Avengers Disassembled
The blue eyes are staring at him.
Just eyes, nothing else. Blue crystals soaked beneath black pupils — cold, dead. Lifeless.
Steve’s pained voice echoes in the nothingness.
“You could have saved us…”
Darkness soaks them up, drowning them in a puddle of space and stars. He sees earth in the distance, but the further he reaches, the further it moves. His fingers reach, the tips just out of reach.
The planet runs from him.
“Why didn’t you do more?”
He hears the shield break and shatter. When he looks to the ground, pieces of it have fallen on his feet, cutting into his bare toes. The shield his father made. The shield Steve Rogers carried.
Broken and useless.
“Mr. Stark!”
Tony spins around, panicked, looking frantically for the voice — for who it belongs to. He tries to scream, croaking, his voice stolen from him. He grips his throat, pushing his fingers deep into his larynx, desperate to call out.
No sound is made.
“Mr. Stark, please!”
He’s crying — the voice, the boy calling for help. So young, screaming with sounds of terror.
Tony tries to run, his legs moving relentlessly. He moves nowhere. Running in place until he can’t anymore, until his legs give out and he’s panting breathlessly for air.
There is no air.
He’s suffocating, dying in space, stripped of oxygen.
He can’t scream. He can’t move. He can’t breathe.
“I’m stuck, Mr. Stark — help me, I’m stuck!”
And then the fire engulfs him.
It rises from the ground, wrapping around him like a blanket, coiling around his body and surrounding him until he sees nothing but flames. It’s so hot.
Tony sucks in a mouthful of air, only to choke on the smoke and ashes, soot that burns his lungs. It’s the breath of hell. Burning the lining of his chest, the moisture in his nostrils steaming until he chokes and coughs.
Peter stands across from him — head to toe in the suit; the spider-suit created just for him. The one Tony created for him.
But he’s naked of the mask. He stares at Tony, his eyes full of fear. Terrified.
Tony scrambles over to him, running to him. Desperate to save him.
A wall of fire rushes out and blocks his path.
“Peter!” Tony coughs, unable to take in a breath. “You gotta get out. You gotta get out, kid!”
“I can’t!”
The flames roar around them like a monster, spiraling upward. Engulfing the ceiling with the same fire that covered the floors.
Peter screams with a sound of pure terror, unfit coming from a voice so childish.
“HELP ME!”
Tony yells at him, “Get OUT!”
He watches in horror as the flames dance around the boy, his red and blue suit scorching into black, charred fabric. Peter howls — raw, blood-curdling screams so high pitched, so anguished that Tony loses his strength to stand, falling to his knees all at once.
His own body doesn’t burn. He’s not granted the gift of death.
It takes seconds. Only seconds for Peter’s body to incinerate in the fire, skin blistering and blood boiling until it all seared away entirely. Until he was nothing but exposed muscle that sweltered, like the smelting metal he'd pour out from a crucible.
“Tony!”
Everything pooled to the ground below — his brown eyes, his ruffled hair, his lifeless heart — it all became one pile of sizzling liquid. The flames began to eat at his bones, the white skeleton turning crisp black.
Tony can't move to stop it.
“Why didn’t you do more…”
The skull of a skeleton stared back at him.
“Tony!”
“Tony!”
Tony awoke with a gasp so hard it visibly shook the bed.
“Oh my god…” Pepper breathed a sigh of relief. “Tony, it’s okay. It’s—it's okay.”
For a moment, he sat paralyzed. Vaguely, he could feel Pepper gripping his shoulder — vaguely aware that she was saying something to him.
But he was too panicked to understand.
Each breath came in hard, his lungs heaving for air as if he had been holding his breath. There was a burn that spread all throughout his chest, inside his chest. Making each breath worse than the last.
The screams rang in his ears.
It felt real.
His skin was still hot, burning heat flustering fiercely inside of him. The room had become too warm, the air was too hot — everything burned.
“Tony, you’re shaking,” Pepper said, her voice trembling.
Looking down at himself, Tony realized that she was right. Sweat drenched him, coating his skin in layers. His arms shook and his legs twitched, noticeably spasming even underneath the cover of sheets. His muscles ached with a heat that didn’t exist.
No matter how hard he tried to focus, he couldn’t stop hearing the screams.
Peter’s screams.
He threw the covers off his legs and practically jumped out of bed.
“Tony!" Pepper tried to call out to him.
Tony was already halfway across the bedroom.
“I can’t…I — I…” he shook his head and waved his hand, as if he was dismissing the idea of any more sleep. In a haste, he grabbed his t-shirt and pants off the nearest lounge chair and left the bedroom. Not giving Pepper a single look on his way out.
Rhodey had made the announcement late in the night.
He knew he didn’t need to — most of everyone had assumed the outcome. It was hard not to, all things considered. But it helped him make things official. It helped him solidify what they knew to be true, to subdue any disbelief and doubt that may have been floating around.
Once he knew that SHIELD had everything under control, Rhodey did what everyone else seemed to do — retreat.
Wanda hadn’t left her quarters since they returned from Brooklyn. And though Vision stayed at her side, sitting silently in a chair by her bed, she remained crawled up in a ball for hours. Her headphones were never once removed, tucked tightly in her ears; her phone displayed a playlist of music that not once did she turn off. Not even when sleep came in layers.
Bruce spent most of his time down in the laboratories. He worked absentmindedly on a few projects before dozing off on the surface of his desk, pen between his fingers and glasses skewed on his face. It was where Natasha found him, and where she gently removed the glasses that had been broken and repaired too many times to count.
It was she stayed afterward, quietly deciding she hadn’t wanted to be alone.
Sam had lost track of how many times he ran around the compounds perimeter. He didn’t count in hours or miles, rather how long it took for exhaustion to make his knees weak and legs buckle. When his body gave out, he stayed sitting on the steps near one of the building’s entrances, waiting to see if a star would break through the night’s cloudy sky. It never did.
The night passed by, with no team member invulnerable to how long time stretched on.
Tony appreciated Pepper’s efforts at comforting him — really, he did. She was the love of his life for a reason, by his side no matter what. Always gripping his hand and telling him that it would be okay.
But he couldn’t sleep.
If he closed his eyes, if he even blinked, he’d see death. He’d see a charred skeleton ablaze in flames, he'd smell burnt blood and tissue and soot that mixed with human flesh. And the screams, echoing over and over and over inside his head until he —
No.
He couldn't sleep.
His workshop kept him occupied, where spent most of the night into the early morning — blaring music, drowning out the sound in his head until his ears rang so loud it turned his headache into a migraine. Not even that gave enough of a distraction. By the time he left the room, the glass windows of the hallways were bright and full of sunshine, glistening with yellow and orange colors that would make even Asgard blush.
Rain was more suited for today. Tony had never wanted it to storm so badly in his life. Cover the sun with clouds and darken the skies — he couldn’t handle the brightness. Not today.
For some time, Tony wandered the compound aimlessly. It was a mindless walk, just to stretch his legs and get his muscles moving. Anything to keep him awake.
He was getting too old for these all-nighters.
Still, he had no plan to sleep anytime soon.
Eventually he made his way into the lounge, strolling over to the kitchen where the brown cabinets were lit with the skylight above him. It hurt his eyes— he squinted as he stepped inside.
“FRIDAY.” Tony skipped the coffee grounds and went straight for the Keurig, popping the cup in the device with ease. “What’s the status on the team?”
There was a pause of silence.
“In what regards, boss?”
Tony could have rolled his eyes. If he didn’t know better, he’d say his AI was being resentful for last night. Sometimes he wondered if he'd been creating his artificial intelligence with too much personality.
He grabbed a bottle from the top cabinet and poured heavy-handed into his mug. The amber liquid mixed terribly with the black coffee, but he didn't care.
“Who’s here and who flew the coup,” Tony clarified, letting a beat pass before he shook his head. “Actually, no, whereabouts aren’t important. Just tell me who’s not here.”
While she took a minute to process his request, Tony brought the steaming, hot liquid up to his lips. He let himself take a deep whiff before swigging it back in his mouth, eyes closed as the bitter liquid slid down his throat. It hit his chest, a warmth encasing him and momentarily silencing the ringing in his ears.
And then the flames came flashing behind his eyelids.
“I’m stuck, I—you gotta help me, Mr. Stark, I’m stuck!"
He jerked and sputtered on the coffee.
“Clint Barton cannot be located in or around the premises,” FRIDAY answered, speaking as Tony coughed harshly into a nearby dishrag.
Giving three large wipes across his mouth before tossing the dirty towel aside, Tony rolled his eyes.
“So quick to abandon ship,” he muttered.
The sofa section wasn't far and Tony made his way there in a few short feet, sitting down on a bright red couch and clutching his mug in both hands. His back ached, both from yesterday’s fight, and from sitting hunched over on a stool for the better part of the night. He didn't care; it was anything to keep himself distracted.
“Well, I suppose he was trying to retire anyway,” Tony mumbled, to nobody but himself.
“He’s with his family.”
The voice caught him by surprise. Jerking his head around, Tony saw Steve walking up the stairs, his hands deep in his pockets and his head bowed to the ground. Barely even looking at Tony, barely even looking anywhere but at the floor.
Great — if his head wasn't hurting so bad, he'd roll his eyes again. This was exactly what he needed this morning.
“You eavesdropping on my conversation, Rogers?” Tony shifted on the couch to face him, the overhead skylights stabbing into his eyes when he turned around. At some point he needed to make a detour to his quarters and grab his glasses — if his migraine got any worse, it'd become an aneurysm.
Steve didn’t respond.
He didn’t seem like he wanted to, looking almost as tired as Tony did. If he walked up the stairs any slower, he'd put some truth behind everyone's grandpa jokes. Any other day and Tony may have called him out for it — a joke, a tease, something sarcastic and long winded.
Tony gave him a sharp once-over and left it at that.
“We’re in the middle of a grade A crisis,” he said instead, and bitterly at that. “Who gave him approval to leave the grounds?”
Step by step, Steve walked up the remaining stairs, giving light to the five o’clock shadow across his jaw. The dark patches around his face looked out of place, so much that Tony realized he'd never seen the man without a clean shave before.
It didn’t go unnoticed. But he kept it unmentioned.
“I did," Steve plainly answered, resting a hand tiredly on the banister to the stairs.
Tony pursed his lips. “Of course you did.”
He made sure his eye roll was noticeable from a distance. Turning back around on the couch, Tony redirected his attention to his coffee mug, where steam still danced in swirls across the rim.
It was everything he could do to focus his attention elsewhere.
“Clint did a lot of negotiating with SHIELD yesterday,” Steve defended, his tone mollifying in every way it could be. He looked to the banister, where his hand laid across the railing. “We’re all lucky that Hill didn’t put a warrant over our heads for what happened.”
Tony made a face, even though Steve couldn't see it.
“Okay?" He shrugged his shoulders hard enough to rattle his head. "Should I be giving him a gold star?”
The hold on his mug was reaching a dangerous grip — if he had even one ounce of Rogers serum, the entire thing would be shattered into a million different pieces by now. Tony switched one hand to the handle, taking a swig that was larger than his throat could handle.
As he did, he could feel Steve's sigh hit all the way from a distance; even as he stood quietly at the stairs, stuck between the kitchen and the couches. Not making any moves to condense the length that separated them — distance that felt like miles instead of feet, like an entire world had built a wall between them.
It never failed that every time they knocked a few bricks down off that wall, more somehow found their way to take the place.
Tony made no moves to break it down.
Neither did Steve.
Instead, he leaned against the railing of stairs. Not proceeding any further into the lounge, and waiting for the other man to take the lead in the conversation.
“How’d it go with his aunt?” It took time, but eventually, Tony did speak up. Yet his tongue dripped with a bitterness that his tone couldn't absorb, much more raw than even he intended.
Steve didn't seem to be able to absorb it any better.
“I gotta be honest with you Tony,” he said, quietly, all but hushed under his breath. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
A beat fell between them, a pause that stifled thick in the air.
Tony clenched his eyes shut for a moment, and it wasn't until his jaw cracked that he realized he was grinding his teeth. The reality hit him with a force he wasn't expecting. It was official — May Parker knew, she'd been told, she was absolutely positively informed that her nephew had been killed because of his heedlessness, his neglect —
Tony's hand clenched the mug handle until it hurt.
He didn't sign up for this.
Goddammit, he didn't sign up for this.
"Believe it or not," Tony wearily looked over his shoulder, facing Steve head on. "You just did.”
Steve looked away, and for once, Tony couldn't blame him for it.
"Listen, Tony," he was still looking somewhere far off in the kitchen when he spoke. "I know you’re upset right now—”
“Don’t,” Tony harshly bit back, and not sparing a shred of venom in the process. He shifted on the couch again to face Steve, this time waving his mug in the air. “Don’t do that. Don’t act like we’re all buddy-buddy, that you understand me, that you — you know, it’s been a really long day, so if you could just stay away from me, that’d be fantastic.”
The clock on the wall showed seven, and the sun through the windows lit up with a sunrise, but Steve didn't mention it. And if Tony noticed that he didn't mention the smell of whiskey in his coffee, or that he looked absolutely unraveled at the seams, than he was smarter than he gave the soldier credit for.
“Is that how you’re going to deal with this?” Steve pushed himself away from the banister, walking further into the common room — and taking the credit away before Tony had time to give it to him. “By pushing us all away?”
Tony gripped the handle to his mug until his knuckles went white.
“What’s your agenda?" he spit out, his brows furrowed as he stared hard at Steve. "Why are you here? Are you truly not capable of waiting twenty-four hours before you need to give a hearty, chock full lecture on responsibility and all things great about America?”
For a moment, Steve was quiet.
“Would you believe me if I said I was worried about you?”
Tony scoffed.
Steve furrowed his brows at the sound.
“Are you worried about me,” Tony started to ask, the hand not holding his mug waving a finger at Steve. "Or are you worried about what I might do?”
Steve arched an eyebrow, and the fact he even had to consider his answer was enough for Tony.
Still, the word broke from his lips. Short and succinct. "Both."
The birds from outside began to chirp, and Tony relocated his finger from Steve over to his temple, pressing there until the ache behind his eyes started to fade. Even the sound of his own breathing was grating his nerves. The coffee was either helping or making it worse.
“You may have forgotten, but this isn’t my first rodeo with death." Tony shut his eyes tight to break the colors floating behind his clenched eyelids. He didn't bother looking when he took a gulp of his coffee, using his other senses to get it to his mouth. "I may not have lost soldiers before, but I have lost family. No thanks to your friend."
His words were starting to slur, and Tony realized the whiskey in his coffee may have been more than intended. It didn't stop him from chugging another gulp, and one more after that.
The burn wasn't enough coursing through his throat. It needed to hurt more.
“Tony…" Steve had gotten closer — Tony could feel his ridiclious body heat spreading between them. Or maybe that was the liquor hitting. "I know this is hard. It’s going to take time, and patience —”
"Not even twenty-four hours!" Tony snapped, jerking so hard the mug split liquid along his hand. The hot coffee burnt against his skin, and Tony allowed it to. Making no moves to clean it up. "Not even a full day before you just had to show up, you just had to show your righteous face and start spewing patronizing, condescending PSA’s to me!”
Tony's shout echoed the empty lounge. His eyes were still clenched shut when Steve looked away — turned away — and Tony didn't see how his entire chest lifted with a breath so deep it gave the ocean a run for its money. If he'd been paying any attention, any attention at all, he may have also heard the shake that rattled Steve's breath as he let out a heavy sigh.
“We lost him too, you know," Steve's voice was almost too quiet to hear.
Tony wished it had been.
“You lost him?” Tony scoffed, the sound piercingly angry. He slammed his mug down on the table, uncaring as the contents split everywhere. "I'm sorry, exactly how long did you know him?"
Steve met his angry eyes with soft ones, stripping him of every decade he slept frozen in ice.
“You’re right,” he nodded, struggling to find the right words to say — it showed in the bob of his throat, highlighting the shadow that covered his jaw. “It's not that I don't wish I had known him sooner. Or longer. Because I do, we all do. Peter was a good kid." Steve frowned, the downward tug of his lips creating lines on his face Tony hadn't seen before. "It's just...he obviously meant a lot to you, Tony. I don’t think I’ve ever…”
There was a pause.
Steve looked down to the coffee cup on the table, watching as the mess began to leak driblets onto the ground. One drop at a time, creating a small puddle on the marble floor. A mess that somebody, at some point, would need to clean up.
“You called him your kid.” Steve forced his eyes away from the dripping coffee, back to where Tony sat. His head tilted to the side, just narrowly. “Last week…out on the island…you called him your kid.”
The coffee kept dripping.
Tony barely craned his head around to look at Steve — close enough now that if he wanted to take a seat next to him on the couch, he could. If Tony hadn't been so confused, he would've made a run for the other sofa. Or jump straight down the stairs, need be. Whatever it meant to get Steve away from him.
Curiosity always did win when it came to Stark's. And Steve's out-of-the-blue comment was just enough to grab his attention.
"Your point?" Tony made a face that was caught between insulted and perplexed, and something else he was too tired to figure out.
Steve found himself leaning against the armrest of the sofa, slowly, enough that the movement didn't jostle the man sitting there.
“Tony…” Steve started to say. “Was he actually your son —?”
“No!” Tony's eyes were wide enough to fall onto the floor. Jesus, if that didn't get him to sober up quickly. "Christ, no, I didn't have — no!"
He definitely needed to go heavier on the whiskey. Tony brought a hand to his forehead, not realizing it was wet with coffee until it smeared against his temple. He cursed under his breath, rubbing the back of his hand roughly against his jeans before returning to a halfhearted temple massage.
This was exactly the shit he'd been worried about with Parker. Rumors, speculation, tabloid garbage nonsense that would spread like wildfire — this was part of why he wanted to keep Peter secret from the team.
A scoff shook his back. So much for that.
Despite Tony's outburst, Steve still seemed wary. His head tilted further to the side, his confusion deepening. All the more visible underneath the lack of sleep that coated his features.
It was a tired Captain America that Tony took pity on. His confusion was no different than Bambi on a dewy morning, lost and looking for answers. Glancing over at Steve — really looking at him — and Tony didn't understand how even the blues of his eyes had deepened with that confusion. It was almost enough to make him scoff again — because of course Rogers could pull off the Bambi eyes when he wanted to.
Screw it. It didn't matter now. It didn't matter what the team knew and what they didn't know.
It wasn't like Peter was around to worry about anymore.
"He wasn't...he wasn't my kid, no," Tony let out that scoff after all. "He’s been — he was— hanging around here. A lot. More often than I probably should have let him.”
Tony adjusted himself on the sofa, attempting to straighten his back in a way that would evoke poise they both knew he didn’t have right now. The sip of coffee he took only further deteriorated that attempt. The hand holding his mug began to tremble with the liquid he hadn't consumed in ages.
“What can I say, he was needy and I needed..." Tony didn't realize his foot was tapping against the floor until the sound started to aggravate him. "It doesn't matter what I needed. The kid was supposed to be a one-hit-wonder in Berlin, that's it, that's all. I needed an enhanced on my side, that's what this was about — that's all this was supposed to be about."
Steve noticeably slumped. "Tony —"
"But it started after he rejected my offer to join the team. Only after the Accords were tossed out — wouldn't have him involved in that nonsense, wouldn't dream of it," Tony kept talking as if he didn't hear Steve. Which he likely didn't, judging by his far off stare to the kitchen cabinets. "I brought him over to tinker with his suit, nothing more. Then it kept happening, but for different reasons — ‘let me show you this invention, come watch the game, help me upgrade DUM-E.’ The kid was smart. Damn smart, Rogers.”
The words bounced with an echo as Tony found silence more captivating than his story. He kept his gaze set straight ahead, his expression cold and tight.
It'd only been six months since all that started. Less than half and year, one hand and a digit from the other, and that was it.
So why did it feel like so much more?
“Last time I had him over — before all this shit went down, it was to show him that damn chameleon helmet." Tony cleared his throat, roughly. "I kept telling myself excuses — why I wasn't okay with you and the others knowing. Kept saying that maybe the further we got away from the Accords, maybe..."
It didn't matter.
It didn't matter that there was a time, a point somewhere along the way — kept so deep in the back of his mind that Tony never accessed it — that he wanted Peter to be apart of the team.
It didn't matter now.
"I was relieved the night he snuck in." Tony looked down at his coffee mug, cursing the contents inside for his loose lips. If Steve had anything to say about his insobriety, he kept it to himself. Maybe he earned that credit after all. "I wanted him involved. I wanted to show him off — hell, I was proud of him. The damn kid couldn’t be stopped, Berlin was just the start of it. I made him the suit and I took it away and he still went out doing his spider-thing. Stubborn as an ox, that one."
Tony spun around on the sofa so quickly, it nearly had Steve doing a double-take.
“A building fell on him, you know."
Just like that, Steve met his gaze, head on. His eyebrows jumped high enough to reach the ceiling.
“An entire building,” Tony went on to say, a wagging finger putting emphasis to his words. “I wasn’t there, I didn’t know — hell, the kid even warned me ahead of time. Told me about the trouble and I didn't listen. He was alone and...and…and he got out of that situation. All by himself. He's a kid, Cap, but he's...he's a hell of badass."
The present tense leaked from his mouth, and Tony cursed under his breath, realizing it too late.
Was. He was.
Because he was gone.
He got the kid killed, and now he was gone.
Tony shifted on the couch, letting his back rest against the cushions where the ache in his neck briefly let up.
“Always going on about responsibility…" One closed fist scrubbed hard at his eye. "Always saying that if he had the power to do something, it was his responsibility to do it.”
The birds had gotten louder, and Tony could feel the skin underneath his eye grow tender and raw. If he rubbed any harder, he'd go blind.
Leaning forward, the throb in his back returned as he reached for his coffee mug, grabbing the handle despite the liquid that kept the outside wet and dripping. It was a minute too late that he realized there was an MIT logo plastered on the center of the mug, with streams of dried coffee staining the ceramic material.
He purposefully held the cup in his other hand to turn the logo away.
“I knew he could handle things by himself, but…I didn’t want him to have to do it alone.” Tony spoke with a raw emotion that cracked in his throat. He tried to hide it inside the mug, taking a sip that was longer than necessary. “He told me he saw me as a...sorta mentor."
The next words disappeared into the half-empty coffee mug, settled right over his lips.
"What a fucked up person to choose as a mentor.”
Tony wasn’t sure when the coffee had gone cold. He chugged the rest without care, finishing it in one quick swig.
However long the next pause was could've been a second to a day, and Tony wouldn't have noticed. It wasn't until Steve cleared his throat — and then again, rejuvenating the stabbing knives behind Tony's eyes — that the silence cleared away.
“Tony, I…" Steve took two small steps to be in front of Tony, his hands so deep in his pockets it was a wonder they didn't touch his feet. "Listen, I'm—”
Tony forced himself to look up, finding Steve's eyes looking straight into his.
They were hollow, almost empty.
“Why didn’t you do more?”
"I'm sorry —”
Tony shot up from the couch before Steve had time to move out of the way.
“Don’t," he all but mumbled, staggering to his feet before heading straight for the stairs. "Save it for your PSA's.”
Steve turned at the hip to watch Tony leave, the white-knuckle grip he had on the banister noticeable even from a distance. His steps were heavy going down the stairs, and only once he departed was Steve's sigh the only sound that remained.
That, and the coffee dripping on the floor.
Two decades.
That's how long Happy Hogan had been a Stark Industries employee. Two decades under Tony — not just the man’s chauffeur, turned bodyguard, turned Head of Security. It was something more than just a paycheck. Tony and him had developed a strong friendship, a brothership of sorts over their time spent together.
Happy would say, without a doubt, that Tony Stark was one of his best friends. He’d lay down his life for the man, as the billionaire had done for him in the past. Without hesitation.
Over the course of those twenty-some years, the ever-so-odd tasks he'd been assigned with started to pile up. Experiences that would shock any ordinary man — especially once Iron Man came to exist. If permitted to write a book about it all, it’d easily be a top seller. And Happy considered it — boy did he consider it. If he had any writing skills, he'd be on Opera's best selling list by now.
There were the playboy days, the times he'd screened women for Tony — ensuring no one was too crazy or dirty to get in his bed. The young and reckless days, when he'd bought paraphernalia for him when Pepper refused to, a dabble in this and a dabble in that, none of which ever stuck.
And then when he took on the mantle of Iron Man, God did his life get weird. Suddenly, he was carrying around briefcases of the man’s armored suit, driving around undercover Russian spies, and personally taking on swarms of creeps in fist-to-fist combat. At this point, they'd probably pin his autobiography as fiction.
But nothing — nothing compared to this.
“I-I don’t know, you tell me.” Happy waved his hand with visible aggravation. “You’re the salesman. Sell me something.”
The salesman — gray-haired with matching beard — quirked an eyebrow in response.
“Well…I suppose cost factor needs to be established first. Your basic materials will be the cheapest — bronze, copper," he spoke so slowly that Happy wanted to strangle him. "Price goes up with stainless steel. There’s wood, of course — mahogany, walnut, cherry, maple —”
Happy let out a frustrated sigh. He didn't have time to listen to a man long past retirement rattle off every piece of wood there was in existence.
“Boss says to make it the most expensive thing you got,” he mumbled, tugging at the tie that had become uncomfortably tight around his neck.
It wasn't his fault that he was snappy. The casket store was creeping him out, on every level possible. Never, in his entire life, had he stepped into one of these stores before. It was bad enough dreading the day when his parents would pass and give him that responsibility. He was a single child, it would all be on his shoulders.
But to be here for a kid?
Working for Tony always brought on first experiences, but this was one he wished he had passed on.
“What...what about size?" Happy gave a quick glance around him, both eyebrows knitting in the middle. "All these — everything on display — they’re too big. Way too big.”
The salesman stared at him, a blank and emotionless expression written across his face.
Happy assumed anyone working in a casket store of all places would need to be somewhat dead inside to get the job done.
“Too big?” the man repeated.
“Yeah,” Happy insisted, nodding at a pace that had him seeing double. “The kid wasn’t that big. He was like…well, kind of scrawny. He’d drown in these things. And they’re way too long, he was only…yay high?”
Happy held his hand in the air as if he was measuring the height of someone, reaching to his chest. He looked down and immediately lowered the hand a bit — and then raised it a bit again — and then lowered it and kept it there.
The salesman blinked a few times before shaking his head.
“We have…child size. And adult size," he explained, eyeing the walls that contained the display cases. "You can always pad the corners to avoid any shifting of the body."
His voice was so monotone and slow that it was driving Happy crazy. He tugged at his tie again, pulling it loose.
“Whatever,” he mumbled. “Adult size, whatever is most expensive. It’s not like we’re gonna have a body to bury anyway.”
The salesman nodded, walking behind his desk and pulling up the necessary paperwork for the order form. And moving at the pace of a snail, Happy noticed. So much for getting this done quickly.
Happy went to lean against the nearest wall, only to discover there wasn’t one space that hadn’t been decked out in casket displays. He jumped away, his whole body jerking as if he had been burnt.
"Jesus, Tony..." The feel of his breakfast lingered in his throat and Happy swallowed hard, desperate not to re-taste his hash-browns.
He had done a lot in the past twenty years working for Stark Industries.
But this was the worst thing Tony Stark ever made him do.
The conference room was quiet. Painfully quiet.
Gathering the team was harder than Steve expected it to be. It took all day to convince them to meet up, some being more difficult than others. It was rare he had to put his foot down, but as much as he wanted to be their friend, he had to be their leader first. At the end of the day, that was his job.
'19:00, sharp. Be there.' They all got his memo, loud and clear.
It was late at night by the time they all regrouped, sitting around the large conference table in one of the many private rooms within the compound. They came one by one, until Tony was the last of them to join, mountain glass full of alcohol in his hand. No one mentioned it.
They also didn't mention how he bypassed the table completely, instead taking a seat in a corner of the room — far away from the others.
Once they were all present, and only once it was made abundantly clear that no one wanted to talk, did Sam finally break the silence.
“I really don’t want to be here right now," he practically mumbled, slumping so far down in his seat that his knees hit the underneath of the table.
“None of us do.” Rhodey looked up from the documents scattered across the table, only briefly eyeing Sam along the way.
“Yeah?” Sam sat up so suddenly that his back went ramrod straight. “Then why isn’t Barton here? Why does he get to go home while we suffer through this bullshit?”
Standing at the head of the table, and eyeing the same documents as Rhodey, Steve found his expression hardening.
“Sam —”
“Because Clint just watched a boy his son’s age die," Natasha interrupted before he could go any further, her tone a hot knife that cut through them all. "Pardon the man for being a bit shell-shocked and wanting to spend time with his family.”
The only thing sharper than the sound of Natasha's voice was the look Sam proceeded to give her. And the sound of Bruce clearing his throat didn't go unnoticed.
“I believe we’re all shell-shocked right now," Bruce kept his voice low and quiet, as if he didn't want to be heard to begin with.
He was — Natasha was sitting right next to him.
“I’m not. I’m disgusted.” Natasha shifted in her chair, turning to look at the corner of the room where Tony all but hid himself away. “And I’m not afraid to speak up either. None of this would have happened had you not involve a child in this mess, Stark.”
Silence was her only response.
It sounded foreign, out of place. Normally one to throw back banter, to snap or bite or have a witty remark raring to go, Tony instead stayed quiet. He hadn't looked to the group, not once. His head stayed bowed and his eyes stayed low, watching the whiskey swirl around in his glass.
His detachment only further angered Natasha. Even Sam relented on his heated stare when he saw the look she proceeded to give him — it was a look he didn't want to mess with.
Steve dropped a stack of papers with a sigh that could've blown a tornado through the room.
“That’s enough. This is not why I asked you all to be here.” The papers were gathered and handed to Rhodey in a stack, no sooner than Steve leaned over the table with palms pressed heavy against the flat surface. “Nat's right, Clint is with his family right now. I gave him the permission to leave grounds, a twenty-four-hour absence off base before before SHIELD puts us in lockdown.”
There wasn't a single jaw that didn't clean the floor — Tony excluded.
While he took a long gulp of his drink, everyone at the table seemed to explode all at once.
“What?” Sam hissed.
Wanda shook her head. “That cannot be.”
Bruce furrowed his brows. “You can’t be serious.”
"Listen, listen!" Steve hushed the room to the best of his ability. "We negotiated the best we could. But facts remain — Peter wasn’t an official member of the team. And…and he was a minor of age. SHIELD doesn’t want us leaving the facility until they decide how to proceed with this.”
Bruce looked all around, not grabbing anyone's attention in the process.
“Proceed?” he asked, his eyes growing wide. “Proceed like…‘putting us in jail’ proceed?”
When he turned to Natasha, she didn't give him so much a glance. It was all the answer he needed.
"Oh, jeeze," Bruce mumbled, removing his glasses and pinching tightly at the bridge of his nose.
“Great,” Sam muttered right back, with a hand flopping in the air. “We avoided becoming fugitives only to land right back where we were.”
Steve adamantly shook his head. "That's not the case —"
“Sounds like it to me,” Natasha seamlessly cut in, folding her arms across her chest as she leaned back in her chair.
Steve tried to give a heated look, but even he was too tired for anything past a flicker of frustration.
“Rogers said it himself…" Rhodey gathered the stack of papers and placed them into the briefcase on his chair, packing them away one at a time. "We got a minor killed. I can’t foresee this ending well for us.”
"Whoa, no!" Sam pointed a rigid finger down the length of the table. “We didn’t do anything."
"Sam," Rhodey shot his head toward the man, with a glare on his face that aged him by years. "When you're on a team, that means taking responsibility for —"
"Cut it out!" Sam ploughed right over him. "Stop treating me like I'm brand new to this —!"
Rhodey's jaw tightened. "Then you should know that when one person does something around here, it falls on us all —"
"What did I just say, man!"
"Sam —!"
"Don't —!"
Steve banged his palm down on the table, just loud enough to jolt everyone’s attention.
"Knock it off!"
Rhodey and Sam fell quiet. Albeit reluctantly.
The exhaustion on Steve's face may have had a part in that. The show of frustration definitely did.
“Listen…" Steve took a deep breath in to compose himself. "As difficult as this is right now, we have other pressing matters to deal with. The chameleon helmet is still missing. The magician is still at large. SHIELD doesn’t know who tampered with the Chitarui — now is not the time for us to be at each other's throats.”
“Let them deal with it.”
Chairs swiveled around and those who were standing turned to face the corner of the room. Just in time to watch Tony sip from his liquor, looking almost casual in the way he tilted the glass against his lips.
Rhodey hesitated before shaking his head. “It’s not that easy, Tones.”
A look fell over Tony's face, swallowed whole by the intoxication coating his features.
“Why not?” Tony looked over at Rhodey, the dark bags under his eyes hidden only by his glasses. He gestured his drink aimlessly in the air. “We get involved, we mess things up. We get people killed.”
For a split second, he locked eyes with Wanda — her back was towards him, and his high-tech glasses shrouded his face. But it was long enough that the others noticed. It spoke what he wouldn't dare.
Almost immediately, he returned his gaze to the drink in his hands.
“If they want it done a certain way," Tony slurred, "let them do it themselves."
Natasha pursed her lips in a show of anger, and Rhodey turned his head away completely — though as he rubbed the nape of his neck, it became clear that his reasons for anger were different than Natasha's.
After all, Tony's outward show of drunkenness wasn't exactly an every day occurrence.
If the room hadn't fallen so quiet, maybe Rhodey's hushed comment of 'almost a year, Tones' would've gone unheard.
For everyone's sake, Steve pretended not to hear it.
“This is our responsibility, Tony," he said, forcing firmness to his voice that didn't quite meet his eyes. "It’s our mess to clean up."
“No," Tony drawled out the word until it became six syllables ending with a hiccup. "Disappear-O the Magnificent is not our mess.”
Steve leveled him a look. "Tony —"
“I will take responsibility for the helmet — I already have, my guys are working on that." Tony gestured towards the other occupants of the room with a lazy twizzle of his index finger. "But the rest of it is not our problem. And quite frankly, with all offense intended, I don’t see it as my problem either.”
Turning around until she was basically chest-to-back of the seat, Natasha stared at Tony with a sense of disbelief.
“Are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one goddamn second?”
The question remained unanswered.
The only person furthest than Tony was Vision, who sat at the very end of the table, not far from Wanda.
Quietly, he raised a single hand in the air. “If I may vocalize a theory —”
“No, you may not.” Tony stood from his chair no sooner than he spoke, staggering and spilling his drink until he found balance. “I’m done here.”
He barely took three steps before Sam scoffed, watching as he stumbled to the exit.
“Walking away like the coward you are.”
“Hey!” Steve was quick to intervene — but not quick enough.
“Say that again, Wilson?” Tony stopped dead in his tracks, the door all but forgotten. The contents of his glass could've spilled out completely and he wouldn't have cared.
Sam shot up from his chair at lightning speed, the wheels pushing it back until it was too far away to catch.
“You heard me,” he struck a cord, that much was obvious. A hard sniff of his nose and he straightened his spine. “Everyone in this room knows that you’re responsible for that kid's death, and now you won’t step up to the plate and make things right.”
“That’s too far, Sam.” Steve shot his arm out — as if Sam was ready to physically attack Tony and he'd be the only one to stop it.
Wanda cocked her head to the side. “Is it?”
Steve didn't hesitate to turn and face her.
“Yes, Wanda," his tone was a gentle warning. "It is."
Still, Wanda shook her head.
“Why could we not save him?" Her questions were sharp on her tongue. "Why was protecting the city more important than protecting our own?”
The only immediate response was the return of silence, tense and stifling in the air.
“Because that’s our job," Steve finally forced the words out of his mouth. "That’s what we do — we protect those who can't fend for themselves.”
“That kid was trapped," Sam retorted, sourly. “One of us should have gotten to him.”
Rhodey's sigh was like a gust bursting through the room.
“We were ambushed,” he was fast to say. "We did our best, that's all we can ever do —"
“That’s an excuse," Natasha cut in, her head so low no one could see her lips move.
Sam knew it was her who spoke. He craned his head low until she had no other choice but to look at him.
“Yeah?” he asked. “And where were you while we were out in the field?”
Bruce put a timid hand between them both — no different than Steve, as if he could keep them both from breaking each others necks.
“Sam, we know you’re upset, but you —”
“Don't," Sam harshly rebutted. "I have just as much psychological training in this as you do."
Despite Sam's growing anger, Bruce stayed calm. It wasn't like he had a choice.
“Then you should know this isn’t any one person’s fault," he insisted. "We all did our best out there —”
“No. We didn’t.” Tony’s voice was almost unrecognizable, heavy with a slur. It caught everyone's attention. “We could have done more.”
WHAM!
Steve slammed his balled fist down on the table, the wood shaking and splintering in the middle.
“Alright, that’s enough!” he shouted, barely paying attention as Bruce and Sam noticeably pushed their chairs away from the table — the wood continued to splinter long after his fist made contact.
Even Tony looked at him with eyes wider than the ceiling lights.
The next breath Steve forced was shaky, and in the silence that followed, there was simply no denying it.
“We are not going to let this tear us apart," Steve forced the words out of a throat that didn't want to speak. When he returned his gaze to the table — to everyone around him — the blue in his eyes was sharp. The ceiling lights had no effect on them. "We are a team. We have fought hard this year to remain that way. And I understand last night has caused a tremendous amount of stress for us all — trust me when I say I am just as devastated by this. Somebody died. Somebody young, somebody we all — in some way, cared about. Somebody we should have protected. It is our job to have each others backs out there, and we all failed in protecting him.”
The room was silent for another moment. It dragged on until it was too much to handle.
“No, Rogers," Tony shook his head, slow at first, harder by the second. "They're right. I'm the reason Parker died out there."
Steve looked to the ceiling in an attempt to keep what little composure he had.
“Tony, you’re not —”
“I recruited the kid," Tony ignored him, stumbling forward with slight drunkenness. "I brought him in on that mission. And I failed to get him out in time. Not you —" Tony pointed his finger at nobody in particular. "Not you." He kept pointing in random directions. "Not even you." That time, the finger landed on Bruce, who kept his comment to himself. "I gave him that suit because I saw a great amount of potential in him — I saw the better parts of me that I couldn’t live up to. And I swore to myself that I would protect him, whatever that took I would make sure he had protection."
Tony's loose lips did nothing to subdue Natasha. Not even the slur to his words cut through her anger.
"He was a child, Stark —"
"And I had Happy watching him for the better part of this year!" Tony's voice grew high-pitched, and liquid split out of his mountain glass as he gestured it carelessly at Natasha. "I had every damn protocol I could think of, every Iron Man suit ready to save his ass if he screwed the pooch — I was watching him, I was…I was..."
A breath left his mouth, with no words attached.
Tony suddenly sat down in the nearest empty chair, the wheels taking him back a few feet before he hit the wall.
"It wasn’t good enough.”
The next silence that fell was different. All encompassing, finding corners of the room it hadn't touched before.
Tony swallowed, hard, his throat noticeably spasming along the way.
“And I don’t blame him,” he continued, though the tightness between his eyebrows deceived his words. “He heard someone in need of help, he went after it — like he always did. No problem was ever too small for him. He saw those Chitarui, he knew we were being ambushed...he did what he did best. Prevented anything worse from happening. I don’t blame him."
Tony downed the rest of his drink in one swig, barely hissing at the burning alcohol that poured down into his chest. He savored the feeling, relishing in the heat that spread through his body.
"I blame myself." Tony's eyes stared ahead, lost somewhere that was far away from the conference room he sat in. His body present, but his mind long since missing. "I should've taught him more.”
Tony stared at the empty whiskey glass, the reflection of his feet warped at the bottom. If he looked hard enough, he could see a bit of himself staring back at him. Just his eyes, the brown inside of them being overtaken by eyelids too heavy to keep open.
“I should have slowed the world down...give a boy like that a chance to grow into the man he was supposed to become.”
Eyes were on him, he could feel it without seeing them. They burned through his skin no different than the burn of liquor that hit his throat, no different than the flames that consumed a kid far too young to be taken from the world.
Tony closed his eyes shut, and kept them shut.
It didn't matter what SHIELD did, it didn't matter if Tony found himself locked behind bars, or on the Raft for the remainder of his life.
He deserved it.
He was the catalyst to the team’s deterioration, to their inevitable downfall. He could try to keep them together, duct tape the broken pieces where he could. But one by one, he’d let them down.
Parker was proof of that.
"So leave." Tony looked up and shrugged. "Don't trust me? Don't blame you. Don't have faith I'll have your back out there — go, now. I won't blame you for that either. Just like I don't blame the kid...it wasn't his fault, and it won't be yours if you leave."
If there was any consideration to the idea, any inkling of a chance that a single member deliberated the idea, they didn't have time to show it.
And Tony, so wrapped up in his own disheveled thoughts, didn’t even notice when the room’s walls lit to life.
“Tony Stark.”
Otherwise plain drywall illuminated with the reflection of a bright, vivid orange. The colors sparked with an electricity that came from no outlet, crackling with embers that had no flames.
The figure stepped through the portal, one leg at a time, with a heavy red cloak flowing behind him.
“For being one of the smartest people on this planet," he started to say, stopping only once appearing through the portal. "You sure are dumb as hell.”
Tony's eyes grew twice their size, with a reflection of fire sparklers lighting the red spider-cracks along the way. Only once the portal closed did the fizzling sparkles dissipate. Despite the sound made, they left no burn marks on the floor.
Tony blinked.
“And who the hell are you?”
And then again.
And once more to sober up.
Standing in the corner furthest from Tony, the man squinted his eyes and tilted his head, looking Tony up and down before settling his gaze in place.
“I’m Doctor Stephen Strange,” he announced, with no shortage of prescience emitting through his tone. “Sorcerer Supreme, and Master of the Mystic Arts.”
Before Tony could even consider getting his legs under him, Sam beat him to it.
"Ah, hell no!”
Bruce shot out his arm to hold him back.
“Hold on, Sam—”
“No!” Sam pushed right past that arm, already five leaps across the room. "No, I am done with this magic bullshit!”
It was Steve who pulled Sam back, just narrowly, and with little effort at that. By the huff of exasperation that followed, Sam was far from thrilled about it.
An entire fight could've broken out and Tony would've known no difference. His eyes stayed straight ahead, locked firmly on the man in front of him — the way he was dressed ended up being the least disconcerting thing of all.
Realization cut through the effects of the whiskey like a hot knife to butter.
“You’re the one who warned Banner," Tony didn't miss a beat.
Neither did Strange.
“Apparently not well enough,” he retorted, looking around the room just once before setting his sights on Tony. “Your friend. He's still alive.”
Natasha slowly stood up from her chair, with Wanda and Bruce following suit. Slowly, they pulled away from the conference table and drew closer to Stephen, steps full of incredulity leading the way.
The entire room could've been packed with people and Strange still wouldn't have looked anywhere but at Tony.
“Peter Parker." Strange lowered his chin, staring Tony down. "The kid is still alive.”