Title: Resurrection, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 5/13
Authors: seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony. Various canon ships. Sharon/Winter Soldier.
Warnings: Denial fic. Blatant shipper fic. One non-canonical het pairing. Slash (meaning a same-sex sexual and/or romantic relationship). Incredibly PG-rated porn.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Also, some of the dialogue in this chapter (the stuff on the tape; you'll know when you get to it) was taken from Brian Michael Bendis's Civil War: The Confession.
Note: For a rundown of where this fic departs from current continuity, see the notes at the end of chapter one. Familiarity with the events of Captain America #25 and Civil War is encouraged.
Thank you to angelofharmony and tavella for the wonderful beta job.
Chapter Five:
For almost as long as the original Helicarrier had been in operation, there had been a framed black and white unit photograph of the Howling Commandos hanging on the wall of the Director's office next to the desk. They'd been in Australia then, waiting to be shipped out to Guadalcanal.
The photograph had disappeared along with Nick Fury.
When Maria Hill had taken over as Director, she hadn't bothered to put any personal touches in the office. Stark hadn't either, although he had tended to leave lab reports and tools lying around.
Dugan hadn't realized how sterile and wrong the office looked without that photograph until he walked in to see Fury settling it back into place on its hook.
"There," Fury said, sounding pleased. "That's better."
"The place just doesn't look right without it," Dugan agreed, taking off his bowler hat and entering the room.
Fury turned to him, and gave Dugan an appraising glance. "Well, don't you look like the cat that ate the canary."
"Ah, I just gave Rogers his shield back."
Fury dropped into his chair, propping his feet up on the desk, looking irritated. "And you didn't come get me? I hope you got pictures."
Dugan shook his head. "The surveillance system's still down, so there's probably no evidence. It's a shame, though; he looked like he was about to cry."
Fury snickered. "I think he sleeps with that shield," he said, waving Dugan towards the room's other stuffed leather chair. "Sit down; I've got a bone to pick with you."
"Only one?" Dugan asked.
Fury ignored the comment. "How could you let Stark run my organization?" he said, stabbing a finger at Dugan. "He's been one step away from a total breakdown for years!"
Dugan snorted. "What do you think I've spent the past six weeks doing damage control on?" Serving under Maria Hill had been an exercise in frustration; switching to Stark had been trading incompetence for potential instability. Stark was a hell of a tactician, but for six weeks, Dugan had watched him snap at subordinates, duck out of meetings to hide in SHIELD laboratories, and put his fist through a mirror twice. And then there was his monologue to Cap's body, which Dugan flat preferred not to think about. But after the way Hill had mishandled the registration mess, replacing her with someone had been necessary, and only Stark had been in the position to take charge. "There was no one else who could step up to the plate. It was Stark or Maria Hill."
Fury nodded. "Right. Criticism retracted. Good choice."
"Trust me, it wasn't my idea" Dugan said. "Do you think I wanted a CO who, A," he held up one finger, "has no clue how to run a military organization and B, is actively trying to get himself killed? I kept expecting him to take off for the Gulf Coast and get beaten to pulp by the Hatemonger's flunkies."
Fury pulled two cigars out of his pocket, lit one, and tossed the other one to Dugan. "Ah, Dum-Dum, I've missed you."
"Good," Dugan told him. "Because the next time you run away from home, you're taking me with you."
Steve quietly pulled the door closed behind him. Thank God, the hallway was still empty and silent; he wasn't ready to face anyone at the moment. He had left Tony sleeping, and now he didn't know what to do next; they hadn't actually had the conversation that he had come to have, and he now he had even less idea what was going on with Tony than before.
He wished, briefly, that there was someone on the Helicarrier he could go to with this. But Tony had effectively isolated himself to the point that Steve honestly couldn't think of anyone.
There was also the fact that they still needed Tony to fight Red Skull and Doom, and there was no one else who had any real experience with the Mandarin. And Steve needed Tony to work with him if there was going to be any chance getting the two groups of Avengers to talk to each other like reasonable adults. They couldn't afford to have him out of commission.
Petty as it was, he had hoped, during the worst of the fighting, that Tony felt his betrayal the way Steve had felt it. He had, he realized, been secretly hoping that Tony had been affected by his death, that he would welcome him back with open arms, and a good explanation, and possibly a speech about how he'd realized that he'd been wrong, and Steve had been right.
But real life didn't work that way. And he was starting to wonder if he'd really been as totally in the right as he'd thought.
He'd never wanted Tony to be affected like this.
The last time he'd seen Tony anywhere near this... broken, had been when he was drinking, and even then hadn't been this bad. And that time, he'd handed off the armor to Rhodey. Now, it was a part of Tony, and there was no one else who could wear it.
After everything that had happened between them, Steve was surprised to realize that he wanted to help Tony. Needed to help him. Not just because it was necessary, but because seeing him like this hurt.
An hour ago, Steve had had a plan, the first one he'd had since coming back. Now, that was blown completely out of the water.
At the far end of the hall, the door to the labs opened, briefly flooding the passageway with light, and a dark-haired woman with a scar down one cheek stepped out.
She stood in the doorway for a moment, apparently observing Steve, then walked towards him purposefully, white lab shirt flapping around her. "Have you seen Tony?" she asked, holding up a clipboard. "The spectrum analysis reports on the debris from the Helicarrier are back, and he wanted to see them."
"He's sleeping," Steve said. There was no way he could tell a random lab tech about what had just happened.
The woman looked up at him, frowning slightly, then down at his costume. "Oh! You're Captain America," she said, face clearing. "You used to be Tony's friend, right?"
Steve nodded, unsure what to say. The woman carried on, though.
"Look, he's been a little off, recently," she continued, a puzzled expression flitting across her face. "After his parents died, he was upset, but he didn't let it slow him down or interfere with his work. But lately, he's been... unpredictable. He won't even let me run any tests on the Extremis."
"Maya, we've been over this," A man's voice said, as the door to the labs swung open again. "Leave Tony alone about the Extremis thing, okay?" He paused, seeing Steve, than walked over to join them. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?" the man asked. He was wearing an ill-fitting SHIELD officer's uniform jacket over a tie-dye shirt, and had long, grey hair tied loosely back.
"I got better," Steve quoted. After he had seen that movie, half of what Peter and Tony said to each other had suddenly made infinitely more sense.
The man grinned. "Right. I guess you people do that sometimes. I'm Sal Kennedy," he said, holding out a hand, "I work here, with Tony."
It was hard to imagine this man actually working for SHIELD, but then, Tony had always had somewhat strange hiring practices. "It's nice to meet you," Steve said politely. He couldn't help but feel a little awkward, though; he didn't know either of these people, and after what had just happened, he wasn't ready to face friends, let alone strangers.
Sal frowned at Steve contemplatively for a moment, then said, "Hang on a second, there's something I should probably give you." He took the woman - Maya - by the elbow, and guided her back into the labs with him. As the door shut again, Steve could hear him saying, "Yes, that was Captain America; no, you can't test his DNA."
Left alone again for a moment, Steve closed his eyes, contemplating just leaving. He had no idea what this Sal wanted to show him, and he had enough problems as it was, right now.
"Here we go," Sal said, and Steve opened his eyes again. Sal was holding up an unmarked video cassette. He handed it to Steve, who turned it over, examining it for any clues as to what it might be.
"What is this?" he asked.
Sal stuck his hands in his pockets, looking a little uncomfortable. "It's security footage," he said. "When they brought your body back here, Tony went to have a little 'talk' with you. It's just a good thing Dugan was watching the monitors when he did; I'd hate to think what would have happened if someone else had seen it."
Steve's fingers tightened on the cassette. "Oh," he said. He didn't want to think about being dead, and didn't want to think about what might have driven Tony to go talk to him while he was.
But at the same time, he couldn't help but wonder what he'd had to say.
"I have to admit, I was kind of relieved when Dugan gave it to me. It was the first time in a while that I'd actually seen Tony get upset over any of this," Sal went on, nodding at the tape. "I was starting to worry about his grasp on reality."
"He didn't bother to turn off the security cameras?" Steve asked, frowning. If Tony had overlooked something so basic, he must have been off-balance.
"Naw, he wasn't quite that out of it," Sal said. "But apparently the old Director was a paranoid bastard who had analog backups installed privately a couple years back. Dugan said something about some crazy mutant-cyborg with a messiah complex that can also talk to computers."
Steve glanced over his shoulder at the door to Tony's room, then back to Sal. "I'm not sure what good my watching this will do; he obviously never intended for me to see it," he said.
"Trust me, you need to see that," Sal said, shaking his head. "If nothing else, someone who knows Tony better than me needs to be able to make the call on whether he's really as... well. Like I said, you should watch that. Some of what he says..."
"What does he say?" Steve asked, consciously forcing his hands to relax; cracking the tape wouldn't help anything. Considering the state Tony had just been in, he was a little scared to know.
"I don't know that I could get it across," Sal said, shrugging one shoulder. "Watch the tape."
Sharon had never seen the commissary this deserted before. Normally, even at eight o' clock, there were at least a handful of people there getting coffee or catching a late dinner. Tonight, all but one of the long tables were empty, and only the safety lighting was on. Winter Soldier was sitting alone on the far side of the room, mostly hidden by the shadows. The red light from the "Exit" sign over the room's double doors glinted off his metal hand -- otherwise, she might not have noticed him.
Sharon walked across the room, her boot heels sounding unnaturally loud against the deck planks, and sat down next to him. "You know, you could have turned on the lights," she said.
He shrugged. "I didn't need them."
Sharon picked up his coffee cup and took a sip; it was lukewarm, and almost sickeningly sweet. Winter Soldier didn't so much drink coffee as he did hot sludge composed of sugar and coffee grounds.
"So," he said, "how much trouble are you in?"
"Considering that I deserted my post and aided and abetted a fugitive, surprisingly little." All of the paper trail documenting her defection had gone up in smoke with the new Helicarrier, and no one was certain at the moment if leaving to join Fury still qualified as desertion.
The agent who had questioned her -- a hastily promoted major who had still had captain's bars on his shoulders -- had been more interested in what she knew about Red Skull than in what she had been doing for the past two months. He had pointedly avoided asking any questions about Winter Soldier; she had gotten the feeling that he was a little scared of following that path of inquiry too far. Winter Soldier's status -- part of SHIELD? A freelance mercenary? Colonel Fury's pet? -- had been uncertain even before Fury had gone into hiding, and most of SHIELD hadn't even been aware of his existence until this morning.
"Where were you?" she asked. "I got out of the debriefing and you were gone."
He turned to look at her, catching and holding her eyes. "I thought you'd be with Steve by now."
"I killed him, James. That's not something a relationship can recover from." The fact that Steve was back now, however miraculous it was, didn't erase the fact that she had shot him. It didn't matter that she hadn't done it willingly; he had still been dead. "I haven't even gotten up the courage to tell him yet." He didn't remember what had happened; it was obvious from the way he'd looked at her in Strange's house. He would never look at her quite the same way again once he knew.
"Trust me," Winter Soldier said seriously, "he'd prefer not knowing."
"You can't base a relationship on lies."
Winter Soldier frowned, expression baffled and almost painfully young, and for a moment, she could almost see Steve's Bucky, the one who didn't exist anymore. "You know he'll forgive you."
"Yes, but I haven't." She took another sip of Winter Solder's disgusting coffee, and added, "Do you really think I'd go to him without telling you first?"
He reclaimed the coffee cup and held it cradled in both hands, staring into it, head bowed, stray pieces of dark hair falling in front of his eyes.
The first time they had slept together, it had been purely for comfort, a way for both of them to hold on to a little piece of Steve. The second time had been adrenaline, and so had the third.
It had been over a month now, and while she owed a debt to Steve, she owed one to James, too. He was the one who had been there. Who knew what it was like to have blood on your hands that wouldn't come off.
"It's between you and him, Sharon."
She shook her head. "It's more complicated than that, and you know it." Was this why he'd disappeared after they'd finished debriefing him? To clear the way for her to go back to Steve?
"Only because you're making it complicated." He lifted his gaze from his coffee and met her eyes again. "Either tell him or don't, but someone's going to eventually. There's no way Stark didn't figure it out from the autopsy reports."
The only thing worse for Steve than hearing about her betrayal from her would be hearing it from someone else. "Tomorrow," she decided. "I'll tell him first thing tomorrow."
"He'll forgive you," Winter Soldier said again. "It's what he does."
"I know," Sharon said.
Winter Soldier set the coffee cup down on the stainless steel table top, then reached out to cup her face with his left hand. The metal fingers were cold against her skin. James had no sensation in those fingers -- the Soviet scientists who'd designed his arm hadn't been concerned with those kinds of details -- and when they weren't in bed together, he rarely touched her with it. When he did, as now, it was for her comfort, not his.
She reached forward and took hold of his real hand, lacing her fingers through his, then grabbed the collar of his leather jacket and pulled him forward into a kiss.
Outside of the monitor room, Steve ran into the first SHIELD agent he had seen since leaving the officer's lounge.
The officer -- a tall black man about forty years old -- came to attention as soon as Steve stopped in front of the heavy steel door to the monitor room. "The security cameras are all off-line," he said, raising an eyebrow.
Steve nodded at the guard. "I know," he said, holding up the tape. "I've got some footage to review." Preferably alone.
"That's fine," the guard said. "You know how to work the machines?"
Steve nodded, and the guard entered a code in the keypad beside the door, then stepped aside to let him in.
The room was crowded with an intimidating array of electronic equipment, most of it sleek, modern, and completely unidentifiable. The player for Fury's surveillance tape was crowed into a far corner, behind a bank of computers and a laser disk player, as if the techs responsible for the equipment were demonstrating their contempt for such an obsolete machine.
Steve sat down, donned the black, plastic headphones -- the letters S.H.I.E.L.D. were stenciled on each ear piece -- and slid the little cassette into the VCR. He hesitated before hitting "play," unable to shake the feeling that he was spying on Tony, but the itching need to know what the hell was going on finally overcame his reservations.
There were a few seconds of static, the screen covered in grey fuzz, and then the static resolved into the black and white image of a body lying on a metal table, shot from above.
It took Steve several moments to recognize the man on the table as himself.
He was maskless, in the same torn costume he'd been arrested in -- the same one he'd worn to the courthouse. His shield was lying across his torso, its surface splattered with blood. It hid the bullet wounds from view, and Steve was glad for that.
He hadn't heard the first shot, just seen the dot from the sniper's laser scope and felt the pain as the bullet ripped into him. He'd only heard the one that killed him, the sound of the gunshot echoing in his ears as something slammed into his gut with enough force to knock him to the ground -- except he'd been on the ground already, hadn't he? -- and there had been flashbulbs going off, and people screaming, and it hadn't even hurt, at first, not the way his shoulder had, not until Sharon had started to put pressure on it, trying to stop the bleeding.
"... they're Fury's kids, and they want their daddy back..."
Tony had entered the frame, and was talking. Steve barely registered his presence on the screen, eyes still fixed on his own body, motionless and obviously, undeniably dead.
Steve wasn't sure how long he sat there, staring at himself, unable to process anything beyond that. He was vaguely aware of the rough, broken tone in Tony's voice as it raised in volume, but other than that, he didn't really hear what Tony was saying on the tape. The fact that he was there, dead, onscreen was surreal and overwhelming.
"...but now I can't..." Tony's voice had gone suddenly very quiet, and it was the drop in volume that actually caught Steve's attention. Not even half an hour ago, when he had been clutching at Steve's costume and crying uncontrollably, had Tony sounded quite so thoroughly broken.
"It wasn't worth it."
The words were nearly inaudible, particularly compared to the way Tony had been almost shouting earlier. But something about the way he said them made Steve's stomach twist, because there was some hidden meaning underlying those words. There something that Tony wasn't quite saying, something important.
Steve needed to watch the tape again.
It took him several minutes to force himself to hit the rewind button. This time, when the picture appeared, Steve forced himself to focus on Tony.
He was sitting next to... sitting next to Steve. He was in his armor, holding his helmet in his hands.
He was saying something about a Greek soldier Steve had never heard of, but whom Tony nevertheless seemed convinced he would know about.
"...there's winning and there's winning," he finished, "and sometimes winning doesn't feel like winning. It almost feels like losing. Or we might as well have lost if this is what it costs."
Tony stared down at his helmet; Steve couldn't see his expression, but his voice sounded tired.
"I --" his voice faltered, "I came here to tell you why this happened. You asked me and I'm going to tell you."
The last time they had spoken to each other, Steve had demanded an explanation. Every time they had argued over something Tony had done, he had come to Steve afterwards and explained himself, and Steve had always forgiven him.
Steve couldn't help but smile a little bit as Tony then began to relate a long, rambling anecdote about Doom, and King Arthur.
Somehow, he'd figured out from this that superheroes were going to end up fighting each other. Steve had never really understood how Tony made those kind of leaps, how he got from one piece of information to a seemingly unrelated conclusion, and still, somehow, turned out to be right. To be honest, Steve had never really understood how Tony's mind worked in general, beyond the fact that Tony was obviously smarter than him.
"I knew what it meant," Tony was saying now. He had, it seemed, known about the registration bill a lot earlier than the rest of them. "I knew it would pass. I knew exactly who would fall on what side of the issue. (Except Peter, Peter surprised me.)" Steve wondered whether Tony was surprised that Peter had switched sides, or surprised that Peter had ever sided with Tony at all. "I knew my feelings. I knew your feelings. I knew this was it."
And then, finally, Tony started explaining why he had done what he had done. "We had to work within the system. We had work with the leaders that the people of this country voted to represent them. To not do this is arrogance -- criminal arrogance. I told you that."
Tony had told him that, but he hadn't wanted to listen, had wanted to believe that if he stood up for what was right, people would see the error of their ways. Had that been arrogant of him?
"Who else was there? No one. So I sucked it up. I did what you do. I committed." Steve frowned. Why had Tony been so convinced that he had to go this alone, that he had to be the one to do this, especially if he hadn't actually wanted to?
Tony was audibly upset now; though Steve couldn't see his face, he could tell from his voice that he was crying. If it hurt this much just to talk about it, how could he have gone through with it? Particularly when he knew, as Steve had now realized that he must have, that it was wrong.
Clint had always said that Tony's biggest problem was control -- that he always had either too much or not enough. Control... Steve had assumed, back when this whole thing started, that Tony was on some kind of power trip, but it hadn't been that at all. Tony had been trying to do damage control. Tony had always done that, always needed to try and fix things, no matter how unfixable, even when it was obvious that doing so would only make things worse.
Tony hadn't been doing the right thing, and obviously knew that, but he'd been doing it for the right reasons. Steve closed his eyes from a moment, shutting out the sight of the screen -- of Tony's misery and of his own body -- unable to take the sight of either for a moment. Tony hadn't sold the rest of them out; he'd sold himself out to try and protect them. He remembered Tony, in the Avengers Mansion, mentioning Project Wideawake, remembered Carol insisting to Jessica that Stryker's cronies in Congress were out to get her and Peter, remembered the avid glint in Maria Hill's eyes when she'd informed him that the Registration Act was being signed into law.
Steve himself would never trade liberty for safety, but if given the choice between seeing Peter in the Negative Zone, and seeing him on a dissection table, he knew which one he'd have to choose, no matter how much he'd hate himself for it.
Tony finally looked up in the direction of the camera, face contorted with tears.
"The good news is..." he said, "through all of this... I never took a drink! And if I didn't drink during this, I'm probably never going to... So there's that." He tried to smile, as if mocking himself for thinking this would make up for anything.
It said something, that never once during the war had it occurred to Steve that Tony might start drinking again. Tony had always been more afraid of that than anyone else.
Steve should have thought of it, though. It was pretty much the only thing that could have made things even worse.
If Tony felt the need to mention that he hadn't fallen off the wagon, it meant that he'd come close. In the six years since he'd stopped drinking, Tony hadn't touched alcohol again of his own will; he must have been even closer to the edge than Steve had thought. If he'd held it together, he must have really thought that what he was doing was vital.
"To do what I needed to do to win this quickly -- I knew that meant you and I would never speak again. Or be friends again. Or partners again. I told myself I was okay with it because I knew I was right and I -- I knew it was saving lives."
Steve realized that he had leaned forward until his face was only inches away from the screen. Tony was really crying now, the way he had been on Steve's shoulder not an hour ago.
"I knew this and I said I was okay with it. And -- and even though I said... Even though I said I was willing to go all the way with it... I wasn't. And --" he broke off, sobbing. It was worse than his breakdown earlier. He sounded like a man who had lost all hope, who had no reason left to go on. "And I know this because the worst has happened. The thing I can't live with... Has happened." Steve could hardly understand him now, his voice was so thick with tears. There was a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach; he was almost afraid to hear the rest of Tony's confession, afraid to hear what might be coming. "And for all our back and forth," Tony's voice was getting louder now, building in intensity, and all the things we've said to each other... For all the hard questions I've had to ask, and terrible lies I've had to tell... There's one thing that I'll never be able to tell anyone now. Not my friends or my coworkers or my president... The one thing!! The one thing I should have told you. But now I can't..." He trailed off, as if the air had been knocked out of him. When he spoke again, it was in a hoarse whisper that hurt to hear. It wasn't worth it.
The tape ended, and the screen fuzzed back into static. Steve sat there staring at it, numb.
No matter how obviously upset Tony had been earlier, it hadn't prepared Steve for this... this devastation.
It was both humbling and a little frightening to think that his death could break someone that way.
Less than four months ago, when his armor had gone out of control, Tony had stopped his own heart to save Steve. With the chaos in the streets, it had taken the paramedics twenty minutes to get there, and Steve had given Tony CPR the entire time, long past the point where there was any hope. The Extremis was the only reason he was still alive, but Steve hadn't known that at the time; all he had known was that he couldn't give up on Tony.
That hadn't been the first time Tony had tried to trade his life for Steve's. There had also been the time Red Skull had released a biological agent over Mount Rushmore, and Steve had been knocked out and had lost his gas mask. Tony had pulled off his helmet, deliberately exposing himself to the toxin, in order to give Steve mouth-to-mouth, and he'd woken up minutes later to find Tony unconscious beside him. Steve had thought Tony was dying then, too, and still couldn't imagine what he would have done if he had.
Tony was one of the first friends he'd made after waking up in this time -- the first person whose voice he had heard, when they'd pulled him out of the ice -- and had been one of his closest friends for over ten years.
When Steve had lost his shield in the Atlantic ocean, Tony had moved heaven and earth and spent God knew how much of Stark Enterprises' money to find it. Before this registration mess had started, Steve had known that any time he needed help, all he had to do was go to Tony, and he would drop everything and do anything in his power to help him. He'd always hoped that Tony would eventually figure out that that went both ways.
Any time something had been bothering Steve, it had been Tony, out of all the Avengers, who noticed, and who came and talked to him about it. Sometimes whether Steve actually wanted to talk or not.
And he liked Steve's art, even when it wasn't technically any good. There had been one or two pieces hanging in the lobby of Stark Tower that had made Steve cringe every time he'd walked by them, because the perspective was so bad, but Tony had held onto them through multiple office buildings and multiple incarnations of Stark Enterprises.
The sound of static finally went silent, and the screen went black as the tape reached the end of its reel. Steve pulled the headphones off -- he'd forgotten he was still wearing them -- and ejected the cassette.
A couple of years ago, Tony had managed to swing season tickets to the subway series, and had let Steve drag him to every game, even when it had involved canceling business meetings. That had been during the period when Tiberius Stone had been trying to destroy his company and his life, and Tony had desperately needed the break. He had worn a little smile the entire time, and had barely looked at the baseball field. At the time, Steve hadn't realized that this was because Tony had been watching him. In retrospect, it was obvious.
It was all obvious.
Tony had been in love with him. Was in love with him.
Why the hell had he never said anything?
Why the hell had he sold his soul, gotten in bed with people he hated, borne all the responsibility alone, kept Steve in the dark, and never said anything?
If Steve had actually understood what Tony was trying to do, he would have... still opposed registration, because forcing everyone with superpowers to become the Pentagon's pet superhero army was never not going to be a bad idea, but if Tony had come to him, had told him what was going on when he'd first learned of it, maybe they could have worked out a better way to fight it. A way that wouldn't have gotten people killed.
Tony's decisions had affected all of them. By making them in secret, he had denied them the right to decide their own futures.
If he loved Steve, why hadn't he respected him enough to let him make his own choices? Why had he let Steve die thinking he despised him?
If Steve's death was the one thing Tony couldn't live with, why had he let Steve think that their friendship meant nothing, that he didn't care? If nothing else, surely he had deserved better than that.
And if his death was an unacceptable loss, what made Tony's life an acceptable sacrifice?
There was a sharp snapping noise, and Steve looked down to find that he had cracked the cassette tape down the middle. He stood abruptly and went to get some more answers.
There was a dull, throbbing pain at Tony's temples, and his eyes were sore and scratchy; it felt a little bit like a hangover.
/ Director Stark, sir/ The voice spoke directly into his brain, re-routed from the communicator in his armor.
/ What/ Tony groaned. He was lying on his bed, on top of the covers, still fully clothed. For a moment, he wasn't sure how he'd gotten there. If he'd passed out in the lab -- Then he remembered. Steve was gone. Of course Steve was gone. He wouldn't want to stay around after Tony had lost it so thoroughly.
/ This is communications,/ the voice that had woken him continued. / We've got an unidentified energy signature on three of our satellites. I think someone's breached the firewall. /
Tony sat up, and the room tilted and went grey for a second.
He closed his eyes, and rested his head in his hands, waiting for the dizziness to stop. Apparently, seventy-two hours straight without sleep were his outside limit. He'd been feeling the grinding press of exhaustion since yesterday, but there was so much to do, so much that required his direct attention.
/ Get Maya to take a look at it/ he told the communications specialist. The extra effort of subvocalizing the words via the Extremis made his head hurt even more, and he kept his eyes shut, rubbing vainly at his temples. / And shut down the satellite network until we know who's spying on our transmissions. /
Tony closed the transmission down, not waiting for a response. He couldn't deal with this right now. He'd been on the verge of crashing when he'd come back to his room, had intended to go to bed as soon as he'd finished dealing with Congressman Dickstein, but then Steve had appeared at his door, and Tony couldn't not talk to him, even though he'd known that he wasn't prepared to handle what ever it was he had to say. Known that he couldn't handle Steve's anger, or his hatred, just then, no matter how much he deserved it.
What Steve had actually said had been so much worse, though, because Tony knew -- knew -- that he didn't deserve that. That after everything he had done, with the blood that was on his hands, there was no way he would ever deserve Steve's apologies for anything.
But Steve being Steve, he was always ready to try and give people the benefit of the doubt, to shoulder responsibility for things that weren't his burden to bear.
Tony swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, wrapping an arm around his ribs as they reminded him that they hadn't liked being thrown through a wall earlier. For Steve to come to talk to him now, he must have had something important to say, and Tony had fallen apart before he'd had a chance to. He might not be good for anything else at the moment, but he could at least find Steve and listen to what he had to say.
Probably he had meant to offer his help against Doom, or propose some kind of temporary alliance against all three supervillains. He might have lost Steve's friendship, and probably his respect as well, but Steve was obviously willing to put up with him for the greater good, even to try and forgive him when Tony had given him no reasons to want to.
Before Tony could leave to look for Steve, though, the door slammed open with a loud bang, and Tony flinched, startled out of his daze. Steve stormed into Tony's quarters and kicked the door shut behind him, his presence filling the small room. He still had his mask off, and the single light in the room cast a corona through his fair hair. His eyes were blazing with anger.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded, brandishing a cracked cassette tape at Tony.
Tell him... what? Tony stared at Steve blankly. Obviously he was too tired to process information properly anymore, because he had no idea what Steve was talking about.
Steve waved the tape again. "Your hippy friend gave me the security tape of you," he hesitated, as if searching for a word, "...talking... to me."
There couldn't be a tape of that. He'd made sure there was no recording, that no one was watching. "There's no footage of that," Tony protested, feeling sick. No one could have seen that. Steve had seen that? "I turned the cameras off."
Steve shook his head, not taking his eyes off of Tony. "Fury had analog back-ups."
Tony found himself wanting to crawl under the floor to get away from that intense blue gaze. Steve was staring at him as if he could see through him, which, if he'd seen that, he could. "Who else has seen that?" he asked. No wonder no one in SHIELD would listen to him. They knew he wasn't committed, knew he was unstable, knew he was a complete mess --
"Luckily, just Dugan, Kennedy, and me." Steve's voice was quiet now, serious. "What the hell did you think you were doing, Tony?"
Tony closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts; he couldn't focus while looking at Steve, couldn't process anything past the fact of his presence. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," he started, opening his eyes again. Steve was still staring at him, gaze fixed on his face. "Registration was supposed to stop this kind of war from happening, stop anyone else from being..." he trailed off, unable to say any more. Even with Steve standing inches away, undeniably present, it hurt too much to mention his death aloud.
"I know that," Steve said impatiently, "I know what you thought you were accomplishing. I want to know why you decided to do it on your own and keep us in the dark." He stepped closer to Tony, voice raising in volume and intensity. "What gave you the right to make that decision for us? Why didn't you ever tell me?" It was practically a shout.
Tony stood his ground, feeling a sudden surge of anger. "I didn't have a choice!" he shouted back. Why didn't anyone understand that? If there had been any other way, didn't Steve know he would have taken it?
"You always have a choice!" Steve took another step forward, looming over him, and Tony instinctively backed up, shoulders hitting the wall.
No, goddamnit, he hadn't had a choice. He couldn't let Steve compromise himself. Had selfishly wanted to keep that last bit of innocence Steve had somehow still held onto intact. "I didn't want to take you down with me!" he shouted. The fact that he'd spent the past six weeks wishing he had convinced Steve to betray himself, wishing he'd backed down, given up, let the world go to hell as long as Steve was still in it, proved exactly how selfish he was.
"Damn it!" Steve shouted, flinging the tape to the floor. His fist slammed into the wall, inches away from Tony's head. Tony kept himself from flinching, remained motionless. If Steve wanted to hit him, he'd more than earned the right.
"What do I have to do to make you stop hating yourself so much that you keep screwing us all over?" Steve shouted, grabbing the collar of Tony's shirt in one fist and shoving him back into the wall. And then Steve kissed him.
Tony was frozen, unable to respond. This couldn't be real, was every dream he'd ever -- The back of his skull cracked against the wall. Steve's left hand was tangled in his hair, gripping hard enough to hurt, and his lips were crushing Tony's, bruisingly hard.
Tony leaned forward, molding his body against Steve's, and opened his mouth, kissing back for all he was worth. He reached up and wrapped a hand around the back of Steve's neck, holding him in place.
Steve let go of his hair, sliding his hand down to cup the side of his face, and Tony closed his eyes and gripped Steve's mail-covered shoulders, the hard scales digging into his fingers.
Steve broke the kiss, pulling away, and Tony was spared the indignity of making little whimpering noises of disappointment only because Steve spoke first.
"Not here," he growled, and swung Tony around -- still with a death-grip on his shirt front -- and pushed him down onto the bed. There was a flare of sharp pain from his ribs that Tony ignored, in favor of tugging at the straps that fastened Steve's shield to his back. The leather was stiff -- of course; no one had cleaned or oiled it in a month -- and he had to pull harder than he expected.
The buckles finally came undone, and the shield fell to the floor with a loud clang. They both turned and stared at it for a second, then Steve turned back to Tony and yanked his shirt open, sending buttons flying. He straddled Tony, pinning him to the bed with his weight -- as if he thought Tony might actually go anywhere at this point -- and kissed him again, less forcefully
but with no less intensity.
Tony leaned up into the kiss, closing his eyes and letting himself concentrate only on Steve's mouth, his tongue, his gloved hand gripping Tony's now-bare shoulder. He blocked off the last of the datafeeds in his head; they had been meaningless noise since the first time Steve touched him, even the armor distant and unimportant.
Tony broke the kiss this time, catching Steve's right hand in both of his, tugging the red leather glove off, and pressing a kiss against the back of Steve's hand. Steve's skin was warm against his lips, and he repeated the action with Steve's left hand. He tossed the glove to the floor, and began unfastening the buckle on Steve's belt, while Steve pulled his mail and leather shirt off over his head.
"How many pieces does this costume have?" Tony asked, as the buckle finally came undone.
"Too many." Steve threw the shirt to the floor, kicked off his boots -- some small part of Tony's brain was still rational enough to be amused that even now, Steve was taking his shoes off before getting in bed -- and straddled Tony again, yanking open the fly of his pants.
Tony leaned up and kissed the base of Steve's neck, where it joined his right shoulder, then again over the center of his chest, then bent and pressed a final, openmouthed kiss to his stomach. His skin was smooth, faintly salty, and unscarred.
Steve tugged at the waistband of Tony's pants, and he lifted his hips so that Steve could slide them off. Tony kicked at them, and they fell off the end of the bed and disappeared onto the floor.
Steve planted a hand on Tony's chest and shoved him flat against the bed; his hand was big and warm and he didn't remove it as he bent to gently bite at, then kiss, Tony's hipbone.
Tony had always appreciated Steve's exceedingly tight leather pants, but at the moment, they were covering far too much of him, and removing them was proving to be a challenge, mostly because of the angle.
"This isn't working," Steve said. "Hold still." He climbed off of Tony, pulling his pants off with one hand while the other stayed firmly on the center of Tony's chest. He tossed the pants in the same direction Tony's had gone.
Tony still couldn't quite believe this was happening -- if it weren't so good, he'd think it was a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation, but hallucinations were never pleasant. He had no idea what had driven Steve to do this, but if it was what he wanted, Tony wasn't going to question him.
He would probably never have another chance to get this close to Steve again, and he wasn't going to waste this opportunity.
Steve's fingers dug into his hips, over the bruises left from where he'd hit the water; it hurt, but Tony didn't care, reveled in the undeniable proof of Steve's presence.
Tony slid one hand up the inside of Steve's thigh. He didn't need to memorize his body -- Steve's costume had never left anything to the imagination -- but that didn't lessen the urge to touch him, the need to get as much physical contact as possible, to reaffirm that Steve was here, was whole, and for whatever reason, he didn't despise Tony.
Steve had been gone, but he was here now, and Tony could feel parts of himself that he'd thought were dead coming back to life.
Steve was blond absolutely everywhere, which was an interesting change from most of the blonds Tony had done this with, and every bit as perfect as the costume advertised. He made a sort of growling moan, eyes going half-lidded, and Tony could feel himself smirking lopsidedly. He was always good at getting people to make those kinds of noises, but this was Steve and that made everything more... It made it important.
Tony ground his hips upwards into Steve's, running one hand up over the flat of Steve's chest, then down again, and Steve bent his head and bit the base of Tony's neck, sucking hard on his flesh. Tony arched up, digging his fingers into Steve's back -- no costume in the way now -- and Steve gasped his name and tensed, and his left hand tightened convulsively on Tony's shoulder.
Tony's vision greyed out for a second. When it cleared he tilted his head back and kissed Steve on the corner of the jaw, feeling his pulse beating rapidly under his skin. He let himself fall backwards onto the pillow and stared up into Steve's eyes. They were very blue, pupils still dilated.
"Thank you," he told Steve, closing his eyes.
The bunks on the Helicarrier weren't really meant for two people, but curled together like they were, Sharon and Winter Soldier fit well enough.
His wrists were still chained to the bed, and he was staring up into space, lost in thought. Sharon didn't ask what he was thinking; if he had something to say, he would. She stayed silent, resting her head on his shoulder, one hand absently tracing patterns on his chest.
She knew that she ought to unlock his cuffs so that they could go shower, but she was comfortable, and he wasn't objecting.
James was frowning slightly, eyes fixed on the wire mesh bottom of the top bunk. Sharon couldn't help but wonder if he still thought that she was going to go back to Steve. She had told him that she wasn't, that she couldn't, but she didn't think he'd really believed her.
After all, Steve was Captain America, no matter what the circumstances, and it would be hard to do better than him. James had idolized him for years, too, and had held her that first night while she had cried over his loss for hours, still wearing the blood-stained clothes she'd worn on the courthouse steps.
But things had changed, she had changed, and there was no going back to they way they had been before. No matter how easily or completely Steve might be able to forgive her, Sharon would never be able to completely forgive herself, and she knew that it would eventually drive her crazy, to have his unconditional forgiveness for something like that.
And there was this now, and it was good, too.
Sharon stretched, then settled back against James, resting one of her legs between his. "So what happened on April 29th, 1945?" she asked, shifting slightly so that her head was tucked beneath his chin. "The other day, when we... saw Steve for the first time, he said that to you, and you knew it was him." She had known as soon as she saw him; from the way he stood, the tone of his voice. James's question, whatever it meant to the two of them, had just confirmed it.
James stiffened for a fraction of a second, slightly enough that Sharon knew she wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been lying half on top of him. "The liberation of the concentration camp at Dachau," he said. "It was the first time we were involved with something like that. When we got to the furnaces, Steve threw up. I didn't; I knew what to expect." His voice was even, but Sharon knew him well enough now to hear the faint shadow of something very tired in his words. He rarely talked about the war, and even less about what came after it. On the rare occasions that she actually asked him about something, though, he would answer her.
There was nothing she could do to remove that shadow from him, and in any case, he was a grown man, and his regrets were his own.
Sharon sat up, so that she was straddling his legs, and leaned over to kiss him, pressing her lips firmly against his. She kept one hand pressed firmly against his chest as she grabbed the keys off of the hook they had hung them on earlier, and reached up to unlock his wrists without looking.
His arms free, he tangled one hand in her hair roughly, holding her against him for a minute, before letting go. She stretched again, so that she was lying half on top of him, legs tangled together. He settled his mechanical arm around her waist, hand resting against the small of her back. It was hard, and cooler than her skin, although it warmed rapidly when they were this close. The first time they slept together, she had been a little thrown by the sensation of metal against her skin, but she was used to it now, and barely noticed it anymore. He pressed his real hand against her stomach, fingers splayed. It was an intimate gesture, almost as intimate as sex, somehow.
She would never try to pretend that she could absolve him, and he did her the favor of doing the same. They had never tried to pretend that their relationship was about anything but physical comfort and release. It was what it was, and Sharon was comfortable with that.
Tony had fallen asleep, eyes closed and body completely limp. His eyelashes were slightly damp and clumped together, dark and vivid against pale cheekbones.
Steve stretched out next to him, sliding an arm underneath his shoulders -- Tony sighed and rolled onto his side, without waking up, until he was lying half on top of Steve, head resting on his shoulder.
The base of his neck was already bruising where Steve had bitten him. He hadn't meant to do that. He hadn't meant to do any of this. He'd only wanted to talk to Tony, and then he'd seen him, and as sometimes happened when arguing with Tony, he'd gotten carried away, and a decade of intimacy and half-sublimated attraction had overwhelmed him.
And now there was no way to go back and undo it; he wasn't even certain he wanted to. Tony's head was heavy on his shoulder, dark hair a tangled mess. Since waking up in Strange's study, Steve had felt Tony's absence weighing on him, a hollow space in his life where his oldest friend was supposed to be. And now Tony was asleep beside him, warm and sweaty and smelling just a little like metal, and the hollow feeling had disappeared.
Tony hadn't meant to betray him after all. Had cared about him in a way Steve had never even let himself imagine. Knowing that, knowing how important he had been -- still was -- to Tony was almost frightening, but not in bad way.
Steve stared at the grey metal ceiling, frowning slightly. When they'd been shouting at one another, there'd been a moment when he could see the intense, stubborn man who'd been his friend for years, and not the cold, distant shell that he'd spoken to in the Helicarrier's brig.
Tony had never had any defenses where sex was involved; from the moment he'd started kissing Steve back, Steve had known where this was going, and it had the potential go so horribly wrong. The world was still a mess, the Avengers were still split right down the middle, and Steve wasn't stupid enough to think that one sexual encounter was going to fix whatever was really wrong with Tony. But there was also a chance to salvage something out of the wreckage of their lives, and Steve wasn't going to let himself screw it up.
He and Sharon had never been able to make it work for more than a few months at a time, and they'd always been able to go back to being just friends afterwards; when you got down to it, they'd always worked best that way. But this, now... in spite of his reputation, Tony didn't usually do casual sex. And nothing between him and Tony was casual, not anymore. Now that he had a chance at getting Tony back, he wasn't giving him up.
His rolled his head to the side, letting his cheek rest against Tony's hair. The New Avengers were probably wondering where he was; he should have checked in with them earlier. Hopefully, Luke and Sam wouldn't decide that he'd been kidnapped and try to stage some sort of rescue. They would have to wait until morning, because Steve wasn't going anywhere right now.
The next thing he knew, Tony was shifting away from him, and Steve opened his eyes to see Tony leaning on one elbow, staring down at him. He must have fallen asleep, and given how rested he felt, it had probably been for a long time.
He hadn't slept well at Strange's house, had kept waking up, feeling restless and unsettled.
Tony looked away. "I'm sorry," he said awkwardly.
What on earth was he apologizing for now? "Why?" Steve asked. "I practically dragged you to bed like Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind." He could feel his face heating at the memory of the way he'd literally ripped Tony's clothes off. "Maybe if I'd done it years ago, we could have avoided some of this mess."
Tony blinked at him, then half smiled. "Did you just decide you caused this entire war by not having sex with me?"
Steve groaned, and closed his eyes again, covering his face with one hand. "I don't even know anymore." At this point, his assumptions about the way things were had been turned upside down so thoroughly that there was very little he could still be completely certain of.
Tony sat up, wrapping his arms loosely around his knees, staring intently at the wall. "So, you saw the tape," he said.
"Yes," Steve said. Sitting up like that, Steve could see the line of bruises trailing down Tony's back. Had he done that?
"It wasn't worth it, but under the same circumstances, I would do it again," Tony said, still staring at the wall.
"If you knew how it was going to end, would you still..."
Tony turned his head, looking Steve in the eye. "No. If I'd known what... I couldn't have."
What could he say to that? Steve knew that Tony didn't regret what he'd done to himself, hadn't actually changed his mind about the necessity of registration; Tony was only saying this because of what had happened to him. Knowing that someone loved him that much felt good, but if it came down to a choice between him and the world, he knew which one was more important. He'd rather Tony do what he thought was right, than go along with something he thought was wrong just for Steve. "A more articulate man than me once said that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. And you certainly didn't do nothing." Steve sat up, and put a hand on Tony's shoulder. "I'm still not sure I agree with it, but maybe if I'd known..."
"Would it have changed anything?" Tony asked, looking away.
"I don't know," Steve admitted.
"I should have told you," Tony said quietly. "I should have..." he turned to look at Steve again. "I did..." he hesitated, "things I can never atone for... and I don't know how you can --" He put his head down on his folded arms, shoulders slumping. Steve could feel the bones in Tony's shoulder shifting as he moved. Had he actually eaten at any point in the past two months, or had he just been living on coffee?
It was obvious that Tony was talking about what had happened between them last night, that he didn't think he deserved anything from Steve but contempt. But Tony wasn't the only person in this bed. "After everything that's happened over the past few months, I've earned it. I deserve the chance to be selfish about something." Steve pulled himself forward so that they were sitting side-by-side, wincing as he saw that the bruises that covered Tony's back extended out over his ribcage in a colorful array. "I'm sorry," he said, nodding at the bruises. He still wasn't sure what had overcome him last night; he normally wasn't that aggressive when it came to sex. But apparently, as with most other things, restraint went out the window when it came to Tony.
"What?" Tony sat up straight, and gave him a confused look, then glanced down, following his gaze. "No, those are from the Doombot, and the wall, and getting thrown into New York harbor," he said, tilting his head to look at Steve through his lashes, smirking slightly. It was a familiar expression, though not one Steve had ever expected to be on the receiving end of. "Anyway, even if they weren't, they'd be worth it."
Steve couldn't help but smile back; there'd been a flash of wry humor there, and for a moment, he could see the old Tony, the one he hadn't seen for months. Considering that they were both naked, and in bed together, that should have been strange, but it didn't feel that way.
There was no going back, but maybe they could go forward. "You know," Steve said, "I actually came here to say that we needed to get our teams to work together."
"That's going to be harder than you think," Tony told him.
"Taking on any of the villains out there while we're still divided will be even harder." Steve caught his eyes, and dropped his hand from Tony's shoulder. "You know that as long as the government is trying to make superhumans their weapons, you're not going to get the New Avengers."
"It was the least I could get them to agree to," Tony said, voice low and, for a brief moment, emotionless again.
"The situation has changed," Steve reminded him.
"I don't have any favors left to call in," Tony admitted, "but now... Now they need us." His jaw was set, and his eyes were grey in the dim light. "Maybe there are still strings I can pull."
Steve grinned, feeling more optimistic than he had in a long time. "Do that, tell them that, and I can make them listen. Or try to."
"Or we could always just get the Helicarrier declared a sovereign nation," Tony said, offering him a crooked smile. "It's big enough."
Steve had missed Tony's support, but hadn't realized until this moment how much he'd missed his sense of humor as well. No one else actually noticed when Steve tried to tell jokes. "Nick Fury could be our king," he offered, deadpan.
"Well," Tony replied, equally deadpan, "in the land of the blind-"
Steve shoved him, lightly because of the bruises. Tony swayed with the motion, then settled back against Steve's side. He leaned his head against Steve's bare shoulder, closing his eyes.
"I don't deserve you," he said, almost voicelessly.
Steve slid an arm around Tony's waist, and rested his chin on Tony's hair. They hadn't deserved a lot of things, and they couldn't make up for any of them unless they worked at it together.
Thank you to Wolvmbm for reviewing, and to coldthing, Michael Weyer, and RoguefanKC for the encouragement.