Steve caught up with Sam before he got to the door. "Let me," he said.

"Let you?" Sam asked, incredulous, about as worked up as Steve could remember seeing him. "Do you know how hard it was to convince Duo that Stark was not going to do exactly what he just fucking did in here? He knows you don't like him—"

"That's not true—"

"And he doesn't like you—"

"Fair enough—"

"So why the hell would I let you go talk to him? To make sure he hops the next jet out of here?"

It hurt, a little, to hear Sam accuse him of that. "Look, I know Tony maybe better than anyone here. You and I both know that he's still processing. He hasn't changed his mind about Duo, he's just getting his head around it, and in typical Tony fashion, he's done it in the worst possible way. He doesn't want to lose Duo."

Sam crosses his arms. "Even assuming that's true—and I'm not saying I agree with you—that still doesn't explain why I should let you talk to him, and why on earth you'd think that would be an optimal solution here. I'd sooner send Bucky. At least Duo likes him."

"He's not going to listen to you, because you've already been wrong," Steve pointed out. "He's not going to listen to Bucky, because Bucky is not going to have the vaguest idea of how to fix this, and he doesn't know Tony well enough to know that he wants to."

Holding his gaze for a moment, Sam shook his head. "Are you sure about that?" Sam challenged. "For real, Steve. Are you sure Stark really wants to fix this? I heard the same shit you did—Duo is like Natasha and he's like Clint. He's a killer. That's just part of his makeup. If Stark can't be okay with that, maybe…" He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Maybe it's better to just let go and let him leave."

It was Steve's turn to frown. "You don't really think that," he said.

"I don't know what to think," Sam admitted. "I thought that Stark would understand what Duo is in the context of a Clint or Natasha, or just as another damn hero who isn't nearly as perfect or stain-free as the world would like to think. But that memo seems to have missed him entirely. Maybe it's okay to be friends with those types of people, but it's not okay for his kid to be one. That happens, you know."

"It shouldn't," Steve said.

"But it does," Sam retorted.

"Excuse my interruption." Steve and Sam both jumped as Chang stepped toward them. Steve was getting really tired of Duo and his friends getting under his personal radar. It was unnerving. "You two should decide who, if anyone, is going to talk to Maxwell, because if you don't, I will, and if I do, he won't be coming back."

"Why wouldn't he come back?" Steve asked, not really because he didn't know the answer, but because he wanted Chang to say it.

"After that disgraceful display, I don't want my friend anywhere near your precious Stark. Maxwell is not for everyone. He is the kind of person one either loves or hates. He's not someone who invokes indifference. He deserves care and support from someone purporting to be family. If Stark cannot give that, then it is better that he not be any part of Maxwell's life."

"What gives you the right to make that decision for him?" Sam asked, part challenge, part sincere curiosity.

Chang glared at them, unimpressed for a long moment before replying. "He is family. A brother I would lie for, kill for, and die for, and I know with absolute certainty that he would do the same for me. What is Stark to him compared to that?"

The righteous anger on Duo's behalf almost radiated from Chang, and Steve exchanged an uneasy look with Sam. This was someone Duo valued and trusted explicitly. If he got to Duo first, they weren't going to have a prayer of changing his mind again.

"Let me," Steve said, a request. "I won't make him run."

"You really think you can convince him that Stark will change?" Chang asked with condescension that made many of the villains they'd dealt with look mild in comparison.

Steve met his eyes, knowing that if he were to convince Chang of anything, he was going to have to be as solid and unwavering in his convictions as Chang was. "Tony wants to have a relationship with his son," he said.

"And what is Maxwell to you, Captain?" Chang sneered. "Why do you care one iota about whether or not Stark and Maxwell ever become anything to one another?"

They were good questions, and questions Steve wasn't sure he was ready to answer beyond, "Because it's Tony."

Chang's dark eyes felt like they were seeing inside of him, into the heart of him; Steve hoped he wasn't, that he couldn't, but there wasn't really anything he could do about it if Chang could. He stood resolute, refusing to flinch.

Chang blinked first.

"You have one chance, Captain," he said. "If you make this worse, it is not Maxwell's homicidal tendencies you will need to worry about."

Inclining his head, Steve said, "Understood." He managed not to add the sir, at the end, but it was a close thing. He patted Sam shoulder and turned on his heel, heading for the deck.

It took Steve a moment to spot Duo at the end of the runway. He was laying down, legs hanging over the edge, swinging them like a child. Sighing, he wandered over, climbed up before jumping the rest of the way up. Looking down at the floor difference in height, he had to wonder how Duo had gotten up to the runway from the lower floor. Then again, he'd seen Duo in battle, seen him move, and none of them really understood how enhanced Duo was.

"You're not who I thought they'd send to talk to me," Duo said as soon as he was in earshot not to be yelling.

Since Duo hadn't just told him off, Steve wandered to the end and lowered himself to sit next to him. "You know Tony hates it when you do this," he said as he mimicked the posture.

Duo snorted. "As he has made abundantly clear every time he sees me do it." His voice was thick with irritation.

"He just worries about you," Steve said.

"If I'm going to kill myself, it's not going to be throwing myself from eighty stories up," Duo said. "There's too fucking many people here who could save me, and besides, I got one rule about suicide."

Steve wasn't sure he wanted to know, but if he didn't ask, the conversation would die, and he couldn't let that happen. "What's that?"

"You want to kill yourself, then kill yourself. You don't get to put innocent people at risk."

"Sounds like you've given it a lot of thought," Steve forced himself to say, trying to stay calm, trying not to panic, because whatever discussion he thought he'd be having with Tony's son, this was not really it.

Duo let out a soft laugh that was not at all amused. "None of us went into the Eve War thinking we were coming out of it alive," he said. "We all knew that if it came to surrendering the Gundams or surviving… well, we knew what we had to do."

That, he didn't like, but he did understand. "War makes us have to make terrible decisions," he said, trying to convince himself, maybe, as much as he was trying to convince Duo. "At the end of the day, you were a hero—"

"Stop right there, Rogers," Duo interrupted, sitting up, then he glanced over his shoulder to look at him. "I know something about your story. The man who was driven to serve his country, who needed to be part of the fight, needed to help people. I'm not you."

"I know that," Steve said.

Shaking his head, Duo said, "No. We didn't all join the fight for the right reasons. Sometimes war makes heroes of people who didn't mean to be, and sometimes it makes villains of people who should have been heroes." He turned to look out over the city again. "I never went into that fight thinking I was coming out again. I definitely didn't expect to win. I wasn't after some moral high ground." Like you, Steve heard, though he didn't say it.

"You're still saved people," Steve said, and he even believed it.

Duo scoffed. "I was angry, and I wanted to hurt the people who hurt me. We won, and I ended up on the right side of the fight, on the right side of history, so people tell me I'm a hero." He shrugged. "Maybe I am. But I didn't go out there intending to be anyone's hero. I went out for vengeance, pure and simple. I was nothing and no one. I didn't exist—didn't even have my own name—so they thought they could hurt me." He looked back at Steve, fierce determination in his eyes that was so like Tony's but also so much harsher, so much colder, so much angrier. "I was going to prove I existed if it was the last thing I did, and I was going to make it hurt. Wasn't like I had anything left to lose."

Suddenly, the memory of Tony standing toe-to-toe with him, saying, Everything special about you came out of a box, while Steve taunted him about only being the suit swam up.

You're the same, he realized, chagrined and with a pang. Duo's people skills were better than Tony's, so he was much more subtle, but Duo was just like his father: sure of his own abilities, including his ability to push people away, to protect himself. Sure that he couldn't be loved or even liked for being exactly who he was.

Tony was wrong, and Steve knew that Duo had to know better. He had obviously devoted friends, but father and son alike had been so hurt, they were determined to push people away rather than risk being hurt again.

Rather than risking hurting others again.

He thought of what Sam had told him and Bucky about surviving soldiers, about the way so many carried shame of their supposed heroism, how they were decorated and lauded for some of the worst things they'd ever done, for days they lost friends and couldn't call victories, even if, on paper, they won.

The world hailed Captain America as a great hero, but he almost wasn't. He became a hero by breaking the rules, going against orders, doing what he wasn't supposed to. By doing what he knew was right and damn the orders and the military.

Sometimes it makes villains of people who should have been heroes.

Had he failed, Steve would have been a villain, a loose cannon, a threat. He knew that at the time, and he didn't care. He became a villain for opposing the Accords, and he still wasn't convinced he was wrong about them, but the way he'd done it, not trusting Tony with Bucky, with the truth, not just talking to him, not listening. He'd been wrong in all of that.

"You did what you had to," Steve said, meeting his eyes. "I haven't studied the Eve Wars a lot, but from what I've seen, the majority of rational people I know agree that the Alliance was corrupt, that the colonies were abused and oppressed, and that Gundam pilots are heroes. Sometimes the legacy you leave is just bigger than you are. It's a tragedy that the fate of the world was put on the shoulders of teenagers, but that doesn't mean what you did wasn't ultimately heroic, even if it was terrible."

In war, he knew, heroes were all too often made by being the one left standing. Worse, he knew from Sam and had seen it in Tony, they were expected to view those terrible days as great victories.

How many terrible days haunted Duo's sleep, he wondered.

"Explain to me why anyone thought it'd be a good idea for you to come out here and talk to me."

Calling himself nine kinds of a fool in his head, Steve sat up as well. "Well, you wouldn't listen to Sam again," he began.

"Probably not."

"Neither Vision or Bucky would have known what to say."

"Also likely true," Duo agreed.

"Chang would probably tell you to walk and never look back."

"Three for three so far. I'd be impressed if it weren't so basic."

He wasn't sure whether or not he found how similar Duo and Tony were frustrating or comforting. Steve knew Tony, and while Duo wasn't exactly Tony, they were similar enough that he was pretty sure he knew which buttons he could push and which minefields would be best to avoid. He thought he understood Duo as a soldier as well. Tony may protest being one, may protest that Duo was one, but there was something in Duo's eyes that only soldiers had.

Deciding to lay back down and fixing his gaze on the clear sky above, Steve thought for a long moment. The sky might be clear, but the stars were dim and hard to see, and Steve still found it hard to believe sometimes that there were colonies up there, that people lived up there. "You know, in all the world, you're the only one who was a close enough match to Tony to pick up as family."

"I'm blood," Duo replied with derision. "Where I come from, family's something you choose."

"I know something about those too," Steve replied patiently. He could feel Duo's eyes on him but resisted the urge to look at him. "Tony… struggles with both, I think."

"I would love to know why that's now my problem," Duo said with enough sarcasm that Steve had to hold back a wince.

"It's not," Steve told him honestly. He could feel Duo's surprise. "You… you don't owe Tony anything."

There's a silence before Duo said, "Okay, who are you, and what have you done with Rogers?"

Steve finally turned his head and looked at Duo, whose eyes were narrowed in suspicion and whose hands looked like they were ready to go for weapons.

"It's the real me," Steve said.

"No," Duo replied, drawling out the word exactly the same way Tony did. "The real Steve Rogers thinks I'm a dangerous wild card that needs to be put down."

"I do not."

"You definitely don't like me."

That… was both true and not. "I don't dislike you," he said.

Duo glared.

Sighing, Steve said, "What you said in there… about being the little guy. It… resonated with me."

The glare backed off, but Duo's eyes were still narrowed in suspicion before understanding softened them. "You've been the little guy," he said.

Nodding, Steve said, "Sure was. Only… we're different."

Rolling his eyes in obvious contempt, Duo said, "Because you just got beat up and I killed people?"

"No," Steve said. "Because I don't think you started fights. I think you just finished them." He gave Duo a self-deprecating grin. "I was the little guy who started fights I couldn't win. And I know something about being a soldier in fights I don't expect to win."

Duo raised a skeptical eyebrow, and Steve didn't know if it would be easier or harder to talk to him like this if he didn't remind him so much of his father. He didn't even realize all the tiny things he recognized about Tony until he saw them reflected in his son. "Sure," Duo said. "We'll pretend I believe you."

Suppressing the urge to sigh again, Steve said, "Tony's just scared, you know?"

That startled a disbelieving laugh out of Duo. "Stark?" he asked, looking back out over the city. "What the fuck does Stark have to be afraid of?"

"The same things you do," Steve said. "Mostly being alone, but also… that no one will ever be able to love him for who he is."

At the last one, Duo's head snapped back around so quickly, his braid whipped back. He stared at Steve without saying anything for a long moment, expression a perfect poker face.

Unusually uneasy under the weight of those eyes, Steve said, "Tony's afraid that the only value he'll ever have to people is as the Tony Stark. Billionaire, genius, philanthropist. He's terrified that no one will ever just see Tony, and love him for who he is. But… I think you already knew that, and respectfully, if you say you didn't, I may have to call you a liar."

"I was going to ask you why the fuck you care if I make nice with him. If I'm ever anything other than the stranger he happens to share DNA with."

Steve raised his own eyebrow. "And now you're not going to?"

Duo finally looked away again, pulling a knee up to his chest and setting his knee on it. "No," he said. "Do you really think if you can somehow help make us be a family, he'll forgive you?"

This time Steve stared until Duo met his eyes. "I messed up with Tony. Whether or not he forgives me is up to him. I just want him to be happy."

"And you really think I can make him happy?" Duo asked.

"Would I be out here trying to tell you to give him time if I didn't?"

There was another pause before Duo answered, and it was odd; Tony rarely paused to think through an answer. It was almost a relief to find a difference. "I asked Sam this, and I'll ask you. Are you really sure I'm good for him? You've seen what I'm capable of."

"And I've seen the way your friends protect you. Seen the quality of people you surround yourself with. You're not easy or simple, but neither are Natasha or Clint, or even Bucky." He chuckled. "I don't think you can say that of Tony or me for that matter." He took a deep breath. "I know it seems like Tony can't deal with you, but if he can deal with Bucky, who murdered his parents… he'll get his head around what you had to do."

"What I still do."

Steve inclined his head in acknowledgment. "He'll get his head around it, and when he does… You've got a chance to have someone really special in your life."

Duo sighed and stood with a fluidity that made Steve think bones were optional. "Let me sleep on it." He looked down at Steve, face inscrutable again, then added, "You ever going to tell him you're in love with him?"

His instinctual response was to deny it, but before he could open his mouth, some voice in the back of his head went, oh. He cleared his throat and said, "I'd, uh, appreciate it if you wouldn't mention that."

"I won't," Duo said. "But you should tell him."

Steve felt like he could be knocked over with a feather. "You don't like me," he pointed out.

"I don't," Duo admitted readily, and Steve grimaced at the quick response. "But I know something about regrets and how short life is."

"I'd prefer to be at least reasonably certain he won't throw me out of the Tower," Steve admitted, scratching at the back of his neck. "I think I've got a lot more ground to make up first."

It got a soft, amused sound from Duo. "Well, you're not wrong," he said, then turned on soundless feet and walked back toward the Tower.

Steve could only hope he managed to convince him.