As he watched Tony fall asleep again, Rhodey reflected that he may have been too hard on him-it's not like Tony didn't have good reason to be suspicious of Steve in particular. But at the same time, Tony had been stubborn about accepting any peaceful overtures from anyone on Cap's team before he'd gotten sick, so it's not like he was completely out of line to want Tony to behave himself.

Still, it takes two to tango . . . he eyed Steve and Clint as they returned. "He asked why you're here," Rhodey said without preamble.

Steve stiffened, but Clint just nodded. "It's a fair question, I expected it sooner. Are we bothering him? Should we leave?"

"He didn't say so, but you should know I've got my eye on both of you. I appreciate that you're here to spell me, but not if it's at his expense. You stress him out, freak him out, or even just make him uncomfortable, you're gone. Got it?"

"I hear you loud and clear," Clint said easily, handing him a plate of food.

Steve hesitated. "We don't mean him harm, surely he knows that."

"After what happened? I think some suspicion is perfectly reasonable," Rhodey retorted.

Steve flinched. "I've told him I'd like to mend things between us, but he hasn't replied in kind. What else am I supposed to do?"

"Hasn't replied in kind?" Rhodey repeated disbelievingly. "It's not often that those who betray him are even allowed back into his life. He's giving you a chance, Rogers, but you have to prove yourself. Be a help, not a hindrance. Show him you've got his back the way you were supposed to all along."

Steve was silent, then said quietly, "I still disagree about the Accords."

"Then help him make them better."

Steve took a long, slow breath, then nodded slowly. "What did you tell him about why we're here?"

Rhodey waved dismissively. "Something lame and unconvincing. I wouldn't have believed me. What would you say if he asks?"

"I told him a while ago that I'd be there if he needed me, so here I am."

Rhodey wasn't convinced, but he didn't press the issue. "What about you, Barton?"

"I'm here because Lila loves her Uncle Tony," Clint started, then shrugged. "And there are things I thought and said about him that weren't true or fair, but even so he made sure Laura and the kids were kept safe. I'm in his debt for it."

Rhodey looked at him thoughtfully. "That, I believe. Will you both promise me that you'll make yourselves scarce if he is at all uncomfortable? It's a little hard to be a bouncer from a wheelchair, but I'll do it if I have to."

"We'll leave if it would help," Clint said immediately and Steve nodded in agreement.

Rhodey hoped that would be enough.

.

The evening's breathing treatment was less productive than usual but even Rachel pounding him on the back didn't help, so Tony went to sleep exhausted, aching, and congested. He dreamed of the cave and immersion in freezing water and fears of drowning.

He woke coughing harshly, gasping for breath. He grew lightheaded before he remembered he had to breathe in through his nose if he wanted the help of the oxygen. The coughing accomplished what it hadn't earlier, and he blindly reached for the little plastic basin. Suddenly it was in his hand and he gagged and spit several times until the coughing spell passed.

Once he could breathe well enough to pay attention to something other than pulling air into his lungs, he found he was leaning on something warm. Or, more accurately, draped over something warm, which turned out to be Rogers's arm.

"Are you all right?" He felt the words as much as heard them, and there was a note of worry in the tone.

"Um, yeah. Thanks." He slid the little basin onto the table and snagged his water cup as Rogers helped him shift back onto his pillows.

"Should I call Rachel? That sounded uncomfortable."

"No, I'm good," he said, then took a long draw from his straw. He got only a little water before the straw made the empty sucking sound.

"I can get you more water," Rogers offered.

Tony looked at his cup and then at Rogers, considering. "Thanks," he said finally, handing him the cup.

When his cup was returned full of lovely cold water, Tony focused on that rather than the hovering supersoldier. He didn't know quite what to make of Rogers's solicitousness.

"How's your throat?" Rogers asked after several minutes of silence.

"Doing better," he answered truthfully.

"Good. I wondered, since you still aren't talking much," Rogers teased gently.

Tony chuckled a little and slid his cup back onto the table. "You need air to talk," he said briefly, then carefully drew in a long breath before continuing. "Still working on the breathing thing."

"You seem to be doing much better at that than you were."

"Getting there," Tony agreed. "This helps," he said, tapping the tube connected to his nose.

Rogers nodded but didn't say anything else, and it wasn't much longer before Tony's eyelids grew too heavy to keep them up.

He slept soundly for the remainder of the night.

When he drew near the point of waking, he could hear Barton talking. In the pauses there was no audible response, so he figured out fairly quickly that Barton was on the phone. Likely the morning call with his family.

Tony was more or less awake by the time Barton finished his call. "How are the kids?" he mumbled into the silence.

There was a creak as Barton shifted his weight in the chair. "They miss me," he said simply. "And they're worried. You freaked them out, going down the way you did."

"Sorry," Tony said, peering over at Barton. He didn't look mad, but he was a hard one to read sometimes.

"They'd feel better if they could come and see you."

"Is that allowed?"

Barton shrugged. "I'm sure we can make it happen if you're up for it."

"You don't think all of this-" he gestured at himself and the machines, then took a breath, "-would freak them out?"

"Nah," Barton replied immediately. "Lila managed to see the picture we took of you for Pepper, so we've already had to explain about the machines and everything. You could use a little sprucing up, but I think you're due for a bath this morning anyway."

Tony shuddered. "Don't remind me." The nurses knew what they were doing, but being given a bath in bed was horribly undignified. As was requiring help with his elimination functions, but the less said about that the better. The only redeeming thing about the baths was that they now occurred following the morning breathing treatment when he was exhausted and likely to fall asleep and thus be spared some of the insult to his pride.

"It would have to be an afternoon thing, after Nathaniel's naptime."

That would give him time to sleep after the physical therapist came, and it's not like they would stay long since the kids ate dinner fairly early. It would be good to see them, and since he was going to be as clean as he could get for now . . . "How about today?"

"Sure you're up for it? It doesn't have to be today. I mean, you've not even wanted the rest of the team to visit yet."

How could he explain that the company of the kids was preferable right now? Kids were easy, all you had to do was let them talk at you. Adults-and especially these adults-would require way more effort and attention. He said lamely, "The kids are fewer people."

Barton laughed. "I'll check with Laura, but I think we can plan on that."

Tony nodded. He was saved from having to come up with anything else to say by Rhodey and Rogers returning from breakfast, a tray for Barton in tow. Barton began filling them in just as Rachel arrived for the morning's breathing treatment.

.

"Uncle Tony?" a small, slightly muffled voice said shyly.

Tony opened his eyes and smiled to see Lila bouncing in the doorway, one hand in Laura's and her brightly colored backpack in the other. She was wearing a blue paper mask, but even so he could tell she was grinning. "Hey, little bit," he said fondly.

Lila led Laura to the bed. "Nathaniel was still sleeping, so I left Clint with him, and Cooper stayed back with Auntie Nat," Laura said before Tony could ask. "He's had the sniffles so we wanted to play it safe."

Tony turned his attention back to Lila, who was staring at him solemnly with her big brown eyes. "Can I give you a hug?" she asked.

All of his tubes were on the opposite side of the bed from her, so he saw no reason to say no. "Come on up," he said, patting the open area beside him.

Her face lit up and she carefully climbed onto the bed with Laura's help. Tony sat up as well as he could and she gently slipped her arms around his neck in a hug. He patted her back and she pulled down her mask briefly to kiss his cheek before settling down facing him. "Will you be okay?"

"Eventually, yes."

"Why is your face so hairy?"

He grinned. "I'm trying a new look." He had decided that no one would be able to do justice to his usual goatee, so his morning shave-courtesy of Rogers-was only to trim everything evenly. "Do you like it?"

She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. "Too scratchy," she pronounced, then turned to Laura and asked for her backpack, which she unzipped to withdraw a piece of slightly crumpled paper. She tried to smooth it out, then set it on his lap. "I drew this for you."

"Thank you." His hands shook a little as he examined the drawing. God, he felt so weak and tired.

"Do you want me to explain it?" she asked patiently.

"Please."

"That's you on the bed in the middle, and that's all of us around the bed." She proceeded to name each stick figure, though he had a good idea who was who already from her artistic choices. Vision, for instance, was entirely purple.

"That's really nice," he said when she'd finished her recitation. "Thank you." He wondered if someone had given her the idea to draw it or if she'd come up with it on her own. Rhodey's words from the previous day about being a team echoed in his mind.

"What's that thing in your nose?" she asked abruptly.

"It helps me breathe," he said simply.

A few more questions about his bed and the equipment followed, some of which were answered by Rhodey before he could gather the words. He wondered if his growing exhaustion was that obvious or if Rogers had said something about their conversation the night before.

Her last question was, "Can I read you a bedtime story?"

"It's not bedtime," Tony felt compelled to point out.

She tilted her head as if pondering that. "Then it's a naptime story," she decided. "I'll read and you'll take a nap."

His exhaustion must be that obvious. "Sure, honey," he said agreeably, glancing at Laura, who reached over and squeezed his hand.

Lila rearranged herself to sit snuggled up against his side so he could see the pictures (he didn't mention that the pictures wouldn't matter if he was supposed to be sleeping), then began reading. It was something cutesy about a cat with shoes and he couldn't keep his eyes open past the first two pages.

He could still hear, though, so he knew when she stopped and he felt it when she climbed off the bed. "Was that okay?" he heard her ask someone worriedly.

He knew she wasn't talking to him, but he gave a thumbs up anyway. It was perfect.

.

After Lila's visit, Tony felt like he didn't have good reason to continue refusing to allow the rest of the team (such as it was) to visit him, too. But there would be ground rules.

To start, there would be no more than four people in the room at a time; this was recommended by Nikki and he liked the idea.

Also, no extra visitors while he was being tormented by Rachel or the physical therapist or even the nurses. In practice, this mostly limited their visits to the hours between lunch and dinner, which was just fine with him.

Last, if he was sleeping, don't wake him up. Rhodey thought that rule was unnecessary since it was common decency to let a sleeping person be, but Tony wanted to be specific, just in case.

Even as he was agreeing to the team visiting, Tony hoped they wouldn't come right away. It was absurd how tiring Lila's visit the day before had been even though he hadn't really done anything but sit there. Fortunately they took pity on him and didn't show up that afternoon.

He wasn't so lucky with Rachel. Now that his throat wasn't as sore, she started nagging him about eating and even told the doctors they should start scaling back how much he got through his feeding tube. Meal times were fraught with peril as he was offered things he didn't want to eat or drink but felt compelled to take anyway to signal that he was trying.

As if his continued existence wasn't proof enough that he was trying to recover.

Two days after Lila visited, Tony woke at lunchtime and opened his eyes to find the blinds on the hallway window had been lifted and everyone he'd left behind at the compound was standing there (even Cooper), watching him and waving.

"Can't you give a guy some warning?" he grumbled. He was genuinely happy to see the kids. He could do without most of the rest of them-he had no idea what they wanted from him and he frankly didn't care.

And they had brought lunch, because of course they would, and he didn't want any but they would offer and that was going to be awkward. He was debating whether he had time to plausibly "fall asleep" before someone could try to give him food when Lila brought over a cup and a colorful bendy straw and put them on his table.

Someone had made him a smoothie and the straw was one of Lila's favorites and how could he not try it with those big eyes watching his every move? He finished it for the same reasons, even though Lila had been shepherded out of the room at some point and was no longer supervising.

Natasha and Wilson stayed in the room with Rhodey and Barton-Rogers went with everyone else to somewhere else, he didn't know or care where-and he had to admit it was nice to hear some different voices as he slipped back into sleep.

.

Now that Tony was willing to allow visits from the rest of the team, there was something of a revolving door of superheroes cycling through his room. He was never sure who he might wake up to find beside him, since there could be up to three new faces (never four: one of his original three was always there too, most often it was Rhodey), and he was often surprised to see who had decided to come back. He'd been certain that a few of them wouldn't darken his doorway beyond that first day when everyone came, but there they were. Funny how they suddenly cared, now that he was sick.

Perhaps the oddest combination of visitors had been Wilson, Wanda, Vision, and Barton. Barton, of course, had been around, but Wilson and Wanda had no real reason to want to see him. They were probably there just to see Barton. Vision was something of a mystery; he'd been a staunch ally, that was true, but Tony suspected the only person he truly cared for was Wanda.

Rogers excused himself from babysit-Tony-duty after the team had been coming for a few days. "Duty calls," he'd said apologetically. Tony realized he should know about and possibly have input into some of the things Rogers was working on but he couldn't muster the energy to insist upon being informed.

In the meantime, Tony successfully graduated to a regular nose-thing-that-provides-air (it had a name, but he couldn't ever seem to remember what it was). Rachel was pleased with his progress, but still needled him about eating and needled the doctors about removing the feeding tube.

The evening doctor that had been around from the beginning (who Barton had called Doctor not-Bruce until they found out the doctor's name was, in fact, Dr. Bruce) agreed with Rachel, so they liberated him from that tube one evening. Now Tony was left with only the IV and the oxygen tube hanging around, and that was a good feeling despite his reservations about having to eat.

With fewer things for him to get hung up on, Zack the physical therapist started having him try moving around a bit more. One day he got to sit on the edge of his bed, his legs over the side and his feet several inches above the floor. It was a simple thing, yet he hadn't done it in so long that it felt like a huge step forward, never mind that he was maybe a little light-headed while he sat there and then he felt tired afterward.

Apparently he'd done well enough, though: the next day Zack had him sit on the edge of the bed and then ease forward so his feet were on the floor. His full weight wasn't on his legs, not yet-and Zack's hold on him made sure that even if he slipped off the edge of the mattress he wouldn't collapse onto the floor-but his bare feet were planted on the cold tile. He hadn't been on his own two feet in weeks. Goosebumps rose up on his skin and they had nothing to do with the temperature.

Predictably, the day after that was devoted to working his way up to actually standing. It hurt to try to straighten up fully and he was leaning a not inconsiderable amount of his weight into Zack's grip on his elbows, but he could stand.

One step closer to normalcy.

.

The next morning, the breakfast awaiting him when he woke included a cup of a dark brew that smelled vaguely like coffee. He picked it up and sniffed it more carefully, trying to decide if the slightly sour aroma was due to the interference of the nose-thingy or emanated from the liquid itself. Since he wasn't going to remove the tube, he couldn't draw any conclusions.

All the while, Barton watched him closely. A little too closely. Tony grew suspicious, especially since Rhodey was mysteriously not in the room. "What's this?" he demanded finally.

"It's exactly what you think it is," Barton said evasively.

Rhodey rolled into the room, wearing different clothes than Tony had seen him in last. So that's where he'd been.

"What is this?" he asked of Rhodey, gesturing toward the styrofoam cup squatting on his table.

Rhodey addressed Barton instead of answering. "You gave him some of that coffee?"

"I think he can handle it," Barton argued.

"Careful, Tony. It's pretty terrible," Rhodey warned.

"So it is coffee," Tony said, picking up the cup again and taking a cautious sip.

Whatever look crossed his face made Barton howl with laughter. He sipped it a second time, just to be sure he really tasted it, then set the cup down with a frown. Was it possible that being sick had affected his taste buds? Because that was not at all what coffee was supposed to taste like, even terrible coffee.

"Give me yours," he ordered, gesturing to Rhodey.

Rhodey sighed and passed his over by way of the table. Tony sniffed it, then sipped it carefully. That was vastly better. "Okay, see, that is coffee," he said, giving it back to Rhodey. "I don't know what the hell this other stuff is."

"Worst coffee ever?" Barton asked with a grin.

"Indigestion in a cup," Tony corrected with a grimace.

A/N: Just for the record, kids visiting ICU isn't usually a thing, for infection reasons. But Lila is too cute to resist, even as an author. The book about a cat with shoes is _Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes_.