Marvel 616 Fic: Undo | Chapter 7

[vail_kagami]

summary and story information this way

The day has been long. It hasn’t been special, not in the context of Steve’s life, but it was long and exhausting and hard. But successful. The creatures that emerged from the sea had been fought back until Namor stepped in and took over. The avatar of an old pagan goddess who threatened to destroy Boston had turned out to be more of a challenge. Iron Man had been fighting that one for days and it just kept growing and becoming more powerful. It also cut off all communication so Steve never even heard about it until it grew so big people could see it from a distance and the news picked up on it. The sea creatures still needed to be dealt with, so Steve could only send half his team to help Tony. In the end, it took all of them to free the possessed archaeologist and banish the goddess to whence she came from.

It was nothing special, considering. It was just one of those days.

For Tony, though, it was one of those weeks.

If he’s honest with himself, Steve likes those days. Not while they are going on, with the threats and the adrenaline and the responsibility to make sure everyone is safe, but when they are over, and no one died, and they come down from the adrenaline high with the kind of heavy, satisfied exhaustion that comes with knowing they did good. When he’s still shaking a little over what might have happened and every fiber of his being is made of relief and pride.

Pride in what they do. Pride in his team and in this man standing next to him, who proved once again that he deserves to be one of them; that it was right to forgive him and place their trust in him over and over again.

Tony is standing beside Steve, leaning against the metal fence encircling the balcony, looking out over the city of New York and at the stars above and for a moment, just now, Steve knows they are seeing exactly the same thing. They are standing close enough to touch and Tony’s shoulder is almost level with Steve’s. Slimmer, though. The shirt that rests loosely on his skin would stretch tightly over Steve’s. Steve turns and Tony’s eyes are almost level with his, too, and blue even in the silvery moonlight. His gaze, resting on Steve, is very calm, but his lips are slightly parted as if his heart underneath the light in his chest were beating fast, like Steve’s.

Steve’s hand fits perfectly against Tony’s cheek, though, when he turns his head just so, to have a better angle, and when their lips finally meet it doesn’t feel like a first time either.

It feels like something Steve will carry with him, through the good and the bad.

Then Tony turns until he’s flush against Steve and his arms wrap around Steve’s neck and Steve’s hands rest on Tony’s hipbones, just above the waistband of his pants, and suddenly he feels like a teenager, nervous and giddy and so very large, larger than life. He doesn’t know if he’s felt this way before.

He thinks maybe this is something new.

-

Finally, eventually, things calm down. They had to inform Hank, and Bruce, and… other people. Like Pepper Potts. It’s up to Potts to get word out to anyone else who might care. To handle the press, too. Carol is glad that that’s the problem of someone else and doesn’t have the energy to hate herself for being so selfish.

Everyone at the mansion is very quiet, the way they always are after something bad happened; like they think any noise above a whisper will be inappropriate and rude. So they open doors slowly and set down their coffee cups quietly and barely speak. Even the ones who didn’t like Tony very much. The only noise comes from the kitchen where, Jarvis does the dishes by hand, ignoring the dishwasher. It sounds like water splashing everywhere, like children playing in a bathtub or fighting a war. No one goes in there, not even for coffee or beer.

Carol spends time with Tony. A lot. She sits beside him and takes in the way the borrowed clothes sit so loosely around his thin frame. His hands are long and slender and scarred; both have cuts on them: one from something cutting in his palm, the other from the surgery, when they set his shattered bones weeks ago. It never completely healed.

His hair has grown out of the expensive cut but his beard is well maintained. Carol thinks it’s funny that they let him shave even when they thought they controlled him somehow. They never did. Rhodey knew that from the beginning, because if Tony had wanted to kill him he would have. But he was stupid to go with them like he did. Carol hates him for that and wonders if he planned this outcome, then hates herself for the thought. That isn’t like Tony. It’s like giving up.

Planned, no. Anticipated, probably. And easily accepted. Maybe it’s okay to hate him a little. She can’t even have a drink over this and that is his fault, too.

She hates that someone, eventually, will have a drink or two in his honor and then she will have to punch them in the face. She knows she will do that.

Tony’s face is pale and his cheeks hollow, his eyes bruised and his lips blue. He looks horrible, like he hasn't slept in weeks. He was unconscious when Steve found him, so he never knew someone came for him. For all they know he died believing Steve to be dead and blaming himself for it.

Carol cries over that. She cries over a lot of things and remembers the times she cried on Tony’s shoulder. Somehow that was always okay when it was Tony. It’s okay now, too, because no one will come in here and Tony won’t tell. When she is done, she will leave as well and never see him again.

She takes her time. Then she leaves. The click of the door shutting behind her doesn’t sound final. For a while she leans against the wall and doesn’t think anything at all. Eventually she becomes aware that she’s hoping for an invasion, or Doombots, of Richards fucking with interdimensional portals because that would tell her what to do now. Nothing happens before she finally gives up waiting and walks away.

The door that leads to Tony’s old workshop is half open. Voices ring from it, loud and agitated. When she comes closer, she recognizes Steve and Rhodey and makes out fragments of what they say.

“—come off your fucking high horse!”

“—hadn’t left him alone to come to Seattle—”

“—had nothing to do with it and you know it. Don’t pin this on me! You were the one who—”

“If you’d called us sooner we could have stopped him before he left with them!”

“If you had been faster we could have! If you hadn’t let this—”

Carol turns away and leaves. This is none of her business. She’s sure there will be punches soon and that is none of her business either.

On the way to the front door she passes the kitchen. The door is closed and everything is silent on the other side. The front door is open because Logan is standing outside, smoking. The sun is warm on her face when she walks past him and takes off into the cloudless sky. It’s a beautiful day.

-

A day passes. Steve can tell, because he remembers the sun going down and rising and going down again. By the morning of the second day, he lies on his old bed in his old bedroom and stares at the ceiling. He doesn’t know what to do. It feels like there is no reason to do anything.

He’s lost loved ones before. It never gets any easier.

There’s no manual for it.

Sometimes, it happened during a crisis, in the minds of battle, and there was time for shock and rage but no time for grief. This is worse.

“Tony,” he whispers, and the name already sounds hollow.

Hank Pym and Hank McCoy want to perform an autopsy. Steve doesn’t see the point—Tony was shot, that’s what killed him—but they think the guys who held him might have done more to him. In the end, Steve didn’t protest. It’s not Tony anymore, anyway. It was Tony. Once.

He gets up once the sun has fully risen. Forces himself to shower and to dress in fresh clothes. Forces himself to go to the kitchen and eat. He manages a muffin (fresh, someone baked them last night) and half a sandwich. There’s no one else around. The mansion feels empty.

Steve told himself not to do it, but eventually he ends up going to Tony’s old room where they placed his body after coming home. It’s empty, too. They already took him away.

Steve sits on the edge of the bed. The sheets still bear the vague outline of Tony’s body, and he finds himself smoothing them over until the impression is gone. He doesn’t need any more ghosts in his life.

There are none of Tony’s things in here; he’s been gone for too long, has never really stayed here after the mansion was rebuilt. It’s just an empty room that doesn’t even have his impression on the bedsheets.

Someone else will have it one day, probably. Maybe someone Steve doesn’t even know yet, someone who never met Tony Stark in person. Maybe…

Life goes on and right now, Steve hates that.

There’s the sound of uneven footsteps and then Rhodes appears in the door. He’s walking with the help of a cane and his right hand is bandaged where he sprained his fingers on Steve’s jaw and he’s sporting a black eye. This time he doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t look surprised to find Steve here either.

“You know,” he says, leaning heavily against the doorframe. “Tony had a lot to say to you when you were dead.”

Steve feels like he’s expected to defend himself. He didn’t come to this room when Tony was still here. What he says is, “There are a lot of things I should have said to him while he was still alive.”

“True,” Rhodes agrees. “Well, too late for that now. I really can’t wait to hear what you’ll tell the world on his funeral. Provided you can find the time to show up this time.”

Steve closes his eyes, his shoulders sagging. He can’t begrudge the man his bitterness. But he has lost a lot, too, and it’s only just beginning to hurt.

Rhodes comes limping over, sits on the foot end of the bed. Steve doesn’t say anything, so they sit in silence, and somehow Steve doesn’t mind the company. They are alone together. No one is really touching the other’s space.

“I can’t remember how often I have cursed the fact that I ever let Tony Stark become my friend,” Rhodes eventually says, but his voice is quiet and it sounds like he is talking to himself. “The truth is, I can’t imagine my life without him.”

He and Steve might have become friends had either of them ever bothered to try.

-

It’s not the first time Jim has had to bury his best friend. It’s not even the first time he has had to bury this particular best friend. Turns out, repetition doesn’t make it any easier.

The date for the funeral is officially announced by the media and it just feels surreal and wrong. For a few hours, Jim isn’t even sure he’ll go.

It’s a week from now. He doesn’t have to plan it, he’ll just have to be there. Not that Tony cares. But Pepper will come and he won’t let her go alone. She has her boyfriend, sure, and the other guys from Resilient, and he’s pretty sure Henry Hellrung will show, but it’s not the same. Of the old gang, her and Jim are the only ones who are left.

He’s going to Seattle tomorrow. There’s no point in staying here any longer, watching Rogers wander the mansion like his own ghost.

Villains, of course, have no sense of tact or timing. Doctor Octopus, of all fucking people, has some moronic plan he thinks he needs to carry out barely two days after Captain America carried Tony’s corpse out of a cave and Jim is almost convinced he does it only to fuck with them. If so, he’s even more stupid than his plan indicates; everyone is pissed and hurting and just aching to go out and smash something. Jim would be the first in line, leg injury or not, but his suit was damaged when the elevator shaft collapsed on it and is out of commission.

It’s the realization that there is no one around to fix or improve it anymore than makes Jim lock himself in a bathroom and not come out for two hours.

The people who kidnapped Tony and broke his mind and then kidnapped him again are being held on the Helicarrier. Jim is going to go there before he visits Pepper. The man who shot his friend is up there, too, and Jim is going to see him, and just let Hill attempt to stop him.

The two Hanks are performing their autopsy on Tony right now, though, and Jim wants to wait and see if there is anything else he needs to see this man about.

He thought about going down and watching, but there are some things he doesn’t need to see. Jim has sat through some autopsies before, but he doesn’t want this to be the last image of Tony to get burned into his mind. Instead he waits. Sits in the guest room they gave him and stares at the wall and tries to avoid everyone and not to plan murder.

The others are still dealing with Doc Ock. Jim doesn’t think they really need that long, but maybe they don’t want to come back here and decided to work off some steam. Maybe the problem really is bigger than he thought. He deliberately doesn’t check, knowing it would drive him crazy if he was needed and couldn’t do anything to help.

So only Jim, Jarvis and the two Hanks are in the mansion when one of the Hanks—Hank Pym—comes running up the stairs and very excitedly tells them that Tony is not, in fact, dead.

-

Everyone else is coming back now, but for a moment, Jim gets to be alone with this knowledge. He and Jarvis, who stares wide eyed for a moment and then just walks away. Jim feels very much the same way. He was so lost in grief that now he doesn’t have to be anymore, he doesn’t know how to feel.

First, he calls Pepper. She can’t tell him how to feel either, but she seems pretty secure in her own emotions.

Crying and cursing are the way to go, it seems. Jim doesn’t do that.

Well, maybe he cursed a little bit. He doesn’t really remember. Meanwhile, Hank Pym is beginning to freak out some, because apparently they discovered that Tony is alive after they cut him open and his heart, barely visible underneath the RT that they were just about to remove, started beating again.

What’s worse, Hank seems half-convinced that Tony was more-or-less conscious this whole time, just paralyzed in a near-death state that somehow they missed.

Jim nearly decks him over that. He missed that as well but Hank and Hank are scientists and it’s their fucking job to notice things like that. Actually, he has decked people for a lot less than cutting his buddy open while he was helpless and fucking awake to experience it.

Jim really hopes Pym is wrong about that one.

He regrets missing the opportunity for a punch, but then, it would have been a hard one and Pym is needed by McCoy right now to assist him with saving Tony’s life. Tony might have just stopped being not-quite-dead for two days, but apparently that state was, ironically, the only thing that saved him from dying of his bullet wound. Not to mention that they cut him open and sawed through his ribs and all that. Jim actually feels sick thinking about it.

He paces the corridor a lot, until Captain America storms in, holding his shield like he wants to decapitate someone, and asks for information. Jim can’t really give him much, except that Tony is currently not dead but that might change, and that Steve should have made use of the opportunity to pour his heart out to his corpse because apparently he could hear him, and that the Hanks think the guys who hacked Tony’s mind somehow programmed him to play possum because there were no chemicals in his blood that could have caused this and it’s not something a body usually decides to just do on its own. Hill is trying to get out more from her prisoner. She’ll keep them informed.

And that is all they have at the moment.

Just after Thor makes it in, Don Blake joins the team in the basement in their efforts to fix Tony. For the others, it’s time to wait again. It’s an art Jim has never quite mastered.

This time, the silence between him and Rogers is not quite as hostile.

-

Steve could say that he is getting sick of sitting by Tony’s bedside not knowing whether he will live or die, but that would be a lie. Truth is, he’s gotten sick of that a long time ago. But he also accepted that being Tony’s friend means sitting by his bedside listening to heart monitors, and that actually allowing himself to openly love the man would only make it worse.

At least this time he can sit by Tony’s bedside and hold his hand. He tells himself that and doesn’t think about how he’ll have to leave if it looks like Tony is going to wake up.

Or how they are letting him sit here because they don’t think that will happen anytime soon.

The respirator whooshes, the sound steady and almost comforting. Familiar, too. Steve knows Tony will pull through because it would be too cruel if he didn’t. Hank Pym isn’t quite as convinced, but he’s also upstairs letting Janet assure him that it wasn’t his fault and that Tony was probably too out of it to notice them crack open his ribs to get to his internal organs. Steve hopes she’s right, and that Tony will be able to confirm it, soon.

At least they know that Tony is blissfully unconscious right now. He looks absolutely horrible, and if he makes it (which he will), he’ll need a long time to fully recover. And Steve just knows that he’ll be banned from seeing him in the meantime so his presence can’t agitate Tony’s fragile mind. No one has talked about that yet, but the way things have been going lately, he doesn’t doubt for one minute that it’ll be another month or ten before he is allowed to actually talk to the man he theoretically lives with.

And maybe that will be long enough to forget the way Tony’s body hung in his arms as he carried him out of the base, or the moment when he realized he wasn’t breathing anymore.

He has Tony back, but that is still a moment someone should be taken to justice for, he thinks.

All in good time. Steve was so eager to get his hands on them, and he still is. But now he can get his hands on Tony, if only a little bit and for a little while, and that is more important. As soon as he’s been kicked out here though… Well, he’ll have plenty of time to commit to the people who hurt his lover.

If it was him in charge of those men and women, he wouldn’t let their victim’s lover anywhere near them. Not that Steve is going to hurt them, of course not, but he knows he’ll have to discuss this with Hill. Probably a lot.

For now, though, he’ll be perfectly content sitting here holding Tony’s hand until someone chases him away.

-

They chase Rogers away two days later, when Tony shows the first signs of waking. Jim takes his places at Tony’s bedside and a magazine and reads it three times before Tony not only wakes up but shows signs of actual awareness. He’s also on the phone a lot, talking to Pepper in whispers, alternately telling her to come and not to come. Every now and then he sleeps on the cot they kindly provided for him—Rogers used it before and it had to be even more undersized and uncomfortable for him. Sometimes he just falls asleep in his chair and wakes up with his mouth hanging open and a kink in his neck, hoping nobody saw him.

Life with Tony, basically.

Eventually, after a few days of waiting and reading and staring at the wall for lack of a window, he wakes up to Tony looking at him and giving the impression of actually seeing him. It wakes Jim up completely within a heartbeat.

“Hey Boss,” he says. “Seems that despite your best attempts, you didn’t die. Now, how do you feel about that?”

Tony blinks at him. He manages to look unimpressed while also looking absolutely miserably. It’s an achievement, but then, Tony has experience.

He doesn’t reply because it’s hard to speak with an oxygen mask over his face, and also because he’s weak and in pain. And maybe because the question has been rhetorical and kind of stupid.

“McCoy should show up in a minute or so,” Jim tells him. “He’s probably been asleep so you have a few seconds longer to prepare for the poking and prodding. This is the third time you've woken up, by the way, in case you don’t remember. Which you don’t, I know, so don’t answer that. As for why you are feeling so crappy, you were shot, and then you were dead for two days.”

Tony makes a noise that dies somewhere in his throat and a vague movement that looks uncomfortably like “I know.”

“You know?” Jim growls, suddenly suspicious. “How do you know? No one told you. I guess you where there for the shooting, but how do you know about this being dead thing? Most people don’t guess that, not after two days.”

He hopes the reply is going to be neither “I know because I planned this,” nor “I know because I heard Hank and Hank talk about it while they cut me open.” As a matter of fact, the reply is a vague sound and an aborted gesture that looks disturbingly apologetic to Jim, and then McCoy comes in and takes over.

-

“This is pretty much the greatest success we ever had in bringing down an entire organization.” Jim leans back and folds his arms behind his head, doing his level best to feels as unconcerned and relaxed as he is acting. “Your little trick washed out most of he high ranking members, right into our arms, and they gave away pretty much everything. Their leader seems to be a pretty self-centered guy. We got him, so there’s no need to protect his people anymore, considering they are no longer of use to him if he’s going to jail. He’s been very helpful in hopes of a lighter sentence. And because Wolverine threatened to cut off his balls. Well...” He shrugs. “In any case, his goals don’t seem to have been overly ideological.”

Jim never really met the man. He would like to. Daniel Serkwich may be helpful right now, but he is by no means a good man. He is the kind of man who programmed a code into Tony’s mind that would make his body shut down and play dead, just in case it would ever be useful. And what he used it for was petty, pointless revenge and cruelty: if things had gone the way he’d originally planned it, Tony would have woken up after they buried him and died again, suffocating in a coffin. (They didn’t get that bit from Serkwich himself but from his aide, who is just as helpful right now, and for the same reasons.)

“He was after global domination,” Tony rasps. He makes a vague gesture with his hand because Tony likes talking with his hands but he’s too weak for anything particularly active. “It doesn’t get much more basic than that.”

“It’s a classic. You know, in a way it’s almost comforting that every now and then you get a villain with an agenda like that. No deeper plot, no tragic backstory, just selfish ambition and megalomaniac insanity. I bet he even had shrill, evil laughter.”

“Not in my presence. But he did bounce on his toes when I wrote down the real names and weaknesses of all super humans I know for him.”

Jim gulps. “You did what?”

“Wrote down everything I knew about everyone. He thought he controlled my will so he had no reason to doubt anything. I even managed to fix some details they got right in the files they already had on us. You know, as far I as could get away with without being discovered.”

“Dude.” Jim shakes his head. “You really had this whole thing planned out, didn’t you?”

“No, I mostly made it up as I went along.” Tony’s eyes are drooping a little, but Jim isn’t sure if that’s fatigue or an attempt to avoid talking about how he is a self-centered asshole who tends to go for the most convenient and self-destructive solution with no consideration for his friends. “Didn’t plan on dying either, if that’s what you’re going for.”

“I was, actually. Good to know you didn’t plan that one.” He still can’t help sounding a little sour.

“I’m sorry for attacking you,” Tony tries.

“Okay. ‘I’m sorry for attacking you, but…’?”

“But they made me.”

“Obviously, they didn’t.”

“But they thought they did. If I hadn’t, they would have known their control didn’t work.”

“Yeah, I get that. But how about not pretending in the first place? The two of us could have easily taken them out, arrested them, and learned all about their secret club without you going undercover for two weeks and making us think you’re dead or being tortured or whatever. Although, you know, that never gets old.”

“They did kill me in the end, it that makes you feel any better.”

“Stop that, Tony. They are going to kick me out if I punch you.”

Tony sigs. Maybe he really wanted to get punched. Who knows?

“We’d never have found them all. The guys who attacked us didn’t know anything. Not even where their base was. They were navigated there via a signal to their suits, and the moment they were arrested, those suits would have been destroyed by remote control. Probably killing them, too. They didn’t know that, by the way.”

“I bet that does wonders for the work morale. How do these people no notice if their friends get roasted by their own equipment a lot?”

“That doesn’t happen,” Tony explains. “These guys never really became active before. Some covert operations, but no big missions where they could be captured and interrogated. Mostly, they got their information from people who knew they were being paid by some secret society but not what it’s really about. So whenever someone was arrested for treason or industrial espionage or whatever, they couldn’t give anything away because what they thought they knew was false and HOANU destroyed all ties to them the moment they were found out. They were very careful, have to give them that.”

“Until they fucked up spectacularly.”

“Oh yes.” Tony actually sounds proud of himself. Maybe Jim will deck him one after all.

“Can I punch you? I really feel like punching you right now.”

“I don’t know. Ask my doctor.”

“You asshole.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“It was better this way. You can’t deny that. They’d still be out there if we had done it any other way.”

“I keep hearing 'we', but it was really you who made all the decisions. Again.”

“Well, it was my life I was risking.”

The sad thing is that there is no point in arguing because Tony honestly doesn’t get it. “It could have gone better, is what I’m saying. If you had told anyone what you were planning.”

“They didn’t send me a letter and warn me that there would be mind control in my future. I had to make things up on the spot.”

“You could have led us to the base when they took you.”

“I did, didn’t I?”

“I mean at once. Not two weeks later, just before blowing it up while you’re inside.”

“There was no opportunity. These people weren’t stupid.”

“They seem pretty stupid to me.”

“Their leaders made some bad decisions,” Tony admits. “But altogether, the whole thing was surprisingly sound. They have been around for a long time, gathered intel on a lot of things no one should have known about, and we never even knew they existed. The one time they decided to take action it’s been their downfall, true, but actually, they would have made a great secret service.”

“Seriously.”

“Yeah.” Tony settled more heavily into his propped up pillows. “I’m pretty sure the organization as such will live on in some form. It’s huge, we didn’t get nearly all of them, and the rest will scatter before we can get to all their bases. Losing their leader won’t hurt them in the long run. Eventually someone would have killed him for a promotion anyway.”

“What is their goal, then? We should really get ready to stop them before they become a problem again.”

“Changing the world?” Tony guesses. “I don’t know. Serkwich wanted to take it over; he had some reasoning on how a world united under his rule would prevent wars and thinning out the population beforehand would allow for a better distribution of resources between the ones that are left, but I think he was really just into power and destruction. Some of them really believe in those goals, though. Some are even aiming for them without the wide-spread murder and destruction. Let’s hope their faction is in power the next time they make an appearance.”

“You seem to know a lot about them.”

“Didn’t you read the report? Hill sat down here and wouldn’t shut up with the questions until they kicked her out while you weren’t looking.”

As a matter of fact, Jim has not read the report. Maria Hill only left three hours ago, he seriously doubts she’s done writing it yet. “Let’s just pretend I didn’t.”

“They let me play with their computer. What can I say?” Tony smiles briefly, even as his eyes droop more. Jim should probably let him sleep. “Did you know they call themselves the Harbingers of a New Universe?”

“Yes. Sounds ridiculous.”

“Would have been Harbingers of a New World, but HOANW makes for a bad abbreviation.”

“Wow…” Jim lets that sink in for a moment. “The problems evil organizations face, I’m telling you, man.”

“Rhodey, where’s Steve?”

The question is unexpected and unwelcome. Jim actually flinches, doesn’t quite manage to cover it up. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, man. I know he’s alive. I remember… Well, I remember a lot of things you probably don’t want details on.” Tony smirks, but it lacks conviction.

Jim probably shouldn’t be surprised. Tony has been amazingly stable, psychologically, since his return. Of course he would be able to get his more recent memories in line once the newly unlocked old ones no longer drive him crazy.

It would even be convincing if not for the nightmares he still has, but those can be caused by any number of things. Either way, it’s obvious that Tony won’t let this episode slow him down any longer.

“We didn’t know how you’d react,” Jim explains. “So he was sent away, until we knew you’d be alright.” He snorts softly and hopes Tony can’t tell how his stomach is turning into a tight knot. “He’ll be ecstatic to hear he can come back here.”

He stands, ready to leave and call Captain America down here from wherever he may be, but Tony holds him back.

The grip around Jim’s fingers is disturbingly weak.

“Don’t get him yet,” Tony says quietly. “I don’t want… I’d like to see him when I’m not unable to get out of bed.” He closes his eyes, turns his head away and pretends to sleep, effectively cutting off any argument or question. After a second of watching him, Jim sits in the chair again and waits until Tony’s breath evens out and real sleep takes over.

It doesn’t take long for the nightmares to start.

-

It’s ridiculous. Tony used to be one of the richest men in the world. He’s flirted, dated, and slept with countless women. He’s faced off dozens of super human, alien, or plain insane villains who were stronger than him and beat them. He’s stood in rooms full of strangers and told them about his alcoholism.

There is no rational explanation why he’s now feeling insecure and nervous because he’s about to face the man he’s been living with for months.

A part of him still has trouble accepting that knowledge as real. All the other memories he got back got the prime seat in the theatre of his mind, the grief and guilt over Steve dying being foremost among them. Tony knows all about Steve being back but he doesn’t remember him coming back and somehow that leaves the two sets of memories unconnected, like everything that happened after he woke from his coma happened to someone else.

He wonders if it was like this for Carol, who had no emotional connection to her past. But no—the emotions are all there, even if the ones that for a while incapacitated him with their intensity are still overlaying everything. Tony still remembers researching all he’d done in the time he’d forgotten, learning about the SHRA, about the Negative Zone prison and cloning Thor and Bill Foster’s death and Happy’s death and Steve’s death and Jan’s death and not even having the luxury of disbelief because he knew immediately that this was all something he would do, no matter how much he hated himself for it. And how his heart was beating in his throat when he told Thor he’d do it all again with a bravado he didn’t feel. And how it felt when Steve hugged him after he and Tony and Thor came back from fighting dragons in the Nine Realms.

He remembers waking up after their first night together convinced that Steve would either regret it or brush it off and not sure if he could take either.

He remembers Steve bringing him coffee to his workshop when Tony had to work through the night and kissing the top of his head before going to look through some papers, and that he was happy.

It makes this moment even worse.

He finds himself wishing that for once in his life Steve is going to be late, or that an alien invasion will happen right now to let him postpone this, but of course, his luck being what it is, Steve is right on time and no alien overlord breaks through the ceiling and declares war on Earth.

Steve comes in, through the mansion’s front door, wearing casual clothes, but looking neat—as if he’s going on a date—but Steve always looks that way when he’s not in the middle of a workout. He smiles when he sees Tony, and it’s so relieved and warm that Tony heart breaks and his stomach turns. He moves to meet Steve halfway; everything still hurts, ever step is a conscious effort, but it’s okay, he’s had worse. Steve is something that’s worse. Steve reaches out with his large hands, moving so carefully like Tony is something that might break, and Tony hates that. He looks so damn happy, though, and Tony hates that more.

Everything about this is terrible but at least they are alone, he’s made sure of that. They are alone.

“Steve,” Tony says. Seeing this man, feeling his hands cup his cheeks, makes his heart beat faster, and that’s wrong. So is the little voice that tells him that Steve shouldn’t be here, alive or not; that somehow he slipped into another universe while he wasn’t looking, one that is punishing him for his sins by making everything perfect the way he effectively kept it from being.

“Steve,” he says again, but doesn’t stop the other man when he leans in and presses his lips against Tony’s. For a second, he closes his eyes. For a second, he returns the kiss.

After a second, he breaks it and takes a step back and Steve lets him go; a little confused, a little concerned. About him. Clueless.

Tony hates himself for everything.

“Steve,” he says for the third time and he isn’t proud that his voice is steady, just grateful. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Now Steve sounds a little suspicious; he knows Tony too well.

“For everything. For this. You shouldn’t be here. With me, I mean. This should never have happened.”

“’This’?” Steve asks. “Are you talking about us?”

Tony’s throat tightens; Steve is beginning to sound a little angry, the way he gets when he’s lost and hurt and doesn’t know how to react. Tony doesn’t trust himself to speak for a second but he forces himself to look Steve in the eye and nods.

He hopes Steve will see his point; that this will be over soon.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Steve doesn’t even sound overly disbelieving. He sounds incredulous, rather, and a little irritated, as if talking to a child who doesn’t realize how stupid he’s being.

“Yes,” Tony says.

“Why?” Suddenly, Steve’s hands close around Tony’s shoulders and his grip is just a little too hard for all the muscle tone Tony’s lost while he was sick and then a prisoner. When he speaks, though, his voice is quiet. “Is it because you remembered? Because of something I did?”

“No. Yes.” Tony sighs, wishes his breath didn’t shake, wishes Steve would just get it and not fight him on this. “Things were fucked up. If I had known—”

“You knew,” Steve interrupts him. “You knew everything about what happened. You did your research, we talked about it. I’ve for- We worked through it, didn’t we?”

“I knew,” Tony confirms. “I knew like I know about the World Wars or the Revolutionary War. Just that in this case there was one guy in it who was a lot like me. Now I remember. And I know things I didn’t know before. That no one told me.” He knows how it feels to sit alone in a room and make the decision to kill a friend. He knows what it feels like to fight people he loves and make that decision over and over again, every day, and tell himself it’s worth it. “You hated me,” he says, softly.

Steve is silent for too long. “No, I—”

“Yes, you did. I have… What I did. I made you. I knew I would but it’s still…” It’s still hard to say to words, no matter how often he’s been going through them in anticipation of this meeting.

“Tony, I love you.” Tony closes his eyes because Steve sounds so earnest and the words have never come as easily to Tony. “No matter what happened. I do. I did for a long time, that’s why it hurt so much, that’s why… We talked about this. A lot.”

“You never said you hated me,” Tony insists. “Really hated me. Enough to want me dead.” He’s no stranger to hate; he knows what it looks like, what it feels like to be hated, has known since the first time he was old enough to realize what he is and what he should be and what he won’t ever be. It’s ugly and hard and unforgiving. Tony hasn’t hated, really hated many people in his life because being deserving of true hatred, that’s a lot. It’s also personal, it’s always personal. That’s why Steve hated him; because he expected better, and because Tony took his friendship and love and threw it in his face. “You should have.”

“Did Rhodes put you up to this?” Steve’s expression is dark and getting darker. He looks up and at the stairs leading to the second floor for some reason. As if he’s expecting to see someone standing there, watching them. Tony knows there is no one and doesn’t look.

“Rhodey? No. What would he have to do with this?” He shakes his head, refusing to let himself be distracted. “It wasn’t hard to come up with myself. A relationship like ours… I love you, Steve. Always did. But I went into this under false assumptions. I should have known, probably, but I didn’t, and you didn’t tell me…” He shakes his head and can’t look at Steve anymore. “I would never have let this happen if I had known.”

“Let it happen,” Steve repeats. “Tony, this isn’t some accident. And I don’t know how you can think… I don’t hate you. I mean it when I say I love you. That’s not something I would lie about. And I’m sorry what happened, I got carried away. I was angry, but I never wanted to hurt you, not really. You have to believe me.”

“Steve, I’m not scared of you,” Tony tells him, desperate for Steve to get it. “And I don’t blame you. You did nothing wrong.”

“Then why are you leaving me?”

“Because you… Because this can’t work. It won’t work.”

“It worked so far.”

“Because I didn’t know!” Tony is rising his voice now, but that’s desperation, not anger. He wants to be done with this before he loses it. “I knew what I did, to you, but only on an intellectual level. I didn’t know how bad it really was. You don’t hate people, Steve. You don’t kill people, but you wanted to kill me. That’s how bad it was. How can you even look at me?”

“You said you’d do it again. You said you’d stand up for what you did. Did that change, too?” Steve sounds lost, but also, maybe, a little hopeful, and this just keeps getting worse because they never really got over any of this. Tony deleted his memories and robbed them of any chance to try.

“No,” he squashes Steve’s hopes. “That didn’t change. But you can’t… you’ll never forgive me. You shouldn’t. I don’t know why you even got involved with me in the first place.”

“Because I love you, you moron.”

“No, you don’t—”

“Don’t tell me how I feel!”

“—and even if you do, it isn’t enough. Not after… I knew I’d sacrifice our friendship, Steve. I was okay with it, because I knew it was worth it, keeping you and everyone as safe as I could. You just… you separated the man who did all that to you from me because I didn’t remember. But I do now. And it was always me. You can’t possibly want to be with the guy who hurt you so badly that you’d kick all your morals out of the window.”

Seconds pass in which Steve doesn’t protest. Doesn’t argue. He closes his eyes for a second and then he says, “Tony,” and reaches out his hand, but it’s half-hearted and Tony is already out of reach.

“No.” Tony walks past Steve, towards the door. Making an effort to stay out of reach but Steve doesn’t even try. “I’m sorry,” he says again, because he is. More than Steve knows. “This is my fault. I’m finally doing the right thing.” Even if he has to hurt Steve to do it. Again. Even if he has to be the bad guy again. At least this time, he thinks as he steps out into the evening sunlight, Steve will eventually understand.

chapter 8