Here's the second to last chapter, with one more to tie everything up - unless anyone reviews with a really good idea that I think I would write :) After this I'll be focusing on some of my other unfinished stories, so keep your eyes peeled x Thanks to everyone that's read and reviewed and I hope you all do the same for this chapter x
Steve, despite all evidence to the contrary, is not innocent. He fought in world war two, and knows the price of things, even if he wishes he didn't. He knows what things can cost, has seen the horror that can be wrought at humanity's hand, the fear and cruelty it can inspire.
Steve remembers that very well, seeing Bucky strapped to that table and the tremble in his limbs whenever Steve had reached for him.
He isn't innocent.
But he's still young, and more than a little but naïve. Steve still sees things in clear shades, where the good guys always manage to save the day and the bad guys are defeated and imprisoned and never hurt anyone ever again. He's not stupid enough to think that there is nothing that goes bump in the night, just that it can be defeated if you're clean cut enough, good enough. Seeing the bad in the world has made him twice as determined to see the good in it as well, and Howard Stark was definitely on the good side.
Steve never lets a friend done that's in need, not Bucky when he was captured, not any of his team, and not Howard, who made him strong enough to fight for his country. He values his friends, because as a scrawny weakling he hadn't had many of them until he'd finally been eligible to join the army - and that had been because of Howard.
And because of that he doesn't let anyone disrespect his friends.
Not even their kids, when it seems like the only thing Tony Stark has to say about his father is an insult.
Until now it's always infuriated Steve - because the Howard he'd known was a good man, a kind one, and that kind of disrespect wasn't something he'd tolerate from anyone.
But now he didn't know what to think. He and Tony would probably never be friends, not over the last few months they'd reached an understanding, a team that fought more than battles. He would never ask what Howard had done to Tony because he didn't want to hear it, but he'd picked things up from the others.
The Howard he'd known had been gone a long time ago.
Nothing reinforced this better than the revelation of what he'd done to Tony, the mutation of his genes so that he could be Howard's project. To create something even better than a super soldier.
Horror and disgust was all he could feel, looking at the man who had been rebuilt for science, for curiosity. His own Maker had been one of the people who was supposed to look after him, to be there for him, and he'd torn him apart and put him back together in an arrangement that better suited him.
Steve felt sick.
Tony refused to talk but that didn't matter because he'd seen enough of the experiments that humans could perform on each other. World war two, and Bucky, was a class example of that.
He didn't really want to know what Howard had done to Tony, only this time for Tony's sake, not Howard's. Talking about those things can help or make them worse, and it's really up to Tony to decide which.
Steve looks at the inventor with horror and Tony looks back in understanding and pity. He knows what it's like to get the reality of the world in one dose and it's something he would wish on very few people, particularly someone as untainted as Steve. He knows that Steve isn't as wholesome as most people think - a side effect of living with the man for the last few months - but he isn't far off.
He also knows that Steve doesn't know how to act now, how to act now that Howard isn't the picture perfect hero that he remembers.
To be honest, Tony doesn't either.
Steve tries his best. He doesn't really understand how a man can change like this, how he can go from one of the best human beings to one of the worst, with a hundred thousand lives on his hands, with two ash clouds and a laboratory of things too terrible for anyone to talk about.
He doesn't understand how someone can do the reverse, fighting to save the world with only a metal suit to protect himself.
He isn't innocent but he sees the world in shades of black and white and perhaps that's why he's best suited to being the Avenger's leader. The rest of them are too hardened by what they've seen, too close to giving up.
Steve never stops trying to see the good in things, even when the more jaded members of his team laugh cynically at the idea. He never stops trying to make the world a better place.
But in this case he doesn't really see where the good can be found.
Howard had destroyed so many lives, a far cry from the man he had known. What was redeemable about that?
Tony's life had been twisted and pulled out of shape until he was barely recognisable as human, his genetics warped and his childhood ruined, hiding behind a thousand masks because he knew he couldn't depend on anyone to help him.
Steve doesn't know where to find the good in that. It ruins his view of the world.
Tony kind of regrets that.