Steve's smiled fell—ecstatic to heartbroken in 0.2 seconds. It was a world record, he was sure; life was sad and unpredictable, yes, but it had certainly never changed this fast before—at least not in his experience.

One second, he was packing his things into his suitcase, tossing in his clothes (the worst fold job he'd ever done) and gathering his few earthly possessions, and the next, Tony was standing in his doorway, the reactor in one hand and his face unreadable.

"What's wrong?" Steve asked. He dropped the suitcase onto the bed. Old and battered as it was—his father's from before he was born—the handle bent to one side, and a cloud of dust rose up around it. Steve ignored this, all his attention focused on Tony.

"I'm staying with the Duke," Tony replied.

Steve's heart dropped into his stomach. It was a trick; it had to be. Tony who looked at the Duke with nothing but distain, who spoke of escape like it put the oxygen in his lungs, Tony who stared out the window when he wasn't staring at his inventions, dreaming of a new and better life. That Tony—the Tony Steve knew so well—would never choose to stay with the Duke.

"After I left to get, well," Tony held up the reactor. Wires stretched out from its back side, reaching for nothing. "He offered me a new lab, full funding for the club, all the supplies and equipment I could ever need. But he had one condition." He gestured at Steve with his free hand. "I can't see you anymore. I'm sorry."

Steve frowned and shook his head, still refusing to believe his ears. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

"You knew who I was." Tony said. He squeezed the edges of the reactor until his knuckles turned white; for a moment, the device seemed to absorb the entirety of his focus, and he stared down into the small glowing light. When he finally looked up to meet Steve's eyes, his own were terrifyingly blank.

Steve had always know Tony was a talented actor, but he'd never known him to disappear entirely. The Tony that stood before him now was not Tony Stark, the business man extraordinaire, or even Tony Stark, the grease covered engineer fiddling with wires in his bedroom. This Tony—shoulders back, jaw set, hands unmoving—was nothing but a ghost.

"What about the plan? What about us?" Steve asked. He surged forward, his hands reaching out for Tony—to touch him, to remind him of who he was, of who they were—but Tony backed away.

"The difference between you and me is that you can leave anytime you want," he said. "This is my home. SHIELD is my home. The plan is nuts. It was always nuts. Maybe it sounded good for a second, but it was never going to work. I have a job here. I have a plan here. And I can make that plan work with the Duke. With SHIELD. Not running off into the streets with you."

Steve's throat tightened. When he spoke again, it was as though the words were being choked out of him. "There must be something else. This can't be real," he said. "Something's wrong. Just tell me what it is, and we can fix it. Together. Tony, whatever is going on, just…tell me. Tell me the truth."

He tried again, his hand reaching out just far enough for his fingers to brush against Tony's arm before the smaller man side-stepped the embrace. Steve gulped. None of this made sense. Just an hour ago, Tony had been set to run away with him; even before their plan—sudden and reckless as it might have been—they had been happy. Hadn't they? Yes, it had been difficult to hide, and he would never enjoy the idea of sharing Tony with Tiberius Stone, but all the time they'd spent together had been good—great, if Steve had anything to say about it.

All those nights spent together couldn't be a lie. All those stolen kisses, the soft brush of Tony's fingers on his spine, the way they'd laughed when there was only each other to hear. They had felt too much, seen too much of one another to let it all slip through their fingers now.

At least, Steve had felt it; surely, Tony couldn't have been faking it all, could he? Why would he?

"Tell me the truth. Please, Tony. I'll understand," he said. He could hear his own voice break, hear the desperation in every note, and still, he couldn't bother to care. Nothing mattered but finding answers; nothing but fixing what never should have been broken in the first place.

"The truth?" Tony repeated. "The truth is I pick the king. That's how the story ends. Welcome to the real world, buddy. You've got a lot to learn."

Right then and there, hearing the malice in Tony's voice—the cold snap of it—Steve's heart broke, one piece chipped away for every word. Tony, his eyes still unnervingly blank, turned on his heels and left.

As Tony exited Steve's room, he seriously contemplated ripping out his own heart and exchanging it with the machine in his hand. It had been the plan all along—to use the reactor, the creation from his own hands and mind, to fix his broken, barely beating heart. Of course, the plan had always included a heart to fix, but why shouldn't he skip a few steps? His heart was useless anyway; let him throw it out, let him become a machine. He'd been sick for so long, he could no longer remember what it was like to have a working heart anyway. But at least with Steve he'd understood how a heart was supposed to feel . Maybe it didn't beat right, maybe it sucked at doing what a heart was supposed to—like pump blood through his body and actually function —but in the mushy figurative sense, his heart had finally figured it out.

For a few short, glorious months, he'd known love.

Now his heart was broken in both ways, and what was the point in a heart that couldn't even work metaphorically? Maybe the veins and aortas that kept it functioning like a not-so-oiled machine might be blown to hell, but he'd sort of enjoyed having its Valentine's Day counterpart working—the sort of heart that was rounded at the top and easy to draw, the one that came in colors of red and pink and was covered in lace, the one that Cupid shot arrows through. Fuck Ty, fuck Fury, fuck SHIELD, and all his whole damn screwed up excuse of a life because now he couldn't even have that.

Walking toward his death, Tony had nothing but a script in his head and the last lingering beats of his stupid heart against his ribs. He'd have been better off leaving it with Steve; at least it could have ended its days in peace.

Tony simply couldn't get Steve's face out of his mind. He'd always known he'd make a poor boyfriend, knew he'd let Steve down one way or another, but he'd never seen it playing out like this. Never did he think he'd be the one breaking Steve's heart—a heart that had so much to live for and so much to give. Tony would have given anything in the world to change places; hell, he'd give anything to go back in time if he could. If he'd known things would end like this, if he known then the pain he would cause him, Tony never would have dragged Steve through this mess. He never would have been so cruel.

As Tony made his way back to the club, Steve's panic stricken face played through his mind on an endless loop. Had there been another way? Had he done it wrong? Was there any nice way of hurting the only person you'd ever loved? If there was, he couldn't picture it, but he'd have traded it all—all his work, all the money he'd been hoping for—every happy moment—to erase the pain in Steve's eyes.

When the time finally came to present the play (and it did; as Fury said, the show always went on), a new actor took Steve's role, and Tiberius settled down in the back of the crowd with a look of glee on every inch of his face. Every hour between the break-up from hell and the start of the show reeked havoc on Tony's heart. He knew, even before the day began, before he was standing side stage, staring out at his seat in the crowd and wondering if Steve would show, this was it; today, when the curtain fell, and the dream ended, Tony would die.

He wasn't sure how he knew it; in fact, he wished he didn't. But he couldn't deny that each breath was harder to take than the last, couldn't ignore the constant piercing pain in his chest, the shaking of his hands, the pounding headache, the blurry vision. Tony simply knew, as though he held a stopwatch in his hand, and the seconds of his life were ticking down before his very eyes. Call it instinct, call it pessimism if you must, but the end result was undeniable.

This was it.

Prior to the start of the show, he put his affairs in order. He signed all his earthly possessions away to Rhodey, split his rather small bank account between him and Pepper, and wrote to every salesman in Paris with a rather convincing pitch for the reactor if he did say so himself. He might not live to see it change the world, but that sure as hell didn't mean it couldn't.

He wasn't leaving much behind, but he could at least leave his ideas.

And so the show came—a dazzling feast for the eyes, an overwhelming display of every color imaginable, dances and music, well-spoken lines, and a beautifully written play without its author anywhere in sight. The crowds came in bunches—a loud talking, squealing mob of people that sighed at all the right parts, gasped at all the little surprises, and laughed practically on cue.

Tony was dying, Steve was gone, and the show—as it always did—went on.