AN: I debated so much whether to include this. However, at the end of the day, the truth needs to be aired before they can - emall/em of them - move forward together. It didn't feel right, a cheap cop out, to sweep it under the rug.


"Hey." Steve ignores the creeping prickle of dread along his spine. His hand finally registers the tautness of the shoulder muscle under his hand and he bends slightly to peer into the troubled face. "Have you seen Tony? He was here this morning and now I can't find heads or tails of him. He looked…"

"Off," Bruce finishes. He licks his lips and glances at Steve over his glasses. "I know."

They're silent for a moment. Both men not-so-subtly eye the ceiling.

"He's in the medical boardroom, down the hall," Friday finally says.

Another pause. Bruce frowns, his tense frame coiling even tighter. "And? What has he been doing for the last two hours?"

Steve catches Bruce's gaze and they share a stormy look.

"Friday?"

"I'm not permitted to say, Captain."

That's never good.

Tony's tears had shut off once the surgery finished and Bruce broke the news that Peter probably wouldn't wake up.

Instead of the mood swings from earlier, Tony's gone silent. Flat affect. The quietest of them all except for his visits to a comatose Peter. Everyone has come to the point where they banded together.

Not Tony. Tony drifts further away with each passing day.

Bucky looks up from his book. "Did he say to lock the door?"

"He did not."

With a nod to Bruce and Bucky, along with a hand squeeze to Peter, Steve winds down the hall, unnerved by how dim it is, how many lights have been shut off.

The medical boardroom sits at the very end of the hallway, the last door on the left. It's far enough away that it won't disturb patients and yet close enough to convene emergency meetings and consult on diagnosis results.

It also houses two large flat screens and a variety of AV equipment, most of it holographic…

But some of it is older tech.

Steve opens the door and no explosion inferno ever struck him like the atmosphere in this room.

Everything is dark except for one screen against the left wall. Tony sits on a stool before it. He's in a rumpled blazer and jeans, utterly motionless like Nat was in the gym last night.

The TV is on, silhouetting Tony as a dark, small shadow.

Steve sees what he's watching and his face doesn't fall—it shuts off completely. An IED could detonate at their feet and Steve wouldn't be as shocked as this moment.

And suddenly Steve understands that both he and Tony are just actors who've been stripped of their makeup to reveal the fleshy, weak parts underneath. Like it's all a farce and they were wrong to pretend to be anything different.

Different than what we really are: a sick kid from a poor neighborhood and a lonely, neglected college frat boy.

Steve has never felt so close in age to the man in front of him.

They're not, of course, decades apart and with lives so divergent that it's a wonder they worked together at all. But there's something unifying, a loathsome solidarity, to the way they've both fooled the world into thinking they are something bigger than the ill men inside.

We're better conmen than any criminals we take down. It's laughable to act like we're any better.

Steve stops a good three feet away from the back of Tony's stool. He knows Tony senses him but the mechanic does nothing.

The only mercy in this situation is that the tape is almost done. Steve has missed the show.

Pitiful cries filter from the speakers, a woman's pleading voice before her air is choked off. Steve's gut turns to lead. Tony, other than a slight sway on the stool, doesn't appear to react at all.

Grey static replaces the video.

"You grabbed the tape," Steve whispers. "When we were in the bunker."

Tony doesn't move. Steve can't see his face from this angle but there's a ghostly, afterlife set in the posture of his shoulders. The way corpses are still.

"I didn't understand." Tony's voice is dead, like the people on screen. "I didn't get why Zemo lured us all that way just to hurt Peter. Why couldn't he have done that in Romania or even right on our front door step or…"

He needed Bucky to make this a ritual, symbolic killing. A repeat of history.

Tony has obviously come to the same conclusion. He bows his head for the briefest of seconds and Steve's heart shatters.

"But now I realize what he was trying to do. He didn't care if we watched this video now or later. The consequence is still the same. When Peter died, this would break us apart instead of unite us in our grief."

"But Peter hasn't died." Steve's heart is a frenzy in contrast to Tony's too slow, dreadful beating. An executioner's drum. "We got him back. Zemo's plan backfired."

Tony rears to his feet without warning.

His face is trying to be rock hard but cracks form around his eyes and quivering lips. Steve has never seen his glare so crackling, so thunderous.

"Did we get him back?" Tony jaw slides one way and then back again. "He's lost. Forever. Don't act like you don't know that."

Steve's vision goes white for a moment with horror. The words slip out before he can stop them. "It wasn't Bucky's fault. You said you knew that."

With speed to rival a whip, Tony clamps a hand around Steve's bicep. His eyes are bright, both from tears and utter fury. It's the bottling of a rocket before it explodes, the fizzing solution of torment solvents so potent they strain at their bounds.

Steve feels the energy running up that hand, the power too strong for its container.

I lost you too, Tony.

Why can life not let him have people he cares about? Why must he always sacrifice one to gain another, an impossible decision?

Tony, for how he's shaking with rage, can't seem to get his voice past a guttural murmur. "Did you know?"

A stinging wave of anguish washes over Steve and drowns him for a moment. His life is full of choices he can't win.

He may play the hero…but Steve questions for the first time if he's ever played the villain in this drama of life. Now, stripped down, Steve can't hide the truth swirling behind his eyes.

He wants to deflect this question, something like, 'I wasn't sure…never confirmed…'

Steve's brows draw back and Tony's knit together. The universe holds its breath for one suspended moment that's so excruciating Steve seriously wonders if he's lost his mind and if he hasn't he very much wants to, just to be free of this.

"Yes," says Steve.

Tony releases him at once.

The room spins from the bomb shell, Steve swaying a hair, both physically from the pressure of being shoved away and the emotional weight crushing both men.

"He's in my infirmary not twenty feet away." Tony's eyes widen as he mutters to himself. "He's right there."

This thought must panic Tony enough to leap into action. He moves to shoulder past Steve. Steve steps deftly to the side, blocking Tony's access to the door.

Tony's teeth grind together. "Out of my way, Cap. I'm getting to him no matter what you do."

Steve's pulse sends an echoing beat of terror. "Not a chance, Tony. Stand down."

"That was not a request. Move."

They're both in plain clothes but Tony lifts his arm as if to fire a gauntlet. Steve realizes a beat later that he's pointing at the ceiling.

"I don't need to lay a hand on Barnes to kill him. Friday? Enact Protocol Thirty-Seven."

Steve gasps. His skin drains of colour. "You wouldn't dare."

"I'm afraid I cannot safely dissipate the gas, boss, not with Mr. Parker also residing in the med bay."

It's impossible to tell, but Steve thinks he sees the instant Tony's vision goes red with helpless wrath.

"He's in there with my son!" Tony is finally, at long last, roaring.

"Our son! He's our son!" Steve yells right back. "You promised! Your promised that you understood Bucky is a victim here too."

Tony ignores him completely to lunge for the door.

It is, to the astonishment of both men, Steve who gets in the first punch.

It's not a hard hit by any means. Steve doesn't use his strength, just a regular connection across the left side of Tony's jaw. Drunk men in bar fights have hit harder. Tony doesn't even reel from it, used to much stronger wallops.

His jaw still drops in shock, eyes huge, and he stares at Steve like he's never seen him before.

In turn, Steve has never seen Tony look so young before. He mirrors the shocked expression. Both men gape at each other for three heartbeats like schoolboys on the playground.

And then the reality of it all crashes down in one tidal wave.

Tony throws Steve against the wall while he's still stunned. Steve falls and pounces back up.

"It wasn't him, Tony. He didn't know what he was doing."

The bloodlust in Tony's eyes grows as he fixates on a target. "I don't care. He killed my mom."

It goes to hell after that.

Steve stops thinking and is surprised to find himself on the defense for the fight. Tony lands in hit after hit, using moves that Steve recognizes because he taught them.

With one brutal uppercut to Steve's ear, he snaps out of it.

Their faces bloody in mere minutes and Steve feels the crunch of bone both in his own shoulder and under his hand when he shunts Tony's arm to the side to throw him off balance.

Steve doesn't have a shield and Tony doesn't have any armour but as it turns out, neither need it whatsoever.

Tony's nimble fingers are good for breaking just as much as they are for building, as it turns out. They're everywhere—yanking and crushing and breaking and bouncing Steve against any furniture Tony can steer him close enough to.

There's a loud, wet crack when Steve's head hits the table at the exact same spot as his earlier concussion. Steve screams. It's too abrasive a sound and it sets off an immediate alarm in Friday's systems.

Her shrilling mixes with Tony and Steve's growls of pain and berserker fighting.

In an instinctive move of self preservation, Steve swipes Tony's legs out from under him and hefts the man's entire body weight over his shoulder. He throws it far away from himself—

Right into the row of screens.

They splinter, glass impaling Tony's back and sides.

It doesn't keep Tony down, either thanks to adrenaline or kamikaze rage or a cocktail of both. The man leaps back up and bulls straight into Steve's waist, hurtling them both to the floor. He pins Steve with a knee on his sternum and pummels the man's face.

It's Bucky and the helicarrier all over again.

Steve is shocked for the umpteenth time today—this time to feel tears on his face.

"He's my friend," Steve chokes out.

Tony squeezes Steve's neck between his hands. "So was I."