in the morning, i'll wake up dead
start.
Steve thinks and thinks about the last time he saw Tony, and how the engineer's hands were shaking around the neck of a beer bottle.
He thinks about how Tony hasn't been drunk in four years, and how he's not even sure anymore if Tony's alive. Tony - he's always been good at the disappearing act. Just ups and leaves sometimes, and doesn't come back for days on end. But this time - this time it's different. Tony's been gone for four months. Could be dead, could be injured, could be captured by HYDRA…
The last one makes Steve shudder. He would rather the billionaire be dead than in HYDRA's clutches.
He remembers the day Tony said he'd quit drinking for good. "I've - I've decided to stop," Tony said haltingly, and looked up at Steve, brown eyes so very afraid but also lit with this kind of passionate determination that was so very rare and unique. "Drinking, Steve. It's not - good for my health, and...well, Pepper's been telling me to quit for a long time. You all have. So I'm going to. I'm going to try."
"That's great," Steve had said, smiling, putting his hand on Tony's arm. But in reality, he hadn't thought for a second that Tony would succeed. That Tony was being serious. Because he…
"Fuck you, Rogers. It's like you think I'm a - a toy, to play around with while the iron's hot. You never take me seriously."
Steve's hands clench. Four months, and the news is calling the engineer dead again, saying even rich white men's luck runs out eventually - and also the headlines say that Captain America is unfit to lead a team of heroes after a reporter talked, talked shit about Tony, and Steve's vision whited out and he broke the man's nose. Anyway, Steve thought it was bullshit at first - yeah, okay, it's crazy that someone could survive so many ordeals, but when has Tony ever been normal? He'll come home one day, laughing at everyone's worry, saying he was in Malibu rebuilding his mansion or visiting another planet with Thor.
Except Steve doesn't think Tony's with Thor, or in California. He doesn't think Tony's alive at all anymore.
"How could you give up so easily?" Rhodey had screamed at him, just yesterday. Shoving at Steve's chest with his hands, even knowing that he wouldn't be able to move a supersoldier, especially not on prosthetic legs. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you ever even give a shit about him?"
"Of course," Steve said. He had had to pull those thick, guilt-sludged words out of his throat. "Of course."
"Tony was in Afghanistan for three months," Rhodey hissed, "it's only been four. and you're already - you've already given up. The least you could fucking do was keep looking, keep trying. After you hurt him. After you made him cry, you fucking asshole! You know how many fucking times Tony's cried - really, truly cried - in his life?"
Steve didn't say anything. He didn't, because he couldn't. Rhodes was right - Steve had hurt him, and although it wasn't like Tony was all that innocent either - the man had made plenty of mistakes too - Steve doesn't pretend that he hadn't given up easily on Tony while the billionaire had still been alive.
"I was the last person to see him," Steve had said tiredly. He couldn't even look Rhodes in the eye; he was too afraid of the blame, the accusations, he'd see there. "He looked...empty. He was drinking. He told me goodbye."
Steve's breath hitches on a sob, and his fingers tighten around the bottle Tony had dropped right before he'd left. For a second, he was sure Tony was going to throw it at him - a centimeter of alcohol still sloshing in the bottle, arm cocked back - but then it was like all the air had escaped the billionaire. Like Tony was some stupid Party City balloon. "Goodbye, Steve." Worn out. Broken. The bottle, set empty on the counter. Something so hollow in Tony's gaze that Steve almost cried out as Tony walked out the door, wanted to say, Wait! I'm sorry! Wait!
But now it's too late. It has been four months. Tony might have even killed...no. Steve refuses to entertain that thought. Tony's always been strong, so strong, bouncing back from every obstacle and pothole in his path. Tony wouldn't do that, would never.
Are you sure? Steve's mind says, traitorously. You saw his face after you all were pardoned, you saw him lying on the floor in Siberia with your shield in his chest. Tony was always only human, Steve. No human is unbreakable. Maybe you broke him.
"Stop," Steve says aloud. His voice cracks embarrassingly. A hairline crack forms under his knuckles in the green glass of the Heineken. "Stop."
"Steve?" a voice says, softly, from the doorway. "You alright?"
Steve turns; Natasha is there, framed by the doorway, her face just the right amount of concerned. "What do you want?" he snaps, colder than he means to be. "What are you doing here?"
"We were pardoned, and the government said it's best to stay in Stark tower, remember?" Natasha says, even though she must know that's not what he's asking and quite frankly she's kind of being a bitch.
"Fuck off, Nat." Steve's too tired for this. He runs a hand over his face, places the bottle back in the same place it's been sitting in for the past four months.
For a brief second, Natasha allows her mask to slip, and he sees her as how she is, tired too, scared, regretful. "I'm sorry," she says, more quietly, and takes the seat at his side. "I promise, we're looking as hard as we can."
"What if he doesn't come back?"
"He will," the Russian says. She repeats it, sternly. "He will. Stark is like that."
"Even the toughest men can be wounded beyond repair," Steve tells her. It doesn't sound like something he'd say - it sounds like something he might be parroting from Tony, something Tony might have said in the later days leading up to his disappearance.
Natasha shakes her head. "As much as it's hard to admit, Stark's special. Different." Steve wonders briefly if she might be saying all these things more for her own benefit than his.
"He's not inhuman, Nat."
They sit in silence for a while, each respectively mulling over their own thoughts, when Natasha says suddenly, "Do you ever wish you hadn't chosen Barnes?"
As painful as it is to say, Steve has to reply honestly. "No." But then he swallows, lets his shoulders slump. "God, but I wish I had - I could've done things differently. Tony always said there were other ways to do things, that if you were stuck in a corner, you could always - he would always find a different way to get out of it. He'd find a way - cut the wire - or put himself on it no matter the cost." Yeah, Steve had learned the hard way that he had been wrong about the billionaire's character. It haunts him - that he is no better a judge of character than he was before, even with the serum.
Natasha smiles a little. "Tony knew, deep inside, that sometimes there are no better ways to do things. He knew this. But ultimately - despite his being a 'man of science', and all of that - he was driven by hope. Guilt and hope. He always wanted there to be a better way to do things, even when it was impractical."
We're talking about him like he really is dead, Steve thinks, and the realization hurts him, knots a fist in his chest. "There was a better way," he said, quietly. "Tony would have thought of a way. I didn't listen to him."
"Yes," Natasha agrees, but probably decides he's already hurting enough, because she doesn't say anything about his statement after that. "Why are you here, Steve? You can't get drunk. That bottle's empty. Why are you here?"
For a moment, all Steve can think is, why am I here? "It was the last place I saw Tony," he says tonelessly. "Before he left - or disappeared, or - I don't know. Tony was sober for four years straight, did you know that? I did, and I came down here, and we fought, and he was drinking. He was - drinking, Nat, God, do you know how hard he tried over the past few years to - " He breaks off. He doesn't want to end his sentence in a sob.
Natasha places a hand on his arm, making her movements slow and noticeable. Maybe it's so she won't spook him. "You saw him last," she says gently. "But we all made mistakes. We all hurt him. It's on all of us, that we didn't see what was happening until it was too late."
"I should've known! I should have known, I should have known, we all should have known! Just because we didn't see doesn't - doesn't excuse us. Fuck, Nat, I didn't even know he was still afraid of Bucky or Wanda until he told me that day! I didn't know he was still afraid of me!"
That, of all things, hurts the most. That he did this to Tony. That Tony, strong as he was, was afraid of Steve. But maybe that was just another mark of Steve's errors - that he always viewed the person inside the Iron Man suit to be just as strong outside of it as he was inside. Iron can rust, Cap, he can hear Tony saying. I'm just a man - like you, sort of - fragmented laughter - man with a plan! - hiding inside a metal coffin.
"The only thing we can do now is bring him back." Natasha is shifting; she is preparing to leave, Steve knows. To do what? Think? Mourn? Look desperately, hopelessly, some more? "What's done is done. But Tony isn't. There's still time to save him."
"Is there?" Steve looks at his teammate. She, who sided with Tony during that stupidly-named Civil War, but still decided to let them go. He thinks that maybe she has regrets too, if not as many as he does. "And even if there is, he shouldn't have to be saved in the first place. We shouldn't have - done things to him that would make him need saving."
"Tony was struggling with a lot of things long before us," Natasha says softly. It isn't an excuse, or self-defense: it is just pure, straight fact that sets Steve's blood straight to boiling anyway.
"Yeah," he says, acidly, bitter. The conversation is ending here and now; he can see it in her face and in the sudden rage surging in his body. "We just added another hundred issues to the list."
-
That night, Steve dreams about the last time he saw Tony, just as he has been every night this month.
"You're drinking," Steve reprimands, led to the penthouse bar by the sharp scent of alcohol in his serum-enhanced nostrils. Tony is there, clearly drunk out of his mind, looking stupidly at Steve. His eyes are watery, blurry, like he isn't seeing straight.
"Yeah, so what?" The words are a slur. "Since when do you - " Hiccup. "When do you care?"
"Tony." Steve crosses his arms over his chest. Later, he will feel sad - so horribly, wrenchingly sad - but right then, he is just fucking stupid and ignorant and disappointed. "You just broke your sobriety. You haven't touched alcohol in over four years! I can't believe you would decide to end that now."
"Well," Tony says, blowing out a breath. Steve would be able to smell the acidity even without the supersoldier serum. "Sometimes people end things, Steve. Sometimes they get tired."
"I can't believe you," Steve says shaking his head. "Gosh, Tony. Four years, and you're throwing all that away on some stupid binge."
"Whatever." Tony sets the quarter-empty bottle down on the counter, next to the four other beers already littering its surface. "Like I said, what do you care?"
Steve frowns. "Why wouldn't I? You're still my teammate, Tony. Even after everything that's happened between us."
"Oh." Tony smiles; it is almost as sharp as the cheap beer in his bottle. "Yeah, I forgot. Wouldn't want a defective teammate bringing everyone else down in the field, right? Can't have a drunk be the only guy standing between you and the bad guy."
Steve rears back, scandalized. (Maybe, he thinks later, he only felt scandalized because of its truth.) "No, that's not why," he says, but doesn't really know what else to add. "I - we - care about you, Tony. It's not...right, seeing you like this."
Tony laughs, serrated and hoarse. "It's not right. Right. Because the Avengers are all playing roles here. Pretending to like each other. Pretending like we've made up. Don't play dumb, Rogers! We haven't forgiven each other! You'll always pick Barnes over me - over any of us."
"It's been months since we came back, two years since the…the fight. And I signed the accords, Tony - we all did. As soon as it was revised, we did. It just wasn't right to sign them before. We didn't do it to hurt you, just as I'm sure you didn't mean to hurt us. Why can't you see that?"
"It's not about that!" Tony is on his feet now - when did they start talking so loudly? "It's about how we hurt each other, and you lied to me. Fuck, Steve, I like you, I do, even despite everything; and every day I wake up and I think shit, if only the great Captain America liked me back! But you can't tell me while looking me in the eye that you like things this way. It's not the same, and it'll never be the same again."
It hits Steve like a freight train. Tony really thinks this way, and it's all coming out, like a ball of thread unspooling - is this what Tony's been hiding all this time, under that sobriety, that easy, careless smile? "I didn't know you felt this way," he says quietly. "I thought we were friends again."
"Oh, of course we are," Tony bites out. He's trembling. "Of course we are - if we ever were before. Because I can't help but let you all back into my life. Because you guys were the best things that ever happened to me before I screwed everything up with Ultron, and then again with trying to listen to the wants of the world. It's so hard faking, you know that, Steve? Pretending like I'm okay, like you guys didn't hurt me and like I don't see how Clint still kind of hates me and like nobody blames me. Pretending like I don't look at Wanda and you and Barnes every day and see you beating me into the ground and the witch filling my head with her magic. Like a happy family will erase the things we've done, the people we've killed. We aren't saints, Steve! We aren't even heroes. We're just people with unique abilities playing God, over and over and over again. Are we really helping people? Are we helping people if we're all standing on a fucking scale and our death count is keeping it balanced at zero?"
"We save people," Steve says, but his voice is hollow. He isn't sure if he means it. Tony's confusing him, filling his head up like the feeling he gets when he thinks about what Peggy might say if she saw him now. He doesn't like it. "Things go wrong, but ultimately we try our best."
"Best isn't good enough," Tony hisses. For a second, his face crumples, and Steve sees him - raw, drunk, real in a way he never truly is nowadays. "Best isn't good enough when it comes to people's lives."
"You're a hero, Tony." Steve thinks he knows where all this self-recrimination is coming from. Tony's just in a dark spot, like when Steve thinks about the past or when Bucky remembers being the Winter Soldier. He'll be fine. They'll be fine. (How many times has he lied like this to himself?)
Tony smiles; it is the smile of someone who has given up. It is not a look a man like Tony Stark should ever wear. It fits all wrong on his face, wrinkling his skin in all the wrong places. He looks wretched. "In some ways, we both are," he says finally, conceding. "I guess. But tell me, Steve. Look me in the eye and tell me you don't sometimes think the world would be - would have been - better off without you. Would be better without all the mistakes you've made."
Steve shakes his head firmly. "I've done more good than bad," he says, and it's not arrogant - it's true that he has. He has definitely helped many more people than he has harmed. But somehow he doesn't think that that is what Tony's asking.
(To this day, he still isn't sure what Tony had been asking.)
Tony plucks the Heineken neatly off the counter and drains it so that there's only a few drops left, sliding slowly back down the inside of the neck. When he looks back up, still swallowing the last mouthful of his cheap beer, his eyes are startlingly clear. Hollow and dull but clear. "iIm tired, Cap." The flash of a bitter smile. "Aren't you?"
"I…," Steve starts, still a little lost in the conversation, still trying to decipher what Tony's trying to say, but it's already a second too slow. Tony has seen everything in that brief hesitation.
"It's okay," Tony says. His eyes are so very brown, his lashes so very long. Steve is beginning to think that the wetness in his eyes isn't glassiness from the alcohol like he'd initially assumed. "Goodbye, Steve."
Wait, Steve wants to say. Wait, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for what's happened, for what I've done, for what's happened to cause this rift between us. Please, Tony, stay. Talk to me and explain, and I'll listen, I'll listen. Just wait.
But he doesn't speak.
For a moment it looks as if Tony's going to throw the bottle at him, but then the shorter man just places it - almost gently - on the counter before turning away. And Tony staggers out the room, fumbling, loose, the bottle left glinting on the sleek dark countertop, dark hair mussed, clutching at his left arm. Steve watches him go. And watches the empty doorway once Tony has gone, is gone for sure, has left the penthouse and maybe even the Tower entirely.
Maybe he would have done things differently if he had known Tony was never coming back.
But as Natasha said, what's done is done.
(He thinks that maybe he's not sure they would be able to save Tony anyway, even if they found him again one day.)
(He thinks maybe all along, it wasn't just Tony that needed saving, but all of them. All of them, drowning in denial and guilt and regret and pain and loss and torn between one choice and the next, carrying burdens, carrying so many fucking burdens like Atlas sagging under the weight of the world.)
(And finally, he thinks that maybe - privately in his own head where there's no one else to hear it - there is no such thing, no such thing as being saved.)
end.