#drabblethon 600

[aslightstep]

14 - Steve/Tony, post-CW or CW-compliant would be preferable, but an AU is fine.

(For clarity’s sake, Tony and Pepper were never together in this. Actually, just assume Iron Man 3 doesn’t happen for my peace of mind, or move it down the timeline after TWS. OK, and a little bit of a warning, even though it might be overzealous. This fic deals a bit with my personal headcanon that both Steve Rogers and Tony Stark have issues with obsession/fixation, and this isn’t exactly a positive spin on that. SO. Some of the ways they think might be a little eh?!?! if you weren’t prepared, but now you are!)

I Was A Fool

1. (Do you remember I searched you out? How I climbed your city walls.)

Tony watches him at the railing for a long time, one hand wrapped around the tumbler of whiskey and one hand half reaching for the panel that would open the sliding doors leading outside. “How long has he been out there, J?” he asks softly.

There’s something about the angle of Steve’s body as he leans over the railing. Something about the curve of his neck as he stares down at the street. Something about the arch of his feet, neither planted on the ground. Unsteady, the engineer in him thinks. Ready to fall-

“Two hours, sir,” JARVIS answers, and Tony thinks of the two hours he’s just spent in his bed, waking up from nightmare after nightmare, waking up and drifting off until they all became one big long terror.

He had given up and headed for the nearest source of alcohol when he saw Steve standing at the ledge of the balcony, leaning. The light of the moon and the city have washed him out, the gold of his hair gone silver and his pale skin gone white. He looks like a statue. Screw it, he thinks, and heads outside.

Steve must hear the door hiss, throwing a cursory glance over his shoulder and tensing when he sees Tony. They still haven’t quite managed to get along, even after the epic bonding experience that was an alien invasion. “Late night or early morning for you?” he asks gruffly.

“I like that you think I went to bed at all,” Tony quips, wondering at the strangely coaxing tone to his voice. “What about you, Cap? This isn’t cramping into your five AM wake up call?”

Steve shrugs. “Thought I might skip it.”

There’s another joke on the edge of his tongue, but instead Tony just wanders over until he’s right beside Cap. He sees blue eyes flicker down to his glass and then back up, but Steve says nothing, which leaves him oddly disappointed. Not like he had wanted someone to be here in the communal floor when there was a bottle of Jack in the workshop, not like he wanted someone to look at him and say oh, Tony, you don’t need that. It might have been nice though, just to hear. 

Leaving the talking to Tony, then. That’s okay. Tony can do talking.

“Lot has changed, I bet,” he says, gesturing out to the city. 

“Well,” Steve says, clearing his throat when the one word comes out choked. “I never much had the chance to see it from this view.”

“Still, doesn’t mean you don’t-” Tony says, because he is good at talking, but he is not good at knowing where and what not to talk about. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

“Like you said. A lot has changed.” It doesn’t sound agreeable, or even kind. It’s miserable, Steve’s voice, and angry. 

“I figure building’s are the least of your worries there, Cap,” Tony says.

Steve is quiet for a long moment. “You’re probably right. I just - remember things a lot differently. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it isn’t…like that anymore.”

“How well do you remember it?”

“Perfectly,” Steve whispers. Then, to Tony: “I always had a good memory, but after the serum-”

“Photographic,” Tony finishes. He takes a swallow of his drink and lets it burn all the way down, finds his lips curling up against his will. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“What?” Steve says, looking at him for the first time. 

Tony tries to smooth out his sneer into something normal, something not so bitter. Tries not to show Yinsen’s body going slack or the dark of space or the ripples of water as he drowned over and over in his face. “I mean. Useful, right? It’s useful. Plans, schematics, there at the back of your mind forever, but sometimes. Not so good.”

He thinks Steve sees it all in his face anyway, because his eyes go a little soft and more than a little pained. “Yeah,” he says. “Sometimes.” And Steve’s seen friends slip between his fingers, too. Steve’s seen death, too.

“Sometimes I have nightmares,” Tony says out to the sky. “But. They’re just memories.”

Steve shifts a little closer. “Yeah,” the soldier agrees again. Then, seemingly apropos of nothing: “I hate the cold.”

“I wish you had a glass so I could toast to that. Deserts are fucking freezing at night.” Not as cold as, oh, being frozen alive, but still. “Water. On my face.”

“The window broke first thing on the plane,” Steve agrees, and this conversation of half-filled fears is less gruesome than it has any right to be. Tony almost finds himself smiling in the brief seconds he isn’t wondering what the hell Fury was thinking, putting this team together. The Island of Misfit Toys was a part of fiction for a reason.

“You know,” he says. “It’s not all gone.” When Steve raises an eyebrow, he gestures out at the city. “New Yorkers are nostalgia-ridden fools, near as I can tell. Never tear anything down. They just built around it. Or on top, more likely, I guess, there’s not just excessive amounts of space here. But they make something new of out it. The old, I mean.”

Steve looks at him for a long time, then back out at the city. “You figure?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tony says. “I mean, c’mon, you know better than me. The Chrysler Building. And that one over there-”

“It was there, back then-”

“Yeah, so, and it’s still there, but look at that line there, they added on, brand spanking new. Hey, come here, sit down with me, I’m getting creaky in my old age-”

“So dramatic,” Steve huffs, but he releases his death grip on the railing and they sit, legs through the slots as they look out at the city, still looking at building. “It was an insurance company in my day.”

“Cell phones now,” Tony corrects, and Steve looks at him dubiously, and they’re off, cataloging the differences, the similarities, and he never thought of using buildings as metaphors - left that up to architects who waxed philosophic about arches and singers who sang uncomfortably intimate songs about their hometowns - but it seems to be working now so he sticks with it.

Tony puts his drink down. When he and Steve are finally through talking, barely getting words through their yawns, he stands, leaving it out there, completely forgotten.

2. (Do you remember me as devout? How I prayed for your calls.)

Steve sometimes has this picture of Fury. The director is sitting at his desk, looming over a puzzle, working on fitting the pieces together. He does so, but the puzzle has no color. No picture. The pieces fit, shoved together, interlocking like they were made to, but the it’s still just a group of pieces. There’s no story. No whole.

Sometimes, that’s what the Avengers feel like to him. This group that he’s supposed to wrangle together and make into Earth’s mightiest heroes, that fights together like a well-oiled machine, like Fury’s perfect puzzle, and then goes home and separates. Broken, he thinks. Clarifies no, broken apart.

There’s something growing here, in Natasha’s miniscule smiles and the easy line of Clint’s shoulders and Thor’s embraces, just a smidgen hesitant; in Bruce’s shy offers of dinner. There’s something in the way Tony looks at him over the glow of his holographic work stations, something in the easy way that Tony fights at his back.

(Something in the way that Steve looks back. That Captain America is always at Iron Man’s side.)

It grows, slowly, over time. The picture forms of them, together, a team and a family, together. He wants them to stay, he realizes fiercely. He doesn’t want to be alone. He dreams about loses them, about waking up in a world without the ones he loves all over again. He’d do anything to stop that. Anything not to live through it again.

And he supposes, if he’s honest with himself, it’s why he takes it so hard when someone tries to take Tony away. Even if that someone is occasionally Tony himself.

“Oh, stop with the sad eyes,” Tony is telling him as Steve stares down at him from where he has slumped over Tony, boxing him in on the lab table Steve had laid him out on when he had to exchange the arc reactors. “You saved me. All better now.” He taps the new arc for good measure, and hands the old one - the one that he sacrificed to jumpstart the machine that would fry all the mechanical beasts that attacked New York City today - off to DUM-E to be incinerated.

“You nearly died,” Steve gasps. He can’t catch a breath, he can’t stop looking at Tony’s lips, the color coming back to them, such a relief after the way he had watched them turn gray as Tony died, Tony was dying, he nearly lost him-

“I did what I had to,” Tony says softly, because they have had this conversation more than once. Steve is not one to cast stones at Tony’s maverick tendencies in battle but there had been an adjustment period in the beginning, Tony not used to a team and Steve not used to hyper strong flying battle suits armed with missiles fighting with him. 

“In my arms,” Steve mumbles. “Through my fingers…”

And Tony has always been so good at picking up Steve’s dropped cues, filling in the blanks he leaves all over his life. “But you saved me. Just like I knew you would.”

“Tony, you can’t just-” Leave me, he doesn’t say. “If I wasn’t fast enough, or if your heart had given out sooner-”

“But it didn’t,” Tony insists. “It happened, we fixed it, it’s over. Steve,” and he sits up inside the circle of Steve’s arms and he’s so close and all Steve can think of is to drag him closer, so he does. Tony is so warm against, so soft. So breakable. “We all came home today.”

They did. The team is safe, the city is saved. Even Bucky, wherever he is, is most likely safe. It’s been a good day, he should be relieved. But all he can think about is how unfocused Tony’s eyes went, how Tony never looks like that. He wants to stay, he thinks to himself. And he wants Tony there with him.

“You with me?” Tony murmurs from where Steve has let him tuck his head into his shoulder. 

“Warning,” Steve finally manages. His fingers are on Tony’s neck, feeling his pulse and pulling him closer, never close enough. “Next time you pull a stunt like that, I want a warning.”

“Can do, boss man,” Tony says on a laugh. “Poor planning on my part, I’ll admit it.” He pulls away, looks up at Steve. “Sorry,” he murmurs, and at first Steve thinks he means for today, but then Tony’s lips are on his, pressing gently, and everything flies away.

He likes looking at Tony. He likes listening to Tony. He likes watching him work and scheme and laugh and he’s even fond of his irritating lack of filter and the fact that he is allergic to sleep. But he doesn’t love Tony, not like Peggy. 

But God, does this feel right, Tony alive under his hands, the faintest hint of a pulse in Tony’s lips where they meet Steve. It feels right when he kisses back. Together, he thinks, or not at all. “Don’t be,” he whispers back, and Tony’s lips curve against his.

Much later, the kissing grows more fervent, and they wind up on a couch, Tony in his lap making all kinds of delightful noises, and Steve is so happy and so scared.

“Don’t leave me,” he whispers into Tony’s hair as the man trails kisses down his neck, lips trailing over the pulse beating double time in his neck over and over, a point of fascination for Tony. 

“I won’t, I won’t,” Tony promises against his skin. “I’m right here, champ. We’ll both - yes please that again - we’ll both agree to turn down the theatrics, alright? We’ll both come home every day. To - oh - to each other. And do this all over again.”

Tony’s hand are so tight around his arms. He tries to focus on that, on the feel of them, on Tony’s back muscles moving under his fingers. But he’s floating somewhere, or sinking down, to wherever Bucky hides now, wherever Peggy’s mind goes, wherever Dum Dum and Morita and Phillips went after they passed. Steve never keeps anything good. “Don’t leave me,” he repeats. “Don’t.”

He doesn’t love Tony, but here, underneath his hands, breathing and alive, is where Tony belongs. He’ll do anything to keep it that way, even something as terrifying as falling in love all over again. Tony promises again, and Steve believes him, dragging Tony back up again to lay kisses against the words spilling out of that mouth.

(And he would tell him. He would show Tony what Zola showed him. But he doesn’t know, not for sure. It’s just a suspicion. And if he tells Tony, he could lose him, and Tony could take Bucky with him. 

And maybe that makes him selfish, maybe he’s a coward, but this way nobody hurts. This way nobody’s left alone.)

3. (But stand still is all I ever did.)

Tony doesn’t love Steve when he finds him in the hospital after the destruction of the helicarriers, carrying his shield, recently rescued from the Potomac.

He admires that Steve’s hair is still golden even in the sickly hospital light, he treasures the steady beep of his heartbeat on the monitor, and he smiles when Steve wakes up and those big blue eyes find his. 

“Enjoy your Cap nap?” he asks, and Steve groans theatrically at the terrible joke. 

“Changed my mind. Throw me back into the river. Put me out of my misery.”

“Uh, no. I don’t think even your immune system can take another dip in there.” Steve does that funny little crooked grin he does that Tony used to run his fingers along just to straighten and now just wants to run his fingers along. He coughs, looks down. He doesn’t love Steve, but he loves him enough, if that will ever make sense. Enough to take his own dip in the Potomac. “I got you something.”

“You didn’t have to,” Steve says automatically, but his mouth clicks shut as Tony brings up the shield and places it over his lap. 

Tony watches Steve, watching the emotions flit across his face. Shock and happiness and unmistakable fear. “Just a present, Steve. No pressure,” he murmurs, and Steve frowns at them both, him and the shield. “I heard what happened. With Barnes.” 

There’s a question hanging at the end of that sentence, but Tony will never voice it, and Steve doesn’t hear it.

“If you need help looking-”

“Thank you,” Steve whispers. He reaches out, wraps a hand around the edge of the shield. “You didn’t have to.”

“Only if I didn’t want Howard to rise from his grave and strangle me,” Tony jokes, startled a bit when Steve suddenly goes tense, his grip white-knuckled around the shield.

“I didn’t feel right without it,” Steve says, and though the subject is the same the change in tone still seems abrupt. “Like part of me was missing, too. I - thank you for saving it, Tony, really.”

Tony inexplicably finds himself blushing. “It was nothing,” he mutters, then moves to stand. “Well. To your speedy recovery, then, Cap-”

“You’re leaving?”

“My presence is not usually conducive to speedy recoveries.”

“Bull,” Steve declares, settling back. “I feel better already.” And yeah, Steve could probably use some mindless chatter right now. A distraction, a past time, until the world starts moving again. Tony stays. He’s has got a million things to do back home, but he stays.

“So, I hear thanks are in order for saving my life, by the way…”

He doesn’t love Steve when he comes back, fresh and uninjured and taking up space on the floor below Tony’s in the Tower. He loves his companionship, loves his humor, loves the pranks he’s brave enough to play on Natasha, but he doesn’t love him.

He doesn’t love Steve while he’s away, on a mission or after Barnes. He misses him, designs fretfully on the offchance that whatever he’s sent Steve out there with fails, and even admits to himself the streak of jealousy that arises for Steve’s single-minded focus on Barnes.

He doesn’t even love him when they kiss for the first time. Part of that might be the fact that his chest is still on fire and Steve’s cheeks are still a little wet. Part of it might be the fact that he knows he and Steve are broken, that this might be the worst thing that will happen to either of them.

Why did you let yourself fall? he didn’t ask at the hospital, because he already knew the answer. Same reason he gave his address to a terrorist, probably, or the reason why he sometimes sees himself steering towards the ground when he’s flying the suit. You want it to stop, and it’s going to stop, and those two things aren’t always the same, so might as well end it on your own terms, right?

He doesn’t love him, but he could, God, he could. He could break him to smithereens, or he could love him, or he could do both and destroy everything, but Tony Stark is not afraid, or at least that’s what he tells the mirror every morning.

Steve kisses him back, and he thinks maybe he could tell Steve instead. Steve is more than enough to help him believe it. Because Steve is good, and brave, and so much better than Tony.

Still, he doesn’t love Steve right up until the moment that Steve finds him hiding in his Tower workshop a month after he left him at the new compound with the recruits. They’ve been chatting by phone, keeping each other updated while Tony tries to handle the fact that he built the very thing he was trying to prevent and Steve tries to deal with the fact that Tony didn’t tell him about it.

Tony barely gets out a hello when Steve hefts something up onto the lab table and almost reverently puts it down, stepping back and looking at Tony expectantly. It’s one of his old suitcase armors, the only armor left now. It must have gotten lost in Steve’s stuff ages ago, and it’s caked with dust and grease.

“What is this?” Tony asks suspiciously as Steve rounds the table to slide in behind him, arms wrapping around his waist.

“To your speedy recovery,” Steve says into his ear before dropping a kiss right above it, and Tony stares at the armor and does not cry.

Like part of me was missing, Steve had said a year ago. Tony knows the feeling. 

“I don’t know if I can-” Tony cuts himself off, and Steve’s arms move until big hands are cupping, wrapping around his own.

“No pressure,” is the reply. “But. I think you can. For what it’s worth.”

It’s worth everything, because Tony loves Steve, and Tony is a moron, and has loved him this entire time. He wants to tell him, but all that comes out when he turns and throws his arms around his boyfriend’s shoulders is “Captain America, always saving the day.”

He will. Someday. Soon. They have time now; he figures they’ve beaten the odds, two broken souls fitting together just right. All those dreaded maybes slink off to the back of his mind to die a quiet death. Steve is the best thing that has ever happened to him.

[0. (I was a fool for love.)

The shield crunches through the fiberglass of the arc reactor as Steve twists it hard. Tony hands are above his face, still bracing for a blow, and Steve keeps catching glimpses of wide, terrified, furious brown eyes through the fingers of the gauntlet.

(‘Don’t leave me,’ he had asked, and Tony had promised, and Tony had kept it in the end.) 

The reactor goes out. Tony drops his hands. Everything is red and dark and cold and Steve is so tired. He waits for Tony to speak, because this is his half-dropped cue, the one that Tony always picks up. But Tony stares up at him, so indescribably hurt.

He wants to fill the silence for him; Tony and Steve, that’s what they do, they pick up the slack for the other. He’s going to open his mouth and say Tony, I love you, I’m sorry, Tony, I was wrong I never meant for it to get this far and I wanted to save you, I wanted to keep you safe, I wanted to keep you-

Bucky groans, somewhere to his left. Steve stays silent and Tony, who had tried to murder Bucky, now seems completely unconcerned with him. His eyes are fixed on Steve, big and bright. Last chance. Open your mouth, Rogers. Say it, for once in your life, say it before it’s too late.

But what would that do, he wonders, staring back at Tony, but hurt him even more? 

Steve has always lost things when he was a kid, always scrounged and scraped by for his next paycheck, next meal, next breath. He’d never gotten to keep much, even after the serum. He saves what he can, where he can, and he holds it close, because everything else slips away. 

So Steve stands and walks to Bucky. Pulls him up and shoulders the burden, begins the long walk out, when he hears scraping behind him, a sharp inhale. Tony, picking up the cue. He pauses.

“That shield doesn’t belong to you,” Tony growls, and Steve’s heart breaks. “You don’t deserve it.” A part of me, he had once called that shield, and he had known Tony had understood him completely.

Later he sends a letter that goes unanswered and a phone that’s twin never rings and Steve wonders if Tony might hate him less if he hadn’t dropped it. Later, Bucky puts himself into stasis and all three of them are alone. He remembers how this used to be his worst nightmare. 

He’s glad he never told Tony he loved him and he’s glad he never heard Tony say it back. And that’s so cheap, that’s all surface, because Steve knows the truth and it is damn near time he stopped lying to himself. He loved Tony, and Tony loved him, and that’s how they broke each other.

Months later, almost a year, he’ll be caught with Sam and Clint in Western Europe and they’ll be brought before the United Nations to be tried for violations against the new Avengers’ Accords and several sovereign states. Tony arrives at some point before the trial, Rhodey at one shoulder and Vision at the other, and watches him with the same wide dark eyes Steve dreams about on the nights he can sleep. Steve hopes for one wild moment that Tony is here to help them like he once swore to do in a Berlin conference room.

(’I will,’ Tony had responded to Steve’s pleas, on an even earlier occasion. Tony had promised.)

Tony turns away.]

4. (If you’re worried that I might have changed, left behind all of my foolish ways…)

The trial is an open and shut case because it turns out it’s really hard to prosecute people for breaking laws that never actually went into effect anyway, and Steve and his buddies walk within the week. Someone delivers the new Accords to them; he doesn’t know who, maybe Natasha. Tony genuinely doesn’t give a fuck. To say that he has survived without Steve is true, to say he has lived is pushing it, to say he has thrived is a bald faced lie, but what no one can argue, is that Tony has persevered.

He always has, through the death of his parents, Obie’s betrayal, his own many brushes with death and his lingering issues over the nightmares those produced. He looks in the mirror every day and tells himself that he has lived through so much worse than Steve before. 

(The best lies are always half-truths, and Tony Stark has always been the best liar.)

He finds three signed copies of the Accords on his desk, as well as a transfer request for S. Wilson, C. Barton, and S. Rogers. He grants before he can think, and watches through the security cams three days later as the men move back into the compound. 

He stays ensconced in his lab, working on SI projects or updates to the armor or building up his secret armory in the basement for a threat that looms large in his mind and nowhere else. He sees Steve looking up at the cameras sometimes, mouthing words that Tony doesn’t puzzle out. He knows the man asks about him sometimes and FRIDAY has full permission to give him updates, because he remembers what killed him most during the fighting was the uncertainty, the not knowing if Steve was okay. He may be angry, but Tony Stark is capable of empathy sometimes.

He lives through this, too.

It doesn’t last, of course. Thor comes back with Bruce in tow, shouting ‘the aliens are coming!’ like Sci-Fi Paul Revere and in between sick vindication and abject panic Tony finds himself suddenly thrown at Steve, being expected to lead a team with a man he barely trusts.

Steve tries to talk to him, more than once, but sometimes his conversations start with “Bucky needed me-” or “Bucky had no one-” And all Tony can think, the thing that he eventually screams at Steve is: “Jesus Christ, do you think you’re the only one who’s ever loved somebody?”

Because it wasn’t about Bucky then, and it isn’t about Bucky now, and Tony understands how he might have given that impression what with trying to kill the man, and that’s on him, but he hates that after all this time, Bucky is still the only thing Steve can see. He hates that Bucky was the only thing Steve chose to hang onto. He hates that he was sacrificed on the altar of Bucky Barnes, but he gets it. If it was Rhodey he would have done the same thing, which is why psychiatric help for Barnes was the first thing he offered Steve when he could. Bucky isn’t the problem here.

They fight, more often than not, Steve vacillating wildly between apologetic  and defensive. He stands his ground, always, and it used to impress the hell out of Tony but now all he can see is curled fists and a jutting, clenched jaw and sparking eyes and he’s scared, of course he is, the bruises Steve left didn’t fade for months, but more than that: this is the little guy coming out in Steve, the one who stood up to bullies, the one who Steve himself had written a letter to Tony telling him that he had no one.

That’s the problem.

Because yes, he’s incredibly angry Steve lied to him about his dead parents, a fact that explains thoroughly to Steve-

(”Those were my parents,” Tony said, deadly quiet. “That was my family. My history. It had nothing to do with you but you took it anyway. Do you get that, do you understand? They were my parents. Mine. They belonged to me like I did them and you took them away from me!” 

It had sounded like everything the newspapers ever accused him of, narcissism and ego and vanity, but how else could Tony properly express how violated he felt sometimes, thinking of all those night he laid in Steve’s arms while all the while Steve knew?)

-but he knows that if he tried, he could get through that with Steve. Steve could even help him carry that burden, throw back a drink with him for Howard and listen to him talk about Maria for hours.

Tony already has the what. It’s the why that has slowly eaten everything away.

One day a fight is too much, or goes on too long, and they’re both exhausted and inches away from each other and Steve’s chin goes up and Tony slips. “Why were you so scared of me?” he asks, like he’s been dying to for months. Steve’s eyes widen.

“What?”

Tony panics, but there’s no way to take something like that back. “It’s not just my parents. You didn’t tell me about Zemo, either, until it was too late. You were scared of my reaction, weren’t you?” Steve says nothing, eyes still like saucers and Tony closes his eyes. “I just want to know why. What did I do to make you-”

There are arms around him the next moment, the first time they’ve touched in nearly two years, and Tony sags inside them. He just wants to know, honestly. Then maybe he can let this go. 

“Please stop talking,” Steve says, and Tony laughs because they’re both so shit at this. “It wasn’t - you didn’t do anything. It was all me.”

“You were afraid I would go after Bucky,” Tony says. “That’s why you stayed quiet.”

“I wanted.” Steve takes a shuddering breath that shivers down Tony’s own spine. “You. I can’t explain what that really means. I lost everything from before. But I suddenly had you. And I would have done anything to keep you. I was - I was the one that was scared, Tony.”

And Tony has always known that Steve was - is - not stitched up quite right. Botched jobs, half-finished ones still bleeding all over the place. Tony isn’t quite healed up either. And he remembers, painfully acute, not telling Steve about Ultron because he couldn’t even bear the thought of pushing him away.

Neither one of them had ever trusted the other to stay.

Now he knows the truth. And as he sees it, there are two options. He can keep being angry, and they can stay like this forever until Tony’s prophecy comes true and they destroy each other. Or he can let it go. Forgive Steve and forgive himself, and fight for the relationship he always wanted with the man he loves.

He knows what he’d choose, every time. He also knows he can’t do this without Steve.   

“We can’t be like this anymore,” he breathes into Steve’s shoulder. “We’re gonna get each other killed.”

“’M sorry,” Steve murmurs into his hair. Tony echoes him, finally wrapping his arms around Steve.

“You know we can’t go back,” Tony whispers. Steve stiffens in his arms, and then relaxes all at once like a great weight has been lifted off of him.

“I don’t think I want to,” he answers. “But I - I have to say it, okay? I did love you. I do, still. I always will.”

The words sink in, and they’re not the surprise Tony expected them to be. It was never love that was the problem between them, and love is not what needs fixing. “I love you, too.”

Love isn’t enough for people like them. Trust, openness, comfort, that’s what they need and never had. But love - love is more than enough to build on.

There is the beginning of a hesitant, cautious smile on Steve’s face that Tony feels himself returning. Like the old man said: Together.

5. (…you best be looking for somebody else without a foolish heart.)

It takes time, effort, and more than a few skirmishes with Thanos’ forward scouts, but he and Tony stop fighting each other and begin fighting side by side.

“Oh, I’ll always be right here,” Tony says, sarcastically cheerful when Steve turns to find him mowing down a line of Chitauri. “Right by your side. Even if it kills me.” The last bit is delivered in a grumble, because everything is still not fixed and some days are hard for both of them. But they are getting better. Steve stands at Tony’s back on the battlefield and knows he is right where he belongs. He’s determined to never forget it again.

There comes a fight where Tony lands in front of him, repulsors up, and Steve doesn’t think for a moment, just puts the shield up and redirects the blasts to the enemies around him like they did their very first battle. When the area is clear and he lowers the shield, Tony’s faceplate is up and the man inside the armor is staring at him with something akin to wonder. 

It doesn’t snap everything magically back into place, but then again they don’t want to go back. They don’t kiss; they are explicitly not a couple, although lately the word ‘yet’ has been thrown around an awful lot whenever they repeat the denials to their friends. The kind of forgiveness, love, and trust that they are cultivating takes time. 

Sam snorts a laugh at that. “And of course you choose to take this time in the middle of an alien invasion.”

“Gives us something to look forward to when we win,” Steve shoots back.

They’re not a couple, but they exchange ‘I love you’s often. And every time, Steve feels something strengthen within him. Figuring out how to love Tony without the oppressive need to keep him safe and keep him at his side, trimming back his emotions when they teeter on the edge of obsession is one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do, but one of the most rewarding. Tony, too, no longer looks at him the way he always used to, that shining awe edged with self-loathing and trepidation. It’s replaced with something much softer, more real. 

(”I used to think I was going to destroy you,” Tony had whispered to him one night. “I’d tell myself that I couldn’t possibly.”

“You could now,” Steve confessed. “But I trust you not to.”

“Now that’s true love,” Tony joked, but they both knew how right he was.)

He used to be so scared of loving Tony, because loving meant leaving. It had always felt a little like a poison, slowly eating away at him. He’s still scared; he wakes up some days and can’t get out of bed for hours at just the idea that Tony won’t smile at him if they see each other at breakfast, just like there are times when Tony won’t see him because that day he’s angry all over again at Steve and he doesn’t want it spilling out, doesn’t think it’s fair when he’s given Steve his forgiveness.

But they’re getting better at pushing through. On those mornings, Steve will call Tony to come to him, and he always does. On those days, Tony will ask Steve to wait for him, and he always does. 

Tony may leave him, but he always comes back to him, too.

They move back into the Tower, where it’s easier to be on call for any major attacks. He finds Tony out on the balcony late one night, sitting against the railing, his legs poking through the slats. Steve joins him and they smile at each other, silently reminiscing.

Until Tony looks over, huffs, and says “fucking metaphors.” Steve frowns, puzzled until he follows Tony’s gaze to an old building - the insurance-cum-cellphone company. It was obviously damaged in the last attack; it’s covered in scaffolding and a large sign that says ‘UNDER CONSTRUCTION; REOPENING SOON.’

The image, combined with the old memory of Tony using the building as an example of the past being brought into the future, not being destroyed by it, makes Steve laugh at his words.

“Rebuilding,” he guesses, and Tony rolls fond eyes at him.

“On top of the old,” Tony grouses, and Steve slings an arm around him to drag him close, pressing a kiss to his temple. 

“Making it better,” Steve says, and the next time he leans in Tony turns his head, catching him in their new first kiss.

5 times Steve and Tony saved each other and 1 time they didn’t.

[ao3feed-buckyxtony]

I'm Not Your Hero

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2k6rPrM

by aslightstep

I'm not their hero/but that doesn't mean that I wasn't brave

Tony helps Bucky pick up a few of the pieces of himself he’s lost along the way, but its up to Bucky if they go back into the puzzle.

Words: 2333, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 4 of Drabblethon 600, Part 1 of Drabblethon: Winteriron edition

Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Tony Stark

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark

Additional Tags: Bucky Barnes: War Hero, Bucky Barnes Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2k6rPrM

[aslightstep]

I Come With Knives

I never promised you an open heart or charity/I never wanted to abuse your imagination

“Howard? Why are you looming over the baby?”

Howard didn’t look at his wife, instead once more turning Tony’s wrist to the right, then to the left. “I don’t loom,” he muttered when he felt Maria’s hand on his shoulder.

“Hover, then.” Together they looked down at Tony, fast asleep in his crib. Howard carefully placed his son’s hand back on the mattress, palm down so the name on his wrist was hidden.

“We should get it removed,” he said quietly. “While we have the chance.”

“Howard, that’s his soulmate,” Maria said sternly.

“His soulmate that he’s never going to meet?” Howard asked derisively, turning towards her. “It’s cruelty, Maria. We get it done now, he’ll never know.”

“So we let him grow up thinking that there’s no one out there that will or would ever have truly loved him?” his wife challenged. 

He sighed, steering her out of the room. “You place too much stock in soulmates, my dear. They’re not the be all and end all of everything.”

“Should I be insulted?” Maria laughed, running her finger along her own name carved into Howard’s skin. “Look, all I truly know about soulmates is this: when the fascists were chasing us out of Italy and I lost my parents, when I thought every day was my last, knowing that somewhere out there, dead or alive, you had carried me in your heart was the only thing that kept me going. No, soulmates are not everything, Howard, but they are enough. And besides, Tony deserves to know.”

Howard pursed his lips, thinking it through, knowing Maria won’t back down on this, and he finally nodded, earning a smile and a kiss from his wife. “He never said anything, you know,” he said to her as she began to walk away. “He must have wondered. Same last name and all. But he never said.”

Maria shrugged. “Maybe he was scared. Forties homophobia is a pretty big deterrent, Howard.” She headed towards their room.

Howard took a deep breath and let it out slowly, rapping twice on the door to Tony’s room. “You hear that, kid? You grow up and hate that name, you don’t blame me.”

There was a reason Maria didn’t want Howard to remove her son’s soulmark. One that she would never tell him directly to her face. 

Howard was never going to be a good father.

She never even meant to get pregnant, even though Howard wanted an heir. Especially because Howard wanted an heir. She loved her soulmate, but he was never going to view any child of theirs as anything but another one of his inventions.

And Howard expected his inventions to be perfect.

Tony, beautiful, brilliant Antonio, was anything but perfect. He was a noisy, overly-inquisitive child who had a know-it-all streak a mile wide and was a bit spoiled. He was messy and loud and forever saying nonsensical things. In other words, he was a perfectly normal four year old, but Howard would never see it that way. Everything wrong with Tony needed to be fixed, NOW, instead of letting him grow out of his more negative qualities.

Maria picked up Tony as he cried, running ice along the burns on his fingers and internally cursing her husband’s name. Of course he had pushed Tony to finish the circuit board, of course he had let their baby use power tools. He had been so disappointed when Tony’s first board hadn’t worked, told Tony not to even bother if he couldn’t get it right. Howard had always prized the scientific method, but with Tony, his creation, he couldn’t seem to fathom inaccuracies.

“Daddy will be mad,” Tony sobbed. “You have to let me down, Mama, I have to try again.”

Maria hushed him, running a hand through his hair. “Daddy won’t be mad, baby.”

“Yes he will, he’ll hate me. He hates me!”

“He doesn’t, sweetheart, he loves you.” As best he could, anyway. “And I love you, too.”

Tony only just sobbed harder, shaking his head.

This was why Maria insisted they kept the mark. Because Howard was going to carve their baby into a scientist no matter what, and Maria could say the words for both of them until she turned blue in the face, but Tony needed proof. She gently turned Tony’s hand so his wrist was facing them, running her hands along the name there. Her poor son. “He loves you, Tony.”

Tony slowly quieted, reaching out with his other hand, so small, and following her movements. “He does?”

“He’s your soulmate. No matter where he is, no matter what you’ve done, he loves you. Always. That’s what a soulmate means: always.”

“Always,” Tony echoed, a hint of a smile in his voice.

Edwin Jarvis dragged the glass of whiskey away from his young charge and replaced it with a glass of milk. “Would you like to tell me what brought this on?” 

He had come home to find the liquor cabinet’s lock picked and Anthony flung out on the piano bench, contemplated the tumbler in his hands like it was a hand grenade. He had ushered both pre-teen and tumbler to the kitchen where he now sat beside him, rubbing a hand on his back.

Tony’s eyes were red. Jarvis didn’t even know Tony remembered how to cry anymore.

“M’ soulmate’s dead,” Tony whispered, and Jarvis felt his heart sink. He and Maria had talked about this moment, how to handle it. He was amazed, honestly, that it had taken Tony so long to piece it together. He only wish Maria was here now.

“You knew.” Tony was staring at him now, betrayal in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t anyone?”

“Because he made you happy,” Jarvis answered. “And you deserved that feeling for as long as we could give it to you.”

Tony’s lower lip trembled. “Why even let me feel that when you knew it was going to be taken away? He’s dead, Jarvis! Like, really dead, like for-decades dead. I’m never gonna see him. I’m gonna be alone forever.”

Jarvis pulled his charge into a hug, holding tightly until Tony relaxed. “Not so, sir,” he said softly. “He’ll always be with you. He was meant for you. That makes him a part of you, and nothing, not even death, can take that away.”

Tony’s body shuddered and Jarvis felt his shirt grow damp, but Tony remained silent. Jarvis hoped that meant the words sunk in.

“You’re seriously not gonna tell me?” Jim laughed, hitting Tony with a pillow. His roommate toppled over in a pile of gangly limbs and giggles. “I showed you mine!”

“And I’m sure Virginia Potts is a hell of a lady, whoever she may be,” Tony said. “But I didn’t ask you to show me, man, this isn’t quid pro quo or something.”

The words were as teasing as ever, but Tony’s eyes had shuttered by the end of his sentence. Oh. Oh. Dammit. Jim had overstepped some serious bounds here. “’Course, man. I didn’t mean - I just thought if I knew I could keep an eye out.”

Tony shrugged, sitting up, fiddling with the thick band around his wrist covering the name of his soulmate. Rhodes had never seen him take it off in the entire year he had known him. He’d bet that was one serious tanline.

“He’s dead.”

Jim blinked, head snapping towards Tony, not sure he heard right. “He’s-”

“Dead,” Tony repeated.

Well, Jim was definitely taking Worst Best Friend this year. “Tones, I’m sorry.”

To his surprise, Tony looked up and smiled. “It’s okay. He loved me. Even if he never met me. He had my name. He loved me. That’s enough for me.”

“That’s…” Jim searched for words. “Weirdly mature of you, boss.”

Tony laughed, pushing at his shoulder. “Don’t rag on my coping mechanisms, man!”

Jim dragged the younger boy into a headlock, and promised himself he’d never let anyone bother Tony about that wrist band where he could hear them.

“What’s it like?” Tony asked Pepper once, as they were both drifting on inflatable tubes neither should have brought into the lazy river installment circling the hotel pool. But hey, who was going to stop Tony Stark, or his platinum card?

She made an inquisitive hum. “The soulmate thing,” Tony clarified, and Pepper opened her eyes to look at her boss. He wasn’t looking back, his eyes firmly placed on the ceiling, but she could read the yearning in his face.

Tony had told her the truth about his soulmate years ago, but it still hurt her every time she thought about it. To know that Tony would never feel what she felt-

Well, maybe she could describe it to him. Tony had always had an amazing imagination.

“You feel…complete,” she said, and Tony sighed and closed his eyes. “You feel finished. Like you’ve been a puzzle all your life and here someone has all the missing puzzles you didn’t know were missing. And you have all of theirs. It’s mutual, and that’s what makes it - so great, I guess. That you’re needed as much as you need. That your love is returned equally.”

She and Rhodey had turned out to be platonic, both happily seeing other people who were also platonically-bonded, but she couldn’t imagine being without him now. Functioning like she did now. Sometimes it scared her, that level of devotion. She knew now why some people killed themselves after losing their soulmates.

“Sounds wonderful,” Tony murmured, his right hand encircling the band on his left wrist. “You and Rhodey are lucky.” He didn’t mean it to sound petulant, and it didn’t, but she still felt a spike of guilt anyway.

“Very,” she agreed, reaching out to take his hand. “And lucky to have you, too.”

Bruce watched as Tony stuck a hand out to the Captain while popping blueberries into his mouth. “Tony Stark,” he said when he was finished chewing. 

“I know,” Captain Rogers said, a hint of disdain in his voice. “I read about you.”

“Then obviously you know absolutely everything about me there is to know,” Tony said, blisteringly dry, but it was the expression on Tony’s face that caught Bruce’s attention more than anything. He looked strangely nervous and - expectant? Like he was waiting for a specific reaction.

Whatever it was, he didn’t get it. Rogers snapped at Tony a bit then left, and Tony came back to the lab equipment looking small and lost, fiddling with the band around his wrist. 

Jesus, Bruce thought. Please don’t let them be soulmates.

Thor respected the Captain and his command, but even he had to admit that so far the man was absolutely dismal at connecting with the Man of Iron.

It was not all Steven's fault, of course; Tony was pricklier than most monsters Thor had faced and his manner of speaking took time to get used to. Between the two of them, both men were terrible at communicating with each other.

So Thor did what he would do with his fellow warriors back home when they would fight.

He sat them down, and got them drunk.

"You both have much in common," he said as he filled Steven's cup with liquor straight from Asgard.

"Like what?" Tony asked, one eyebrow raising.

"You are both leaders of your people. You are both quick-witted and ingenious. You both are missing your soulmates." That last one was a gamble; Thor was never sure when it was appropriate to talk about soulmates. (Personally he found the whole thing strange and frightening in a way he couldn’t define, but it was not his place to pass judgment on them.)

“My soulmate’s not missing,” Tony said, staring at Steve with an intensity that seemed out of place. “He - They’re just. Not here.”

“Neither is mine,” Steve said quietly, looking up at Tony, a curiosity in his eyes that wasn’t there before. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said stiffly. “I’ve never known any different.”

“You mean you have never met yours?” Thor asked, a bit shocked. From what he had been told and what he’d seen, people had ways of hunting down their soulmates now, and Tony was quite famous. 

“No. And I never will, so just-” Tony down his finger of scotch and then wiped at his mouth with a shaky hand. “Look, Thor, this has been great, but I know what you’re trying to do. Me and Cap here, we just don’t mesh well. I think he’s got a giant stick up his ass and he thinks that I’m not good enough-”

“When did I ever say that?” Steven cried, outraged.

Tony lifted his chin in the air. “Oh, you didn’t have to. Your face is plenty expressive, Cap. You’d make a terrible spy, by the way. But also, let’s not forget that you knew men worth ten of me with none of this. We all know who you were talking about, Rogers.”

“I don’t,” Thor volunteered.

Steven looked devastated. “Tony, I was - I was confused, and angry. I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry. Besides, didn’t you make me look like a complete idiot not one day later, flying that nuke into the portal? I thought you’d never come down.”

Tony’s chin slowly dropped so he could meet Steven’s gaze more fully. For one long tense moment Thor thought he might get up and leave, but then Tony sighed. “I didn’t mean what I said either. I just. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said. “Hey, Tony. You’re good enough.”

“Yeah?” Tony said with a tentative smile, and Thor finally relaxed. They began slowly discusses other things, people and culture, the differences between Asgard and 1940s New York City and the world today. It felt like camaraderie. Thor would be most pleased to take this news to the Widow.

“What was he like?” Tony asked a few drinks in. 

“Who?” Steve rolled his head to look at the other man.

“You know...” Tony laughed and fiddled with his wristband. “Barnes.” Thor detected a peculiar note of reverence when Tony said the name, but from what he’d said, Tony had grown up hearing tales of these Howling Commandos. Thor suspected such respect was not so far-fetched. 

“You really want to know?” Steve asked. Tony tilted his head, a strange smile on his face.

“’Course I do. We could swap stories if you want. I could tell you ‘bout all the crazy shit Aunt Peggy got up to.”

And then Thor watched as a real smile, the first he had seen in this new world, grew on Steve’s face. “I’d like that.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” Steve said to Tony as they both stood in the kitchen, watching Bucky carefully fiddle with the remote.

“It’s no problem,” Tony replied, his voice very faint. “Couldn’t leave him out there in the cold, could I?”

After hearing what down in DC, Tony had spared no expense helping Steve track down Bucky and bringing him back to the Tower - “only if he wants to,” Tony had said, cautious but hopeful. Now they had him back, and neither of them could take their eyes of the man.

Tony was finally meeting one of his heroes; he was forever asking Steve about Bucky, what he had been like when they were kids and during the war. He looked up to Bucky in a way he didn’t to Steve, and at first that had made Steve a bit jealous, but then he realized that Howard had essentially poisoned Tony against him by constantly putting him in competition with Steve’s memory. Bucky was safer, and not seemingly impossible to live up to. Tony actually had a Bucky Bear, although he had turned bright red when he admitted he had bought it in his teens.

And Steve - Steve was getting back his soulmate.

He had taken a careful peak under the wrist band Bucky never took off when Bucky slept on the plane ride over, and breathed out a sigh of relief when he saw that HYDRA hadn’t marked over or cut off his name. God, he had missed him. Had missed having a soulmate, period, but Bucky more than anything.

Tony moved from beside him, approaching Bucky and sticking out a hand. Steve tensed; Bucky’s reactions weren’t always reliable. “I’m Anthony Stark,” Tony said, which was a bit odd as Tony hated his full name, but maybe he was saying it to give Bucky something concrete to latch onto. “But you can call me Tony. You okay with Bucky?”

Bucky stared at the hand, then Tony’s face, and then slowly reached out with his metal arm. Steve stepped forward, but all Bucky did was shake Tony’s hand. Tony inhaled sharply and the air seemed to freeze before Bucky broke it with a rough, garbled “Bucky’s fine. Anything’s better than ‘Asset.’”

“I bet,” Tony said, smirking a bit. Bucky dropped his hand and a shadow passed over Tony’s face, but then he was all smiles. “How ‘bout I give you the nickel and dime tour?”

“Ain’t got any money,” Bucky grumbled. “Didn’t exactly get paid for killing people.”

Tony shrugged, not looking the least bit horrified. “Eh, I’m rich enough for the both of us.”

Tony was quite possibly Bucky’s favorite person in those first few months. Steve and Sam tried to be there for Bucky as best they could, but Tony just had an uncanny knack for knowing when to hold his hand and when to back off. Tony would drag Bucky down to his lab and plunk him down amongst the mess and make him sorts nuts and bolts into drawers. It had infuriated Steve until he realized that the order soothed Bucky, helped him think.

Tony dragged them out on tours of New York, to all the best and the absolute worst restaurants in the city. “You’ve got cast-iron stomachs, you can handle it,” he’d laugh when Steve and Bucky would complain. And Steve was grateful that Tony had gotten Bucky out and about, grateful that he could see his soulmate in the sun, but part of him also resented it.

It was only that he recognized the way Tony looked at Bucky. Because it was the same way Steve did. It was the same look Steve saw everytime he glanced at a mirror. And he didn’t know how to feel about that. Sure, he had never told Tony, anyone, about his soulmark, but Tony had to know, didn’t he? Steve had moved heaven and earth to get Bucky back, he had never given up, gone weeks without sleep to bring him home. Surely Tony wasn’t that oblivious?

“You should tell him,” Natasha advised when he went to her. “Tony is that oblivious. If you don’t, I will. He follows Barnes around like a puppy, Steve, it’s not good. You’re all going to get hurt.”

“Who’s going to get hurt?” Clint asked, coming into the kitchen and opening the fridge to grab the milk.

“Tony.”

Clint’s face screwed up in a frown. “Seriously, I’m starting to think he’s doing it on purpose. You and Barnes are literally made for each other, no way he doesn’t know. Soulmates are - you don’t get between soulmates.” Steve’s eyes flickered down to the ‘Phillip Coulson’ written on Clint’s wrist. “He’s being an ass, is what it is. You want me to talk to him, Cap?”

“Steve should talk to him,” Natasha interjected, looking at Steve meaningfully before getting up and leaving. Clint watched her go and then turned to Steve with a dark look.

“Look, I’ll set him straight, Cap. You go be with your soulmate. You gotta cherish every moment while you still got it.”

Steve hesitated, uneasy about the entire situation. What if this pushed Tony away? Tony had been so good for Bucky - Steve wasn’t always capable of dealing with the person Bucky had become, too wrapped up in what they used to be, but Tony seemed to know what this Bucky needed before he even needed it sometimes. Steve didn’t want to ruin that, not when they both were doing better than they ever were before.

But, no. He had to think better of Tony than that. Tony was a good man, and a lonely one. Steve completely understood the appeal of Bucky Barnes, but Tony would get past this.

He headed upstairs to the floor he shared with Bucky. They weren’t back to sharing a bed yet, but Steve felt comfortable walking into Bucky’s room and laying down beside him while he read.

“Something wrong, punk? You got that constipated look you always get when you’re unsure about something.”

Steve punched at his arm. “Jerk. Nah, it’s nothing. I just-” He trailed off, looking down at his wrist band. He had been hiding it for so long. Out of fear, then out of grief, and now out of habit. He had nothing to hide anymore. Bucky was his soulmate. His always. 

“You just?” Bucky asked, and when Steve looked back Bucky was gazing down at him, that old well-worn look in his eyes that Steve loved so much.

“I wanna take ‘em off,” Steve said, snapping at his band. Bucky’s eyes followed the movement and lit up.

He leaned forward to kiss Steve on the mouth. “I’m game if you are.”

Six months ago he would have gotten Tony drunk to do this conversation. But five months ago Tony stopped drinking, coincidentally at the same time Bucky Barnes came to the Tower.

Tony got sober. Tony came up to socialize. Tony slept, Tony ate. Tony took care of himself, and even managed to take care of Bucky, too.

If Clint weren’t so mad at the guy, he’d feel damn sorry about doing this. Because with Bucky around, Tony had gotten better. 

But soulmates? You don’t mess with soulmates. You don’t get in between two halves of the same heart; that was just cruel. And Tony might pretend to be socially inept to get out of whatever gala Pepper wanted to drag him to that month, but he was almost as good at reading people as Natasha was. Steve was his best friend. He had to know what he was doing to the guy, blatantly going after his soulmate like that. The soulmate that Steve had watched fall of a fucking train, the soulmate that had been tortured and brainwashed by HYDRA.

Bucky needed stability right now. He needed the feeling of completeness and finality that only a soulbond could provide. Clint knew from experience. Pulling himself out of the nightmare that was Loki’s meddling had been a nightmare without Phil. 

God, now Clint needed a drink.

The point was, soulmates should never be torn apart. Not by death, not by time, not by megalomaniac Gods, and not by narcissistic genius with the emotional quotient of a teaspoon.

As if summoned by negative thoughts, Tony appeared in the living room, surreptitiously looking around. For Bucky, Clint figured.

“Promise me you’ll be chill,” Sam whispered urgently. He had insisted being here when he caught wind of Clint’s plan, to ‘defuse the situation if need be.’ Clint thought it was unnecessary. He wasn’t going to pull any punches, Tony wouldn’t appreciate that. He was gonna give it to him straight and true.

Tony saw them looking, quirked an eyebrow, and sauntered over. “The arrows give you trouble, Katniss?”

“We need to talk.” Tony stopped in his tracks, looking between the two of them, and then slowly nodded, making a gesture for Clint to go on. “You need to leave Steve and Bucky alone.”

“Steve and...Bucky?” Tony asked, glancing at Sam for guidance.

Clint leaned forward to draw his attention back. “Look, we all see the way you look at Buck, and it’s not okay, Stark.”

“What’s wrong with the way I look at Bucky?” Tony’s hand went to his left wrist, where his customary black band covered his soulmark. “Did he say something? I know I can be a bit...much.”

And Tony looked so hurt and earnest that second doubts began to creep into Clint’s mind. Natasha had always said emotions had to be shoved in Tony’s face. “Tony,” he said, voice softening. “Steve and Bucky are soulmates. You do know that, right?”

Tony went still as a statue. “What?”

Clint looked at Sam, who nodded and shifted forward, taking the reigns. “Bucky is Steve’s soulmate. Always has been. And you’ve been so helpful, and they both adore you, but you’re starting to - overstep, a little.”

“Overstep,” Tony repeated faintly.With his right hand he dragged his left wrist over his heart and held it there. Pulse against pulse. Clint knew that trick; it was a textbook coping mechanism for those that had lost their soulmate. No one knew why it worked, but feeling a heartbeat next to your soulmark made everything not feel so lonely. He’d woken up in that same position several times after Phil died. “Why did - why didn’t Steve say anything?”

“I don’t think.” Sam paused, searching for words. “He hid it for so long, back in his time. I don’t know if he knows how to say it. He thought you would know. You two are so close.” For some reason that made Tony flinch hard and Sam rushed to reassure him. “No one’s mad, Tony. Just maybe take a few steps back. Give them some room. Just...be their friend.”

“Their friend,” Tony echoed again. Clint had never seen the man so lost for words. “Because they’re soulmates, so they’re like one entity. Complete. My mom always told me-”

He stopped, closed his eyes, and let his wrist drop. He looked, for a moment, like a puppet with its strings cut. Lifeless.

“I thought you knew, man,” Clint said quietly, because God, did he feel like a jackass now. Tony clearly did not know. “I’m sorry I came on so strong it’s just - soulmates are special, you know?” Sam kicked at him; once again, no, Tony did not know. 

Clint watched as Tony visibly pulled himself together, pasting on a little smirk. “No, it’s cool. It’s good to know before I - well, I - I can’t come between that. Thanks for cluing me in, birdbrains.” Tony turned away, heading for the door to the kitchen.

Later when Clint went looking he found one of the liquor bottles missing from the cabinet and wondered how disappointed in him Phil would be.

Sam watched Tony's face carefully as Steve emerged from the elevator with Bucky, their right wrists uncovered for the first time. 

JAMES BARNES Steve’s read, in the clear blocky print that Bucky sometimes slipped into on his better days. STEVE ROGERS, read Bucky's in Steve's messy cursive.

Sam brightened at the sight, damn proud of both of them. Tony's jaw clenched tightly but other than that he didn't respond, and Sam breathed a sigh of relief. 

"I'm such an idiot," Tony said under his breath. Sam allowed himself a small smile. He wasn't usually a fan of Tony's level of self-deprecation but in this case it was a sign that Tony was accepting things, that everything could be normal, no hard feelings.

"Only a little," he said, nudging Tony playfully. "But it's understandable." Neither of them looked down at the wristband hiding Tony's soulmate. Sam felt for the man, he did. Everyone deserved to meet their soulmate, but Tony was approaching forty-five and there was still no sign of them. Whoever they were, Sam hoped they got their asses in gear and weren't dumb enough to listen to whatever the media said about Tony. "Hey. You'll meet them. You've waited this long right? I promise once you do, it'll be worth it."

Tony looked at him and for a moment he looked so lost, so devastated, that a low swoop of dread filled Sam's stomach. He'd seen that looked before, on soldiers who made it back only to find their home was gone. Some of them never found it again. 

Then the moment passed, and Tony smiled tremulously. "I've always heard soulmates were a wonderful thing."

“They are,” Sam reassured him, thinking of Layla Simmons, stationed over in China, waiting for him to call on Skype soon.

Steve and Bucky make their way over to the couch, holding hands, both looking apprehensively at Tony. The billionaire took one look at Steve's wrist, one look at Bucky, and chuckled. "So, it's always been you two against the world. All alone."

"Yeah," Steve said softly. Bucky was focusing intently on Tony, watching every minute twitch of his face, but beyond the slightly bitter tone of his voice, Tony was completely calm.

"Well," he said, standing to clap Steve on the shoulder. "Not anymore. You've got all of us supporting you no matter what. I'm proud of you, Steve."

Sam knew he was not imagining the relief on Steve's face. He had been so worried after Clint told him about the intervention in the kitchen; Tony's friendship was important to him. To both of them. "Thanks, Tony."

"And I'm sorry-" Tony faltered, his eyes going distant and vague before a tiny, full-body shudder went through him. "If I've been a bit over-bearing and ah, oblivious. I've been told I have that problem. Selfish." Bucky opened his mouth to speak but Tony was barreling forward. "You two-"

For the first time he looked at Bucky, and that inexplicable dread rose up in Sam's gut again as the light in Tony's eyes flickered out. "You deserve to be happy."

Bucky rubbed at his left metal wrist, a nervous habit Sam had noticed he'd picked up since arriving at the Tower, and nodded. "Thanks. 'M not sure about deserving but-" He looked at Steve and smiled, heartbreakingly hopeful. "I am lucky."

Tony's responding smile was all wrong, distorting his face into something alien. He wagged a finger at Bucky. "Don't take it for granted." His voice was all over the place and Tony began stepping backwards. Sam tensed, ready to step in if Steve's brand of mother-henning prevented Tony from saving some face but they all watched as Tony turned neatly and made his way to the elevator, calling for JARVIS to take him to the lab. 

"He'll be alright," Sam told them both when they looked worried enough to follow him. "He's hurt, and probably a little embarrassed. Just give him some time."

Steve nodded and sat down to watch some TV, but for a long moment Bucky remained standing, watching the elevator as if waiting for Tony to come back.

JARVIS watched his creator stumble into the lab, holding his left wrist to his chest. He was crying. JARVIS did not have any previous recordings of Sir crying.

Something was very wrong.

“Can I help you, sir?” he asked, and Tony responded with a laugh, lasting two seconds longer and two decibels higher than the average of his past instances of real laughter. “Sir?”

Tony made his way to the table where his main computer was kept and sat, swaying in a similar manner to previous instances of Sir being inebriated, but JARVIS knew he didn’t do that anymore, had stopped shortly after learning Sergeant Barnes was coming to live in the Tower.

Sir laid his arm out on the table, his wrist - his bare wrist - facing up. JARVIS analyzed the handwriting there in an instant, a thousand if/then statements colliding to form a very distressing conclusion.

“Did you know,” Sir said in a hoarse voice. “That my mother once told soulmates carry around pieces of each other? That way they’re never alone. Not even death can stop that. No matter where they are, no matter what you’ve done, you’ve got somebody who loves you. Always. That’s what a soulmate is.” Sir laughed again, reaching down for the liquor bottle he had brought in from the kitchen earlier, the one he had yet to crack. He did now, taking a long sip before JARVIS could even begin the sequence to remind him of his pledge to stay sober as long as Sergeant Barnes needed him. 

“Oh God, I thought I was going to be happy. Can you imagine, J? What a fucking joke. I should have known. Dad did. Said the mark was a fucking mistake. He always did know best.” Tony held up the bottle in some form of a salute. 

JARVIS remained silent. For all that Sir had given him room to grow, he was still a machine. He didn’t know how to respond to this. For awhile he simply watched Sir drink, and quietly mourned along with him a future they that was lost to them now. 

“I thought he loved me,” Sir whispered. “All that time, I thought he loved me. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. No one could.” 

He drank.

“Hey, J,” Tony said some time later, only slurring a little. The cameras couldn’t fully capture his expression, his head tilted into shadows, but he was staring at the mark on his wrist again. “Fire up the soldering iron.”

Natasha helped Thor tear Tony out of his armor, piece by piece, cursing him all the while. “Дурак!” she spat, tossing one of the gauntlets aside as Thor worked on the legs. Steve was going to have to bench him after this stunt for certain; he’d have no choice. Tony had always been reckless but this was borderline suicidal. 

What had changed, she wondered in the back of her mind. Tony had been doing so well, all of them meshing well, living together at the Tower. Barnes coming back had made it even better, slotting neatly into their little circle, and though Tony’s obvious crush on him was doomed to go nowhere, surely that wasn’t enough to send Tony into this kind of tailspin.

She didn’t even realized the band that hid Tony’s soulmark had broken off until she was staring at the skin of Tony’s left wrist, mottled by a deep burn. A very recent burn, the scar a very bright pink. If there had been a name under there, it was gone now.

The pieces fell into place very quickly after that.

“Oh.” The small, simple word fell out of her mouth like a stone. “Oh, Tony.”

It felt weird to be sitting around drinking while Tony was in the hospital, but the nurses had chased them out hours ago and after a battle like that, they all needed to unwind. They left Bruce at the hospital, and their phones were all at the ready, but the environment had relaxed just a little.

Bucky didn’t know that he could follow suit, though. He kept seeing Tony diving into that explosion over and over. What had he been thinking?

That had been a common thought these past few weeks, as Tony withdrew further and further from the team for no apparent reason. He’d overheard Clint telling Steve that he had advised Tony to back off a little and honestly, that still kind of bothered Bucky; everyone had been so worried about the attention Tony was paying him but Bucky liked it. He liked that Tony never treated him like he was fragile, he liked being the center of Tony's world and he liked making Tony the center of his if only for a brief time, because it always made Tony smile and Tony should always be smiling. 

There hadn't been a need to confront him; Tony was smart and would realize his crush had a soulmate and they would ease into being friends. But he also knew it bothered Steve so he didn't say anything. Tear the bandaid off quicker, he supposed. He didn’t know Tony would take it this seriously.

Gone were the movie nights catching him and Steve up on modern cinema, or the weekly Wednesday tours to the weird hole-in-the-wall joints dotted across New York City. No more sitting in the lab watching him tinker. No more random spurts of Italian desserts filling his fridge. No more Tony, period.

It hurt, and it also irritated him a little. Just because he didn’t want Tony didn’t mean he wanted Tony gone. He missed him, like a physical ache, like cold in his bones. Steve said that Tony wasn’t very in touch with his feelings and didn’t handle rejection well, but it had been weeks. Bucky just wanted his friend back.

“So,” Clint suddenly said loudly. He was a bit drunker than the rest, and looking at Natasha. “Heard you two had to take off everything. Even that little band of his. D’you see a name or is he actually a robot?”

“Clint. Dude,” Sam breathed out, annoyed. “Not cool.”

Clint frowned, seemed to internally repeat what he said, and then frowned harder. “No. Wait. I just mean-”

“Shut up,” Natasha snapped. The room froze. She had never spoken like that to Clint before. Bucky wondered if anyone else could see the minute trembling of her fingers. “You don’t know what you’re asking, so be quiet.”

It’s not like Bucky wasn’t curious, too. Whoever was Tony’s soulmate - well, they were damn lucky, and the sooner they realized it the better. They had to know, Tony was on TV three times a week. Tony was brilliant, and funny, and had a mountain of issues and insecurities but wasn’t afraid of pushing through them for the right person.

Tony just needed that right person. Like Steve was for Bucky. Bucky turned towards Steve, sitting beside him, and nuzzled into his neck, finally relaxing when he felt Steve’s hand begin running through his hair. 

"Something wrong with the arm?" he asked, and Bucky looked down to where he was rubbing against his metal wrist. It bothered him sometimes, even though there was nothing wrong with it. Like a phantom pain.

"'S nothing," he murmured. Steve kissed his forehead and they settled in closer together. 

Everybody deserved a Steve. 

He hoped Tony found his soon.

Tony stared down at his wrists as Helen helped him fasten the cufflinks. He was leaving the hospital, finally, two days later than planned, but it had taken awhile to get Helen and her prototype skin-grafting machine here and a little bit longer to convince her to help him.

He couldn’t take his eyes off of his left wrist. Smooth, bare, free of markings. No scars. No names. 

No soulmate.

“You’re a life-saver, Helen,” he whispered, and she glared at him before sending him on his way.

He was heading back to the tower now, back to the team, back to the bots and JARVIS, back to him. Except Tony couldn’t go back to him - that would mean that Tony had ever had him in the first place.

Of fucking course you never had him. Who in the hell would deserve to be the other half of you, Stark?

His mother, Jarvis, his friends, they had all told him that soulmates were love, and acceptance, and unconditional. And it had saved Tony’s life more than once to know that he ranked that, even those years when he thought his was dead. He had lived his life dreaming of that kind of bond, that even when he was the scum of the earth, Merchant of Death, he could have that kind of love.

But it wasn’t for Tony. There was no other half. There was no love, no acceptance, no unconditional. There was just him, alone. Like always. Like he deserved.

Still a disappointment, after all this time. Sorry, mom, for single-handedly - ha - ruining your entire philosophy on soulmates.

He should have known from the beginning. He had just been so caught up in, the swelling tide of everything that had been promised to him. Completeness. Serenity. An open heart. He had been so caught up in waiting for that moment when he would finally be loved back that he hadn’t seen there wasn’t anymore love to be given. 

There were paparazzi waiting outside, swarming the car where Happy waited for him. Tony, with a practiced smile, threw up a peace sign with his left hand, his sleeve pulling back, and a thousand pictures were taken of his blank wrist.

Tony Stark had no soulmate. It would be front-page news for the next week. He preferred it this way. This was his story, and his alone now. He wasn’t abandoned, unwanted, a cast-off of a failed bond. When future interviewers ask him, he’ll smile and say “I guess I just loved myself enough for two people.” 

Tony had burned his heart out of his chest a long time ago. This was just making it official.

He never had a name. It never said James Barnes.

Tony Stark had no soulmate. 

[aslightstep]

8 - Aesir!Tony/Thor

Some legends are told/Some turn to dust or to gold/But you will remember me/Remember me, for centuries

Note: bastardization to the extremes of Norse mythology. Tyr = Tony. 

Centuries

Thor crept along the halls of his home, down past the guards to where the infirmary was. Father had forbidden him from visiting ‘too soon,’ but Father was only sore at Tyr for not celebrating the great conquering of Fenrir, the mighty wolf that was prophesied to eat his Odin whole some day, choosing to stay in the infirmary and nurse his injury alone.

Thor had celebrated merrily at his brother and mother’s side; his father was safe and Tyr, in his bravery, had proven his worth to his parents to stand by Thor’s side. But as the night grew long and Tyr continued to stay away - from a feast that in other words was being held in his honor! The hero Tyr, savior of the All-Father and Asgard! - his heart grew heavy. Tyr was a blacksmith, and a master of weapons and war. The loss of his hand must have grieved him greatly.

But the infirmary, when he finally arrived, was empty.

“Are you looking for Lord Tyr?” One of the healers asked, a knowing smile on her face. Thor felt his cheeks heat at what kind of knowing that might be. He had very little shame left within him, but he and Tyr were not…discreet in their affections. It seemed like every servant or lord in the palace had happened upon them at least twice. “He left an hour ago. He didn’t say well, but a bright prince like yourself surely has an idea.”

Thor was already leaving before she had spoken, a hopeful smile on his face.

Tyr’s smithy was a place of wonder, swords and shield and armor hung on the walls and strewn about the tables surrounding the great forge in the center. Enchanted suits of mail worked busily at patching holes and sharpening blades, lit up from within by their inscribed runes. The great magic fire of Jalmari crackled merrily in the middle of the forge, belying the true power that Thor had been blessed enough to see only once or twice.

Sitting on the lip of the forge was Tyr, tinkering with a gold and red gauntlet, holding it awkwardly between his bicep and forearm. The stump where his right hand had been before it was lost to Fenrir’s bite was already healed over.

“You’ve enchanted helpers just for this sort of work,” Thor said, smiling hesitantly as he crossed the room. Tyr looked up, saw him, and smiled back, just as tremulous.

“This is the kind of work I need to do on my own,” he said softly. Thor stopped in front of his lover, looking at the runes he had already carved into the metal.

“Shall I leave you, then?” he asked softly, and when Tyr’s eyes met him they shined in firelight. It took Thor’s breath away, even as his heart broke.

Tyr was standing, crushing the gauntlet between them as he flung his arms around Thor. “Never,” he said into the crook of his neck, and Thor returned the embrace, feeling the minute trembling in that deceptively slight frame. For all that Tyr was the bastion of the anger and fire of war, he also embodied the empathy and compassion that caused men both to fight and to drop to their knees to stem the wounds of an enemy.

“Then I will stay. Always,” Thor promised.

Tyr side, pressed a kiss into the skin over his pulse, and pulled away. “Hold this. I need to make one last adjustment.” Thor took the offered gauntlet and held it as indicated.

“Tyr-” he tried to speak, though he had no idea what he would say.

“I don’t regret it,” Tyr cut in, not looking up. “I agreed to chain Fenrir, I agreed to give up my hand. It was the right thing to do, Thor.” He finished the rune and looked up. “I would do it again.”

“It will not be forgotten,” Thor said solemnly, leaning down to press his lips hard against his lover’s forehead. “Your sacrifice will be sung through the ages.”

Tyr snorted, pushing Thor back playfully. Thor was cheered to see his good humor returning. “It’s just a hand. I’ve already got a replacement.” He wiggled the gauntlet back and forth, laughing as Thor’s jaw dropped. “What, did you think I would leave it up to Loki or someone else? Did you see what he did to Sif’s hair?”

“Believe me, he has paid for that a thousand times over,” Thor chuckled. “How shall I help?”

“Hold me?” Tyr asked, turning towards the flames. “Jalmari always takes care of me, but the pain will be great, I can’t deny it.”

Thor held Tyr, close enough for comfort but loose enough to move, as the smaller man stuck his hands into the flame just as they burst to life. He did not scream, but it was a close thing.

Afterwards they rested against the flagons of stone that made the forge, watching Tyr wriggle his new fingers. “How does it feel?” Thor whispered.

“Marvelous,” Tyr breathed. “Strong.” He turned to Thor, his eyes taking on a speculative, possessive gleam that Thor knew and cherished well. “Would you like to see for yourself?”

Tyr’s hands made quick work of his armor as Thor’s head fell back. Centuries of this, he thought, and he smiled.

Tyr was dressed in his red and gold armor, as he always was these days, when he came to Thor’s tent that night.

“The battle comes at dawn,” he said unnecessarily, shedding plate until he was only gauntlet and bare skin, sliding in beside Thor and letting himself be held. 

“I’ll be by your side,” Thor swore, running his hands through curling dark hair.

“It’s foolishness,” Tyr whispered. “I am War. I know where I am not to be. We should compromise with the Vanir. They are clever and fierce, as we are. We should be joining together, not fighting.”

“They threaten everything we hold dear,” Thor responded. “Our home, our way of life.”

“They are not Jotunns, intent on dominion,” Tyr snapped, then immediately subsided. “I just. I dread the dawn. I wish to stay in this moment with you forever.” The red and gold gauntlet intertwined with Thor’s hand, and they both stared at the contrast until Tony brought them both up and kissed the seam where they met, before rolling over onto Thor. “I am War,” he repeated. “My blood needs to sing.”

Thor heard his unvoiced demand and tugged him up, closer, ran lines of fire down his sides. “Then I will plays its song.” 

The night was not long enough.

Thor lost sight of Tyr in the midst of battle. When the tide stemmed all around him, when warriors dropped their weapons one by one and turned towards the west, his heart dropped low.

He found Tyr, bleeding and broken, the red and gold cracked around him, exposing the skin he had worshipped just hours ago. Thor ran the few short meters left, collapsing beside him. Sif and the Warriors Three lingered at the edges of his vision. Somewhere someone was calling for a way to be made for the prince, meaning Loki was coming, but all Thor could see was the trickle of blood running down his love’s face.

“Thor,” Tyr managed on a cough, red misting up into the air with his breath. He raised his hand, palming Thor’s cheek. “I am sorry.”

“You’re fine,” Thor insisted, holding that shaking hand to him. “Do not talk. You are War. You do not end.”

“Of all the terrible things to tell a dying man,” Tyr said, trying to smile. His mouth was bloody; Thor kissed it anyway. “I made you promise to stand beside me…I am sorry I cannot do the same.”

“Don’t say that,” Thor cried, burying his head in Tyr’s broken chest. “Don’t apologize. All the time I ever had with you - I was unworthy.”

“You were. I love you. I - always will.” Tyr’s eyes grew distant, and Thor rocked him gently, like he was simply going to sleep, like they were back in bed, in love, forever. “Remember me, Thor. Remember me. One more promise.”

“I will, I will,” Thor said fervently. In the distance, Loki echoed his promise, then Sif, then the Warriors, then a thousand soldiers, enemy and ally alike. Tyr smiled even as his breath stuttered to a stop, his eyes losing focus. He died in Thor’s arms, and Thor did not know when he stopped screaming.

“Peace,” Thor said when the war council next convened. Tyr’s body was resting in his boat, ready to be put to sea. “We ask for peace.”

Odin looked at him, and where Thor expected surprise, he only saw sober understanding.

Centuries passed, and Thor grew unruly. He was cast out, down to the world of Midgard, deemed unworthy. He found himself missing Tyr fiercely, Tyr who would have been by his side, Tyr who would have followed him.

Tyr, who here was legend. It cheered Thor, even as it saddened him.

“Tyr kinda fades out after this,” Darcy said after noting Thor’s interest in his story. “What happened to him?”

Thor stared at the (incredibly inaccurate) portrait of a War God. His armor was plain and black, but the artist had managed to capture at least one thing in the proud tilt of that defiant chin. “He died,” he said quietly. It had never stopped hurting.

“Oh, man,” Darcy said, then peered at Thor’s face, apparently seeing the truth of it if the devastated expression on her face meant anything. “Oh, man.”

“Indeed,” Thor replied, and that was the end of that.

Until he saw a red and gold armor flying on the picture box. “Whoa!” Jane screeched when he stood and crossed to it, holding it so tightly it groaned. “That’s just Iron Man, okay? Tony Stark. He’s kind of a superhero now.”

“That armor.” He watched this Iron Man, this Tony, weave back and forth through similar looking suits, blasting them apart. The compact and ease of movement, the cleverness of his tactics, the red and gold. Remember me, Tyr had pleaded. Thor had kept that promise. This could not be anyone else. “I must go to him.”

“Um,” Jane said.

The next day the Destroyer attacked, Thor was sent home, his brother was lost, and the Bifrost destroyed. Tyr was lost to him again.

The first time he saw Iron Man fight in person, it was against himself.

“I do not wish to harm you, Tyr,” he pleaded, blocking up a blow.

“It’s Tony, big guy. Mr. Stark if you’re nasty,” the man told him while blasting him back. “And if you don’t want to fight, maybe don’t steal my stuff!”

Loki grinned at him the whole way back in the helicopter while Tony Stark regarded him with curious but distant eyes. Eyes that Thor had loved, once.

Thor remembered. Tyr had not.

He was saddened to see how closed off this Tony was, how he had lost his purpose as War since the beginning. War was not for profit, and it was not to be taken lightly. A sword is truly a shield until you swing it at the wrong person. Tyr had taught him that. Tony had seemingly learned this lesson, but however it had happened had carved out great parts of his heart.

Or maybe, he said, watching Tony’s expression fall minutely as the Captain berated him, he had just hidden them away.

“I believe that is enough,” he broke in, and both men turned to him. There was a moment of naked gratefulness and hope in Tony’s eyes before it disappeared. “Past mistakes do not define us, though they should never be forgotten. Leave them behind, for all our sakes.”

Of course, that did not stop Loki’s plan of destruction. He saw Tony look back over his shoulder at him as he and the Captain ran for the suit, and then he was gone.

“I feel the oddest compulsion to say ‘this is just like old times,’” Iron Man said to him as the Avengers circled up, waiting for orders. “You sure you’re a god, Point Break? You didn’t oh, I don’t know, gain some freak powers after an epic beach party down in Cancun in the early 90s?”

Thor did not know what half of those words meant, but he laughed anyway. Iron Man’s head tilted at the sound and his faceplate slid up. “Seriously, Thor. This deja vu is off the charts.”

“Perhaps it is the battle,” he replied. “Doesn’t it make your blood sing?”

“Singing blood?” Tony smiled, his eyes going a little distant. “That would play some pretty wild tricks on the mind, huh?”

“Verily,” Thor agreed softly, and Tony peered closely at him, looking confused before Captain Rogers began calling out orders and the faceplate slid down. 

Thor lost track of him, and began to panic. The stab wound in his side from Loki’s dagger pained him greatly; it must have been poisoned. He stumbled in his movements and suddenly Iron Man was at his back.

They fought perfectly, executing moves and combinations Thor had not used in centuries. Tyr no longer fought with a sword, but he had long used the type of science that Tony used in his gauntlets.

“Keep your head up, big guy,” Tony told him as they cleared out the area. “You’re not allowed to leave me. You promised.”

The suit froze for a second, the helmet tipping in Thor’s direction as his heart seized in his chest. “Wait-” Tony said, even as Thor reached forward with a whispered “Tyr” on his lips, before more aliens came.

Tony blasted up to the sky and was lost again, and the next time Thor saw him, he was disappearing into the wormhole.

The Captain let Thor drag Tony’s body to him, even though both he and the Hulk must have been confused. Thor ripped off the faceplate, fighting not to scream as the same still face he remembered from centuries ago was revealed.

“You’re fine,” Thor insisted, grabbing Tony’s right gauntlet and holding it to his face. “You are War. You do not end.” He closed his eyes.

“Of all the terrible things to tell a dead man,” a raspy voice croaked out, and the Captain gasped out loud. Thor opened his eyes to find Tony staring back at him, at the gauntlet intertwined with Thor’s own hand. As if in a daze, he brought their hands to his lips and kissed the seam where they met.

“Tyr,” Thor whispered. 

“Thor,” Tony - Tyr - replied, a weak smile beginning to form on his face. “You remembered.”

(The team took the revelation well in stride: by that meaning the Captain threw his hands up in the air, said “Sure, fine, Tony can be a god, too” and the archer had remarked “It is just impossible for you not to be famous!” and the Black Widow had added that being the embodiment of War explained a lot and no, Stark, that wasn’t an insult, and the doctor had simply asked if he could test Tony’s blood when they got back to a working lab.

”You know,” Tony said as the team sat around the table, eating the oddly-named food. He was remembering more every second, but remained ‘Tony’ for now and might always. Thor would call him whatever name he wished; he was merely happy to have him in his lap right now, feeding bits of meat to him. “That kinda explains how I keep living through all the absurd shit I do.”

“Going headfirst through that window,” Steven said, nodding.

“Metal poisoning,” the archer added. “Saw Nat’s notes on that. You should totally be dead, man.”

“Afghanistan,” Tony listed, grimacing. “Electrocution, lots of blunt force trauma, like three overdoses…”

“Also how you’ve looked thirty three for fifteen years,” the Lady Natasha remarked, and Tony pointed at her, apparently adding it to some invisible tally. 

Thor’s chest rumbled in laughter, and Tony shivered a little, basking in the vibrations, which only made Thor’s laughter grow. That was something old between them, too. It was a joy to see.

He was eager, however, to begin finding things new.)

[aslightstep]

winteriron + 21

And I have loved you in a tame way/And I have loved you wild

Song is:

Seven Bridges Road

“Bucky, seriously, think this through.”

Bucky ignored his brother, throwing more clothes into his knapsack. “Buck! Brock is not worth this.”

“He is to me,” Bucky rumbled, swinging the bag over his shoulder. “And if this is what it takes to get him, then I’m going.”

Brock Rumlow was all Bucky had ever wanted. He was handsome, funny, athletic, and most importantly, charismatic. He always fit in everywhere he went. Bucky had never had that; people thought him cold, called him ‘Winter.’ Everybody but Steve and his mom Sarah treated him like an outside, which, okay, he was, but still. Bucky just wanted to belong with, to somebody.

Brock was that somebody. Yesterday Bucky had dressed in his best suit, scraped together his courage, and went to ask for his hand, but Brock was high-class. He couldn’t just be wooed by some pretty words.

“I would bring you the stars, Brock,” Bucky had sworn, and ignored the pang in his heart when Brock laughed, focusing instead on how beautiful he was when he did so.

Brock got himself under control, looked Bucky up and down, and said “Alright, Winter. We all saw the shower yesterday. One of the stars fell from the sky. You get me that star and I swear to be yours.”

So now Bucky prepared to walk down Seven Bridges Road. No one ever made it past the fourth bridge unless they could pay the toll, but if you could, you would find yourself in a magical world. Or so said Bucky’s father, Chester Phillips, in his favorite nighttime story.

Sarah said that’s where Bucky came from. His father had been her childhood friend and she had taken care of Bucky once he passed on, but his mother had always been a mystery. “She’s from beyond the bridge, your pa always said,” Sarah would tell him. 

“It’s dangerous,” Stevie said. “I’ll worry about you, jerk.”

Bucky smiled at his brother, ruffled his hair, which Steve predictably huffed at. “You shouldn’t. I’m leaving all the stupid with you, punk. I’ll be fine.”

Downstairs, Sarah Rogers was waiting. She handed him food, a water canteen, and his birthright: a magical candle that was said to transport the user miles in seconds as long as the candle was lit. “Come back to us,” she whispered to him as they hugged. “You will always have a place here.”

“Be safe, Bucky,” Steve told him, and then he set.

For love, he told himself as he left the only home he’d ever know. 

“No passing.”

“But-”

“No passing unless you can pay the toll,” the tollman said, tone as bland as his face. Bucky rolled his eyes, feeling like they’d been arguing for hours even though it had only been a few minutes.

“And what’s the toll?”

“If you don’t know, then you can’t pay,” the man said with a shrug. “If you can’t pay then you can’t pass.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “You sure you’re legit?”

“Do you want to see my badge?” Bucky nodded and he passed it over.

“Phil Coulson. Agent of Shield. Is that what it’s called, beyond the bridge - Shield?”

Coulson shrugged. “Just about. More capitalization. My badge if you please?”

Bucky almost handed it right back over, then jerked his hand back, grinning. “What will you give me for it?”

Coulson froze, staring at Bucky hard. “You wouldn’t happen to know Chester Phillips.”

“He was my dad.”

“Son of a-” Coulson cursed, then stepped to the side. “He did the same exact- just go.”

Shield did not look immediately different then his own town of Bridge, until he hit the first village. Talking birds, spellcasters, a woman with two heads - Bucky tried not to gape but he was pretty sure he failed.

“Excuse me, do you need help?”

Bucky turned at the hand on his shoulder. A pretty woman, around Sarah’s age, was standing there, her eyes roving over his face like she was drinking him in. “Um, hi,” he said, and something in her eyes grew very bright. “I’m Bucky - James, really, but everybody calls me Bucky...”

“James,” she echoed, her hand rubbing over his shoulder soothingly before letting go. “Are you lost?”

“Yeah, a bit. This place is pretty busy.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, her face falling. “Our King just recently passed. The Barnes royal family has many sons, and word says that he decreed any of them could inherit should they prove themselves worthy.”

“How do they do that?” Bucky asked, curious despite himself.

“They catch a star,” the woman said. “And bring it back here to be admired. People are gathered in case one of the princes comes through and needs help. If they choose the next king, they assure their futures.”

The star - he had to hurry. “Listen, do you know where the star fell? Only, I’m after it too.”

“After it?” she repeated, sounding disappointed. “May I ask why?”

“I’m retrieving it, for my love,” Bucky answered proudly, but her frown only deepened. She was silent for a very long time, her gaze weighted, before she pointed towards the east.

“It will be a long journey,” she warned him. Bucky grinned, stepping closer. Inexplicably, he felt he could trust this woman. He showed her the candle. Her eyes grew wide as they raised to his face and then, suddenly, filled with tears.

“Whoa, hey,” Bucky said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “It’ll be okay! ‘S nothin’ to cry over, its just a candle!” She just kept crying. Jesus, this is why people thought he was cold. He was so rotten with people.

She stepped away with him and pointed again to the east. “Promise me that you’ll be gentle.”

Bucky’s brow wrinkled in confusion but nevertheless, he nodded. She took a few deep breaths, pulled a match from...somewhere in her dress, turned him in the right direction, then lit it.

“Be gentle,” he heard again, before the world zoomed away.

He found a huge crater where the star must have landed, but no star. Instead there was a young man sitting in the middle, looking completely distraught. He was dressed in a slinky silver shirt and white pants, which looked beautiful against his tan skin and dark hair and eyes. For a moment Bucky was frozen as he stared down at him, his breath caught in his chest.

Then the boy noticed he was there, and scowled. “Hey! Don’t just stand there gawking. I’m injured, I need help.”

Bucky scrambled down the slope to reach him. “I’m looking for a star that landed around here, have you seen it?” He panted as he reached him.

The boy stared at him like Bucky had just said something very stupid, before his eyes narrowed. “And what do you want with this star?”

“To take it back to Brock, my one true love,” Bucky answered, reaching out a hand.

The boy snorted in derision. “True love? From a human? Are you even capable?”

“What are you talking about?” Bucky asked, dropping the hand like the boy’s acidic tone had scoured it raw. “You’re human. You’ve never been in love?”

“I am not human!” The other man snapped, looking insulted. “And...no. Of course not. Love is so fleeting. There’s no point to it.” He looked up at the sky, where the moon hung bright, a mournful look in his eyes. “She’s so far away.”

“Who is?”

“Maria,” the boy answered. At Bucky’s clear bewilderment, he pointed up at the moon.

Bucky felt the need to take a step back. Clearly this man was insane. “You named the moon Maria?”

“I didn’t name her anything. Maria is her name. She’s my mother. Well, not really. But she protects me from Howard, blocks me from his view, and that makes her family.”

“And...who is Howard?”

“Your sun,” the boy said as if it was obvious. “He’s an asshole. He likes to push the other stars around, show off how brightly he shines, like he’s not just a little dwarf star.”

Suddenly multiple things clicked in Bucky’s head. The absence of the star. The boy in the middle of the crater. His injury, as if he had fallen, and all this talk of the sun and the moon. He pointed excitedly at the boy and said “You’re the star!”

“...I am,” the star said slowly, crossing his arms with an adorable pout. “And you’re not taking me anywhere.”

“But I need you to win Brock!”

“If you have to sell a sentient being to win Brock’s love, then let me tell you, he is not worth it,” the star said, raising one imperious eyebrow. “I’m not going, and you can’t make me.”

They glared at each other, at an impasse, until Bucky grinned. “I don’t think I like that look,” the star said just before Bucky swooped down on him, lifting him into his arms. The star felt nice in his arms, warm and soft. Amidst many protests, Bucky carried him out of the crater and to the woods where he sat him down and began breaking a branch off the tree.

“I’m not going to sell you,” he reassured the boy, pulling out his knife and carving at the top of the branch. “Not now that I know that you’re - you. I just want him to see. He’s promised to be with me if I do and he’s - all I ever wanted. I could belong with him.”

“You don’t belong?” The star asked, still cross but with curiosity in his tone as well.

“No,” Bucky said softly. “Never. I’ve always felt like an outsider, like I can’t relate to others. Even when they’re the same as me.”

He thought he heard an “I know what you mean” but when he looked Tony was staring at the sky again, the same sad look from before back in his eyes.

“Look, why don’t we help each other out,” Bucky said, pulling out the candle from his back. It hadn’t run out yet. “This candle can transport you miles in seconds as long as the flame is lit. It could get you back home. I’ll give it to you, if you come with me.”

Tony stared at the candle hungrily, eyes flicking once or twice to Bucky’s face. “Alright,” he agreed after a moment. Grinning, Bucky put the candle away, surreptiously pulling out another item. He got the star onto his feet, then handed him the crutch he had carved out of the branch. 

“You got a name?”

“Yes. But I’m not telling you!” the boy answered mutinously.

Bucky grinned. The star had spunk, he’d give him that. “Then I’ll just have to make something up. Bambi? No, too fiery. Silver? No, that’s no good. Give me a hint, doll?” A sudden burst of color flitted across the star’s cheeks and Bucky’s grin grew wider. “Doll? You like that? You’re certainly as pretty as one. Fun to carry, too.”

“Just shut up and get moving!” the star spluttered, his cheeks burning red. “The sooner we get to Brock, the sooner I go home!”

The star was funny, as prickly as he was, and endlessly curious. He had Bucky explain every new sight they came across, huffing cutely when Bucky didn’t exactly have all the answers. “Why couldn’t I have got a useful human?”

“Hey, who is giving you a piggy back ride right now, you spoiled little star?”

“I’m not spoiled, you’re just a worrywart. I’m pretty tough, you know?”

“Sure, doll,” Bucky snorted, adjusting the star so he was more comfortable on his back. “I see some lights up ahead. Might be an inn. We’ll stop for the night.”

“Shouldn’t we hurry?” The star asked. “Aren’t you anxious to see Brock?”

“He’ll wait for me,” Bucky said, trying to sound surer than he felt. Maybe the star heard his fear anyway, because the arms around his shoulders squeezed him a little tighter for a moment.

It was indeed an inn, operated by a man and wife. The wife was a little odd; her exotic coloring with ink-black night and moss green eyes kept distracting Bucky, drawing his eye. He snapped back when the star scraped his knife across his plate, creating a terrible screeching sound.

“Something wrong?” Bucky asked. Tony just scowled at him and announced he wanted to take a bath. The wife, Madame Loki, immediately began fussing around him, tugging him upstairs.

There was another guest, a Sir Stane, that had the air of importance and condescension Bucky knew well to avoid. He headed upstairs, pausing when he heard Loki and the star through one of the doors.

“You seem stressed, my dear,” the woman was saying.

“Yeah, I guess,” the star sighed. “I just miss my home.” Bucky felt a pang of guilt at that. He could have sent the star back straight away, found another way to win Brock’s heart. It’s what Steve would have done. But Bucky didn’t want to keep waiting for the moment when everything made sense, where he suddenly fit in. Brock made sense, he told himself.

The voices dropped to a murmur and Bucky was about to move on when suddenly he heard a shout from within. Heart leaping into his throat, he burst through the door to find Loki standing over the star in the bath, a knife raised high.

There was a light burning bright in the center of the star’s exposed chest. It seemed to be Loki’s target, but as the knife swung down Bucky let out a yell and tackled her. The knife skittered away as they rolled around on the ground. “Doll!” Bucky shouted. “Run!”

The star seemed torn with indecision, but before he could decide to run or stay and help, Sir Stane appeared at the door. “What is all this-” His eyes froze when they landed on the star, the light in his chest. “The star! Oh, my boy, you don’t know what a gift this is. With you in my grasp, I will be king!”

“The star is mine!” Loki howled, and with a flick of her wrist Bucky went flying. He landed near the knife and stared at it woozily.

“Bucky!” the star came rushing towards him. “Come on!”

“Go,” Bucky mumbled. “Take the candle - go -”

“I’m not leaving you, you idiot! Maria above, what kind of horrible person do you think-”

There was another crash and suddenly Stane was bearing down on them, his hands going for the star’s throat. Bucky didn’t know what compelled him to move, but suddenly the knife was in his hand, and then in Stane’s gut. Bucky and the star watched as the man gasped and fell back.

“Now can we go?” the star said faintly, and in answer, Bucky grapped his hand as they dashed for their gear and clothes and left.

“Tony,” the star said softly as he dabbed gently at the wound on Bucky’s forehead he had received when his head collided with the wall. Bucky tilted his head questioningly. “My name. It’s Tony.”

“Tony,” Bucky echoed, weighing it, feeling the taste of it on his tongue. Tony blushed that beautiful red, but this time underneath it was a strange soft glow.

“Don’t wear it out, okay?” he warned. He shook a finger in Bucky’s face, attempting to look intimidating, but Bucky just laughed, grabbing his hand.

“Don’t worry, Tony. You’re still my doll.”

Loki chased after them over the countryside, Tony and Bucky only staying one step ahead of her at all times. Even worse, they found out that Sir Stane’s brother Sir Pierce was wandering these same hills, looking for them.

They fled into a lightning storm, hoping to cover their trail, only to get captured by a boat that harvested the lightning for sail. For a long moment, Bucky expected to be killed, but the Captain, Nicholas Fury, took one look at their hands, wrapped around each other, and snorted.

“Eloping?” he asked out the side of his mouth to Bucky, who shook his head. “Oh. Well, maybe you should think about it.”

Captain Fury, pilot of the Helicarrier, was fierce in front of his men, but fairly genial otherwise, agreeing to take them back to the closest port to the village on Seven Bridges Road. In his spare time, he took to teaching both Tony and Bucky how to shoot.

“I’ve had men train for years ain’t got the aim you got, Buck,” he complimented. 

“What about me?” Tony whined.

“Yeah, you’re okay.”

That adorable pout overtook Tony’s face once more and Bucky took pity on him. “Here, let me show you something,” he said, stepping close to Tony and raising his arm to wrap his hands around his forearms. 

“O-Okay.”

With curiously trembling fingers, Bucky fixed Tony’s grip, unable to help himself from lingering. Tony was just so warm, and bright. He felt so perfect in his arms.

“Is this good?” Tony said lowly, turning his face up to Bucky’s so they were only inches apart. All Bucky could see was large brown eyes staring up at him, sparkling and bright. The whole world lit up around him but Bucky only had eyes for the star in his arms. 

“It’s good,” he replied. “So good. You’re so good, Tony.”

Tony blinked slowly, and his or Bucky or both of them inhaled on a shudder that shook the earth. “Can I-” Tony began.

“SHOOT!” Fury shouted, and surprised, Tony fired the gun.

Bullseye.

“Well, look at that,” Fury said, smirking. “There’s hope for you two yet.”

Tony pouted again, which was starting to do interesting thing to Bucky’s blood flow. It wasn’t until he lifted his fingers to run them along that lip and they cast shadows back at him that he realized Tony was glowing. Tony had never done that before, not this brightly.

Tony was staring at Bucky’s outstretched fingers now, then to Bucky himself, and a shy smile took over his face. The glow, Bucky realized, meant Tony was happy. Happy with him.

“They call me Winter, back home,” Bucky said on their last night. They stared up at the star from the deck of the ship and Tony relayed stories of them. There was Pepper to the east, shining brilliantly. Rhodey to the north, never blinking. A weak light down south that Tony called Hammer with a sneer. So many stories of a place Tony called home. It made Bucky sad. “They said I was cold.”

“Only because they wouldn’t let you in,” Tony said. “You’re the warmest person I know.”

“I’m just about the only person you know, Tony.”

“I’ve watched humans for centuries,” Tony said stubbornly. He looked sideways, almost abashed. “The other stars always laughed at me for it, watching. But humans are so interesting. They feel so much. Stars change, but not for centuries. I never knew-” His hand reached up to clutch his chest, over the bright light Bucky knew was there. “I never knew it could feel like this.”

“Me neither,” Bucky whispered, rolling over so he could drink in Tony fully, shining bright against the wooden planks. He made the mundane look beautiful. Tony rolled as well, and carefully reached out to trace over Bucky’s arm, then his ribs, down to his hip.

“I wish we could stay here,” he whispered, before his expression shuttered. “But we can’t, can we? You have to get to your love.”

Bucky wasn’t so sure anymore.

They were in the village when he resolve broke. Tony yelped as Bucky shoved him against the wall and began digging in his pack. “What are you doing?”

He pulled out the remains of the candle and handed it over. “Here. You can go home now.”

Tony’s eyes flickered from the candle to Bucky’s face, confusion on his gorgeous face. “But - don’t you want to win over Brock?”

“No.” I want to win over you, but I can’t. “Forget Brock, he’s not important. I should have given this to you straightaway, and let you get home. I put you in danger.”

“You saved me,” Tony said fervently.

“Still.”

Tony rolled the candle back and forth, eyes narrowing on Bucky’s face. “Why didn’t you? Give it to me. Just to win Brock, right?”

Bucky opened his mouth, then closed it again. Sarah had taught him to be truthful. “Not exactly.”

“Then why?”

“Because I wanted you to stay,” he whispered, unable to look at Tony, to see rejection once more.

Hands grabbed onto his face, dragging him down towards Tony where their lips crashed together. It was clear Tony had no experience, but he made up for it in enthusiasm, kissing and kissing and kissing. Bucky groaned into his mouth, wrapping his arms around the smaller man to bring him closer, he had to be closer.

He stepped forward, pushing Tony to the wall again and held him there, kissing back as fiercely as he could. “Tony,” he groaned, his hands touching everywhere they could. 

“I want to stay,” Tony panted, tilting his head back so Bucky could get at his neck. “I want to stay. Bucky, I love you-”

Tony was glowing bright, hard against his thigh where he was rutting into Bucky. He likely only had the vaguest idea of what he was doing. Bucky slowed the kiss down, pulling back to gain some control. This was important. “I love you, too,” he said. Tony literally lit up, even though his smile faltered.

“But Brock?”

“Brock isn’t home, doll,” Bucky said, kissing him again. He couldn’t stop. “You are.”

Tony’s smile looked fit to split his face and Bucky was worried the glow might start attracting attention. “You know, I’ve noticed we’re in an alley right next to an inn.”

“Historically not good places for us,” Tony teased. Bucky nipped at his lips, quieting his giggles.

“Maybe we can make some better memories.”

They rented a room, kissing and touching as much as the star seemed comfortable with, into the late hours until Tony, who seemed permanently lit from within, fell asleep. Bucky watched him, then rolled over to walk towards the desk, jotting down a few lines before grabbing up his pack.

He had to tell his family that he was never coming back again. That he had found his home, and it was wherever Tony wanted to be, because it was Tony. And, he grinned as he sawed off a little piece of Tony’s hair, he would keep his promise to Brock, if only to show him the wonders he was missing.

He dropped the letter off with the landlady to leave with Tony and set out just before dawn, a spring in his step.

Tony woke with a smile on his face. Maria above, the other stars didn’t know what they were missing. “I hope you see me, Mother,” he whispered to the ceiling. “I hope you’re happy.”

He rolled over, wanting to wake up Bucky and maybe persuade him to do some of the things he was clearly holding back on last night, only to find an empty bed. “Buck?” he called, but there was no answer from the attached privy.

He got out of the bed, wincing at the cold floor, and went to look anyway, but the room was entirely empty. When he came back, he noticed that Bucky’s pack was gone. Tony ran his fingers through his hair, a nervous habit he had developed in this body, and felt a weird choppy bit, as if someone had chopped a piece off.

“Oh,” Tony said, when it all clicked together. He had left.

Bucky had left him, and gone back to Brock, taking a piece with him. He had changed his mind. Chosen the human. Of course. Why would Bucky, who never felt like he belonged, love a star, who never would?

Tony was such a fool. 

Numbly, he dressed himself and walked out of the room, out onto Seven Bridges Road and heading for the border. He couldn’t go on without Bucky. Even if he had to watch him from a distance as he always had before, at least he would see him.

A moment later the landlady came to the deserted room, carrying breakfast on a tray with a letter stuck neatly in the corner. “Good morning, dearie, your man said-” She stopped at the sight of the empty room, her heart dropping at the shadows left behind.

“BUCK!” Stevie cried, and they fell into a hug. “Look at you, look at your hair!”

Bucky tugged on the strands that had grown out over his time in Shield, grinning sheepishly. “And look at that smile,” Steve continued. “Good trip. Did you find your star?”

Bucky’s smile only grew when he thought of Tony, waiting for him back at the village. He would only stay for a few hours; he couldn’t wait to get back home. “Yeah, I did.”

“And? Where is it?”

“He is waiting back at Shield for me, so I can say my goodbyes here.”

“He?” Steve repeated, eyes bulging with surprise. “Goodbyes?!”

Bucky laughed, and told him the whole story. By the end of it he swore Steve might be swooning. “Gosh, Buck, that’s so romantic. I knew there was something different about you the moment I saw you. So he’s nice, really?”

“Nice is not the word I would use,” Bucky said with a snort, reaching into his pack for the handkerchief he had wrapped Tony’s hair in. “Look, a little piece of him-”

“That sounds creepy, Buck.”

“Just look, punk,” Bucky said, then unwrapped the handkerchief. Instead of strands of Tony’s soft dark hair, however, a stream of beautiful silver dust fell to the ground between them. Bucky stared at where in mixed with the dust on the floor, and an inexplicable feeling of dread welled up in him. “That’s...not right.”

“Bucky?”

“It turned to dust. It was his hair, I swear it, Steve.”

“I believe you. But our world isn’t like theirs. Maybe Tony just doesn’t belong here,” Steve reasoned. 

Doesn’t belong here.

“I left him all alone,” Bucky whispered.

“Yeah, but you said you left him a letter.”

Bucky shook his head, shouldering his pack, checking that the gun Fury had given him was still in there. “There are people after him and I left him alone - what if he tries to come to where I am? He’s in danger, Steve!”

“Alright, alright,” Steve said, his tone both soothing and firm. “Just don’t panic, alright, Buck. We’ll go get him.”

“We?”

“Well if my future brother-in-law can’t come to me, I’m going to him,” Steve said, and Bucky knew there was no arguing with the stubborn set to that jaw.

“Stop!”

The woman who had been pestering him since he exited the inn was still at it. “I can’t,” Tony said blankly. “I have to see Bucky.”

“James - Bucky - he’s coming back. I saw you two yesterday, the way he looked at you - he didn’t leave. But you can’t go through the bridge!”

“I have to,” Tony said. The woman tried to follow him but was jerked back by the very long chain that had kept her shackled lo these many years just as Tony crossed under the fifth bridge, heading for the fourth. A carriage was coming their way, driven by a familiar-looking, handsome man with black hair and dark green eyes.

“Need a lift?” The gentleman asked, but Tony shook his head. “Oh,” the man said, grabbing his hand. The woman screamed and Tony realized why those eyes were so familiar. “But I insist.”

They disappeared in a flash of green light, the carriage continuing on, as the woman stared at the place they had disappeared. 

“Tony!” she heard, and her head snapped up. James - Bucky - her son, came barreling towards her, collapsing at the place where Tony had just been standing. A small blond man with a shield on his back followed after him and placed a comforting hand on Bucky’s shaking shoulder.

“Was that one of the ones after him?”

“Loki,” she answered for them. “It’s a trickster spirit that feeds off natural energy. A star would power it for centuries. We have to go after him.”

“How?” Bucky sobbed, digging his hands into the dirt as if he could drag Tony back to him. “He’s gone.”

“Do you still have the candle?” she demanded, and Bucky’s shoulders froze, mid sob and looked up, nodding. “I can show you the way.”

“Come with us,” the blond man said, and she shook her head, pointing at the chain. Her son stood, reached into his pack and pulled out a gun. Without blinking, he shot her chain apart.

Gaping, she stared at the split pieces. “What’s your name?” James asked her softly.

“Una,” she replied. She had almost forgotten her name, in the time since she had been allowed to speak it. She pulled out a match, James held out the candle, and they flew off to save a star.

“You can’t have my heart,” Tony laughed even as struggled against his bond. “I gave it away. To someone who didn’t even have the decency to give me a replacement.”

“As fascinating as your tale of woe is,” the spirit drawled. “Even a heart with such little power as yours can sustain me for decades. At this point, I’ll take what I can get it.”

He raised the knife high and Tony found himself closing his eyes, waiting. It wouldn’t even hurt, he told himself, not when Bucky was carrying the most vital pieces of him.

“I believe you have something that belongs to me, spirit!” 

Tony’s eyes flew over, but it wasn’t Bucky. A short, sandy-haired man was standing at the door, armed to the teeth.

“You!” Loki snarled.

“Who?” Tony asked.

“Pierce!” the man screamed. “Rightful king of Shield as soon as you give me my star!”

Tony blinked, feeling serious deja vu. “Hey, did you have a brother named Stane?”

“Yes,” Pierce said, smiling. “And I thank you for dispatching him. I only need one more thing from you-”

He was cut off when a round disk came sailing out of nowhere, hitting him in the back and sending him flying. A familiar figure filled the doorway, flanked by two figures, one Tony knew and one he didn’t. But only one that was important.

“Bucky!” he cried, lighting up. Loki cackled at the glow, scrambling for his knife, the full power of a star within his grasp, but he was blown backwards by a shot from Bucky’s gun.

Bucky rushed to Tony’s side, unchaining him from the altar and lifting him up into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he breathed into Tony’s neck. “I’m so sorry.”

“You left me,” Tony cried even as he returned the embrace.

“I told you I was coming back,” Bucky said, pulling away.

“You did?”

“I left a letter.”

“Where?”

“With the landlady!”

“Bucky-”

“As fascinating as this is,” a new voice broke in, and Bucky and Tony looked up just in time to dodge a stab from Pierce’s sword. Steve was sprawled out on the floor, groaning, while Una was running towards them. Bucky dodged ripostes and blocked swipes with his sword until he was backed into a corner. Pierce raised his sword high and Una shouted “Brother!”

The man froze at the voice, the call, and turned to look at the woman, his eyes going wide with recognition. “Sister?” he asked disbelievingly. “Where have you-”

The questioned never finished as Loki re-entered the fray, sending a lance of ice straight through Pierce’s eye. Una screamed as her brother fell, and the trickster appeared behind Tony to grab him by the neck.

“Tell your friends to leave, star,” he growled in his ear, summoning several pieces of ice and directing them towards Bucky, Steve, and Una. Tony kept his eyes locked with Buck’s, wide and terrified. “Let’s you and I finished our business.”

“Tony, no! I won’t leave you!” Bucky screamed, scrambling to his feet. Loki sent the ice forward and Tony yelled.

“Oh? Do we have a deal, star?”

Tony panted, struggling, gazing at Bucky. “You won’t hurt them?”

“Of course not. Not if you cooperate.”

“Tony, don’t!” Bucky yelled. “Please! I won’t leave!”

“I love you,” Tony whispered, and Bucky’s eyes filled with tears. 

“I love you, too.” He stepped forward, letting the ice touch his chest. “Please.”

Tony closed his eyes, accepting his fate. At least Bucky would live. “I think you forget how stars die, trickster.”

Loki chuckled in his ear. “And how is that?”

The light in Tony’s chest suddenly grew bright, and then brighter, until Una had to shield her eyes. Bucky, however, didn’t look away. Tony smiled. “They go supernova.”

The light exploded, taking Tony and Loki with it.

Bucky woke up coughing. He was disoriented for a moment until he remembered where he was. What had happened.

“Tony!”

He shoved pieces of debris off of himself and got onto his hands and knees, crawling towards the last place he had seen the star. The room seemed permanently bleached with brightness, and Loki was nowhere to be seen.

A small body rested where Tony fell, and he scrambled to it, turning his love over to see his still, pale face. “Tony,” he whispered brokenly. “No. No. Please, don’t leave me. Please. You are my home.” He kissed unmoving lips. “You are my heart.” Another kiss. “I belong to you, and you belong to me.

“I love you.”

Outside, where none of them could see, the clouds moved from where they blocked the moon’s view. Maria looked down at her Tony, her star, her favorite child, and smiled, sweetly sad. The moon grew a little dimmer that night, and forevermore after.

Inside, Tony gasped to life.

Bucky cried out, then laughed wetly, kissing all over his face, saying his name.

“I told you,” Tony grumbled. “Not to wear it out.”

“Doll,” Bucky corrected, smiling down. 

Tony sat up, feeling at his chest. “It’s gone. My light.”

“Never,” Bucky swore and Tony looked up at him, trying to smile.

“I don’t think I’m a star anymore, Buck,” he said, trying so hard not to cry. “It’s so cold, now.”

Bucky tugged him closer, kissing his forehead. “Then I will warm you up.”

Una ran her fingers through her brother’s hair, remembering when they were children and he wanted to save the world. How did they come to this, she wondered.

“I’m sorry,” a voice broke through her reveries, and she looked up. James was standing nearby, the star cradled against him. Steve was in the distance, retrieving his shield. “He was your brother?”

“Your uncle,” she said, smiling sadly when the man stepped back in shock. “Your father was Chester Phillips. I met him while running away from my guards and fell in love at first sight, but he only had the one night. He left before I could tell him about you. I knew you would be in danger from my family, so I had Coulson smuggle you to him where you would be safe.”

Bucky’s mouth opened and closed as he struggled to adjust. “You - he passed on when I was eight. He said he always regretted leaving my mother.” He looked down at Tony. “To never make the same mistake, when I had love in my grasp.”

Tony got up on his tiptoes to reward him for that bit of poetry, and Una smiled to know that Chester remembered her. “You have defeated all others, James. You have retrieved the star. You have fulfilled all the requirements to become king of Shield.”

“Me?” Her son yelped. “A king. I’m just a kid from Bridge!”

“Hey,” Steve said indignantly. “That’s my line.”

“I can’t be a king!”

“I think you’d make a great king,” Tony said, shrugging. Bucky rounded on him. “You’re smart, you’re kind, but not too kind. You’re compassionate. You’d look great in a crown.”

“You realize I’m gonna marry you. You’ll be king, too.”

Another shrug, though accompanied by a truly spectacular blush. “Well, if I can’t be a star, being a king might do.”

“A star is a star,” Una said. “No matter how far it falls.”

Tony blushed even more at that, and her son beamed at her before ducking down so he could get to the star’s mouth again. They got quite distracted, and Steve gagged.

“Gross. This is gross. You’re gonna be royal and gross. Royally gross!”

Tony broke away from Bucky with a gasp, glaring. “Who are you, again?”

“I’m Steve! Bucky’s brother, thank you,” Steve sniped back. “Future Captain of the Guard, too, so you should be nice to me, starshine.”

The two glared at each other while Bucky looked to the heavens. “I haven’t even said that I would - look. Mother? You know more about this than me. Why don’t you rule? Or we can, together. Just as long-” He kissed Tony again. “As long as I have you.”

Tony smiled, and though he wasn’t a star anymore, Una still thought she could see a glow. “I love you, too...Your Majesty.”

[aslightstep]

The Stories So Far

So Drabblethon 600 is roughly 1/3rds finished! Thanks to everyone who submitted prompts. I thought I’d round up the first ten for anybody who missed them since I tend to post them at different times every night.

Make This Go On Forever - 616/Stony/Soulmate AU. Steve and Tony are soulmates. Steve and Tony love each other. These two statements might have nothing to do with each other. (Character Death, Compliant through Times Runs Out)

XO - (MCU/Stony) At the dawn of the Infinity War, Steve and Tony meet again. Compliant through CACW.

Yellow Flicker Beat - (MCU/Gen/ABO) The truth about Tony comes out. It all goes downhill from there. Compliant through Avengers.

Singin’ in the Rain - (MCU/Thunderiron) Thor and Tony are the two fliers on the team, and that forges a bond. Compliant through Avengers: Age of Ultron

I’m Not Your Hero - (MCU/Winteriron) Tony helps Bucky pick up a few of the pieces of himself he’s lost along the way, but its up to Bucky if they go back into the puzzle. Compliant through CACW.

Wings - (MCU/Ironpanther) The side of humanity strikes a critical blow in the Infinity War. Tony and T’Challa take some time to prepare. (Character death, Compliant through CACW)

Seven Bridges Road - (MCU/WinterIron/Stardust AU) Bucky must retrieve a fallen star to impress his one true love. The star is a person. Named Tony. 

Standing in the Shadow of a Damaged Heart - (MCU/Ironhusbands) Rhodey takes Tony up on an offer to pilot his newly built armored battle suit. Things change from there. Semi-compliant through Avengers.

My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark - (616/Superior Iron Man) Tony Stark is taking over the world one piece at a time. Steve has to stop him. (Character death, compliant for most of Superior Iron Man)

Welcome Home - (MCU/Winteriron) Bucky and Tony’s lives have paralleled many times over the years. Perhaps that’s why they fit so well. Compliant through CACW.

I made a playlist here!

[aslightstep]

Hey :) For you drabbleton - would you be willing to do the prompt no.1, Stony, in an Arthurian (or, ya know, faux-Arthurian) setting? If you don't like the setting, that's fine, it could be a normal MCU or anything else - it's just that the evil forces and, eh, all the horses scream knights and Camelot :) Thanks. This is such a lovely, fun idea, all the prompts look great :)

We’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces/Singing whiskey for my men, beer for my horses

Beer For My Horses

The horn sounded and a ragged cheer rose up from the battlefield as the surviving giants turned their backs on it. Steven himself was quite preoccupied with wrenching his sword out of the great horned beast that had nearly taken his off with its massive jaws.

“I half expected it would never end.”

Steven whirled, which had the beneficial side-effect of providing enough force to remove the sword from the beast’s hide, and grinned at Sir James watching his struggle with his customary smirk.

“Come now, Barnes, don’t tell me you were growing tired!”

“We’ve been fighting since dawn, Rogers. I’d rather you tell me without a lie that you are not.”

Steven shrugged, sheathing his sword. It had been a good fight. Their kingdom protected and King Arthur triumphant against the evil that had threatened its borders. He was never one to dream of battle, only to do what was right. To be a Knight of the Round Table was to be fulfilled completely, for Steve. “You know me, James. I can do this all day.”

James merely rolled his eye, walking forward to drag Steven into him and under his arm like they had done since they were children and more. Of course, Steve used to fit quite neatly there, before wizard Erskine gave him the Draught of Rebirth. Now, James had to reach, but that had never deterred his old friend.

However, he was just short enough now that the edge of his chest plate knocked into Steven’s hip, where one of Mordred’s bannermen had gotten a lucky hit in the barest gap between his mail and his armor, cutting through the jerkin and beyond. The wound wasn’t deep and would heal quickly, but he was like to never hear the end of it until it did.

James edged away so he could look down and made a sympathetic face. “What will I have to do to prevent you from telling this to Anthony?” Anthony would worry without end, and though his mouth set in a pout was one of the most beautiful things Steven had ever witnessed, he was not overly fond of the overbearing caretaking that went with it.

But James, instead of beginning absurd bargaining as Steven expected, dropped his eyes down and to the left. “Yes. Well, about that, Steven…”

Steven’s heart nearly stopped. “What is it? Did Mordred’s fiends get into the camp?”

“No,” and Steven breathed out a sigh of relief. Anthony was the king’s heir, and so he was kept to the camp, where he was safe. “But you’re not going to have to worry about Anthony’s particular brand of tender care.”

“…What,” Steven said dangerously.

“Do you remember that massive explosion that took out their entire left flank around two hours ago?”

“What.” 

Steven was going to kill him.

Anthony was being held in the infirmary tent. His bodyguard, Clinton Barton, went a little pale when he saw Steven storming through camp towards him. “You!” Steven snapped, seizing Clinton by his collar. “You were supposed to protect him!”

Clinton scowled, pushing Steven away. “‘M not locking him up in a cage, Rogers. Tony wanted to fight; so did I. We took out at least two hundred soldiers. What was your count?”

“Barton,” Barnes said softly, and Clinton took another look at Steven and sighed, stepping aside.

“He said he had a brilliant plan, yes?” he mumbled. “The man shoots fire out of those gauntlets. It is hard to say no to that.”

Steven considered him, then relaxed as well. Anthony was as persuasive as he was reckless, and he and Clinton had become great friends. He could not fault Barton too greatly for this.

He stepped through the tent, a small smile quirking at his lips at the sight that greeted him. Tony was thronged on all sides by Lady Pepper, Sir James Rhodes, and his own mother, the Princess Maria. Sir Margaret Carter stood behind him, holding him still while the grand Wizard Merlin crouched over him, muttering incantations over his chest and blocking it from Steven’s view.

“Oh, good, you’re finally here.” Steven looked to the side. Lady Natasha, Merlin’s own bodyguard, was doing the closest thing to smiling Steve had ever seen on her lovely face. “I half expect Anthony to make a break for it at any moment. Perhaps your presence will dissuade him. Ah, Sir Barnes, you survived.”

“I tend to do that,” James said, smirk back in place. Natasha mirrored it perfectly.

“See that you continue to do so. There might be a reward.” She turned back to the preceedings just in time for Rhodes’ ‘Of all the stupid-!’

“It was not stupid!” Oh, and Anthony was well on his way to being drunk if that slur was any indication. For the pain, Steven guessed. As they watched Tony drained the goblet in his hand but when offered a refill declined. “Go give the rest of that to Jarvis. He’s like to be in the same shape as I am. He’ll need it. Oh, and bring him some beer later. The Murkwood lager. It’s his favorite.” The servant nodded, more than used to Tony’s odd eccentries regarding Jarvis, his horse.

“And what shape is that?” Steven asked loudly, and the entire tent turned towards him, Anthony’s face lighting up with a bright smile as the teen swayed towards him as if drawn by a string. It always warmed Steven’s heart to see such a reaction, but now he didn’t know how much was due to drink or pain.

“Steven! Did you hear? I was fantastic.”

“And foolish,” Lady Pepper said.

“It was not foolishness, Pep,” Tony said, a genuine frown crossing his face. “Mordred’s army would not have even had those stones if not for me. I had to fix my mistakes. Uncle will be proud of me, won’t he Mother? And Father, too.” He added, much more quietly. Margaret rubbed his shoulders soothingly.

“Oh, Anthony,” Maria sighed. “We never blamed you. You need not get yourself killed to make Arthur proud. A finer heir could not be asked for.”

“Killed?” Steven squawked. Unable to stand it any longer, he pushed forward, though Rhodes and Pepper stepped aside readily enough. Merlin glanced sidelong at him, finished his mutterings, and moved away, revealing the stone that was now resting in Tony’s chest, a web of already-scarring wounds and spells carved into the skin. Steven reached out a hand hesistantly. “Tony-”

“I’m fine,” Anthony said. “Merls patched me up good.”

“I wish you would not call me that, Your Highness.” The wizard turned to Steven and favored him with a gentle smile. “The stone calls to like. Prince Anthony, in his infinite wisdom, used his gauntlets to implode the enemies’ supply. Jarvis dragged him away after they were hit with debris, which almost pierced his heart, but this should halt its procession.”

“Tony,” Steven breathed, torn between exasperation. “I understand you feel blame, but if I lost you-”

“Then it would have been in good cause. I won’t regret it.” Tony grabbed Steven’s hand and pressing it to his chest. “Feel me, Steven. Feel me breathe. Feel my heart beat. Come now, would I leave you so easily?”

And indeed underneath the cool surface of the stone he could hear his mage’s heart beat proud and true. Steven didn’t know what his face might have shown; Anthony covered his hand with his own and whispered lowly. “For you, my knight.”

Steven surged forward, only remembering at the last second the company they were in, but Merlin merely scoffed. “If you think anyone is paying mind to you two with Lancelot and the queen acting with all the subtlety of a painted whore, you are mistaken.”

Tony leaned the rest of the way with a grin, kissing him so hard Steven tasted blood through the sweet taste of relief. Anthony was alive, and would remain so. The day was victorious. They were heroes all. Outside there was a sudden call for the whisky casks to be broken open. The celebrations would begin soon.

“Oh!” Anthony exclaimed when a cask was brought in for them on orders from the king himself. “A toast!”

Somewhere Natasha snorted. “To Merlin’s superior magic, I hope.”

“To King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,” Barnes added, prompting a cheer from Rhodes.

“To fallen enemies and Mordred’s defeat,” Clinton proposed.

“To Guinevere, Lancelot, and painted whores,” Tony murmured into Steven’s mouth. “And Jarvis.”

“Here, here,” Steve said, and kissed him.

[aslightstep]

You’ve Got the Love

Song here

“And you’re gonna be okay?” Rhodey asked for the millionth time.

“You mean you’re not tired of babysitting me?” Tony said into the phone, his voice straddling the line between teasing and razor-sharp.

“If anyone’s doing the babysitting here, it’s you,” Rhodey responded, and they both fell quiet. Tony pictured Rhodey on the other end of the line, sequestered off in some quiet corner of his mother’s house while his relatives laughed and danced in the other room. Sometimes he couldn’t bear to watch. Sometimes when they were together Tony would do the most mundane thing, like stretch up for a coffee mug on a high shelf or lean down to grab something off the floor, and when he turned back to his friend Rhodey was turning away, his hand over his mouth.

Tony, sitting in the quiet of his car as it idled in front of the empty Avengers compound, felt like he could finally understand that feeling, however superficially. New York had been on fire tonight, but he watched the people celebrate the incoming new year like a fish in a bowl. He had left the company party early, unable to stand it. Their happiness. Their easy companionship.

“Any New Years Resolutions, boss?” he asked, turning the car off. One thing at a time.

Rhodey, after a long moment, snorted derisively. “You know if either one of us make any we’ll never keep ‘em.”

“How about we keep it short term, then? Once we hang up, you put on your dancing legs and have fun with the family.”

“Yeah, okay. Only if you get out of the damn car and go inside. Go hug the bots or something, tell FRIDAY you love her.”

Tony swallowed hard. “Square deal, Rhodey-pie. Starting now?”

“See you next week, Tones.”

The call disconnected and he took the phone away from his ear. The lockscreen picture showing Iron Man, War Machine, and the Black Panther’s helmets stacked precariously on top of one another made him smile briefly, but it fell away with a sharp pang in his gut as he remembered the old version: Cap’s cowl, Thor’s winged helmet, and Iron Man’s faceplate, side by side.

That was a different phone. A different suit, a different team. 

A different year.

“Happy New Year, Stark. You made it,” he muttered bitterly to himself, then got out of the car.

The compound was dark, only a few lights on, but FRIDAY had raised the temperature at some point. He crossed through the lobby to the interior barracks, his plan of attack well-established by now: he would head straight to his room. He would not pass go, or Steve’s room, or Nat’s. He would not collect 200 hundred dollars, or make sure the kitchen was still stocked with all of Wanda and Vision’s crazy experimental crap or call a certain royal. He would go to his room. He would go to sleep. He would wake up and do it all over again.

That’s why the piece of paper on the door was particularly shocking. He stared at it for a long moment, confused by its mere existence until the familiar shape of his writing caught his eye, tangling alongside another’s, neater and more self-conscious.

It was the piece of paper he and T’Challa had passed between themselves the first time they met to discuss the Accords after the fight. The bureaucrats had shouted over each other and Tony had been nursing a headache since Siberia, so he wrote a note to T’Challa and slid it to him like they were in grade school.

‘You think they’ll even notice if we blow this popsicle stand?’

T’Challa had frowned at the note, then Tony, who had just gestured around the room with a succinct eyebrow lift. T’Challa huffed, lips quirking, and had actually written back. ‘In a fight this would be the time to launch our surprise offensive.’

‘Only if we weren’t fighting each other while we were at it. Tell me all your secrets, kitty cat.’

The paper was then filled with their hopes for the revised Accords. Now, a new note was written, in different pen.

‘The first time I truly met Tony Stark. To you, Tony.’

“Uh, FRIDAY?” Tony asked, pulled the paper down and running his fingers over the words.

“If you will proceed further into the compound, boss,” FRIDAY replied helpfully to his unanswered question.

“Is he in there? I mean of course he is, but where?” Tony asked, pulling open the door. In response, FRIDAY turned on one of the lights, revealing something on the wall.

“It’s still ten minutes to midnight, Cinderella,” she joked. “Why don’t you enjoy the ball?”

“You realize Cinderella has to run away from the prince afterwards, right?”

“Since when have you ever followed a script?”

Never, except in this case in might be a good idea. Tony hadn’t seen or heard from T’Challa in a month, and given the way they’d parted, it had made him incredibly nervous.

He’d kissed him. And T’Challa was gone the next day. 

Tony didn’t get to keep good things, he should have learned by now. It was pointless to keep trying. And yet, for T’Challa...for the chance that the kindness and humor and compassion he’d seen could even belong just a little to Tony, he’d do anything. He’d try again.

The second surprise was a picture that had grown somewhat famous over the past few months: T’Challa and Tony shaking hands amidst a sea of reporters and politicians, smiles on both their face as they finalized the first amended version of the Accords. ‘To legacy. To King T’Chaka of Wakanda.’

Three through five were pictures of the New Avengers, such as they were, in various states of exhaustion after battles. There was one that had been taken the moment after the publicity photos were finished, where Peter, T’Challa, Tony, and Vision had all sort of slumped into one huge puddle. It ended up being the front page photo instead. ‘To the battles we have won, and to those we have not fought yet,’ the note for this one read.

Next was Iron Man and Black Panther, feet entangled as they relaxed in a spider-web hammock Peter had strung up for them while they waited for an on-site debrief. ‘To the moments in between.’

Five was Rhodey’s first day back, in the truly massive War Machine they had designed together to accommodate his injury. The team had fought together better than ever that day. ‘To the Avengers,’ T’Challa wrote, and when Tony put the pictures in his coat he was surprised at how hard he was breathing, his face flushed as he was holding something back with great effort.

Six was a video message from Peter, who was at some science boot camp Tony had enrolled him in as a Christmas present. “Tony!” He said excitedly. His eyes were manic in the familiar I-have-been-in-a-lab-for-39-hours kind of way. “This is so great, I can’t believe this! I know I already thanked you, but seriously, thank you thank you thank you. I wish you were here, though; the instructors won’t let us blow anything up. I told them that Tony Stark said that explosions were the mark of true science, but for some reason they didn’t believe me. Anyway...Happy New Years, Mr. Stark. See you soon!”

Seven was a message from Vision, who had been asked to do some repair work on the International Space Station. “The men and women up here are fascinating, but I find it is the stars that are truly keeping me company. I hope you are not alone on this night, but if you are, I suggest a bit of star-gazing. Orion is supposed to be particularly bright, tonight.”

‘To good friends, old and new.’

Eight was a blanket of newspaper clippings and articles detailing his first few years as Iron Man. ‘2008 was the year that you became Iron Man. You changed the world, and despite what you may think sometimes, I believe it was for the better. To Iron Man.’

And below that:

‘To Ho Yinsen. May he be proud of what we’ve done.’

Tony closed his eyes, hoping the same thing. He remembered when he blurted out “Yinsen would have liked you,” to T’Challa one day while they were working in the shop together, T’Challa waxing poetic with stars in his eyes about bringing Wakanda closer together without cutting them off from the outside world. Tony had admired him for that. T’Challa had refused to let himself be warped by his grief or anger.

He’d never told anybody, but Yinsen was barometer by which he rated everyone he met. He knew he loved someone when he could look at them and think how much Yinsen would have liked to meet them. Sometimes that love had not be rewarded, but Tony kept to it still. And T’Challa...knowing him had so far been reward enough.

Nine through eleven were: a playbill for Cats, the first play Tony had dragged T’Challa to; the beaten up pack of playing cards they had once spent an entire night playing with one night in Berlin; and schematics they had traded back and forth, Tony’s notes both precised and filled with various machine-related innuendos that T’Challa responded to with delightfully dry sarcasm.

‘To partnerships, and belonging.’

Twelve made his heart plummet and then soar to catch somewhere in his throat. It was a tiny little picture, Iron Man sailing in the skies, but it was the familiar art style that hit him hardest.

‘Steve has told me that you two first met in 2012, in the middle of saving the world. He wanted you to have this, and I have promised him you wouldn’t destroy it. A king cannot break his promise, Tony. Be kind. To forgiveness, and to being forgiven.’

Thirteen was a status update on Barnes’ progress with BARF. ‘To kindness and intelligence, the depths of which I have never seen.’ Tony snorted. Like that didn’t come from T’Challa’s pushing, his insistence that Tony was a good man. Tony was really only ever as good as the man at his back. He wanted to keep being this good, though. He wanted the feeling he got when he looked at the positive prognosis on Barnes. He wanted the hope T’Challa gave him. 

He just wanted T’Challa, period.

And this? Maybe this meant he was wanted back. Even after a month of radio silence, maybe he could still hope.

Fourteen was a collection of cards from children all over the world that had been sent to Black Panther. The ones spread over the counter top all featured Iron Man, helping the Panther save the day, little kids and teens encouraging them to keep fighting. ‘Apparently, we have a good ‘aesthetic.’ We do look good together, I’ve always thought so. To heroism, however small, and the ripples it makes throughout the world.’

Tony stole a few of the cards, tucking them in with the pictures and Steve’s painting, and followed the lights, rounding the corner into the living room. T’Challa looked up from the last few candles he was lighting and smiled as a song began to play.

Fifteen. ‘La Vie En Rose.’ Tony felt his mouth work from grin to grimace and back again. “So my hope that you had dismissed that whole thing as a fever dream was kinda useless, huh?”

T’Challa’s smile faltered. “Tony-”

“I mean, Edith Piaf wailing away, us standing on the Eiffel Tower, and I kiss you? It’s a veritable storm of cliches. I would’ve marked it down to a dream myself.” His first instinct was always self-defense.

“Tony,” T’Challa said again, quietly, more firmly, stepping close. “I am deeply sorry. I did not mean to leave you that way. But our schedules are so hectic, and I couldn’t say what I wanted to say over the phone.”

“’Not interested’ is pretty easy to say, Pantherosity,” Tony mumbled to the ground, wanting so badly to lean into the embrace but not quite capable of letting himself. Letting himself have this. “Five syllables. Four, if you decided to mumble. Which, you don’t.” He was rambling. He was nervous.

T’Challa’s laugh rumbled in his chest. “Do you really think I would have done all this if I wasn’t interested?”

Tony finally gathered the courage to look up at him, giving in to his worse instincts, being selfish. “Okay. So tell me you love me, then.”

“I love you,” T’Challa said easily, as simple as breathing, and Tony felt his jaw drop. 

“You - you do?”

“I do. I should have called, I know, but I - I knew you might get the wrong idea, if you couldn’t see it -me- for yourself. The way I look at you. Ev-everyone has said I’m terribly obvious, but it can’t be helped. I want to be obvious. I want you to know how much I care for you. And I wanted to surprise you.”

“Consider me surprised,” Tony said dazedly. T’Challa smiled at him, dipping the pad of his thumb into the hollows of Tony’s face, as if memorizing him.

With his other hand, he reached to his neck and pulled out his necklace. There was another one now, tangled up in it, smaller and on a more delicate chain. A single vibranium claw hung from it like the world’s deadliest teardrop.

“I was also making this,” T’Challa whispered, lifting it over his head and placing it over Tony, fidgeting so it laid just so while Tony stared. Sixteen. “Be mine,” the king whispered, tugging Tony closer. 

“Turnabout fair play here?” Tony asked before their lips could touch, and T’Challa grinned. 

“I have been yours since that kiss, Tony. All you must do now is claim me.”

“10,” FRIDAY began. “9, 8. 7-”

“I can do that,” Tony said, to himself or to T’Challa or to both of them. “I can have this.” He’d lost so much, they both had, but T’Challa pressed impossibly closer he felt the pictures and paintings and letter in his jacket crunch in closer to his heart. Yeah, he’d nearly lost it all. But he’d gained more than he could have ever hoped for, too. 

“3, 2, 1! It is now 2017, gentlemen.”

Their lips touched, and fireworks exploded. Seventeen.

Happy New Year, Stark. You made it.

“Oh!” Tony said, pulling away, pleased at mournful little noise T’Challa made. “I love you, too.” T’Challa’s eyes lit up and Tony found himself laughing, pulling him back in. “Now we may proceed.”

To love, and trust, and your skin on mine. To us.

[aslightstep]

Hi, I just saw that you are taking writing prompts. I wonder if you could do number 9. with Tony/T'Challa (preferably post CW)? That would be amazing, thank you.

Oh lights go down in the moment we’re lost and found/I just wanna be by your side/If these wings could fly

Song is:

Wings

Tony took his hand, leading him away from the others. They watched the two pass, some stepping aside when needed, but T’Challa kept his eyes on Tony. “Play a game with me?” Tony asked, and T’Challa replied: “What kind?”

“Stress test for the brain, kitty cat. Can’t let a mind like that go to waste. We’ll call it ‘Remember When?’”

They emerged from the war room that had survived the helicarrier’s crash out into the blood-red evening sky. It was quiet tonight; T’Challa was no longer use to it and he treasured it now. He could hear every breath moving in and out of Tony’s body so clearly. He counted them, every one, held them close and Tony closer as they began the long walk. “Alright,” he agreed after a long moment when Tony seemed to slip a bit on the exposed struts, overbalanced by his burden. “I’ll play.”

Tony grinned, and they both ignored the wobble to it. “That’s my guy. Alright. Remember when….we first met?”

“1997. You were twenty-seven and I was twelve. Shuri and I had traveled with our parents to Germany. You were giving a conference on robotics. I snuck out of my hotel room to see you.” Because Tony Stark had been brilliant, even back then, and T’Challa had been fascinated. “You were half-drunk and still managed to answer every question.” He had been impressed. And mildly disgusted. Tony Stark had glowed so bright.

“He is a candle burning at both ends,” T’Challa had relayed miserably to his father when he and his sister were inevitably tracked down and dragged back to the Embassy. T’Chaka had somehow viewed that lesson enough, and they never spoke of it again.

“That’s the first time you saw me, Lion-O, not when we first met,” Tony admonished him in the present. “Now I’m officially worried. Do I need to send you back to Van Dyne to get your head scanned?”

“I am not leaving you,” T’Challa said firmly, and Tony’s teasing smirk slid away. T’Challa sighed. “2016, Germany. The Accords. Leipzig, with the others. You were still in the red and gold then.” Iron Man had fought brighter and more brilliantly then any one else that day, and when he looked back on those interminable gray days after his father died what he remembered was flashes of red and gold against a too-blue sky.

“Aw. Do I hear nostalgia in your voice?” Tony glanced down at his body, covered up by the sleek, black stealth suit that was Mark 76. Born just two days ago, from blood, smoke, and tears - and a part of T’Challa’s heart. “Can’t blame you. I miss it, too. Your turn, T.”

T’Challa pursed his lips, thinking. A smile - hadn’t he thought just last night that he would never smile again? - curled his lips. “Remember when you first visited Wakanda?”

“Oh, God,” Tony groaned. “On that half-baked mission to bring back Steve and his Merry Men? I was so surprised that you just let me touch down-”

“You didn’t speak the language,” T’Challa remembered with a grin.

“And your delightful countrymen led me on a chase for three days. I just wanted to talk to you but nope! Go wander in the jungle for three days, Stark, maybe the king will deign to rescue you from the panthers.”

“You didn’t need rescuing,” he replied with a chuckle. He began to like this game. It was so Tony. A smile to the last. “Perhaps a lesson.”

“On my overbearing ego. Believe it or not, loverboy, you were not the first one to try to drill that into my head.”

“Patience, Tony. The lesson was patience.”

“Oh?” Tony asked, with a smile that turned salacious. “Well, you figured out better ways to teach me that, didn’t you?”

They came to the end of the broken metal and made the jump down the street below, Tony using his thrusters so the landing would jumble his precious cargo. The streets were littered with craters and parts, machine and alien and human alike. Scott Lang and Wanda Maximoff were down here still, somewhere.

“Remember when we first got to talk? No bullshit, just you and me?” Tony asked, and T’Challa tilted his head, searching out his lover’s face for a clue to this specific memory. They had had many conversations in those early months, and every one carved a new special place for itself in T’Challa’s mind. Tony was grimacing a little, and something clicked.

“You mean the first time we fought?” he asked, near disbelieving. “Only you, Tony…” But it was the first time he had seen Tony Stark drop his masks, his ‘overbearing ego’, and let T’Challa see the vulnerable man underneath.

He had just been so tired of fixing the Accords, tired of running up against Tony as a roadblock when for all intents and purposes they were supposed to working together. Every time mention of Steve’s team came up, Tony would turn away.

“Are you truly so obsessed with your own image, so prideful that you can no longer see what is the greater good?” he had finally snapped after cornering Tony alone in a conference room in Austria.

“I’m fighting for the greater good right here and now, same as you, Panther King, so you can drop the high and mighty act,” Tony had snarled.

“No. You are fighting for yourself.” And Tony had physically jerked back out of his grip. “You know we need the Captain and the others, yet you continued to block their return-”

“No, I’m simply not aiding it! They want to come back then they can damn well come back and speak for themselves because I am done doing the dirty jobs for them.”

“We need them!” T’Challa had insisted, and something in Tony’s eyes had broken. He did not realize how dark the other man’s eyes were until that moment, when cracks of light began to appear as he let loose.

He screamed at T’Challa, about betrayal, and trust, and teamwork. About family, and how the Avengers were not one. That Tony could not forgive them, could not let it be okay, because that would be mean that they got away with it, were even rewarded. That Tony wanted nothing more than to forgive, anyway.

“You told me the choice to end my suffering had always been mine,” Tony whispered, coming to stop in front of Stark Tower, staring up at the ruined remains of the physical embodiment of his legacy. “I needed to hear that. Never thanked you for it.”

“You are welcome,” T’Challa said, dragging Tony’s gauntlet up to press a kiss to it. He managed a smile. “Remember when we kissed for the first time?”

Tony rolled his eyes, playful. His hand trembled in T’Challa’s. “How could I forget? Never had a guy stage a private dinner and a moonlit stroll just for one kiss.”

“You deserved it,” T’Challa said, remember how Tony’s hair had gone oddly silver in the moonlight, how he’d given in to the urge to run his fingers through it. “You were worth it. Always.” He delivered the last word as a whisper to Tony’s palm before dropping it as they both turned towards the Tower. The first few floors were ruined, blocking access, but T’Challa wanted - needed - to take his time.

Tony turned to him with a grin that faded quickly from his eyes. “Remember when I took you flying?”

T’Challa stepped close in response, one foot on Tony’s boot as the suit boosted them up. That first time had been significantly more exciting than this, Tony taking them high above the jungles, twisting and twirling and even dropping T’Challa every once and awhile before catching him. They had kissed at 2000 feet of open air and he had never felt more alive.

Now, Tony touched down at the 18th floor and led T’Challa inside towards the elevator. “Tony, there’s no power-” T’Challa protested, but Tony just smiled, holding one finger to his lips.

“Elevator makes its own electricity,” he confessed as they slid into the box. Indeed, the buttons lit up when Tony’s pressed one and they began their ascent. “Me and…me and Pepper. We. We were gonna market it. Stark’s next billion. Before.”

Before. When the sky was still blue and Japan still existed. When the only alien was Thor and the only thing that hung in the sky was the moon. 

When he and Tony had had the rest of their lives.

“Remember when we first made love?” T’Challa whispered. Tony doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. It had been slick and sweet and as unhurried as it had been unanticipated. A stolen evening with Tony in his palace, shut away from the world. He would give anything-

“Don’t,” Tony said, suddenly there against his lips, before he closed the distance. They kissed artlessly, mindful of the package cradled under one of Tony’s arms. “Remember when,” Tony breathed, kissing him between words. “When I told you I love you?”

“You made everything such a competition,” T’Challa said, pressing closer. Package be damned. They could ruin it now, and then Tony could never use it. “So proud of saying it first. Like I didn’t already know. Like I didn’t already love you. Like I hadn’t always.”

“Sweet talker,” Tony tried to tease, but it came out on a sob.

The elevator beeped. Roof access. The doors slid open. Tony pulled away, eyes remaining closed for a very long moment, before they opened and he stepped back, once more taking T’Challa’s hand, leading them out.

The sky was much lighter here. The atmospheric weapons Thanos’ forces had deployed had destroyed it months ago, not long after the first arrival. Still, it was strangely beautiful. 

“You’re here,” Bruce Banner breathed, coming towards them, eyes glued to Tony. “Tony…”

“Please don’t.”

Banner’s face fell. “I know. I - thank you.” They always said that, in the end. Others had raged and screamed at Tony, together and individually, but in the end, they always thanked him.

He would not send Rhodey. He would not risk Vision. And Thor would never make it to Thanos’ battle station undetected. 

It had to be Tony.

“Dimensional Trap, Tab A, as requested,” Tony said, handing the key piece of machinery he had carved from a Cosmic Cube and hidden these long months from Thanos’ ever expanding reach. “Never did come up with a snazzier name.”

“I’ll get it ready. You two-” Bruce looked between them, then down at their hands. “Take your time.” He walked away, towards where the rest of the parts, the more easily replaced ones, waited for assembly under Erik Selvig’s careful watch.

They turned to each other. “Remember when,” Tony began, but didn’t continue. He raised a hand, manipulating the suit until the gauntlet fell away, and traced T’Challa’s face carefully, as if memorizing it. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he answered, voice breaking on every syllable. He wanted to beg, and scream, and cry. And he had. Every day since Tony revealed his plan one week ago to attach a dimensional drive to Thanos’ main ship, half phasing everything within a ten mile radius into another dimension until the sheer pull of reality tore it apart. A device that had to be placed and activated manually. 

This was not the time for that. This was the time to hold his lover close, absorb the trembling in his bones, and kiss his tears away. Later, there would be time for T’Challa’s grief. Now, they mourned Tony’s lost future.

“Remember when you saved the world?” T’Challa asked softly.

“I remember when we did,” Tony answered, and they smiled at each other.

“Tony,” Bruce called after what seemed like only a few seconds. He held up the fully assembled drive, his face lined with grief. “It’s time.” 

Tony nodded, and his helmet was sliding around his face. There was a long pause where T’Challa knew he was informing the Avengers down below of his departure, hearing their last well wishes and goodbyes, and then his hand slid out of T’Challa’s, metal wrapping around the digits, and walked towards Bruce.

Iron Man took the device in his hands. “I’m very scared,” he confessed, his voice sounding almost conversational through the comm line.

“I’m right here with you,” T’Challa promised, and the faceplate turned to him. “I won’t leave you.”

There was a pause, then a nod, then Iron Man blasted into the sky.

He didn’t know how long he had watched, long after Iron Man had disappeared from view, when Tony’s voice came over the line again. “Remember when we got married?”

“Tony, we never-” T’Challa began, before the words caught up to him. Tony’s game. A whimper escaped him as he slowly collapsed to the ground with his head in his hands. “Yes,” he whispered. “I remember.” 

“How did it go again?” Tony asked, a very thin thread of fear in his voice. “I’m getting old you know. Memory’s not what it used to be.”

“We…we had two. We had to. You became my - my consort,” T’Challa gasped. “We had a coronation. Then a smaller, private one in New York. Friends and family. We all came together.”

“Rhodey cried during his best man speech.”

“Peter ruined the cake. We didn’t mind. Vision had made it; we didn’t have the heart to tell him-”

“-how terrible it was,” Tony finished.

The sky above was a red haze through his tears. “Remember when we decided to start a family?”

“I-” Tony sucks in a harsh, surprised breath. “I still can’t believe they let us adopt.”

“We named her Maria.”

“And him T’Chaka. We - I was so scared I was gonna mess up, be a horrible dad, but we made out alright, didn’t we?”

T’Challa nodded, smiling around the cry in his throat. “We did. We did, Tony. We were happy. Content.”

“We grew up,” Tony said, words spilling out of him fast and messy now. “Got old. Raised the kids, the grandkids. We trained - trained new Avengers. Fuck. Fuck. I passed the suit on. You passed the crown. We. We. Jesus Christ - we retired. We were happy. Do you remember that, T’Challa? So happy. I never knew - remember? Remember when-”

The line cut out. Above them, a shock of black erupted in the red for several long seconds before disappearing. 

T’Challa jerked back in shock, then fell forward with a scream. “Tony?” he asked the line when his breath returned. There was no reply. “I remember, Tony,” he answered dead air. “I remember it all.”  

[aslightstep]

19 - Winteriron

I’m not their hero/But that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t brave

This is honestly a little bit away from the prompt.

Song is:

I’m Not Your Hero

“Take a trip with me,” Tony says, collapsing on top of him, grabbing the remote out of his hand before Bucky can stop him and turning off the TV, cutting Megyn Kelly off mid-sentence on another one of the seemingly endless roundtable discussion on the Winter Soldier’s place on the Avengers roster.

At this point Bucky is pretty sure he can do an accurate impression of both sides of the debate. Bucky the Victim vs Bucky the Assassin. Rarely, they get creative and add in the ever popular (and Bucky’s personal favorite) Bucky the poor unstable woobie, those brave Avengers for taking him in, I hear Tony Stark’s dating him, how precious, now lets keep him away from the weapons but no need to lock him up, of course!

(It’s rarely used because its hard to sum the position up in a snazzy caption, you see. Tony calls it the ‘Bucky the Dog’ argument. ‘You’re like a rescue,’ he’d explained. ‘Apparently we need to feed you, house you, but not let you out because you’ve been raised badly and don’t know any better, and might go gnawing off some poor kid’s arm for looking at you the wrong way.’

Tony hated Bucky the Dog.)

“Ignore the crazies,” Tony wheedles. “Pay attention to me.” He makes grabby hands that Bucky grabs up and uses to drag his boyfriend closer. “So take a trip with me?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to take a trip?” Tony says, affecting an innocent expression. “Because the Tower has access to too many 24 hour news channels? For the opportunity of new and exciting places to have sex? Bucky! Stop with the patient eyebrows.” Bucky mouths ‘patient eyebrows’ to himself, shaking with laughter. “It’s a surprise.”

“Oh, God,” Bucky groans. The last ‘surprise’ of Tony’s was a cake filled with strippers. For Natasha.

Tony seems to read his mind and points an accusing finger at him. “You cannot deny that was amazing and she loved it.”

Natasha had loved the strippers. She knew at least eight new ways to bend now.

“Alright,” Bucky agrees, and accepts his boyfriend’s gleeful, slightly sloppy kisses with a smile.

“It’s not an argument of what James Barnes deserves, that’s a complete strawman. It’s a question of what he can handle. The man has had an incredibly difficult life, one that’s produced well documented instances of PTSD and dissociative attacks. This is not a man equipped to handle the kind of stress the Avengers are put under every day-”

“He was a monster, plain and simple. And maybe we can believe Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers here, maybe the monster has been taken out, but what kind of scars did that leave-”

“I mean, in all honesty, how can he ever be trusted? How will we ever know?”

“Hey.” A foot kicks at his own, knocking Bucky out of his miserable recollections.“I know that face. This plane is a That-Face Free Zone.”

He kicks back at Tony. “It’s nothing, Punk,” he says, mustering up some semblance of a smile. It just makes Tony grimace, then crawl over so he can sit beside him.

“How ‘bout just no faces at all?” he asks as he settles. “For a former super spy you have horrible facial control.” Bucky stiffens up beside him and Tony sighs, taking his hand. “James.”

James. That’s all its ever taken from Tony. His name, said in that fond, slightly impatient tone. “James,” Tony had said, finding James in the aftermath of a panic attack that had ended in the destruction of his living room. “James,” he had said when he built a new arm and the first thing Bucky did with it was play fetch with the bots. “James,” he had said when Bucky had finally surrendered and kissed him. “What took you so long?”

Now Tony sits with him, patient, staring out the window so James feels distinctly unenclosed. He hadn’t been like this at the start of their relationship and its nice, sometimes, to think that Bucky has taught him some things, too.

“They’re not wrong,” he finally says, and Tony takes that as his cue to finally turn and look. “The news. I’m a complete mess three days out of five. I remember all of it, everything I did, so it’s all still there in my head. I can’t be trusted.”

“I trust you,” Tony responds immediately. “Am I an idiot?”

“No.”

“No, James, I am very smart.” Bucky smiles painfully and Tony clenches his hand. “Look, you being an Avenger? That’s always your choice. I’m sorry if we’ve pressured you-”

“You haven’t-”

“Oh, we totally have. Especially Steve. But you’ll need to discuss that with him. As for the rest - those vultures have only ever seen skin-deep, trust me on this. If I listened to them, let them dictate my life, I’d’ve ended up face down in a ditch bleeding Patron by the time I was twenty five.”

Bucky pulls his hand away so he can wrap his arm around Tony and hold him close. “You hate tequila,” he mutters, and Tony laughs.

“See? They don’t know anything. All they saw of me was a drunken overgrown fratboy and all they see of you is the Winter Soldier. Thing is, yeah, they’re not wrong every once in awhile, but they never have all the story. The Winter Soldier is not everything you are. You’re Buck, you’re James, you’re Sergeant Barnes.

“And by the way, you’re only a mess two out of five days. At most. The other three?” Tony smiles at him. “You are the best, the bravest man I have ever known.”

“Jeez, Tony,” Bucky breathes, because he never knows what to do with these pep talks. He wants to believe him, but he is constantly surrounded by heroes nowadays, and he is always reminded of his bloody past and how painfully he falls short, how impossible it seems to ever come back from that, even when he sleeps every night next to a man who did just that. He drops a kiss on Tony’s head and leans back into the chair. “So where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise, Buck. A surprise. Your dementia is showing again, old man.”

“I’ll show you old-” Bucky tips his boyfriend over in the seat.

“Oh God, I’m so glad you believe in stubble-”

“Believe? Facial hair’s not like Santa Claus, doll-”

“James.”

They touch down in Washington, DC. Tony takes them to a hotel first to freshen up, which for some reason means busting out the baseball caps and shades for both of them. Then they hope in a car that drops them off at the Mall. Tony leads them to the National Museum of American History and Bucky stops dead.

“The Smithsonian? Tony, I’ve been here before…”

“Yes. When you had just broken your brainwashing. Somehow I’m thinking you weren’t exactly absorbing all that you could.” Tony looks at the ground, the space where Bucky has taken a step backwards, and grabs his hand. “I just wanted you to see something, but we can leave.”

Bucky stares up at the building. The last time he’d been here was a blur of memories without context and a constantly building terror at what had happened to him. He had been scared. But Tony is with him now. “No, I’m fine. Show me.”

The Captain America is as busy as ever, and this time Bucky notices how many of the exhibits bear a tiny inscription under the description: Donated by Howard Stark and the Stark family.

Tony smirks when he notices where Bucky’s gaze is lingering. “Yeah, let me tell you there is nothing quite like meeting the men your dad quite literally collected.” Bucky waits for a moment to see if his smirk goes sharp and sad, but Tony just wanders on. He’d let go of his anger about Howard around the same time he’d let go of his anger towards Bucky.

They stop in front of the glass wall bearing his name, date of death (which bears a new addendum in tiny print of his miraculous recovery in 2016), height, serial number, rank, and a summary of his life. 

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Tony murmurs.

“Five hundred words or less,” Bucky says. He doesn’t mean to sound as bitter as he does, but Tony just smiles sympathetically at him and takes his hand, leading further.

They pass wall after wall of Steve Rogers, Captain America, Brooklyn’s Favorite Son, and American Legend. Bucky can see where the facts have gotten muddled: for example, he knows for a fact that the assault on the HYDRA base on the border of Luxembourg was planned by Dugan, not Steve, and was a smashing success, but facts rarely stand up to myth. “Bet Steve hates that.”

“He does. We’ve been petitioning to make them get their asses in gear and change that for years,” Tony groans lowly. 

Tony tugs him further, further into the exhibit, a part Bucky never visited before, too skittish about lingering last time. There is a wall with a long line of booths cordoned off by black curtains. The Howling Commandos: From the Other Side, a banner reads overhead, and Tony leads Bucky into one. They squeeze onto a seat, Tony puts his arm around Bucky, and then he presses play.

An old man appears on screen, looking to the side as if listening to someone. He nods, and chuckles. “My name is Peter Montcourt,” he says, his French accent extraordinarily thick. “I was nine years old when the Howling Commandos liberated the town of Bayeux from Axis control. My hometown.”

“I had lost a brother, a father, already. My town was overrun with Nazis, Italians. People disappeared during the night, never heard from again. Everyday we heard - it might be you. You might be next.

“Then one night we heard gunfire and explosions and I remember thinking that this was it, they had grown tired of watching us, now they were killing us all. A soldier burst into my house with a gun, and I stood over my mother, but the shot never came. He was gunned down.

“I never met Captain America. Steve Rogers did not liberate Bayeux. He was leading another push. Bayeux was liberated by-”

“It was me,” Bucky breathes, tears in his eyes as he remembers, and Tony’s hand smooths down his arm.

“Sergeant James Barnes. The same James Barnes who gunned down the man who wanted to hurt us. He came into our house after that, he told us who he was and that he was a sniper, and asked us kindly if he could take a position in my room upstairs, because it had good sightlines. We of course agreed. He told us to hide, but I stayed and watched him. He remained calm, and efficient. He never panicked. He was very brave.

The man grows a little teary-eyed. “People do not talk about Bayeux much, because the very same day Captain Steve Rogers freed a POW camp near Lyon. But I do not forget. None of us in this town do. We owe Sergeant Barnes and his men our lives. I was very sorry when he died. He was a good man.”

The video freezes and Bucky lurches forward, pressing his hand against Montcourt’s face. “He grew up, James,” Tony whispers. “Had a family. All because you saved him.”

“I’m not him,” Bucky says hoarsely, tears nearly blinding him. “I’m not the sergeant.”

“Mm. But he is a part of you.” Tony intertwines their fingers. “I just…I wanted you to see, know, I guess, that you are…more than the Winter Soldier. More than whatever they call you. That there’s as much greatness in you as darkness. You were a good person, Buck and…we can’t all be war heroes. Sometimes we’re just victims. It doesn’t diminish you or what you did or what you can do. I’m - shit, I’m sorry, I’m so terrible at this. I just thought you should see.”

Bucky is quiet for a very long time, staring at Montcourt. He remembers that little boy and his mother. He had remained in their home for three days, defending it and taking out enemy soldiers. The woman had brought him food that he never ate. The boy kept him awake with conversation. They had been the brave ones.

He withdraws his hand and places it over Tony’s. “Thank you,” he tells him, and the other man smiles tentatively. “I - I get it.” He isn’t the Soldier or the Sergeant. He’s just Bucky now, with shades of all of them thrown in, but maybe…maybe that isn’t so bad. At the very least, he remembers how to be strong and good. And if he needs a reminder, he has Tony and Steve and the Avengers.

They don’t get to decide what he is or isn’t. Only Bucky does that. And he doesn’t have to be a hero. He can just be…an Avenger.

“Are there more?” he asks, gesturing towards the screen. Tony’s smile goes full-blown and Bucky can’t help it, leaning forward to kiss him soundly. “I love you.”

“You, too,” Tony replies softly, pulling away. The moment goes soft and sweet for a moment, but that was never Tony’s particular style and sure enough he pulls away, his grin going positively wicked. “Ninette three booths down tells a charming story involving you, her, Dugan, my dad, two goats, and a modified washing machine. I would love to hear your version of it.”

Outside the booth an old man is waiting his turn with his wife. He steps aside for Bucky and Tony but freezes dead when he catches a good glimpse of Bucky’s face, looking back over his shoulder at the Barnes Memorial for a moment before turning back. Bucky freezes when the man raises his hand, but he merely salutes.

Bucky returns it, sloppily, then heads for Tony, who has been lowly calling his name: “James.”

[aslightstep]

Hmmm, what about 4 with Thor/Tony?

I’m laughing at clouds so dark up above/The sun’s in my heart and I’m ready for love!

Oh god I got weirdly literal with this. Song is:

Singin’ In the Rain

Besides Tony, Thor was the only Avenger who could fly.

Welllll, he wasn’t sure Thor flew so much as flung his hammer in a direction and held on. Then he sort of…hovered.

The point was, they were the eyes in the sky for their team. That sort of thing formed bonds, especially when Thor was actually an even bigger troll than Tony and liked to fly high in the air after battles and pretend he couldn’t hear Cap’s orders. “There is so much interference, Captain!” he called, and Tony smothered his snickers because he designed the damn comm units and specifically took cloud cover and massive amounts of electricity into mind. 

Cap sighed heavily and Thor turned to Tony with a grin. “Man of Iron, your suit is mighty indeed. But might is not everything.”

“I’m not sure what you’re implying there, but it sure isn’t about me, Mighty Thor.”

“Ha!” Thor boomed. “If your suit is as quick as your wit, I challenge you. A race! To the death!”

“No, Thor,” Cap commanded, managing that perfect mix of dead-inside and amused that Tony would give at least five thousand dollars to be able to replicate.

Thor frowned, silent, until Clint came to his rescue. “To the utter shame of the loser and eternal bragging rights to the winner?”

“I like it!” Thor announced, then pointed his hammer at Tony. “Do you accept my challenge, Man of Iron?”

“I’m pretty sure I can’t refuse,” Tony said wryly. It had been tough, trying to fit in with the team, even after their collective near-death bonding exercise that was the Chitauri attack, but this felt like what he would do with Rhodey. Like friendship. Maybe this team stuff wasn’t so bad.

Somehow, Tony lost, and the team razzed him for weeks. This team stuff was the worst.

Tony and Thor’s post-fight races got to be a regular occurrence, both trying to even the score as Tony would claim two wins, then Thor would have a hot streak. The city even called to recommend a designated ‘track’ situated between buildings that didn’t mind sudden fly-bys by missile-launching metal suits and large men wielding magic power tools. Fury complained once or twice, but it was good PR and, as Cap pointed out, Iron Man and Thor always got straight to work whenever the race was finished.

But sometimes, when it was late at night, and the quiet of the workshop got too loud, Tony would suit up to go flying. He used to go alone out in Malibu but now…now he had Thor.

“Hey,” he whispered the first time he woke Thor up for it. “Sorry about waking you up, and feel free to say no, but um. I can’t think. Or sleep. So. I’m gonna go flying. Do you want to come with?”

Thor had stared at him for a very long time, not even bleary-eyed even though Tony had heard him snoring, and then he nodded, retrieving Mjolnir. 

The first few times they didn’t even speak, just lazily drifted above and around the city. One night, though, Thor came for Tony instead of the other way around.

“I miss my home,” Thor confessed, and Tony twisted in the suit so it was facing him, face scrunching up in confusion.

“You go home all the time,” he said, and Thor shook his head.

“My brother is imprisoned, my mother heartbroken, and my father fading. I can never go home again.”

And Tony understood that. Going back their family mansion after his parents and Jarvis died, going into SI after Obie’s betrayal, going into the Malibu house with Pepper gone. They were just buildings now. It hurt, to realize Thor felt that pain, too. “Well, no matter what happens, big guy, you’ve always got a place with us.”

Thor nodded after a long pause, then smiled at Tony, and it was like the sun had dawned early. Tony damn near ran into a building. Thor laughed himself hoarse and they talked all through the night.

“Tony, I have seen kids at the zoo with more manners,” Natasha intoned dryly as the team watched Tony press himself against the windows.

“Um, do those kids own said zoo? No. These are my windows. Literally mine, I built them in the lab. Fucking Armortex, bulletproof my ass…” Tony muttered to himself, remembering his headfirst dive through the previous set. “Anyway, my manners, Romanov, are still in tact.”

“You’re leaving handprints,” Steve pointed out. “And you’re making me anxious.”

“You’re always anxious, you mother hen,” Tony said. “Besides, Thor’s coming in tonight.”

“We know,” the whole group said. Bruce continued with “You’ve only mentioned it a million times.”

“Eighty four, to be precise,” JARVIS added, and Tony groaned.

“Oh God, I hate you all.” Turning around, he saw all of them wearing a variation of a smirk. He pouted, feeling oddly defensive. “What? I like Thor.”

“We know,” they repeated as one, and Tony turned just so he could bang his head against the glass.

Thor indeed touched down thirty minutes later and they all gathered outside to greet him. Tony tried not to look too excited - the shit-eating grin Clint kept throwing him really helped keep that in check - but when Thor turned to him, Mjolnir swinging and an easy smile on his face to ask for a flight, Tony felt his face split into a wide, uncontrollable grin.

“Have him home before nine,” Steve commanded Thor with mock-severity. Thor gave a solemn bow in response. Tony rolled his eyes, heading over to the assembly line waiting for him.

“J, they don’t respect me,” he whined as the suit assembled.

“No, sir,” the AI said, sounding fond. “I think they do more than that.”

Thor wasn’t the same when he came back after Frigga and Loki’s deaths. He stayed indoors, for the most part, and kept to himself. Tony tried, but he just wasn’t very good at helping out. Every time he tried to talk to Thor he was met with silence. The god never looked up, never smiled. Tony knew about grief, knew he needed space but he thought…

It didn’t matter, he told himself as he kept to his lab. Clearly he was handling this wrong. Thor didn’t need a chatty engineer in his ear, not when he was going through so much.

“What are you doing?”

Tony very manfully did not scream but he also didn’t reprimand Butterfingers when he went rolling towards Clint, fire extinguisher in hand while he waited for his heartrate to go back to a normal level. When it did, he called the robot off from where it had cornered Clint against a workbench and a wall. “What’s up, Birdbrain?”

“You. Down here. Thor��s upstairs. He just lost his brother and mom, man. What are you doing?”

Tony grimaced. “I didn’t want to crowd him, Barton. I was kinda all over him.”

“Yeah? That was good for him, Tony. He was getting better. Now you’re never around and he’s just sad, all the time.” Tony looked down, doubtful and guilty, and Clint sighed. “You don’t have to talk, Tony. Knowing you, you’ve been babbling about absolutely nothing and half the reason you’re hiding down here is because you just remembered all the crazy shit you said. Just you being there will help him.”

“Why?” Tony asked, hating how whiny he came out. Clint looked at him like he was a moron and inexplicably he began to blush. He whirled away, ostensibly to put down his tools but mostly just to hide. “Okay. Okay. I’ll…I’ll go up in a few.”

He found Thor out on the terrace, staring up at the sky. Rainclouds had formed, although if they were natural or a manifestation of the thunder god’s grief, he wasn’t sure.

He came out suited up, and pulled Thor to his feet. “Come on, up,” he said. “We’re going flying. It’ll be good for you.”

The god followed him into the air, only hesitated a little. It was a good sign.

“I am so sorry,” Tony said when several minutes had passed. “I can’t say it enough. No one can.”

“No,” Thor agreed quietly. He had no comms so Tony was flying close to him. Close enough to touch.

Not letting himself think twice, Tony took Thor’s hand in his. “Follow me?” he asked, and Thor turned his head to look at him, even though he couldn’t see through the mask.

He dropped the hammer, letting himself hang in Tony’s grip. “Anywhere,” the god swore, and Tony swallowed hard before blasting upwards, through the air, the rain, through the clouds, until they came up on the other side, where the sun was filtering through. Below the world was gray, but up here it was bright, and quiet, and peaceful. They stayed there, hand in hand, for a very long time.

The tower was more quiet than he had ever heard it, the only sound the rain falling hard against the windows. There was glass everywhere, strewn across the floor with robot parts, even though it had been weeks by now.

What had he been thinking?

He’d wanted to protect everyone and he’d nearly killed them all with Ultron. No one had protested his leaving the Avengers and Thor-

Thor was gone. 

He sipped another glass of whiskey and quietly designed a cleaning bot in his mind, content to fall asleep there in the ruins like he had the past three nights when a knock came at the window.

He bolted upright, gauntlet forming around his hand, but when he saw who was there he froze.

Thor said something, frowning when he got no response. Well, yeah, buddy. No JARVIS, and FRIDAY wasn’t installed yet. Wearily, Tony walked to the window, pulled the latch, and heaved it open. “You’re back,” he said dully.

“You were not at the compound” was Thor’s response. He looked worried, his eyes halting at the circles under Tony’s eyes before roving down the rest of his frame.

“I told you.”

“Yes, but I thought-” Thor stumbled, looking frustrated with himself. “They miss you. I missed you.”

“Did you.”

Thor frowned, then raised his hand and ever so carefully placed it on one side of Tony’s neck. “I hurt you, I should not have. It was unkind of me, and you are-”

“How many licks did Ultron get in at you?” Tony interrupted, brushing Thor’s hand off, even though it had hurt. “We’re even.”

“Tony,” Thor said seriously, stepping closer. “Hear me. I am sorry.”

Tony wanted to protest, shake it off like he had Rhodey’s worry and Cap’s one thousand phone calls and texts and Bruce’s prominent absence. But this was Thor. He couldn’t do that. They didn’t do that. Instead he found himself curling forward into the god, head against his chest as strong arms wrapped around him.

“You’re forgiven, Point Break. One hundred percent,” he said into the chestplate. “’M sorry, too. I’m so sorry.”

Thor hushed him, running a hand through his hair before pulling back and lifting Tony’s head by the chin. “Fly with me?”

“The suit’s a mess. Haven’t built a new one.”

“I will not let you fall,” Thor promised.

They flew up through the clouds to the sun waiting above. Cautiously, Tony felt out for Thor’s hand, but the god grinned and tugged him in close. They hovered there, holding each other as sunlight filtered through the cirrus clouds above them. Tony felt lighter than he had in weeks.

“Wish we weren’t seven thousand feet in the air and I didn’t suffer from reduced lung capacity,” he grumbled, and he felt Thor’s chest rumble as he laughed.

“Pray tell, Man of Iron, why is that?”

“Don’t be coy,” Tony said snottily. “We are literally slow dancing on a cloud right now. You know how bad I wanna kiss you?” 

Thor grinned widely, bumping his forehead against the faceplate. “I have an idea. But wait the storm out up here with me, Tony. I wish to kiss you in the sun.”

“Sap,” Tony accused, laying his head back on Thor’s shoulder. He could wait a little longer.

[aslightstep]

Dogs Days Are Over

inktail? asked for Peggy 26, unfortunately things went screwy and I had to delete it. 

Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back/Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that

Peggy had always run the line between being absolutely certain of what she was doing and never quite believing that she could be the person who could do those things.

When she was little, she was supposed to want to be the princess, the damsel in the tower. Instead, she’d played at knighthood. She saved the damsel, be it her dog or her brother or her friends. She swung her mighty sword she had shaped from a branch and the lid of the trash bin served as a shield and she fought.

But a woman, a princess, did not fight. At least not then.

To the point: Peggy knew who she was. She didn’t know if who she was was right.

(Later, after the war, after her first big case, it was so breathtakingly simple. She could be both. The princess was the knight all along, and she saved herself.)

She muddled through for quite sometime. She met Fred Wells, she became a codebreaker. Her brother Michael was always telling her to ‘do more, be more, you’re so much more, Pegs’ but she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure. 

She was content, in that place of inbetween. (Later, that would serve her well. Peggy learned to love the brink, that delicious edge of decision, that place where the future was infinite and everything, almost as much as she loved to throw herself over it.) And wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t that more that most people got? So she wasn’t happy. She could learn. Peggy was highly adaptable. The bride playing princess, playing spy, playing soldier.

The offer to join the SSR lingered on the edges of her mind, and she was almost ashamed at how much she, who had so much, who should be happy here in the place she was meant to belong, thought about it. Michael encouraged her. Told her to stop being scared. That got to her. She never played scared.

Then Michael died. Men in dark suits invading her wedding day to rip her world to smithereens. Peggy had to rebuild her life, rebuild herself. And this time, she had to be sure.

She joined the SSR. She worked at Colonel Phillips side, she freed Erskine, and she had never felt so alive. It was like waking from a deep sleep; the princess, she laughed to herself, and this kiss of true love.

And then she met Steve Rogers. Steve, scrawny and small and so sure, never one to linger in the in between, never one to smile at her with the taunt at the corner of his mouth like all the rest.

Always genuine and brave and true. And she - and this was the most remarkable thing to her, the thing she never could explain - she never wanted to be him. She never wanted to play Captain America. She wanted to fight by his side.

She sat at that table with the Howling Commandos, at Steve’s right hand, or perhaps it was Steve at her left, Howard on her right, all of them looking and laughing at each other, job well done, at that round table in France. Knights one and all, and she belonged.

(Later, this was the moment she dreamt about when the way it ended it stopped hurting.)

She was happy. Through so much pain (Michael), through so much indecision, she was here at another brink, leaning over a great height, looking down below.

The Commandos clinked classes with her. She smiled at Steve and she threw herself over, certain that whatever was at the bottom, it was right where she belonged.

[aslightstep]

3 - Tony (MCU or 616, maybe superior Iron Man)

I don’t know what is happening to me/Or if I’ll die, ‘cause I just never sleep

I chose to go with 616, but not Superior. Set sometime in Hickmanvengers. TW for mentions of alcoholism.

Insomnia

Tony kept a bottle of vodka in his lab.

It used to be scotch, tucked away into the back corner like the horrible secret it was, left there at the corner of his mind. A test of will. Of commitment. Of sobriety.

After his relapse a short time ago, though, he changed it out. An alcoholic will drink anything, but they still have preferences. And vodka...well, it didn’t call to him the same way the bottle of Yamazaki did. The vodka weighed less on his mind than the old bottle did. Less than the new sobriety chip in his pocket.

Now, he pulled it out to set it on one of the tables and stare at it out of the corner of his eye. The Avengers were upstairs, hopefully all asleep. Steve might have been having one of his nightmares right at this moment. That made Tony want to laugh, and then to cry, so he did neither, and focused on the new schematics T’Challa had sent over for consultation.

Not that he needed it. None of them needed any help to destroy the world, but they happily played this game of pretend. Still, Tony dutifully made a note where improvements could be made, watching the pen shake in his hand.

He didn’t want to sleep. He resented his body demanding it of him. He had to work, had to do this, had to succeed at this one thing that he’d given up so much for.

Steve had looked so happy when he showed him Avengers World. That was Tony’s brand of pretend. T’Challa would share plans to make himself feel like his weren’t the only hands getting dirty. Strange studied how to give up his soul to assuage his guilt in summoning a planet-killing demon. Tony hid the worst thing behind an avalanche of good to fool people into thinking that the man himself was good.. He’d been doing it for years. 

He wished he wasn’t pretend. He wasn’t an absolute nightmare set adrift in the waking world. He wasn’t the worst thing.

“Incorporate,” he said sloppily. His entire body felt numb. He had been up for 79 hours. He didn’t think he’d ever sleep again.

“Starting,” the computer intoned, and began incorporating Tony’s improvements on T’Challa’s bombs. Because it always could be better. They was always a more efficient way to kill people.

Tony wheeled away to where he set the bottle. He wasn’t going to drink it. It wasn’t even the good kind of vodka, just some cheap off-brand type. He was just going to be this strong. Just this strong. That’s all he needed, and then he would go on.

He laid the bottle on the side, giggling a little maniacally as he thought of college years and kiss the bottle. “Shall we play a game?” he asked himself, then laughed again, contemplating. “If it lands anywhere other than me, I keep working. If it lands on me, I go to sleep. ‘Me’ shall henceforth be defined as here to here-” he indicated two spaces about six inches away from his body. “Got that?”

“Noted,” the computer said, even laying out holographic lines where Tony indicated.

Maybe he was drunk already, Tony thought, and spun the bottle anyway. 

Of course he couldn’t actually sleep. He could calculate friction and torque and momentum, however. The bottle faced the wall, and Tony felt irrationally angry.

“Incorporation complete,” the computer noted. Tony grabbed the bottle again.

If me, I work on Avengers World. If otherwise, I go back to the bomb.

He spun it with some level of carelessness. His tired eyes followed the bright red lid around and around, until it stopped, pointing west, away from him.

Tony’s eyes remained on the cap when he spoke. “Run simulation.”

He righted the bottle, running his hands along the curve of it, watching the liquid inside slosh around as he put it back in a starting position. Out of the corner of his eye, the simulation played. The bomb worked perfectly, an imaginary earth gone in seconds.

Another him. Another Avengers. 

Maybe it was a world where the worst bad guys were idiots with guns. Maybe Rumiko Fujikawa was alive. A world where Tony became Iron Man simply because he was a good person. A world where Steve got to live out his life after the war. A world where the Avengers had never fought, where they lived at the mansion training the next generation. A real Avengers World.

“If it lands on me,” he said hoarsely. “I go tell Steve. If not, I stay here.”  

He spun. He would go upstairs, he would wake Steve up, he would tell Steve the truth. Steve would be furious, and had every right to be, but Tony would be honest, for once, just for once he wouldn’t equivocate or evade. He’d tell Steve they needed him. He’d tell Steve they were dying. He’d tell Steve he couldn’t sleep. 

The scraping sound of the bottle spinning faded away, and Tony opened eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed. The red cap was facing dead away from him.

There were tears on his cheeks. He touched them, felt the salty stiffness on his cheeks. Tear trails, hours old. The clock ticked over. 80 hours of no sleep.

“Send adjustments?” the computer asked. Tony reached forward, grabbing the bottle. It felt so warm. When was the last time he had been warm?

If it lands on me, I send it. If otherwise-

“I drink,” Tony whispered. It couldn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. His whole body was numb. Drink, Tony, or keep contributing your part to genocide. He laughed at himself.

He spun.

[aslightstep]

30 - Arya - future AU

Burn everything you love/Then burn the ashes

Song is My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark but that’s already been used. I have no idea if this is what you wanted by future AU, but I just went with future in the ASOIAF Universe.

Gonna Need A Spark to Ignite

She found her sister in the large tent they had set up as the infirmary, passing from bed to bed.

Small fires were banked in braziers set at every other bed but the cold had reached even into here, but both Arya and Sansa remained uncloaked. They were Starks; they belonged in the cold. Soon they would belong to it, as well.

“A raven got through,” she said quietly as Sansa finished a row, wiping her knife along the side of a once-pretty dress. It used to cheer Jon and Arya, in a strange way, Sansa’s persistence at finery even at the end of the world. It would have annoyed her once, but Arya had grown up. Now, she stared at the dark smears of blood along her sister’s hips and torsos where she has already wiped the knife clean several times. They were so many wounded, so many to save from the cold grip of undying. 

“Bran.” Sansa said, a question and an answer.

“He burned it,” Arya answered. “Sent one last message through the trees then…nobody will get to Winterfell.”

Sansa nodded, staring down at the knife. She was very pale. Arya took out her own knife, began along the line of men at the other side of the tent, slitting their throats or easing a knife between their ribs if that was easier. Some saw her coming. Some whispered thanks. 

She remembered - no. It was too late for that.

She reached the end, stood beside her sister as they observed the tent full of blood and death. “You made the right decision, Arya,” Sansa said finally. “I always thought Winterfell could never be destroyed, that there was magic to keep it safe, but. Well. You never did believe in fairy tales.”

Arya did, though. Not her sister’s, and maybe not the happy ones, but she’d believed in heroes and bravery. Now she knew better, just like Sansa did. There were no heroes, only monsters with better disguises than the rest.

She had learned that the first time she slid on another person’s face.

“You’re going out?” Sansa asked, very quiet. Arya nodded and Sansa’s face twisted up as she turned to her. “One more thing,” she said, grabbing up the hand Arya had wrapped around her dagger and bringing it to her ribs.

Arya wrenched away. “Sansa!” But even as that wild moment of panic flared, it faded.

“I used to believe that I would be brave enough to do this on my own,” Sansa said softly, her gaze going far away, and Arya knew her sister was back in the capitol, under Joffrey’s boot. “That all I needed was one good push and I would jump or I would starve myself or. Or. I was very imaginative back then. Now I’ve seen it all, and I’m still afraid.”

After their father’s death, after the wedding at the twins that took Robb and her mother, Arya had wanted - hoped - to believe that she had gone cold and dead inside. All the Faceless Men ever taught her was how wrong she was, how much she felt. 

Then she came back home, to her sister and brothers, and the world froze over, and Arya finally figured out through endless marches and battles, how to bring the cold into her bones, how to freeze and settle into one single state of existence. A man would be proud. Arya was No One was Mercy was Arya was Death.

“Remember to burn the tent,” Sansa breathed. Her voice came out in a gale of mist. The temperature was dropping, the sounds of the battle dying. Someone out there, Jon was losing. They were close.

Arya pulled back the dagger, put it away, and drew Needle from it’s scabbard, stepping away from Sansa so she could hold it at the right angle. For a minute, her sister looked just like their mother, and Arya remembered sliding a knife into the shell of Catelyn Stark she had found in the Riverlands. Maybe that was when she learned.

“Look at me,” Arya said, and Sansa did. Blue, blue eyes, the color of death, nothing like Arya’s. Sansa never had been anything like her. “Don’t look away.”

“I won’t. Thank you.”

Sansa had lied. Wasn’t afraid at all. Here at the end of all things, they’d finally found common ground. Better to die your way, better to burn it all down, then let the ice creep in and take control.

“Go find Jon. Tell him I’m fine. Don’t die alone.” Sansa was ready; Arya adjusted her grip. “Don’t die alone, Arya. We must all-”

Arya pushed forward.

“-go home now.”

She laid her sister down, arranged her hair, smoothed out her dress. Wiped away Stark blood on her jerkin. She went to one of the braziers and with a learned economy of motion, kicked it over, igniting the tent.

She walked outside and waited until the flames began to blend in with her sister’s hair before heading to the battlefield, snow crunching under her boots. The fire caught to other tents behind her. Up above Viserion and Drogo tangled with their undead brother, lighting the sky in flames.

The world burned as Arya surged onto the battlefield, burning with it.

[aslightstep]

PROMPTS ARE NOW CLOSED

Thanks to everyone who requested stuff, the rest should be just as much fun as these past six have been!

[aslightstep]

drabble’s gonna be late tonight guys. it snowed and something hinky is happening with the power lines.

also, thanks to everyone so far who has reblogged or commented! This is harder than I thought it’d be but has so far been very fun and I’m actually proud of myself, so thanks for the confidence boost. also PSA that i only have space for one more prompt