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When Steve first saw Tony again, he didn’t know what to think.
There was too much in his head, after all the time they’d spent apart, after all they’d said and done to one another the last time they’d been in the same room, and not least because of all that had changed since the world as they knew it had come to an abrupt end. A dozen different reactions floated and wavered, unrealized. To choose one would be to grasp mist with his bare hands.
But of course, it didn’t really matter what Steve thought in that moment. It didn’t really matter what any of them felt, because they were heroes through and through, and they knew better than to allow their personal issues to come between them and the needs of a bereaved universe. They would fight together, and they would do it well, because no other choice existed. Not for them.
If Steve thought anything, it was a formless wish that someday there would be the after Tony had once mentioned. And then, maybe, there could be a choice.
*
When Steve first saw Tony fight again, something in him woke up.
It wasn’t a feeling he could name, or point to, or dwell on for more than a fractured moment—he was fighting too, after all—but he felt it come and go in his consciousness like the flash of red and gold in the corner of his eye. Not the usual pride he felt for a teammate, not the basic concern he would always feel, and different from the feelings he had once gently nurtured for his friend.
The emotion was gone a moment later, and Steve had more important things to worry about than pinning down one distracted moment in a brawl. He couldn’t stop to want anything, much less to ask for anything. Not now. He hardly stopped to breathe until the sounds of combat had begun to fade—
But it was one fight of many, and there was no stopping then, either. There couldn’t be, when all of them fought for nothing less than everything that mattered.
*
When Steve saw Tony take a blast meant for him, he realized he’d been wrong.
*
It wasn’t the end yet. It couldn’t be. But Steve knew, sitting by the side of the unconscious Iron Man on the field of battle, that this was far too important to leave any longer. He was just trying to come up with the words.
Sam had joked, once, about the speeches Steve gave, and at the time Steve had laughed. Of course he spent time thinking of what to say—no situation that called for a speech could call for anything less than his very best. That didn’t always mean it was difficult. Those thoughts, of freedom, of justice, of his ideals, lived all the time more or less quietly in the back of his head, so when the time did come it was sometimes only a matter of pulling out the right ones like ingredients from the refrigerator. Other times it was more like finding the right ingredient from the back of a high shelf behind a half-dozen other jars. But those thoughts, the important ones, were never far out of reach.
This thought wasn’t one of those. It didn’t feel the way they always did, clear and sharp and incontrovertible. He still didn’t know what it was.
“S… Steve?”
“Tony!” Steve couldn’t help the too-loud relief in his voice when the nano components of Iron Man’s mask finally receded. The suit defaulted to self-repair and cover Tony’s body when he was unconscious, for which Steve was truly grateful, but nothing quite compared to seeing Tony safe with his own eyes.
He realized, abruptly, that between sunglasses and armored lenses and the faceplate itself, he hadn’t seen Tony’s eyes until now. He wanted—
“Huh,” Tony was saying, rough tone clarifying as he came fully awake. “So I didn’t die.”
“No, you didn’t,” Steve smiled.
He still didn’t have the words, but he knew now what he wanted. He took a breath.
“You know, Tony, I thought I’d be glad to know you still cared about me, after… what happened between us.”
“Steve?” The faint amusement on Tony’s face slipped. “I—you’re not—what?”
“Why did you take that hit, Tony?”
At that, Tony’s smile vanished altogether, and he dropped his eyes finally away from Steve’s. Nanocircuitry formed and receded almost silently along his collar, an instinctive self-defense.
“You know why.”
Steve did.
“You thought I was in danger, and you wanted to save me.” In that, at least, Steve could never find fault. “But that can’t have been the only way—Tony, wasn’t there something else you could have done, something—“
“I don’t know!” Tony snapped. He sat up quickly, still not looking at Steve. “I don’t know.”
For a moment, the only sound was their too-heavy breathing and the more distant movements of their comrades, giving them space. Hold and release. Hold and release. Tony met Steve’s eyes again.
“I don’t know if there was another way. I just thought that if you were in danger, and I could do something… it would be worth it, to give up whatever’s left of my life for you. Even after what happened between us.”
The honesty in his tone and the determined warmth in his eyes brought that new want in Steve surging to the fore. He knew that his impulse wasn’t Important the way some thoughts were important, and that it was selfish to choose that want and even more so to ask for it.
He knew, now, that it mattered all the same.
“I don’t want that,” he said. But he’d said it before, and there was no reaction this time, either. “It’s not enough for me.”
Tony’s eyes widened and Steve went on hurriedly.
“It’s selfish. It is. But I don’t want—half, or whatever’s left, or—Tony, I want all of it,” he persisted. “We hurt each other, and I want to make it right, but I don’t want just whatever forgiveness is implied by some last act of protection. I want to work for more than that. I want to live the rest of our lives, together or not, on speaking terms or not, knowing we had the choice to really try. I believe it’s worth it. And if we can make it right, then I want to give you more than half of my life, too.”
When the words finally came to a stop, Steve was breathing harder than ever, as though the fight had never really ended. Tony didn’t seem to be breathing at all. He just sat and stared, eyes wide, so blatantly full of emotion that it was impossible for Steve to guess what feeling might come out on top.
“Tony?” he said more quietly. The more time passed the more he realized how his declaration could be taken, and how he might, in truth, want it to be taken.
He wanted Tony to know how he felt.
“You really scared me for a moment there,” Tony said, with false lightness and a real smile. “I thought you were about to give some epic letdown speech, heh.”
“And… what do you think, now?”
Tony’s determined face returned as he climbed to his feet, extending one gauntleted hand to where Steve was still kneeling in the crater where the shield and the suit had struck the ground together. They stood up together, winded but well, and Tony’s sharp eyes took in Steve and the ruined landscape in a single glance.
“I think I want to try,” he said. “I think I want—“
There Tony closed his eyes and dropped Steve’s hand, and Steve let him. It wasn’t time now, but there would be time. He had to believe that.
“I think I’m ready to keep fighting,” Tony said.
“I think I’m ready to win,” Steve answered.
Tony laughed brightly, forming up his suit and powering up his repulsor nodes for flight. “Yeah, winning sounds about right. Coming, Cap?”
There was a choice. There was a choice, and they were making it right now. Steve smiled back and stepped closer.
They hadn’t practiced the move much, and what with everything that happened they hadn’t had a chance for a long time, but Steve’s body had an even better memory than his mind; he put his feet on Iron Man’s boots, clasped his hands to newly-shaped grips in the armor’s pauldrons, and held tight as they took off toward their comrades. It was a little graceless, and a lot unpracticed, but flying together felt like a promise. To fight the next battle, and fight hard enough to come out the other side of it just like this. To give their lives, instead of their deaths.
If they were going to fight for everything that mattered, they would have to fight with nothing less than everything they had.