The Mosaics of Our Souls
Day ???
Tony’s lost count of everything. He feels like he’s just floating through life. He works, tries to sleep, and works some more, and endless cycle on repeat.
Pepper and Rhodey call Peggy when Tony doesn’t answer any of their calls. He itches for something to drink, something to forget, but Peggy had moved in temporarily to Tony’s place, hellbent on taking care of him. After all this, he doesn’t want to hurt her even more.
Peggy and Natasha are the only friends Tony has left in the hospital. Those who aren’t outright hostile to Tony choose to avoid him to stay in neutral ground, and those in neutral ground still largely side with Steve, having known the man for longer.
It makes work hard. Surgeries are incredibly awkward, and the whispers following Tony are cruel. As much as Peggy tries to stop them, Tony asks her not to. He doesn’t want her to use her hard-earned position like that.
Natasha helps, though. She brings him food at pokes at him until he eats at least a few bites, and makes a point to walk with him because no one dares to cross her. In one of his more lucid moments, he asks here why she’s helping him, and she answers with a faraway gaze that she understands what it is to have to make the hardest choices. She tells him of a faceless man, and of her infertility, and Tony pulls her in for a hug, and they clutch onto each other like a lifeline.
What Tony wants is to talk to Steve. It’s well proven that Tony doesn’t get what Tony wants. After the first twenty missed calls, Tony realises that Steve’s blocked his number.
Using JARVIS to break through would be laughably easy, and in his most desperate moments he nearly does it. The knowledge that Steve would forgive him even less is the only thing that stops Tony.
In the end, it’s another little boy that forces Steve to see Tony again. The boy’s heart fails in the middle of surgery, and Tony’s tech is the only hope.
So Tony scrubs in, the arc reactor glowing in his palm, and they do the surgery in cold silence. The attendings cautiously skirt around them both. Just days ago, Tony would have flirted with Steve as he pointed out details to the aspiring doctors, reminding them of the wonders of science and medicine.
Now, he realises that neither science nor medicine has advanced fast enough to cure the pain that grows with every breath in Tony’s chest.
The surgery goes as well as can be hoped. The boy will live to see many more years.
They’re washing their hands in silence when, against all expectation, it’s Steve who breaks the silence.
“Peter is my son. Not yours.”
There’s the tiniest part of Tony that wants to point out that had Rumiko not given birth, had Rumiko survived, they wouldn’t be having this discussion, but it’s squashed down by the weight of Steve’s words. Steve isn’t wrong. Tony has no claim to Peter, legally or otherwise.
“I loved him from the moment I first saw him, eight days after he was born. Eight whole days. More than a week. He spent his first week crying with no one by his side, no one to soothe him, no one to love him.”
Tony wants to yell at Steve that he knows. He knows and doesn’t have to be reminded. He wants to ask Steve what he would do if he had been as mad with grief as Tony was. Even now, standing in this situation, Tony doesn’t regret his decision.
He’s about to tell Steve that when –
“We were doing just fine, the two of us, before you showed up. We don’t need you in our lives, Tony. There was a time when I thought we did, but we’re happy. Peter is happy. We don’t need you.”
Steve looks about as happy as Tony feels, but Tony is too busy letting Steve’s words crash again and again like a battering ram against his chest.
Peter is happy.
That’s all Tony ever hoped for Peter. A happy life. When Peggy had handed Tony the papers giving up his claim on the little boy, Tony had prayed harder than he had ever done in his life for his son to grow up loved, cherished, happy.
He supposes he should be happy that he was granted this one wish.
And Steve hadn’t needed Tony to make Peter happy. The memory of Steve’s words, warm and full of truth rings in Tony’s head: Peter’s happy because of you too, you know?
It crashes and breaks, shattering shrapnel burrowing deep in Tony’s heart.
We don’t need you.
‘You don’t need me,’ Tony almost repeats, but his mouth is dry and he can’t speak because there really is nothing more that needs to be said.
Without another word, he moves away from the door to allow Steve a chance to escape from the room, and Steve takes it. He gives Tony a curt nod as he leaves, and Tony takes it as a sign that they’ve reached some sort of understanding.
They don’t need him in their lives.
Tony doesn’t need them either. Tony was perfectly fine running his company and wrangling his inventions away from Obadiah Stane. He was fine staying late at galas charming rich people off their money for charity. He only had Pepper and Rhodey and Peggy, but that didn’t matter, did it? They were the ones who stayed. They were the ones who mattered.
Tony wants those lazy mornings with Steve and Peter, though, wants everything to just go back.
But they don’t need him.
They don’t want him.
“Tony, you don’t have to do this.”
Peggy is staring him down, concern in her gaze, not sympathy. This was why Tony loved Peggy. She knew what he needed, and she gave it to him, ceaselessly, unconditionally. He has never known how to thank her, and he doesn’t know how now.
“I’ve already made up my mind,” he says. He doesn’t want to hurt her, so he adds, “I just need to get away for a bit. You know how this thing is getting between staff and affecting patients. You can put me on sabbatical leave, if you have to.”
Peggy sighs, standing up from her seat to tug Tony into a hug. “Where will you go?”
Humming in thought, Tony replies, “don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll brush the cobwebs off Rhodey’s flying suit, take her ‘round to see the world.”
“You know, if you didn’t ask me not to, I’d have him fired in disgrace weeks ago, regardless of whatever history he has,” Peggy tells him, her voice fiercer than steel.
“I love you too, Aunt Pegs,” Tony murmurs, because if anyone is to have his heart, Tony knows it has always been safest with Peggy Carter.
She lets him go, holding him at arm’s length, her hands gentle and yet firm at each of his shoulders.
“I am incredibly, unwavering, proud of you. It will never be your fault that there are people like Steve who don't understand why you had to make the choices you did. Besides, if they can't even make the effort to try and understand, they're not worth it.”
Her gaze is sharp and soft, looking deep into Tony and filling the hollow crevices of his soul with warmth. “You are a good man, with a good heart, and I will always love you for it.”
Then, she smiles, and it feels like dawn rising over Tony’s heart.
“When you’re ready to come home again,” she whispers, one hand reaching up to tame his unruly hair, “I’ll be waiting to talk your ears off and fatten you up with cakes.”
For the first time in weeks, Tony believes that he might actually be able to survive this. Like maybe he can find the strength to move on, and to continue tinkering and building and fixing until he tries to find a way to heal his heart and the mess he’s made of the world.
Eventually, Peggy lets him leave with his back ramrod straight, sunglasses perched on his nose like an armor. She watches him until he walks completely past the glass of her office windows, wondering when she'll get to see him again.
After a moment, her eyes drift back to the stark white envelope lying like a sore thumb on her immaculate desk. She doesn't need the three words stamped in black ink to know what it contains. Peggy wonders how things could have gone from joyous to this, whatever it is that exists now.
Then, because Peggy has never really been about protocol, she hooks two fingers beneath the painted wood of the desk, pressing until a small gap slides open. Gently, she slips the unopened letter inside, because no one needs to bother with it right now.
Tony still has an infinite amount of time to change his mind. She understands if he never does, but there’s no one who could replace Tony’s brilliance, anyway. SHIELD will never be able to find anyone competent enough to take Tony’s place at the forefront of the future.
Before she shuts the compartment and turns the lock, Peggy lets her gaze linger across the dark words marring the centre of the envelope.
Letter of Resignation