#capimtrb2018

Author's Note: *waves hello* Since this takes place during the scene where Tony and Steve say goodbye at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, I have borrowed some lines of dialogue from the movie. This is a new fandom and a new ship for me. Also, because 2018 has thus far repeatedly kicked my ass on a personal level, it's been a while since I've written fic. Please feel free to comment; I'd love to hear your thoughts, whether you leave a smile, a frown, constructive criticism, or a poem. ;) All I ask is that you please remember that there is, in fact, a human being on the other side of the screen. Thank you for reading!

------

“I will miss you, Tony,” Steve says from beside him as they walk across the grass, and though there’s nothing particularly remarkable about his voice, Tony still can’t resist turning his head so he can peer at his face for just a moment—

(In a quicksilver flash of whimsy, he thinks of the Sirens luring ancient mariners to their deaths with their hypnotic voices. The thought flickers and vanishes.)

—to gauge Steve’s sincerity. That’s all. Not so Tony can admire the blue gleam of his eyes; the glitter of his lashes in the sunlight; the little ruts etched between the sandy, twin slashes of his eyebrows. Never that.

(He’d laugh at himself if he weren’t so pathetic.)

“Yeah?” There’s no hollow ache in his stomach and his chest when he thinks about leaving Steve there at the new Avengers facility. There isn’t, ok? “Well, it’s time for me tap out.” Relief that Steve hasn’t asked him to stay makes Tony a touch breathless.

If he— If he asks him to stay—if the words Don’t go slip out of that pretty, pink mouth, wrapped in a plea, not a command, Tony would maybe possibly definitely consider it; that would be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.

Because if Steve is fire, Tony is gasoline, and Tony has just enough self-awareness to realize it would only take a single stray spark and he would gladly ignite.

They talk for a few minutes more about a simple life of family and stability.

When Tony looks at Steve, he wants to stay. When he looks at Steve, he wants to call his armor, suit up, and hit the sky, letting wind and distance create a buffer between him and the man wearing a uniform Tony designed for him. When he looks at Steve, Tony wonders just how strong the solid stretch of those broad shoulders is. He wants to test it—wants to curl up against Steve’s chest and make himself small, so small that neither the memory of his father’s alcohol-slick breath, the casual brutality of his father’s fists, nor Obi’s betrayal, can touch him.

Worst of all, he wants to tuck his head under Steve’s chin and breathe his secrets into the gentle cup of his collarbone.

I’m the man who killed the Avengers. I saw you all dead. I felt it. The whole world, too. Because of me. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t do all I could.

When Tony looks at Steve, it isn’t the legend or the super soldier he wants; it’s the man.

Tony tells Steve none of these things, though, glass-fragile inside, where no one can see it, shielding himself with a whitewater rush of words instead. Their conversation leaves Tony very happy he’s wearing shades. Hopefully, the tinted lenses hide enough of his eyes that Steve can’t sense the uncomfortable emotions roiling inside Tony.

In the end, Tony drives off, leaving nanofragments of himself back at the Avengers compound, whether Steve realizes it or not.

Back in his bedroom in Malibu, Tony unzips his bag and finds an unmarked manila envelope lying on top of his clothes. His fingers fumble with the metal clasp, and he rolls his eyes. “Fuck,” he mutters as he slides a single sheet of paper from the envelope and manages to catch its sharp edge with his finger. A red drop blooms blood-bright at the bottom right corner, just beneath the space where S. Rogers is inked in strong, neat script. Tony’s eyes track upward from that spot on the page, his pulse beating hard enough that he can taste it in the back of his throat.

Part of a forearm and all of a hand, long-fingered and short-nailed, graced with downy hair Tony can almost feel beneath his fingertips if he concentrates, are drawn in pencil, hyperrealistic, in the foreground. Steve’s hand. It reaches back toward the top of the page, fingers curved in an elegant arch Tony wants to travel with his lips, and gives the impression of stopping short of touching what’s sketched there: Tony himself lying on his side in a bed, legs bent and curled in like he’s hiding from something. 

A nubby, checkered blanket is pulled up over him, covering his entire body from his neck down. His hands, folded as if in prayer, lie caught beneath his cheek and a fat pillow. His mouth sits slightly open, lax and soft. But his eyes are closed, lashes and perhaps dark thoughts casting deep shadows on the thin skin below. His hair sticks up in jagged, haphazard spikes. All except for a thick chunk that’s somehow pulled low and comma-shaped over his forehead. Above the entire drawing hovers a dialogue bubble, and inside it reads, “I don't trust a guy without a dark side.” Words Tony remembers speaking to Steve when they were arguing about Ultron—and secrets.

It’s him. It’s him. It’s unmistakably him, lying in the bed he and Steve had shared at the Barton farm. Eyes closed, Tony permits himself a moment of weakness—allows his trembling fingers to trace over and across the paper, imagining Steve watching him sleep. Imagining Steve watching him and wanting to touch. But no, that can’t be right...

Tony bites his tongue until he tastes copper. Only then does he open his eyes. Ignoring his still full bag, he dashes out of his bedroom and to his workshop, where he locks himself in. The drawing he drops into a drawer that he locks. After five minutes, he unlocks and reopens the drawer, and with a heavy sigh and his mouth curled bitterly on one side, he removes the drawing and places it on one of his drafting tables.

Tony works. He calculates probabilities; draws schematics; welds and hammers; ignores JARVIS’ crisp Sir, Captain Rogers wishes to speak with you; drinks cup after cup of strong coffee; stays awake until his body decides for him. Then, and  only then, does he do what he’s been fighting so desperately not to do. He slumps over a table and sleeps, muscles twitching occasionally, head filled with images of Captain America’s broken shield and their friends’ broken bodies and finally, finally, finally Steve’s broken body and his even more fractured words: You could have saved us. Why didn't you do more?

---

"Is that why you stopped sleeping in our bed?"

He hears Wanda draw in a sharp breath behind him and that's right, she didn't know about the two of them.

Blue eyebrows draw together, that ghostly face shading into... anger, almost.

"No Steve, that was because I was angry at you."

Steve wants to laugh. Angry. Robots can't be angry.

"Where's the real Tony?"

It hurts to ask. It hurts to think that while he was out and about, being together with this, this facsimile, making doe-eyes at some cheap copy of the man he loves, Tony was lying unconscious somewhere, injured and with nobody to help him.

Confusion flits onto that blue face and settles there.

"Steve, I am me. I'm the real Tony. I'm right here."

Steve shakes his head, raising his shield. Blinks away tears and advances on the... thing standing in front of him.

"Where is he? Tell me where!"

Tony's copy still sounds calm when it replies.

"My body -- my original body -- was destroyed. It doesn't exist any more, Steve. It's just dust blowing along the streets of New York."

The armour's arms raise to hold out the LMD like an offering.

"This is my body now, Steve. I made it to look exactly like me. It's identical. It's better."

Under the shield, Steve's arm starts to shake along with the rest of him.

It can't be true. It can't be. Tony can't be gone.

"That thing is nothing like you."

Blue features morph into angry derision in a flash.

"Isn't it? You sure couldn't tell the difference the last time we fucked."

Steve rears back, dropping his shield-arm in shock.

The silence drags on for a few heartbeats. It's Vision who breaks it.

"It's true, Captain. Tony used Extremis to transfer his consciousness into the LMD moments before the death of his human body. I used the Mind Stone to help him."

Steve turns his head to look at Vision, keeping the Iron Man armour in his peripheral sight.

"Why?"

As always, Vision looks untroubled.

"There are still traces of JARVIS inside of me. Like him, I wished to preserve the life of our creator."

It's not the answer Steve wants. Not the answer he's looking for. He turns back to the Iron Man armour and the blue hologram of Tony's face.

"Why? Why would you do this to yourself?"

Why would you do this to me?

He swallows the question he really wants to ask.

The expression on the hologram's face is painfully familiar. Sadness. It's a damned good imitation.

"Strange showed me. He showed me a vision of what would happen to you if I died."

The hologram looks down, averting its gaze.

"You would have died, Steve. You would have let the bioweapon kill you instead of searching for a cure. Losing me would have been too much. And the world needed you to live and keep fighting."

The hologram looks up.

"I needed you to live. So it wasn't all for nothing. So I didn't die for nothing."

Looking at the pain in those wrong-coloured eyes is nearly unbearable. Trust Tony to program something capable of tricking you into feeling sympathy for a machine.

Steve's voice comes out harsh and broken when he speaks.

"You are not Tony. Tony would know I'd never want this. That thing you're holding isn't him, it's a cheap copy. There's a reason you had to trick me. I would never have replaced him with some robot. You're insane if you think that."

For almost a minute nothing happens. The hologram flickers like it's broken and for a moment Steve thinks that this is it, that it has just shut down and any moment the armour will darken and shut off.

Then suddenly the armour jerks and drops the LMD at his feet.

"Destroy it then. If you hate this version of me so much. This isn't like JARVIS programming, there's no uplink to the Tower and no backup. My consciousness can't exist outside of the LMD's framework. The only reason I can control the armour is that I used the armour's connection to the LMD to back up my mind in the first place. If you destroy the LMD, I'm gone. Just like you want."

With that the armour pushes him out of the way, walking towards the workshop's door.

Steve turns after it, helpless. He's too slow and his hand grabs air instead of metal.

It feels like he's back in the ice all of a sudden, the weight of a glacier crushing his chest and pushing his shoulders towards the floor.

The armour halts as if it can feel him reaching for it. It takes him three tries to force the words out.

"You'd let me destroy it. Just... just like that."

He's traced Tony's features a hundred times with his hands and with a pencil. He barely recognizes them now, made of blue light and twisted with... something. Something like hopelessness.

Tony's voice is just the same though, even coming from the suits empty chest.

"This was supposed to be a gift, Steve. I don't think I want to be alive if you don't want it."

With that the armour steps into the alcove near the door, it's lights going out. The hologram of Tony's face flickers out of existence.