They’re standing in almost a semicircle around the machine, silent, when Natasha sees movement beside her and acts on instinct, whirling to grab Steve, pulling him back.
“What the hell?” Tony cries, while Thor shouts out “Captain!” and Natasha grunts.
“What was that, Rogers?” she asks, letting go of his sleeve. He doesn’t answer her, just stares at the time machine.
“Capsicle, I’d like to remind you that while I’m all for jumping in and having a blast, this--” Tony says, waving his arms about, with his helmet flipped up, “--is a time machine, and it’s probably not a great idea to just go for it, and get our hands dirty.”
“Steve,” says Natasha firmly. “What were you thinking?”
Steve’s still standing there, silent, in jeans and a t-shirt. It’s odd, Natasha thinks to himself. In Tony’s workshop, with paint on his cheek and “millennial” clothing, doesn’t really look like Captain America.
“He wasn’t,” proclaims Tony, waving his arms some more. “Do you know what would happen if we screwed around with something like this, not knowing how it works or who even built it? I swear, the next time someone drags something back from a recent mission and goes ‘Hey, Tony, take a look at this, will you,’ I’m going to--”
“What would happen.” Steve says. It’s barely a question. “If someone tried to use it.”
Tony looks confused for a flash, but he quickly clears the expression off his face, because confusion is not something Tony Stark does. He shrugs, twiddling a screwdriver. “Dunno, Cap. In the best of cases, let’s say you went back--” Because where else would Steve Rogers want to go? Not the future. He’s already done that. “--it’d be like you were supposed to go back and the future--or the present--is what it is, because of that. But that’s only one theory. The other one is that it would screw up everything--you know, America would be a communist state, the Nazis would be flying hot air balloons, Iron Maiden wouldn’t have existed, yada yada. In general, bad shit.” There’s a pause. “A lot of people and things would cease to exist, if the timeline got screwed up.”
“And we can’t have that,” mumbles Clint. It’s an innocent statement, presented a little sarcastically but a general fact accepted by the group at large. The loss of something, especially a person’s life, because of time travel? Yeah, not a good idea.
They all know that. But still, they’re waiting. They’re all waiting for Steve to answer the unspoken question, the would you still go back, even if--?
“Steve,” Bruce says gently.
“I--” Steve starts, and the truth is, the real truth is-- “Are we destroying it, or letting Tony tinker for a bit?”
Clint opens his mouth. Natasha silences him with a look. Thor swings Mjolnir idly. Bruce takes a sip of his coffee. Tony flips the screwdriver up and down, up and down.
“You’re the captain,” he says finally. The whole team looks to Steve.
“Destroy it,” he says, no inflection in his voice, and leaves.
Tony wakes to his head smashed against Bruce’s shoulder, and his feet in Natasha’s lap. What wakes him up, however, is Jarvis’ soft voice.
“Sir,” Jarvis says. “Captain Rogers is in the workshop.”
Tony is immediately, completely awake. Natasha is too, and they exchange a glance before Tony asks, “What is he doing?”
“He’s sitting in front of the time machine, Sir,” says Jarvis calmly. “He appears to be in some sort of distress, with an elevated heartbeat--”
“Okay,” Tony says, and tries to move without waking Bruce. He manages to get up, with only a little help from Natasha, but then Bruce says “Tony?”
“Sh, Bruce,” says Tony. “Go back to sleep.”
Bruce knows what’s going on. He suspected this would happen. “Steve’s gone through the machine, hasn’t he.”
Tony gapes at him, and then snaps his jaw shut. He suddenly realizes that the situation Bruce just described? Is in immediate danger of happening.
“He’s sitting in front of it,” Natasha says. She thought that Steve had fallen asleep in front of the TV, along with the rest of the team. She certainly had. Maybe she was wrong, maybe she was right, but the real problem now was that Steve, a man who was cruelly ripped out of time, asleep for seventy years, and thrust into the future with nary a ‘by-your-leave’, was sitting in front of a time machine.
Bruce says what they’re all thinking. “That isn’t much better.”
The three of them ride the elevator down with barely a word exchanged, and enter the room in silence.
The time machine--the portal--is basically a metal rectangle, with several cords and wires and a big metal box attached to the top. You can see right through the transparent blue film it produces (as far as Tony can tell, there’s no on/off switch) to the other side of the room.
Steve’s in the same jeans and t-shirt as he was this morning. His legs are criss crossed, and he’s hunched over something.
Natasha can see that he’s drawing, but she can’t tell what, not from where she’s standing. The three of them walk over.
Steve doesn’t look up. His pencil makes short strokes on the page, and it’s a man, it’s a man with short hair and bright eyes, a man in what’s clearly 40s regalia, standing by a window and grinning at the viewer like there’s nowhere else in the world that he’d rather be.
Anyone who knows Captain America would know that face.
“Steve,” Natasha says. Her voice is gentler than Bruce has ever heard.
“I thought I told you to destroy it,” Steve says, and his voice is raw, like he’s been shouting. Or crying.
How do they say they weren’t sure if Steve was in the right mindset to make decisions like that? “I wanted to tinker with it a bit,” says Tony, shrugging as if Steve can see him. He still hasn’t looked up, though his pencil has stopped moving. “It’s fascinating, really. The amount of calculations involved, the amount of--it’s incredible.” Tony could go on. He doesn’t. He didn’t really want to tinker with the time machine. To be honest, it scares him, frightens him in a way that he can’t explain. He has a sense that Natasha feels the same way.
It’s Bruce that breaks the silence. “Steve,” he starts, and Natasha and Tony’s heads snap towards him, because all of a sudden, the whole room feels like it’s prepped to explode. Bruce takes a deep breath, making sure he knows exactly what he’s saying. “Who was Bucky Barnes to you?”
“Everything,” Steve breathes and it sounds like he’s been holding that in for all the years he was in the ice, for the mere months he’s been out of it, and he’s crying, holy shit, Captain America is--
But he isn’t Captain America right now, is he? He’s Steve Rogers, a kid from Brooklyn who lost his friend. His friend, who, Tony is beginning to suspect, was more than just that.
Tony doesn’t know what to do in these situations, so it’s Natasha who takes charge, gently pulling the sketchbook from Steve’s grasp and setting it aside. She forces Steve to lean in to her, not saying a word, just holding him. Bruce squats down, feeling rather useless, and rubs Steve’s back.
He’s trying to stifle it and let go at the same time, because he’s Captain America, he has no right to be so broken after seventy years of sleep when all the other Avengers have gone through so much worse--look, Natasha is holding him, Natasha, who was tortured for practically her whole childhood--Bruce is rubbing his back, and he caused the Hulk, it’s his fault that Bruce tried to kill himself, he has no right, he has no right--
“I know,” Natasha is saying, and Bruce keeps rubbing and Steve is crying harder. “I know, Steve. I know.” She’s not saying it’s okay. She knows it isn’t.
Tony, feeling awkward, picks up the sketchbook and goes to the beginning. There--the SHIELD gym. There--Sergeant Barnes. There--Stark Tower. There--Thor and Mjolnir. There--Peggy Carter’s face. There--two girls kissing on a New York sidewalk. There--Bucky Barnes. There--Bruce and Tony in the workshop. There--jagged ice and water. There--Barnes. There--Natasha sipping tea. There--Clint shooting arrows. There--Bucky. There--Bucky.
Bucky. Bucky. Bucky.
Over and over, in a thousand different ways. Nude, clothed, standing, sitting, in pen and pencil, in color and not, in the corners of pages, hiding his face, his arms, his body, staring blatantly out of the page--
“Steve,” says Tony, and he stops there.
“I can’t go back,” Steve says. His head is buried in Natasha’s neck. “I can’t ever go back.”
“No,” says Bruce quietly.
“He saved me--he kept me alive for so long, I would’ve died without him, and when the time came, I couldn’t even save him.” Steve pulls away, looks away. “I--I--”
“You loved him,” Natasha says.
It’s barely a revelation. It’s not shocking. For Bruce, it’s a sense of quiet, final understanding. For Natasha, it’s confirmation of what she had suspected. For Tony, it’s like all the pieces have clicked.
Steve nods. “He was beautiful,” he says. “No matter what. Even after--” After Steve rescued him. “--even when he was in pain, he was the best man I’ve ever laid eyes on. The best man--” He swallows. “The best man I’ve ever known.” Steve turns so he’s facing all three of him. “He loved me. I loved him. And then--” he lifts a shoulder, drops it. “He fell.”
So you fell too, Natasha wants to say.
So you tried to kill yourself, Bruce wants to say.
So you couldn’t live without him, Tony wants to say.
They say none of these things. There’s nothing to say to Steve Rogers, not like you can say “I’m sorry” to Captain America, and he’ll dismiss any grievance or upset.
Steve Rogers isn’t Captain America, because Bucky Barnes was just Captain America’s sidekick. And Bucky Barnes was--is--so much more than that to Steve Rogers.
Natasha brings Steve to his feet. His eyes are red and his blonde hair tousled. He looks exhausted. He’s been looking exhausted for a while, Bruce notes.
Tony wonders what those seventy years in the ice were even like. Natasha doesn’t want to know. She knows enough about torture already.
“C’mon Steve,” she says. “Let’s get some hot chocolate.” And then to bed, she mouths at Tony and Bruce.
Because what else can they do?
Steve almost looks small, following after Natasha like that.
Tony scratches his beard. He’s never been one for silences. He picks up a bar of metal, hands it to Bruce, and searches through a couple of drawers before finding a relatively large axe. Bruce raises an eyebrow at him, puts the metal bar down.
“I’m going to check in on Thor and Clint, then head to bed,” Bruce says. Tony nods. He figured that’s what Bruce would say.
Bruce leaves, and Tony turns back to the time portal, with its iridescent blue film. “Why did the boy throw his clock out the window?” he mutters to himself.
It’s very very quiet. The sketches of Bucky overlap with the image of Steve sobbing on the back of Tony’s eyelids. It’s practically all he can see.
“To see if time could fly,” Tony says, and raises the axe.