Now there's no point in placing the blame
And you should know I suffer the same
If I lose you, my heart will be broken
Love is a bird, she needs to fly
Let all the hurt inside of you die
You're broken when your heart's not open
Madonna, "Frozen"
oOoOoOo
Stark Mansion, Malibu CA
May 15, 2012
When Toni wakes, she's alone in the bed. She hazily blinks conscious, letting information coalesce from the sunlight streaming through the window, the soft warmth of her mattress, and the faint scent of Steve on the pillow under her head inform her of where she is. Normally, she wakes grumpy, snappish and growling at everyone and everything that gets between her and her morning cup of coffee… but this morning, she just stretches languorously, rolling like a cat under the covers, before sliding off the mattress and stretching again, toes to fingertips.
"Morning, J," she says, yawning. "What's the day looking like?"
"Good morning, ma'am," JARVIS replies. "It is 9:37am. The temperature is a pleasant 77 degrees Fahrenheit, and the forecast indicates a full day of sunshine, with a mild chance of sun showers this afternoon. You have no pressing emails to answer, and your schedule remains clear, as per Ms. Potts' orders. There are three notes flagged for your attention. Do you want to review them now?"
"May as well," she says, padding towards the bathroom.
"You scheduled a reminder to begin fabrication of the Mark VIII armor today, as well as implementing Project Rebound. The fabrication facilities at the Culver City installation have sent notification that Captain Rogers' tactical uniform is complete, and request a fitting in order to attend to potential alterations before it is finalized. As well, Captain Rogers asked me to notify you that he left at seven for his morning run, and he estimates his return to be somewhere around eleven am, as he wishes to do some sketching at a location he discovered yesterday morning. He added that your breakfast is in the warmer, and the coffee is fresh-made."
Toni blinks as she sheds her clothing and steps into the shower. "That's… thoughtful," she says, tipping her head under the spray to wet her hair.
"I believe Captain Rogers, like sir, is what is colloquially known as 'a keeper', ma'am," JARVIS says dryly.
"Don't be an ass, kid. I can still ground you." She scrubs shampoo into her scalp. "Or sell you to Gates," she says thoughtfully. "What's the status on Mark VIII specs, J?"
"The simulations are all conclusively green, ma'am. Would you like me to begin fabrication?"
"Yes, do. Pause it when it's ready for the paint cycles, though. I still haven't decided if I want the classic design or the alternate version."
"Very good, ma'am. A notification warning has now been set. The manufacturing process will pause in approximately four hours."
After a shower and a fresh change of clothes, she towels her hair dry and wanders into the kitchen. Just like Steve's note via JARVIS promised, there's a plate of food sitting in the warmer, and coffee in the pot. She eats her breakfast sandwich over the sink and drinks her first cup of coffee while she's at it. She pours another cup, then heads down to the workshop to sink some time into some things she needs to do.
oOoOoOo
Steve
When Steve gets out of the shower, he notices the shield is gone. It's been sitting in the corner of his room for the last few days, since he chose the room on the first day, set aside but not forgotten. He hasn't touched it since, just allowed it to sit and gather dust while he enjoyed the first vacation he's had since he and Bucky spent that day at Coney Island way back in 1940.
But now it's not there.
He hurries into clothes, ignoring the wet towel that slides from his hips, ignores the fact that he's still dripping from the shower. He tears the room apart in short order, thinking maybe he put it somewhere else, but it's nowhere to be found. He stands in the middle of the room for a long moment, anxiety a thump under his lungs, trying to remember the last time he saw it, if he brought it to the beach and somehow left it there, if someone could have crept in and stolen it while he was gone.
It's stupid, it's so stupid, it's just a shield… but it's a shield wrapped up in his self-identity, one of the few things he has left to tie him to his old life. It's saved his life so many times, it actually feels like a physical blow, a solid punch in the chest, to think of it being gone forever.
"I apologize for the intrusion, Captain Rogers," JARVIS says suddenly, and Steve jumps, because the voice comes from everywhere, "but I am registering a spike in your vital signs that indicate the early stages of a panic attack. Would you like me to notify ma'am that you need assistance?"
"No. No, I'm … I'm fine." With inhuman effort, Steve manages to get his breathing under control, though it takes him a good few minutes to do so. The unsettled flutter doesn't go away entirely, though; it just dies down to constant itch, like ants crawling around his chest. "JARVIS, do you know where I might have left my shield? I think I may have misplaced it."
"My apologies, Captain Rogers. Ma'am borrowed it several hours ago, and it is currently in her workshop." The AI pauses, then adds wryly, "I believe she meant to replace it before your return."
Steve frowns a little. The shield, he thinks, should have been the last thing Toni wants to touch. She had given it sidelong looks full of wariness on the flight to Los Angeles, nervous with its presence until Steve decided to tuck it out of sight. Why would she come into his room to take it now? "Thank you, JARVIS," he says, deciding to ask Toni herself.
He can hear the music a flight of stairs up, loud and throbbing and a little more vulgar than he's really comfortable with. He knows he's missed a lot, but he has no idea how music went from singing about love and the brassy melodies of jazz and big band to growling about violence and calling women bitches.
The workshop door opens at his approach, and the music cuts down to a level that's barely audible. Toni spins around in her chair as he walks through the door, clearly surprised to see him, slightly panicked and even a little… guilty? The shield, he's relieved to see, is on the bench behind her, and looks as shiny and undamaged as when he stacked it in the corner.
"Shit," she says, wide-eyed as she stares at him, dragging her hands back and forth over her denim-clad thighs. "What time is it?"
"It is 12:03pm, ma'am," JARVIS replies. "I did attempt to alert you to the time, but ma'am muted me for interrupting her sciencing."
Toni's expression grows more rueful and guilty. "Ah well," she says sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck. "There goes my surprise."
Steve arches an eyebrow. "What surprise?"
Toni turns back and lifts the shield off the bench, flips it in her palms so the star spins to face down. There are new arm straps attached: the brown leather is replaced with stiff black fabric that glows with blue lines, the same color as Toni's arc reactor. "One of your weaknesses," she says, "is you can lose the shield. Sure, it bounces back, but that doesn't happen all the time, right? So I fixed it. I think."
She tosses him the shield, and he catches it reflexively, arm sliding through the straps like he's done a thousand times in the past. "You think?"
Toni turns back to the workbench, rattling components and tools as she digs through them. "Vibranium is notoriously hard to work with," she says over her shoulder. "The Wakandans are the masters, but they're pretty secretive with their research. Outside Wakanda, I'm probably the leading expert, if you discount von Doom - which, by the way, please do. He's a goddamn lunatic - and even I don't know a fraction of what the Wakandans have discovered."
Steve slides the shield off his arm, inspecting the new straps carefully. They're comfortable and nearly frictionless, but still offer a good grip for when he needs to fight with it. "You can't just ask?" he asks absently, running his finger along one of the blue lines. Huh. Feels like leather, even though it clearly isn't.
"I've tried," Toni says in exasperation. "But their tech is proprietary and Howard kinda torched any good will the Stark name and America in general might have had when he appropriated a nearly twenty pound chunk of the stuff back in the 30s. A-ha!" Her hand closes around what, to Steve's untrained eye, looked like a rough-shaped bracer and lifts it free. "Gimme your shield arm."
Steve holds out his arm, frowning. "What do you mean, appropriated?" he asks, as Toni slides the bracer over his hand and fitting it to his forearm. Her fingers are lithe and deft, tightening it until it's snug against his skin. It's not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it's obviously only half-finished, and he's worn scratchier things in his life.
"Well, Howard didn't exactly have the permission of the Wakandan government to play around with their sacred metals," Toni says, reaching out in an unspoken request for the shield.
He hands it over, frowning in disapproval. "Somehow, Howard left that detail out of his story about how he created the shield," he says.
"Probably because you're a good man," Toni says, standing up with the shield and trotting away. "And you'd insist on giving it back to its rightful owners." She holds up the shield, out to the side, like a target. "The trigger's pressure based, but I haven't finished it yet. Can you just… flex your forearm a bit?"
It's a measure of how strange Steve's life has become that he doesn't ask any questions. He just does as she asks, and the blue lines suddenly bloom incandescent along the leather, bright and bold. Across the room, Toni lightly tosses the shield into the air as it starts to spin. It pinwheels for a moment, then shoots towards Steve like it ricocheted off a wall.
He throws his arm up, and it snaps tightly against the bracer. It hits hard, enough to bruise even him, and Steve grunts as rocks him back a little. "That will come in handy," he says, pulling the shield off the bracer again. Can't help a slight grimace as it jars the sore spot. "If it leaves my arm attached, that is," he says with a smile.
"It's meant to be integrated under layers of reinforced Starkweave with your uniform," Toni says, trotting back to him and reaching out to undo the bindings. "Which is almost ready, actually. Fabrication sent word that the preliminary work is done. They need a fitting to make adjustments, and then it's finished."
Steve's never really been comfortable with people, complete strangers, having their hands all over him, and a couple of the ladies working in the Fabrication department had been handsy, touching his arm and shoulders often enough that he'd started to think they were finding excuses. They hadn't been anything but friendly and polite, but after almost an hour with them, he'd felt hounded and cornered.
"Maybe not today," Toni says, and he catches her eyeing him speculatively. "Later tonight? I can do the finishing touches myself, if you'd prefer."
"That'd be swell," he says, and tries not to let the rush of relief he feels show in his face or voice. He and Toni are still getting to know one another, but he's learned that she can be a bit prickly where any of who she considers to be her people are concerned, and he doesn't want to be the reason someone gets reprimanded or fired.
With effort, he shakes it off and smiles. "Come upstairs," he says, reaching carefully out to take her hand, giving her plenty of opportunity to pull back. She's been less and less jumpy around him since their arrival, but he still sees the wariness, feels it skitter across his chest, every time he reaches for her. "I'll make lunch."
Toni lets him interlock their fingers, and her palm is cool against his. "I am kinda hungry," she says with a wry smile. "Breakfast was hours ago. Thanks, by the way. It was delicious."
He shrugs with an easy smile. "I like cooking," he says, and doesn't add for you, even though he wants to. She'll drive you fuckin' crazy, Bucky told him a few nights ago. She's the dumbest genius in the world. You'll end up feelin' like a babysitter half the time, making sure she eats and practically pinning her in the bed to make sure she sleeps. She's stubborn as a pig and never admits she's wrong. But yeah, Stevie. She's totally worth every scrap of it.
Bucky's right, of course. Steve's halfway there already, but he has a head start. He's been here since Toni's mark first manifested on his skin all those long years ago. He risks squeezing her hand gently, and is rewarded when she squeezes back and smiles at him like he hung the moon.
oOoOoOo
Stark Mansion, Malibu
May 16, 2012
Toni wraps her hands, trying to keep the panic under control. She keeps her breath slow and regular, but her inhales are a trifle sharp, and her exhales come out shaky. She concentrates on the bright blue of the wrap, flexing her fingers and wrist to check the fit before closing the velcro strap on each hand. Concentrates on the feel of fitted cotton-lycra blend, the breeze on her arms, the floor under her bare toes. She's barely got a handle on it, and she knows it. But this is something she has to do.
"Alright," she says softly when both hands are done, closes her eyes and blows out a breath. Squaring her shoulders, she turns and walks purposefully from the bench where she'd been warming up to the mats in front of the wide, ocean-facing windows, where Steve is waiting in his workout clothes. His face is open and creased with concern, and she doesn't need his mark to feel his own nervousness and uncertainty. He's radiating it in waves of distress, from the crinkling of his eyes to the way he keeps making minute adjustments to the black wraps on his hands.
"We don't have to do this," he says as Toni takes her place in front of him, and his arms drop to hang loosely at his sides. "It hasn't been that long, Toni. We don't have to do this right now."
She takes another deep breath, slow inhale, holds it for a few seconds, and then lets it out just as slowly. "Yeah," she says with a wry shrug, and adjusts her feet until she's in a comfortable, ready-for-anything stance. "We kinda do. Cos we're going back in a few days, Steve, and you're going to join the Avengers, and I can't afford to have a panic attack in the middle of combat because Captain America scares me."
He flinches, ever so slightly. "I'm never going to forgive Hydra for this," he says, soft and dangerous.
"Good," Toni replies. "Cos I'm sure as shit not either." She bends her knees, shifts her feet again, and brings her hands up in loosely-curled fists. "Just please keep in mind that I'm a plain old vanilla, boring-ass human being, not a supersoldier, huh?"
Steve manages to make his stance look like a fluid motion in a single step of his foot. "I know you're not superhuman, Toni," he says with an amused frown. "But boring and old are two words I doubt I would ever use to describe you." He pauses, eyes looking distant and dreamy for a moment. "You do smell like vanilla, though," he adds then. "I think it's your soap."
"Shampoo, actually." She smiles, steps left and starts to circle as Steve turns with her. They've agreed she can get a few hits in so Steve can judge her ability before he starts doing anything but blocking or redirecting. That's the verbal, out-in-the-open reason, anyway. But she knows just as well as Steve does that if he comes at her first, she's likely to freak and that just sets everything they've managed to accomplish back to zero.
She's rusty, because it's been weeks since she's done anything but punch a bag until her hands are bleeding, but she's got years of training to rely on. It only takes a few circles around Steve before she's got herself completely in control, and she sees an opening. She's pretty sure Steve's handing it to her on a silver platter, but she'll take it.
She steps forward, leading with a straightforward strike with her left hand. It's smoother than she has any right to expect, given how long it's been since her last spar with Clint, but she's still off-balance and overextended. Steve turns his shoulder backward, and she hits only air. True to his word, though, Steve doesn't try to touch her as she slides past him, just steps back to give her space. She spins, throws a cross with her right fist, alternates in a few kicks with jabs. It's insulting that, supersoldier or not, he's not even really trying to dodge her. Half the time, she swears he doesn't even move.
"Dammit," she grumbles, smoothing her hands over her hair because running them through her tight french braid is out of the question. "I'm out of practice."
"Your practice is fine," Steve says calmly. "You're too tense and you're overthinking it. It's muddling your timing. Quiet your mind."
"I swear, if the next words out of your mouth are you will hear them speaking to you, I am never watching Star Wars with you again." She closes her eyes, shakes her limbs loose, bounces back and forth between her feet. "Should it really be this hard?"
"I honestly don't know." Steve shrugs with an apologetic smile. "It's easy for me. Then again," he says, and Toni knows he just had a thought, because his eyes are lighting up and he has an aura of eureka in his expression. "Then again, I'm a supersoldier."
And he lunges at her, so fast she doesn't have time to blink. His hand snaps around her wrist, and then she's flying over his hip. She squawks and oofs as she hits the mat, twisting into the momentum to roll her back onto her feet.
"What the hell, Steve?" she yelps, waving her arms at him. Anger and indignation catch up to the surprise, fed by the steady pulse of amusement under the white star on her chest. "I wasn't ready! You could have hurt me."
His grin widens, and it is enraging how self-satisfied it is. She grinds her teeth together and her hands fist at her sides. "Big girl in a suit of armor," he taunts, crooking his hand at her. "Take that off, and what are you? A plain old, boring-ass vanilla human."
Every single syllable hits home, her own words cutting vicious and sharp, and just for a moment, her vision hazes in red. "Oh, you're going to regret you said that," she snarls, and drops back into her ready stance.
"I'm starting to want you to make me," Steve says, and beckons her forward again with a quick flick of his hand.
Deep in the back of her head, she knows what he's doing. He's deliberately riling her up so her anger will override everything else that might be holding her back. It's effective, she has to admit; even though she knows it's just a trick, it's working a little too well.
She launches forward, pushing off the mat hard and fast, spinning the moment she clears the floor into a high spinning heel kick. Steve snaps his arms in a cross in front of his face, trapping her foot between his forearms.
She has fractions of a second to judge the grip he has on her ankle, but her brain has always worked at light speed. She takes the risk, keeps turning into the spin. She gets her leg over his shoulder, her knee around the back of his neck just as he releases her trapped foot. Whips her now-free leg around, locks her ankles together under his chin, and throws her weight down over her shoulders, arms outstretched to break the fall.
Steve makes a startled, strangled noise, and Toni's cackling in delight because she's taken him by surprise. His spine bows backward, arms pinwheeling, and Toni hastily scissors her ankles apart, rolling away before she gets squashed under a toppling supersoldier.
They both roll to their feet, Toni blowing a puff of breath upwards to shift a loose lock of hair out of her face. Steve is so graceful she's rabidly jealous on principle, barely landing on the floor before he back-rolls over his shoulder and into a crouch. She shifts her stance from left forward to right, arms tucked tight to her sides. For a long moment, she stares at him, and he stares back.
His expression breaks first, softening from neutral and unreadable into gentle concern. "You with me, Toni?"
For someone who only two nights ago hadn't known their routines, their walkthroughs, Steve's picked it up quick. Toni's shoulders loosen at his words, and she rolls them comfortably, settling into an easier stance. "Yeah," she says with a tiny grin. "How about you? You with me?"
"Yep. We're good." He rises to his full height, and Toni's breath catches in her throat, because Steve Rogers is who she dropped to the floor, but Steve Rogers is not who gets back up. He's minus the shield, minus the uniform, minus the cowl, but there's a set of his shoulders, a look in his eyes, something about the way he holds himself… There is absolutely no doubt in Toni's mind that this is Captain America in front of her now.
"Oh damn," she breathes softly, and her eyes feel like they're taking up half her face, they're so wide. The aura of confidence and command he radiates is alluring, so alluring she nearly swears right then and there to follow him into the mouth of hell without stopping for socks and shoes, let alone the armor."Goddamn, Cap," she says again, and if she's more reverent than a devout Catholic at Sunday morning mass, it's only because she's okay with feeling like a starry-eyed kid watching the old newsreels all over again.
He smiles, calm and capable and alert. "You ready, soldier?"
That really shouldn't turn her on at all, should it? Recent bouts of insanity aside, she's never been one for chains of command and adherence to rules. It should frighten her a little that her only response is fiercely happy and challenging, "I was born ready, Cap."
Brave words, but she knows how much bullshit they are when he just grins, sudden and gleeful, and comes at her with a staggering speed. Holy shit, he's fast, is all she has time to think before he's in her space and she has to duck under an open-handed sweep of his arm. She barely gets clear before his knee smacks into her solar plexus and knocks her rolling across the mats.
"Ow," she wheezes, cradling her ribs with a palm. Steve's being careful and pulling his blows by a lot, but she's definitely going to be bruised.
She scrambles on her hands and knees backward as Steve approaches, kicking up onto her feet when she has clearance. Her brain is racing in a hundred different directions, only a few of which are bright and jagged paths to fear and panic at the sight of blond, blue-eyed muscle stalking towards her. But mostly, she's focused and grinning, anticipating where his first strike will come from and calculating what her best course of action will be.
She slides her foot back, letting muscle memory take over to set her body for whatever he's going to do next. She dodges to the left as he throws a punch with his right hand, her arms automatically in motion to deflect his rising knee strike with her crossed wrists.
"Too slow, old man," she taunts, jabbing at his gut with a one-two combination. The punches don't hit, but she didn't expect them to, because she wanted to force an opening. When Steve obliges by bending slightly forward, she flows into a twisting scorpion kick, and her instep cracks into his shoulder, and he staggers one step with an oof.
They break apart again, and Toni is goddamn delighted, she's laughing out loud and dancing backwards, hands in defensive fists in front of her. Steve's eying her and rubbing his shoulder briefly where her kick landed. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you?" he says, wry but pleased.
"I try to be," she says cheerfully, and makes a bring it gesture with both hands, trademark smug smirk bright and wide. And just because she's her, and because he won't get it, and because she just pulled off the goddamn Trinity kick, a personal first in her years of sparring with assassins and spies: "C'mon, Cap. Stop trying to hit me and hit me."
His answering grin is wolfish and eager. "Betchoo got klahws, kitten, " he drawls, and charges.
Toni is going to murder Bucky at her earliest opportunity, because there's no way Steve could have known without Bucky tattling. There's too much Brooklyn in that last statement for her brain to do anything but briefly short spectacularly out, which is how she ends up with a bruise perfectly shaped like the edge of the mat on her left ass cheek.
She loses, of course, because she was always going to lose. It wasn't her best day of fighting, but it wasn't a bad one either, and she knows she gave it at least 75%. Steve, on the other hand, might have cracked 30% of the best he is capable of giving, and that's being generous with her estimates. But she's happy anyway. She held her own, got in a couple of brilliantly timed if occasionally lucky shots, and has purged the remnants of the anxiety and fear out of her system.
Still, she's completely wiped because Steve is a merciless perfectionist, and she spent the last fifteen minutes drilling in form corrections and adjustments to her fighting styles. She lies on the mat, flat on her back and limbs sprawled out, catching her breath. "Bet you totally regret that boring-ass human crack now," she says, once she's got enough lung capacity to manage speech. "Even if you totally allowed me to get in that first takedown."
Steve sits beside her and starts unwrapping his hands. He shakes his head with a rueful smile and rolls his shoulders. "I really didn't," he says. "It won't work on me again, but you caught me off-guard with it that time." He tilts his head, speculative. "Clint's been your primary instructor, right?"
"Yeah." She squints up at him. "How'd you know that?"
Steve sighs and rubs the back of his neck. "When I was… not myself, I studied footage of all of you. Hawkeye is quick and unpredictable hand-to-hand. He adapts quickly and comes up with unconventional angles of attack. You're faster and a little more efficient, but I recognize his style in yours. Widow's too, but mostly his."
Toni snorts again. "No way I'm faster than Clint," she says, "but please don't ever tell him you thought I was, because he'll run my ass into the ground proving you wrong. I don't have the ability to keep up with him without rocket boots. Any faster, and he'd break the sound barrier."
"I studied footage of you too, Toni," he says quietly, and there's a look in his eye, a distant and angry look that sends chills down Toni's spine, even though she knows it's not directed at her.
She sits up, inwardly a little surprised that it doesn't take as much effort as she thinks it should. "Don't go there, Steve," she says as his face darkens into such a Bucky expression, she doesn't think, she just reacts. She settles one hand on his chest, over where her soulmark is hidden beneath his shirt, and the other slides soothingly up his back over his spine. Realizes quite suddenly that Steve is not Bucky when he stiffens in surprise. She blinks, and her hands freeze. "Uh…"
"What are we doing, Toni?" he asks quietly. He isn't looking at her at all, just staring at his hands resting loosely over his knees. He doesn't pull away from her, and she doesn't pull away from him.
"I don't know," she says, then resumes the slow, broad strokes up and down his spine. After a few moments, the stiffness starts to melt as he relaxes. "What do you want to do?"
"I'm a simple fella, Toni. I believe marks appear for a reason." He sighs, turns his head to face her, and covers her hand with his where it rests on his chest. "We've been avoiding talking about what happened. I think we need to get to that conversation, or we'll be stalled like this forever."
"Now?" This would be an excellent time for a sea monster to rise out of the Pacific or an invasion of aliens or a plague of rodents of unusual size for that matter. Unfortunately, no world-ending disaster or invasion of gigantic vermin to save her from being an adult. She takes a deep breath. "Yeah, okay," she says, taking the plunge. "Let's talk."
