#amonaewrites

Title: Won’t Catch Me Crying for Laire (laireshi) Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Pairing: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark Word Count: 732 Tags: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Hurt, Ambiguous/Open Ending Summary: Captain America is gone and the whole world mourns his loss, but Tony Stark finds himself coping with a bottle and an ancient Nokia.

Title: Don't Gimme No Friction for Robin_tCJ Rating: Explicit Pairing: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark Word Count: 1,986 Tags: Crack, Uniform Kink, Porn With Plot, Betting, Established Relationship Summary: Steve and Tony have an ongoing bet.

Title: Whatever I Can Get for MassiveSpaceWren Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Pairing: Tony Stark/Bucky Barnes Word Count: 1,863 Tags: mcu - Freeform, pseudo-villain, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Angst, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Identity Porn, Minor Violence, Amnesia, Memory Loss Summary: The Winter Soldier comes back to New York with a new goal: find Tony Stark. If only he were clear on the reasons why.

Title: Somewhere Only We Know for sleepyoceanprince Rating: Mature Pairing: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark Word Count: 1,993 Tags: Demon!Steve, Pre-Relationship, Hurt No Comfort, Possession, Exorcisms, Threats of Violence Summary: Steve comes back from battle acting strangely and Tony takes it upon himself to find out what the Hell is going on.

Title: Our Color is Blue for Veldeia Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Pairing: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark Word Count: 1,117 Tags: Early in Canon, Flirting, Pre-Relationship, blueberry, Tony being a general pain in the ass Summary: Steve turns down a snack from Tony, not realizing how irritating it will be in the long run. When he’s had enough, he hunts down Tony for a confrontation.

Title: I Remember Your Smile for morphia Rating: General Audiences Pairing: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, past mention of Steve Rogers/Peggy Carter Word Count: 944 Tags: Inspired by Music, Sad, Happy Ending, seriously do not listen to the song while reading this Summary: Tony creates a playlist of songs he thinks that Steve would enjoy. Steve reacts more than he thought to one in particular.

Title: I Spy Something That Is... for kleos_aphthithon Rating: General Audiences Pairing: Billy Kaplan/Teddy Altman Word Count: 658 Tags: Trapped In Elevator, Fluff, Cutesy, adorable boyfriends, Billy being an optimist Summary: Teddy knows the elevator in his building is old. He knows this. So really, it’s no surprise when it breaks down.

Title: Misstep for dreabean (missdreawrites) Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Pairing: Tony Stark/Bucky Barnes Word Count: 1,535 Tags: Explosions, Happy Ending, but first lots of panic, Bucky bringing his A-game Summary: During a mission, Bucky takes a misstep and finds himself with his foot on a bomb. His first choice for help is Iron Man.

It took months for them to make sense of the changes around them. It probably would have taken Tony a few weeks, at most. The difference was subtle at first, things they had already noticed: increased dexterity and cognitive thought processes; several cases of the bites not taking to infection as well as they had, or in some instances, killing the bitten instantly; and the most alarming—those who had turned coming back to themselves. Steve didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it, until he saw it happening to one of their group. There had been reports on the radio lines, whispers of something that sounded too good to be true, too full of hope.

But there it was, clear as day, a woman who had been all but dead and pulling at her chains only a day earlier and was waking the next with a nasty infection but no sign of the virus. Steve watched, wide-eyed, as Bruce checked her over with the same bewilderment that he felt. He could see the hope, the fear, the reluctance in Bruce’s eyes when he glanced back, knew the doctor was thinking the same thing that had been filtering through Steve’s mind over the past several weeks.

What about Tony?

Steve barely dared to believe, barely dared to hope that there was even a chance that the genius had made it through this unscathed. Tony had been bitten on the very cusp of the turn in the disease, the beginning of everything moving toward recovery instead of infection. There was a small chance, Bruce had informed him, that Tony had been one of the first to come out of it, human again on the other side. Steve hardly allowed himself the spare moment to dwell on the possibility. He had seen him, watched those amber eyes glass over while he tried to focus on the last words Steve had said to him, possibly the last words he ever would say to him.

Steve wished he could go back to that moment, wished he had the courage to say something more, something meaningful. Though no matter what he had said, back then, it wouldn’t change a damn thing now.

After they were sure that the virus really had receded—that the numbers of undead had dwindled to almost nothing, that those infected came back to themselves only a few days, or even hours after—their group split up. Many of the civilians returned to their home towns, hoping to find others they thought they had lost in the initial scramble. Steve wasn’t sure where his home was, not anymore. Bruce left them halfway through Indiana, mentioning something he needed to check on, though Steve suspected the man needed his space after so much time in confined quarters and high-stress situations with others. Clint and Natasha seemed eager to get back to New York, to see what (if anything) remained of S.H.I.E.L.D. Steve wasn’t sure it was a good idea, going back to the city that held so many memories, both good and bad, but he tagged along. Maybe he could settle back into Brooklyn, help with the rebuild efforts. If anything, it would keep his mind off of what could have been, what he may have done differently, had he known.

They were in Pittsburg, having stopped overnight to re-supply and rest, when he saw the first one. On the side of an old warehouse, faded from exposure to the sun and rain, was a graffiti tag, unlike the others Steve had seen in the past. However, he recognized it, saw in the swirling blue patterns and calculations an image that few others would be able to see.

It was JARVIS, staring back at him from the concrete walls.

“Jesus,” he hissed, feeling Nat and Clint just as frozen behind him, all three staring at the same visual, the same possibility.

“Maybe it…was before he was too far gone?” Natasha offered, always the voice of reason. She had known that Steve let Tony go free in the woods, known the moment he returned to camp, looking crushed for an entirely different set of reasons. But Steve had seen him in the forest, known how limply his hands held the pistol that Steve had forced into them. There was no way his Tony, that Tony, had the dexterity to create such an elaborate tag.

Steve listened to the radio feverently after that point, waiting for something else, another sign, another hint. Nothing came through, just more survival stories, more calls for supplies and help from all corners of North America. He had almost given up hope when they saw the second one, scrawled on the peeling front of a billboard along highway 80.

“Shit, do you think he really did it? Found a cure?” Clint made an attempt to scale the platform, to get a better look at the tag, but the ladder had been torn from its rusted hinges. It lay in the grass, tangled among weeds and pebbles, long forgotten and useless.

Natasha popped her shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, though Steve could see the slightest hint of excitement behind her gaze, bright eyes still glued to the blue swirls on the billboard. “If anyone was crazy enough to do it, you bet your ass it would be Stark.”

Steve didn’t want to hope, but at the same time, he couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t stop the tiny flicker of it, dancing just beneath his chest.

On the way back to New York, they found several more of the scrawling images, each slightly different than the last, as though they were processing a different set of algorithms. Steve wished that Bruce had stuck with them, at least to decipher the first few pieces of graffiti. Maybe then Steve wouldn’t be wondering whether he was getting his hopes up for nothing.

New York, unsurprisingly, was in a state of disarray. Most buildings were abandoned, though there were areas of the city where people who had either stayed or returned were starting to rebuild. When they arrived at the Alexander Hamilton bridge, Steve paused on the other side of Harlem River. He didn’t have to say anything, could see the archer and assassin watching with dual looks of understanding. They knew how much it would break him to go back, to return to the tower just to see it as empty and forlorn as the rest of the city.

So he went to Brooklyn, where he helped families rebuild their homes and builders gut apartments to be repurposed as temporary housing. He settled into one of those buildings, collecting a few meager belongings from his old apartment, which had been ransacked along with the others on his old city block. Thankfully, anything he had that held value to him seemed like junk to anyone else: a few faded photographs, a collection of drawings and letters scribbled with childish abandon, and a single Phillips screwdriver that had been left behind the last time Tony popped by to make “improvements” to his radio.

Though it made him feel nauseous to think about Tony—to wonder where he was, if he was still him somewhere out there—he kept the small screwdriver in his new apartment, running his fingers along the grooves and divots in the handle, etching his fingernail along the indentations in the bit. Steve could recall the look of concentration, the way Tony bit at the inside of his lip while he was working, hunched over the Philco with a furrowed brow.

The radio had been taken, but that didn’t matter. He could find a new one, it could be replaced. But something about that made his heart clench and shudder, so he put it off, listened to the newer plastic handheld that he’d picked up on the road.

One morning, when he returned from his run—which had turned into running errands and lending a hand to half the neighborhood—and flicked on the little dial, a familiar voice crackled to life. Steve was halfway into the shower, running water finally restored after a few weeks, when Natasha’s calm tone filled the room.

“—and today, we have a real treat. A classic, just dug up from the archives. Again, I’d like to remind you all that no matter what things look like now, they can only go one way from here. Without further ado, enjoy.”

Steve frowned, confusion creasing his brow as he listened to the first few bars. He recognized the song, it had been big during the war, and he felt a whorl of emotion at the memories it provoked. Crackling fires and boisterous laughter, friends long lost and gone. His voice rose without conscious thought, cracking once before chiming crisp and clear through the tiny room.

“Tho’ you’re tired and weary still journey on, till you come to your happy abode, where all the love you’ve been dreaming of will be there at the end of the road,” he sang, letting the sound echo back and wash over him as rivulets of water coursed over his face. Steve turned off the shower once the song was over, scrubbing at his hair with a scratchy cotton towel when Natasha’s voice came back on the air.

“So friends, just remember, when things look dire don’t stop searching. You might find something you didn’t know you were missing. This is Widow, reminding New York that all rebuild efforts are being streamlined through the Avengers Tower. No matter how big, or how small, we will find a way to help.”

The radio fizzled back to the usual announcer, leaving Steve frowning at his bathroom sink, where the black plastic box was balanced. He suspected that Natasha doing radio segments wasn’t exactly part of the rebuild effort, though the angle certainly came across that way. She wouldn’t have chosen that song, if that was the case, certainly not something from that era.

Steve finished drying his hair, threw on a pair of somewhat passable jeans and a button-down, and headed out the door. He’d managed to fix up a few motorcycles, one of which was always outside his building, ready for use. They were easier to weave through the wreckage than a car, and since many parts of the city were largely impassable (except on foot), it was good to have a bike on hand. It took him thirty minutes to get to the tower, more than usual due to a few bridges being blocked by abandoned cars, and when he arrived, he didn’t know what to expect.

He did know that out of all the things he might have predicted, Iron Man’s silhouette halfway up the tower, replacing a panel of glass, wasn’t one of them. Steve felt the ache in his chest and he frowned. It was poor taste for someone else to be using the armor, though how was it even keeping aloft without JARVIS? Maybe Rhodes was back, piloting it to help with repairs. It still left a sour taste in his mouth, no matter the rhyme or reason behind it.

Steve pushed off the bike and towards the building, not halting his progress when he heard the heavy sound of metal boots hitting the pavement behind him. It was only after he caught the tail end of a tinny greeting that he stopped, keeping his eyes on the door and his hands clenched at his sides.

“What? Not even a hello?” Iron Man called out, his voice sounding so much like Tony that Steve risked a glance over his shoulder. The visor was down, but as he often did before the outbreak, Steve could see the amusement in the angle of the armor’s limbs, the tilt of his helmet.

“I came to see what I could do to help,” he answered, voice harder than he meant it, stinging with pain at the back of his throat. “Heard rebuild efforts were based out of here.”

“Oh. Yeah. Here, follow me. I’ll get you set up.” Iron Man stepped into the tower, passing groups of people gathered around tables and volunteer stations, before taking the elevator at the back of the main hall. They didn’t speak as it ascended and Steve could feel the rapid thundering of his heart, pressing hard against his ribs with each beat. It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. He got bit. He turned. Steve watched it happen, saw with his own eyes.

“Coming?”

He had been so caught up in his own thoughts he hadn’t even noticed that the elevator had stopped, nor that Iron Man had stepped out, waiting for him halfway into the workshop.

Tony’s workshop.

Steve paled, a knotted twist in his stomach sending wave after wave of agony through him. He didn’t know if he could do this, didn’t know if he could be here, where everything was still so much Tony that it hurt. Even though the workshop surfaces were covered with radios, bits of cars, and an assortment of metal that may have once been a toaster, it was all so familiar it made him want to cry.

Instead, he clenched his jaw and stepped forward.

“Great, I’ll get your help sorting through this stuff to find something useful. Want to get things back to normal as soon as possible, you know? Just give me a second to get out of this.” Iron Man was walking to the platform that would lift off the pieces of the suit, peeling it away inch by inch. The tower, thanks to Tony’s arc reactor technology, still had power, buzzing away through the metal arms as they pried piece after piece of the suit away, revealing the man within.

No… It’s not… It’s not possible.

Steve found himself holding his breath.

The helmet came off last, the man reaching up with his own scarred hands to pull it up and over, freeing a shaggy mess of dark hair. It was longer than Steve remembered, longer than he ever remembered it being, though his Van Dyke was only slightly overgrown, as if he had trimmed recently.

“Tony…?” Steve’s voice came out in a whisper, a hiss of a sound that was almost lost among the rattle of machinery replacing parts to their proper locations. The dark-haired man held up the helmet, letting one of the metal limbs pull it away, though his hands sifted through tangled strands as if he didn’t know what to do with them after.

“Hey,” he rasped, voice rough around the edges. Steve could see the new scars: an angry, puckered line that blazed a trail from his right ear to his left collarbone; a nick where hair no longer grew at the tail end of his left brow, which matched a similar scar along the bow of his lips; and a small, barely-there scratch over the knuckles of his right hand.

Steve felt his knees go out from under him, relief dragging him down fast and hard to the concrete. Tony was there in an instant, hands hovering, hesitant, just over Steve’s shoulders. Steve felt the first sob bubble past his lips and he kept his gaze on the cold stone flooring, at least hoping to hide the tears he could feel welling under his closed eyelids, though he had no control over the sound. Palms were touching, gently, to his shoulders, a warm and hesitant pressure. Steve could feel the quiver in each of the mechanic’s digits.

“So, uh, welcome home, I guess?” Tony sounded nervous, his fingers tapping a rhythm where they settled to running soothing patterns over Steve’s arms. Chuckling, he continued speaking, voice harder than Steve remembered, but still full of the same cautious excitement. “When Nat and Clint showed up without you I…I was a little worried, you know? But they said you needed space, which, totally fine, I get that. It was a lot for all of us. But then you didn’t show up and I was about three minutes from flying down to Brooklyn and—”

“How?”

“Sorry?”

“How are you…how…” Steve couldn’t force the words, couldn’t seem to make his voice break more than a soft hiss as his throat closed up, suddenly tight.

“How am I…me?” Tony offered, and Steve could hear it then, the amused glimmer beneath his tone. Lifting his gaze from the flooring, Steve tried (and failed) to hold Tony’s for more than an instant. “Steve, hey, look at me?”

Tony’s voice was soft, his hands even softer as he tilted Steve’s face up just enough to hold his attention. Amber eyes were shining bright, nothing like the foggy hue they had been before. “I’m okay. I’m here. It’s really me, I promise.” And then Tony’s arms were around him and Steve didn’t even have time to be embarrassed that he was sobbing against the genius’s Nirvana tee shirt. Tony rubbed calming circles between Steve’s shoulder blades as he explained, taking his time where it mattered most.

When Tony had started, in the woods, everything was hazy, his memory fuzzy around the edges. He remembered bits and pieces, strands of images or sound that would filter back to him, but he only started forming real memories a few days after he had left the group. There had been a town, barely big enough for the label, where Tony had stopped for the night. He closed himself up in a tiny two-bedroom home and slept for what felt like days, fever roiling through his body, hand clutching tight to the pistol Steve had left him with in the woods. He had thought it was getting worse, that the virus was finally taking everything from him, removing every last part of him that was human. However, when he woke, everything seemed clearer. His bones ached and his stomach growled with hunger but he felt right.

At first, the obvious conclusion was that the drugs had worked, that the miracle cure really hadn’t wasted millions of dollars in funding. But the more times he ran the numbers through his head, the more it seemed impossible. The methodology was there, the theory, sure, but the numbers just didn’t add up. And then he’d heard the rumors, just whispered through passing groups at first, more and more as he got nearer to New York: the virus was receding. The more generations it went through, the more hosts, the weaker it became until it was almost no more than a horrible case of the flu.

So Tony went to New York, rebuilt the most urgent parts of the tower, and flew the suit every evening across the nearby states, looking for anything that might explain why the world suddenly seemed to be righting itself.

“And the…graffiti?” Steve asked, finally getting himself under control enough to speak but refusing to raise his face from where it was pressed against Tony’s shoulder.

Tony laughed, bright and sharp and loud. “You saw those? I kept putting them up, hoping I could lead you guys back to the city, in case you were headed elsewhere.”

“What did they mean?” Steve remembered the variations, could picture them as clearly as if they were right in front of him. Tony stilled, his heartbeat stuttering for a moment. For a long while, neither of them spoke, just sat clutching at each other in the middle of the workshop floor.

“Well,” Tony, of course, spoke first. “It’s probably easier if I just show you.” He stood then, nudging Steve to stand as well before stalking to the large, open area that served as his three-dimensional work surface. “JARVIS, pull up the file, would you?”

“Of course, sir.”

Steve stayed perfectly still as the room dimmed and JARVIS’s blue glow illuminated around them. He could see Tony, a few feet away, uneasily shifting from side to side as the recording played. Tony’s voice filled the room a second later, reflected in the fluctuations of JARVIS’s mind.

“Steve,” the lights pulsed with a familiar pattern, the one he had seen in several of the tags, “I’m so sorry. I should have told you, I should have let you help. I was scared. Please don’t blame yourself for what happened, and if you have to be angry, be angry with me. Just…come home, Steve. Come back to me, so I can come back to you.”

The room brightened again and Tony had angled himself away, turned his face so Steve could no longer see the expression there. He was tapping an unsteady beat against the arc reactor and Steve saw the edge of his lip caught between his teeth. Though he was sure his eyes were watery again, he crossed the space between them in a few swift steps and pulled Tony into his arms, nestling his face into the mop of dark hair.

“I’m home, Tony.”

On the first day, it bleeds. A lot. It’s difficult to keep the bandages fresh without the rest of the group hovering around to inspect the injury, but he manages. Of course he manages, he’s Tony fucking Stark. When the world collapsed into a zombie apocalypse that would have given Hollywood a run for its money, he managed. When two members of their group were ripped apart at the seams and they were forced to leave them behind, he managed. When they couldn’t find a safe place to stay for the night and had to take rotating shifts in the woods, he managed.

Maybe not as well as he had hoped, on that last one, but he continues to deal with the outcome of that particular incident. Quietly, mind you, since the last thing he needs is good ol’ Stars and Stripes pointing the business-end of a shotgun in his face.

“Stark. The Captain wants to see you, out by the West lookout.”

Shit, he’s getting too complacent if he’s letting Birdbrain sneak up on him. Sure, the undead tend to move with a lot more shuffling and groaning, but even Tony can see that they’re getting…smarter. They’ve been adapting at an alarming rate, faster than he and Bruce can keep up with, given their limited resources. Hell, last week they tried to open a door. And not by the usual means of ramming their thick skulls against it repeatedly. It required dexterity, concentration, and conscious thought to open a door. As if they need more reasons to be concerned about the whole situation.

Everything they know about the shambling corpses is: they hunt for and consume flesh; turn anyone that has contact with whatever remains of their bodily fluids; and don’t have enough coherent brainpower to create plans or strategy. At least, they didn’t. If that has changed, they’re probably fucked, even if they do have a master strategist, two geniuses, and a pair of former assassins on their side. But, on the other hand, that might mean a cure isn’t completely impossible.

Besides, he’s Tony fucking Stark. If anyone is going to cure the god damned zombie apocalypse, why shouldn’t it be him?

The West lookout is barely more than a few pieces of corrugated aluminum they’ve linked together using scraps of metal and leather. They lucked out, this time, and stumbled upon what used to be some kind of gas station/rest stop. There are even a few cots in the back, so those in their group who aren’t used to long journeys can sleep for a few hours.

The rest of them, they manage.

Cap is seated atop a ramshackle structure (that can be loosely referred to as scaffolding, if one is feeling generous), his blue eyes trained on the horizon. There are three other members of their group, some trained and some not, at the other lookout points. Theirs is one of the largest survivor groups out there, at least from what they’ve heard and seen on the road. It doesn’t help their numbers that the Captain seems to pick up stragglers at every waypoint and fork in the road. The man himself looks tired, a scraggly blond beard adorning his usually clean-shaven features. Tony resists the urge to touch, keeping his twitching fingers jammed into pockets instead. Not the time, not the place.

“You wanted to see me?” The era of goofy nicknames and playful banter seem long behind them, any verbalization of the chiding antics gaining him nothing but narrowed glares where it used to earn a half-hearted look of frustration mixed with amusement. Tony misses it, sometimes, more than he can understand. More than he misses the suits, the tower, even Pepper…

Not the time, not the place.

“You’ve got next watch. Wanted to make sure you were up for it.” There is something to his tone, a rough, accusatory edge that makes Tony’s hackles rise up. Doesn’t help that the man’s gaze is still glued to the forest around them, not even a glance his way.

“What makes you think I’m not up for it?” Sure, he looks like shit, probably smells ten times worse, but that can be said for most of their little band of misfits.

There’s a second, just a fraction of a moment, where Cap’s attention flickers to him. “I know you’ve been in the med kits. There’s a lot of stuff missing. Makes me think you got banged up last time.”

Tony frowns, filtering through his thoughts to find a lie that may pass as plausible. “It’s not a big deal. I tripped, like an idiot, while getting away from one of those things. Took a branch to my side. It’s really just a big scrape, but it bled a lot, at first. It’s fine now.”

There’s a grunt, a soft, non-committal noise that Tony tries not to read as disbelief. But then Cap’s climbing down off his perch, the whole thing swaying from the movement, and handing over the hunting rifle they save for lookout duty. After all, they’re the only things they have that are big enough and accurate enough to make use of the scopes Tony finagled together.

“Be careful. Sound the alarm if you see anything urgent.”

“Sure. Get some sleep. You look like shit.” Tony can’t help himself around Cap, can’t help the lilting tone that flows into his voice or the cocky grin. But he can see the slightest slant to those chapped lips, a bit of tension bleeding from broad shoulders, and it’s all worth it.

“Same to you, Tony.”

On the second day, it starts to itch. Slow and careful, building up to an irritation that causes him to run jagged nails across his belly every third step. Steve takes notice—of course he notices these things—but doesn’t say a word.

Thank god for that. He doesn’t need the others picking up on it, although knowing Natasha, she somehow knows. She always knows. But she isn’t saying anything either, so it’s fine. Everything is fine.

He’s managing.

When they go on a supply run, he volunteers to look for medical supplies. They allow it, mainly because he’s been the one using them all lately, but also because no one else knows what to look for. Well, except Bruce, but the team had decided it was better for green and mean to stay back with their troupe of survivors, with the civilians that weren’t as capable of defending themselves. The Big Guy, it seems, is immune to the disease, so it’s handy to keep him as a last line of defense for those who need it most.

The first place he comes across—a small, run-down pharmacy—has already been looted, possibly by other survivors or those who panicked when the news first leaked to the public. There are barely a few packages of gauze left behind, every drug plundered, despite their useful(or useless)-ness. But Tony knows this city, or used to know it, and knows there is a pharmaceuticals conglomerate in one of the business towers. It’s kind of risky, going into one of those buildings. They don’t tend to have a whole lot of exits, and the amount of nooks and crannies that could be housing a nasty surprise are many. Also, stairs. Lots and lots of stairs.

Tony is wheezing his way onto the fifth floor, clawing at his side in an attempt to scratch the never-ending itch, when his radio crackles to life. He freezes, glancing around the hallway and listening for any sound of unpleasant company. When nothing but the eerie quiet and a drift of dust motes greets him, he presses down on the PTT. “Stark, here. What?” he hisses, voice low, just in case he catches some unwanted attention.

“Where the hell are you?” Cap’s voice is hard, disgruntled, but not strained. They aren’t in the middle of a battle, then. “What part of fourteen hundred did you not understand?”

He glances down at his watch, shakes it, looks again. The numbers stay frozen on twelve-twelve. “Sorry, Cap. Watch is busted.”

There’s a responding growl, a murmur of voices he can’t quite make out, and then clipped orders are echoing across the hall. “Get out here now. We’re leaving.”

“No can do, Cap,” Tony chimes, starting off down the hallway, the taser-pistol combo he’d rigged earlier drawn and at the ready. “Still need to get my hands on some of those sweet, sweet drugs we need so much. Not all of us have super-soldier healing.”

He hears the sharp intake of breath, wonders briefly if he took it too far, but then Cap is speaking again, the reluctance in his voice obvious. “Fine. But hurry up. Twenty minutes.”

The line clicks, dead. Tony jams the radio back into his pocket and hurries through the halls, not as cautious as he would have been, should have been, had he the leisure of time. He grabs some general supplies, lest the good Captain be suspicious of his intent, before heading to the room he knows must have the answer. It has to.

Thankfully, the windows to the room are still intact (which means no one had looted it already), but on the downside, that also means he will have to find a way to pry open the door. The backup generator should have run out of power ages ago, so it’s just a matter of popping the locks and sliding back the glass. Easy, right?

Doing so quietly turns out to be not so easy. The door is old, damaged around the edges, and it lets out a screaming wail when he pries it apart with the bit of rebar he found down the hall. (By found, he means repurposed from an old radiator in one of the offices, but no one is here to call him on it.) For the first few inches, he pauses, glancing around and listening, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Silence greets him every time, so he gets bolder, pries more of the door open before pausing. When there is barely half a foot between him and the lab, he doesn’t stop, just keeps letting the horrible scrape of metal on metal ring through the hallways.

So he doesn’t hear the thing so much as feel the hot, musty breath on the back of his neck, smell the copper and rot in the air. Tony flinches and scrambles through the gap in the doorway, feeling the drag of its hand on his tattered jeans, kicking wildly with his legs until he’s inside. The zombie is bigger than he is, broader in the shoulders, and it can’t seem to figure out a way through the small gap in the door.

Thank god for small miracles.

It does, however, linger outside while making horrible noises and clawing at the glass with what little flesh is left on its fingers. Yup, that is definitely bone scraping on the windows. Gross.

Tony rushes around the small space, flicking through vials and cooling units long dead before finding what he is looking for. The thing is still scrabbling at the door by the time he’s through, still watching him with eyes glassed over and foggy.

“Shit,” he mumbles, frowning at the thing and looping the straps of his bag tighter where it sits against his thigh. He needs to get out, now, before that thing brings its friends along for a snack with all the noise it’s making.

Guess it’s as good a time as any to test out his new weapon.

Tony lines up the sight, watches the thing zero in on him and claw at the doorframe with a renewed vigor. He hopes to hell it is quieter than the other pistols they have, but seeing as it’s basically a glorified taser, it should be relatively silent. Should, being the operative word. He doesn’t have any idea how it will affect the undead, however, so he holds his breath while he fires the first three rounds right into its skull.

For a while, nothing happens. Tony can hear his heart thundering in his chest, feel it against the dull ache below his ribs. The thing keeps pressing, keeps trying to force its way in, and he knows it will only be a matter of time before the door either gives way or the dumb lunk figures out how to angle its torso.

Oh, would you look at that. Figured it out after all.

Tony scrambles back over the counter in the center of the room, wanting to put something solid between himself and that thing. He isn’t sure if dual exposure will increase the infection speed, but he isn’t too keen to find out.

The creature lumbers around one side of the table, dragging itself slow enough that Tony is able to dart about the opposite end, avoiding an outstretched arm that—yep, that’s definitely only bone left at the ends—barely skims the edge of his sleeve.

Just as he’s getting tired of the little cat and mouse game the thing just…stops. Tony pauses, ready to run for the door, when he notices the creeping trail of smoke pouring from its ears. Brows raised, he darts for the slot in the doorway, expecting to be followed, but it just stands there while the insides of its skull are cooked. He risks another glance back, just to make sure it hasn’t changed its mind, but the creature just stares ahead, possibly attempting to process the heat expanding inside its head.

Tony takes the stairs two at a time, ignoring the ache in his side as he sprints back to the meeting point. Cap is glowering at him by the time he gets back, forty-three minutes past the meeting time, and Tony just shrugs as he tries to catch his breath. He can feel the narrowed gaze like embers crawling up the back of his neck all the way back to camp, his bag chafing where it rubs against the bandages. All that matters is that he got the vials, that this could work, would work.

And if not, well, he’ll manage.

On the third day, it burns. It burns like the fires of hell are trying to drag him down through the hole in his gut, and then some. He keeps his mouth shut about it, grinding his teeth together to restrain the pathetic sounds of his agony that are threatening to escape his lips. It’s easier when he goes on watch, around mid-morning, because at least he is alone in his agony. He doesn’t have to worry about what kinds of faces he was making, doesn’t have to keep the occasional whimper from slipping out.

So he glowers out at the horizon, trying to keep his mind alert though his eyes, hazing with tears every few moments. He’s been up most of the night, huddled away in between the rows of batteries and air fresheners, reading dosages and trying to sift through the notes left behind by fleeing biologists. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to Tony, but he doesn’t want to risk asking Bruce, doesn’t want to risk everyone else finding out in the process.

Plus, the Big Guy seems to have a penchant for smashing zombies. Isn’t worth that chance.

He winds up guesstimating the dosage anyway, his hands shaking too much to worry about precision. It isn’t as though it can actually make things worse and, well, side effects he can manage.

Though the nausea and dizziness are a pain in the ass.

As most shifts do, this one passes without interference or disaster. Someone’s boots are crunching across the gravel with big, heavy steps. Tony breaks from his half-dazed stare at the treeline to glance over his shoulder.

“Hiya, Cap. That time already?”

Tony isn’t sure how the sun has gotten so low in the sky. Maybe he blacked out for part of his shift. If so, he’s incredibly lucky that nothing had happened. The Captain isn’t returning Tony’s easy smile as he approaches, a hard line between his brows.

“Yeah, you’re done for the day, Tony.”

“I’m good for a few more hours,” he insists, trying to keep the weariness from his tone. It winds up coming off as too-sharp, too-crisp, but that doesn’t change the tension fizzling between them.

Cap jerks his head toward the ramshackle building. “Go. Get some rest. You look like hell.”

“Well thanks, you always know how to flatter a guy,” Tony mumbles, starting the slow, uneasy descent down the scaffolding. His limbs feel heavy, leaden, and more than once his foot slips on the metal rungs of the ladder. When his feet are finally on solid ground, Tony feels a shudder run through his spine, feels the moment his legs decide that standing is for suckers. He leans, hard, against the nearest solid thing.

The nearest solid thing happens to be Cap’s chest. When Tony looks up, there are hands hovering uneasily at his shoulders, a confused look on the man’s face. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Tony murmurs, pressing his face momentarily against a strong bicep as another wave of agonizing heat courses through him. It feels like he’s melting from the inside out.

There are cool palms at the back of his neck, strong digits pressing gentle and brief against his skin. “You have a fever,” Cap says, frown obvious in his tone. “Take some medicine when you get back in there, okay? Did you need me to go get someone to escort yo—”

“I’m fine,” Tony snaps, shoving off and away in one smooth (well, not smooth, but he doesn’t fall over so whatever) motion. He doesn’t look back as he drags his sorry self back to the main building—he doesn’t have to. He can feel the disappointment of Cap’s gaze without looking to verify its existence.

It is fine. He has the drugs from the lab. He’s fine. He’s managing.

On the fourth day, he collapses.

“Tony!” Steve’s shouting at him. He sounds worried. He shouldn’t worry, Tony’s managing just fine. There’s a shuffle, a chill as his shirt is pulled up over the hollow length of his belly.

“Shit.”

“Is that…?”

“I don’t know. I don’t… Tony? Can you hear me?”

“He’s bit.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Rogers, look at that mess. It’s fucking infected. We’re lucky he hasn’t turned on us already.”

The sound of the safety coming off is a loud snap in the empty room.

“Get out of the way, Steve.”

“No.”

“Cap, you can’t save him.”

“I’m not going to let you shoot him like a damn dog!”

Everything is happening so fast, too fast for him to track with his eyes, and he’s tired. So fucking tired. Were the drugs supposed to make him tired? Or did they fail? Are they right? Is he turning?

“Steve,” Tony hisses, his throat feels raw and scratchy, like he gargled pinecones. Steve’s there in a second, kneeling at his side, holding his hand like he cares. It’s comforting, makes Tony want to drift off all over again, but he forces his eyes to stay open. This is important. “Not here,” is all he manages to get out, but his eyes drift to the others, to the civilians that have gathered around with various levels of shock and terror on their faces.

But Steve is smart. Steve gets it, right away, and scoops Tony up like he doesn’t weigh anything (which, to Steve, he probably doesn’t). He’s shouting orders to the others but Tony can’t hear him anymore. Can’t see either. His eyes have slid shut again. But he feels the sun on his skin and can smell the pine trees, can feel the pulse of Steve’s heartbeat against his temple.

“—ony. Tony! You need to open your eyes. Come on, rise and shine, soldier.”

He wants to tell Steve off, to say he’s not a soldier, but his mouth doesn’t seem to be working anymore, either. Tony opens his lips only to snap them shut when he can’t find the words, so he struggles to sit up instead, feeling the strength of Steve’s palm against his back. When he does manage to open his eyes, he wishes he hadn’t. Steve looks upset, his eyes are kind of watery and they’re pinched around the corners. He wants to punch whoever made Steve look like that.

Oh, wait.

It was him.

He should really punch himself, but before he can put that thought to action Steve is pressing a pistol into his hands, his useless, leaden hands. Tony glances up at him, brows furrowed in what he hopes is a display of confusion.

“I’m going to fire a shot, but I want you to run, okay? I…I don’t know if you’re going to turn, I’m sure you had some kind of a plan to prevent it. That’s why you took so long on the med run the other day, isn’t it?”

Tony finds that all he can do is nod, his head lolling on his shoulders from the jerky motion.

Steve smiles at him, but it’s shaky and full of water and fear and something else Tony doesn’t have the capacity to place right now. “So you run. I’m letting you go, but the others will think… If anyone can beat this thing, it’s you, Tony. So run, and if,” he pauses, clears his throat, “when you’re you again…come back to me?”

Tony feels his heart shudder at the word. Me. Not us or we or them but me. Come back to Steve.

He likes the sound of that. Again, words are failing him, so he just bobs his head and watches the smile that unfolds across Steve’s features, the way it lights up his eyes and allows the tears to flow freely. Steve stands, brushes the pine needles from his knees and raises his rifle to the air, lets off a single shot against the golden hues of the sky. Then he’s walking away, and Tony knows he needs to get up, needs to move, needs to keep going before the others find him (or better yet, before more undead find him), but it’s hard. It’s so hard, and the pistol is heavy in his hands.

He looks at his hands, sees the rusty shade staining the grooves between his fingers, his nail-beds. He turns the taps on again, as hot as they will go, and the bathroom fills with steam. With the sound of the running water he almost can’t hear the dry, hiccoughing gasps coming from deep in his chest. Slowly, his gaze moves to the mirror, already coated in a thick layer of steam. He swipes a palm through it, meeting espresso eyes sunken against a pallid complexion, dark circles like two deep thumbprints beneath them.

“I am Tony Stark,” he swallows, throat closing even as he forces his way through the words.

“And I killed Captain America.”

---

Tony wakes with a start to the sound of the emergency alarm blaring, his room filled with a dull crimson glow and the soft sound of JARVIS’s voice behind all the ruckus. There’s a headache pounding thick and heavy behind his eyes and for a moment he debates returning to sleep, hiding away from responsibility and duty, all of the things he has worked so hard to be good at over the past few years. All of the ways he had tried to impress him. To live up to his expectations.

None of it mattered anymore, did it?

“JARVIS, shut that damn alarm off.”

The room goes silent, and he pulls the covers over his head. If he pretends not to be here, no one will bother him. The rest of the team can handle it without him, even if they are…less a member.

“Tony, get your sorry self out of bed and assemble already.”

His heart stutters and stops in his chest. The blankets are shoved unceremoniously to the floor as he looks toward the ceiling, knowing how clear the panic is on his face. But that, that voice… It isn’t possible.

“JARVIS? Where is Captain Rogers right now?”

JARVIS won’t lie to him, can’t lie to him. Unless Tony has finally cracked, slipped off the ledge into the gulf of creeping tendrils and dark thoughts, and lost his mind.

“Captain Rogers is awaiting your response on the rooftop. The rest of the team is already aboard the latest model of the quinjet. I suggest you hurry, sir.”

“Right,” he mumbles, reaching out an arm. He calls the suit to him, not caring about the undersuit. He has to see, has to make sure it was real.

Cap is glowering at him, cowl up and shield at the ready, when Tony arrives on the roof. Tony can’t make himself speak, can’t force his lips to form words. He’s grateful for the privacy afforded him by the faceplate—there is a burning at the corners of his eyes he doesn’t care to explain. But then some of the harshness flickers in those blue eyes and the look becomes almost concerned. Tony can’t deal with concerned, so he clears his throat.

“Sorry to hold up your little party, Capsicle. What’s the emergency?”

“If you hadn’t ignored the alert this morning,” there’s a little growl to his voice. It’s nice, real, alive. “you would know. We’re dealing with some kind of mutation. It’s big, strong, and really likes to throw things.”

“So you on a Tuesday.”

“Just move out, Iron Man.”

Tony watches the broad lines of his shoulders as Cap moves into the quinjet. He can see the rest of the team already inside; Natasha’s arm isn’t broken, Clint isn’t sporting a new gash along the ridge of his nose, and Bruce is tucked among the parachutes instead of being MIA. Without lingering too long on it, he offers a peppy salute and fires up the repulsors.

It could have been a dream. A nightmare, really. But it had all seemed so real that it’s still rocking him to his core. Now isn’t the time to mull over it, though. They have a job to do.

“JARVIS, play me in. Something hard and heavy to get the big guy’s attention.”

“Very well, sir.”

He blasts Zeppelin through the suit’s outgoing speakers, ignoring the complaints he hears over the comm lines. The music drowns out the buzzing at the back of his mind, the idea that this situation is strange, and he has almost rid himself of the last gnawing kernel of worry when he sees the creature.

Sure, it’s big and intimidating, but nothing they couldn’t normally handle. What’s concerning is that this monstrosity is identical to the one in his dream, down to the deep purple sludge dripping down its incisors. Which he knows is venomous, because he watched the Hulk get bit only to crumple like an infant moments later.

Tony doesn’t realize he’s frozen, hovering midair with the thick tones of Immigrant Song blaring all around him, until Cap’s voice comes rushing through his helmet.

“Iron Man! Get your head in the game and get those civilians out of there!”

He shouts something like an affirmative answer, moving without conscious thought. There’s a woman huddled behind the remains of a VW and he swoops in to haul her to safety, the same as he did before. He fires a few repulsor blasts over his shoulder and disintegrates a chunk of concrete, just like before. And he watches the piece of steel rebar as it follows an arcing path toward the fray.

Just like before, it’s too late when he calls out, his voice dying on the swell of the breeze.

There’s a frenzy of activity, but for Tony, everything stops. He focuses on the singular point that is Captain America, collapsing to his knees and then to the ground, chest heaving. Tony doesn’t have to fly down there to know that his usually-bright eyes are unfocused and glassy, his breath coming in heavy, wet, shuddering sounds. He knows because he already lived this, already saw this moment in time, feels it as sure as the heartbeat thundering in his chest. When he comes back to himself, he is standing beside his team, the monstrosity defeated, everyone huddled around the blond’s still form. It seems strange, to see him without a furrowed brow or a boisterous laugh or that sneaky smirk he gets when he knows he’s being a sarcastic little shit.

Captain America’s gone and it’s all his fault.

Again.

---

Tony wakes with a start to the sound of the emergency alarm blaring, his room filled with a dull crimson glow and the soft sound of JARVIS’s voice behind all the ruckus. This time, there is no panic or confusion, he is throwing off the sheets and calling the suit in one fluid movement, hurrying to the rooftop and waving a cocky salute at the team before taking off toward the scene.

“Tony, what are you doing?”

“Sorry, Cap. Got a hot date later and I want to wrap this up real quick. You’d understand if you got out once in a while,” he teases before shutting down the comms, not wanting to hear the protests, not knowing if he can keep himself together if he hears the man’s voice, haunting him from beyond a twice-earned grave.

The thing is just as ugly the third time and Tony fires a few quick shots to its chest, trying to lure it away from where he knows the woman is huddled behind the VW. It works, insofar as it earns him a big furry claw to the center of the suit and sends him flying back into the side of a building. He makes a mess of someone’s office before detangling himself from the warped panels of the filing cabinet. By the time he heads back out, the rest of the team is already there, in the thick of the fight.

There is a moment, just barely, when he sees the debris coming at him, knows it’s going to hit. He hears JARVIS calculating risk and all that, but he ignores it, continues firing and darting between as much of the incoming danger as he can. What he doesn’t see is the shield, hurtling toward him in all of its red, white, and blue glory before it knocks him straight out of the air.

About three seconds before half a bus careens through the air space he had just been occupying.

“Thanks Ca–” he starts, remembering the comms are off and flicking them back on.

What he hears after the line opens up is Widow’s snarled voice, filled with rage and a tremble of fear. “Idiot,” she growls and for the life of him, Tony can’t pinpoint her location.

Then he sees her, a lean shadow crouched over—

No.

Nonononono.

“Fuck.” He’s flying fast, too fast, and kicks up a scattering of soil as he falls to a stop beside them. Cap is lying against the remnants of what was probably a green space, before the fighting turned it to mulch, his breath strange and stuttering. There’s a large gash through his right shoulder, deep enough to see the pale smoothness of bone through a canyon of crimson. The edges of the wound bubble and hiss, a strange purple ooze eating away at what remains of his uniform sleeve.

“Hey.” The Captain waves with his left hand, weak, and it drops the second he’s made the gesture.

Tony clenches his hands into fists at his sides, feeling the creak and give of the gauntlets. “You fucking idiot.”

“You’re the one who turned off your comms, idiot.”

Cap is smiling at him. It’s almost fond, or would be, if he wasn’t dying. Tony can see blood on the whites of his teeth. It makes his stomach churn. He can’t look, can’t repeat the desperation of the last two times, the blood on his hands. He can’t do this again.

---

Tony wakes with a start.

Mission.

Giant raging beast.

Complete chaos.

VW.

Shrapnel and screaming.

And no matter what, every time…

He can’t save him.

---

He’s lost count of how many times it’s been. He doesn’t know how many times he’s been forced to watch Steve die, over and over again. It never ends, because no matter what he does, the outcome is the same.

There was the time he tried desperately to cover Steve’s back, sticking close as he could, and then the idiot went running off to save the woman behind the car. The woman that Tony should have saved. But Steve ran off and got himself impaled on the end of a mangled claw and then struggled to keep his innards from spilling to the concrete with nothing more than his hands.

Another where he didn’t go at all, the vague hope that it was his presence that was the cause. That time, the rest of the team came back with only a shield. Tony didn’t have the courage to ask why. He only wondered what he did to piss off the universe so badly that this was his punishment.

His mind is reeling, this battle blurring with all the others, repeating as a cacophony of noise in his mind. Tony can’t keep this time straight from the last dozen, but in the end, he supposes it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. He can’t stop this.

For a while, his brain runs formulas and calculations, computer programs that have yet to be built. It’s calming, to a certain degree, and he finds his mind diverting to infinite loops. A constant cycle repeated because of a glitch in the program, a delay that the computer can’t overrun. The only way to break the loop would be to introduce a new variable, whereas he has been changing those that already existed. He needs a new method, a new diversion, a new algorithm to impose. Maybe, just maybe, that would stop this, halt the repetition in the coding, fix the flaw in the design.

“JARVIS?” His voice cracks and he ignores it, doesn’t think about the consequences, just the end result. That’s all that matters, anyway. “How fast can I blow through that thing with the unibeam?”

“Sir, the suit’s power is only at sixty-five percent and I don’t believe that is a wise–”

“Stats, JARVIS. Just the stats. Please.”

There’s a pause, and he hates to think of it as judgemental but, well. “It will take approximately thirty-three seconds, sir. And nearly all your remaining power.”

“Yeah, I thought so. Thanks, buddy. You know what to do?”

“Yes, sir. Protocol alpha-three-six-one-oh-two.”

“You’re the best, JARVIS.”

“I live to please.”

Tony bites the inside of his cheek, knowing that choice of wording was deliberate on the AI’s part. He ignores the ache of concern growing in his chest, the rapid pounding of his heart behind the arc reactor.

“Alright kids, playtime is over. Stand back and let daddy do his job.”

“Tony.”

He can’t deal with it, can’t handle the worry in that tone. So he just turns off the comms, giving a salute as he glides by and stops just short of the behemoth. It watches him with beady eyes, teeth bared in a grotesque snarl.

“Okay, big and ugly. How about you and me turn up the heat in here.”

It hurts. Everything hurts. And it’s bright. That’s probably because he’s watching the sky through half-lidded eyes. Can someone please turn off the sun? There is talking, shouting, really, but he can’t hear who it is over the blood rushing through his ears. Tony meets eyes as brilliant as the sky and feels his lips forming a smile, but it’s stretched thin, like it’s too big for his face, like it’s tearing him apart.

“Steve.”

He thinks he hears his name, but he could be wrong.

It doesn’t matter, anyway.