in his chest like a drum's steady beat coming into a crescendo. A lot of things had changed between him and Tony; that was undeniable, as impossible to oppose as the pull of gravity or greedy grasp of time.

"Steve..." There was a long pause, one that lasted somewhere between slow-moving seconds and snail-paced years, before Tony spoke again. "You and I both know that it always was."

"Well," Kevin Feige said, rubbing at his temples, "it's certainly interesting, though hardly what I expected."

Mary bit her lip, unsure for a moment of how to respond. Marvel Studios was nothing like she had originally imagined. For one thing, the people working there really didn't have superpowers (none at all, not even the kind that she imagined people could get away with hiding), and Stan Lee only came around on Friday mornings when there were free doughnuts. Working here? Just the thought still made her heart race.

"Well," she said, folding her hands together, "you said that you needed me to help bring something fresh and new to the scripts."

"Well, yes, but..." Each word came out clumsily, slowly one after the other. "I just never expected this."

"You told me to write what the fans want." She sighed. "I know, it's rather rushed and the tension is a bit forced, but that's just because it's the first draft. Once I polish it up it will come out a lot better, especially once I put everything in script format." She paused for a moment. "I always like to write things novel style before scripting them; it helps to improve my writing over the drafting process and allow me to better understand just what kind of a work I'm making."

"It wasn't that-" Kevin stopped suddenly, his eyes turning back to the script. "Well, I guess you misunderstood me when I said to write what the fans wanted." Quickly, he shoved the manuscript back to her. "Go check with the storyboard team and some of the other writers and bounce off a few ideas, Meredith."

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

"What?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Mary," she said, looking down to the crumpled script in her head. "It's Mary Suzanne."

There was something salvageable in her work, even if he didn't see it. With a sigh, Mary left Feige's office and headed down the dreary, weakly lit hallway towards the elevator. A few extra hours at the writing desk wouldn't kill her.

Note: I made this as a meta fic mixed with crack, along with a big middle finger to Feige since he seems so against adding any LGBT characters to the MCU. Oh well, I can dream.