Of Home Near

Despite Rocket’s assurances that the spaceship was completely repaired, something deep inside the Benatar had apparently gone clunk when he and Nebula had fired up the engines to test it. The two aliens had promptly powered the spaceship down and gone back to crawling over the exterior and inside the engine cavity, yelling insults at each other and occasionally coopting Carol, Bruce, or Rhodey for an extra set of hands. The situation left everyone else vibrating with thwarted adrenaline, which had so far led to three broken dishes in the kitchen and a couple of dented walls down in the training rooms. The whole thing reminded Steve of the build-up to the Normandy landings, which had been put off several times for bad weather on the English Channel. Lately he felt like most of his life was spent building up to an operation only for it to be delayed or called off at the last minute.

This wasn’t like the Berlin operation, though. Steve had known that if the SSR hadn’t been able to carry through with that op, then the Allies would still win, that Adolf Hitler would still die, even if it wasn’t at the end of a rope after a trial in an international criminal court. He had no such assurances when it came to Thanos. If they took too long here and Thanos left his last recorded location, or if someone else in the vast galaxy had the same bright idea and got there first –

Everyone else in the universe was owed their vengeance too, and Steve wasn’t vain enough to think that he and the Avengers were the only people capable of going after Thanos. But he wanted it to be them. He’d already had one of his wars end without him; he wanted this one. It was stupid and selfish and self-centered, but Steve wanted it anyway. Besides, if it wasn’t them that did for Thanos, then they would never know. Steve knew his team well enough to understand that the not knowing would drive each of them crazy sooner rather than later.

He found Thor in the narrow garden courtyard that ran along one side of the living room, sitting with his axe leaning against the bench next to him, talking to Wong. Both men looked over as Steve slid the door open and Wong said, “I’ve been telling Thor what we discussed this morning.”

Steve nodded, shutting the door behind him to enclose the three of them in the little rectangle of mock-Japanese garden, with its trickle of stream, stone lanterns, and neatly-clipped tree. He wasn’t exactly surprised that Wong had told Thor their theory about the Infinity Stones; the other man was under no obligation to listen to him and Steve had been coming to talk to Thor about just that, since he knew more about the Stones than anyone else here except maybe Wong himself. “What do you think?”

Thor lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Perhaps.”

From his expression, he wasn’t deeply invested in either the question or the answer. He lifted the axe into his lap and produced a whetstone, filling the air with the rhythmic sound of stone on something that was nowhere close to steel, honing the alien metal to a razor’s edge. All he wanted, Steve knew, was Thanos dead, partial payment of the blood-debt owed to the murdered Asgardians, to Loki. No matter what happened with the Stones, none of his people were coming back.

Wong looked at Steve, who shrugged. He couldn’t say that he was surprised by Thor’s response.

After a few moments of silence, Thor rested the whetstone against the burnished blade of his axe and said, “For almost ten thousand years, the vǫlur held the Time Stone safe at Urðarbrunnr, their ancient stronghold on the world of Nornheim. When they were massacred twenty-four centuries ago, long before I was born, the survivors gave the Stone into the keeping of one of their allies in the Nine, the forerunners of your order.”

“The vǫlur?” Steve asked, frowning.

“The seeresses of Yggdrasil,” Thor explained. “They draw their number from across the Nine. Most were killed and Urðarbrunnr destroyed in the massacre – no one knows who did it or why – and now they wander the Nine and gather only in small groups.”

Steve felt his eyebrows climb, but when he glanced at Wong, the sorcerer nodded. “I’ve read about the vǫlur,” he said. “There are accounts of them in the library at Kamar-Taj.”

“There have been humans amongst them before,” Thor said. “Not many, but some.” He flexed his fingers against the shaft of the axe and went on, his voice taking on the slight sing-song note of a trained storyteller, “Our stories say that uncounted eons ago, when the Aesir and the Vanir were one people, Lóðurr the First Allfather won the Tesseract from the Jotun Ymir playing at knucklebones. When Ymir’s son Skrýmir attempted to steal it back, claiming that Lóðurr had cheated at the game, the fighting between the Vanir and the Jotnar split Jotunheim and Muspelheim apart. When the Aesir left Vanaheim, Sigurd the Ever-Glorious stole the Tesseract from Njord’s vault in Nóatún so that Buri could use it to create the first Bifrost. The Vanir tried six times to steal it back during the Aesir-Vanir Wars and failed six times. Centuries later my father sent it to Midgard – to Earth – for safekeeping; I don’t know why.” He frowned suddenly. “To keep it from Hela, perhaps.”

“What about the Reality Stone?” Steve asked, ignoring the usual uneasy prickle at the mention of the Tesseract. “It’s from around here too, right?”

Thor nodded, his expression going even darker. “Before Asgard, before the Aesir or the Vanir, before the birth of the stars, the Svartálfar, the Dark Elves, were the first to dwell in Yggdrasil’s branches, when the cosmos was still nothing but darkness. Of that darkness, they made a weapon – the Aether. Or so our stories say; the Svartálfar were beyond time, the ancient enemy of my people and of all life in Yggdrasil.”

“Were?” Wong asked.

A muscle worked in Thor’s jaw. “During the last Convergence, when my grandfather Bor was king in Asgard, their king overreached himself. He meant to use the Convergence to return the Nine Realms to eternal night. The Aesir and the Vanir joined together to stop him, and Bor used the Bifrost to steal away the Aether and conceal it in a realm whose doors could only be opened by the Bifrost or the Convergence. Malekith sacrificed all the Svartálfar but his closest followers in an attempt to destroy the armies of Asgard, then hid himself and his hirð – his handfast men – away in the dark spaces between stars until the next Convergence.”

“I remember that,” Wong said. “I was at the Sanctum in London then to study it, along with other scholars from my order.”

Steve cocked an eyebrow at him. “You didn’t do anything about the alien invasion?”

“It happened a little fast,” Wong said defensively. “We dealt with the cleanup.”

“Oh, that was you lot. I’d wondered.” Thor’s jaw flexed again. “The Aether is not like the other Stones. It’s – it’s not a stone, it’s more like an angry sludge. The Convergence weakened the world-paths that bind together the Nine Realms and many doorways that were closed opened, even for little more than the space of a breath. Jane –” He swallowed hard. “Jane Foster stumbled into one and found the Aether, which implanted itself inside her, drawing on her life force. I brought her back to Asgard and the Dark Elves followed. They killed my mother and my brother.”

“Uh –” Wong said.

“Loki got better,” Thor clarified unhelpfully. “It would have been nice if he had bothered to tell me that, but instead he usurped the throne by disguising himself as our father and sending Odin into exile on Earth, which is actually how we met Strange.”

“Sorry about that, by the way,” Wong apologized.

Thor lifted one shoulder in a shrug, a tiny smile dancing around his lips. “It was funny,” he admitted. “But Strange was lucky Loki wasn’t crazy anymore by then because a few years earlier he probably would have leveled New York instead of just pulling a knife on him.”

“I feel like I’m missing something,” Steve said.

“You’re probably happier if you don’t know,” Wong said. “Honestly I was happier when I didn’t know Strange had done that.”

Steve looked at Thor, who shrugged again, still looking very slightly amused before he seemed to remember all at once that both men were dead. He went on without explaining further and said, “Malekith was able to manipulate the Aether, drawing it from Jane and into himself. We stopped him in London, but nothing we did could harm the Aether. My father – my brother,” he corrected himself, “– sent the Aether away to what he thought was safety outside the Nine Realms, where he believed no one would look for it, because for eons upon eons the Aether was known to be lost in Yggdrasil.” Thor swallowed hard. “He didn’t want the Space Stone and the Reality Stone in the same place.”

“Did Loki know about the Mind Stone in the scepter?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know.” Thor shook his head and repeated, “I don’t know. I think – I don’t know.”

“Did he ever say anything about where Thanos got it?”

“Loki never said anything about Thanos,” Thor said. He looked down at his knees, at the weapon resting across them, and flexed his fingers slowly and deliberately.

Steve let his breath out and looked at Wong to give Thor a moment. “Do you know anything about the other two? Power and Soul?”

Wong shook his head. “No. According to our texts, they’ve never been on Earth. We know they exist, but that’s all. It’s the same thing they say about the Mind Stone. It has no history on Earth until the Vision – well, New York, but even the Ancient One didn’t know it was here then. Not the Tesseract, either. The Aether, yes, during the Convergence; it wasn’t subtle.”

Thor snorted softly. “No.”

Steve leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest and frowning to himself. Thor glanced at him, his head cocked slightly to one side in a silent question. Steve shrugged back at him and asked what had been weighing on his mind for a while. “Why were they here?”

When Wong and Thor both frowned at him, he explained, “That’s three Infinity Stones that have been in the Nine Realms for – uh, a long time. Two on Earth for at least a couple thousand years. I know the Nine Realms are big, but that’s all territory that was ruled by Asgard, right? Or that was under some kind of obligation to Asgard –” He didn’t know the specific political situation, which was something he probably should have found out six years ago.

“The King of Asgard is Lord Protector of the Nine Realms,” Thor said, which didn’t actually clear anything up. After a moment, he clarified, “Bor first claimed the title when Asgard destroyed the Svartálfar, the Dark Elves, but it was Odin who brought the rest of the Nine into the Protectorate in truth. Though the name goes back beyond time. There have always been nine realms, though it’s actually many more worlds than nine, either under Asgard’s direct rule or that of the others.”

Steve decided to mentally file that away as “like the Holy Roman Empire, but weirder and in space,” and said out loud, “But it’s strange that there were three Infinity Stones here, right? For values of ‘here.’”

“The Nine Realms are old,” Wong said slowly. “Maybe the oldest known polity in the universe, at least according to the texts in Kamar-Taj. Maybe it’s not that strange that the Stones were here.”

“Rocket said that the Power Stone had lain hidden for thousands of years on a dead world before his friend found it,” Thor said.

Steve frowned, realizing he didn’t actually know the Point A to Point B trajectory of the other Stones. “Did Thanos take it from them?”

Thor shook his head. “They turned it over to the Nova Corps and Thanos took it from Nova by killing his way through most of Xandar.”

Steve stared at him. “The…what?”

“Aliens,” Thor said unhelpfully. “Not of the Nine.”

Steve decided that that was the best he was probably going to get and said, “Okay.” He shot a glance at Wong, who looked just as blank as Steve felt. Evidently Kamar-Taj didn’t know as much about outer space as they had thought five minutes ago.

“I found nothing about the Soul Stone when I was searching our records,” Wong said. “Did Asgard know more?”

Thor just shook his head, running his fingers over the axe blade, tracing the grooves in the alien metal. He looked as though he had already lost interest in the conversation.

Steve caught Wong’s eye and jerked his chin at the door that led back into the main building. Wong hesitated for a moment, then told Thor, “I’ll see you on the ship,” and left them alone in the little garden.

Thor picked up the whetstone again and returned to sharpening his axe. He didn’t seem to mind Steve watching him work, though Steve would have left if Thor had asked him to go.

Another time Steve might have brought his sketchbook out, but even if it hadn’t been upstairs in his room it wouldn’t have felt right. He still found himself memorizing the sight of Thor seemingly alone in the stone garden, focusing on the contrast of Thor’s intent concentration on the deadly blade of his weapon and the calm trickle of water through the little stream. He could see the sketch in his mind’s eye, his fingers twitching a little with the absence of a pencil.

Thor finally finished sharpening the blade, tested it by shaving a patch of hair from his forearm, then offered the weapon to Steve. Steve took it, not bothering to remark on the fact that the axe apparently lacked the restrictions that Mjolnir had had on its usage. Presumably Thor knew that; he clearly wasn’t in the mood to joke around.

He inspected the weapon carefully, respectful of the deadly edge, then with a glance at Thor for permission did a few passes with it. Despite its size and apparent unwieldiness, it was superbly balanced. It was the first chance he had had to get a close look at the weapon. While the decorated blade was clearly of the same origin as Mjolnir, the designs a little more angular than the usual flowing Asgardian Borre-like ring chains, the shaft was made of some kind of twisted wood that Steve didn’t recognize. It looked like it had grown up over the center point of the axe head.

“From Groot,” Thor said when he saw Steve exploring it with his fingers, looking for evidence of a join.

Steve glanced up at him. “The, uh – tree guy?”

Thor nodded gravely. “That is Stormbreaker,” he said, indicating the axe. “A gift from King Eitri of Nidavellir, the realm of the dwarves.” When Steve blinked, nonplused, he went on, “Nidavellir has been under the direct protection of Asgard since the wars against the Dark Elves, before the Protectorate. After Ragnarok, when Asgard –” He swallowed hard before he went on. “The realm of the dwarves is two worlds in truth. Myrkheim, their ancient homeworld, and the great forge ring of Nidavellir, where Eitri and the other forge masters crafted the most fearsome weapons the galaxy has ever seen. After Ragnarok, Thanos attacked Nidavellir. He told Eitri that he would kill the dwarves on the forge ring unless he – unless he crafted something capable of harnessing the power of the Infinity Stones.”

“The gauntlet,” Steve said, remembering that cold golden gleam.

“Yes.” Thor swallowed again. “Eitri told me that Thanos killed everyone else on the ring and extinguished the star. He crippled Eitri by pouring molten uru over his hands. But Eitri had the molds for Stormbreaker made already. The rabbit and I were able to reawaken the star to restart the forge.”

Steve decided he didn’t need to know details about that.

“The forge was damaged,” Thor continued. “Eitri was only able to craft the blade, not the handle, so Groot…provided it.” He made an evocative gesture with both hands.

Steve glanced down at the axe he was still holding, suddenly feeling a little queasy. Of all the options he had considered for how Thor had acquired his new weapon, “made of body parts” hadn’t been one of them. “Uh –”

“It’s not like it would be with a human or with most other species,” Thor said quickly, reading his expression. “It was a great gift. Granting it didn’t harm him.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Steve knew Thor well enough to know he wouldn’t have said that if he didn’t mean it. He flexed his fingers on the axe’s shaft, lifting it to the study the wood more closely. It just looked like wood, though he was far from an expert. “Is there another Bifrost on Nidavellir? That’s what brought you to Wakanda, right?”

“Not on Nidavellir.” A smile flirted briefly around the edges of Thor’s mouth. “The dwarves use other means to travel between Nidavellir and Myrkheim. No, Stormbreaker makes its own Bifrost.”

Steve blinked again and looked down at the axe, turning it over in his hands.

“A small one,” Thor clarified helpfully.

“How’s that even work?”

“I have no idea,” Thor admitted. “I’m not certain I could do it again, but it got me here, at least.”

“We’re glad for that,” Steve said. Since he was still holding Stormbreaker, he handed it back to Thor, who set the butt against the ground and folded his forearms over the top of the massive blade. Like Steve, he was in street clothes; he had pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt to reveal arms corded with muscles like steel cables, striped here and there with a few old scars.

Steve tucked his hands behind his belt buckle. “You okay with this?” he asked.

Thor nodded. “So long as we actually go at some point.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Thor’s storm cloud eyes were dark with understanding. “My mother and my brother both gave their lives for the Stones, as did those of my people who survived Hela’s slaughter and Ragnarok. I can do nothing less.” He looked down at the scuffed sandy soil beneath his feet, his fingers flexing against the cold metal of the axe blade. “I’ll do what I must.”

Steve nodded; there was nothing he could really say to that. There was one more thing he needed to know, though, and it was a question that he wasn’t sure Thor would be willing to answer. He didn’t know if he would, in Thor’s place. He hadn’t, when it had been Bucky.

Thor cocked an eyebrow at him, sensing his hesitation. Steve licked his lips and said reluctantly, “Bruce told us that Thanos sent Loki to Earth six years ago. That New York, the Chitauri, all that – that was him.” That they had been at war for six years already without knowing it.

Thor didn’t look angry, just tired. “My brother never spoke of it,” he said. “Not until Thanos found us. And then –” He paused, clearly sorting through his memories of something he probably didn’t want to think about. “He said very little. He was ashamed, I think, that anyone could force a son of Odin to do such a thing.”

“Force?” Steve asked quietly. He didn’t know if it was true or if Thor just wanted it to be true; he wasn’t sure that at this point it mattered.

No. It did matter. For Thor’s sake if for nothing else, even if Loki was dead. Especially if Loki was dead.

Thor didn’t answer him, just stared at the opposite wall of the little stone garden. Finally, he said, “I would give all the years of my life that yet remain for another hour with my mother or my brother or my friends.” His gaze flickered up to Steve and he added, his voice a little wry, “Go be with Natasha.”

Steve didn’t move. It struck him suddenly that he had had what Thor would have given anything for: another hour with the people he had loved and lost, with Peggy and Howard and the Howling Commandos, with Colonel Phillips and Irene Lorraine and the whole of the SSR.

He’d had it. And he’d walked away.

But he had still had it.

Steve wiped away the wetness on his cheeks and told Thor, “You’re my friend too.”

Thor set Stormbreaker aside and rose to his feet. He put one hand on Steve’s shoulder as Steve looked up at him and said, “I know.” His embrace was hard and fast before he stepped back again. “Go be with her until it’s time to go kill the bastard.”

After he left Thor alone in the garden, Steve went to check on both the progress of repairs and the other members of his team. As he had expected, everyone was still antsy and keyed up, even the experienced operators. Nobody got into this life because they were content to sit and wait; after weeks of helpless inaction, all anybody wanted to do was something.

This wasn’t like going after Loki or Ultron or Hydra. They weren’t trying to stop anything or save anyone. This was for blood. This was for vengeance.

No matter what else happened, at the end of the day they were still the Avengers.

If we can’t defend the world, then you can be damn sure we’ll avenge it –

Steve had heard that story from Tony.

He found Natasha talking with Clint and Sam, while Bucky and Yelena lurked on opposite sides of the room and eyed each other like a pair of wary hounds. Steve wasn’t sure why, since they had both been at the compound for weeks by the time he and Natasha had arrived, but maybe it was just that their return had changed the dynamics of the team. Or that now they were scoping each other out as potential in-laws, rather than teammates; Steve didn’t want to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. The realization was more disconcerting to him than he had expected. He had known that Yelena Belova and the other members of Natasha’s family existed, but had never met any of them before.

Clint had been obsessively checking over his assortment of arrowheads, but he looked up as soon as Steve came in. “Anything?” he asked, his fingers clenching on the little wedges of metal until he winced and shook out his hand, then sucked blood off one fingertip.

“Not yet,” Steve said. “They’re still working on it, or at least that’s what I think the swearing meant when I checked on them.”

“No ETA?” Sam asked, frowning.

Steve shook his head and added, “But I did just pass Rhodey on his way out there with about six rolls of duct tape, so probably pretty soon, but I’d make sure your will’s in order before you step aboard.”

Clint’s mouth twisted. “Doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”

Steve bit the inside of his cheek, not sure how or if he should respond to that.

“That would be a cool way to die,” Yelena said, contemplative.

Bucky snorted. “No, it wouldn’t. The duct tape automatically makes it not cool.”

“It’s still a spaceship.”

“Held together with duct tape.”

“I think there are a few nuts and bolts in there too,” Sam offered.

Natasha snorted softly and got to her feet as she caught Steve’s eye. Clint’s gaze tracked them both as Natasha joined Steve, the corners of his mouth turning down slightly. Steve was well aware that Clint disapproved of the two of them, but since he hadn’t made an issue of it yet – not to him, at least – Steve was prepared to go on pretending that he hadn’t noticed. Natasha definitely did notice, because she made a rude gesture in Clint’s direction that made Sam snort laughter.

Sam rolled his eyes at Steve; he was apparently one of the few occupants of the compound willing to take the whole thing in stride, probably because he had spent the last three years in close company with Steve and Natasha and was one of the most observant people Steve knew. He had never said anything, but then again, Steve hadn’t expected him too. Wanda had probably known too, but she had had the advantage of being able to read minds.

Natasha flipped Sam off too, grinning, and went past Steve out into the hallway. Steve shrugged sheepishly at Sam and Bucky and followed her out.

“He’s just annoyed that I didn’t retire, marry an accountant, and adopt two point five children after I got out of the Red Room,” Natasha said when the door had closed behind them. Bucky, with his enhanced senses, could probably still hear her, but not the regular humans. “He’ll get over it.”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “An accountant?”

“He’s not picky, a doctor or an architect would have been fine too.” She sighed and scrubbed her fingers through her hair. “He and I were on the same op, opposite sides, about ten, eleven years ago, which is how I got on SHIELD’s radar. They’d known there was someone out there using the Black Widow name, but they didn’t know it was – well, not me, actually, they didn’t know the scale of the Red Room. I was just the first one that Nick could actually confirm. So he sent Clint after me, both to take me off the playing field and to send a message to the Red Room. It was right after Clint went back to fieldwork after Lila was born; he was riding a desk for a few years when she was still pretty little, since Laura had had a rough time with her. You know he gets sentimental about girls, like with Wanda. I was younger than she was. I wasn’t a kid, though.”

For a moment Natasha’s gaze went distant, the way it always did whenever she talked about the Red Room. Steve touched her elbow lightly and she turned her attention back to him, smiling wryly. “It’s not that he really thinks he rescued me, not really. He just –” She hesitated, picking over the words, and finally went on, “He’s always wanted me to have the option of being normal. I tried a few times. It never worked out.”

Steve bit the inside of his cheek; he knew a little of what that was like. “And marrying Captain America doesn’t really count, does it?”

Natasha shrugged. “Well, it’s not up to him.” She leaned up and kissed him, slow and lingering. “The whole point of leaving the Red Room was being able to make my own choices,” she said against his mouth, then kissed him again.

Steve kissed her back, settling his hands on her waist. He only pulled away when Bucky jerked the door open and said, “You know the walls are glass, don’t you?”

“So don’t look,” Natasha suggested, while Steve bit his lip, feeling heat flush his cheeks all the way up his ears and down his neck.

“If you were doing this all over the SSR, no wonder Carter looked like she wanted to rip your head off and go bowling with it,” Bucky said meaningfully, then grinned when Steve glared at him.

“Get a room,” Sam added helpfully, smirking.

Clint was studiously looking in the other direction. Yelena was watching them with a faint frown on her face, less like she disapproved and more as though she was sorting something through in her own head.

Natasha’s gaze flickered to her and softened slightly, but she didn’t say anything.

“Sorry,” Steve said after Bucky had shut the door again, still grinning.

Natasha shrugged, more amused than anything else. “If Tony wasn’t still freaked out about Howard we’d probably be hearing a lot worse.”

Steve thought about some of the cracks Tony had made about Bruce and Natasha three years earlier and had to agree. “He did tell me that we should do porn if we ever needed a lot of money fast.”

Natasha snorted and started towards the stairs. “If I ever need money fast, I’ll empty one of his bank accounts. Did you talk to Thor?”

“Wong got there first, but yeah.” Steve fell into step beside her.

“What did he say?”

Steve gave her the short version as they made their way upstairs. She hummed in acknowledgment, frowning a little, then said, “I’m worried about Thor.”

“I am too,” Steve admitted. “But I don’t think there’s anything we can do right now. If there are Asgardians still out there, the ones that got off his ship before Thanos attacked –”

He had heard that from Bruce, not Thor; Thor wouldn’t talk about it.

“You really think they’re out there?” Natasha asked.

Steve sighed. “I don’t know enough about out there to say one way or another.” He hadn’t liked not knowing enough about space or the political situation thereof six years ago when Nick Fury had informed him that aliens were real and they were attacking Earth and he didn’t like not knowing all that much more now that they had already attacked Earth twice – or three or four or five times, depending which way you were counting. Probably more before SHIELD had started keeping track, or at least telling him about it.

“Yeah.” Natasha ran a hand through her hair, sighing, and glanced out the nearest window as they passed it. The view from here suggested that the situation with the Benatar hadn’t noticeably improved since Steve had gone outside to check on it.

Steve ran his fingers through his own cropped hair, or more accurately, over it. It wasn’t a modern Marine’s buzzcut, but it was still shorter than it had been for a few years now, since the SSR had been in the process of reluctantly preparing him for another publicity blitz. Which reminded him –

“We’d be in the Germany at the front now if we were still –” He stumbled for a moment, caught between saying home and back there.

Natasha’s gaze flickered towards him, sympathetic, and she didn’t bother to finish for him, waiting patiently for him to go on.

Steve didn’t bother to pick one word or the other. “Taking pictures with Ike and Monty and god help me, probably Patton, watching the weather for the Berlin drop.”

“Did you ever meet him?” Natasha asked curiously.

“Who, Patton?”

“Eisenhower.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah, twice. Once before D-Day; the other time he came to headquarters to see Howard and Colonel Phillips about something. I don’t know what, I wasn’t in the meeting, but the Howlies and I were there at the same time.”

“Have you met Patton?”

“Yeah, he was a lunatic,” Steve said. “Decent at what he did – the military side, anyway – but a lunatic. I think Phillps’ greatest fear was that the SSR would end up under his command and believe me, he tried.”

Natasha eyed him. “You know it’s terrifying when you call someone a lunatic.”

“If you’d ever met George Patton, you’d understand why. He makes – he made – Secretary Ross look thoughtful and considerate. Maybe a better soldier, but – different kinds of wars, so it’s hard to say.” Steve had read Ross’s record, but his knowledge of American military history after the Second World War was strictly academic. Nothing he had done with SHIELD or the Avengers had all that much in common with Vietnam or Iraq or any of the United States’ other conflicts.

Part of Steve wished that he had seen Thanos in the field with his troops, just to get a better idea of the man. Probably the Black Order’s tactics or lack thereof had been characteristic, but you never really knew. Steve would have liked to have seen Thanos himself commanding to judge. On the other hand, presumably no one else would have liked that.

He and Natasha climbed the stairs that led upwards towards the residential wing of the compound, without ever having said as much to each other. When they reached her room, Natasha pushed the door open and smiled at him. Steve started to follow her inside, then stopped. Natasha looked up at him, her eyebrows raised.

“One minute,” Steve told her, and darted across the hall to his own room, which he hadn’t slept in since they had gotten back.

Steve didn’t have many possessions left from the old days; most of what there was – and there had never been much – was still at the Smithsonian, though they had taken down the special exhibit when he’d made Interpol’s red notice. There were a few things that the Smithsonian had returned to him, though.

There was an old Schrafft’s candy tin on top of his dresser, the red paint badly faded and rust eating the metal after eighty years. Steve wrestled with it for a few moments, trying to get the lid open without accidentally pulling the whole thing to pieces or crushing the soft metal.

When he finally got the lid open, he sorted carefully through the contents – two thimbles, an ancient spool of silk thread with a needle still stuck through it, a length of embroidered ribbon wrapped around a wooden card that still showed marks where it had been picked off a dress, a rosary with a steel cross and glass beads, a single pearl earring, a brooch shaped like a heron with one wing broken off, six folded letters, and a gold ring with three tiny garnets set into the band. Steve took the ring out, weighing it in his hand, then shut the lid carefully and went back across the hall, shutting the door behind him.

Natasha was sitting on the side of her bed, looking curious. Her eyes widened as Steve knelt in front of her.

“I know you said you didn’t mind having a ring that Howard paid for,” Steve said. “But –” He held the ring up between his fingers. “My dad got it for my mom after they’d been in America for three years,” he added shyly. “It might not fit; I think her hands were smaller than yours. But you could wear it on a necklace, maybe? If you wanted to. You don’t have to –”

Natasha took it from him, her hands shaking a little. The ring didn’t fit over the knuckle on her ring finger, but it fit snugly on the smallest finger of her right hand. “I want to,” she said, her voice thick. She looked like she was about to cry.

Steve felt a little tension that he hadn’t even realized he had been holding go out of his shoulders. He took both of her hands in his, stroking his thumbs over the rings on each hand, his calluses catching on the gemstones. “If I haven’t told you lately,” he said, “I love you and I want to marry you.”

Natasha leaned down and kissed him. “I love you,” she said against his mouth.

Steve had to straighten up to kiss her again, since this angle was bad for both of them. Natasha tugged her hands free of his and stood up to put her arms around his shoulders, kissing him back. Steve let one hand settle on her hip, spanning the small of her back with the other. She was all familiar curves and compact muscle against him, sleek and beautiful and dangerous, the same woman that Steve had decided six years ago he was going to marry if she would have him.

Natasha pulled back to look at him steadily, one hand on the back of his neck. Her gaze was clear and direct, searching his face for something. She must have found it, because she said, “Steve,” and kissed him again.

Later, they lay naked in bed with the sheets tangled around them. Steve propped himself up on an elbow to watch Natasha as she raised her hands over her face, studying the rings on both hands in the slatted sunlight coming in through the blinds. Steve could tell by the quality of light that the afternoon had drawn on and spared a moment to hope that someone had gotten somewhere with the Benatar and they weren’t going to have to put this op off until tomorrow.

“Do you mind that Howard bought the rings?” Natasha asked, turning her head towards him.

Steve made himself think about the question rather than respond immediately, twisting his ring around his finger. “No,” he said finally. “I like having something from there that’s – that’s real. Something I can touch.”

Natasha pushed herself up on an elbow so that she could gesture at the shield with her chin. “That doesn’t count?”

“That’s different.” Steve didn’t know if he could have articulated how, but he made a game try anyway. “That’s about me and Howard, and Tony, a little, even if Howard didn’t know about all that. This isn’t. It doesn’t matter that Howard paid for it. Or what he was using the rings for before,” he added wryly.

He didn’t really think that Howard had been using them to sneak around with women; for one thing, Howard Stark had never needed to sneak around with women. For another, that sort of thing hadn’t mattered all that much during the war. For a third, despite Howard’s playboy reputation Steve didn’t actually think he had gone stepping out with anyone in London, male or female. In America when he was in front of the cameras, sure, but not at the SSR. Steve had the sneaking suspicion – which he would rather be dead than ever share with Tony – that while Howard had been happy to sleep with both men and women, he had a preference for men, but his justified paranoia about the subject meant that he was fairly ostentatious about going with women.

It was the sort of thing that most people at the SSR had been aware of, but no one would ever have said as much. The priority had been chasing down Hydra and winning the war. Anyone who had a problem with anything that might get in the way of either of those could find another unit.

He blinked the memory aside with practiced effort and went on, “It was never about Howard buying the rings. I just…I just wanted to give you something. Something important, something from now.” He bit his lip. “I guess technically it’s from 1915, but –”

Natasha leaned over and kissed him, one hand on his cheek. “Thank you,” she said, her voice a little shaky.

Steve stroked her hair back from her face. “What is it?”

She shook her head. “Just…thank you.” She kissed him again, deeper this time.

Steve kissed her back, settling one hand on her shoulder to brace her as she climbed on top of him. He put his other hand on her waist, then moved it lower to the firm muscle there, and felt Natasha grin against his mouth. Her lips moved to the corner of his jaw, then down his throat, to his collarbone and lower, her hair falling across her face to tickle his chest –

The door opened and Clint said, “We’re about ready to g – oh my God!”

“Jesus, Clint!” Natasha jerked upright, elbowing Steve painfully in the upper thigh and gathering the sheets to her chest as she turned to glare at him. “Don’t you knock? Doesn’t anyone in this entire god damn compound knock?”

“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon!” Clint said, one hand over his eyes.

Steve thumped his head back against the pillows, pressing the heels of his hands against his forehead as he fought back frustrated lust. “What is it, Clint?”

Clint moved his hand enough to look at them, determined that their situation hadn’t changed appreciably in the last fifteen seconds, and covered his eyes again. Natasha rolled her eyes at Steve and leaned over the side of the bed to start looking for her clothes. She came up with Steve’s t-shirt first and tossed it at him.

He caught it and dropped it in his lap before he sat up and said again, “Clint. What’s going on?”

“Spaceship’s fixed,” Clint said after a moment, still not looking. “For real this time, according to Carol.”

Steve rubbed a hand over his face and tried to make himself think, which wasn’t exactly easy right now, especially since Natasha hadn’t put on anything but her underwear. “All right,” he said. “Tell everyone to suit up and be out there in half an hour.”

“Right,” Clint said, sounding a little faint. He backed out of the room and shut the door hastily behind him.

Steve let his head fall back again. “Christ, that’s some timing,” he muttered.

“Tell me about it,” Natasha agreed. She leaned across the bed and kissed him. “We’ll make it up after we kill the son of a bitch.”

“Damn straight.” Steve kissed her back, then sat up again. He pulled his wedding ring off, weighing it briefly in his hand, then unclasped his dog tags from around his neck and strung the gold band onto the ball chain before clasping it again, the way he had worn it at Beaulieu.

Natasha met his gaze as she stripped her own rings off, leaving her hands bare so that nothing could get caught on the metal. She touched the gold-and-garnet ring briefly to her lips, her gaze still fixed on him, then set all three rings down in a little ceramic dish on top of her dresser. She flexed her fingers, her tongue darting out to touch her teeth briefly in a wolf’s hungry snarl.

“Time to go to work, Cap,” she said.

Steve stood, naked except for the chain that held his dog tags and his wedding ring. “Let’s end this.”

Tony and Bruce were having an argument when Steve stepped inside the Benatar.

He hesitated just inside the entrance, standing back on one heel; he wasn’t in the best of favor with either man right now and didn’t want to start another argument just by being here at the wrong time. On the other hand, if they were going to yell at him, it would be better to get it over with now.

He had barely even articulated the calculation to himself when Tony turned on him and said accusingly, “Did you know about this?”

Steve stared at him as Bruce put his head in his hands. “I don’t know what ‘this’ is, so you’re going to have to break it down if you want an answer.”

“About the big guy still throwing his little hissy fit,” Tony elaborated. “Come on, Banner, he needs to get with the picture. He lost, we lost, old news. Get him out of his head – your head, whatever.”

Steve looked past them to see the bulk of the Hulkbuster’s chassis packed into the Benatar’s hold, huge against the smaller frames of the Iron Man and War Machine suits; that must have been what had prompted this. “I knew about it back in Wakanda, but it hasn’t come up in the last two days.”

Tony looked thwarted, like he had wanted someone else to blame. It probably could have been anyone; Steve had just been the one who had walked in. “What’s his problem anyway?” he demanded of Bruce. “You’re not still having your thing, are you? New York wasn’t bad enough for him?”

“He wasn’t coming out in Wakanda either, even when the –” Bruce made an expansive gesture with his hands to indicate Thanos’s big alien lieutenant. “– tried to rip my head off. It’s his head too, remember?”

“Funny way he has of showing it.” Tony glared suspiciously at him, like he was daring the Hulk to come out. Steve frankly thought that now would be a very bad time for the Hulk to make a reappearance, since they actually wanted the ship to make it off the ground. That, and he didn’t want to find out if the Hulk had a grudge about Natasha too.

From the glance Bruce slid towards him, he was thinking the same thing. “Look, if he shows up once we’re there, then he shows up,” he said. “If he doesn’t, well, it doesn’t change anything, does it?”

“That’s my suit,” Tony complained, but it sounded pro forma rather than sincere.

“You already have a suit,” Bruce pointed out. He glanced at the cases again and then added, “I thought you had some kind of nanite thing going on.”

Tony’s jaw set. “Ran out, so it’s back to driving stick.”

Bruce rolled his eyes at Steve, who grinned wryly in response. All he knew about nanites was what he had picked up from various movies and he doubted any of it was all that reflective of reality, though with Tony there was usually a thin line between the two.

Tony slid another suspicious glare towards him, then blinked in sudden consternation. “You’re wearing Dad’s suit.”

Steve glanced down, though he knew perfectly well which uniform he was wearing. He still had gear left at the compound from before the Avengers had gone pear-shaped over the Accords, but none of his older suits had felt right for the moment. The body armor in them was undoubtedly better than Howard’s updated uniform, but Steve didn’t think that was going to matter all that much when it came to Thanos. He’d wanted –

He didn’t know what he wanted.

His silence hung in the air between them, as heavy as the shield on his back. After a moment, Steve said, “Yeah,” more because he thought he had to say something than for any other reason.

Tony scowled indiscriminately at both of them and then stomped off through the body of the spaceship. Steve stared after him, startled by his familiarity with the place, then realized that Tony had been stuck on this ship for more than three weeks while Steve and Natasha had been at the SSR.

“Jesus,” Bruce muttered, rubbing his hands over his face. “We’re not a team, we’re a time bomb.”

“Doesn’t mean we’re not a team,” Steve told him. “If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.”

Bruce’s gaze flickered upwards toward him. After a moment, he nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Just –” He lifted a hand and then let it fall, repeating with a tired grin, “Just.”

“Yeah,” Steve said.

Bruce glanced around, then sat down heavily on what Steve was assuming was either a bench or a crate. “I tried,” he said, like Steve had asked him a question earlier and he was coming around to an answer. “I tried to get the other guy to come out – in New York, in Wakanda, here, it doesn’t matter, he just – he won’t do it. It’s never happened before and believe me, Steve, I spent years trying to figure this all out. All I wanted for years was for him to just – go away. And now he's gone and I just – I just need him back. And it’s not like Tony thinks, it’s not like I can negotiate with him, he’s not a voice in my head or anything. He’s just…there.” He dug the heels of his hands furiously into his forehead, as if he could squeeze the Hulk out. “And, I mean, he’s still there, he’s just not…doing anything. Which would be great if this was literally any other time in my life.”

He dropped his hands to his knees and stared up at Steve. After a moment he added, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said awkwardly. Even without Natasha in the mix, he knew that his existence had always been something of a sore point for Bruce; Captain America was the serum’s greatest success story and the Hulk was its most notorious failure. Sometimes the Hulk gave Steve the shivers if he thought about it too much, though he also had the Red Skull to dwell on if he wanted personal nightmares about the serum. He wondered what Abraham Erskine would have made of Bruce and the Hulk.

He turned his head a little at the sound of footsteps, then turned the rest of the way around when he saw Pepper Potts standing in the ship’s entrance. “Is Tony here?”

Bruce got to his feet. “I’ll get him.”

Steve turned his head to watch him go, then looked back at Pepper, hesitating a little. They had always been friendly, but Steve didn’t think that they had ever actually interacted enough that he could comfortably call them friends. He had always wondered if Maria Collins Carbonell Stark had been anything like Pepper, though Howard and Tony were dissimilar enough that Steve wasn’t sure that he would place money on it. He had seen pictures of Mrs. Stark and there was a superficial physical resemblance, but that didn’t mean anything. The only people he could ask were Tony, who would probably take a swing at him for suggesting it – especially right now – and Rhodey, whom Steve wasn’t certain had actually known Mrs. Stark well enough to say.

At the moment Pepper looked weary and strained, the skin around her eyes swollen like she had been crying. She smiled wryly at him when she saw him looking.

“How are you doing?” Steve asked her.

The corners of her mouth turned downwards and she repeated, “How am I doing?”

Steve lifted a shoulder in a shrug, sheepish. “Sorry.”

“No, I –” Pepper lifted her hands and then dropped them again. “I’m doing terribly, but Tony’s alive and you and Natasha are alive so at least there’s that, except that you’re all about to leave and go to space and fight the guy that – that –”

“Beat us all?” Steve filled in for her.

“Yeah, that.” She rubbed her hands over her face, surprisingly bare without her usual armor of makeup, then let her breath out slowly. “How I feel right now doesn’t matter,” she said slowly. “What I need – what I need is to know that he’s dead. Thanos, I mean. I need to know that he can’t do this again, not ever. That’s what I need.”

“He’s going to die,” Steve promised her. It was a promise that he shouldn’t have made – he knew very well that there were some things that couldn’t be promised – but he did it anyway. “We’re going to get this guy, Pepper.”

She looked at him, her gaze hard, then nodded. “I believe you.”

Steve blinked, more startled by her trust than he had expected. He didn’t think he had actually talked to her since before the fiasco with the Accords and he had no idea how she had reacted to that, since both she and Tony had avoided making public statements about it. A Stark Industries spokesman had put out a carefully anodyne statement after Germany and SI had refused to comment about it since, even during the mess in New York a few months later.

Pepper, watching his face, said, “I didn’t know about the Accords.”

Steve looked at her sharply and she elaborated, “I didn’t know that Tony was going to get involved. Secretary Ross went to him directly. There have been other bills like it in Congress before, but they’ve all died in committee –”

“I know,” Steve said. It wasn’t something that he had paid much attention to at the time, since Nick Fury’s heavy hand had kept him insulated from knowing about it, but after SHIELD had gone down and Aldrich Killian’s attack on the president had made worldwide headlines it hadn’t been something he could avoid.

“President Ellis and Secretary Ross kept it out of the usual channels by going through the UN instead of Congress,” Pepper said. “Tony and I were –” She waved that aside and Steve nodded again; he’d heard that from Tony in Germany. “So I didn’t know. If I’d known, I would have told him that it would backfire on him one way or another – probably not just on him. Obviously not just on him, but that’s what I would have told him. It’s not something that he should have attached his name to.” Her mouth was a little tight; SI’s stock prices had taken a bad hit in the wake of the Accords and still hadn’t fully recovered the last time Steve had checked. Though he knew better than to think that stock prices were what Pepper was talking about.

“I don’t blame you for it,” Steve told her. “What happened…well, it’s all going to get dragged up again anyway.” He felt a muscle jump in his jaw; he wasn’t particularly happy about the deal he had made with President Korematsu, but right now he didn’t have time to start dwelling on it again.

He bit the inside of his cheek, hesitating, then gave up and asked the question anyway. “Did you know about the Parker kid?”

Pepper let her breath out slowly, a little anger flashing in her eyes, though it wasn’t aimed at Steve. “I didn’t know he was fifteen. Not then. I don’t know what he was thinking, it was stupid.”

Steve was saved from having to comment on that by the arrival of Tony himself. He came out of the depths of the ship with Bruce behind him and frowned warily at Steve and Pepper. There was a beat of awkward silence before he said, “Hey, no trying to steal my girl, you’ve got your own.”

Bruce winced and muttered, “Don’t say that to Nat’s face…”

Tony winced at the idea and said, “I like my skin intact, thanks.” He came over to Pepper with his hands out as Steve nodded to her and stepped away. “What’s up, honey?”

Steve watched them as they left the ship for a little privacy, trying not to let his frown show too obviously on his face. He had spent most of the day trying to gauge whether Tony was physically up to this operation or not; the Iron Man suit would keep him on his feet, but his reflexes wouldn’t be where they needed to be. Up there he wouldn’t have FRIDAY to pick up the slack, either. The problem was that even if Tony couldn’t handle this, there was literally nothing that Steve could say that might convince him to stay home. If he was going to hear it from anyone – and Steve wasn’t sure he would – then it had to be someone other than Steve who said it.

And no one here was going to say it. Probably not even Pepper.

He glanced up as Thor came in, carrying his axe over one shoulder and followed by Natasha and Yelena, with Bucky trailing suspiciously after them. Both women were suited up, looking like inverses of each other with Natasha in black and Yelena in white, Natasha with gold on her bites and belt and Yelena with silver. Thor was still in jeans and a sweatshirt, though Steve doubted that would last once they got where they were going; presumably Thor had his cape and armor stored away in whatever magical pocket he kept it in when he wasn’t wearing it. He put a hand on Steve’s shoulder, his gaze hard and cold.

Steve met his eyes as he reached up to grip Thor’s fingers briefly, nodding to him. There was nothing left to say; they had said it all earlier. All that was left was to do it.

Thor released him after a last squeeze that was hard enough to hurt. He went past Steve into the belly of the ship, his steps heavy on the alien metal of the flooring.

Bucky looked after him, then said, “This is going to be new. Unless you do this sort of thing a lot.”

“This’ll be my first time too,” Steve told him dryly. “You know, three days ago Phillips was planning to load all of us into a C-47 and fly us out to the front in the Ruhr.” He thought about it. “Well, probably to Reims first, that’s where Ike is – was. Then the Ruhr. Then they were planning to drop us out of a plane over Berlin.”

“Yeah, to kill Hitler, you said that already,” Bucky said, his voice equally dry. “You prefer your murderous sociopaths alien or human?”

“Preferably?” Steve said. “Dead.”

“I don’t think I remember you being this bloodthirsty before,” Bruce said, sounding dubious.

“No, this is pretty normal,” Bucky said. “I’m pretty sure his greatest regret is that he couldn’t testify at Nuremberg.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to testify at Nuremberg, no one from Hydra was on trial,” Steve said, swallowing back the bitter rage in the back of his throat. If they had been, it might have saved SHIELD a lot of trouble down the line – it would almost certainly have saved lives. The last person he could say that to was Bucky, though.

He remembered having told Abraham Erskine a few years ago – or whatever – that he didn’t want to kill anyone, and that was mostly still true. There were very few people that Steve had ever wanted to kill; that didn’t mean that there weren’t people he didn’t believe should be alive.

Thanos was one of those people.

He caught Yelena’s thoughtful gaze. It was the same look she had been giving him for the past day or so when she thought he wasn’t aware of it, the same look he had gotten used to over the course of the last six years, because people were always trying to figure out who he really was once you stripped away the propaganda and the mythology. Her interest was presumably a little more personal than most, though Steve was under no illusions that it was on his behalf.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to get Thanos back here for a tribunal,” Natasha said.

The combination of Steve’s honesty and his bloodthirsty streak made him say, “I’m fine with that.”

He wasn’t particularly bothered by the idea of Thanos not getting a trial; it wasn’t so much that he thought Thanos had abrogated the right to one as that as far as Steve was concerned, this was still war and the Infinity Stones were the most devastating weapon that had ever existed.

He scratched at his hairline – he hadn’t bothered with his helmet; he wanted Thanos to see his face when he died – and said, “Where are we going in here anyway? I haven’t been onboard before.”

Bruce still looked pretty dubious, but he said, “This way – Rhodey and Sam are up there with the others now.”

Despite the recent strains of his overly eventful life, Steve had never actually expected to be onboard any kind of spacecraft. He had heard from someone that Rocket and his crew had lived on the Benatar and knowing that, Steve could see the evidence of amongst the wreck of the ship’s many repairs. It reminded him of the houseboats he had seen in the old days, everything compressed to fit in a small space through which people lived and worked, though the ship itself was probably three times the size of his last apartment – in sheer footage, counting the parts that weren’t living space, not far off the tenement building he had grown up in.

Most of the other members of the strike team were up in the cockpit or bridge or whatever it was called when they reached it, Rhodey and Sam talking enthusiastically to Rocket about the ship with their pilots’ curiosity. Nebula was there too, looking a little bored, though Steve had gathered in their short acquaintance that that might not be any indication of her actual mood. Wong and Carol were talking quietly in a corner while Thor stared bleakly out the viewport. Possibly he was watching Tony and Pepper talk on the lawn; possibly he was just brooding. Steve wasn’t going to venture a guess.

Clint was already there, fingering his bow and looking as grim as Thor. When they came in, he glanced up, saw Steve and Natasha, and turned hastily aside. Natasha rolled her eyes at Steve and went over to talk to him.

Steve swung his shield off his back and sat down in the nearest jump seat, figuring someone would move him if they needed to. Bucky sat down next to him and said, “What’s that about?”

Steve winced. “He walked in on us earlier.”

Bucky eyed him. “Romanoff pull a gun on him too?”

Steve dug an elbow into his ribs, flushing.

“It’s the middle of the afternoon!” He glanced out the viewport at the angle of the sun and corrected himself, “It’s the end of the afternoon!”

“Like I don’t remember walking in on you and Mary-Alice Flanagan during school – and Mary-Ellen Stewart, and Mary-Evelyn McDonough, and Mary-Margaret Moretti –”

Bucky elbowed him back before he could go on. “Jesus, how many girls did we know named Mary something?”

“A lot.” Before he had joined the USO, most of Steve’s sex education had come from the combination of Father Kennedy telling his captive audience that the Pope wouldn’t like it if the Holy Father knew that he had told them about condoms or the rhythm method and Bucky’s blow-by-blows of his own assortment of girlfriends. In retrospect, it was a slightly horrifying combination, though it at least it had meant that he had known how Tab A and Slot B worked the first time it had actually been relevant to him. “Don’t forget about Gabriella-Teresa Luonghi, she pushed you off that bridge when she caught you with Mary-Margaret.”

Bucky glared suspiciously at him. “You’re making that one up.”

“Nope.” Steve scratched at his jaw and leaned his head against the back of the jump seat. Despite the quiet, overlapping murmur of conversation on the bridge, he could still feel the same tension that had been building all day. Everyone here was a killer, in one way or another; everyone here knew what was coming.

Not everyone here knew what was at stake.

It had been in the back of his head all day, what Wong and Bruce and Carol had suggested, and Steve couldn’t shake it no matter what he did. Contrary to popular opinion, Steve wasn’t and never had been an optimist; between nearly dying a dozen times before his twenty-first birthday and spending most of his life throwing himself at closed doors that didn’t budge he had no illusions about the world. It didn’t mean that he ever stopped; it just meant that he was never really surprised when something didn’t work out the way he had hoped.

Maybe, just once, he wanted to live with the illusion that the Snap could be undone, though realistically he knew that the bet Thanos had destroyed the Stones was probably the better one. Steve had met a fair number of fanatics in his day, from Johann Schmidt to Helmut Zemo. Howard Stark, too, in his own way. There were plenty of people, Thaddeus Ross included, who would probably call Steve one and some days Steve wasn’t sure they were wrong. He had gotten good at gauging what one would or wouldn’t do when the chips were down.

Thanos would do it.

He glanced up at the sound of an approaching step on the alien metal of the deck, recognizing the faintly stuttering sound of Tony’s breathing; he still wasn’t fully recovered. The other man came in and leaned heavily against the nearest chair for a moment, gathering himself, then looked around. When he saw Steve, Tony let his breath out slowly, then nodded once, his expression set in determined lines.

“All right,” Steve said out loud, as if answering the question Tony hadn’t asked him. Every head in the cockpit turned towards him, like magnets drawn to true north, even those of the near-strangers. He told them the same thing he had told Natasha six years ago on the helicarrier before New York. “Time to go.”