This rhythm, he's familiar with.
He burns his clothes (burns the evidence) until his hair smells of ash, stomps the fire out into slush, shivers and presses his legs together and digs a wicking layer out of his pack.
He needs to get back. He's done. He's had his tantrum. Had it, loosed his anger out here in the snow, dispatched his faceless monster of an enemy, and now he's hollow, hollow and cold and angry that there are apparently allies and it doesn't make a rat's ass of a difference. He's angrier than he'd like to admit that his heart is aching for Thor and Tony and everything they were, before.
He notices, this time, drifting through the trees like a ghost. Evidence of people, stubborn people, like him (resilient, he would have thought, once), who root like weeds and snarl until they die. Lanterns, campfires, a flashlight, once, a mile or so off. It's only because he's better that he can see it at all from this far away. He doesn't make contact. He suspects he wouldn't like what he'd find. He suspects those men back there are what passes for honor now in this burnt-out shell of a world.
He is coming to realize that this is it: the end of the line.
It always got better, before. Something always gave. New lungs, new life, second, third, fourth chances. You lucky bastard, Sam said once, and clapped him on the back. All that time in the trenches without a scratch, all that time unscathed while he buried his men and everyone left –
Five miles, six miles, miles, in the dark, miles back to nothing, miles back to the barest of lives with no promise of a future and the sky a dim haze to light the way.
Leave.
He's warm enough. He won't start starving for days, worst-case. The star is burning on his back.
Built for the cold.
The sky lights up behind him, and he wonders, briefly, if lightning storms are right for this time of year when he feels a wave of heat on his neck.
He's turning around as the fireball goes up. He has the absurd impulse to put a hand up to shield his face, but he'd be dead already if it was a nuke – he's not blind, his skin isn't melting off. There's just the desolate roar of the wind and the ungodly pillar of fire and ash ballooning up to the dismal grey sky.
He's watched a lot of bombs, seen a lot of people die, and that was a significant payload.
There's nothing in that direction but Ontario. His rational half suggests they wouldn't wipe it away. They must have supply depots there; it's a major population center, air traffic suggests it's valuable. The Skrulls are nothing if not economical.
Earth is theirs now, after all.
"– dumbass," someone half-sobs.
Steve's head snaps around.
Carol lands in a sloppy skid, her hair wild and blown, energy sparking up her black-covered arms. She dives at him, throws a hand back to smooth the snow over both their boot prints, winds her arms up under Steve's shoulders.
"Are you ok," Steve says, by far the least important question he wants to be asking, and Carol kicks off.
"I saw the first explosion, absorbed another," she bellows to beat the rush of air as she takes them up above the tree line. "What were you thinking," she snaps, her voice rent and desperate and grateful in his ear, "I said we'll deal with it together, not you have an open invitation to paint a target on all of our backs – "
A third explosion sounds behind them.
Steve flexes his arms so he's locked into Carol's grasp and cranes his neck around to look. It's across the lake, a little to the southwest. He can't be sure, but it looks like –
"Did they just blow up Toronto?" he breathes.
"No," Carol shouts. "Toronto's further west; that was some survivor town. They're too invested in the cities to level them." Steve wonders if she realizes she's shaking.
He stares at the black nothing of the lake beneath them, at the luminous reflections of craft hovering over the water, of the lit dots of more observatories what must be 20 miles on, 40, 60, and the particulate cloud is blazing like a beacon next to the dimmest one, the only one burned to the ground, back in the direction he was traveling from –
"That's 20 miles away," she's shouting. "It's the nearest city to that support base you fucked up. Likeliest perps," she says, and it would be wry if this weren't Carol coming down from hours of panic. "They don't know what you losing your shit looks like."
"Did I do that?" he asks, and he's fairly certain he can feel his blood slowing.
"Do you get it yet," she shouts over the wind.
Steve tallies with freezing fingers as he clings to Carol's arm around his chest, and it's nothing like flying with Tony. Tony would tell him it's not his fault, it was an accident (it wasn't an accident), Tony would tell him there's always a tomorrow to make it right, but what if there isn't, what if he never makes any of it right –
Lives snuffed out because of him. He's done it before; he tries to match up that burning crater in the ground to human lives erased, knows it's nothing, nothing at all to what they've already lost, knows people die in war. Knows he doesn't feel anything he should be feeling.
Thinks it's going to have to be something he lives with.
Just like all the other things.
Tony would say he's turning into a stranger, and fuck if that doesn't make him wither in Carol's arms.
Carol brings spoonfuls of instant coffee to her mouth between strides.
"He said it was important," Steve says, drifting along a few feet to her right, wondering if mainlining caffeine would do anything to quell any of the fifteen intolerable things he's feeling right now. "He risked opening the Bifrost to get here. He said he can't control the weather anymore. That doesn't concern you?"
"It's winter," she says bitterly. "It's gonna keep being winter, I don't know what you want me to do about it."
Steve stops short. "Has he been here before?"
Carol throws her spoon back down into the canister and wrenches the door to the conference room open.
"Look," she says. "This is now a situation. They're moving 20,000 bodies tonight, routing everything down through Rochester. They're gonna be sending patrols crawling all over the water for the next week and a half."
Clint sits bolt upright from where he's been sprawling. "What?"
It's not just Clint. Danny starts to stir in the corner, and Steve thinks maybe he should feel guilty for that; how many days must he have been out of commission for what he's done for him? Logan is leaning back in one of the swivel chairs, too, his booted feet kicked up on the conference table, and – a tiny swell of indignation rises in him – a blond pile of paws and ear tucked up into the crook of his elbow, sound asleep. The minute Clint starts to stretch, though, the puppy wakes, tumbles out of sleep and into a ridiculous howl thrown in Steve's direction as she climbs onto Logan's shoulder like she's scaling a mountain.
"Twenty thousand?" he says around a mouthful of cigarette. "Hey," he says to the puppy, and whispers in her ear for a minute before she relaxes into a muted growl and slinks back down into Logan's lap.
"Thank Steve," Carol snaps, and takestaking an armful of rolled-up maps from Maria. "Can you please put her to sleep before we get started?" She nods at the puppy as it curls its tongue around Logan's ear.
"Shit," Danny says.
The urge to sink into the floor starts to feel unmanageable.
"Can we," Steve murmurs, leaning over the table next to her, "can I have a minute, I didn't– – "
"It needs to wait," Carol says, dragging the map across the table.
"It doesn't bother you," Steve murmurs, the weight of their eyes pressing at him (ignore it, there's nothing to be done) from where they're sunk into their chairs at the far end of the table. "He's been gone since the invasion, and now he shows up and – "
"If it was important," Carol says sharply, "he'd be here himself."
Steve is opening his mouth to respond when he catches Clint shaking his head.
"Carol," he starts, again, hushed, "if we're grouping, we need to talk about Tony – "
"We are not grouping," she says, louder than he'd intended for this to go, but ok, Carol. Her show. "I need to make sure you didn't just fuck us all over. That's what we're doing here. It takes us an hour to mobilize if we have to move somewhere. Luke and Peter were out when you blew that station up, I've been out all night looking for all of you, do you get it – "
"Actually, Cage just got back," Maria says, "He's eating."
"Well, thank fuck for that," Carol says, throwing her hands up. "Peter is two days late checking in," she snaps.
After all the trouble, after everything, after he chased them out of their last home, this –
Responsible, he thinks.
He doesn't know what face he's making, but Carol has moved on to ignoring him, and Maria is already recapping. "He said there was another body dump here," she mutters to Carol. "Same symptoms; that's the eighth this month, so that rules out our theory about it being confined to the tri-state area."
"Body dump," Steve says, leaning in to get a better look at the map. "What is going on?"
"Get out of the way," Carol says flatly.
Because Steve still hasn't learned to pick his battles, he shifts up, straightens, plasters earnestness on himself. Conviction. "Let me help," he says. This is what they used to call reaching out. "What do you need me to do? I can – do you want me to find Peter, I can – "
"You've helped enough," she snaps, and slaps something hard and plastic into his palm, toes up to meet his height, levels her eyes and dares him. "Go shower," she says. "You're covered in blood, that's why she's barking at you. I'll catch you up if you miss anything."
She sits down, and Steve looks at his hand. It's a baby monitor.
The rest of them filter in. Maria perches on the edge of the table and puts her hair up into a tiny ponytail and looks more worried than he's really comfortable with while Clint and Logan eye him and his blood-covered clothes with moderate disgust. He shifts, takes the minute he needs to realize that no one cares if he comes or goes, that he's not calling the shots.
This is maybe the part where he's supposed to ask for direction.
"Tony," Carol says bitterly, and reaches across the table to thumb up the monitor's volume. "Your turn."
Steve turns it over in his hands and thinks, guilty.
Hank has taken off most of the bandages.
Steve doesn't ask how long he's been down here. Wants to ask, should ask about that and more, when did you sleep last, what are you doing here, top of the list is where's Strange, but that goes overlooked, too, because Tony looks worse than dead, and Steve can't tear his eyes away.
His skin is out again. Steve feels obligated to cover him. He knows it's absurd, but he aches to look at him, the ghastly pallor of his skin in the wash of blue-green from the monitors that look like they're about 20 years too old to be attached to Tony's person. Everything's stitched but the plasma burns, ugly lines of dark pucker running over his chest. He looks brittle.
He looks terrifyingly frail.
"Are you sure?" Steve asks.
"No," Hank says irritably. "I said it could be a stroke, it could be a hundred other things, I don't have the imaging equipment to do the assessment he needs, he's – he's not good, Steve. I told you I'd call you. I haven't called you."
Tony isn't good.
He could be a dead thing; it's only the breath rattling in him, the rush of the ventilator and the tube taped into his mouth and the thousand monitors taped on the scarce few patches of unspoilt skin, that let Steve know otherwise.
(You wanted this, you needed to see him – )
"Carol said he was in a coma," Steve pushes. He doesn't know what that means. He doesn't know what he wants to hear.
"Technically," Hank says. "He's heavily sedated. He may have brain damage."
Steve is nodding, he's screwing his face up to stave off the itch that lets him know tears are well on their way. He lets himself look back at Tony for the tenth time, needs to look, to see him there, even though it sends dizzy bursts of panic through him when he imagines him lying there forever, even though it hurts to look at him like Steve's never let anything hurt him before, and Tony would rather die than come out of this with brain damage –
"His blood alcohol level was .36," Hank rattles off, flipping quietly through Tony's chart with one clawed hand. "He's malnourished, he's got the beginnings of a lung infection because he aspirated water, he's had intermittent palpitations – he's always had a heart condition, you know that."
"Why isn't he healing," Steve rasps, and clears his throat. "Extremis should've repaired some of the damage, he shouldn't be – "
"Oh, he's healing," Hank says. "You try replacing half your blood volume with ethanol and let me know how it goes."
"It's been almost 2 weeks," Steve says, almost to himself. "He should be."
"You know, I've already been over this with Carol," Hank says, "I – "
"Please," Steve says to the floor.
Hank sighs. "His body can't keep up. Extremis..." He slides his glasses off and slings them onto the table he's sitting next to. "If I had to guess? That virus they uploaded, what took out all the other StarkTech? It did a number on his hardware, too. I don't know what needs to be done to repair it. That's more mechanics than it is biology, to a point, but I have no way of knowing. There's no way to interface with the nanites in his blood, not with him – even if there was, from what little I've read of Maya Hansen's research, he substantially modified the tech to suit his own biology. It's like he built his own operating system – that's a gross oversimplification, but the damage I could do just trying to bring it back online without his guidance would be…"
Disastrous. Hank doesn't need to extrapolate. Steve, for his part, is stuck on trying to imagine what disabling Extremis – shutting down Tony's hardware – could possibly look like, wondering if it's half as ugly as what it took Tony to make himself that way in the first place –
He slides down into the chair because he doesn't know how he can keep standing.
"No," Hank says, and he's hauling him up, gently, terribly strong. "Absolutely not."
Steve opens his mouth to argue, and then imagines Tony's face, the mute terror that's settled into his eyes.
(As if Tony is aware of anything right now, it's the most merciful thing that's happened to him, the only reason he's here and not resting, finally, is because of Steve – )
He supposes he should be grateful if Tony recognizes him at all after this.
"You need to get someone else in here," Hank says, and he's kind enough to open the door instead of pushing Steve through it. He checks his watch. "I've been doing 4–hour naps. Everyone else is otherwise engaged. I don't want to put him in restraints, and I don't really want to sedate him longer than we have to, so the kindest thing to do is to have a sitter with him."
Steve stares at him, mute.
"Your face is not the first thing he needs to see," Hank says flatly.
It's entirely different, hearing it out of someone else's mouth.
He thinks, dimly: Carol had no right.
Steve nods, because there's nothing else to do, and gathers his shield, crusted with Skrull blood.
He leads himself away, the baby monitor cradled in one elbow, and thinks that none of them have any right, that Tony's at their mercy and no one realizes how much of a responsibility that is, that no one wants it. Steve just has to trust, trust Tony to them and their petty grudges, and Tony's just lying there, clinging to life when his body wanted to be gone a long time ago, Tony is lying on the other side of the door that Beast is locking –
He had no right, and it stops him in dead in the empty hallway.
Mercy, he thinks, and it brings him to his knees right there.
They didn't wait for him to start the meeting.
He stands in the doorway, listens to Carol talk about Thor and the new curfew schedule that's Steve's fault. Restrictions on movement. Supply runs need to be made, the tech we talked about. Trade if you have to. Start looking for new boltholes, In Case. We're low on getaway vehicles for non-fliers; a truck would be nice next time if you can find the gas for it.
She gets around to it after all that. After the important things.
"We need to be better," she says.
She says it to eight tired faces, wan and sallow and wanting to be done with this briefing.
Steve hunches a little lower against the wall and lets himself feel the dull desolation that's barely even rearing in him anymore instead of bursting in like he should be doing. He fists his hands up and listens to them breathe, listens to Carol ask them – ask, as if this is something to be civil about – to be considerate (considerate), asks them to help with what they can, to realize that he's adjusting. In captivity for months, she says, calm, level. Mistreated, she says, and doesn't even stumble on it. Medically induced coma, she lies, nary a mention of bottles or bleeding or that rope made of torn sheets Steve can't forget the feel of.
They blink at her. This is a normal day, perhaps.
"None of us have a lot of patience right now," she says. "Just do what you can."
Doesn't say if he wakes up.
They always do what they can, don't they.
If Steve had their ears, if he was in there with them, if this was another time and he was the one holding the threads, he would say what really needs to be said. He'd do it so fucking calmly they'd mistake him for Churchill; he'd tell them that they need to get over themselves, that they can't afford to be petty, that Tony thinks they hate him, that it's their friend down there on life support, their teammate, that he's too ashamed to even ask for help, that he thinks he doesn't deserve to live anymore because they left him there, that he thinks they'd rather he'd have died and he might be right. How do they not understand that they ripped him apart, how do they not see him bleeding and terrified and hurting, how do they not get that they took everything from him, how are they all too busy feeling sorry for themselves to work up an ounce of compassion, what has it ever cost them to be kind –
"It's four," Clint says, nothing approaching even the vaguest of apologies in his voice. "Are we done?"
Steve thinks that maybe this is how it happens. You stop looking. You don't notice. You don't care.
They maybe don't realize they're terrible.
They maybe don't realize they're losing themselves.
Steve turns away to hide himself in another one of these unmarked, sterile rooms, and feels, still – again – like he maybe should have died a long time ago.
He musters up his waste of a body and tries to get some sense of the scale of their bolthole away from home.
(Grounded, useless, a protector who can't protect – )
It takes 49 paces to bring him to the end of a corridor, one of five arrayed in a star pattern, he thinks, wings connected by a series of cross-laid tunnels, narrower, utilitarian, not the wide corridors they've been walking through. Two levels, the medical bay buried deep in the southwest corner, as far as he can tell, which is concerning; it's probably under the lake (there's probably no need for concern, Tony probably sold the designs for these). The walls are cold when he puts his hands to them. The noise of the generators is dulled down here. It's quiet enough that the breath in his lungs gets sucked away into nothing.
He wanders into empty rooms. Finds a vast hall with rows and rows of shelving with thousands of identical metal boxes. He rips the lid of one of them open and finds bottles. Albuterol inhalers in one, gluten-devouring enzymes, blood pressure and hypertension meds in another. Everyone perfectly printed with the name of a Congressman. A senator. A presidential aide.
He throws one of them against one of a shelving unit and waits for the echoes to settle.
There are more living quarters, dormitories with identical sets of stainless steel bunk beds bolted to the floors. Eight, ten, twelve of them and he stops counting, all empty. They could all have a wing to themselves, if they wanted. It's that huge. He tallies, briefly, and realizes that this facility must have been meant for a thousand people. Supplies being what they are, they could stay here for years, maybe. Small wonder they aren't fighting.
He wonders how many more of these there are. Wonders if the Skrulls know about them. He didn't, but how many people did, how many knew about these, how do they know they aren't being watched, how could they ever have anticipated needing security to defend against their own faces –
He thumbs at the strap of his shield slung over his shoulder and walks through hall after empty hall, vibrating in his own skin.
The baby monitor is resolutely silent.
It's a blind corner. They collide with a dull pain that rockets down his arm, and Steve decides it's his fault. He wasn't looking.
The someone he's bumped into lurches back. "Sorry," Steve says, unsure if he's even capable of being sorry right now, and strides past, not trusting himself not to – combust, maybe, he doesn't need to break down in front of anyone else this week.
"Steve," Peter says, a wretched sound rasping out of his throat, and Steve stops.
He's in sock feet, his hair gleaming in damp spikes. His skin looks red, abraded, almost like sunburn. The whites of his eyes are bloodshot. There are days' worth of stubble coming up on his chin; Steve tries to remember seeing him with a beard, ever, and can't. Peter was always the clean-cut type. He supposes an apocalypse brings out the ragged in people.
Peter's arms are full of clothes, neatly folded. He holds a camera and something that looks like it might be actual film, on top, tucked right under his chin.
"Tony," Peter mumbles, as if that's any explanation at all, clutching his bundle to his chest.
Steve reminds himself that this is what Peter does, this is what they do, that Steve was authority and reassurance once – as if he'll ever be able to walk away from that – and that he's already cried himself into sobbing three times this week and this needs to stop. They would have hugged, once, he would have clapped Peter on the back or something, that's what he's looking for, but physical contact with anyone feels like a transgression now, how can he when his other-self has –
"I looked in the power plant, I…he wasn't in his room, I didn't." Peter presses his lips together and looks up, lost. "Do you know where he is?" he finally asks, his voice fracturing on the end of it.
Steve stares, because how is this possibly his burden.
"I just," Peter says, bites at his lip, " – Cap, I'm really tired, do you – "
"Tony tried to kill himself," Steve says, because he doesn't have the energy to lie. "He's in a coma."
It's a thing that should be screamed instead of whispered quietly in this corridor.
Peter blinks, and blinks, and blinks.
"Oh," he exhales, his eyes darting wildly around. He snatches absently at the mess of fabric spilling out of his arms, but it's a half-hearted effort; the clothes are already strewn all over the floor. He clutches his camera with the tips of his long fingers, does his damnedest to keep his mouth from forming into the grimace it wants to be making, he's trembling with it, practically.
Steve wonders what the hell is it that makes people want to put up such a front for him
Peter is holding himself stiffly, his body folding in on itself a little as he brings his free hand up to clutch in his hair. There's a gash across the back of his hand, neatly field-sewn, already starting to heal up, there are – garrote marks, running around under his chin, laid over the ugly scar on his jaw –
Peter is two days late checking in, he was supposed to be back yesterday –
"You didn't hear," Steve says, and he can't even find it in him to be sorry for how sour it sounds.
Peter looks up at him, and his skin seems almost yellow against the dark purple shadow-smears under his eyes. "No," he says, looking so stupidly young, running his hands over and over his damn camera, "I was away, I," he starts, and chokes, and looks away like he's counting to ten, and Steve would like nothing more than to be cruel and tell him that never works. "When," he says, finally.
"I don't know," Steve says honestly. "Five days ago." He clenches his jaw and watches the hope drain away from Peter's eyes. "What could you possibly want to talk to him about," Steve says dully. "It's not like any of you care."
Apologize, Steve thinks, first. Mean, he thinks, second.
He doesn't really expect Peter to start crying, then.
"I wanted to apologize," he tries to explain, looking lost and horrified and overwhelmed. "I just wanted, it's." He looks at the floor, and Steve watches the tears bead up and run off his chin. Steve catches the camera before it can smash when it falls out of Peter's shaking hand. "I said some things," Peter whispers to himself.
Steve is so very tired of watching everyone else falling apart, too. "Yeah," he says, "We all say things."
Peter looks at him like he can see through to his bones.
"You were," Peter says through his tears, "you were together."
Steve can't manage surprise anymore. "No," he says, exhausted.
"I was cruel, wasn't I," Peter says, and he's staring at nothing, trembling violently, and he sinks down to the floor and puts his head between his knees. "Oh my god."
"It's not your fault," Steve says, feeling dismal, because he knows it's his.
"I wanted to apologize," Peter whispers, again, and scrubs his free hand up over his face. "I was harsher than I should have been, I was just, he never would have taken it like that, before, I just wanted to talk, I just, why he did what he did, and you two, I wanted – "
Peter looks up, looking absolutely wretched.
"They used you," Peter chokes. "Didn't they, we knew they tortured him, but we – "
Steve thinks maybe he used to be a passable liar.
"He ran from me," Peter says, drawing himself into somewhat of a ball, "I mentioned you, and he ran."
"Please don't spread that around," Steve says to the floor, because he's such a coward.
Peter stares at nothing. "I was careless – "
"Can you promise me you won't throw that information around, Peter, please – "
"Do you know what I said to him," Peter says, clutching at his head, "I told him that I didn't know why you saved him, that's what I told him, and I meant it, you two – "
"We weren't together," Steve says.
"You might as well have been," Peter says, "That's why they sent a Skrull to be you, that's why it worked – "
"Well, since you have it all figured out," Steve says dully.
"Don't start with me," Peter says, "Don't talk to me about – both of you, you had to rip us all apart instead of taking a time out and trying to talkto each other – "
Peter clamps his mouth shut and drags the clothes into his lap one by one.
It's disarming, the grief in his face. Steve wonders when he learned grief like that.
"He's really thin," Peter says, after a while, "I thought he could have these, they're Danny's, I'm too short, but – he needs something smaller, he's – "
"Can you help me," Steve blurts.
Peter looks at him with ruined eyes. "They already know," he says, "or they think, it's." He looks down at his lap.
Steve considers that, and slides down to sit next to Peter.
"I want you to help me," Steve says, praying that he's doing it right this time, "I want, just listen, ok – "
"They're going to suspect now," Peter says. "It's a small house, it's not – "
"No, can you do me a favor?" Steve asks. "He's on suicide watch, if…when. When he wakes up, someone needs to be with him, and I can't – "
He drifts into silence, because there are so many things that are can'ts now.
"Why can't you forgive each other," Peter says, sounding desolate.
Steve bites into his tongue so hard blood wells up in his mouth.
"Can you just sit with him for a few hours," Steve says, "while you're here, while I – figure something out with Carol? Hank needs sleep."
Peter is very still. "He'll have someone," he says, strangled, "he'll. Don't worry, I'll…I can talk to Carol."
"It's not your fault," Steve says quietly.
"I'll take care of it," Peter says.
"You're not responsible," Steve says.
Peter looks up, looking like he's lived a thousand years.
"I think we're all responsible," he says.
When the towel comes off, it's still not dark enough.
K'arr'n is blond, Steve's color, the straw-blond he's never given a thought to changing until now. He pulls at it, teases some of the longer bits until they're dry. He's barely managing something gingery; it's not nearly as dramatic a change as it needs to be. He's getting there, edging into darker-looking, more of a fire starter, less of that open naivety, the easy broad smile they used to say made him approachable. He looks cautious. Older, maybe. He runs a hand through it, still damp, and wonders if he should start wearing glasses.
It needs to be browner than it is. Another batch.
It's long already. It falls down around his temples when he dips his head in the bowl, then sticks flat and wet over his forehead. He won't cut it. K'arr'n's was spikier.
"What are you doing," Carol says.
By the time he picks his head up out of the bowl, she's holding the coffee canister in her hand, the bathroom door wide open behind her, looking nothing short of incensed.
"What are you doing," she says again. Her hair is wet. She smells faintly like – darkroom chemicals, maybe, something artificial –
"There were 30 more canisters in the pantry," he says, tired. "I looked, I thought – "
"Are you kidding me," she says, and he honestly doesn't know what he's done now. He dabs at a bit of coffee sludge that's sliding down his ear. "What is this," she says, and shakes the can at him.
"I thought it would be easier," he says. "For Tony," he clarifies, when she doesn't move an inch.
"For Tony," she echoes. "Tony, who's in a coma."
"I know that," he says irritably, snatching it back. "It's," he falters. "When he wakes up," he says. "So he's not – " Scared. Terrified. "So I look different."
Carol is very still for a minute.
"He's not gonna wake up, Steve," she says.
"After all that," he hisses, slathering the shit on his head and snatching at the plastic wrap in the sink. "He didn't survive all of that so he could die," Steve says, certain. So certain. (Terrified.) He finishes winding it, wipes the drips off his neck. Turns to Carol. "He's never given up," he explains, like it will calm the gallop of his heart when he thinks about that line on the monitor that indicates brain activity –
(This is not a never sort of situation, he knows – )
"You need to not get your hopes up," she says flatly.
"Let me have this," he snaps, doesn't plan to, but does, "it's the least you can do, give him the benefit of the doubt – "
"It's not about the benefit of the doubt – "
" – can you please just – "
" – the odds of alcohol-related coma patients waking are – "
" – don't tell me the odds, ok – "
Carol puts him on the floor.
His arm comes up, automatically; his muscles don't know any other way to be. Her arm presses into his throat, warm and light and solid as steel. He scrabbles his hands at her wrist and feels his airway constrict ever so slightly more for his trouble.
There's energy boiling under her blue eyes, and Steve is utterly disarmed.
"Is this the only language you understand now," she snarls, "because reason doesn't really seem to have been doing it for you, Steve." Her hair falls into his face.
"I thought you'd understand," he says weakly. It's taking most of his energy to keep her arm loose enough to breathe.
"You need to check yourself," she snaps. "You're developing a problem with boundaries."
"That base needed taking out – "
"THAT WAS NOT YOUR CALL TO MAKE," she roars over him. "You are out of control – "
"I'm sorry," he yells back. "I had to do something – "
"I'm not your Captain," she parrots at him, "isn't that what you said to Maria, Steve, you said you were leaving – "
" – and then Tony happened," he rasps, "get off of me – "
"LISTEN," she hisses. "Shit or get off the pot, Steve. Because you're fucking up my ship. I have active ops, I had active ops until you gave them a fucking beacon – "
" – I didn't – "
"Shut up, Steve. I'm trying to do what I can. There are things bigger than you and your anger management issues in play. Do you know how many safe houses are left on the list? Two. Two safe houses and we start running, for real, for good. We disband. This is it, do you get it? I didn't ask for this. It fell into my lap, because I was on the right continent when the shit hit the fan and you weren't there and neither was Tony, but I did it, because that's what we do, Steve, we fight, and all you've done since Fury threw his life away to save your sorry ass is make messes that I don't have the resources to clean up – "
"Like you didn't have the resources to go back for Tony?" he snarls.
"What do you want," she yells. "The damage is done, they got what they wanted – "
"I want a chance to help him," he yells back.
"You do not need to be the one to help him," she screams. "We don't get second chances. What is it you think you can do, Steve? What is it you think you can do to help?"
"You told me to fix it, Carol – "
"And then he took a stomach full of painkillers and drank a liter of Patrón – "
"Was I supposed to leave?" he says. "Was I supposed to leave without trying to make it right – "
"You can't make everything right!"
Her voice rings off the tile because Steve has nothing to say to that.
"You do what suits you, "she says bitterly. "You always have, you do what you want to do because you can get away with it. You think you can save everyone. You meddle," she chokes out.
"I just – "
"No, this is where you listen," she shouts. "This is where you take my fucking word for it, Steve, you don't know what it's like to be powerless like that."
"Yes, I do," he hisses. He did, once, it's there, it's still in him somewhere, he remembers being helpless, eons ago, remembers –
Carol slams his shoulders into the floor, again, and Steve gets the message this time and stops struggling.
"I'm stronger than you," she says. She draws her arm up, and there's energy humming up into her hand, and Steve wonders, briefly, if she's a Skrull, if everyone has gone insane but him, if she's actually going to burn him –
"What do you think," she snaps. "Think I could boil your brain if I wanted?"
Steve feels his Adam's apple move against her forearm.
"What do you think, Steve," she says, and her hand is warming on his throat –
"Don't," he says, and he can't push her arm off –
"How do I look," she presses.
Steve looks at her, at her angry face and the deep shadows under her eyes and the ferocity in the curl of her lips.
"Like you could kill me," he says. He's certain they can both hear his heartbeat. "Like you could kill me if you wanted," he chokes.
"Then what the hell do you think you look like when you're mad, Steve," she whispers.
"Please," Tony says, wood scraping his bare knees and he can't even crawl, "I'll do anything you want, anything – "
"Take a minute," she says. "Take a minute and think of what it's like for him, imagine what having you back is like, and then imagine what that betrayal would feel like – " her voice warbles a bit " – imagine being terrified every time you saw someone you trusted with everything – "
"Tell me, Steve," Tony says, his eyes stark and blue and desolate. "Tell me what I can do, what can I do to make it stop – "
"Stop," he's whispering, "ok, I. Ok."
"You're a soldier," she says. "You're a weapon."
"I know," he tries to say, but Carol tightens her arm again and he can feel his oxygen leaving –
"If Tony wakes up," she says, "this is how he's going to look at you. He's not gonna see you. He's going to see him. He's going to wonder when you're gonna hurt him. He's gonna wonder why you haven't."
"Ok," he says weakly. "I know."
"It's not your fault," she says, "but you need to understand."
"Ok," he whispers.
Her hands go away from his neck, and he coughs and coughs and feels his chest heave under her weight.
"Are we clear," she says.
"Yes," Steve says.
"Are you staying?"
"I don't – "
"Make a decision," she says, and her eyes are cold, cold blue.
"For now," he gasps.
"I need you to play ball," she says. "Because if you were me, you'd be throwing my ass out in the snow for the shit you've been pulling."
Carol always has been one for candor.
"Ok," he says.
"You stay out of the fucking way," she says. "You're grounded until you get your head on."
He swallows. "Ok."
"Leave him alone," she says. "If he wakes up, you leave him alone until he's ready."
He turns his head away to the side. "Yeah," he says, and chokes down the lump in his throat.
"You used to be a goddamned hero," she says. "Start acting like one."
He fixes his eyes on the floor and hopes she doesn't notice what a slap that feels like.
Her weight is gone, then, and she's holding her hand out to help him stand.
He doesn't take it.
"It's fine," he says stiffly. He levers himself up on the toilet. It's not fine.
Nothing is fine.
"Fine," she says.
"I'm not the one that hurt him," Steve says. "I didn't hurt him. I wouldn't." He turns his eyes up to Carol and tries to feel defiant and doesn't feel anything at all.
He wishes she'd give him something, but all she does is stare.
"You did," she says. "It's just that he didn't start bleeding until you were gone." She ducks her head, tugs her sleeves back over her wrists. She shrugs a little, like she doesn't care, and she's a far better actor than Steve knows how to be anymore. "It doesn't matter," she says dully. "You're the one that has to make up for it."
Steve looks anywhere but at her face, because she's right.
She straightens up. Tucks her dog tags back into her shirt. Looks almost conciliatory when Steve rubs at his throat, and then decides she's not going to be and rests her hand on the doorknob. Gives him one last searching glance.
"I'm sorry," he says, and for the first time in a long time, he means it.
"You look like an idiot," she says, and then she's gone.
"Take it out," Tony gasps, as soon as the gag comes out of his mouth. "Take it out, please, please – "
One of the guards nudges at it with his rifle, and Tony's body bucks forward.
"She's so generous," K'arr'n says, catching him around the waist, his voice strangled and bitter, and Tony feels his fingers curl around the base of it. He could sob, mortified and hopelessly grateful; it's been a day, he doesn't know what he would have done if he hadn't come back, Veranke chained his arms around in front so he couldn't –
K'arr'n drags it out of his body and fucks it back into him hard enough that Tony wails.
"Don't tell me what to do," K'arr'n says in his ear, and Tony bites into the slot he's chewed through his lip as K'arr'n stabs him in the neck with a needle. "Did you ask her for it?" He tugs it all the way out this time, holds it in front of Tony's face, streaked with lube. "Did you thank her?"
Tony wants to say no, how could he, it's just one more thing, one more cruel touch, one more humiliation in a line of them, one more person to use him, one more reminder that it's bullshit to think he's living in a body that belongs to him, but K'arr'n is swiping his fingers around in Tony's mouth –
K'arr'n wipes his hand on Tony's back, says something in Skrull to the guard as he's kicking his boots off. Whatever Tony's been injected with is boiling through him, lighting him from the inside, calling the lines of everything into perfect clarity, the heavy humidity of outside drifting in through the balcony doors like it's summer (it could be, by now), the hum of Steve's lamp unbearable in his ears –
"She's using you to fuck with me," K'arr'n says. He shoves Tony onto his elbows and drags him back by the knees so he can feel a finger around inside him. Tony cringes away, halfway to crying already (he can't help it, it hurts) and K'arr'n is pulling his hair and Tony wants to sob that he doesn't have to be cruel, he'll do it, whatever it is, he'll do anything to avoid worse (K'arr'n always comes up with worse), please –
" – so arrogant there's no way to tell," K'arr'n is saying, and he presses something cold and metal and spiked onto the skin behind Tony's ear. "She thinks it's working. She said you listened." He tosses something at the guard and then it's hands on his hips, spreading him apart and there's nowhere to go –
"Beg me for it," K'arr'n says, nudging up behind him. "You begged her, didn't you?"
Tony thinks if he opens his mouth, he'll sob.
"We do this as many times as you need to," K'arr'n snaps, and buries himself.
Blood dribbles down his chin and into the sheets. He'll pay for that later, tastes it on his tongue, gasps and chokes on it while his lungs try to accommodate the unendurable weight of Steve's huge body against his bruised mess of a spine. He won't be able to hold them, he's going to fall, K'arr'n is already fisting his hands brutally in Tony's hair like he's grasping at reins, reaching around to feel Tony's balls dragging against the red silk duvet. He realizes he's crying again, prays K'arr'n doesn't see so he won't turn crueler, but he doesn't know how not to, he has no right, all he has to do is kneel here and let himself be used –
He buries his wet face in his carved-up arm when he feels his cock swinging heavy and hard between his legs.
"Go ahead," K'arr'n says, breathless and pleased, because he never misses anything. "Rub yourself on my sheets and see if you can get off that way." He snaps his hips and drags Tony back by his thighs. "Are you picturing him? I know you're not thinking about me."
He's not going to talk, he's nothing, he doesn't have thoughts anymore, he won't bring Steve into this –
(He is, he's thinking of Steve, he's disgusting and Steve would be disgusted and he's sorry, he feels like he's going to be sick and he feels like he wants to come and he's dizzy and K'arr'n is mad and he's such a piece of trash –)
"You are," K'arr'n whispers again, wraps two of Steve's fingers under Tony's collar and jerks his head back. "You're thinking of him, you'd have done this for him, pretend, Tony." He's gasping into Tony's ear, he's close, maybe, he traces a finger over Tony's jutting hip. "Close your eyes and think of America," he murmurs, and Tony's sure he's dripping, he wishes he were better, he's sorry, he's sorry –
"I'd be gentle," K'arr'n is saying, and buries himself, deep, knocks the breath from Tony's lungs. "If you asked me, I'd be gentle." He feels around for Tony's cock, jerks him a few times, slow and teasing, and Tony bites, bites, bites so he won't beg. "Ask me to be gentle, Tony," he whispers.
No, he won't, no, but he wants to, no, his mouth wants to say please, he doesn't remember what kindness feels like (it won't be kindness) –
"K'arr'n," Tony sobs, and he doesn't know what he's asking for, he doesn't know what to say, he can't ask to be gentle, he can't fool himself with that, Steve would have left him, Steve hated him, it's not believable, Steve would have let him rot for this –
K'arr'n's thrusting abates for a moment before he bashes Tony's face into the headboard.
"The next time you use my name, I'll sell you to a breeding camp," K'arr'n says, and he yanks on Tony's leash hard enough that the blood from his nose slides down his throat –
(It's going to be enough, someday, it will, K'arr'n will get tired of this, K'arr'n will sell him to someone who will have no compunction about beating him to death, someday he'll be done paying – )
" – we're not lovers. You're not a hero anymore, you're nothing, I own you, do you understand?" K'arr'n is saying. He twists one of Tony's nipples, the burned one, and Tony's vision greys out with pain for a minute. "Rut against the bed, Tony," he snarls.
Let me die, he thinks, let me die, let me die, just let me –
"Why don't you listen," K'arr'n hisses, scratches over Tony's newest welts until Tony hears his own agonized screaming. "It's like fucking a plank of wood, move – "
He arches his back as much as he can, lowers his hips the last few inches, trembling down to his bones. K'arr'n whispers things to him, this is as good as it gets and you wouldn't last a day on the Peak and my guards would fuck you if I told them to, and this is better than those, he could love this if he tried, he just needs to try harder, needs not to be such a useless whore, flexes his thighs, arches everything he can think of and it's not enough, tries to put himself down, tries to drag up pleasure from the memories of what he used to be, but it's useless, he's useless, he doesn't think he can get there, he's sorry and he's a terrible plaything and K'arr'n is going to hurt him if he doesn't –
K'arr'n swears, fucks into him once, twice more and crushes them both to the mattress.
K'arr'n wipes Tony's hair out of his eyes, panting, and Tony's heart pounds in his chest. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do, if he's failed, if K'arr'n is going to put him out to kneel in the snow again, if he's supposed to thank him, if he's supposed to beg for more, if he's supposed to clean K'arr'n off with his mouth or let K'arr'n kick him down to the foot of the bed –
K'arr'n rolls them over onto their sides and wraps one of Steve's calloused hands around Tony's swollen cock.
He gives a little thrust instead of pulling out, undoes the manacle on his wrist, drags Tony's hand down to his crotch, whispers calm down and and relax and you'll do better tomorrow, won't you and runs Tony's fingers over his own disgusting flesh. His hands shake, they're always bleeding, he never wants to touch himself again, he wants to say no, wants to say anything and doesn't, rasps, whimpers, moans please, lies there, the salt of his tears running into his gasping mouth, lies there and lies there and lets K'arr'n kiss his neck while he brings himself off, whimpers like the garbage he is when his body goes taut and breathless and he turns to putty in K'arr'n's arms, lets K'arr'n nudge their come-covered fingers into his mouth and licks it all away –
He lies there, tears streaking over his cheeks, as K'arr'n cradles him, shoves a pillow under their heads, presses them together, draws the echo of a scream out of Tony when he strokes a hand absently across Tony's beaten skin, rests his cheek against Tony's neck so Tony can feel his breathing slow and deepen. Tony bites into his hand until he tastes blood when he watches the arm around his waist darken to green. He wishes he were better; he'd wrap his chains around K'arr'n's throat, he'd press a pillow over his mouth and watch him struggle and die, he'd reach and close his fingers on the hilt of the knife and drag it across K'arr'n's throat, if he weren't a coward and he remembered what courage felt like, if it weren't a dream that his body used to shine with red and gold –
Calm down, someone says. Don't try to breathe.
Hands on his face. Around his mouth. On his neck.
Coward, Steve's voice hisses in his ear.
He doesn't know how to say no, get off, please, can't open his mouth, can't close it, can't breathe, everything is bright, there's something jammed down his throat, he chokes and bucks and tries to suck in air and can't –
Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep –
You're ok, someone says, you're ok. I'm going to sedate you, calm down –
He was always going to end up in hell.