A/N: Remember when you guys kept asking me when I would address the things that Tony said to Alya?

Stay tuned...

Chapter Forty-Eight:

"It's been twenty-three days since Thanos came to Earth." Rhodey spoke. "World governments are in pieces. The parts that are still working, are trying to take a census. And it looks like he did exactly what he said he was gonna do. Thanos wiped out fifty percent of all living creatures."

Twenty-three days.

Twenty-three of the longest days of Natasha Romanoff's life. Twenty-three days without her daughter attached to her hip, without her smile, her laugh.

Alya had been so excited about her birthday, which was only a couple weeks after the snap. She was going to turn thirteen years old, she'd finally be a teenager, like Wanda and Peter. She was so happy to rattle off all the 'teenaged' things she wanted to do and the places she wanted to go.

But Thanos ruined all of it.

Tony had been up in space, drifting aimlessly until Carol Danvers found him and rescued him, bringing him right back down to earth.

He was malnourished and a bit frail, but he was going to be okay. Thor was the angriest anyone had ever seen him, shouldering the responsibility of their loss even though he wasn't to blame. Steve had been doing his very best to deal with his own grief and help Natasha with hers.

It wasn't easy on anyone.

"Where is he now?" Tony asked from his place in a wheelchair, hooked up to an IV. "Where?"

"We don't know." Steve answered stoically. "He just opened a portal and walked through."

"What's wrong with him?" The billionaire looked right at Thor, who was sitting away from everyone else, seemingly not even paying attention to what was being said.

"Oh, he's ticked off." Rocket, the raccoon, told him. Natasha couldn't stop herself from thinking that Alya would get a kick out of meeting an animal that had the ability to speak. "He thinks he failed. Which, of course, he did. But, you know, there's a lot of that going around, ain't there?"

"Honestly, until this exact second, I literally thought you were a Build-A-Bear." Tony snarked, but he didn't receive the reaction he was hoping for.

"Maybe I am."

"We've been hunting Thanos for three weeks now. Deep Space scans and satellites, and we've got nothing." Steve stayed on target. "Tony, you fought him."

"Who told you that?" Tony quipped. "I didn't fight him. No, he wiped my face with a planet while the Bleecker Street Magician gave away the stone. That's what happened. There was no fight."

"Okay." Steve could see that Tony was still rattled from what he had been through. He could understand his attitude, he fought Thanos as well. It wasn't pleasant.

But if there was any way that they could bring everyone back...

"He's unbeatable."

"Tony, I'm gonna need you to focus."

"And I needed you. As in, past tense." Tony snapped. "That trumps what you need. It's too late, buddy. Sorry. You know what I need?" He struggled before rising to his feet, knocking things off of the table as he did so. "I need to shave. And I believe I remember telling you—"

"—Tony, Tony." Rhodey tried to stop him from reaching Steve.

"Alive and otherwise what we needed was a suit of armor around the world! Remember that? Whether it impacted our precious freedoms or not! That's what we needed!"

An awkward tension filled the room as everyone realized that years worth of bottled up resentment was now spilling over.

But the statement was odd, at least, to Steve and Natasha. 2014 had been the year that they stopped Project Insight. That was meant to be a suit of armor around the world. It wasn't right.

"I said, 'we'd lose'. You said, 'we'll do that together, too.' And guess what, Cap? We lost. And you weren't there. But that's what we do, right? Our best work after the fact? We're the Avengers not the Prevengers."

"Okay." Rhodey tried again, knowing that this was going to go too far.

"Right?"

"You made your point. Just sit down."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"No, no. Here's my point. You know what?"

"Tony, you're sick."

"She's great, by the way." Tony motioned to Carol, who was with them, watching this whole thing.

Alya used to love the stories that Fury told her about Captain Marvel and Goose the cat. She thought that Carol was amazing and it heartbreaking that she couldn't be there to meet her.

"Sit down. Sit."

"We need you." He spoke to her. "You're new blood. Bunch of tired, old mules." He moved closer to Steve who stood firm. "I got nothing for you, Cap! I got no coordinates, no clues, no strategies, no options. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not trust. Liar."

"Tony…" Rhodey didn't even know why he bothered.

"Here." Tony ripped the arc reactor off of his chest and slammed it into the palm of Steve's hand. "You find him, and you put that on. You hide."

The room stopped and everyone stood around, not saying anything. They weren't really sure what to say.

But Steve finally had enough.

"Nice Hydra rhetoric, Tony." He spoke up after a small period of silence. He didn't know how much longer he could be 'understanding' or 'patient'.

That's what he always was.

He understood that there was something deeper going on with Tony every time he threw an unprovoked insult his way. He was patient when he and Bruce created Ultron and leveled an entire country before destroying it. He understood that he and Tony were never going to agree on the Accords and he even understood how horrifying it must have been for him to find out that Hydra killed his parents.

What he couldn't understand was him trying to murder Bucky right in front of him just to hurt him. He couldn't find it in himself to be patient when Alya broke down in the middle of the living room because Tony decided that he wanted to taunt her by throwing her horrific past in face. He couldn't understand taking a fourteen year old child out of the country, illegally, without consent of his guardian, to fight in a battle that he had no business being in, all while lying to his face. It backfired when they had to smuggle Peter out of the country again, this time, for his own safety.

But what really angered him, was the fact that he was standing right in front of him, blaming him for a mass genocide that he had tried so hard to stop. Then he justified all the awful choices he made by using logic that he once heard from Hydra.

"Cap, c'mon." Rhodey tried to stop him. "He's not doing well."

"No." Steve shook his head. He had reached the end of his tether. "He isn't the only one not doing well. I had to watch my best friend, my brother, turn to ash right in front of me. Alya disappeared in Natasha's arms. Sam is gone! Wanda is gone! Vision is dead! He is not the only once that has a hard time dealing with things and I think it's high time we start acting like it. He had the strength to stand right here and tell me off, then he can stand here and listen to what I have to say in return."

"Fantastic." Tony rolled his eyes.

"You took it upon yourself to build Ultron and that Iron Legion after we told you not to mess with that stone. If we were able to defeat all of them, what chance did you think they would have against Thanos? And our 'precious freedoms', Tony? I knew you had something to do with those helicarriers for Project Insight, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, apparently, I was wrong." Steve looked him directly in the eyes. "And then the Accords —"

"— The Accords were a good idea. You were only thinking about how they affected you." Tony narrowed his eyes.

"Of course I was!" Steve almost laughed bitterly. "Because they did affect me! I wasn't going to sign my rights away to make you feel comfortable assuaging your guilt! Those Accords affected me, they affected Wanda, Peter, Bucky, and Alya, but do you know who they didn't affect? You. You can take that suit off anytime you want and live life as normal. We can't change who we are, it's in our DNA. But of course, you didn't care about that. I guess that's why you broke them as soon as you could, right?"

"Tony, is that true?" Pepper asked, having just entered the room.

This was all new information to her.

"Tell her, Tony." Steve shrugged. "Tell her about how you tried to murder Bucky in cold blood because you wanted to get back at me for not telling you Hydra killed your parents. Tell her what you said to Alya that made her feel like she had to leave without saying a word. Tell her about all those files you decrypted on her and her mother before you mocked her with everything you knew. Go ahead, Tony."

No one had ever seen Steve like this. His eyes were dark and his nostrils were flared.

He was fed up.

"Tony, man." Rhodey knew that Tony and Steve had their issues, but he had no idea that things were this bad. "This isn't right."

"I watched that little girl cry herself dry because you called her a murderer."

"Tony!" Pepper gasped, putting a hand to her mouth.

So that was the reason why Alya left the Compound! That morning that Pepper got up and found the little girl's empty room, she panicked and looked everywhere for her.

Twice.

And when she couldn't find a single trace of her, she panicked and called Natasha to ask her if Alya had any places she liked to go, hopefully, someplace she hadn't thought to check.

She was relieved when Natasha called her back to tell her that Alya was safe in her old apartment in Brooklyn, but she never got any answers as to why it happened. Tony never told her anything specific, he just told her that Alya was homesick and she wanted to see the city before she had to reunite with Natasha.

Of course, Pepper thought that was odd, but she didn't have any evidence to think otherwise.

Now she knew the truth.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there when you needed me." Steve continued. "I wish I could've been. But the fact of the matter is, I sent you that burner phone so that you could call me when you needed me. I never got that call, at least, not from you. We were all down here on earth, Tony. It wasn't me that wasn't there."

During Steve's little rant. Natasha's eyes became alert once again. She listened to every word he said and was in agreement. She didn't care about any slights Tony had against her, what she couldn't let go of, was what he did to her daughter.

His words had destroyed her from the inside out and now she was gone.

"How dare you?" Tony bristled. "You don't know what I've lost."

"You didn't lose anything, Tony!" She snapped, hopping out of her seat so quickly that the chair she was sitting on crashed onto the ground. "You lost nothing!"

"Nat." Steve didn't want this to become a screaming match.

One, it wasn't good for Tony's health right now, and two, it wouldn't make Natasha feel better. He said what he had to say because for years, he had been internalizing it all.

He didn't hate Tony. In fact, it was the very opposite. Nobody bothered arguing with someone they deeply hated. Tony's decisions and his words hurt him, he just wanted him to know that.

"No!" Natasha sneered. "What did you lose, Tony?"

Steve actually had to keep himself in-between the two to prevent Natasha from advancing any further. If she did manage to get her hands on him, it might get ugly.

"I lost the kid."

"You did not lose the kid!" The blonde's eyes darkened. "May lost the kid! He was her nephew! The nephew you sent to us because Ross wanted him to sign the Accords! You lost nothing! I lost Wanda! I lost Alya!" Her voice broke when she spoke her daughter's name, she was on the verge of another meltdown if she wasn't careful. She couldn't even mention her own sister's name because if she did, she would've lost it. "I lost my baby! And you're really going to stand here and equate losing a kid you 'mentored' for three months, to me losing my daughter?"

"Okay, Nat." Steve pulled her in for a hug to try to keep her from spiraling.

This was getting very ugly, very quickly.

Natasha let out what sounded like a very strangled cry of pain before her legs gave out right under her, forcing Steve to shoulder her weight.

"Natasha…" Pepper's heart broke for her.

She really had no idea. She couldn't imagine holding that child while she vanished into thin air. It would've broken her.

"Nat, please." Steve whispered in her ear, trying to stop her body from trembling.

"Bruce." Rhodey gave the startled looking man a look.

Poor Bruce had been standing there, trying to keep busy while staying out of it. He didn't like confrontation and he didn't like arguments. But he knew that some things needed to be said.

He couldn't believe that Alya had been dusted. That little girl was a ray of sunshine and he knew how much Natasha loved her. This had to be devastating for her.

He nodded his head and disappeared into another room to prepare some sedatives for both Natasha and Tony. They were going to need them.

Thor stood up and swooped Natasha up into his arms and followed him. She felt light...lighter than usual, almost as if she wasn't eating as often as she should've been.

But who could blame her?

Tony tried to sit back down, but all his energy was spent. But before his knees could even buckle, Steve caught him and kept him from hitting the ground.

A peace offering of sorts.