Chapter Text
The last of the creatures went down with a shriek that made Steve’s ears ring and a heavy thud as its scaled body hit the pavement. He shook his head to clear it, the painful noise seemingly stuck inside his skull. None of the other winged, insect-like monsters that had suddenly crawled out of the sewers had made any noise like that, or any noise at all besides the buzzing of their wings. This last one, the one that did, was for all Steve could see exactly identical to all the others and he absentmindedly wondered if that supported Tony’s theory of the creatures sporting a hive mind. In that case, the last one to fall might simply have given the death-cry for the entire group.
Judging by the way the things had coordinated their fight, Steve was actually pretty sure that there had been a hive mind at work. They needed to keep that in mind for the next time these creatures showed up – because if there was one thing years and years of being a superhero had taught him it was that basically no threat that had surfaced once would never surface again. Even villains who got killed usually came back sooner or later. Steve would know, after all.
With these monsters, as individual creatures, he had no doubt that they would stay dead. But it seemed pretty likely that there were more where they had come from. Admittedly, though, they hadn’t been all that much of a threat, especially since the Avengers knew something about coordinating their movements as well.
Even now. Even when some of them weren’t even on speaking terms with one another.
By the time Steve’s head had cleared enough from the noise, he found himself alone amidst three dozen fallen insect-monsters the size of ponies. Iron Man had taken off as soon as he was no longer needed, not lingering any longer by Steve’s side than he absolutely had to, and Steve felt disappointment at the realization even before he felt anger. Eventually he tried to settle for relief because he didn’t really want Tony to be around and any attempt at conversation would only have been awkward, but the feeling wouldn’t quite stick.
Anger it was, then. Being angry at Tony was, after all, so very easy.
“Guess he’s not sticking around for the clean-up,” Luke’s voice sounded right beside Steve, reminding him that he wasn’treally alone among smashed monsters so much as he was alone among smashed monsters and a bunch of brightly-colored superheroes. He shook his head, deciding to forget Stark for the moment.
“There might be more of them,” he voiced his earlier thoughts. “We need to find out were they came from.” Which meant a visit to the canalization. Steve suppressed an unhappy sigh as he activated his com-link. “Miss Marvel, how are things with you?”
“Sticky and disgusting, but over,” Carol’s voice replied. ”Iron Man just splattered the last of them against a wall.”
That explained where Tony had gone, then. Steve tried to ignore the fact that Carol and her team certainly hadn’t faced any more difficulties with the insectoid invasion than Steve’s team and had hardly needed the extra help. In fact, he decided to ignore Tony altogether. “We need to find out where they came from before more of them arrive.”
“Based on the fact that they gravitated towards the water but didn’t come to the surface anywhere near it, the old subway seems to be a pretty safe bet.” That was Tony’s voice, slightly mechanic sounding but completely free of distortions in a way that told Steve he was using Extremis to access the comm. unit. “I’m gonna check it out.”
“No need,” Steve found himself saying. “We got it covered. Stay up here and watch for any new arrivals.”
He cut the connection and looked up to find Wolverine staring at him with a disgruntled expression and claws still dripping slimy bug-matter. “Did you just volunteer us for canalization duty?” the mutant asked incredulously.
“You volunteered for canalization duty the moment you decided to spend your life fighting evil in colorful spandex,” Steve reminded him. “Let’s go. The sooner we start the sooner it’s over.”
-
The old subway had been a good tip, but they didn’t make for a comfortable trip. The tunnels were partially under water, having been abandoned long ago after being flooded too many times. They had been intended as an express network of subway lines beneath the subway, but even though the project had been sponsored by the rich and the famous as an exclusive subway unavailable to the general public, maintenance had proven to be too expensive and the tunnels had been given up after only a few years. As far as Steve was able to judge it, the whole thing had been a bad idea from the start. And not only because it meant he had to sneak through the cold darkness several hundred feet beneath New York to look for monster bugs.
At least Tony had had the right idea: the bugs liked the water. Steve, Logan and Jessica Drew found a large number of empty egg shells and a few dead bugs in a small pool of water that glittered in the artificial light of their torches. Wolverine took a sniff at the dead bugs, then at the water.
“Dead for about three days,” he told them. “The water is full of chlor, highly concentrated. I wouldn’t drink it if I were you.”
“I wouldn’t drink anything down here,” Spiderwoman pointed out. “Or touch it if I can avoid it.”
Steve could sympathize. “So the water got poisoned and they had to migrate? Why go topside if they kept to the tunnels before?”
“You want a guess?” Logan shrugged. “It’s the poisoned water that drove them out of hiding, and with so many new members of their crawling society, they decided to go where the food is.” He gestured at the eggshells. “All these hatched recently. They probably lay here for decades.”
“Maybe they were never intended to live in the tunnels. Maybe some bugs just placed their eggs here so they’d be safe until they hatched,” Jessica speculated.
“And then they did, but the water got poisoned and they were driven out before they were quite ready,” Steve completed the thought.
Before the Avengers had been called, the two swarms of giant bugs had killed three people; eaten their flesh right off their bones. Steve grimaced at the thought that the creatures they fought might not even have been fully grown yet.
Logan seemed to have the same thought. “Good thing their parents didn’t show up.”
“Tony was right,” Steve mused. “They were seeking out the water. They took the exit closest to the harbor that’s directly accessible from these tunnels.”
Logan made a soft, snorting noise, while Jessica let the light for her torch run over the empty shells one last time before sending it back the way they had come, into the oppressive darkness that could hide all sorts of things. “Think there are more of them?”
“Not anywhere near here,” Logan said. “Would’ve smelled them.”
“I’m impressed you can smell anything at all down here.”
“I can smell enough.” His claws came out with a faint noise and retracted again, so quickly Steve barely noticed at all. “And I say we should go back up, because I smell a lot of things all around us that will not tolerate us in their territory much longer.”
Steve shuddered. He listened and heard nothing. But Logan had his claws out on the way back and that was enough to make him clutch his shield and hurry.
-
Wolverine relaxed gradually the closer they got to the exit and the daylight that waited for them. He was the only one; Steve and Jessica remained tense and at least Steve breathed an audible sigh of relief when they climbed out of the tunnels and onto the street.
The world beneath the city belonged to other people. Other people and other things. As long as they kept to themselves and didn't threaten the rest of the population, Steve was happy to leave them be.
There was a large, strangely shaped statue standing beside the exit they climbed out of. After the long, silent darkness of the tunnels, its stony, unmoved stare was vaguely unsettling, even considering that it had no face. Steve suppressed another, even more irrational shudder and turned away from it, trying to figure out where they were.
His communicator cackled. “Did you find anything?" Tony's voice sounded in his ears. There had been a communication blackout while they were in the tunnels, the reception capitulating before tons of rock and metal, but Tony, being Tony, had known the moment they were back within reach. The Extremis had probably alerted him.
"Just an empty nest," Steffi replied. "Seems they are all gone. Anything here?"
"All quiet. Seems that was it. Meet us back at the mansion when you are ready."
"Yeah, see you." Steve almost winched at his own words; they sounded far too normal, too familiar. Talking to Tony, even those few words, had almost made him forget that outside of missions and Avenger business, they didn't. That if anyone asked Steve how he felt about Tony these days, he would have a hard time telling if it was just anger and betrayal, or of there was genuine hatred thrown in the mix as well.
They were all working together as a team again, but nothing had been undone. Acting like it never happened wouldn't fix anything, and Steve should better start to remember that.
Especially since he was the only one who ever seemed to forget, at least where Tony was concerned. Things between the other members of the team were still tense and Tony kept away from all of them, either not caring enough to seek them out, well aware that most of them only tolerated but didn't actually want him on the team.
Of all the Avengers, even the pro-registration heroes, he was the only one who hadn't come to see Steve after he had come back to life.
It was hard to believe that Steve had only come back two weeks ago, and some of that time was nothing more than a blur of sensations and fractured memories; the sound of a gunshot, pain ripping though him and Sharon’s voice from far away. Then a vague recollection of movement. Steve thought that he might have walked somewhere, remembered, perhaps, the road beneath his feet, but if he tried to grasp it, there was nothing more specific than a dream.
He didn’t even remember showing up at the mansion’s doorstep, had only learned he had walked there under his own power from Sam, who was the one who had caught in as he stumbled through the door. The first thing he knew was waking up in his old room and barely recognizing it now that all pictures and personal affects were gone.
The second thing he remembered was everyone coming to meet him: Sam, Luke, the two Jessicas, the ones who’d fought at his side; but also Carol and even Reed Richards along with the rest of his team. Everyone, even the ones he had fought so bitterly before his death, had been so very eager to welcome him back. Everyone but Tony.
It was probably unfair that he recalled the confusion and bitterness over Tony’s absence more clearly than the joy over seeing everyone else.
In the days that followed, literally every superhero currently active in the United States, as well as some retired ones, had come to see him. Only Tony remained absent. And it was stupid after everything that had happened between them, but Steve had still expected him to come. He had expected him to be the first to greet him, even though he couldn’t explain why.
For a while there, in the beginning, he had been convinced that Tony was dead, and that had been a thought he’d found himself unable to face. It had taken him courage to ask where Iron Man was when the team assembled around him for the first time, and Carol’s short and suspiciously vague reply had been, “Busy.”
So there had been relief, and then the disappointment and anger had set in full force. They had dominated Steve’s emotional world ever since, and now the fact that his own mind seemed so eager to forget all the big and small betrayals Tony just kept piling on top of each other only fuelled his irritation.
In the light of that, it was probably for the better that Tony seemed to have cut the connection without waiting for Steve’s reply.
Steve scowled at that, too, then hoped no one had seen. He had been back to life for barely two weeks and was already leading a superhero team again, with all the responsibility that entailed. He needed to get a hold of the world again, and of being alive in it, before he could try to figure out what to do with broken friendships and feelings that led him nowhere. None of that mattered for his job – if anything, this fight today had shown that mutual resentment or not, Captain America and Iron Man fought together as well as they always had. It didn’t matter what they privately felt. It didn’t affect their performances and therefore, resolving their issues had no priority.
It didn’t matter. Plain and simple. It was meaningless. Had they messed up, had they made errors because they no longer blindly knew what the other was doing and hadn’t had each other’s back in battle at least, then Steve would have been forced the confront Tony about all the things that stood between them and find a way to work it out.
But Tony wasn’t even giving him that much.
-
In the time Steve had been dead, a lot of things had happened. Skrulls had invaded the Earth and were driven away. Thor returned. Amnesties had been handed out by the dozen to the unregistered heroes who had helped save the world from the invasion. Registration was not repealed but generally treated by everyone and their dog like it didn’t exist, at least where the heroes with amnesties were concerned. At some point everyone went insane and thought it would be a good idea to hand SHIELD over to Norman Osborn of all people. At some later point, Nick Fury had been reinstated as director.
Steve had heard the stories told in ten different ways by ten different people and it had taken him a while to at least figure out in what order everything had happened. The most important thing (since the world was not currently under Skrull-rule) was that the SHRA was no longer an issue. Not to the general public, anyway. It no longer was anything worth fighting over.
That didn’t mean it hadn’t left scars. Steve understood that his return had done a lot to unite both those who fought with him and those who opposed him in their joy to have him back (and that was a humbling thought right there, an honor he wasn’t sure he deserved), but tension remained. It had been easy to forget, during Steve’s darkest moments, that there had been more people affected than just him and Tony, but now, even though they were learning to work together again, it became obvious that more than just their friendship had been broken. Once everyone got used to working as one team again, much of it might be repaired and trust, Steve was sure, would be rebuild, but things would never be the same as before.
Or maybe he was seeing things too pessimistic, just because he couldn’t imagine anything ever being the same again for him.
The mansion had been rebuilt. That was another thing Steve had not expected, even though he should have. The last time he had been here, he had fought Tony in the ruins. (Tony, who’d come to talk and ended up fighting Steve without his armor and without a chance.) Now it was standing again, housing the Avengers again, as if nothing had ever happened.
Of course that, too, was just a facade. Inside, it was glaringly obvious that this building was but a copy of the one Steve knew. Everything looked mostly the same, but it didn’t feel like home. This wasn’t the first time the place had been rebuilt, but somehow this time, it felt off. Wrong.
Inside the mansion, everyone else was already waiting for Steve, Logan and Jessica as when they made it back from the sewers. The conversations that were going on halted as everyone turned to look at Steve expectantly and wait for his report. They could have looked at Jessica or Logan, but they looked at him. They always did. Usually, it didn’t brother him.
The big, misshapen statue on the lawn was looking at him, too.
Logan ignored them all in favor of getting a beer from the fridge. He didn’t give the impression of being very interested in what was going on, but then, he knew what Steve was going to tell them since he had been there, and no one expected him to make any report of his own.
Before he started, Steve took a moment to look over the assembled heroes he had had lost hope to ever see peacefully in one room again. Carol and Jessica Drew were turned towards each other, apparently eager to continue some conversation that had been interrupted by their latest mission. Jan, small and winged, was sitting on Hank’s shoulder and Redwing on Sam’s. Luke stood with his arms crossed, his Jessica by his side. Peter was hanging from the ceiling, just for the heck of it as far as Steve could tell. It looked almost normal, almost fine.
Thor wasn’t there. He had returned, but preferred to spend his time in Asgard. After everything that had happened, Steve couldn’t blame him, but he felt his old friend’s absence like a missing limp. Thor had always been at the very core of the Avengers, right beside Steve as one of his closest and most trusted friends.
Tony stood apart from the others, near the door, as if he were ready to leave. He was looking right at Steve, but was still in armor, his helmet closed. Not for the first time, Steve cursed how easy the armor made it for Tony to hide behind the face plate and keep everything inside, unseen. He could be glaring behind the mask. He could be smiling, or frowning, or baring his teeth. Steve didn’t know. All he knew was that he was looking at him.
Or maybe he was asleep in there. It had happened before.
“So, was that the last wave of monstrous killer bugs to swap over the city or do we have to stock up on bug spay?” Peter asked, pulling Steve’s mind back to the topic at hand. He told them what the three of them had found, and what conclusions they had drawn, keeping it short and clipped. The next day, a few of them would be going down to the tunnels again and search the rest of the old subway for more nests, they decided. No one was particularly eager to volunteer for the job, but Logan was set anyway thanks to his sharpened senses. He snarled at the mention, but didn’t look altogether too irritated by the prospect. He just looked like Logan. A certain amount of irritation was part of his basic setting.
When Steve was done, his eyes searched out Tony again, but Tony had already left the room.
-
Tony, it later turned out, had gone to the lab in the mansion’s basement right after the meeting. Not that Steve had asked, or gone looking for him; it simply became obvious when the next morning, just as Wolverine, Spiderman and Miss Marvel were about to leave, Tony appeared to present them with the bug-detector he had build overnight.
Peter’s eyes were surprisingly bright with eagerness when Tony explained how it worked, but if it was the scientist in him being excited about this toy or the fact that they would not have to crawl through the darkness full of monsters for hours, Steve couldn’t tell. What he understood was that Tony had found some properties in the greenish, acidic slime that the bugs liked to use as a weapon that were unlike anything he had ever seen before and had tuned his detectors to look solely for those properties. Under the earth their range would be limited, but the three going out to look would still be able to search a much larger area in a much shorter time.
“What do you mean by properties you’ve never seen before?” Steve asked once the others were gone. This was the first time since his return that he was alone with Tony. This was the first time, even, that he saw him without his armor on, the first time Steve saw his face, even if Tony seemed determined not to look at him. This was an opportunity Steve only now realized he had been waiting for, and he didn’t want to waste it talking about bugs. He heard himself do it anyway because it was important. It was something he needed to know about.
Tony was pale, with bloodshot eyes, and wearing an uncharacteristically badly fitting sweater, and Steve couldn’t stop staring at him.
“I mean, they might not be native from this universe.”
Steve nearly groaned out loud. This was just what they needed right now: interdimensional, man-eating monster bugs from a universe full of those things.
Tony seemed to guess his thoughts; something vaguely resembling a smile brushed against his lips and disappeared again. “That doesn’t have to mean the pathway to their dimension is still open. Wolverine said they have been there for decades at least, right? It’s perfectly possible that a couple of pregnant females fell through a gap between the universes that has long since closed, placed a few hundred eggs along the tunnel walls and died. This may well be over.”
“It would surely explain why we never saw anything of these things before,” Steve mused. Tony was right, it was all perfectly possible. “But when are things ever that easy for us?”
There was a sound like a soft snort. “Let’s keep an eye open for them. Logan and the others are scanning the tunnels and I’ll scan the area for any interdimensional portals there might be. It’s all we can do for now.”
It was. For now, there was no immediate action they could take, and that meant that they had time, right now, to talk about different matters. Steve wanted to say something but the room suddenly felt far too public. Any of the others could come in any moment. By the time he decided to speak anyway, Tony was already walking out of the room, swaying ever so slightly on his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Lab,” Tony replied. “As it happens, I have an interdimensional energy scanner lying around, but there are some adjustments I have to make.”
Correction, then: There was no immediate action Steve could take. Tony could make himself useful still, and he ought to, too. Steve let him go.
-
And then he didn’t see Tony again for days. Considering he hadn’t seen him for weeks beforehand, and before that he had been dead for months and before that they had tried to kill each other, maybe it wasn’t all that remarkable, but somehow it bothered Steve. They had been alone for a moment there, had had every chance to say things not intended for anyone else’s ears, and yet Tony had said nothing. Not even a simple “I’m glad you’re not dead anymore.” Not even a “Welcome back”, and most certainly no apology.
Steve was, quite frankly, pissed off. He tried not to be because it meant investing too much energy into something simply not worth it, but he couldn’t stop it. As usual, Tony got under his skin.
Even when he wasn’t actually around.
The search for bug nests and dimensional portals remained fruitless, to everyone’s relief. In the following days, the Avengers took care of some street-level crime; it was nothing big or particularly challenging and Iron Man never made an appearance. Tony seemed quite happy with sinking back into his seclusion and keeping his distance. And if he didn’t want anything to do with them, Steve would let him be. It wasn’t like they were friends, anymore.
So he ignored the issue, kept on acting as if Tony Stark was nothing more than a consultant who occasionally helped out with technological or scientific problems, just like everyone else was already doing. He was surprised when Jan approached him one day when he was leaving the mansion to go for a walk and out of the blue said, “You should talk to him.”
“Talk to whom?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t act stupid, Steve. You have been grumpy ever since you got back, and after you saw Tony it’s only gotten worse.”
“I’m not grumpy,” Steve said, because he wasn’t.
“Oh yes, you are. You’re sulking.”
“I’m what?”
“Sulking, Steve. You are tense and close yourself off and yesterday you snapped at Peter for some silly joke.”
Steve frowned at her, trying to remember the incident. “Even if I did, what would Tony have to do with it? He’s barely even on the team right now. I haven’t seen him in over a week.”
“Exactly.” Jan looked at him with an expression that said, ‘Well, duh.’
Steve did his best to look blank, because that expression best reflected his thought process.
“Steve, every time you and Tony fight, or don’t talk to each other, or Tony’s just gone for an extended period of time you get like this. There’s a pattern. Now, you come back from the dead and Tony doesn’t come to greet you? You sulk. It’s not hard to figure out.”
“This isn’t about Tony,” Steve insisted, though he wasn’t even fooling himself. “I just don’t... I mean.” He suppressed a groan; here he was, stuttering like a schoolboy with a crush just because his mouth had started talking before his mind actually thought of what to say. Also, his start had sounded embarrassingly like a confession. “It’s going to be hard to work this team if he won’t talk to me,” he finally settled for. “I know he doesn’t care about me or our friendship anymore, but it would help if he could get over himself enough to at least acknowledge my existence.”
“Steve.” Jan’s eyes, that had looked at him with soft amusement before, now showed mostly sympathy – and something else. “Tony cares. You can’t imagine how much. He can’t even handle how much. Your death broke him. Literally. He was in pieces, Steve. I… was worried.” She said the last words carefully, in a way something inside Steve didn’t like. “To be honest, I still am.”
“Tony’s fine.”
“Is he? Drowning himself in work, hiding from everyone, not sleeping or eating; does any of that sound remotely fine to you?”
“Actually, that all just sounds like Tony Stark.”
“Touché.” Jan gave him a half-smile, but her eyes remained solemn. “But I mean it. Getting you killed nearly killed Tony as well, but with everything that happened before he probably doesn’t know how to approach you. If you still care about him, at all, you’ll talk to him.”
“Tony didn’t get me killed,” Steve pointed out. “That was all on Red Skull.”
This time, Jan’s smile was a little brighter. She took Steve’s arm and playfully bumped into him as they walked down the sidewalk and past one of the ugly statues overlooking the river. “Talk to him, Steve. For all our sakes. You just came back to life; that’s a pretty joyous occasion for most people. You were given a second chance at everything. It’s about time you act it.”
-
So Steve did. Or at least he meant to. Meant to seek out Tony in his lab and have the talk they’d both been avoiding for so long. If nothing else, it would give him clarity over how Tony really felt. Because he was far from convinced that Jan was right. She and Tony had been friends for longer than Steve had known either of them, but it was evident that Tony didn’t talk to her any more than he did to Steve. Even Carol, who these days seemed closer to Tony than anyone else by the power of sheer determination, was barely seen with him anymore. Jan was right in one thing: Tony locked them all out. No one knew how he felt about anything.
If nothing else, Steve owed it to both of them and the friendship they once shared to find out.
Except that, of course, Tony didn’t live in the mansion anymore. He had stayed there for a few days in the aftermath of the bug incident, locked either in his lab or his armor, but now that potential threat no longer demanded his attention, he had moved back to the tower where he was closer to his company. Steve didn’t talk to him because he simply didn’t get the chance.
He’d do it the next time Tony came by. Whenever that would be.
-
There was a robbery at a bank near Central Park. Not usually something superheroes were necessarily needed for, but the robbers were using cutting edge technology that was a little more than the police could handle, so the Avengers jumped in to help. It was no big deal in the end, because the robbers, for all their advanced tech, were basically acting the way all bank robbers did once they were surrounded by police and people with superpowers. There wasn’t even any need to call in Iron Man, who still was their go-to guy for all matters of a technological nature.
Only Captain America, Spiderman, Falcon and Wasp went out, the four of them a force more than enough to deal with this minor problem. Wolverine was busy with X-Men business, Luke was out with his family, Carol was running an errand somewhere, and even those few who assembled for this job were close to overkill. Spiderman even openly admitted that he was only joining them for these five minutes of excitement because it had been a slow week.
In other words, they went into it far too arrogant and careless.
Nothing bad happened. They took out the seven robbers in a matter of minutes. The money was saved. More importantly, the hostages were saved. There was applause when they were done. Not even the criminals were physically harmed, even though one broke his dignity when he tried to hide behind a young woman in business attire who was paralyzed with fear and Peter shot little strings of webbing at him from various directions in the Spiderman-equivalent of tapping his shoulders from the wrong side before finally taking him out by webbing his masked face against the wall. And that was where Steve lost it.
He waited until they were well on their way home, away from any prying ears, but even that was hard. As soon as he felt safe to do so, he got into Peter’s space, doing his best to just sound stern but knowing he actually sounded angry. Really angry. Because he was.
Peter had just been swapping jokes with Sam and looked completely startled when suddenly Captain America towered over him and told him, in not quite those words, that he was an irresponsible moron.
“You could just have taken the guy out within one second,” Steve elaborated. “There was no need to toy with him like that.”
“Come on,” Sam said, raising his hands in a calming gesture. “It’s not like Spidey hurt him. And it’s also not like the guy didn’t have it coming, for terrifying that poor woman like that.”
“Exactly!” Now Steve stabbed his finger at both of them as if it would help drive the point home. “You played around with the robber without any consideration for the hostage. She was scared for her life and you made a game out of it.”
Peter looked chagrined, but also defensive. “I’m not an idiot! I’d never endanger anyone for fun, and you know it. First thing I did was web the blade of his knife. He couldn’t have hurt her with it if he tried.”
“And I bet she didn’t notice that. Damn it, Peter, not everyone deals with this kind of thing on a daily basis. That woman is probably going to need counseling to get over it. More of the hostages might. For us this was just a minor incident, barely worth remembering, but for them is was a traumatic experience and you need to keep that in mind.” Steve took a deep breath, trying to control his emotions. He was a lot angrier about this than he had any right to be. “If nothing else, remember that for all our amnesties, the registration act is not off the table yet. This is exactly the kind of irresponsibility that can bring it back to everyone’s attention.”
The kind of irresponsible behavior that Tony had tried to keep in check with all the wrong methods. (Steve heard his voice, suddenly, back in the ruins of the mansion when Tony said, It could have been me, speaking of the New Warriors and their disastrous mistake that cost so many lives and started it all. When he’d told Steve of the mistakes he had made when wearing the armor while drunk, and how he wanted a law that would hold him accountable if he, as a superhero, hurt someone even if he didn’t mean to.)
Before him, Peter flinched at the impact of his words, looking like a school boy chastised by his favorite teacher. (It brought back other memories of that day. Everyone idolizes you, Cap.) Sam was frowning and Jan looked at Steve with an unreadable expression on her face. Steve met her eyes for a second before turning away. “Go home without me,” he told them. “There’s something I have to do.”
The last thing he heard before he was out of earshot was Peter asking the others, “Anyone got an idea why he seems to have it out for me lately?”
-
Start Tower was, well, towering over Steve for lack of a better word, like a damn threat he had to take on. But Steve was nothing if not fearless, and right now he was determined to get this over with. Because Jan was right, he needed to do this. Steve had thought any personal business between him and Tony didn’t matter anymore since they no longer had any kind of personal relationship, but he had been fooling himself, and if his issues with his teammate influenced his performance as a leader, he needed to do something about it.
Besides, his excuses for not dealing with Tony until now felt too much like running away, and that just wasn’t him.
So he entered the tower, drove up with the private elevator. No one stopped him. Apparently he was still welcome this far.
As it turned out, it was Jarvis who had allowed him entry. The old man smiled an uncharacteristically broad smile when he saw Steve and Steve found himself smiling back. He’d missed the butler, and told him so. “We all miss you at the mansion,” he added, because he knew it was true even if no one ever said anything. “Peter keeps stuffing the fridge with unhealthy food, and he doesn’t even live there. I think it’s because MJ keeps a close watch on what he’s eating at home. And Logan… well, you know Logan.”
“Living off beer.” Jarvis frowned, but it seemed to be more habit that real disapproval. He looked a little wistful. “I would like to return,” he confessed in his precise, British voice. “I always favored the mansion over the tower, but Master Anthony needs to be close to the company in these times, and to the workshop in the basement. It is not yet an option, though I’m confident the time will come.”
“You’re keeping the place spotless as always,” Steve observed. He couldn’t see much of the penthouse from his spot near the elevator, but what he saw looked almost unlived in. “We could definitely need your influence at home. Sure Stark won’t let you move ahead of schedule?”
It was meant to be a joke to show his appreciation, but Jarvis’ expression was somber and a little sad when he shook his head. “Master Anthony already told me to do so. I requested to remain here for the time being, as I think this is were I’m needed most at the moment.” He began leading Steve to the kitchen and Steve found every bit of the penthouse that he saw as spotless as the entrance. (All the pictures that used to decorate the walls were gone.)
It didn’t look like Jarvis was having all that much to do here.
“Where’s Tony?” Steve asked, suddenly tense. “I need to talk to him.”
“He has had a few important meetings in Bangkok and Beijing last week. He should come home sometime today, but I cannot tell you exactly when.”
Steve couldn’t even tell if what he felt at the information was disappointment or relief. “So I guess there’s no point in simply waiting here until he shows up?” Not that he had anything better to do, but he could well imagine that Tony would probably want to fall into bed and sleep for a day after getting back, rather than discuss unpleasant points of their personal history with Steve.
“It would depend, I imagine, on how much time you have at your disposal. I can tell him he shall give you a call once he returned. In the meantime we can ask Miss Potts if she knows more about his arrival time.”
Of course, if anyone knew about Tony’s schedule, it would be Pepper Potts. “Can you call her?”
“Naturally.” Jarvis went to a terminal inlaid in the wall and opened a video call with an ease that seemed out of sync with his past-century-British-butler image. The face of Pepper Potts appeared after only a few seconds and the frown on her face disappeared when she recognized Jarvis. Steve himself remained outside the camera’s vision and kept his mouth shut.
“Jarvis,” Pepper said with a smile. “And here I thought Tony would bother to update me for a change. What can I do for you?”
“There is a visitor for Master Anthony and we were wondering if you knew when he is scheduled tp come back, Miss Potts,” Jarvis replied, leaving Steve strangely grateful that he did not give away Steve’ presence. He liked Pepper, but right now he didn’t have the patience for the reaction people – even those who knew he wasn’t dead anymore – had when seeing him for the first time.
Pepper’s frown reappeared. It was an expression Steve was all too familiar with. “He came back about six hours ago. Didn’t he check in with you?”
“I would certainly have noticed had he returned to the penthouse. He might have gone directly to his workshop. I will check there.”
“Yeah,” Pepper said. She sounded resigned. “Good luck.”
“I’ll go check on him,” Steve said once the connection was cut. “I’m the one who wanted to talk to him, after all.”
“Very well,” Jarvis agreed. He looked at the coffee maker just about to be done but seemed to know that Steve wouldn’t have the patience for a cup of coffee right now. “If you can make him come up for food and sleep, I would much appreciate it.” He didn’t sound like he had much hope.
The elevator going down to the workshop was still password protected, and Steve was quite surprised to find his old code and voice-recognition still working. He had thought Tony would have changed it during their time as enemies. But the elevator carried him down and the door to the workshop opened to his voice, and there Tony was, standing underneath a shapeless construct and fumbling with wires and tubes Steve couldn’t even begin to put a name to.
The room was warm, much warmer than it used to be. Steve had expected it to be a little chilly as usual, but the temperature was just right. Tony was still wearing a long sleeved shirt underneath a baggy, oversized t-shirt that used to be white but was now covered in stains, the most prominent of them a black smear across the left side that Steve found himself staring at for no reason.
He was working with a quiet intensity Steve was used to seeing on him but had never grown tired of watching. Even now he hesitated for a long time before making his presence known. Whatever Tony was creating there, it had to be important. He never displayed this kind of focus when he was building something for fun.
“What is that going to be?”
Tony flinched at his voice and turned, surprise written all over his face for one precious, unguarded second before his expression closed off. He really hadn’t noticed Steve coming in. “What are you doing here?” he asked warily instead of answering the question. “Is there something you need?”
“Yeah, I need you.” Well, that came out wrong. Tony turned, for the first time fully looking at Steve, and arched his eyebrows, amusement softening the unreadable depths of his red-rimmed blue eyes. “Why, Captain, I had no idea.”
“I need to talk to you,” Steve clarified, feeling irritation rise inside him and letting it sound through his voice. Tony’s expression closed off again and he turned back to his work, clearly expecting Steve to go on.
Okay, this wasn’t a good start. Steve rubbed his eyes because Tony had his back turned and couldn’t see it, and tried again. “What are you working on?”
“A non-fuel engine for middle-sized high-speed boats the coast guard has commissioned, if you absolutely have to know. Big, very important contract. Don’t know if you heard about it, but the company’s had some problems lately and this prototype is due in two days, so you can see that I’m a little busy right now.”
And they were back to Tony trying to get rid of him. Steve frowned and tried to remain calm. Somehow, that was a challenge around Tony more often than not, even when Tony wasn’t doing anything particularly provoking. “Don’t you have employees for this kind of thing? I thought that was the whole point of having employees.”
“It would be, if they did it right. The schematics they handed in last week were for an engine that didn’t fit in the hull and would have exploded after an hour.”
He sounded frustrated. Steve was pretty sure he was making it sound worse than it was, though. Tony was of the unfortunate conviction nothing would be done right unless he did it himself. It was a cause for much irritation between them, and sometimes, war.
“Jarvis said you were in Asia until this morning. I trust that went well?”
“Moderately well. I have to get back there as soon as this project is finished. Provided no one tried to destroy the world in the meantime.”
“Don’t you ever take a break?” The words were out before Steve could stop them and he felt silly for asking, since the answer was obvious. Tony Stark didn’t take breaks, that was a well known fact. Even at the best of times it was hard enough to get him to eat and sleep at all, never mind on a regular basis. This, obviously, wasn’t one of the better times, if Tony’s pale complexion, sunken in face and hoarse voice were anything to go by.
(For a split second, Steve wondered if Tony was drinking again, then he felt bad for even thinking it.)
“When I have the time.” Which was either an outright lie, or Tony simply never did have the time for it. He looked terrible, like he hadn’t slept in days. Last time Steve had seen him outside his armor, he had looked bad, now it was worse. It seemed like Tony always looked worse than before, since their conflict had started. “But I’m pretty sure you didn’t come all this way to talk about my sleeping habits.”
Straight to the point, then. Steve had to keep in mind that Tony was not interested in small talk anymore, and neither was he. “I came because you and I need to talk and I’m tired of you avoiding the issue.”
The wrench Tony was handling was placed on the work table before him with an audible clank, but he didn’t turn around. “And what issue would that be?”
The nerve of that man. Sometimes Steve was simply astounded by it. “Are you serious? Do you really plan on pretending nothing ever happened? That you didn’t betray me – betray all of us – by selling out and hunting us down like criminals? Do you think by avoiding me you can just go back to being part of the team as if nothing had changed?”
Tony’s hands on the workbench were curled to fists – loose fists, no force behind it. “Does any of this look to you like nothing has changed?”
“Not at all. Nothing is the same anymore, and yet you act like it is. All of you do, but you more than anyone. As if you hadn’t thrown some of us in jail without trial, as if the Avengers hadn’t torn each other apart over your misguided decisions.” No, this wasn’t right. Steve wanted to talk, not fight. He hadn’t been able to just talk about things with Tony while they were still fighting, had been too angry and betrayed to listen to anything his former friend had to say, and he knew that maybe some things could have been different if he had. He had to try and calm down, but it was hard. Everything was still raw and painful. For the others, months had passed since the fighting ended, but for Steve, all the wounds were still fresh. “As if I hadn’t died,” he added, softer and more careful. “Jan said you didn’t take that well, but considering you never even came to see me after I got back, I have a hard time believing that.”
It was a long time before Tony answered, and when he did, his voice so was quiet and monotone, it barely sounded like him at all. “You were dead,” he said. “I got you killed and you were gone. You lost your life because of me; I… we. They lost you, Steve. You were gone. You said it yourself: How could I possibly just come to you, as if nothing had happened?”
Steve’s first thought was Oh Tony. This was the side of Tony Stark that hardly anyone ever got to see, a glimpse of all the vulnerability and self-loathing he usually managed to hide and that seemed to touch all of Steve’s protective instincts whenever it was exposed. But he was still angry and didn’t want to be manipulated by his own weakness. Didn’t want to feel sorry for Tony, didn’t want to forgive and forget just because Tony had become a victim of his own mistakes. This was too big for that. So what he actually said was, “But you are acting that way. You never even made an effort to fix things, just pretend everything’s fine. An apology wouldn’t patch this over, but the sentiment would have gone a long way. But no, you just show up every now and then to play hero, and then you disappear before anyone can call you out on your bullshit. If you’d just come to talk to me, offered an explanation, anything. But you couldn’t be bothered. I came back from the dead, Tony. It’s a damn miracle, no matter who’s responsible in the end. Everyone came to welcome me back, even Carol and the others who fought for you. Everyone but you. I was gone, you’re right. And you tell me that bothered you, but when I came back you couldn’t even be bothered to say Hi.”
“They didn’t fight for me.” Finally, Tony was turning around enough to glance at Steve over his shoulder. There was a fine layer of sweat on his skin, testament to his too warm clothes in this too warm air. He was also focusing on the exactly wrong thing and thereby steering the conversation away from Steve’s point. “They happened to fight for the same goal as me, that’s all. Because Reed, Carol, Bishop, they all believed it was the right thing to do. I’m not responsible for their decisions, I didn’t brainwash Carol into thinking this was a good idea and I didn’t set out to destroy Reed’s marriage.”
Steve frowned, not sure where that last one had come from. “You can be damn persuasive, and you know it! Peter would never have followed you in the first place if you hadn’t manipulated him, and at least some of the others-”
“I’m not you, Steve!” Tony interrupted him. “No one would ever follow me just because I’m me and they trust my judgment. They all knew what they were doing.”
“Are you sure? Because no one has mentioned the SHRA anywhere since I came back. The status quo is pretty much what it was before you tried to force your ideas on all of us, and it seems to me that everyone, including Carol and your other followers, are happy with the way things are. No one has tried yet to enforce that stupid law on anyone, or even remind people that it technically still exists.” Steve heard his own voice, the biting tone. This wasn’t going the way he’d wanted it to, but maybe it was the way things had to be. Maybe what he had really needed was a confirmation that things between him and Tony were truly, irreversibly over. “And I wonder if maybe you’re keeping your distance because you are bitter over the fact that you lost. You won your war; I got arrested, then killed, and yet things still didn’t turn out the way you wanted them to, and you can’t get over that.”
To his surprise, Tony laughed, softly and without humor. “Things turned out exactly the way we wanted them to. The way they-” He broke off, suddenly doubling over coughing. The sounds were so harsh Steve instinctively took a step closer, concerned despite himself, but Tony lifted a hand and signaled him to stay away without even looking at him. “I knew from the start that you would never compromise, never register,” he said once he could. “I also knew that eventually something would happen, some threat would appear were you were needed. There would be amnesties and the status quo would be reinstated. I never meant for you… or anyone to die, but this, generally, is exactly the outcome I was hoping for.”
All things considered, it was hard to believe. “Seriously? And all that talk about you supporting the law, all that talk about accountability? Was that just for show, then?”
“The law is still in place,” Tony reminded him, his voice even hoarser than before, almost toneless. “And I stand by what I said. I also know that you will never understand. But the rest of us, those who aren’t perfect, we make mistakes. Not because we’re mind controlled or brainwashed or evil doppelgangers, but because we’re human and we fuck up. Just, with the powers we wield, when we fuck up, people get hurt. And it’s not enough if we watch each other, judge each other. The superhero community is too close-knit, or used to be at least. We’re hardly objective.”
“Don’t start with this again, Tony. Just don’t. It’s going nowhere, and I’m already pissed enough as it is.” They’d had this conversation before. There was no point in having it again, because obviously nothing had changed. Tony had seen everything go to hell around him and he still hadn’t learned.
Tony snorted softly. “Yeah, I noticed. But you’re right, there’s no point in repeating what I said before. I won’t change my mind and you will never understand what I’m trying to say because you’re Captain America, and you don’t make mistakes. No errors in judgment, no impulsive acts of anger while you’re wearing the costume. And certainly no driving under the influence.”
It should have sounded mocking, but Tony spoke calmly and earnestly, just stating facts. He really believed what he said, really believed in Steve’s virtue that much, and somehow that made everything even worse.
“I was going to kill you,” Steve said quietly, tensely. He was almost surprised to hear the words coming out of his own mouth, but Tony only twisted his lips into a smile that wasn’t even bitter.
“As I said. No errors in judgment.”
“So that’s all you’ve got to say about this? ‘Sorry, this went wrong, but I was still right’?”
“I didn’t say sorry.” Just like that, Tony’s defenses are back up and Steve knows that if he’d still had any interest in having a normal conversation with his old friend, it was now lost.
“Fine. Be that way. I actually don’t know why I bothered to come here in the first place.”
“You came to yell at me and remind me that I am a horrible human being and a disgrace to the Avengers,” Tony told him, having already turned back to his work. “You did both. Good job. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m trying to save my company a somewhat important contract, and since a good bit of the fortune I make is used to buy your equipment, it would be in your best interest to let me finish this on time.”
“Oh, so now you’re playing the ‘Remember that I cover all your expenses card’!” Steve threw his hands up in frustration. “That’s low, Tony. That’s just-” He broke off, aware he might be overreacting. Everything had gone wrong here. Steve didn’t even know what he had expected from this meeting, but it wasn’t this. Seemed that Tony hadn’t lost his knack for disappointing him. “You know what?” he said, forcing himself to be calm and rational, just like everyone always expected of him. “It’s probably best if you keep your distance for a while. We’ll talk again when things between us are no longer this raw.”
He turned around and walked out of the workshop without waiting for a reply, and no reply was coming. When he reached the elevator, Steve threw one last look into the room and found Tony still standing in front of the workbench, his back to the door, his shoulders tense. He wasn’t moving. Then the doors slid closed and the elevator started moving, leaving Steve alone with his thoughts.
He regretted having come here. It hadn’t helped at all, only made things worse. There was no talking to Tony. At least not for Steve.
Because Steve was apparently simply not able to have a normal conversation with Tony anymore, one that was not ruined by all their baggage spilling over. Nothing here had gone as planned, but then, Steve hadn’t had a plan to begin with, and looking back he had to accept that he had overreacted, had let himself be steered by anger and had never really given Tony a chance to say anything that would have pacified that anger. Not that he likely would have, but if he had, Steve might not even have listened. This talk had been a total disaster, but Tony was not the only one to blame for that.
So much for the virtues of leadership and rationality that Tony had so praised in him the last time they had tired this conversation, with similar results. The ride in the elevator was long and Steve spent a good portion of the time resisting the urge to knock his head repeatedly against the wall.