Chapter Text
Changes in light mark passing hours. Hours have no real meaning. He has sat through many, many hours. Waited. Then he knew what he waited for. Now -
Rogers' voice in his head again. Hesitation. Frown over blue eyes. A question.
There a train?
Question, not answer. Question, not explanation, not at first, not yet. Question, like it might be something else, like the answer might not - like it was important to keep from confusing it with -
Question. Like there might be more than one answer. Like Rogers didn't want to over -
His mind skids. Thoughts scatter.
He sits on the bed, as sunlight changes. The sun moves; the pattern of light from the window travels across the room.
He sits on the bed, because of something that changed in Rogers' face when he would have gone back to where he's been for the last five days - been, when he hasn't been throwing up or when sleep hasn't beaten him. So he sat on the bed and the shadow on Rogers' face shifted back.
It feels like a small victory. He doesn't know why.
This morning he ate in the kitchen; this afternoon Rogers brought food to the room. His body hasn't rejected it yet. This evening Rogers asked to see the bandages from the morning, checked them for bleed-through, for - Rogers said - comfort. They feel okay?
Another question.
He'd shrugged. The question didn't . . . make sense. Felt unreal. Irrelevant. Rogers had asked, If they start bleeding through or something feels wrong, let me know, okay? and then left. Pulled the door to, but not closed.
Questions. Always questions. Always okay, okay, okay.
There a train?
He closes his eyes and cold metal burns on the palms of both hands, both hands, cold on the skin the left hand doesn't have has never had but must have. A train, frigid wind, cold metal and a fall, and a fall that never ends until the rocks hit him and break him and then cold. Snow. Trees.
Hundreds of feet onto rocks . . .
He remembers falling because he did. Rogers fell; so did he. Rogers fell to water; he fell to rock. Lay in snow until - faces, around him. Their words sound like Russian but he can't understand them. Can't speak to them. He can't stop -
He opens his eyes; his heart beats too fast and now he doesn't want to remember but he remembers anyway, human hands and pain and then after too long nothing. His hands clench, the fingers of his right hand digging hard into the cut on his palm, palm burning from that and not cold.
A distraction.
Welcome.
It's one thing. It's only one thing. But it's there in the centre now. Hard and unmoving now. The train the blast the wind and falling until the ground breaks his body - endless snow and endless trees and endless endless cold - then faces and hands and darkness.
Memory like rock. It doesn't disappear. It's one thing out of all of them that he can't get rid of now and -
I didn't make it.
And he can't. He can't.
It's dark. Rogers is asleep. The window isn't hard to learn, to set, to pull himself through or tap to lock behind him.
The night isn't cold enough to hurt him. Lights, everywhere - risk of people if he goes down, but up -
Rooftops stay empty. Humans tend not to look up.
*******
Steve can't actually figure out how he got out of the condo. The front door's locked, none of the windows are open. A tiny sliver of him's impressed, because he can't help respecting the skill involved.
The rest of him panics, more even than the first night.
He pulls out his phone and then stops. He stares at it, at Sam's number already auto-filled into the recipient box at the touch of one letter. Tries to think of how -
Steve closes the app. Because there's . . .no real point. What can anyone do? What's he going to say? And how much is it going to panic everyone else when he does say it? And does he want to, can he deal with that? Right now?
Nothing, who knows, a lot, and no, especially not right now, in order. So Steve puts his phone back in his pocket.
Then he takes the stuff he just bought, and he fixes the wall. He takes a paint chip and sets it aside, because he'll need it to match. He gathers up and throws out the broken picture-frames, replaces them with two that use plastic instead of glass, because plastic doesn't shatter and cut up skin the same way glass does.
Then he cleans the place. Reorganizes a few cabinets. Starts to move the furniture and then stops, because it occurs to him that that would be change and if - when - Bucky comes back it might not be a great idea.
Then he changes his sheets, washes the ones he takes off and checks and finds that wherever in the room Bucky's been sleeping, it definitely hasn't been the bed. And also that Steve hadn't previously noticed that Bucky's taken one of his smaller mixing bowls and it's living in the closet and looks like it's been rinsed out recently.
No wonder Bucky looks like he's still been losing weight. Steve resists the impulse to throw the bowl against the wall: it's ceramic, it might break. He starts to think how do you get someone so messed up they won't leave a room around other people to throw up but it's a stupid question when you've already answered the one that really matters, that gives you all the other answers you don't want.
Which is how do you make someone who can rip the doors off cars do what you want?
When Sam texts to ask how it's going, Steve lies. It's a lot easier to lie over text - he doesn't have to think about keeping his guilt from showing in his face, because nobody can see it. So he tells Sam it's all the same and goes for a run. Makes supper. Cleans the kitchen again.
He tries to sleep, and doesn't do well at it. When he does drop off the dreams are vivid, bad and the kind he'd rather forget as soon as he wakes up. It feels like five-thirty takes forever to come; then he's up. He makes himself go for another run.
When the condo's still empty when he comes back he makes himself shower, get dressed, eat something, and then he can't any more and walks out the door to start looking.
Sun moves over the sky, and he makes himself stop at a McDonalds for lunch; sun moves further, he makes himself stop at a real restaurant for dinner.
Sun goes down, he has to admit he's not really looking anymore. He's just walking, and hoping, because he can't stand going back to an empty home.
Steve's not sure how he ends up at Stark Tower. Maybe the building's just so ugly the entire city's been warped around it, or maybe it's because it's the only physical representation anywhere within a couple thousand miles (at least) of people that live in Steve's metaphorical world.
Maybe it's because he wants to pick a fight with someone who'll still be standing when it's done. Not really very flattering idea, but it could be true.
Whatever the reason, he looks up from his angry reverie and realizes he's in front of the lobby, and since he's here -
Actually there's no logic to that. But he pretends there is: that since he's here he might as well go up. He's not much better at lying to himself than he is at lying to anyone else, but right now he's content to be an easy mark.
To be honest, he probably just wants to talk to someone who's actually here, in the flesh, even if that means it has to be Stark. Talking to anyone else just means having to lie.
The lobby doors are always open: this time of night, though, nothing else is and you just run into a security desk controlling the private elevators, which are the only ones that run after working hours.
Steve's not actually sure how he's going to explain why he's here, but it turns out he doesn't have to. The young woman behind the desk smiles as he approaches and says, "Good evening, Captain Rogers." She's young and dark-skinned with braided hair and she looks really small for a security guard, but Steve's not really inclined to be fooled by that. He doubts this security department hires anyone who can't hold their own.
Her nametag reads Stone, probably surname.
Steve smiles a little sheepishly. "Guess I'm kind of recognizable," he says. This time she gives him a grin instead of a careful workforce smile and it looks better on her, makes her eyes close to happy crescents.
"Actually, sir, part of orientation with the company is memorizing face shots of all the Avengers, and known SHIELD agents." She pauses and adds, "Or . . .whatever they are now, those faces haven't actually been taken off the orientation material."
She grins again. "The official reason has something to do with always forgetting passcards." Her eyes sparkle, implying she thinks the real reason is something else, which Steve figures too, since he's never had a passcard to begin with. "There's actually a prize for anyone who recognizes Agent Romanoff on un-announced arrival, without resorting to facial recognition software or JARVIS."
That . . . sounds about right, actually. That sounds exactly like Stark. Like any Stark, come to think of it. And Steve's willing to be distracted right now. "Anyone won it?" he asks, and isn't surprised when she shakes her head.
"Then again, as far as I know Agent Romanoff hasn't been here for several months now. She's actually fairly popular." This time her smile looks almost impish. "Nobody liked the HR manager who got fired for letting her Rushman persona through hiring procedures."
Steve'd heard about that one. As far as he knows, Natasha and Pepper Potts are drinking buddies at this point, or whatever you call the modern female equivalent if there's a special term. That hadn't stopped one of Pepper's first priorities after the Expo being to rip through Stark Enterprises employees, finding the ones that SHIELD had used to plant "Natalie Rushman" in the company and abruptly showing them the door, or in some case the other side of the courtroom.
Friends are friends, but in terms of running Stark Enterprises and keeping it fully autonomous and infiltration-free, Pepper Potts makes the actual Starks look lax. Steve gathers the private inquest after the Triskelion fell was even more intense.
"Here for any reason in particular, sir?" possibly-Ms Stone asks, polite-business again and Steve rubs his forehead.
"Actually, just ended up in the area and wondered if anyone was awake," he says, going for the simplest version. He still doesn't expect it to go over as smoothly as it does.
Maybe he should have. He can't be the strangest visitor Tony Stark's ever got in the middle of the night.
"Insomnia bites," the young woman says sympathetically. She's glancing down at her work-surface and spreading it out into the touch-keyboard that Steve cannot for the life of him figure out why Stark is so fond of, which pulls up a couple of windows Steve can't quite see. "Looks like Development and Testing Lab 23D is still online and occupied, which is probably Mr Stark, that area's pretty much -" she glances at Steve and suddenly half-smiles like a conspiracy. "I'll skip the technical terms, it's machines and electricity. Dr Ross'd be in the Q labs, that's pretty much her domain these days, but I guess she decided sleep was actually necessary tonight."
Steve cants his head, kind of diverted by the way the security staff apparently knew the residents' habits - and apparently found them amusing in the same kind of proprietary way one might speak about a weird relative. "Dr Banner?" he asks.
"Actually, Dr Banner almost never gets insomnia," Ms Stone replies, tapping her screen clear and then pulling something down from the top that looked a lot like a finger-print scanner. "Word is, he says it's because he's given up caffeine. Which is funny because Dr Ross runs on the stuff."
Glancing up to see Steve's look of incomprehension she says, "It's always harder to quit something when someone else in your house keeps doing it. Elevator's open, sir," she goes on briskly, "and I think JARVIS can show you the rest of the way once you're up there, assuming you don't find disembodied voices too creepy."
"Well," says Steve, a little bemused, "thank you. Have a good and hopefully uneventful night."
She beams at him. "You too, sir," she says as he makes his way past her to the elevator.
Once the doors slide close, JARVIS voice comes from nowhere and everywhere, saying, "Good evening, Captain Rogers."
"Good evening, JARVIS," Steve says, actually kind of grateful that JARVIS is using that form of address. God only knows what Stark might have come up with.
"Mr Stark is indeed still awake, sir, as he is not currently observing a diurnal schedule," JARVIS says. "I can direct you to him or to any number of enjoyable facilities within the Tower if you prefer."
"What kind of schedule is Stark observing?" Steve says, wondering (as he often did) just how much of a sense of humour JARVIS actually has.
The answer, "That I have not yet established, sir. I shall inform you when more data has been collected," makes him wonder even more. Stark created JARVIS but sometimes - especially since seeing Zola in his endless analog computer-banks - Steve gets the feeling that JARVIS has assigned itself the role of endlessly patient guardian to Stark's occasional erratic metaphorical twelve-year-old, and that the AI's kind of become more than Tony originally planned.
Steve almost takes the offer of directions somewhere else. He knows there's a lot of stuff in the Tower, including an e-book library (God forbid Stark have something as common as paper anywhere near him, but the place had ereaders all around too) and a gymnasium space to make anyone jealous.
But in the end he says, "Directions to the lab, please, JARVIS," and after a brief sense of motion the elevator's doors open. Which implies the Tower's elevators are disturbingly fast.
"As you wish, sir," JARVIS says.
The directions are slightly more convoluted than you might expect, because the ridiculous architecture is more convoluted than you might expect, but Steve manages to follow them through three or four corridors before he finds the door marked D23, and JARVIS says from a different nowhere-and-everywhere, "I've informed him of your arrival."
"Thanks," Steve says and doesn't add, I think.
He's not sure what he expected, but honestly the "lab" looks more like a high-end version of somebody's stolen-space workshop or garage, except with two robots moving around the place making what sound like genuinely sad sounds as Tony kicks something. He waves a hand in Steve's direction while standing with his hands on his hips, glaring at the wreckage.
Steve looks around and says, "It looks like a car exploded in here," because it's the first thing to come to mind, and also because it does. He frowns. "A really complicated car."
Stark wobbles his hand back and forth in the air, steps over something and makes his way to one of the few untouched, tidy-looking corners of the room, where there's a computer desktop, one of his touch-screen desk-surfaces and some of the green sludge he seems to drink on a regular basis. For the first time, Steve finds himself wondering what's in that stuff, but wondering out of curiosity instead of disgust.
(He wasn't kidding when he told Sam the food's better nowadays, so the way people insist on eating and drinking things that only seem vaguely foodlike and definitely, well, gross, all in the name of "health". . . .bewilders him. Well, presumably Stark's drinking it for health. Who knew, with him.)
"Not entirely wrong," Stark says, after he's swallowed, leaning against his desk. "A very slow explosion, most of the propulsion done by human muscle, but sure, exploded. And it is technically a car. Come in, stop standing there with the door open."
Steve steps over one of the strangely-shaped bits of metal that managed to get all the way over here and the door closes behind him. "Technically a car?"
"It flies," Stark says. "Well, technically it floats on repulsor-coil technology."
Memory hits Steve, unexpectedly vivid, right down to the smell of the air and the feeling of having to push his way through crowds that didn't notice a guy who didn't come up past most of their shoulders, and he blinks. "I think I . . .actually saw your father's first demonstration of that. At the Expo."
"Yeah?" Stark says, putting the now empty glass down on the desk, voice curiously neutral. "Well, then you also saw it fail."
Steve actually doesn't remember that, but whether that's because he doesn't remember or because he'd already walked away to that last recruiters', he can't say. Not when he's trying to handle the memory of Bucky in pristine uniform carefully, without either fouling it or shoving it away, and without showing on his face the way it stabs through his brain.
Don't do anything stupid until I get back.
Stark's oblivious, thankfully.
"Dad never did get it working properly, or I guess - " Stark makes a kind of gesture with his hand up near his temple, like he's spinning the air to find words. "Usefully. This one worked, and there was one other prototype he gave to SHIELD, or left at SHIELD, or something, which is probably a scrap-heap of twisted metal now, but really, they're all shit." Stark kicks a piece out of the way. "Hideously expensive to make and maintain, ridiculous to fuel and power - they're science projects, not real machines." Stark shrugs. "Thought I'd see if I could make something of'em."
Steve looks around at the absolute disaster, weighs the actual use of the project to Stark or the world in any way shape or form (because as far as Steve can see flying cars just mean exciting new accidents) and comes to a pretty obvious conclusion. "Is Pepper out of town?" he asks, and gets a sharp look.
"As a matter of fact, yes," Stark says, folding his arms. "She's in DC again arguing with idiots I'm not allowed to argue with anymore because apparently demanding to know if their parents just dropped them on their heads a lot or if they deliberately induced brain-damage somewhere along the line as adults isn't helpful - why is it," he goes on, frowning, "that people always leap to that conclusion when I'm up in the middle of the night?"
This time Steve makes his look around the room pointed. "Because whenever she's not around you seem to lose what little common sense you ever have," he says. "And being up at two AM tearing apart your dad's science projects doesn't show much common sense."
Stark looks like he's thinking about that for a minute and shrugs. "Point granted," he says. "So what's your excuse?" He looks Steve up and down and Steve has just enough time to register how knowing that look is before Stark adds, "New roommate run away?"
For a second Steve is actually incapable of answering, for any value of answer that isn't break Anthony Stark's nose; by the time that's passed Stark's already crouching down to pick up pieces of his slow-motion explosion. Steve makes himself unclench his fists.
"Don't worry about it," Stark goes on, like he didn't notice that second of aborted violence. He talks like someone completely distracted by what they're doing, with what's in front of them, their mind only barely on the other person in the room. "He'll be back."
Looking up, taking in the look on Steve's face he adds, "No, seriously." He sighs and leans one arm on his bent knee. "How long's he been gone?"
Steve debates the merits of answering versus those of walking out before he loses his temper, and eventually says, "Twenty seven hours. And ten minutes." The ten minutes is snide, pulled out of the air because Tony's annoying him but saying the number out loud still makes it sound worse. To him, anyway.
Apparently not to Stark.
"Call me in - " Stark tilts his head side to side thoughtfully, " - four, eight hours, tell me I'm wrong. Unless you have seriously screwed up - and," Tony pauses to add, sitting back towards his heels a bit and gesturing again, "in terms of what I mean by screwing up, I'm not sure you're actually capable of it, since you're annoyingly moral and also I don't think quite stupid enough to try to have him committed to a psychiatric institution, just to shut down that line of thought - seriously, if he was going to actually disappear again for anything less than an epic fuck-up, he'd never've shown up in the first place. Pass me that ca - that tool, by your foot?" he adds, with a tiny pause that implies to Steve he's skipping over a technical name for what he wants and sticking with one he thinks Steve will understand.
Steve wonders if the man gets it from his mother, or if just some random . . . spasm of the universe conspired to make Anthony Stark one of the most obnoxious people you couldn't bring yourself to kick in the head that ever existed. Or what it is that means Stark is allergic to looking like he's taking anything seriously, which makes it incredibly hard to tell whether or not he is.
And if he realizes how aggravating that is.
But Steve does pass him the tool and crouches down beside him. "And what exactly makes you an expert?" trying for a sharp note that Stark seems to want to ignore. Or maybe people are sharp at him often enough that he genuinely doesn't notice. Steve grants it could happen.
"Do something new in the last . . . day or so?" Stark asks absently, sitting all the way down on the floor, poking at the circuit-board with what looks to Steve like a laser, like some kid opening the back of a radio.
Steve hesitates, sighs and since looming over someone is a terrible way to have a conversation unless you're trying to intimidate them (and with Tony Stark that's pointless) and you can only crouch for so long in jeans before it gets uncomfortable, he sits down on the floor as well.
The things Stark seems allergic to taking seriously often, to be fair, seem to include himself. At least when he's working.
"Yeah, actually," he says. "But not bad. I don't think." At Tony's inquisitive look Steve sighs again and says, "He kind of . . . broke up some things in his room. Cut up his hand. I cleaned it out. We ate. Nothing big." He holds back on mentioning the memory, either what it was or him filling it in. He's not about to let Stark that far in, not out of pique and curiosity.
"Yeeeeah," says Stark, drawing out the word, "I'm going to go ahead and guess you've been, what, looking at a closed door since he showed up, otherwise? Because you," and someone should tell Tony it's not really all that fun to have him emphasize a conversational beat by pointing the tool he's just been using to melt something right at you, even if it's off, "wouldn't barge in. Or even knock a lot."
Steve frowns at something in his tone. "What's that supposed to mean?" And he remembers they're only having this conversation because Stark's first question got his back up in the first place.
But Stark blinks like he's genuinely confused, raises his eyebrows. "That you've got admirable respect for personal privacy? That you're not actually an asshole or an idiot, shocking as that is? Not the point," he goes on, doing that thing he does where he drops a line like that into the conversation and then drives forward at full speed without letting you think up a response. "The point is, running away and hiding is a time-honoured and honourable response to completely losing your shit and your ability to deal with it."
He waves the tool from side to side, using it to mark his points. "You run away, you hide, you get cold, you realize that when it comes right down to it living in a tree-house or a, I dunno, doorway on a rooftop somewhere for the rest of your life is actually worse than dealing with whatever you were sure you couldn't deal with, you come home. Sometimes people are jerks and take months about it, but given that he showed up in the first place and stayed this long and thus you," and Stark points the laser-tool at Steve again, and it's no more comfortable the second time, "are probably the only thing in the world right now that doesn't without qualification completely suck, I'm guessing less than twelve more hours."
Steve tries to digest that - both content and tone, which is closer to what Stark uses to talk about calculations than people. Which means it approaches 'serious', at least close enough to toss a rock at it.
One thing sticks out. "Treehouse?" Steve asks.
Tony shrugs and goes back to tinkering.
"First time I did it I was eleven. My long-term planning skills were even worse then than they are now, which may be a frightening thing to contemplate, I admit."
He taps the laser on his other hand for a minute and then jabs it at Steve again, and it's still not really comfortable. "Oh, and getting overwhelmed and unable to deal with your shit happens with good shit, not just bad shit. Don't believe me, ask Betty about the first time Bruce asked her out. It's a hilarious story, she'll totally tell it. Don't let him tell it, he tries to make her sound less ridiculous so it's less funny."
Steve realizes he's frowning, looking at one of the disassembled pieces - through it, really. He actually wants to believe Stark. God knows he actually desperately wants to believe Stark. But, well -
There's a clink as the tool gets put down on top of something metallic and the sound of Tony taking a deep breath.
"Look, Rogers," Tony says, and this time, this time he actually does sound serious so Steve looks up, and Stark also looks, for a minute, completely serious, so serious it's unnerving. Not put on looking-serious, not a joke, but real serious. "Unless you royally fuck up, I will bet you this entire tower that's how it's going to be - he freaked out, he left, he's realizing that was a bad idea, he'll be back in half a day at most. Seriously, I will walk you down eight floors, wake up someone from legal and wager this building, right now.
"And," he adds, picking up the laser-tool just so he can reinforce the point by aiming it at Steve, "if you ever do royally fuck up, you'll know."
"I'll know?" Steve asks. He's not totally sure how to react to the sudden return of Tony Stark's sincerity, which Steve last saw on a damaged helicarrier.
Tony gives him a humourless smile and says, "He'll actually start trying to kill you again."
Steve sits back, a little bemused again, leaning on one hand. "I think everyone else figures he's going to try to kill me again anyway," he points out and now Tony's back to squinting at the circuit-board. But he does frown pretty intensely at that.
"Not my fault they're idiots," he says, sharp and suddenly impatient; almost like he can feel Steve's startled look he goes on, "for fuck's sakes, he had not one but two chances to kill you, where it would have been way easier to kill you than not, and he couldn't. Completely failed."
"One," Steve corrects and Tony snorts at him.
"Sorry, Rogers," he says. "I watched the traffic-cam footage of your little street fight in DC. If you hadn't hit the guy over the head with the past, you and Romanoff would both be in boxes deep underground. Wilson'd probably be joining you. You're not. So." Tony holds up a finger, "once he fucks up, second time despite you giving up he completely fails to beat you to death, then he can't even let you drown which, speaking of footage I've seen, okay so I didn't see you but I saw the wreck and believe me, I don't care where you were in that fucking mess and I don't care how enhanced he is, leaving you to drown would have been way easier and less likely to get him killed. I could not be less concerned about your roommate trying to kill you, Captain."
He still hasn't looked away from what he's doing, not once in the whole recitation. He pauses, considers and gestures with his tool again. "Might break some of your bones, but probably only by accident, and you heal fast. Lucky bastard."
Steve sits in silence beside him for a few minutes: the Stark Digest takes some time to, well, digest. Then he says, "I don't think that should be comforting."
"Why not?" Tony looks up, shrugs. "I find people not wanting to kill me very comforting, personally."
"I don't think it's normal," Steve replies, dryly, "to be comforted by the idea that someone's only going to break your arm."
"We're not normal, Rogers," Tony says, eyes still on his work. "I don't know if you've noticed, but normal people don't have grudge-matches with super-powered aliens or survive buried in ice for decades or have mind-wiped best friends probably camping out on their roof. Take comfort where it is, we don't get a lot of it."
He flips his tool in one hand and adds, "Speaking of which, whenever he's sane enough to meet, bring him by, I am like one hundred percent certain I can make a better prosthetic weaponized arm than a bunch of holdover-Nazis."
The smile isn't entirely willing, but Steve ends up with it on his face anyway, even if it's a little crooked. "I'm not sure anyone's sane enough to meet you, Stark."
"Yeah, whatever." Tony sits back, dropping the conversation almost abruptly, and announces, "I need coffee. Want coffee? I . . . " and he sits up as far as he can and looks around, "do not have a coffee maker in here. Why the hell don't I have one in here? JARVIS, remind me to put a coffee machine in here."
"Yes, sir," JARVIS' voice says, so blandly polite Steve's more and more convinced the AI has to be privately laughing.
"C'mon," Tony says, unfolding himself up in a surprisingly coordinated move. "There's a coffee lounge somewhere a floor down, let's go get some."
There is a coffee-lounge, which is basically a cafe, one floor down. Steve doesn't know why he's surprised that Tony just wanders behind the counter and starts making them both espresso macchiatos, and tells himself he probably shouldn't be. It's mechanical: of course a Stark can use it. Just because the end result of the mechanical wonder is edible instead of explosive, that doesn't make it more or less the same as everything else Stark messes around with.
Somehow, they end up talking about Peggy. Steve's not actually sure how, loses track of the precise progression. Tony makes some crack about SHIELD and things sort of go from there, because Steve's not actually averse to taking a few potshots at the fallen in this particular case and why not, and then there they are.
It's less painful than you might think. Steve finds it difficult on the days when they have to go through the whole discovery of his survival one more time, but it's difficult, not agonizing - and these days it's balanced by the fact that she has as much difficulty holding onto the story of SHIELD's corruption and fall, which spares her a lot of pain.
And he's still proud of her, beyond proud of her. And the memories are good - no regret, no mistakes to sour them.
"She absolutely terrified me when I was a kid," Tony says.
They're sitting in two of the arm-chairs and Steve has to admit, the espresso macchiato's pretty good. And it's halfway between familiar and unfamiliar, which is comforting right now.
"Completely and totally terrified," Tony continues. "Probably the only person in the world I'd do what they said, when they said it." He appears to think about that for a moment, sucking a spot of espresso off his hand and then says, "Mostly."
"As compared to what, never?" Steve asks, amused, and Tony gives a half-nod, half-shrug that clearly says, pretty much.
"Mom asked her how she did it once," he says. "She said it was because I knew Mom wouldn't lose her patience and shoot me, whereas as far as Peggy went, I only knew she hadn't yet." Tony makes a fair enough kind of gesture while Steve shakes his head, grinning.
"First time I ever saw her," Steve says, "she punched this jerk in the face and put him down. He had to have fifty pounds on her at least. Then later she stood in the street shooting at a speeding car coming right for her and got mad at me for ruining her shot when I got her out of the way. So yeah," he says, picking up his tiny cup. "She probably would have shot you."
And he may not be sure how they got onto the subject of Peggy, but after a while and after the coffee's finished, Steve thinks he can see sort of why. He thinks of his crack to Natasha about shared life experiences: of the two things he and Tony do share (other than alien attacks and near-death experiences), Peggy and Howard, Peggy's the one that isn't a minefield.
It's funny, in that not-at-all-funny way. Steve's not actually surprised that Howard hadn't been a, well, fantastic father. Steadiness wasn't one of his strong points. Howard liked to make the big leaps, figure out the big ideas and solutions, and then hand off the scut work and polishing to the people he hired. He was the artist - then he handed the plans to the craftsmen and they actually made the vision a reality.
You couldn't actually do that with kids. Well, you could, but the results tended not to like you all that much. Which gives you Howard and Anthony Stark, the problem play. Steve mostly wishes he'd been there to give Howard a kick in the pants and point all that out.
But that's still a gigantic knot he's not sure Tony's even untangled for himself yet, and God knows Steve wouldn't want someone bringing his mother into this kind of conversation, so Peggy it is. It doesn't hurt that for all his vaunted terror and resentment, Tony was clearly actually kind of in awe of her, in a little boy way.
Steve can deal with that.
The sun's coming up by the time they run out of anecdotes, arguments about the circumstances of anecdotes, and other safe things to talk about and Steve looks at the time, winces and says, "I should get back."
He doesn't feel tired, but he's not surprised. He tries to keep normal hours because it's smart, because just because he can stay up for several days with no ill effects before the lack of REM sleep means he starts seeing things (and wasn't that one fun to find out and there are no prizes for guessing who saved his neck then, either, as so many times before), that doesn't mean he should.
So he keeps normal hours, and his body generally acts like it thinks a twenty-four hour day is a good idea, but he never actually feels tired if he just keeps going.
Which is good, because coffee doesn't actually work anymore.
"Yeah, and I should kick some more ideas around." Tony stands up, mind clearly leaping ahead to his next point of fascination. "Good to see you, drop in any time, remember you actually have a whole floor here which I'll just mention is currently very generic and frankly boring because you never show up and use it, JARVIS'll show you out."
Steve just shakes his head. He'd consider pointing out that Tony could clearly use some sleep, but he thinks it'd be a wasted effort.
"Thank you for the coffee," he says, getting up more slowly as Tony heads for the door to the lounge and pushes it open.
Then Tony pauses, leans back in and says, "Oh, and don't worry too much about annoying your neighbours with noise or broken walls or blood-curdling screams or whatever. I bought the places on either side of you and the one under you a while ago, nobody in'em, should be fine."
And then he's gone out the door before Steve can say more than, "What?"
He takes two steps to go after him, then stops. It won't be worth it. If Tony'd been willing to talk about it he wouldn't've done that and there are literally hundreds of doors right out in the hall he could dart into. Son of a -
"Captain Rogers," JARVIS' polite tones say, "if you would care to step down the hall to the elevator, there is a car downstairs waiting to ease your journey home."
Steve makes himself take a deep breath and heads for the elevator.
Steve takes the car, because of the two of them, he refuses to be more childish than Stark. He thanks the driver, stands in front of his building, and looks up at the living-room window as the sun finishes rising.
Bucky's in the condo, when Steve gets up. The sound of the door obviously startled him, because his hand's got a knife in it as he turns around, but he also stops and then puts it away (small throwing knife, Steve notes, sheath in the right pocket of the jeans he's wearing) when he recognizes Steve.
"Morning," Steve says, resolutely not showing anything beyond habitual moderate cheerfulness. Bucky steps back from the beginning of a move that almost certainly ended with broken bones; he nods, once, in acknowledgement.
And otherwise watches Steve like he's not sure Steve's not secretly a bomb.
He's still in the same clothes as when he left, and it strikes Steve to wonder if it even occurs to him to change them or if - Steve tries not to let what he's thinking show on his face, because he's pretty sure that would get misinterpreted - HYDRA basically dressed and stripped him when they wanted, as they wanted.
Right now he's leaning towards the latter.
"Laundry day," Steve says, taking off his coat and hanging it up. "You know, this is the first time ever we've been close enough to the same size to share clothes? I used to swim in yours. Then, well, the other way around. Not quite as bad, though."
He kicks off his boots. Bucky's still watching him and he's still wary, but he at least looks a little less like someone's about to . . . Steve doesn't even know, and more like he's trying to figure out what Steve's even talking about. Possibly what the words Steve's stringing into sentences even mean.
That, Steve decides, is a better option. Maybe the thing to do was just be resolutely normal.
Well, he amends, thinking of what Stark said, as normal as is possible, considering.
"C'mon," Steve says, stepping past Bucky and jerking his head towards the kitchen. "I'll make breakfast."
The thing is, he says to Sam at one point, I'm not used to people being scared of me.
Well, Sam says, and Steve can hear the grin in his voice, people that aren't Nazis, anyway. Or basically Nazis. And Steve has to laugh, if a little grimly, and grant the point. He is very used to people who pass the "if they're shooting at me, they're bad" test being scared of him, but that's different.
You know what I mean, he says, and Sam does.
Well think about it like this, Sam says, sounding thoughtful, and don't get all insulted at the analogy - imagine the nicest, happiest golden retriever you can think of, right? Completely the gentlest dog you could ever think of, completely well behaved, well: there's still gonna be people that are scared of it, because they're just scared of dogs. Dog bit them one time or just always was running at and barking at them when they were kids, who knows, but they're just outright terrified of dogs. So even this nicest dog ever is gonna have to prove over and over and over again that it's not gonna do that before they stop being afraid. Sometimes for a really long time, depending on how bad they're scared by anything dog-shaped.
Yeah? Steve says, and sighs. That makes sense. Except I think the shape here is 'any person not already marked out as a target'.
Probably, Sam agrees. And Steve finds himself thinking of Natasha and her last text.
If he were superstitious, which to be honest he sometimes kind of is, he might think that basically called her up.
It's windy but unexpectedly warm, and her hair's different again, falling in what's apparently called "bohemian" waves and then twisted up with a hair-stick through it. She's in black leggings, an oversized sweater and a jean-jacket.
Steve sees her as he's stepping out of the Starbucks with his coffee. And she's pretty obviously there at the intersection waiting for him; she stands there until she's sure he recognizes that it's her under the clothes and - compared to the last time he saw her - lack of makeup. Then she turns away to watch for the light changing, like it's up to Steve to decide whether or not he wants to join her.
He's walking beside her by the time the light's green, and he opens with, "Back on this continent already?"
Natasha turns her head slightly with a smile. "Just visiting." She glances over him quickly. "You look exhausted."
"Thank you," Steve replies, dryly. "You look unexpected. I'm surprised you don't have a big sunflower or daisy or something in your bun, to complete the ensemble."
"Plastic ones look cheap and the real ones shed petals all over your shoulder," she says. "Besides, then you have to fuss around with them if you want to let your hair down and they're just more trouble than they're worth."
Her hands are in the pockets of her jean-jacket. Steve's letting her lead, just, but she doesn't seem to have any destination in mind. Something seems off about her, a strange kind of distance, but Steve can't quite pin it down even in his own head. It's just . . . a false note.
It'd been there in the cemetery, too.
He pushes a little and asks, "How's Barton?" It's been his guess for months now that that's where she was, or at least, who she was wherever she was with. Clint Barton'd been in Afghanistan when they brought SHIELD down and Steve's limited contact with the intelligence world since has implied that he hasn't popped up anywhere anyone can find him yet.
If she's surprised Steve figured it out, or if it bothers her, Natasha doesn't show it. She tilts her head a little, looking up towards rooftops, and shrugs. "He said he was going to get a hot dog from somewhere, but that was thirty minutes ago, so by now he's probably around up there." She jerks her chin upwards. Then she lets her head tilt conspiratorially towards Steve as she says, "He worries," and Steve thinks that part of what's off, maybe, is that right now she thinks that's wryly funny and it probably isn't.
They walk for a while, and Steve was right: she doesn't seem to have any destination in mind, looping back here or there. She asks him about Stark, about Banner, about anyone else they know. She says some elliptical things about Fury. As far as small-talk goes it's kind of like a flute-solo over a jackhammer and works about just as well.
"I really didn't expect to see you back this soon," Steve tries, when she pauses. And the next few steps are silent before she looks at him, appraising this time.
"You know, exhausted isn't really the word," she says. "It doesn't really capture it. Working for SHIELD you spend a lot of time," she goes on before he can answer, drawing out the word lot, "looking after scientists and engineers and analysts. A lot of them have the situational awareness of a dead cat. But you put them in front of their projects and give a deadline that should be impossible to meet and you can watch them burn through caffeine like it's the end of the world." She pauses. "Even when it isn't."
Steve almost interrupts, but she's already saying, "They get rings under their eyes and they yawn all the time and their tempers get short and touchy as hell, but underneath that, the good ones . . ." she trails off and looks up at him again, and this time the smile is a little bit knowing and a little bit sad. "They're more alive than you'll ever have seen them before. And that's how you look right now, Steve. That's how you feel."
They walk on for a bit, and the wind picks up, while Steve tries to make sense of that and work out whether it's a good thing or not. He fails, finds a garbage can for his empty coffee cup and says, "Well - firstly, I have no idea what you're talking about, and secondly," and here he pauses, making her stop, too, and turn back towards him, "I don't think you're here to catch up and see how I'm doing."
This one-shoulder shrug and half-smile looks a little more like the Natasha he knows, though which Natasha that really is might be hard to say. It looks more knowing, less light, and older. "Maybe not," she says, and turns back the way she was going. Steve follows her. "You remember the text I sent you?" she asks, still sounding more familiar than before. Steve raises his eyebrows.
"You mean the last one you sent?" he says, a bit pointedly, considering all the times he tried to text her afterwards that disappeared into the sky. "The night that - "
"Mm," Natasha says, her noise of agreement cutting him off. "How's that been going?" she asks, all casual-gossip again with only a hint of weight on the that.
Steve does her the honour of thinking before he answers, holding back on the defensive response that comes so easily. Eventually he has to shrug.
"He's still here," he says. "Nobody's dead, as far as I know, and I . . . have been paying attention."
"Good sign," Natasha replies, and then there's nothing but their footsteps on sidewalk and the wind for another minute or two before Steve clears his throat.
"You said something about the limits of my perspective," he prompts. From someone else he might even have forgotten by now, but he hasn't; Natasha wouldn't go out of her way - and texting counted as out of her way - to make even an offhand remark she didn't think was important.
For a minute Natasha looks thoughtful, takes a slow breath. Then she says, "You're a good man, Steve Rogers. Good without sanctimony," she adds, giving him a look with a quirked eyebrow in it, "which is rare. You care about people and you care about the right thing even when it's not comfortable - but what makes you special is you make other people want to do the same thing."
She smiles like she's smiling at memories, a private smile "You make them think they can be better than they are," she says. "And you make them want to be. People like Fury lead because they know where to find the right people for the right job; you lead because you make the right people want to show up and throw in with you all on their own. That's something not many people can do, and it makes you precious."
Steve ducks his head without meaning to, feels the touch of flush and maybe starts to open his mouth for a demurral, but he stops, and stops walking, because Natasha has. And when he turns to look at her, her voice gets sharper and more focused and she says, "And if you're going to help him you have to stop doing that."
At Steve's startled face - he knows he has to be making a startled face - she half-smiles and touches his chin with a fingertip. "That," she says. "I tell you what you are, you get all aw-shucks embarrassed and start looking for ways to talk it down. And that's fine. Someone brings up New York, you want to talk about firefighters, that's fine."
She shrugs and the smile fades, disappears. "But right now," she says, no smile in her voice either, "you think it down, too. You disown it, even in your own head. And it's sweet and it's modest and right now it's really fucking dangerous, because you have to know what you do to people, even when you're not trying, because you have to be careful."
Steve feels a little bit like she hit him between the eyes. Natasha goes on, "Guys like you usually don't want to. You don't like taking steps down that road, you don't like that much self-awareness, because you don't want to meet the Tony Starks coming back from the other end. You're not worried about getting your credit, you're worried about taking someone else's, or looking like you are, or like you would. And the easiest way to make sure you don't is to make sure you believe it.
"You don't want power over people," she says, "so you pretend you don't really have it, even to yourself. It's sweet and with most of us it works, because whatever else we are we're strong enough that we'll still be ourselves tomorrow no matter what you do."
There's something deeply unpalatable about that; maybe a while ago Steve would have denied it out of hand, or argued with her that it didn't work like that, or something. But now when he tries he gets stopped cold by the memory of Bucky sitting on the floor, arm cut up, waiting for . . . something, and not something good.
And then how, after they ate, Bucky looked at him and then sat on the bed instead of the floor. And how relieved he'd felt, just for a second.
Steve leans against the wall of the building beside them, swallows around the bad taste in his mouth and says, "You're saying he's not," and Natasha deliberately, slowly and pointedly shakes her head.
"He doesn't have a self, Rogers," she says. "Maybe I have too many, anything I make up as and when I need it," this smile is brief and dark, moving across her mouth and her eyes like a shadow before she's serious again, deadly serious, "but he doesn't have anything. HYDRA told him what he was, and it was a weapon, not a person."
She comes to lean on the building beside him. "Pierce gave him missions and targets and punishments and now he doesn't even have that. He's just got pain, and confusion, and fear, and you."
Steve stares at the ground. He wants to argue, not even because he thinks she's wrong but because he just hates what she's saying so much, hates it and doesn't want it to be true. He wants to argue that reality can't be like that because it shouldn't be. He wants to say it can't be like that because it's wrong.
That's what kids do, though, and he's not a kid. Not for a long time.
"So how does someone come back from that?" he asks, still looking at the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Natasha reach up and he figures she's taking her hair down when some strands fall into view. He wonders if even she has nervous habits, sometimes.
"I don't know," she says, frankly. "With great difficulty. Carefully. Slowly. With a miracle. When I told you you might not want to pull this thread, Steve, I had good reasons." She sighs. "Sometimes there isn't a way out."
His jaw hurts; Steve realizes he's clenching it hard enough that he's probably risking his teeth. He forces himself to let go and says, "You can't know that."
"And I don't," Natasha agrees; Steve looks up at her, surprised. She shrugs. "I can't see the future, Steve. I don't know what can and can't happen. I'm just warning you. You, Stark - one way you're the same. Neither of you likes to hear that there isn't a way to win."
She takes a deep breath. "But there's one thing that'll make the difference, if anything does," she says. "And that's that you didn't save him, Rogers." She prods his shoulder gently for emphasis, meets his eyes like she's trying to write that in his skull with a look. "You didn't save him, and you didn't find him, and you didn't bring him home. You couldn't find him. Your choice didn't matter."
She lets her hand drop. "His did. He found you. He got out. All you did was show him that he was trapped, and that there was a door to walk through. He's the one that used it."
Steve thinks about her and Barton, what she said to Loki, the fact that Barton's watching them now. Some conclusions draw themselves.
"And if you have any hope," she says, with another careful breath, "of helping him find a self to be, you have to know that, and you have to know everything about what you did that let you show him. And to do that, you have to know how people see you, how they hear you, what they want from you. You have to know how you affect them. You have to know what every word you say and every move you make sounds like outside your head, and at least inside - " she touches his temple, "you have to own it, because you have to control it.
She takes one more breath, smaller, and finishes, "If for no other reason than he walked away from them, Steve. He left them. He threw off the leash. And that makes him so much more dangerous than he'd be if you'd saved him. He used to have masters and he left them behind and if you trip or stumble and start looking like them to him then I think he'll kill you, and this time you'll die, and all he'll have left is the pain and confusion and fear. And then what happens to him?"
There's a worry-line between her brows. Steve's actually surprised he could put one there, him, or anything to do with him. She says, "You don't have the luxury of not knowing about power and how it works anymore, Steve. You have to know it inside and out because you have to know how to keep from using it even by accident. Anything else is cruel to him, and dangerous to you. Good intentions aren't enough anymore. Not for this."
When Steve doesn't answer her - can't, can't answer her right now through his closed throat and tight chest - she adds, softly, "And remember that the self he finds to be . . . might not be your friend."
Except that he can answer. "He is my friend," he says, flatly. "He is now. He was then. People change, life changes them, but that doesn't."
"I think you know what I meant," Natasha replies, almost chiding.
"I do," Steve agrees, allows. "I just . . . I think you should know what I mean."
She looks away, like she thinks her only answers for that aren't ones he's willing to hear. So he makes himself clear his throat, find his voice and say, "But you're right." And then, as her startled look turns on him, say, "Thank you."
She takes aim at a smile and only barely misses. "Believe it or not, I don't have so many friends I can afford to lose one," she says. And then, "Come on. It's getting cold."
It isn't, actually. But it's a good excuse. Natasha starts to walk again, and Steve pushes himself off the wall to follow her.
And it's uncomfortable as hell, but that doesn't actually matter; he catches up with her and says, "On that subject - I think I owe you an apology."
Now for a minute she looks exactly like the Natasha he knows, amusement and suspicion and sheer personality meeting in the middle of her expression and mixing into something unique. "I can't think of anything you need to say sorry for," she informs him, and he makes a bit of a face.
"That's because one of the effects I have on people is they tend to forgive me for being self-righteous," he says, and she blinks at him in surprise. "They think it comes with the outfit."
He sighs. "On the Lemurian Star, I was frustrated with everything, and angry at Fury," he says, and her blinks change from surprise to momentary confusion. "I took it out on you. I was kind of a dick. I'm sorry. And if you hadn't gotten that file, we'd all be dead now anyway, and as somebody who actually took the time to pick up a power-pack from the weapons factory on his way to rescue his best friend," he pushes on, this time not giving her a chance to interrupt, "I should know that kind of thing is important. I do know that kind of thing is important."
He watches Natasha's face. He might be fooling himself, but he thinks something's softer, behind the wall of her eyes. "The only thing you did wrong was not tell me," he says, "and I'm pretty sure you didn't tell me because I would have . . . " he searches for the right way to say it.
"Flipped out? Gone off at me?" Natasha offers. "Completely lost your mind?"
"Something like that," Steve reluctantly agrees. "And that's on me."
This smile he thinks is real, maybe at least close to a spontaneous reaction from whatever Natasha is underneath all the others that he can expect to get. "Thank you," she says, quietly.
"Next time," he adds, "tell me so I can take it into account. Tactically, I mean." And she laughs.
She walks him home, mostly in silence. But it's comfortable silence. At his building when they stop he says, "Say hello to Barton for me. Unless you want to come in."
"I don't think that would be fair," she demurs. "Don't look - I don't think you'd see anything anyway - but your friend is watching us from your window now, and I don't think he's up to guests."
"Someday," Steve says.
She hugs him and, like in the cemetery, kisses his cheek. Then she waves and he watches her for a moment until she's gone around the corner and, he's pretty sure, completely disappeared.
If Bucky was looking out the window before, he's back in his room now, door mostly closed but not pulled to. Steve measures grounds into the filter of the coffee-maker, fills up the tank and turns it on. The burbling noises are a comforting break in the silence.
Steve pulls his phone out of his pocket, thinks better of it, and then takes the tablet off the desk. It's still a touch-screen and he still doesn't like it quite as much as the actual keyboard, but he's not a quiet typist on that, so the tablet's still easier than the phone, email easier than text. It still takes him about a half hour to get everything about today into the email, then type Sam's address in.
He hits send and leans back in the kitchen chair, staring at the wall for a while before the beep of the machine tells him his coffee's ready.