The figure of Bucky Barnes was unconscious and pale against paler bedsheets; the bruise-like shadows under his eyes telling Steve more than he wanted to know at that point; the features achingly familiar even for how different he was. Natasha slipped into the space beside Steve, taking his hand briefly and squeezing once before releasing his hand again. "This is as far as I can force myself to go." Steve admitted quietly, and Natasha slid to stand in front of him, her eyes steady and her mouth set, "He's not even conscious and I'm scared of facing him." Natasha pursed her lips slightly, her arms folding over her chest.

"Then what are you doing here, Rogers?" She asked quietly, and knowing her, the sense she gave of already knowing the answer was dead-on.

"I'm here..." Steve started, then paused to think about it, "I'm here because he was my best friend."

Natasha cocked a brow, her lips twitching slightly in amusement, "I heard it was because Bruce kicked you out of the lab because Tony was directing Bruce on how to fix his own mass spectrometer, and you were hovering." She punctuated that statement by poking a sharp-nailed finger into his chest, and Steve couldn't help the small smile that brought.

"Guilty as charged. And I have some reading to do, so it's for the best, but I...I was hoping I might dig out what's left of that kid from Brooklyn who wouldn't back down from a fight and get the courage to actually be in a room with him...even if he wouldn't know I was there."

Natasha's eyebrows soared, and Steve regarded her evenly, her grip on his arm stronger than usual, "That kid from Brooklyn doesn't need digging out, Steve; he's standing right here. He's just not good at dealing with guilt. Yours, or anyone else's."

Steve ducked his head, looking in on the man lying there again, because he couldn't seem to tear his eyes away. "You know, I've written him hundreds of letters in my head. Told him about all of this...told him about Tony. I'd have conversations with him when I needed someone to talk to, so he woulda been the first one to know everything...I stopped talking to him, though. When I had Tony to talk to. I talk to JARVIS anytime I need to talk about him to someone, too, so Bucky...the Bucky in my head...hasn't heard from me in a while."

"I'm fairly certain he wouldn't mind." Natasha told him, "You adapted to your life-to this life. He wouldn't begrudge you that."

"No, but I begrudge it. Just a little. If I don't miss them, who will?"

Natasha leaned against the side of the observation window, arms folded and head tipped as though listening to something he couldn't yet hear. "Pepper's...expanded your understanding of Howard Stark, yes?" Steve scowled before he could stop it, nodding. "He missed them, too; to the point of driving him away from all the world happening around him. Not to tell you what to do, but if you ever lose yourself in missing them, I'll be so severely disappointed not even Clint will win me back."

They both knew it wasn't simply missing the men he'd served with that had driven Howard into the bottle so deeply that his ison/i had had to struggle his way out, but Steve was also smart enough to know that it wasn't a small part. "So what would you have me do?"

Natasha shrugged one shoulder, demur. "If it were up to me, your life would be far different, Steve, and it wouldn't include a common-law marriage to Tony Stark as one of the line items. My vote doesn't count. But why don't you try reconnecting with that old friend you lost touch with? If he got you here, he's got to have some good material."

Patting him on the bicep, Natasha slipped around him, her steps heavy enough, for his benefit, for him to listen to her go. Turning his gaze back to the man on the bed, Steve sighed, curling forward to rest his weight on the ledge of the window and squeezing his eyes closed. "I'm sorry."

The sound of Bucky's laugh was something Steve had been scared he'd forget until the serum made his memory eidetic, and the memory of it floated up to the surface. "Whatever, punk. Now, sleeping beauty in there: that's going to be interesting."

Steve looked up at the pale imitation in the bed, sending a wave of thanks to Natasha as he did, because this was something he could do, but it wasn't something he could do with his memories pushed under a rock to help him cope. Steve sighed, forcing his tension to roll out of his muscles, and went to find the meeting room Phil had set up for him with Peggy's journals. There were more than Steve had thought probable, but sitting down to the first, he knew why; Peggy had written it all down, almost clinically, in order to get a feel for what was right versus what was easy. That Peggy had had a fiancé before the war, and it had sparked her move to General Phillips' battalion was, in part, news. Somehow, even knowing she'd laugh at him for it, Steve had always pictured Peggy sharp-shooting and taking no prisoners and no shit in equal measure; that she hadn't ever been a dame made to conform to what was expected, even for as improbable that conformation was.

By the time Peggy was telling him about the first time Howard introduced her to Anthony Edward Stark, Steve had been there for hours, heart aching as he devoured the words about her mourning him as much as she'd allowed herself to do so; then her tenure as an agent and meeting the Jarvises and falling in love with her husband. Laughing at her description of a baby Tony trying to take apart her early SHEILD communicator, Steve startled as a pair of arms wrapped around his shoulders, blinking into the inadequate light now augmented by the arc reactor.

"Ditching me for your ex, Steve? Really?" Tony chuckled, bending slightly to press a kiss to Steve's cheek, "I've been bade to get you out of here so that you eat something. How is it that you're turning into me, by the way? There should really be only one self-destructively workaholic person in this relationship."

Steve chuckled, swiping a hand at his eyes as he pushed back from the table that, indeed, held an untouched cup of coffee long gone cold and a plate of hot pockets similarly mistreated. "I just...got lost in the words."

Tony smiled indulgently at him, bending again to kiss his lips this time, "So, take out and bed, or are you up for a real dinner?"

Steve turned and wrapped his arms around Tony's hips, sighing as he tipped forwards to hide his face just under the arc reactor. "I've barely seen the team today."

"Well, Bruce says he's sorry for kicking you out; Nat told me she had told you to get your head on right or she'd hurt me; Clint is in the air vent watching you reminisce here, because he knows how much Coulson loves these journals; and Thor is the one that brought you the coffee and hot pockets which are apparently a suitable substitute for Pop-Tarts when it isn't breakfast, but lunch-don't ask, he explained it and I just went into hibernation mode in order to stay sane...ish-as sane as I ever am?"

"Fuck you, Stark!" The air vent vented, "How is it you always know when I'm up here?"

"I had a pet tracker surgically implanted at Coulson's behest." Steve was laughing quietly into his chest, hands gripping his hips with a desperation he didn't want to be feeling with Tony's warm, worn hands rubbing at his shoulders, his clever fingers moving up Steve's neck to card in his hair. Steve breathed in the scent of oil and overheated metal and sandalwood, closing his eyes against the thoughts running through his head of all the things he would have seen if he hadn't crashed, versus all the things he had gotten to see because of it. "Move your ass, Barton; I've got Cap watch from here. Or would you like to risk he'll finally give in and have sex with me here, even with you to see it?"

Steve snorted almost inaudibly, pressing his face into Tony's middle because despite Tony's insinuation, Tony's touch didn't even hint that he wanted to have sex; Tony's touch was all about comfort now.

Steve listened as Clint hightailed it out of the vent with more care to make noise than he would ever use to exfiltrate anywhere else: and when the sounds faded, Tony bent slightly, whispering to him, "You okay, Steve?"

"Yeah..." Steve croaked, then rethought his answer, "will be. Can we go home now?"

Tony's palm pressed into the knot of tension under his shoulder with just enough force to make him groan, and Tony's other hand pulled gently through his hair, "Anything you need, Steve. Anything you want, I'll give you everything I can. You know that."

Steve shivered into his embrace, and Tony let himself be moved as Steve put him on the table, Tony clearing back room in the books with a graceful sweep of his arm. Tony put his feet on either side of Steve's thighs on the seat, keeping him pressed against his chest as Steve wrapped himself up in Tony as much as he was allowed. "How did you know these were Peggy's?"

Tony huffed a laugh, and leaned back in the embrace, reaching for one, "I gave her this one for Christmas...the last real Christmas I had."

Steve flinched slightly, and Tony hushed him, gently drawing his face out from hiding and brushing his hands over Steve's cheeks before brushing his lips over Steve's as light as a moth's wing. Steve groaned in denial, catching Tony before he could pull away and drawing him into something slow and deep, his hands wrapped around Tony's wrists, "Tell me?"

Tony sighed gustily, pressing his lips to the corner of Steve's, then his cheek, his temple, his forehead. "I was...I must've been five..." He began, wrapping their fingers together as Steve sucked in a breath as if already in pain, "back home from boarding school, and Aunt Peggy was going to stay with us for Christmas; she was going to get the Howling Commandos to stop by, too, that year, and it'd be just like my third birthday party: they'd run interference, and tell me stories...stories about you." Tony stroked his thumb from behind Steve's ear, down the line of his neck to his collarbone, "Howard had all these collectibles...and I wasn't allowed to go near them, so, of course, that was all I wanted. But I was being good, because I had a very special request that year, and if I was good, then I'd get what I asked for." Steve and he had talked about Tony's past this way; Tony telling him the stories that had been passed on to him. In a way, it was an explanation for that horrible day on the Helicarrier, because while Tony was Steve's link to his past, Steve was a link to Tony's, too. "I wanted to meet Captain America." He murmured, voice almost laughing, but not quite, "Just once. Just to thank him for saving the world, and for saving Aunt Peggy and Dum Dum and Jim...all of them. Even Jarvis and Ana." Steve sat back to look up at him but Tony didn't let himself pause, "I didn't tell anyone that that was what I wanted, but when I didn't get it, I refused to play with the toys I did get; I wouldn't even entertain the idea of being thankful, because I'd only wanted the one thing, and even though I was good, I didn't get it. So why be good?" Tony paused then and immediately regretted it, swallowing past a lump in his throat, "Aunt Pegs saw right through it. She probably used the same look on you that she did on me: like she could see every thought and every reaction in your head, and she didn't give a damn about any of it, you were going to sit and do what she wanted you to, or you were going to be in serious trouble." Steve laughed at that, but he felt more like sobbing, if only for the thought of that little boy that Tony was describing. "She cornered me after breakfast; told me that she had no idea and didn't need to know what I'd asked for, but she fully expected that I should, sooner or later, get it. Of course, as always with the women who have that look and live in the orbit of my life, she was right, but she also had a present she'd smuggled in for me. Something that she didn't want Howard to know that she'd given, so I had to be careful."

"What was it?" Steve asked after a moment. He was almost scared to hear the answer, though a part of him hoped he knew what it was already.

"A plushie of you, actually. I got to have my very own Captain America after all, and I learned that day that Christmas wasn't real, but Peggy and the people as strong and brave and fierce as she was were, and were so much better for me."

Steve felt his ears heat, pulling Tony along the table by the hips, but resisting the urge to pull him into his lap. He breathed deeply, and the kid from Brooklyn would have marvelled at being able to do even something as simple as that, most days. "Why me?"

"Because she loved you, and if for nothing more than that: if your men, decades later, hadn't still talked about you like they were kind of in awe; if Howard hadn't been going searching for you every chance he could get away from us...if for nothing more than the fact that you earned the respect and admiration of Peggy Carter, I would have thought you had hung the moon."

Steve's grip on the fabric of Tony's trousers was tight enough that he had to remind himself that he needed to let go because SHIELD was no place for a rip in the pants, and he looked up at Tony, very close to tears. "I wish I could have been there." To save you from losing faith so young. To give you someone to turn to even when Peggy couldn't be there. To listen and learn from you, even while you were still learning yourself went unsaid.

"I hate the idea of you in that ice, Rogers, so I wish it, too, but I don't think we would have ended up here if you had been there." Tony murmured slowly. He pressed dry, slightly chapped lips to Steve's hair, and Steve let his eyes close, not trying to make himself decide which would be better for Tony, because this was all he could give him, and he refused to regret it. "And anyway, I was a brat; you would have rolled your eyes so hard you probably would've knocked something loose."

"Like I haven't done that now?" Steve teased, and Tony laughed, swatting at his shoulder as he used the wheelie chair Steve sat in to his advantage and pushed Steve back from the table and the hug. Steve let it happen, looking up at Tony with pain in his features plainly, because Tony already knew it was there, and accepted one more kiss before Tony took his hand to lead him out of the conference room, locking it up behind them so that Steve could return to the books later. Steve gestured to the door once they were walking away from it, "This feels like a massive invasion of her privacy." He admitted, and Tony actually guffawed.

"Steve, Peggy was the smartest woman I have ever met. If she hadn't wanted her journals read, then she either would not have written them, or had them destroyed, not bequeathed to SHIELD." Tony reminded, and Steve loved how well he understood the strength of the woman, "She probably would have gotten a kick out of the idea that you'd be reading through everything like this, really. She certainly gets a kick out of you trying to catch up now."

Steve visited Peggy often; and, if he was being honest, the first time after the Helicarrier that Steve had really taken a look at Tony Stark as more than the flash persona and more than the suit, it had been when he'd accidentally arrived in the middle of Tony's own visit. Peggy had grinned at them both, said something to the effect of "my two favourite boys in one room at last" and Tony had snorted, rolled his eyes, and told her she needed to get her priorities straight if he was on the same level as Steve. Then he'd launched back into the story of playing pick-up monkeys with the crew of Air Force One while he'd been in Malibu over Christmas, and Steve had just kind of folded into the other chair, startled to be hearing this, because he hadn't seen it on the news, and Tony hardly shared anything with him. It was at the part of the story when the suit had gotten smashed to bits that Peggy had reached for Tony's hand, her dark eyes much like his as she stared through all his walls, seeing exactly where to hurt if she needed to, and exactly how to build him up should she choose that route. She'd told him about her own trials with the nightmares, and Tony seemed to deflate at that; his eyes going darker as he stared down at this woman they both loved. Steve had learned, sitting beside Peggy's sickbed, that Tony wasn't all sharp lines and mouthy intellect; that he'd suffered more than he'd ever allow anyone to know. When Peggy was falling asleep to Tony telling her about destroying the Iron Man armours for fireworks, Steve resolved to reach out to Tony more; to find a way to make this world work for him, even if he had to start with the piece of the world that reminded him most of the one he'd left behind. A week later, Rhodey was standing in Steve's tiny, SHIELD-appointed apartment in full Air Force uniform, staring him down against ever hurting Tony again. Steve liked to imagine, after he'd learned about the shape of Peggy Carter and Tony Stark, that Peggy would have been standing right there with Rhodes; tall and proud and taking absolutely no nonsense, or she'd shoot at him again, this time with more likeliness to hit.

Tony had seemed perplexed the first time Steve made inroads to being civil; then he'd been amused. Tony had been repairing the damage to Stark Tower with help only from Rhodey and the War Machine suit for the heavy lifting that he needed to be free of the suit to attach back into place. When Steve had managed to get past Pepper's orders to JARVIS and Rhodes' constant presence, into the level that was to be Clint's-smaller than the actual penthouse, but the highest level, and with roof access-he'd found Tony's legs hanging out from under a raised section of the bathroom floor, swearing a blue streak and telling JARVIS that he needed to come up with something more efficient for in-floor heating. JARVIS replied he could perhaps come out from under the floor, as he had a guest, and Tony had called one of them, Steve wasn't sure which one, something in Italian that was best not said in front of small children. Tony had flailed slightly, then finally managed to extricate himself, sitting up and blinking owlishly as he turned the headlamp off.

At first, Steve had assumed it was boredom or pride that kept Tony from calling in professionals. But when the Avengers had started to move in, Tony would still disappear for hours at a time, and Natasha had had to follow him to find out that, in point of fact, Tony was helping to repair a high school that had had a hole blasted though it, and then got swept up into helping the house next door repair their blasted-off roof. He worked in as many places as would let him, as unskilled labour for most of it. The city had been in ruins, and even the great Tony Stark stood up to rebuild it. The first time the Steve followed him to one of the projects he was working on, Tony hadn't batted an eyelash, shoulders-deep in wiring and gesturing with a jerk of his chin, because he'd had a wrench clenched in his teeth, for the wire cutters sitting at Steve's feet, just out of arm's reach even if he didn't have both hands buried in what seemed to have been an emergency generator. To Steve, and mostly everyone else who looked at it, it was a burnt-out husk of a machine that had been beyond usefulness ten years before. Tony, with the same teeth-clenching stubbornness, had taken the damn thing and brought it back to life.

Brought it back to life in a way that Steve wished he could be brought back to life, too.

And then, ultimately-because it had taken him the better part of a year-Tony had learned or built the tools necessary to do exactly that, and put them all to stunning use.