Steve's breath was sharp and uneven as if he'd just run a thousand miles. He was unfocused, there was blood on the floor, blood on the back of his hand. The skin on his knuckles was scraped away, raw and angry red. His hands were shaking. He never shook, that was odd. He couldn't focus. Steve lowered his hand and looked down at Natasha, on the floor, who was still screaming at him but the sound reached him as if he were standing at the far end of a tunnel. His eyes slid past the head that she held cradled in her lap, slid past the ruined face, past the deep crimson that soaked her silk kimono, and smeared her moon-pale thighs red.
His stomach twisted queasily and he screwed his eyes shut. When Steve opened them again everything slammed back into focus.
"YOU HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE. THEY'RE COMING, STEVE. YOU HAVE TO GO! GO!" Natasha screamed at him. Steve flinched back, her words like a cold hard slap. Coming? Who was coming? Then his eyes focused on Tony, still lying in a crumpled heap on the kitchen floor. Blood bubbled out of a hole in his face—Steve abruptly realized that it must be his nose. The man had been handsome once, and the thought made Steve's stomach heave.
"—decided not to. You ruined it." Steve barely caught Natasha's hoarse whisper. He didn't understand what she was talking about. "You ruined it!" she hissed at him again through gritted teeth. The knife was still clenched in her fist, speckles of blood like dark rubies glittered on the black steel blade.
He took a step toward her, meaning to put a hand on her shoulder, but something crunched audibly beneath his boot. When he lifted his foot to see what it was, there was a tooth. Tony's tooth. There were others scattered about the floor, some broken and some whole, lying in their own little pools of blood. That sound, he thought dazedly. There had been a sound like a dozen tiny pebbles pinging off of metal in quick succession right as Steve had punched him. It had been Tony's jaw shattering like porcelain and then his teeth having a brief, but adventurous flight across the kitchen floor. Steve didn't think he'd actually hit the man that hard, but then there was a small voice in his head, vicious and sneering, that told him the truth. No, you tried to hit him as hard as you could.
In a blink he was over the sink, vomiting up everything he'd ever eaten in his life. Steve didn't remember crossing the distance; focusing was hard. Hands still trembling, he filled his mouth with cold tap water and spat it out. He pushed himself back up from the sink and took in a ragged breath, almost a gasp. The bitter taste of bile still fouled the back of his tongue.
"Natasha I didn't mean… I didn't… you have to—"
"They will hunt you and if you fight, they will kill you. If they can't kill you, they will put you in chains and throw you into the deepest, darkest hole you can imagine, on the edge of the world. Once they break you, they'll trot you out in front of the world as an example to the others. It's the protocol Tony tried to warn you about; it's their failsafe. Capture an enemy Inhuman or a Superhuman, doesn't matter. One notorious enough will turn the political tide, like you," Natasha ended in a breathless whisper.
Natasha was afraid. He could read it in her disposition, hear the slight tremble in her voice. That terrified him. "Natasha, I'm—"
"What am I…? We don't have time." Natasha shook her head violently as if dispelling a thought, and then she focused on him. "You have to get out. You have to run Steve, go now. RUN!"
A small aircraft droned in the distance, and Steve could tell that it was heading in their direction. He paused for an agonizing instant with his eyes locked on hers. So much he needed to say, to do, but there was no time. Then, feeling an immense coward, Steve turned for the door and ran.
Natasha swept into the living room. Tony was peering curiously into Steve's refrigerator and closed it when she stopped beside him. "I always wondered what a Super Soldier ate for breakfast. Now I know: pastrami and orange juice. Kinda disappointing," he said.
"What were you expecting?"
"I always imagined he Rocky-ied it in the morning and pounded a couple dozen raw eggs from the homemade chicken coop he keeps hidden in the back room. Here I could've made witty repartee about him drinking bird fetuses and scandalous accusations of misconduct with a chicken, but alas I've been left with pastrami. Must he be so pedestrian?"
Natasha chuckled softly. Before she really knew Steve, she'd imagined something similar. She walked over to the kitchen island and took a seat on one of the stools. "We need to talk," she said, "about what you just saw."
Tony winced and leaned against the sink with his arms folded. "Red, I will admit that in the far distant past I may have been curious about who you tumbled. But I gotta tell ya, the sight of those old man toes curling mid-ride made my irises explode."
"Tony…"
"I know, I know," he sighed and waved a hand. "So let's deal, girlfriend. You trying to turn him to the cause?"
"That's not your business."
"Well it would be if you can work it. What's the deal with you two anyway? You actually dig him? I mean sure his abs have abs, so Pepper tells me, but he's so freakin' grumpy! It's like being in a room with my gramps except that Rogers can throw you across the room, instead of just staring at you with rheumy eyes full of sad, sad disappointment."
Natasha didn't answer. It was easy to get sidetracked with Tony; his mind flitted from thought to thought faster than a hummingbird on a sugar high.
"Got it, not my business. But wait, seriously, does he have moves that nobody under ninety knows about? Kinky old guy sex," he paused to shudder. "You do realize that you're robbing the grave, right?"
She afforded him a small smile that she didn't allow to reach her eyes. All business. The clock was ticking and she honestly wasn't sure if he was playing her or playing with her, but the longer he stalled the more tense she became. Just relax and see where he goes, she told herself. She pushed out the breath she'd been holding deep in her lungs and forced the tightness in her shoulders to loosen.
Tony continued, "Look, I don't need to tell you that the conflict of interest here is enormous. Like giant pink elephant in the room with a Mahout on its back enormous. So, is this going to be a problem? Is Rogers going to be a problem?"
Natasha raised an eyebrow. "I don't do problems, Tony."
"Interesting turn of phrase," he muttered.
"If Steve had compromised me, then I would've ended it. But I haven't ended it. So the question is, is this a problem for you?"
Tony paused, a look of deep consternation on his face. Now was the moment. Natasha took a quiet breath and slowly slipped a slim black throwing knife from the hidden pocket in her sleeve, and waited.
The water ran cold down the rippled muscles on Steve's back and he shivered. He didn't like the cold, it reminded him too much of… other things. But it focused him. Focused him like a whetstone on a blade, scraping away the dullness until nothing remained but the blade itself. His control had shattered, leaving the fragments of his usual calm scattered in a dozen places within his mind. It wasn't normal for him to lose control and he didn't like it.
With each icy trickle, he gathered the fragments and began forming a box. His calm was the box and within it he contained his anger, his rage. He needed to remake the box again and stuff all of his rage and humiliation back into it. Steve was almost done, everything was nearly back in its proper place, but try as he might he couldn't seem to lock the lid tightly again. Well, it would have to do for now.
After stepping out of the shower he dressed quickly, throwing on a long-sleeved T-shirt and a blue quarter-zip sweater over a pair of dark pants. Disjointed, muffled words floated to him from beyond the bedroom door, but they were too low to make out. Steve sat on the edge of his bed and stamped his feet into his boots, pulling the laces tight. He sat back and sighed deeply. This was not how he'd envisioned his morning at all. All he'd wanted was to spend the morning, and perhaps the afternoon, making love to Natasha. Now he had to confront the last man he ever wanted to see, in his own home. But there was nothing for it, so he stood to go.
From down the hall, he saw them talking to one another in the kitchen. Natasha sat on one of the stools, still wearing her robe, looking intently at Tony. There was a furrow between her brows and she frowned as she listened; a sign that she was deeply disturbed by something. Tony was making gestures and talking about stopping something before things got out of hand, and Natasha was nodding in agreement. But Steve had missed the first part of the sentence, so he didn't give it any thought.
Natasha finally looked in his direction as he walked into the living area and offered him a small smile. "Hey," she said in a reassuring voice, "c'mere." She beckoned to him with her hand and frankly Steve was surprised not to find a knife in it. Natasha always kept throwing knives secreted about her person, and he wouldn't be shocked at all to discover that she'd sewn hidden pockets in the sleeves of her robe. Her knives and Taser discs had saved various team members on more occasions than any of them cared to remember.
In a move that he would later come to regret, Steve ignored her and walked over to stand in front of Tony. He studied the man with cold, hard eyes. This man didn't deserve his time, or Natasha's if he had any say in the matter, but he still needed to find out why Tony had come.
"Why are you here?"
"Hi, Cap. Listen, I most humbly apologize for—"
"Why are you here, Stark?"
Tony sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. "I just got word from my contact at the Senate. There's been a massive new development with the bill. I will preface this by saying that believe it or not, I had nothing to do with—"
"That's funny, 'cause I don't believe a word that comes outta your mouth."
"Steve. You need to hear this, it affects all of us," Natasha said.
Steve glanced at Natasha, his face heating. "All of us? Last time I checked you were still will him." That was unfair and he knew it, but the knowledge of where she stood on this issue, and who she stood with, still bothered him.
Frowning, Natasha opened her mouth to reply but Tony spoke over her. "Buddy, we're on the same side here."
"Yeah? Then what's on the agenda this time, Stark? You want me to give up the right to defend myself now too? Agree to be a talking monkey for the government? I won't do it. And don't call me 'buddy.' You're not placating a child."
Tony's visage darkened. "Placating," he said, as if testing the word, "well I had no idea your vocabulary held more than grunts and two-syllable words. That's astounding."
The box of calm in Steve's mind quivered, but he mentally clapped a hand over it. Much as this man got under his skin, he stubbornly refused to lose control again. "What was so important that you felt like you'd be welcome without knocking?"
Tony spun around to Natasha and thrust a finger back in Steve's direction. "He says I can talk now. Which would be awesome if I could finish a sentence. You think you could get him to shut the hell up so I can drop the extremely important information for which I came?"
Natasha sighed and turned to Steve, saying, "Tony just told me that the Senate committee added an amendment to the bill that's already close to passing in the House. It's called the Omega-2 Protocol and from the sound of it, it's going to be bad news for all of us. There's a small group embedded within the committee that… Steve, are you listening?"
"Bad news," Steve shook his head at Tony, in wonder. He just couldn't believe the gall of this man. "Bad news was the bill that I asked you to stop before it hit the floor of the House. Bad news is the American people distrusting any unregistered Superhuman or Inhuman, which you help fuel with your public propaganda appearances. Bad news was you creating a monster like Ultron, when I begged you to see reason, that made an entire city and thousands of people fall out of the sky." And bad news, he added to himself, is you ruining any chance that Nat and I could be happy.
"So I'm not entirely sure what I can do for you here, Stark. Did you expect to come over and maybe we'd pal around a bit before we rolled up our sleeves and got down to solving your problems, just like old times?"
Tony was silent for a long moment. "I didn't create this problem, Steve. But yes, I came here because I thought that we could do this thing together. That we could make it better as a team."
"You killed our team."
"Excuse me?"
"You saw an opportunity, even though half of us didn't want anything to do with that bill, and as usual you went your own way and tore us open, right down the middle."
"For the record, I never saw this is a personal opportunity. We needed to get out ahead of this thing. The bill was coming with or without me."
"So you just thought it was a good idea to hasten it along?"
"Like I said, they've been sitting on this bill for years waiting for the right time. And after those dumbasses—the New Warriors or whatever—pulled their stunt on national TV, the House whipped that bill outta their back pocket the next day. I didn't want to get involved in this, Rogers. But hell I figured that it was better to help steer the ship, than let everyone get sucked into its wake!"
"So Tony knows best," Steve sneered.
"In this case, you're damn right. Tony does know best," Tony snapped back. "I grew up around politicians and world changers; I know how these people think. I know how they work. You spent two lifetimes unconscious in an ice cave and before that you'd barely crawled out of the slum you were spawned in. This is my turf, and I know what I'm doing."
"Know what? I don't need you to help fix this. You've done enough already. I'll see you to the door," Steve said and turned to usher Tony away. Behind Tony, Natasha waved furiously at him, but he ignored her.
Unfortunately, Tony didn't move an inch. "Oh, ohhhh so that's what this is about! Uh-huh I get it; it makes sense now. It's all clear."
Steve sighed deeply and turned back to Tony. "What're you talking about?"
"You don't like me, you never have. You've always wanted a reason to be righteously pissed at me, and now you've found one."
"That's a load of crap. I don't like you when you're being an arrogant, reckless, entitled, limelight- sucking, selfish jackoff. Which happens to be all the time, so actually yeah you're right I've never had much use for you."
"Ouch, if my heart weren't shielded by the ARC Reactor I might actually cry. No, see what you can't stand is that I'm not one of your soldiers. I'm not all, 'Yes sir! Let me lick your boot, sir!'" Tony smiled and walked right up to Steve, his attitude and posture challenging him. The animal instinct within Steve roared at the challenge and demanded that he meet it. They were so close now that their chests were almost touching.
"Okay boys, why don't we take this down a notch?" Natasha urged.
Inside, Steve's box rattled and shook with suppressed rage.
"What you can't stand," Tony continued in a near whisper, "is that I don't run to daddy for permission to do what needs to be done. You can't stand that I have more brains, more balls and more vision than a vial of serum can ever grant you. But what really keeps you up at night, is that deep down in that cold pit in your stomach, you're afraid that without me you'll never be good enough. You don't think I—"
Steve didn't realize that he'd stopped breathing. He didn't see Natasha standing up from her stool and palming something into her hand. All he could see was Tony. All he could hear were those hateful, truthful words pouring out of his mouth. He needed to stop hearing those words.
The box shattered.
In one fluid motion Steve grabbed a fistful of Tony's shirt in one hand, and pulled his other back into a fist. In a moment, everything slowed down. Steve could feel his own face twisting up into a snarl, could see the sudden surprise and flicker of fear in Tony's eyes, could hear Natasha's cry of, "Stop!" reverberating in his ears.
Steve didn't care. His calm and control were splintered into a thousand pieces and there was no putting them back together. His fist began a downward arc as he swung for Tony's head.
A fleeting glimpse of something small and black darted through the air behind Tony and there was a small chunk! of impact. Almost at that same instant, Tony's eyes widened in pain and he arched backwards, loosening Steve's grip and shifting the aim of his swing. It was both the moment that Steve was jolted into the terrible reality of what he was doing and also the moment that his swinging fist connected with Tony's jaw.
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