YOU'RE THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS TO ME
SO AS LONG AS THERE IS BREATH IN MY LUNGS AND BLOOD IN MY BODY
I'M GOING TO PROTECT YOU.
A part of his sister, the part that made her who she is. The part that was made up of lightning and fire. The part that contained icicle shards and waterfalls. That part of his sister had died when Peggy Carter did.
Elizabeth Stark had fallen into a week-long coma that day, and woke up with the need for the repressor, woke up with a part of herself, a large part of herself, brutally murdered by her own hands.
That was the last time Tony Stark had seen his sister nearly dead. That was the first time Tony Stark had swore to himself that his sister would not die, not even over his dead body. That was the first time that Tony Stark had built biometric codes for the house and installed Jarvis' camera into every nook and cranny of every property they owned. The first time Tony Stark accompanied his sister to her self defence class, making sure that he knew how to protect her as well.
Tony Stark has spent his entire life making sure his sister was safe. Spent every resource he had to make sure that she was okay. Built suits, paid security companies, and bought buildings to make sure that he'd never lose his sister.
Liz is all he has left in the world. Liz is everything he has in the world. Liz means everything to him.
So to see her lying dead under the swirling portal in the sky, the same portal that has been haunting his nightmares for over a year now. To see the blood on her face and the lack of breath in her lungs and cracks in the armour he made for her. To see his sister dead kills something inside of him and lights something else up.
Tony Stark could always rely on the consistent need to protect; it's the one constant in his unpredictability, the need to protect Elizabeth Stark.
"Tony,"
She snaps him out of the trance he didn't know he was under. He looks around neurotically, trying to find the image of her and the rest of them lying dead on the ground.
He finds nothing but stone and brick and a glowing stone residing in a sceptre and he turns around to see his sister walk towards him cautiously.
"Tony?"
He debates not telling her. He debates cracking a joke and then reverting her mind from his behaviour. Debates smiling and getting rid of the face that is full of fear, pale and sweating. Debates not giving her the burden of his restless mind.
But they've always told each other everything. They've never lied to each other. When he was dying, when she was given the repressor, when he didn't want to manufacture weapons, when she wanted to open a hospital, they shared.
"I saw you die,"
Elizabeth stops in her tracks, "What?"
Tony points to the mess of nothingness where his worst nightmare was once projected onto, "You died. You all died. I saw you dead. The aliens were there and you died and the Captain told me I should have done more."
Liz grips her brother's shoulders, unable to understand how he saw what he did. Then she looks at the sceptre and remembers the events from over two years ago, remembers Clint and the SHIELD agents that were brainwashed.
She thinks the pieces click together. She thinks she knows what's going on. She thinks she can fix this.
She can't. She doesn't know anything. By the time she realizes that, it's too late.
"Tony," She waits until her brother's eyes focus on her, "I'm here. I'm alive, we're all alive. We're okay. It was the sceptre. Mind control, remember?"
Tony shakes his head, stubborn, "It was so real."
"But it wasn't. It's okay Tony. Everything's okay."
The Captain walks in right then, taking note of Tony's tense posture and Liz's hands on his shoulder, the dormant sceptre only a few metres away from them, "Everything okay?"
Liz looks at her brother, waiting for his response. Tony looks back and nods, "Ya. Everything's fine. Let's get this show on the road."
Liz doesn't think it's a good idea for the sceptre to stay on earth any longer. She thinks that it has overstayed its welcome for over two years. She thinks that the faster they get it away from this planet, the better.
When she tells her brother her concerns, she figures out he seems to think otherwise.
"I'm a futurist Lizzie, I'm curious. I'm just going to run a few tests, and look at the schematics, poke and prod a little and I'll give it to Thor and he can whisk it away to Fantasia."
Liz can usually deduce when her brother is lying. This time, she can't, partially because Tony isn't lying as much as he is omitting the truth and partially because her brother has never lied about such crucial matters before.
The futurist convinces the surgeon and Liz appeases to her brother's wishes albeit with some uneasiness.
When they land, they all disperse to their own floors, eager to get out of their sweaty and dirty suits and into something more comfortable.
Liz, taking note of the Captain talking to Maria, filling her in on the events of the battle, sprints up the stairs into her floor, quickly getting into the shower to wash her hair before putting on the first thing she can find in her closet before frantically pressing the button that will lead her to Steve's floor.
She pauses in the foyer, straining to hear any sounds and when she cannot, she quietly runs into the kitchen, opening the fridge and smiling victoriously when she spots the apple pie that Bruce had made last night; the apple pie that she had lost to Steve after betting on the wrong team during a baseball match.
She grabs the fork out of the drawer and digs into the pie without bothering to cut it into pieces, the delicacy in her mouth causing her moans to come out disgruntled.
"Holy Shit this is so good." She mumbles to herself, shoving another piece into her mouth.
"It's also mine."
She spins on her feet and stops chewing. She doesn't know whether she's frozen with her eyes wide at the fact that she's been caught by Steve Rogers or because she's been caught by Steve Rogers who has just come out of the shower judging by the wet blonde hair and extremely, illegally tight shirt.
Sometimes, Steve has this sudden, uncharacteristic urge to walk up to Elizabeth Stark and kiss her on the lips.
Now, seeing her in his kitchen, wearing an Avengers t-shirt and shorts, with her damp hair curling past her shoulders, her cheek puffed from the ingestion of Bruce's apple pie and her eyes wide in a way that should be comical but is just cute, Steve wants to kiss her.
He leans against his kitchen arc, waiting for her to chew the pie before she looks around the room, looks at anywhere but him as she tries to piece together an answer.
"I was hungry."
Steve raises an eyebrow, "And"
"And you had pie."
Steve calls her out, "And you have a chef."
Elizabeth Stark has a penchant for speaking too fast and too long, especially under stressful circumstances involving hot supersoldiers and stolen apple pie.
"Yes. No. I was hungry and you won the apple pie that I really wanted and you were gone so I thought I could just, you know, walk in the tower that belongs to me, and just borrow some of the apple pie that Bruce initially baked for all of us that you took because of sheer luck. And so I decided to take just a little bit," she makes a small distance between her thumb and index finger, "and then leave the rest for you but then you came in looking like that and now I'm nervous because you're staring me down and I would really like for you to shut me up now."
"Liz,"
She looks up at him, not noticing that he had inched closer until she stopped talking, pressing her lips together and looking up at him the way a child would do to get out of trouble, "Hm"
He could just bend down right now and erase their distance. Pull her close and taste her mouth.
Instead, he just says, "Pass me a fork."
And that's how Elizabeth Stark and Steve Rogers find themselves sitting on the kitchen floor, eating apple pie out of the pan, laughing about Thor blowing up the microwave two weeks ago.
That's how Natasha Romanoff finds Elizabeth Stark laughing without restraint while the Captain looks at her so adoringly it makes her teeth rot.
"I wasn't invited to this party." The previous Russian spy remarks when it is obvious that neither Liz nor Steve are going to notice anyone but each other unless she says something.
It's absolutely hilarious; the way the two heroes snap apart as if they've been caught eating a body instead of apple pie. The way the two heroes create at least four feet of distance between the two of them is nothing but funny.
"We were just," Steve gestures at the half-eaten pie that Steve had won from a bet last night, much to Liz's chagrin.
"Eating pie," Liz finishes for him, in the event that Natasha didn't get the memo.
Natasha doesn't mention to Liz nor does she remind Steve that the Captain was very particular about entering his space. The rest of them had understood of course; a man who lost everything to time must be particular and extremely protective of the very little he has left. During Steve's setting of the rule stating that he would prefer if the rest of the Avengers stay out of his space unless it's an emergency, Liz had been at work and everyone simply forgot to update the young doctor on the new regulation.
It didn't matter regardless. None of the Avengers ever came into others' floors except for Tony who shared a floor with his sister as well as Liz and Clint who visited Natasha; the boundary, a very thin line, prevented the rest of them from intruding into each other's space.
Natasha doesn't mention this to the two superheroes sitting on the floor of a pristine kitchen, eating an apple pie from the pan with two forks.
Instead, she looks at Elizabeth, taking note of the Avengers t-shirt she bought for Liz as a gift one day, "Some guy, super hot by the way, walked into the Tower told you to meet them at the airway before he got a phone call and left."
At that, the pie, which was halfway to Liz's mouth stops in its tracks and the woman, bolts upright spluttering out expletives, "Shit, shit, shit."
As an afterthought, she looks at Steve, "Sorry. Language, I know."
Steve, who had dug his own grave when the berate slipped out, looks pleadingly at the young Stark, "No. Don't do that."
She smiles at him, he can't help but smile back, and they're stuck there, smiling at each other, her standing up and him still sitting on the floor until Natasha clears her throat and reminds Liz of the reason the Russian is in the room.
"Right."
She disposes of the metal fork into the sink before looking up at the ceiling even though she has no need to, "Jarvis, how behind am I on packing?"
The voice that never fails to unnerve Steve replies almost immediately, "Approximately one minute Ms. Stark. Mr. Stark had packed your bags for you yesterday but forgot your repressor as well as added in condoms that I assume you're going to take out."
She can't even be mad at her brother for interfering in her sex life. She's too busy thinking of a way to thank him for saving her yet again.
"Why are you taking them out?" Natasha asks and Steve has never needed her to leave more than he does now.
Liz just cocks one eyebrow and tilts her head, "Very funny. Who do you want me to boink, Stanley's grandfather?"
Steve clears his throat to remind the ladies that he is still very much present and while Liz blushes a tiny shade of pink, Natasha just smirks at him, clearly aware of how much she's riling him up.
Steve just turns to Liz, "You're bringing the repressor."
It's completely irrational, but Liz can't help but feel a little ashamed, as if she's letting the team down whenever she puts the machine with the decreased volts back into her system. She can't help it though. The repressor has been her drug ever since she was seventeen. She was told and genuinely believed that her survival and the survival of others depended on the circular device. Although she knows better now, she cannot help but feel a surge of panic and an impending attack whenever she's in a crowd without the reassurance that her powers will do no harm.
She explains to Steve the best way she can, "It's a precaution."
Natasha's phone beeps twice and she rolls her eyes, already understanding Liz's need for the device to some extent, and she walks away while calling out to her friend, "Can't believe you're leaving me with these morons."
Liz calls after her, "I'll miss you too."
When she's gone, before Natasha's elevator can even completely close, Steve is asking Liz, "You're leaving?"
"I'm building a new hospital in California. I've postponed going there because of the sceptre but now that we've found it, I have to go. Make sure things are going okay."
Her leaving isn't what bothers Steve, "Are you sure about the repressor?"
The Captain spent a whole day asking Jarvis about the repressor after the AI assured him that anything that he asked to be confidential would be confidential unless the AI detects a threat to either Starks. He learned about the electric shocks and the pain and the blood and he spent a whole night wanting to go back to Howard and shake him awake to prevent him from building something so inhumane and putting it into his own daughter.
Liz grabs onto the tips of his fingers, the same way he had once did when he was hiding out at the Captain America exhibition and she had shown up with one of her patients, "It doesn't hurt anymore."
At his disbelieving glance, she presses on.
"It really doesn't hurt anymore." She closes her eyes so very briefly before admitting, "I'm scared Steve. This helps me stop feeling scared."
Steve doesn't ask her what she's afraid of. He knows that even if he did, she wouldn't answer. He knows that Elizabeth Stark, who will carry the burdens of a group of dysfunctional superheroes, will not share her burdens with others.
He doesn't know whether he should kiss her for her kindness or shake the stubbornness out of her.
He hates that he isn't brave enough to do either.
She pulls away, "I'm going to get my stuff and say goodbye to Tony. I'll see you in a couple of days."
Then she's gone and the pie that he had so much joy winning and even more eating with a girl too kind for her own good no longer appeases him and he shoves it into the fridge, making his way to the gym.
Maybe punching a bag will make him feel a little braver.
"And you're going to be back for the party."
"Yes, Tony."
"And you'll call when you land."
"Yes, Tony."
"And you'll use the condoms."
"Yes, Tony."
She freezes when her brother catches her in her mindless response and she looks at his smug face, narrowing her eyes.
"No. I gave the condoms to Bruce."
Tony does a double-take at the information as Liz smiles, recalling the scientist's fearful face when Liz handed him the three packets, "What?"
"He turned red, stammered and then walked away, not before throwing the condoms away in the garbage."
Tony shakes his head, laughing but she still detects the worry in his eyes, still knows him well enough to know he's unsettled, and still has enough of her intelligence to figure out why he's so unsettled.
"I'll be fine Tony. I've taken these trips many times."
She adds, remembering his pale face when he told her he saw her die,
"Besides, I have my powers and the suit. I'm practically unstoppable." She jokes.
He looks at her with a glint in his eye, as if he sees so much more than she does, "I know."
She pulls him into a hug and revels, that even after twenty-eight years she feels the safest when he holds her, the way Tony used to when she was afraid of horror movies and thunderstorms.
And when she leaves the tower that she has learned to call home, she knows she's going to miss it.
Not the modern couches and the tech on the walls or even the lab that takes up the floor.
She's going to miss movie nights and group dinners. She's going to miss being surrounded by people in a way that she hasn't been her entire life.
She's going to miss the small, messed up family she has somehow found her way into thanks to a God of Mischief.