Chapter 1
Clint dies on a Thursday. Distantly, Tony thinks there's a not my day joke in there he could make at Thor, but he can't get the words to come out in a sentence that isn't mostly garble and snot.
"I thought I had him," he tells Steve, drinking another vodka-and-stuff-from-other-bottles cocktail. He's not sure what all is in it by now, but Steve is there to make sure he doesn't mix anything accidentally toxic, so it's not like he needs to be paying attention.
Probably. It doesn't really matter.
"I was sure I had him. It was--It looked like it was going to be a cakewalk." He'd underestimated. Had been joking on the line with Clint for the first couple hours of the flight, telling him relax, I'll get there before you hit dirt. What are you at? Like the fifth floor?
Clint wasn't falling and Tony hadn't gotten there. Someone else had gotten there, and by the time Tony had set down in Europe, Clint was gone.
That was Tuesday.
They find Clint on Friday, dead a day.
"That's three days," he slurs at Steve, for what's probably the two hundredth time. It sucks to be great at math. "They killed him for three days."
"I know, Tony."
"I said I'd get him." He tops his glass up with something blue, turning the cocktail muddy, but Steve doesn't react other than to take the bottle away and set it aside on the bar, out of reach.
"I know."
Tony takes a gulp, not tasting a thing, and grabs for a different bottle. This time Steve lets him fill his glass all the way to the top. "I told him I had him. And then I let them kill him for three fucking days."
"You didn't let anything," Steve says. "Tony--"
He snuffles. Like a kid on a crying jag, but his eyes are dry. Swollen and gritty, but dry. "I'd say he didn't go easy, but you'd probably consider that a good thing."
"He knew you were coming."
Tony huffs. Slams back his drink. It burns. It tastes like shit. "Yeah," he snaps, "I'm so glad he waited for that."
He reaches for the bottle again. This time, Steve catches his wrist, but doesn't say anything, and Tony doesn't pull away. They sit there like that for a while, in no shape to be awkward about it, while he snuffles some more and Steve swallows hard every fifteen or so seconds.
"Asshole," Tony rasps after the silence has gone on a while and the alcohol entering his bloodstream has made him progressively drunker, even while he's just sitting there. "That asshole. That's what he was doing, wasn't it? He was fucking waiting for me."
Steve lets him go. Takes a breath.
Tony swallows. Not crying. Not ripping apart at the guts anymore. "He was hanging on, waiting for me. Like a goddamn idiot," he says.
"It's not your--" Steve starts, but Tony cuts him off with an impatient wave, scrubbing at his face with a rumpled shirtsleeve, wiping away tear tracks and god knew what.
"If he's going to refuse to die, because I said I was coming," Tony says, determined and logical. All of it coming together into a plan. It feels coherent. "Then I'm damn well going to go get him."
"Tony," Steve says gently, face creasing in worry and sympathy, "It's late. You know he's at SHI--"
"No. I have--Selvig's tesseract super-duper wormhole maker thing."
"What are you--?"
"We don't have a tesseract, but we--I. I--Well. It. Has a charge. It has a--" he gestures. Steve gives him a crooked look. Tony huffs, exasperated.
"I can build a time machine, Steve," he says. "I'm going to build a time machine."