#and its even worse because to steve tony is the future and his future died when tony did

[joetavis]

Tony ‘‘sometimes I wish you stayed in the past” Stark

Steve “you are the future to me” Rogers

[hyperbali]

Agatha Harkness Was Right, And Here’s Why

Alright. Finally had to sit down and write my way out of this quiet, internal temper tantrum, and a few people were interested in seeing what I had to say, so I present to you:

Agatha Harkness Was Right, And Here’s Why

Disclaimer: MASSIVE spoilers for the entirety of WandaVision, and I am not nice about it.

I’ll start off by saying that, for all its foibles, WandaVision was genuinely a good example of a property within the MCU/Disney umbrella that stepped out of the usual ‘good guys fight bad guys action extravaganza’ in a way that pushed the envelope. The pseudo-horror aspect of the first few episodes is something I would really love to see engaged with on a more thoughtful basis in future projects.

I would say that it proved to be more than a vehicle to promote toys, but… well…

Yeah. Anyway.

I’ll assume that you watched WandaVision if you’re reading this, but quick recap: In the aftermath of ‘the Blip,’ Wanda is left broken and alone with no one in her corner. Her biggest mentor willingly abandoned his team to get his own ‘happy’ ending (do not get me started on Steve, that’s a document in and of itself), her other biggest mentor is probably off enjoying his family while ignoring the incredibly racist killing spree he’s been on for the past five years, and her lover is dead. When she goes to claim the body, she’s told nuh-uh, that’s government property, please leave.

So she goes to a plot of land in the middle of some nowhere town in New Jersey, which Vision apparently bought despite the fact they were living a pretty decently comfortable life in Scotland, where she looks at the deed that Vision drew a heart on and wrote ‘To Grow Old In’. Very sweet. Kind of weird, considering nothing of this caliber had ever been suggested for either of their characters and they’d been actively running from specifically the U.S. authorities? But sweet.

She has a breakdown and, in her grief, contains the entire town of Westview and all 3,892 of the people in it in her own personal paradise, where nothing bad ever happens beyond sitcom hijinks, no one dies, and every problem is tied up and neatly dealt with by the end of an ‘episode’. Except we learn that this is only paradise to Wanda, who apparently shares the aspect of having to relate everything to her favourite pop culture with Tony, because everyone else in Westview is more or less being psychologically tortured by the incredible amount of pain she’s in, forced to be puppeted actors to make her happy.

Bear in mind, Westview might have been bigger at some point - we have no idea how many people survived the Blip, or how many have been brought back to life within the past few weeks of the current setting. Either way, this is a town that has already dealt with a lot of trauma being dragged into yet another awful, much more specific kind of emotional damage, thanks to ‘the heroes’. Nice.

Agatha Harkness, a witch who’s been up to who-knows-what in the 340 years since she drained the coven that tried to kill her for getting a little too ambitious into jerky, feels the massive expenditure of magical power and decides to investigate. All the while, she carefully uses her own magic to try and peek into Wanda’s psyche, her motivations, all while keeping up appearances and not letting slip that anything is amiss.

I’ll point out that she’s no saint here, either - she specifically keeps one Westview resident at her mercy, and knows what’s happening to the rest of them, but doesn’t attempt to stop it. I’ll chalk that up to her pragmatism; their ‘sacrifice’ was fine to her as long as she could figure out how Wanda could have done something so unheard of in terms of power.

What we come to learn over the course of the show is that, given everything that happened, Wanda didn’t mean to take over an entire town and tool it into her own personal slice of heaven. She very quickly became aware of it; we know that she knows it’s her own personal bubble as soon as episode three, when she’s confronting Monica about how the latter could possibly know about Ultron. Wanda is made further aware of how much damage this is inflicting on others in episode five, when Vision himself tells her that these people are scared. But still, she has everything handled! It’s okay! The outside world is worse, trust her!

Her handling of the question, ‘where are all the children of Westview,’ is one that bears some thinking - and, y’know, kind of more than a little concern. They’re allowed to walk around as part of the ‘Halloween special,’ but as Vision walks further and further out towards the edges of town where Wanda doesn’t have as much full control, people are just frozen in place, or conducting the same few seconds of action over and over. And fully aware of being trapped.

How are they being sustained? Eating, sleeping? If someone isn’t part of her storyline, is she just locking them down into a coma? What made Wanda decide that keeping the children ‘out of the way’ was somehow kinder than involving them, especially given her later argument that she’s been trying to keep the entire town safe and happy?

The fact of the matter is, she only actually starts to feel remorse for any of this after she’s confronted with the fact that, after weeks of being at her mercy, the townspeople of Westview would rather be dead than endure another moment of having to play nice for her enjoyment. She finally opens the ‘bubble’ to let them out - which leads to the ‘epic’ finale of three different entities trying to take down Wanda and her happy family: the S.W.O.R.D. military led by Hayward, the White Vision, and Agatha.

Winding back to how we got here: after Agatha uses her own trapped resident, Ralph Bohner (who, given his casting and the props in place during the last episode, I’m willing to bet is actually the missing witness protection person Jimmy was looking for) in an attempt to lure out Wanda’s reasoning - and fails - she’s pretty much done pretending. She tricks Wanda into her basement, nullifies her powers, and makes her face her own past to get to the truth of the matter.

Not going to lie, favourite moment of the show. Kathryn Hahn killed Agatha’s slightly-amused-slightly-irritated observations about Wanda’s coping mechanisms, and the whole arrangement was extremely meta. I would have paid real money dollars to see her do the same thing to the likes of Tony, Strange, and Loki. Hell, even just having her meet the rest of the Avengers? Augh. If wishes were fishes.

When Agatha comes to the conclusion that Wanda is the vaunted, nigh-indestructible force of nature that she’s literally spent her entire life reading about is the ultimate source of chaos magic and will likely bring about the end of the world, she’s pretty understandably taken aback. To that matter, the fact that Wanda… has very little control over any of it, and is using what she does understand to play housemaker? After how long Agatha has spent learning control, hiding in plain sight, just to be child’s play compared to what Wanda has at her fingertips? I’d be pretty pissed off, too!

The way that WandaVision handled both of the major ‘fights’ - Vision versus White Vision ending in philosophy, and Wanda ending up beating Agatha at her own game of deception - is excellent. A little grating that they had to go with the beat down angle before they got there, but this is MCU; punches and thrown cars had to get shoved in somewhere. And, given that this series very much played with the idea of grey morality, I was sort of hopeful that Agatha would end up in a not-quite stalemate arrangement with Wanda. She’s not as powerful as the Scarlet Witch, but she has the know-how that Wanda sorely lacks; in recompense for her own deeds, she would be able to teach what she knows while also kind of scheming on her own time.

Y’know, like what they did with rehabilitating Loki?

Except that Wanda, who has just gone through the entire rigamarole of coming to terms with the fact that she trapped thousands of people into a nightmare scenario against their will, rendering them helpless to her mercy… traps Agatha into a nightmare scenario against her will, rendering her helpless to Wanda’s mercy.

That moment actually shook me. Oh, my god. We’re supposed to still look at Wanda as a good guy after this?

This isn’t even covering the incredibly awful confrontation with her and Vision where she tries to gaslight him into believing that everything is A-OK, or the fact that the person she gets most violent with (apart from Agatha) is Monica Rambeau, a black woman who spends most of the show bending over backwards trying to say that what Wanda is doing is understandable, justified, and just needs a gentle touch to be dealt with.

That could be its own document, too - how Monica, much as she’s incredible and definitely looks to be a really exciting addition to the MCU roster, more or less gets used as the Good One to absolve and enable Wanda’s actions. One of her last lines to Wanda, after seeing how the people of Westview (rightfully) look at Wanda like she’s monstrous, is “they’ll never know what you sacrificed.”

Sacrificed what? The fake husband and fake kids she made out of her own compulsion to pretend that everything is okay? None of that would have existed if she’d been given the proper resources to actually cope with how much loss she’s had to deal with. None of that would have existed if she hadn’t caused this problem in the first place.

In the end, Wanda flies off in her fancy new gear before the FBI shows up, avoiding any real consequences to her actions - which has pretty much been the running theme of her character ever since she was introduced to the MCU in Age of Ultron. The worst kind of direct consequence she’s ever gotten was being grounded to her room for a while, then kept in the Raft for, like, maybe a day - and both times, she was broken out post-haste.

Meanwhile, she worsened the issues in Sokovia (which, I will say upfront, was Tony’s fault to begin with), unleashed the Hulk on Johannesburg, got a pretty significant amount of civilians killed as bystanders in Lagos (hey, how come Wanda keeps turning a lot of black people into casualties?), and stood back in Wakanda to let their people try to fight off Thanos from getting to Vision until it was clear that there was no other option than for her to get involved.

Great Power Comes With No Responsibility At All, Actually.

Wanda, in the several years she has maintained her identity as an Avenger, has proven time and time again that she takes on innumerable risks without any full understanding of what they mean, allows others to take on the brunt of the fallout for her, and looks sad until she’s forgiven and moves on to the next problem. She has no business casually throwing around the kind of power that being the Scarlet Witch entails, not until she’s actually made any kind of headway into making reparations for what she’s done and tried, really tried, to get a handle on what she’s capable of.

Which she’s apparently doing in the last post-credits scene, astral reading the literal Book of the Damned on her lonesome in the mountains, but… without anyone to guide her, or give her any kind of boundary?

[I ran out of images I could post, but you know exactly what image I am referring to here]

Agatha Harkness was right. And that should terrify everybody that has to deal with Wanda in the future.

(P.S. Do we know if she actually even killed that dog? We never see her holding anything but a blanket, and characters go in and out of that show all the time. Granted, she wasn’t great with the cicada-turned-bird... hmm.)

Additional Notes:

“Well, you’re a Tony Stan, of course you think Wanda’s a villain”

I like Tony because he’s such an awful mess, and the narrative isn’t exactly kind about telling him what a piece of shit he can be! He reaped a lot of problems, created practically half the villains in the MCU, and ended up dying a martyred hero. Thanks to being the tent pole by which this franchise hoisted itself into a cultural powerhouse, he will always be their golden savior. If you want to read about how he’s the true villain of this entire affair, feel free to look up any number of takedown pieces about him that are out there. He’s a dick. I will never “uwu sad baby who did nothing wrong ever 🥺” him the way people do about Wanda.

“Why are you so pressed about this”

Because something as good in concept as WandaVision could and should have been about anyone other than the whitewashed, antisemitic take on Wanda Maximoff that MCU brought upon us. They put crucifixes on her wall in Civil War, for fuck’s sake!

“Weren’t you mad about them not including Aaron Taylor-Johnson”

At this point, I am almost kind of relieved the real Pietro wasn’t resurrected for this, because god knows they probably would have killed him all over again just to inflict that much more pain on his sister.

“Anything else you’d like to tell us, turbo nerd”

This was literally itching at me all weekend to write, so it’s more or less just to get it off my chest. If you powered your way through it, uh… thanks? Sorry if I yucked your yums, but I tried to be as clear with the disclaimer as I could. 🤷‍♂️

[carol-effing-danvers]

Steve Rogers is a Monster

Yeah, that’s a hell of a title, isn’t it? Strap in, it only gets worse from here. 

(click here if you’d prefer to read this on AO3)

Forewarning, if you enjoyed the epilogue for Endgame, this particular essay is not for you - and no, I am not bashing the Steve/Peggy shippers, you are beautiful human beings who make the fandom brighter and I’m happy that at least someone in this fandom got the ending they wanted.

Additional warning: if you expect this to be another Civil War debate, you will also be disappointed. There has never been a measurement invented that can adequately describe how much I loathe the verbal dick measuring contest that seems to pass for human interaction between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in this franchise. It’s not funny or entertaining - it’s exhausting, uncomfortable, and frankly it’s rather lazy writing.

This is about the very specific way that the epilogue in Endgame completely changed the way the character of Steve Rogers can be interpreted, and I don’t just mean the very illogical and contradictory way that time travel is explained, both in the movie itself and the fact that the writers and directors have two completely different views on how that worked out. 

I mean that the choice made by Steve Rogers in the very last minutes of that movie alters the way I view each and every one of his actions starting from The First Avenger and that alteration is exactly what I want to talk about, because whether you view it as deserving or not, what Steve does at the conclusion of Endgame was the most selfish thing humanly possible. Time is a thief, but somehow Steve managed to steal even more than Time.

Side note here: I understand that I am a completely biased Stucky shipper, a friend to Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks aficionado - sorry. Anyway, I’ve always believed that Steve and Bucky were destined blah blah blah, but I was never expecting a Stucky ending. Disney wasn’t going to do that, and I knew that, I wasn’t bothered that Steve and Bucky weren’t doing the smoochies by the end. But Bucky’s facial expression during those last minutes was gut-wrenching. Like...I have no idea what kind of cues the script and directors gave him, but in the future, please don’t ask Sebastian Stan to look sad unless you want soul-crushing devastation. It’s not Seb’s fault, his features are just arranged that way - but the fact that the editing staff allowed Sam to be sad though elated to be entrusted with the Shield and Bucky looked like his soul was being physically torn out of his body was an… interesting choice. 

Other side note: if you’re writing about time travel, I’m begging y’all to get your facts straight. Or just don’t write about time travel. It almost always sounds better on paper than it does on screen and it means that you’ve opened doors to more questions than you’ve probably got the answers for. I know this was about trying to set up the idea of the multiverse, I get that, but there were better and less messy ways to do that, and I know that because I’ve done it before. @Marvel: Let me write you a six-way orgy you fucking cowards~

By going back in time, Steve robbed Peggy of the future that would have been hers - not only that, he’s robbed her of even the chance of making the choice between those futures, because you honestly could not tell me with a straight face that Steve told her the complete truth of what he had done and she would be okay with him alternating the very course of the future. It doesn’t help his case that he has a history of not disclosing truths that he knows will be painful or inconvenient for other people in his life.

He robbed his loved ones - Sam, Bucky, Wanda - of the years they would have spent with him. Sure, he ‘came back’ after Peggy passed away, but they are adults in the prime of youth who knew him sixty years ago in his own time and he is an old, old man who has lived an entire life completely separated from them. He is practically a stranger with a name they know, but a history that no longer belongs to any of them - not even his oldest friend. They have him back, but judging from his age, they’ll be lucky to get even ten more years with him. Assuming of course, that any of them can stand to speak to him - I certainly couldn’t blame them if they tell him to go to hell and take his dad jokes with him. 

Steve has stolen away their friend and dropped off an elderly and dying near-stranger in his place, and this is treated by the writing (and the majority of the acting) as a wild and unexpected but not tragic event. 

Is it really that unexpected, though?

I recall seeing a Game of Thrones essay on Daenerys across my dash (I’m sorry, love, I don’t recall who you are since it’s not a fandom I’m in, but if someone knows who wrote that, please post the link!) which detailed how her ending in the series was foreshadowed many times by her penchant for bloody killings and her habit of surrounding herself with her own fawning friends.

Months after reading that, I had the thought: though Steve is never really shown thinking about Peggy after Civil War, except in a few scattered scenes in Endgame, was this foreshadowed? Whether you believe that his actions are justified or not, what Steve does is still, in the end, selfish at its very heart, and Steve Rogers is not a selfish person. 

Oh no, my dear friends and readers. Because taking this action has solidified and clarified Steve Rogers as the biggest and most selfish asshole in this whole universe.

Steve does not do the right thing, Steve does the thing that will most make him feel better. The fact that this often happens to be the right thing in the end is more the result of happy coincidence than any special sort of moral authority that the man holds. 

Rescuing Bucky Barnes and his fellow captives in a prisoner of war camp from being experimented on by an insane Nazi eugenicist? That was not a moral stand, that was endangering himself, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark because he couldn’t handle the reality of his best friend being killed in war.

Sacrificing himself by putting the Valkyrie down in the Arctic Circle? That was not about sparing human lives, that was about Steve seeing his friend die right in front of him and not being able to deal with the grief. There were ways he could’ve prevented the plane from killing people without killing himself.

Trying to make Bucky remember who he was? And later on, saving him from the government agencies who wanted to hunt him down? Although, arguably, that last one is also just good common sense - Steve was already shown that government agencies could and were corrupted by HYDRA and he’d also seen how dangerous the Winter Soldier could be when unleashed. 

Steve did, I think, truly believe that this was the right thing to do, but it was also about keeping his connection - his very last, since Peggy had descended into dementia caused by Alzheimer’s before she ultimately died - to a past that for him, was only months or years ago, rather than decades. In some ways, this is completely understandable - Bucky might be the very last person left alive who truly knows who the real Steve Rogers is, because the rest of these people only know Captain America and we are consistently shown through multiple movies how uncomfortable this makes him.

This gets...considerably less and less understandable as we are shown Steve’s growing relationships with Natasha, Sam, Wanda - even Sharon, though she barely gets any screen time and they share the most awkward kiss I’ve ever seen - and indeed, what might be the most uncomfortable kiss in cinema history.

Side Note 3: This is made even more awkward by the director’s choice to have two of Steve’s friends watching them the whole time - seriously, who even does that? Why would you make them do that? Only sociopaths make out with their friends staring at them like that. It’s so fucking creepy - and don’t even get me fucking started on the fact that she’s also apparently his own niece. AHHHHH!

But we are shown, over and over again, that Steve is capable of building close meaningful relationships with people in the present. They don’t know his whole history, but they do know Steve Rogers rather than Captain America and they care about him deeply. 

Side Note 4: Notice that I don’t count Tony Stark among those people - despite this strangely persistent narrative that the various writers and directors tried to sell to the audience, Tony and Steve were not friends. They were never friends. They were colleagues at best, but these were two men who neither liked nor understood each other very well, but had to work together. And sometimes that’s okay, too. (Oh dear, I just gave the Stony fans a fit too, didn’t I? Sorry, guys. Enemies to Lovers is a great trope, I support you!)

But let’s set aside Steve’s gross betrayal of the people who loved him. We’ll also ignore the question of whether the motive for these good actions has tainted the actions themselves. Because even without questioning these, the conclusion of this story arc still transforms Steve into the biggest monster this franchise has. 

The very fundamental way that the writers and directors can’t agree on how the time travel mechanics in their own story work mean that Steve has just done one of two things and they range from shady and very questionable to absolutely fucking horrific. 

The first, that he’s created his own alternate universe to exist in, is morally dubious at best. Even the people who support this theory and liked the ending seem to feel that it wasn’t necessarily a ten out of ten on the moral goodness spectrum. They’ll say things like ‘he deserved to have his happy ending’. Even that phrasing seems to acknowledge that doing this was the opposite of the right thing. It just considers doing the wrong thing as being justified rather than horrifying. 

But let’s examine this first idea for a minute - even this, the more innocent of the two implications, means that rather than really processing his grief or dealing with the repeated tragedies and losses that have occured in his life, even as he was running group therapy sessions and grief counseling, Steve Rogers chose to escape his current life by creating an alternate universe that specifically allows he himself to live out his own fucking fantasies of the way his life should have turned out. 

That, in case you are not aware, is wildly fucked up. I thought I was playing pretty fast and loose with Steve’s characterization when I turned him into an extremely polite serial killer but as it turns out, I clearly just wasn’t setting the bar high enough, because that’s somehow even more fucked up than being an undercover child soldier with a small sadistic streak. 

Hm, and now I feel I should have been more creative there...

The second, and even more horrifying option, is that this older Steve Rogers has been in this world the whole time, watching as things unfolded just as we’ve seen over the past decade, taking ‘the slow way’ through time. 

Side Note 5: I do kind of understand why you would do it this way, because that’s really cool and shocking when you say that! Until you think about it for longer than three seconds and suddenly you realize…

Everything that has happened here, every tragedy and downfall these people experienced, happened because Steve Rogers lived his happily ever after with his beautiful wife and did absolutely nothing to stop it. He got to fuck Peggy Carter and watched as his wife built an empire of intelligence networks, knowing that her efforts were completely in vain because her agency was rotten to the core and he never told her.

Every horrifying act committed by HYDRA under the guise of SHIELD was permitted through Steve Rogers’ negligence. And that’s just the wider big-picture worldview, large and shocking, but not personal. 

What about the people that Steve claims to actually care about? 

This means that Steve lived his whole life in contentment with his wife and children while his best friend was physically and psychologically tortured for over seventy years and just...let that go. 

He allowed one friend to murder another in the nineties, when the Winter Soldier was sent after Howard and Maria Stark. Then their child was being advised by a greedy self-interested warmonger who paid terrorists to drag him off to be tortured and slaughtered, and Steve did nothing about that, either. 

Bruce Banner was exploited, experimented on, and made into a monster against his will in the failed pursuit of recreating what was done to Steve, resulting in billions of dollars in damage and dozens or even hundreds of lives lost, and Steve allowed that to happen, too. 

Like Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov was physically and psychologically tortured for others to use her as a living weapon - except that this was probably happening to her since early childhood, and a man her future self loved and trusted implicitly did nothing to save her from this upbringing. 

The Maximoff twins are shown to have not wealthy but loving parents who are murdered in front of them and they both endure days of laying in the rubble of their ruined apartment, wondering if the bomb in their living room would go off and kill them. Later, they are taken in by HYDRA, experimented on, and recruited as child soldiers to the cause when they show signs of having supernatural powers. They start a series of events that result in the destruction of a major city and the loss of what is probably thousands of lives. Pietro is murdered while trying to help the Avengers to stop this, and Wanda suffers the loss of the very last living person she loved. None of these things seem to have bothered Future Steve. 

Steve “I can’t sit on the sidelines when I see a situation go sideways” Rogers, planted himself on that fucking sideline and observed for nearly eighty years as friends, colleagues, and his own wife were lied to, brainwashed, tortured, vilified, and hunted down like animals.

And then there Steve Rogers himself - not the Endgame Steve Rogers, the Steve Rogers who brought down a Nazi plane and will lie beneath the ice for seventy years while everything he knows disappear (mostly) innocent of these horrors, the life he would’ve lived stolen from him by a stranger with his name and his face from another universe.

What I’m saying here is that if you consider this idea for any amount of time, it took Steve Rogers less than ten minutes to become the most evil and disturbing figure in the entire MCU, only (not really tho) contested by Thanos himself. 

Gross and poorly reasoned libertarian ethics aside, Thanos genuinely believes that he did what he did for the sake of the entire population. It’s made fairly explicitly clear that Steve didn’t do this for anyone but himself. 

Call me crazy, but if everyone you know needs to suffer and multiple planet-wide devestations have to happen in order for you to get your happy ending, you might be the bad guy. 

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned?

[thehollowprince]

So... it's been over a year since Endgame and I thought I'd reexamine my opinions on it. Maybe I just needed some time to let it digest? Maybe I won't be so negative about it after some time to think on it. And I'm here to report that... no! Its just as bad (if not worse) than I remember.

Now, anyone who has followed me for any length of time knows that when I'm criticizing the MCU, particularly the Avengers films, I'm talking about Steve Rogers and his "arc". I've made no bones about how I felt about what they did to him and I stand by that opinion. Endgame completely assassinated Steve Rogers as a character, taking a man who by his own admission, if he "sees a situation heading south, he can't ignore it" (written and directed by the same idiots) and stick him back in the Good Old Days where he knows how bad everything is and how bad it's going to get.

The real kicker with that is the fact that the writers/directors who came up with the whole time travel nonsense can't even agree on how it works. Either Steve's bogus journey created an entire new timeline as was badly explained (despite not making any sense whatsoever) in the movie itself, or he was always a part of this universe, which is just further killing of all his characterization since his first appearance. If he created a new timeline, he either spent the rest of his life fixing the wrongs that he knew were going to happen (completely obliterating the fact that they wanted him to "retire" or he woke the Other Steve up and made him "save the world" while he kicked back and let everyone else fight the good fight without him, a clear contradiction of his character. The other option was that he was in this timeline the whole time, living in plain sight as Peggy's husband, despite her being in the espionage business, meaning she would have been watched, even if only for her own protection. But apparently no one noticed how similar her husband looked to America's Greatest Hero? It also just doubles down on the fact that Steve let everything that happened, happen again, despite knowing he could do something about it that would save many lives. That's not something Steve would ever do.

What really makes this whole situation worse is the fandom reaction to that ending. We were still divided after Civil War, and this movie went and divided the fandom yet again. Either you liked Steve's ending or you "weren't a true fan"/"pissed because your ship didn't happen". These same fans who called out the Russos and M&M for years, who called out the horrible writing in Endgame itself when it came to almost every other character, suddenly didn't care when it came to Steve Rogers. That's where the joke came from that they were the new Tony stans. They didn't care how/why Steve got his happy ending, as long as he got his happy ending, even if it spit in the face of everything that came before.

The thing is, the ending wouldn't have been so bad if there had been any semblance of foreshadowing. There was nothing for several movies that suggested that Steve never got over Peggy. The first time he really mentions her in a romantic sense after The First Avenger was in Engame itself, where he hijacked a support meeting for those who lost loved ones in the Snap to talk about a woman who died two years before the Snap happened from old age. The entire thing was a last minute decision to remove Steve Rogers entirely because Chris' contract was up.

I maintain that Steve should have just retired in the modern world, maybe got some actual therapy, and rest, knowing that he wasn't alone anymore and that there were others to help save the day so that he didn't have to do it alone. Would have opened up a possiblity for a return (because apparently Chris misses the role already) in a future team-up movie, where Steve swoopes in to save Sam with a "Captain America needed my help"

[starkeristheendgame]

Peter tattooed Tony's name on his ass after a drunken night on his 18th birthday. And then Tony found out.

I had so many ideas for this and I fucking loved this prompt. Honestly Anon, thank you so much for the burst of inspiration! I absolutely love this concept and spent like two-hours just staring into space and internally fic-writing 😂

Its not exactly a ‘drunken night tattoo’ AU, but that’s because any respectable tattoo shop will not tattoo you if you’re drunk, or if you’ve consumed alcohol within the last 12 hours. So in respect of the professionals and in the interest of promoting safety, this is a slightly different base!

TW: Very light D/s Dynamic | Slight possessive behaviour | Under-negotiated (but consensual)

Peter couldn’t even blame being drunk. He wished he could; really. People did stupid things when drunk. It seemed to be an immediate write-off excuse for anything, instantly accepted as a valid reason for any stupid decisions.

Peter had been completely and utterly, stone-cold sober at every point in this process. He’d been sober when he’d scanned one of Tony’s signatures onto his phone. Sober when he’d booked the consultation with InkSpren Tattoo. Sober when he’d walked into the studio a week later in a pair of MJ’s velvet shorts.

He wasn’t entirely nervous. Pain didn’t really scare him as much as he supposed it used to. Especially not pain from a set of tiny, teeny needles. He’d gone with MJ for her first tattoo, and she’d taken it pretty well. Well enough that somewhere around the first hour, she’d begun to snore.

His tattoo artist was named Dave. That was comforting. Dave sounded like a nice name. Normal. Friendly. Guy-Next-Door-Dave.

Peter faltered in the doorway.

Dave was a 6″1 male with a beard and more tattoos than Peter thought possible to fit on one man. He was in the process of sapping on a pair of gloves, and eyed Peter critically when he noticed him lingering in the doorway, before motioning for Peter to join him.

“Lay down on your front. Arch your spine a little. You’re gonna have to pull those down under the cheek,” he instructed, reaching into a small tub to pull out some sanitary wipes. Peter tried not to feel embarrassed as he did as told, crawling up onto the bed and settling comfortably, before he squirmed, tugging down his shorts and his boxers both.

The wipe was cold and Peter huffed out a breath in surprise, nose scrunching as he forced himself to relax again. It was fine. It was a wipe. “I’m going to apply the stencil now. You wanted it dead-centre on the right cheek, yeah, mate?” Dave asked after a pause, and Peter nodded.

It would be more accurate to say that MJ wanted it there. Or at the least… That was the spot she’d chosen, when he’d lost the bet. Or… The pseudo bet. It was better to say that MJ had simply said she didn’t believe Peter would ever do something like this, and.

Here he was.

The stencil felt a little like rice paper. A little wet, and having some strange, scary dude palming his asscheek was definitely an experience, but Peter lay quietly through it, glancing nervously at his phone. 

God. He hoped Mr. Stark was too busy to call him today. Or worse, face-time him. Was Mr. Stark watching him through the camera? Had he hacked the microphone?

“Alright. Get up and have a look. We can wipe it off and re-place if its not right,” Dave instructed, and Peter moved gingerly, keeping hold of the waistband as he shuffled awkwardly over to the mirror and twisted.

There, emblazoned in dark purple on his asscheek, was Tony Stark. In a perfect replica of Tony’s elegant, eccentric scrawl. “He’s gonna kill me,” Peter breathed, staring at the stencil with growing horror. He caught Dave’s quizzical, raised eyebrow, and forced a grin. “Yeah, yeah. Its perfect. Right in the middle there. Great. Thanks.”

He lay back down, and after a brief warning, Dave begun.

“You lost a bet or something, kid? Or are you just…Really into the whole Iron Daddy thing?”

Peter wheezed.

Iron Daddy?!

“Lost a bet,” he managed to hiss out, burying his face into his arms. Oh, god. Thank whatever Deity was lurking up there that MJ wasn’t here to witness that. She’d immediately demand that the stencil was changed. Dave gave an affirmative sound from behind him.

“Why this guy? You a big fan or something? Or is it the opposite?”

“Uh… I guess a fan? I Intern. At SI,” Peter replied, wincing at a particularly harsh nip from the needles. It wasn’t so bad, all things considered. It stung, but it wasn’t the raging fire of pain that some people mentioned when they spoke about getting tattooed.

“Mmph. Must come with a nice paycheque. You gonna show him?”

“Absolutely not” Peter responded instantly, to Dave’s amused chuckle. Christ. Mr. Stark would fire him on the spot. He’d take back the suit. He’d get a restraining order. What mentor wanted their name on their eighteen year old mentee’s asscheek?

Then again.

Tony was egotistical enough that he’d probably love it, and think it was the most hilarious thing in the world, and Peter really wasn’t sure which one was worse. Not to mention that both involved him dropping his pants in front of his boss.

It was quiet for a little while after that, just the buzz of the needle and the odd puff of breath at the occasional sting from the gun.

“You know anything about knitting?” Dave asked after a pause, and Peter frowned, considering. He knew a little about sewing. He’d made his own suit, before Mr. Stark had showed up. Aunt May had taught him back when he’d thrown a tantrum over ripping his favourite shirt as an eight year old.

“Uh… Not really? I mean, I can sew a little. But I’ve never knit anything,” he remarked back, pondering it. Knitting was soft sweaters and thick scarves. It made him think of little old Russian ladies on their porches.

“My Ma wants to knit. Says she’s at that age. Told me to get her some wool and those special needles. I dunno the first thing about knitting.”

And that was how Peter learned that Dave’s Ma was what Peter imagined Ms. Romanoff would be when she was eighty, and that Dave’s main job was actually as a Doggy Daycare assistant at Paws ‘R Us.

“All done,” Dave announced, squirting a weird, green froth over Peter’s asscheek before wiping it lightly with a series of cloths. “Go take a look.” 

Peter obliging, sliding off the bench and twisting to see his butt in the mirror.

“Aw, man. This is gonna be on my mind literally every time I see him,” Peter complained, clapping a hand over his face. There, in what looked like thick Sharpie across his ass, was Tony’s signature. Forever. If he ever died, it would be with this stamped across his butt.

“He ain’t gonna know none, unless you drop your kick in front of him,” Dave shrugged, peeling off the gloves. Peter had to concede that he had a point. He had zero intentions of ever telling Mr. Stark what he’d done, and in the three years they’d known each other, Mr. Stark had never seen Peter in less than a shirt and bottoms.

MJ looked moderately impressed when she pulled the hem of his shorts down, peering at the taped-up tattoo with her phone flashlight. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” she shrugged, flopping back onto her bed and resuming the video she’d been watching on her phone.

Peter shuffled around to lay on his stomach on the bottom of the bed, slapping at her ankle. “Never tell a Peter Parker he can’t do something,” he announced, and MJ rolled her eyes.

“I never said you couldn’t do it. I said it was a stupid thing to do, and you argued it, and then decided it was your new personal challenge.”

Peter paused, then tipped his head. “Fair.”

Hiding it was both predictably and surprisingly easy. Peter spent the next few days sitting very gingerly and working himself up into a lather about meeting Mr. Stark on the weekend. Would Tony somehow know? What if MJ had emailed him to spill the secret?

What if Peter and his big mouth spilled it for him?

Except… It went fine. Tony picked him up in a sleek, red sportscar and they went straight to the Tower. Peter was taking a gap year in order to process what he wanted to do with his future. 

Spiderman suddenly changing locations would be suspicious, and sooner or later, someone would think to check on new students at local facilities. People moving for jobs, that sort of thing.

Mj was just… Refusing to comply with the Government agenda or something like that. Honestly, Peter was thankful. With Ned moving to San Francisco for college, things could get a little lonely.

Bar the odd self-conscious squirm, it went as any other meet-up went. They stuffed themselves silly with food in the penthouse and messed around with tech and prank-called Steve and by the end of the night, Peter had almost forgotten about his tattoo.

The twitchy, nervous fear that Tony would somehow turn around and demand to know why he had his name tattooed on his ass eventually faded, and life resumed as it had before he’d gotten the ink.

Which, of course, is exactly when things had to go wrong.

Really, Peter should have expected it. His luck ran in a pattern, and he should have walked on egg-shells the moment he realised things were relaxed and easy and his tattoo was still a secret.

It had been about a month since the tattoo. When he was alone, Peter couldn’t help but stare at it, running his finger over the shiny, black skin. Tony’s name, emblazoned like a brand across his ass. 

It became the focal point of more fantasies than his ass could keep up with, lazing floppy and exhausted and lube-covered on his bed, his mind reeling.

He imagined Tony tracing the letters with his tongue. Imagined Tony pinning him down and tattooing it himself. Imagined a different world where the branding was deliberate. A mark of ownership. Or a surprise. The look on Tony’s face when Peter would bend over, revealing his name.

And, as predicted, hiding it was no trouble at all. Peter had his own room in Tony’s penthouse, so if he needed to shower or sleep there, he had complete privacy. It helped that the Iron Spider and that Tony’s Mark II for the fabric Spiderman suit fit over his regular clothing now, so he didn’t even have to strip to do his thing.

The one thing he didn’t factor in, was a disastrous inventory day combined with the decision to wear white boxers. There’d been a raid on a medical facility kidnapping people to experiment on and most of the equipment and tech had been turned over to Tony for examination, classification and destruction. Peter was there to help, sleepy-eyed and not quite as focused as he ought to be.

He didn’t check the lid on the canister was tight before picking it up.

He didn’t see the drop of oil on the floor where Dum-E had been trundling around, moving things.

He slipped with a whelp, still clutching the container as he slid and twisted, bumping canister first into the edge of the table. He was vaguely aware of Tony shouting as his vision filled with pink dust that stung his eyes and seemed to cling to his clothes.

“Peter! Jesus H - Get in the med-shower, now! I turned away for five seconds kiddo, how did you -” Tony’s frantic muttering stops and starts as he grabbed onto Peter’s arm, dragging him across the workshop to the tiny little emergency shower stall in the corner. 

Peter could do nothing but stagger along, blinking frantically to clear his eyes of dust and pink.

It doesn’t even fully register he’s inside the stall until the first blast of water rained down on him, cold like ice before immediately coming something akin to tepid. He spluttered, trying to flatten himself back against the wall as his hair fell down into his eyes and the water streamed down his mouth, his hair, his back.

He gasped as the water trickled down his thighs, soaking through the cotton of his sweatpants and making them heavy. His shirt clung to his torso like plastic wrap and stuck-peeled uncomfortably with each heaving, shuddering breath.

“Yeah, sorry. This thing acts for burns too, so. Gotta keep it cool,” Tony murmured from outside the stall, head tilting sympathetically even as Peter scowled at him from under the battering stream. “Take your clothes off,” Tony instructed, turning to look over his shoulder.

“What?” Peter squeaked, eyes widening as he wrapped his arms around himself protectively. Tony glanced back at him with a raised eyebrow. 

“Relax, munchkin. My moves are smoother than that. It was a powder. Its likely it got inside your clothes, too,” he pointed out. Peter wanted to argue. Wanted to say if he just stood here long enough the risk was over, but.

“Turn around,” he huffed adamantly, scowling harder at Tony’s snort. But the genius complied, turning away and folding his arms as he observed the settling dust cloud. Peter counted to ten slowly, teeth chattering under the cold spray before he peeled off his shirt. 

The water on his skin was even more unbearable and he gave a whine of protest as he begun to work at the strings of his sweats, letting them fall with a disgusting, heavy slop.

“I was naked in front of you before,” Tony pointed out conversationally and Peter spat out water, shaking his head before pushing his hair from his eyes.

“That doesn’t count. The armour ripped your clothing off in beta deployment,” he pointed out, though he couldn’t help softening at the memory, snickering as he turned his back to Tony, scrubbing at his body. 

It had been hilarious. The actual deployment had gone fine, it was just when Tony had deactivated it that the armour had shrunk in on itself, taking his beaten old tank top and ratty workshop jeans with it.

“Both were an accident. Both involved one of us witnessing the other in a state of undress. Although my back has been dutifully turned since you commanded it, by the way. And both were equally hilarious in that my own armour undressed me, and you essentially became a - What is that?”

Peter jolted, having sunk into a daydream state of listening to Tony talk as he wiped himself down. He looked over his shoulder to find Tony staring straight at him, expression delighted and curious. Or, rather, straight at his ass.

Oh.

Oh no.

“Nothing!” he yelped, twisting to flatten his back against the wall. He’d left his boxers on for the sake of not trusting that Tony wouldn’t forget his vow of not looking, and had completely forgotten they were white. 

Which also meant that his dick was now flat out bared to his mentor. With a howl of frustration he twisted so he was side-on to Tony, curling up and glowering with all the muted rage he could muster.

“Its a logo. On my boxers,” he ground out.

“I think not,” Tony shot back gleefully, leaning on the protective railing with an absolutely manic glint to his eye. Peter almost groaned aloud, head falling back under the spray. It was too late. He was doomed. His heart begun to pound and the air he was sucking in felt like it wasn’t enough.

“You have a tattoo. On your ass. Right there,” Tony pointed out, as though Peter didn’t know it. Peter tried to glare but it came out feeble, weak. Fuck. He was screwed. So screwed! 

“What is it? Who’s name is it? Its clearly a name,” Tony continued, pestering for the information.

“Go away!” Peter barked lightly, shifting restlessly under the cool stream. Tony just shrugged easily at him and leaned through the gap, hitting the OFF button for the water. He seemed unfazed at Peter’s shuffling or his attempted aggression, smiling at him sweetly.

“You can tell me, or I can ask JARVIS. JARVIS is nice, he’ll tell me.”

And Peter’s blood runs cold, because there’s no doubt that JARVIS will. Peter never swore him to secrecy, and Mr. Stark’s name on his ass isn’t anything concerning to the AI.

“Its nothing! Oh my god, its just a tattoo!” he complained, making a shooing motion at his mentor as he side-stepped his sodden clothing. “Go get me a towel. And clean clothes. Please,” he huffed, fingers digging into his sides where he’d wrapped his arms around himself. Tony gave him a devilish grin, then gestured upwards.

“J?”

“It appears to be your name in your own handwriting, Sir,” JARVIS dutifully responded, his voice ringing like church bells through the room. The silence that followed was deafening and panic seeped like ice through Peter’s veins as Tony’s childish, gleeful look faded into complete, lax shock.

This is it. Everything he’s done, the last two years, the friendships and the Internship and Spiderman being Iron Man’s little tagalong… All gone. He’ll never eat day-old pizza with Clint again. He’ll never have Dum-E running over his foot again. The terror and panic bubbled up before he could stop it.

“Oh my god. Mr. Stark - You can’t - I’m so sorry. I swear, I wouldn’t have gotten it and especially not there but I just - I never thought you’d see it and -”

“Turn around,” Tony cut him off mildly, but his tone was firm. It was enough to snap Peter’s jaw shut as he stared, nails digging into his ribs as he blinked under the droplets that fell from his lashes. He sucked in a breath, staring in confusion.

“…What?” he breathed, pressing back against the shower wall as Tony advanced, unlocking the cubicle door to lean against the frame, eyeing him like a prime cut of steak.

“I said turn around,” Tony repeated patiently, raising one hand to make a little spinning gesture with his finger, as if Peter was a trick dog. Peter shook his head, horror quickly dawning as he realised not only what Tony was asking, but also the fact that if his boxers were that see-through…Facing the man directly was probably not the best idea.

He shuffled to the side as much as he could without baring either delicate matter. Tony’s lips quirked in amusement at this and he hummed softly as Peter shook his head. 

“Mr. Stark, its not - Its just your name, I swear. You sign it like every day, you don’t need to look,” he pleaded, shivering in the cool temperature of the workshop as the water begun to dry on his skin, running down in rivulets.

“I don’t sign it on your ass every day,” Tony pointed out, stepping closer. Peter wanted to stall, to argue that technically Tony hadn’t actually signed his ass, except his mentor was moving closer, reaching out slowly as though he might spook if he moved too fast. 

He was so close Peter could see the flakes of gold in his eyes, could smell the minty-motor-oil combination.

The first brush of Tony’s fingertips had his skin jumping like a colts, the touch so gentle it almost tickled. It was on the arch of his hips, skating the waistband of his sodden boxers before pressing just slightly to encourage him to turn. Tony’s gaze was tipped down, dark on his own.

“You can say no,” Tony reminded him softy, the hungry look in his eyes fading for a brief moment, replaced by something tender and careful. Peter sucked in a breath but didn’t resist as he was spun slowly on the spot, hands coming up to brace on the tiles. 

“How long?” Tony asked after a moment, thumbs pressing into the backs of his hips, breath hot across his shoulder.

“A month,” he managed to whisper, pressing his forehead to the wall as Tony’s thumbs slid along the waistband teasingly, catching and pulling but never dipping it more than an inch. 

Peter shuddered under the gentle touches, lips parting when Tony finally begun to slide the sodden material down his hips, over the large swell of his ass.

“You should have told me,” Tony rumbled, head ducking to mouth a lazy, open kiss to his bare shoulder, his stubble scratching just slightly. Peter shuddered as he felt the fabric slip to under his asscheeks, tight in the groove where it met his thigh but not overly uncomfortable. “Should have shown me sooner” Tony murmured into his skin.

And then the warmth of his breath was gone as he leaned back, and Peter could hear the gravelly, husked fuck that he uttered as he looked down, palm sliding around Peter’s flank so he could swipe his thumb across the dark sheen of the ink. 

Peter held his breath, tensing at the touch, though it didn’t hurt. Tony’s hand left his side to slide down between his shoulders soothingly.

“My name. On that perfect, juicy ass. Branded on there forever,” Tony was murmured, voice lethal and rasped as he stroked over it slowly, reverently. “Does that make you feel good, sweetheart? Knowing my claim is on you? In such an intimate place, too? Did you choose this?” Tony hummed, breath ghosting down Peter’s spine as he sank slowly to his knees.

Peter wasn’t about to let Tony know that actually, stamping it on his ass had been MJ’s idea. Especially not when Tony pressed a gentle, scratchy kiss over the tattoo. 

Especially not when he licked over the letters slowly, palms falling down to cup Peter’s asscheeks firmly. It was all he could do to whine, high and pathetic as he trembled under Tony’s hold.

Tony continued to mouth at the tattoo, lavishing it with nips and sloppy kisses as he kneaded at Peter’s asscheeks, almost distracting him enough to spread them with his thumbs, the kisses slowly travelling right until hot air right over there made Peter jolt, eyes snapping open.

“Mr. Star - Ahhhh-Ohhh,” his yelp faded into a gasp, which trickled into a breathless moan as Tony planted a firm kiss to the swirl of muscle between his thighs, sucking ever so slightly before promptly laving his tongue in a fat, wet stripe upwards.

“No idea what it does to me, kiddo. Seeing my name there. Marked on you forever. Marking you as mine,” Tony spoke against him, licking and kissing thoroughly between his words as Peter scrabbled at the tiles, desperately trying to keep himself from rocking back against Tony’s tongue.

One of Tony’s hands left his ass to stroke across his flank, delicate in its search before wrapping around his cock with a surprising firmness. Peter’s hips immediately jumping forwards into the grip and his moan was staggered as Tony paired it with a thrust of his tongue.

He mewled, embarrassingly high and and desperate as he threw one hand back, sliding his fingers gently into Tony’s hair. It was soft, far more silken than he had expected for something that stuck up in odd places when not professionally attacked by a stylist. 

Tony gave a soft sound of encouragement, nipping at him and sliding his hand up to stroke at the tip of his flushed cock.

“Mr. Stark, please,” he gasped, fingers twisting lightly in the soft, dark locks and hips stuttering minutely between Tony’s hot, wet tongue and his firm, slow grip. He wasn’t going to last; not with Tony Stark finally touching him. Not with the scrape of his stubble and the husk of his voice.

Tony chuckled against him, the vibrations making Peter shudder before he rose slowly, kissing a wet path from the small of Peter’s back to his shoulders, never stopping in stroking him slowly, firmly. 

“So eager, sweetheart. So precious,” Tony breathed against his skin, his hand leaving Peter’s hip to fumbled between them, knuckles brushing the round meat of his ass as he tugged his belt free of its buckle.

The slap of cold metal made Peter jolt, hips bucking in Tony’s grip and wrenching a whine from his throat as Tony squeezed him lightly, dipping his thumb into the tip and pushing at the bead of pre-cum that oozed there. 

“Steady, darling,” Tony huffed into his ear, the smirk audible in his voice. Peter opened his mouth to reply, but then there was the sudden feel of a thick, long cock resting in the line of his asscheeks, heavy and hot and he could do nothing but groan weakly.

“Hush, sweetheart. I’m not gonna take you apart yet. Not here. When I do that, you’ll be on my bed, spread out and sloppy for me,” Tony soothed, jerking him off in steady, tight strokes as he rocked his hips, dragging his cock between Peter’s asscheeks with a soft hiss of pleasure.

Tony flattened against his back, careless of the fact that Peter was still dripping water as he nuzzled into his neck, one hand roaming from Peter’s asscheek to his own cock and back, petting and stroking.

 Peter could feel the slow, hot build of an orgasm coiling in his gut, could feel his thighs shaking with the effort of keeping still as he let his head fall back onto Tony’s shoulder with a feeble  gasp.

Tony pressed open-mouthed kisses to his temple, training down to his neck where he nipped softly as he thrust against him, a seemingly never-ending, thick drag of heavy cock that Peter instantly wished was buried deep within him. 

Tony’s moans were deep, slow things, soft in his ear as he pushed his hips back, arching his spine to give Tony a better, tighter angle.

“Fuck, sweetheart. So good for me. That’s it,” Tony purred, one hand dropping to briefly pinch over his tattoo, speeding up his hand and his thrusts as they moved together. It was Tony’s cock catching on his rim that did it, pressing there briefly as though he was slide right in, paired with the ragged gasp the older man gave at the sensation.

Peter’s hips stuttered forwards and his high moan pitched into a yelp as Tony gave him a rough down-stroke, his cock jumping in his grip before painting the tiles in milky splashes. Peter shook in Tony’s hold, eyes squeezed shut and chest heaving as Tony worked him through it, continued to chase his own pleasure.

“My sweet boy. All branded as mine, coming on my cock and my touch. Look at you, baby. So good. So good, Peter. Fuck. Seeing my name, my writing on your ass… I’m gonna ruin you later,” Tony promised, voice ragged, hand falling from Peter’s cock to squeeze his ass, thumb sliding over the signature as he chased his own orgasm. Peter fell breathless against the cool tile, rocking back against the firm, heavy slide of Tony’s cock.

“Please, Tony. Fuck me. Mark me. Take me,” he rambled, breath hitching as Tony pulled back with a groan, nails digging into his ass. 

The older man looked down, managing to pull his hips back and angle his cock in just enough time to paint thick ropes of cum right over his tattoo, the thick, creamy liquid sliding over the ink wetly. Peter let out another mewl, his cock twitching feebly at the thought as Tony panted behind him.

There was a fumble, the rustle of fabric, and Peter opened his eyes, looking over his shoulder in time to see Tony snap a photo of it. His cheeks burned with arousal and humiliation, but Tony dived forwards, capturing his mouth in a firm, wet kiss. 

Peter was breathless by the time Tony pulled back, the corners of his mouth tingling with stubble burn.

“Marked as mine. Twice,” Tony murmured into his cheek, pressing another soft kiss there.

[mcudarklibrary]

Dark! Multi-chapter Stories In Progress

Welcome library dwellers. Browse the catalogue for delicious dark treats that are currently still brewing about our favourite Marvel characters. Want your story added to the list or have you found something hiding in the dark corner? Send us a message and we will add it to the catalogue. 

Remember, AUs are more than welcome in the dark part of the library!

Happy reading, darkies! 

Steve Rogers/Captain America

A Gentle Frost by @jtargaryen18​

You were a newer member of the Avengers when the Sokovia Accords tore the team apart. A meeting is arranged between Vision and Wanda. Steve knows Vision will come to his side for Wanda. And that leaves you… Steve plans to take you for his own. 

All I Want by @kellyn1604​

Professor! Steve Rogers sees a lot of potential in a new student. One that he would like to explore, but professional and societal expectations have ways of keeping us from what we want.

Captive by @mdemontespan1667​

Hydra brings Steve and Reader together

Die Besessenheit by @imanuglywombat​ & @sophiria​

You have slowly worked your way through the writer’s ranks at the New York Times, finally securing your dream spot in the business section as an investigative journalist. However, turning down your boss’ advances lands you writing the article from hell: a PR-fix for the Avengers.

Since the destruction of Thanos, the world has idolised the Avengers. They can do no wrong. You see through the facade and their ego. Forced to stay at the new facilities, you must live the Avenger’s lifestyle and document the life of an international superhero.

You catch the eye of Steve Rogers, Captain America.

Fixation by @smutsonian​

You were just walking home from a friend’s house when all of a sudden, a certain super soldier ambushes you.

Heartbeat by @tansypoisoning​

In which Steve comes back from the past to be with you, but he’s not the same person he was when he left

His Muse by @golden-ariess​

You are his muse. The way you walk, the way you move is living art to him. He falls deeper every time... But you don't know him.

I Find That Which Is Lost by @caffiend-queen​

In which Traveller, who ekes out a living by traveling through time to bring back that which is lost, discovers that a reckless and desperate Captain America is sending out ripples that are shredding the fabric of Time through his use of the Infinity Stones. Steve Rogers may not understand what he’s doing, but the Traveller does, as well as Loki, the God of Mischief and Lies. The question is, why is the former Avenger doing this, and who can stop him before he tears Time and Space apart?

Say Thank You by @honeyhan-123​

Nearly five years have passed since Steve Rogers saves your life without so much as a thank you. When he sees you again by chance, he makes sure that he’ll never let you go and maybe teach you some manners in the process.

Sibling Rivalry by @imdarkinme​

This a story set in GoT type scenario, where the reader and Steve are half-siblings, and children of the Warden of Brooklyn. You both hate each other and try to compete with each other until one of you rises above the other.

Tapestry by @darkficsyouneveraskedfor​

King Steven had a wandering eye but you never thought it would fall upon you.

The Nearness of You @cptnrogerss​

it’s the first christmas after the snap. grief brings steve back to where he first found bucky in romania. he finds a ghost that bucky left behind instead.

What You Need by @tansypoisoning​

Life as an unemployed, homeless wanderer was hard, until you met Captain America. Then it got worse.

Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier

A Gilded Cage by @imanuglywombat​

James Buchanan Barnes did not deserve love. After a lifetime of killing and torture, he was beyond the scope of being loved. That was until the night he met you. It was love at first sight for both of you. The panic sets in though when you begin to pull away, consumed by the demands of your career. Bucky has to keep you safe, keep you locked away from the dangers of the outside world. So he takes matters into his own hands.

Breach by @darkficsyouneveraskedfor​

The reader finds herself in the Winter Soldier’s cross hairs during a lock down.

I.O.U. by @champangebucky​

Bucky is tired of the youngest Avenger having all of Steve’s attention. 

Trapped by @jennmurawski13​ & @catnip987

After the five other winter soldiers that Hyrda has in cold storage are killed, The Asset is the only one that remains. In order to create more soldiers for their army, they come to the conclusion that they need a young, strong woman to carry his child, bringing forth the new generation of Hydra super soldier. 

Waves That Beat On Heaven’s Shore by @jtargaryen18​

She died in 2014. Bucky had killed her himself as the Winter Soldier. Inexplicably brought back from the snap, he knows it’s only a matter of time before HYDRA catches her. He’s not convinced she knows anything that would earn her protection from SHIELD. Bucky decides to take advantage of the opportunity presented to him and take matters into his own hands

Wicked Game by @salimahbicharara-comun​

Victorian AU. Three months after getting engaged to the elegant but cold Mr. Rogers, you find yourself trapped in the Rogers Manor. Surrounded by nothing but forests and lakes, you were more than enthusiastic when your  fiancé introduced you to his childhood friend; James Barnes. Lonely to no end and accompanied by only the darkness and your thoughts, your nights start to get filled of wicked dreams of a man of blue eyes and a devilish smirk.

Tony Stark

Darling by @ironlady1993​

This will be a dark!story with Non-con Smut in future Chapters. Reader is Tonys Stepdaughter so no Inzest here.

Stucky

Brooklyn’s Sweetheart by @spacesnail3000​

Bucky and Steve had always been meant to keep her safe and happy. As far as anyone else was concerned, that was their sole reason for being alive. Unfortunately, the things that kept her safe were not always the things that kept her happy. Lately, she was making it pretty damn hard for them to compromise.

Brooklyn Syndrome by @lordelannette​

Bucky's back was pressed against the cold floor and he stared through blurry eyes as Steve stood over him. He was trying to push himself as far away as he could, using his hands and bare feet to slide himself out from between Steve's legs but he couldn't find purchase against the wooden floor. Steve's legs were locked on both sides of his hips and Bucky couldn't move, couldn't get away, and the room was swimming before his eyes and he couldn't focus, couldn't think straight. All he could make out was the hazy figure of Steve towering over him and he lifted his arm to push uselessly at Steve's shin. "P-please," Bucky whispered. His voice was weak, like him, and his jaw trembled as Steve reached down. Steve slid down onto the floor and effortlessly gathered him into his strong arms, cradling Bucky to his chest as he leaned against the wall. "Bucky," Steve breathed. One of his large hands slid gently into Bucky's hair, the other curving against his spine and pulling him even closer. "You're mine now, remember?" Steve's grip tightened then it all went black.

Let’s Review by @viciousdenofsacrilege​

Peter Parker knew that his big sister would do anything for him to be safe and happy. She’d given up everything for him twice over already and would do it again in a heartbeat. And that’s why, when the criminal mastermind Tony Stark started inextricably following him around, he didn’t say a word. Because he knew without a doubt Penny would do whatever she had to if it meant keeping Peter safe. He had to protect her, just like she always protected him. He never considered what would happen if Stark decided both Parker siblings were worth taking. Never considered who else in Stark’s inner circle would agree. He just wanted to protect her and yet somehow, they both ended up with needles in their necks. 

My Right To Purge by @theliveshipparagon​

Purge Night starts at Stark Tower

The Game of Hearts by @you-are-my-sanctuary​

After being kidnapped and sold to an underground club, you quickly learn that the only way to survive in The Red Room was to gain the favor of its customers.Popularity among the men of the bar meant everything in this world.It meant you would have a stable income of food, better treatment from the Mistress, better rooms and of course, it meant you wouldn’t be some cheap fuck anyone and everyone could use.It meant the men seeing you would have to be important and wealthy. It meant that they had to be powerful.When it comes to power, no one was as powerful as Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.Brooklyn’s very own Kings.And everyone knows a king needs a queen.So when these two infamous Mob bosses set their smouldring eyes on you, you were sure of one thing:This was going to be the ultimate game of hearts.One you weren’t sure you were going to win.

It’s A Party (Multiple Partners)

Hunger by @searchforanotherway​

You’re camping with your friends. On a hike you are suddenly kidnapped by a man who takes you to a secluded cabin occupied by other men. They call themselves alphas, the only ones of their kind, and they are convinced that they can convert you (a normal human) to an omega in order to carry their young.They groom you and force themselves on you until you take their knot.

Little Pet by @ironlady1993​

non-con, threesome, blackmail, swearing, dark!professor steve , dark!Professor !tony

[onegayastronaut]

Best Laid Plans (Natasha Romanoff x Reader)

Requested by anon:  Natasha x reader finds out what happens I may after she doesn’t come back with Clint

Words: 2256

Dating Nat has always been a roller coaster, but one thing that you could always depend on is that she would find her way back to you. Your girlfriend had told you on multiple occasions that no matter how dark her future seemed, it was brighter whenever she thought about coming home to you. She called you her “north star” because no matter how dark her life got, she knew she could always count on you to bring her home.

One thing that had always frustrated you at the beginning of the relationship was not knowing what was going on with Natasha when she was on a mission. It wasn’t that you felt a need to keep an eye on your girlfriend: you knew that there was no one who could beat her in a head-on fight. But even though you knew she could hold her own in a fight, it didn’t stop you from worrying about her whenever she went out. You had talked to Pepper about your worries, and she had talked to Tony about giving you the head engineer job at the Avengers base. Tony always gave the hardest assignments because you were the only person other than himself that he trusted to get the job done, and you were very happy to spend more time with your girlfriend and get paid the same time. Most of the time it was fun and games (especially when Thor was around), but now that Thanos had won, there were no jokes to be had.

After getting the team back together, Scott had helped come up with an insane idea -- the Avengers would break up in teams to get the Infinity Stones back and stop Thanos before he destroyed half the world. Natasha and Clint were sent to get the Soul Stone from the planet where it could be found, and you couldn’t help but feel your stomach tighten as you watched Natasha gear up. 

Neither of you said anything, but as she stood up, you grabbed her by the arm. “Nat, don’t go.”

“The team is counting on me, (Y/N). I...we need to do this for the teammates that we lost. Not only that, but the rest of the world also needs an answer about what happened.”

“Nat, the Soul Stone needs a sacrifice. I can’t lose you. Please stay, for me.”

“(Y/N), you know I’ll always come back to you. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be back before you even notice I’m gone. Banner and that ant dude, or whatever he calls himself, said that the people here will barely notice the difference when we come back. So don’t worry about it, I’ll be back and we can watch as many movies as you like.” And with that, Natasha kissed you and walked towards the time machine. You didn’t realize you had been holding your breath until both Natasha and Clint disappeared.

True to Natasha’s word, the machine whirred after a few moments. One after another, the Avengers came back with their respective stones. With every Avenger that came back, you breathed a sigh of relief that another friend was safe, but the knot of tension on grew in your stomach as you waited for Natasha and Clint to come back. Pretty soon, the machine started back up again, and in a flash, a figure appeared on the machine. But unlike the other groups, there was only one figure standing on the platform, and it wasn’t Natasha.

As soon as Clint stepped off the platform, you frantically ran over to him. “Where is she? Where’s Natasha? Why isn’t she with you?”

“She’s not here. She’s gone. She’s gone.”

“No. No. She said she’d come back. She can’t be gone.”

“I’m sorry, (Y/N). I’m so sorry. I told her it should have been me. I tried to stop her, but she went over the cliff. I’m so sorry.”

“Why? Why would she do this?” You had grabbed Clint by his shirt and was gently shaking it as tears started coming down your face. Normally you would never have done this to any of the Avengers considering any of them could put you on your ass faster than you could blink, but you didn’t understand why Natasha would send herself over the cliff when she knew what her death would do to you. You didn’t blame Clint because you knew he loved her too and would have sacrificed herself without hesitation. It was just that Natasha was faster and beat him to it.

There was no time to grieve as the Avengers were only halfway done with their job. But within a week, the population was restored back to the original count before Thanos came about, and the Avengers were grieving the death of Tony. You had felt the loss of Tony like you had lost a brother, and it was made worse by the fact that you didn’t have Natasha next to you to process all that had happened. Clint seemed to be the only one who understood how you processed grief. Even though he had gotten his family back, he still found time after the funeral to have a beer with you and sit in silence for as long as it took for you to feel better.

After drinking with Clint, you went to go find Banner. You had an idea, and he was the only Avenger that was able to help you. He most likely would say no to what you had in mind, but you were sure you could convince him.

“Hey, Bruce, I need your help.”

“Of course, (Y/N). Anything I can do to help.”

“Do you have any of the serum left for the machine?”

“Why? What do you have in mind?”

“I’m going to Vormir. I refuse to believe that Natasha is just gone. If she’s still there, there’s no way I’m leaving her trapped on that planet on her own.”

“No, (Y/N), it’s too dangerous. What happens if you don’t make it back? Then both of you will be trapped there.”

“Bruce, I’ve thought of that. I feel like I died when I didn’t see Nat come back on that platform. You know that if you don’t help me try to get her back, I’ll risk it on my own. But I’m asking for your help because I know you loved her too.”

“Okay, (Y/N).” Bruce turned around and started getting everything ready. After putting on the suit and taking the serum, you stood in front of one of the platforms. Bruce came up to you and put a heavy hand on your shoulder. “Stay safe, (Y/N). I want her back too, but not if that means you die in the process. Are you sure you want to do this?” 

You nodded curtly and closed your eyes. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I’m ready, Bruce.” You heard the machine start up, and before you knew it, you felt yourself enter the quantum realm on your way to Vormir.

When you opened your eyes, you were lying facedown in a marsh. When you looked up, there seemed to be two different moons in the sky. As you got up, you started heading over to the mountain that had the most prominent peak in sight. This planet was as desolate as you imagined it to be, and you could barely stand staying here, but you had already resolved to not leave without Natasha. As you reached the piece of rock that jutted out from the rest, you walked to the edge and looked over. For a second, you thought you saw your girlfriend lying there, but when you blinked, she was gone. You felt a breeze, and you knew that Red Skull was there behind you.

“You’re not here for the Soul Stone.”

“That’s right. I’m here to get her back.”

“Then you came for nothing. When a life is sacrificed, there is no coming back. She knew the cost when she sacrificed herself for the Stone.”

“I’ll sacrifice myself to bring her back. I won’t turn around and leave just because you said no.” When you turned around, Red Skull was already gone. With nothing else to do, you sat at the edge of the rock and decided to wait. You already knew you were in the right place considering Red Skull had come to talk to you, so all there was left to do was to have some patience.

-----

“Where’s (Y/N)?” Steve marched over to Bruce in the lab and looked around. “Last I saw her she was headed in here.”

“She’s gone.” Bruce felt bad being evasive to Steve, as Steve was one of the few people who weren’t scared of the Hulk.

“Gone where? Where is she?” Steve’s clear blue eyes demanded the truth, and Bruce relented after a while.

“You know where. She misses Natasha too much not to go.”

“Send me there. I’m not letting her do this on her own.” Steve took his shield and got onto the platform.

-----

When you heard a noise coming from your left side, you thought that Red Skull had come back for another chat. Instead, you saw an older man clambering up the rocks to get to you. “Who are you?”

“I should be asking you that question, (Y/N). You don’t look so good.”

“Rogers? How long have I been here? You look like a grandpa.”

“Technically, a few hours in our world. But like you, I took a detour. I got to spend a few decades with Peggy before I came back.”

“I could have sworn I’ve been here for days.”

“Which would probably explain why you look like that. This environment isn’t suitable for humans for extended periods of time. I’m taking you back.” Steve bent over and picked you up.

“No! Let me down! I’m not leaving here without Natasha.”

“She’ll never forgive me if I allowed you to die down here, (Y/N). And as your friend, I’m taking you back home before this place takes your life too.”

“You don’t understand, I can’t leave. If I leave that means Nat will be here alone.”

Cap set you down and looked at you. He knew the pain you felt in your heart, and he was beyond upset to see you like this. “We have to go. We both know what’ll happen if you stay.” A hot tear made its way down your face, and Steve squatted down next to you. “Nat would want you to live, (Y/N). You know that. Now come on, we don’t have much time.” He held out his hand and waited for you to take it.

“Why is your hand so cold? And what do you mean we don’t have time? Did Banner put a time limit on our suits or are you just old?”

“Not exactly.” There seemed a bit of sadness in his voice as you walked down the cliff together.

“Leaving so soon?” You could not believe your ears as you turned around to see Natasha standing there. “Hey, babe.”

You ran over to hug your girlfriend, not willing to believe your eyes. “How are you here? How did this happen? I love that you’re here with me now, but Red Skull said it couldn’t be done.” Turning around, you saw Red Skull standing next to Steve. “What’s going on?”

“You wanted your girlfriend back, and you can leave with her. But the price is a soul for a soul. And this one has agreed to stay behind.” Red Skull put a hand on Steve’s shoulder.

“No, Steve, I can’t let you do this. Not for me.”

“It’s okay, (Y/N), it’s okay. I managed to use my last time travel round to go back to Peggy, and I’ve lived a full life with her. It’s only fair you get to be with the girl of your dreams too.”

“But what do I do without my best friend by my side?” Tears threatened to come out of your eyes again. You are so sick and tired of losing the people you love.

“You’ve never needed me to be your moral compass. I’m sure you’ll do just fine on your own. Besides, I think you got someone who will help you make the right decision if you ever needed someone with an honest opinion.” Steve handed you a handheld machine and gave you a warm hug. “You’ll be needing this to get back.”

“Are you sure about doing this?”

“I don’t think it’ll be long before I get to see Peggy again. She’s probably waiting for me on the other side. Don’t forget, I’ll always be here, no matter where or when you are.” Steve tapped you twice on the chest. “I want you and Nat to be as happy as possible, all right? I got to live the life I always wanted with my best girl and now it’s your turn to do the same.”

As you and Natasha stood together in preparation to leave Vormir, you couldn’t help but look back at the Avenger who had become one of your closest friends in all the galaxy. Your last memory of Steve was him giving you a little wave before you pressed the machine to send you back to the Avengers base. You landed on the platform with tears in your eyes, but not from grief this time. Maybe Steve was right: maybe all the support you needed was right there with you in your arms.

[seapandora]

Sky High

Part 1

Summary: Y/N, an angel of the Lady. She is beauty, she is grace, but she will punch a demon in its face. 

A/N: A part of the writing challenge @buckysknifecollection made. It is going to be a series, and I´d love to hear from you guys on what you´d like me to change and what not. I really hope this will be a good one, I love the prompt and I just had a lot of fun writing this even if it probably doesn’t make any sense XD. Anyways, enjoy guys!

Warnings: Swearing (I swear a lot, okay), sexual innuendos (later chapters), alcohol, mentions of death/killing, mentions of religion(s), angst (future chapters), fluff (future chapters)

Steve x fem!reader

Words: 1778

Prompt: Angel/Demon AU

Y/N: Your Name

Y/Ns week had been awful, more so than usual. She hadn´t been able to be around her favorite humanoids and she had been away on mission after mission to species who didn’t appreciate her help and in the end didn’t pray to or for her, meaning her grace was draining slightly. It made her grouchy and really not very pleasant to be around. Natasha had already pointed that out to her, but Y/N had just grumbled and asked for another whiskey. It was the only way she would be able to get through the week in her own head.

Monday

Everyone hates Mondays, why should this one had been any different? It really wasn´t. It all started with Y/N getting her mission. A population of Welmus. An aggressive species who had no beliefs and were therefor hard to control. Welmus weren´t large, but they were many, reproduced faster than regular humans and could be a real pain in the ass unless controlled. Normally the younger angels would handle them, in more or less good ways. But in the past few months they had had a bit of an upproar which ended in the entire population having to be wiped out. Y/N didn’t like the work, but she didn’t want someone like Tony to have to do it. He took it more personal than Y/N did. She just did the job, she didn’t want to loose her wings. It seemed to be painful. So yes, she had commited mass-murder, in the name of Maria. In the words of sir Ian McKellen, in the Da Vinci-code, as long as there´s been one true god there has been killing in his name. Maria was god now. So while the Welmus-species wasn’t huge, standing at a height of 50 cm, they were very very aggressive and didn´t go down with a fight. Y/N had earned quite a few scars from that battle. In the end she had did what needed to be done though and she had wished for no more mission for the day, but as per usual, she never got what she wanted. Maria had given her another mission, this one to sort up another rebellion. She wouldn’t need to take anyone out, but she was supposed to take those responsible, into custody to let them stand in the court of holy law to have their fates determined. What a Monday it had been.

Tuesday - Thursday

Tuesday she had gotten her third mission of the week. To get to earth and make believers pray and atone for their sins. Yay, her favorite. Oh how she hated humans. They were ungreatful, needy, whiny, cruel, and disrespectful. They didn’t appreciate her help and didn’t pray for her after she left. All angels had a specific area they took care of Y/Ns was peace and she had visited earth with the mission to calm people down. The least they could do was to pray for peace no matter what religion they belonged to. Anyways, she had been busy trying to keep forces separated and her mind had been working non-stop to convince the leaders of the two forces to retreat and squash the dispute. What good was it being the good guy if she couldn’t use her powers. The whole ordeal had just taken so much energy out of her and Thursday night she just cured up under the stars and let herself regenerate a bit of Grace. It was exhausting to end fights and make sure everyone behaved, humans were particularly hard to deal with. And would you know, Friday would be even worse.

Friday

Whats worse than having adult humans not believe in peace? Having a child believe in peace but have to take them out because their future shows them to be horrible humans. The world didn’t need a new dictator. Her day had hence started with just studying the child, and eventually talking to the child and lastly taking the childs hand and guide him to Maria. Yes that meant the child moved on to the after-life. Yeah, Y/N job really wasn’t glamourous or fun sometimes. Her Friday didn’t end with that though. Maria sent her to collect three angels from hell, or the underworld rather. It was the same place for all religions who believed in a hell-like world where you were punished for your sins. Y/N liked the underworld, well she didn’t mind the dark and silence down there. Unlike heaven she never felt crowded while she was down there. The angels had all been captured by demons but had now been traded for demons that were kept in heaven. Y/N didn’t really know why they had all been captured, she didn’t really care, she just did her job. The angels had been returned safe and sound and Y/Ns week had finally been over. Well work for her was never over, but she took the weekend away from her boss, so close enough.

Angels and Demons, good and bad, light and dark, blah blah blah… Y/N had heard it all by now. She was the good, light, gracious and angelic. She was beautiful as few and carried her aura with pride. Well according to what most people thought anyways. She hated it, every second of it. Being an angel wasn’t something she had chosen. She had died, it was quite dramatic and all, but she had long forgotten how she died. Someone had seen into her sould and whipped up some hefty spell. And she oop… was an angel. Yeah yeah, it wasn’t that simple, but she didn’t know the process, just that she went through it. A few years into her… holiness… angelness… angelship, she got a wessel. She was to do the Lords work on earth. Y/N hadn´t been a believer before she died, doing the Lords work felt hypocritical to her and she had rebelled in a sense. Her rebellion had led to the exchange of theLord into a very lovey lady, Maria. Okay, she wasn’t lovely but, Y/N disliked any kind of authority. She did her duties as she got them in exchange for not being disturbed inbetween her missions. Her reach stretched beyond Earth, more than the human species believed in a power, and she was one of a number to make the higher powers work. Y/Ns favorite species to help were the Sofwas. They are small humanoid creatures, about 2 inches tall and despite that they’ve got quite the vocal range and Y/N always felt humbled by them. They were vocal, but kind, mostly. Y/N would often volonteer to help the Sofwas and she was respected and prayed to by the creatures. It was important to be that respected by at least one species. If she wasn’t she would fade, her wessel would devour all of her grace and she´d become a mere shell walking across the worlds praying on angels. Now lets not confuse a corrupted angel with a demon. A demone was a completely different thing, as unpleasant and disgusting of course, well almost all demons were awful.

Natasha wasn’t awful. She was a demon Y/N had worked with a few times by now. Angels and demons didn’t always have opposing goals. Most demons knew who Y/N was, they knew her story with heaven and often thought they could ger her to join their cause, or side, or whatever youd want to call it. Those attempt only pissed Y/N off, they were futile. She didn’t want to be on anyones bad side. She had, first hand, had to rip angels wings off because of their disobediance and failure to hide it, or make up for it. She had, first hand, had to kill demons, as they strayed too far off their path. All she really wanted was some peace and quiet. She had no interest in the disputes between angels and demons. She just didn’t want to be bossed around. That was her problem. If she refused orders she´d be discarded, she´d be killed. She was stuck in her situation really. Now back to Natasha, she ran a bar Y/N often visited. They had the more potent stuff that would get angels and demons alike, a good buzz. Y/N was a frequent visitor. Her work was hard and in the bar she didn’t have to think. A few of her collegues came with her occasionally, Tony mostly, but also Rhodey, and T´Challa. They usually met up in the bar to discuss their latest missions. The other three however werent as keen on demons as Y/N was. They were all technically younger than her and had a lot of faith in their boss Maria. Of course they knew about Y/Ns rebellion, but they hadn´t been around for it. At the bar they could talk freely, while there Maria couldn’t summon them. Natasha had made sure that the bar was a free haven.

The bar wasn’t only for them though, no no no, Natasha would never have been able to put up with them alone, there had to be at least two demons in the bar to balance it out. This didn’t always fall well with Tony and Rhodey. T´Challa was more relaxed around the demons even if he didn’t trust them or wanted to talk to them. There was however one demon neither of them wanted to talk to and Y/N wasn´t too fond of him either. He went by The Captain or The Nomad Captain, and he was the leader of the demons. He was the, so called, devils right hand. No one really knew his real name, well of course Y/N knew it. She knew a lot. She got around enough to understand who he was. The captain had a few friends Y/N actually spent some time with every now and then. It was mostly at the bar, but occasionally out in the real world as well. A demon Y/N really enjoyed spending time with was Sam. He was fun, and didn’t judge Y/N for being an angel. Unfortunately Sam spent most of his time with The Captain and his other associate. Y/N wanted to say the two were friends, but she didn’t know if demons could even have friends. Hell, she wasn’t sure she had or could have friends. Yes she had her collegues but they weren´t her friends. Currently the bar was empty apart from herself, Natasha, Natashas friend Wanda, and The Captain and the person Y/N had realized was closest to him, James. It was weird being the only angel in the establishment, but Y/N didn’t care too much. As long as The Captain and James didn’t pick a fight she would be fine. 

[steves-on-a-plane]

Two Roads Diverged

Title: Two Roads Diverged SONG FIC: The Day I Died - Five For Fighting Words: 2343 (2090 without lyrics) Pairing: Steve Rogers x Peggy Carter Author’s Note: This song came up under my suggested songs on Apple Music and as I listened to it, it just really gave me Steve and Peggy vibes. I wasn’t a huge fan of how Endgame tied up Steve’s story but as I wrote this, I took a linear look at his relationship with Peggy and it helped me understand that version of Steve a little bit better.

“Give me your coordinates. I’ll find a you a safe landing site.” The voice of Agent Margaret Carter ordered. The sounds came out muffled and crackling through the speaker on the plane’s console. That was 1940’s technology for you.

“There’s not gonna be a safe landing.” Captain Steve Rogers relayed regrettably from his seat in the cockpit. He fiddled with the plane’s controls. Steve was already strapped into the pilot’s chair and physically preparing for impact. “But I can try and voice it down.”

“I-I’ll get Howard on the line. He’ll know what to do.” Agent Carter insisted. Steve could hear the desperation in her voice, even through the cracking of the speaker.

“There’s not enough time.” Her told her, his voice never wavering. He told himself at the time that the level tone was for her sake, but the truth was it was just as much for his own. “This thing’s going down and it’s headed for New York.” There was dead air between them for several seconds before Steve laid out the only option. “I gotta put her in the water.”

“Please, don’t do this.” Agent Carter argued, sounding more desperate than Steve ever thought he’d live to hear. “We-we have time. We can work it out.”

“Right now, I’m in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer a lot of people are gonna die.” Steve disagreed. He needed to make her understand that the didn’t have any time at all. “Peggy, this is my choice.” Silence managed to push its way into the conversation again as Steve tugged at the yolk of the plane. The aircraft dipped down into a full-on nosedive, its trajectory headed straight for the icy water below. Neither one of them could bare disconnect communication with the other. There was still so much left unsaid between them. Some many things they’d never share.

“Peggy?” The Captain’s voice finally cracked slightly as the yolk shook in his hands. Though he hoped she’d never be able to tell through the speaker on her end.

“I’m here.” She responded, already sounding very far off.

“I’m gonna need a raincheck on that dance.” He said as his plane broke through the clouds. He was coming in fast. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

“Alright.” Peggy obliged, holding back tears. “A week next Saturday at the Stork Club. Eight o’clock on the dot. Don’t you dare be late. Understood?”

“You know, I still don’t know how to dance.” He admitted. Trying to keep the conversation going. Again he convinced himself this was for her sake.

“I’ll show you how.” She promised. “Just be there.”

“We’ll have the band play something slow.” Steve agreed, the water felt only inches away now. “I’d hate to step on your…”

I woke up, you next to me. You said, “Good morning, are you free?” The sun crept in for one last time. I was alive the day I died. The clock struck noon but did not care.

No matter how much time passed, Steve couldn’t seem to shake the memories of that day. When he woke up thawed and miraculously alive sixty-six years later, he knew it couldn’t have been anything but divine intervention. It truly was a miracle to be alive, but Steve wasn’t so sure it was a good thing. Whether you called it fate, destiny, whatever, the same force that had brought Steve Rogers back to life was the same force that had forced him go in the first place.

It was just easier for Steve, who liked to think of himself as a simple man from a simpler time, to think of this force as God. And to Steve it seemed just so unfair that the same God who could curse him with so many childhood ailments could bless him with whatever it was that Dr. Erskine liked so much. The same God who brought the force of nature that was Peggy Carter into his life, could let the two of them be separated so absolutely. To the rest of America, the return of Captain America was a sign of good things to come, but to Steve it was a painful reminder of the man he’d never gotten to be.

Bzzzz. Bzzzzz. Steve looked at the mobile phone that vibrated across the desk in his room. The phone had been given to him by SHIELD Director Fury who had explained that landlines were as extinct in this time as he felt. He didn’t recognize the number, but he answered the phone anyway. It wasn’t like anyone he knew would be calling.

“Hello?” A female voice called cautiously into his ear.

“Hello?” He questions back. “This is Steve Rogers. Who is this?”

“Captain, my name is Sharon. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to call, but your condition was need to know and I wasn’t high enough on the chain of command. Anyway, I’m calling because I think my aunt would like to see you and I suspect you’d also like to see her again. You knew her as Peggy.” The woman on the phone explained.

I saw a child in my old chair. A shadow fell across your face, but all the years could not erase. I was alive. I was alive. You pulled me close. I held you tight. Though my smiles told a few lies, I was alive, the day I died.

Again, Steve found himself wondering how a God could bring him Peggy back, but not quite. Was this the curse he was destined to bare forever then? To always have what he wanted just out of reach? The love of his life was there with him but while Steve still looked the same Peggy had aged. She’d gone on and gotten married. She had a family, a life. For her it had been sixty-six years. It wasn’t her fault that to Steve it had felt like six minutes.

“You should be proud of yourself.” He told Peggy as he said by her bedside. He studied the photographs by her bedside at the nursing home. The Captain couldn’t help but think how lucky the man who’d been married to her must have been.

“Mmm.” Peggy hummed in agreement. “I have lived a life. My only regret is that you didn’t get to live yours. What is it?” She added, taking in his downcast expression.

“For as long as I can remember, I just wanted to do what was right.” He sighed, looking away from the photographs. “I guess, I’m just not quite sure what that is anymore.” Peggy laughed at him and Steve’s heart skipped a beat. He’d missed her laugh.

“You’re always so dramatic!” She commented between chuckles. “You saved the world. We rather mucked it up. The world has changed and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best. And sometimes the best that we can do, is to start over.”

I was the first to see a star. It seemed so close, it was so far. Wind started to roar. Screamed time to go. You know all you need. You know all you know. I was alive. I was alive. You pulled me close. I held you tight. And though our smiles told a few lies, I was alive the day I died.

She’s gone. In her sleep.

That’s what Sharon’s text had said. That was the message that Steve received to let him know that the love of his life had died. A simple five-word text. Steve looked around the room, the timing couldn’t have been worse. The Avengers were literally falling apart before his eyes. They were all there. Sam, Tony, Nat, everyone. Arguing over some bullshit restrictions that had no place even being considered in the first place. It was too much. But that was the future, or in this case the present. Everything was always too much too fast these days.

“I have to go.” Steve mumbled, getting up from his seat in the living room. He walked off without giving the others a chance to ask why. He was packed an on a plane to London within hours.

The service was everything one would expect from an international hero like Margaret Carter. Even down to the perfectly pitched choir of angelic singers. The family asked Steve to be a pallbearer and he was honored, even if they were just indulging an old man’s sentimentality. Sharon gave a moving eulogy and then it was over.

He was expected to just go on home. To pretend like the only person, he’d ever really loved wasn’t buried six feet under. He was expected to go back to New York and sign a bunch of documents saying that the government had the right to tell him and the others like him if, when and how they were allowed to save people. The entire thing didn’t sit right with Steve. He couldn’t stomach it, the entire idea of someone else being in control of his future.

Steve Rogers had let people tell him who he was his entire life. That ended today.

“Sometimes, the best we can do is to start over.” He whispered to himself. Steve Rogers had let people tell him who he was his entire life. That ended today. He was done being the monkey in the suit who danced when they called. Steve slipped out of the church and disappeared from the public eye for three years.

Oh, Sweet Angel you call. Oh, Sweet Angel you call. Oh, Sweet Angel. White went black. Black went white. Universe cracked. I saw the light. You called my name. I did not respond. But I heard you well, carried you on.

“You have to return the stones to the exact moment we got ‘em or you’re gonna open up a bunch of nasty alternative realities.” Dr. Banner explained to Steve. He flicked open the briefcase where all six infinity stones were housed.

“Don’t worry Bruce,” Steve closed the briefcase solemnly. “Clip all the branches.”

“You know if you want, I could come with you.” Sam offered.

“You’re a good man Sam, but this one’s on me though.” Steve nodded and took in one last look at his friend before turning to Bucky.

Buck had been Steve’s friend forever. They’d survived almost a century together. The world had changed around them and dragged the pair kicking and screaming along with it. There were no secrets between them and Buck knew, even if Rogers didn’t, this was the last time they’d be seeing each other. At least as they both were then.

“Don’t do anything stupid till I get back.” Steve echoed the last worlds Bucky had said to him before shipping out back during WWII.

“How can I.” Bucky shook his head, recounting Steve’s response from ‘The good ‘ol days.’ Back when the worst-case scenario didn’t involve time traveling aliens who could wipe out half the population with a single snap. “You’re taking all the stupid with you.” They shared a hug that expressed more than either had ever said allowed to the other. “I’m gonna miss you buddy.” Buck whispered as they separated.

“It’s gonna be okay, buddy.” Steve promised. With a final reassuring pat on the shoulder he walked away and stepped on to the time machine.

Midnight came and I was gone. The planet shrugged and moved along. A few people noticed and sang my songs. I was alive the day I died. I was alive the day I died.

Returning the Infinity Stones hadn’t exactly been easy. Even with the ability to travel forward or backwards with time as needed Steve found that getting the timing just right, took a little bit of practice. He didn’t have a way of recording how long the job had taken him, but he knew he was done when he opened the briefcase to find no more Infinity Stones and one final Pym Particle, his ticket home.

Home. He chuckled to himself. He’d never really felt at home anywhere or anytime. Growing up he’d been a scrawny kid from Brooklyn who never quite knew when enough was enough. During the war he was a puppet. Back when his uniform was still a costume and the closest he got to being a hero was punching a fake Hitler in the jaw three times a night. After the ice He was an eighty-eight year old man trapped in a twenty-something’s body. There was no stopping things after that. The music was too loud, and cars moved too fast.

He’d missed so many things he’d never be able to catch up on. America in the twenty first century had never really been his home. He looked down at the Pym Particle in his hand wondering if he dared. There’d be no going forward or back. That was the last one. He’d have to get the timing just right, because he was going to be stuck whenever time he landed.

Despite his best efforts to live in the present, he’d spent most of his life looking back with regret. Regret that he hadn’t been able to tell her back them when the timing was right. Regret that he hadn’t listen that day. That he hadn’t let her get Howard on the line to work things out. Regret that he’d never gotten that dance with his best girl.

Hardening his resolve, Steve set the date on his time travel watch. It had been seventy-two years for him, but for her it would be less than seventy-two hours. He’d show up with a bouquet of flowers even though flowers weren’t quite her thing. This was a special occasion and she’d understand that. He’d apologize profusely for missing their date and then before she had a change to say another word, he’d get down on one knew and ask her to be his gal forever.

I woke up, you next to me. You said “Good Morning, are you free?” The sun crept in for one last time. I was alive the day I died.

Disclaimers: All the bold text are song lyrics, and there is quite a bit of dialog pulled from MCU movies so if you reconize it, chances are its probably from The First Avenger, Winter Soldier, Civil War or End Game.  

[leahxx129]

Nat’s Masterlist

Welcome to my masterlist! :)  I know it’s kind of short, but I’m planning on changing that in the foreseeable future.

Also, once you open a link, you can see that every fic has its own warning section, but I’m gonna note the ones that contain smut with a * next to their title.

Fun Fact (Steve Rogers X Reader)  *

Summary: Fun fact: when you’re dying, your life does flash before your eyes. Well, not all of it of course, just the snippets that actually made it worth living. For you this means four memories that portray different stages of your relationship with Steve Rogers.

Misbehavior (Tony Stark x Reader)  *

Summary: A mission goes sideways because of Tony Stark’s impulsive decision and this angers you to the point of punishing him in a very special way. Unbeknownst to you, an entire audience witnesses it.

Tragedy of Butterflies (Peter Quill x Reader)

Summary: As a result of the Snap, Peter Quill dies in your arms and your heart shatters to pieces since you’ve been secretly in love with him for quite a while now. What happens 5 years later when everyone is brought back to the battlefield, including some very unexpected people?

Path of Healing (Sam Winchester x Reader)

Summary: You’d met Sam Winchester years ago and he had ruined your life. You’d sworn that if you ever saw him again, you’d kill him. Nowadays, just as you were about to finish an important case, he showed up out of nowhere. Were you really gonna keep your promise?

His Name (demon!Dean Winchester x Reader)

Summary: Nobody knew why or how, but on their thirteenth birthday every person on planet Earth would start feeling this burning sensation on their left lower arm, which intensifies as the day carries on. By the time the sun goes down, the burning sensation would leave a scar, forming a name. It’s believed to be the name of the person one belongs with. The letters on your skin spell out Dean Winchester.

No Promises (purgatory!Dean Winchester x Reader)

Summary: When Dean Winchester ended up in purgatory and Cas abandoned him, he was completely alone in a land of vicious monsters thirsting for his blood - up until he met you. You managed to escape the place together, but now Dean’s brother is stuck there. There’s only one way to save him, but it requires a great sacrifice. Will Dean be able to make it?

The Last Descendant Series (Sam Winchester x Reader) 

Summary: When Sam Winchester’s brother gets possessed by an archangel, he hits rock bottom. Luckily for him, you’re there to save the day. Later on, he returns the favor and the two of you develop an amicable relationship, which has the potential of turning into something more. But will it? Is the revelation of your biggest secret going to change everything for the better or for the worse? Can you overcome your past and concentrate on the present in order to have a future?

Part 1    Part 2    Part 3    Part 4 *   Part 5

Make It Right (John Winchester x Reader)

Summary: John Winchester saved your life once and when he shows up at your doorstep with his sons, asking you to look after them, you do it without hesitation. But his one-time-only inquiry turns into a two-times deal and slowly evolves into a habit. Can you play along even after he breaks your heart?

Heaven’s on Fire (Castiel x Reader)

Summary: You’ve successfully managed to get off the grid but thanks to your best friend, the one person you wish to see the least finds you and reveals a surprising truth. Will it be enough to bury the hatchet though?

No Idea (Castiel x Reader)

Summary: In hopes of finding Chuck, you and Castiel visit a Supernatural Fan Convention. At the event, you bump into a couple of enthusiasts who uncover some very interesting facts about the real nature of the relationship you and the angel share.

Truth or Cut (Dean Winchester x Reader x Sam Winchester)

Summary:  The British Men of Letters try a new approach to acquire the Winchesters’ cooperation, which leads to heartbreaking revelations.

Source.

Feels Like Home Series (Hvitserk x Reader)

Summary: Following your father’s death you return home to Kattegat. Soon enough you partake in a raid that brings some suppressed feelings and unwanted truths to the surface. Is your bond with Hvitserk strong enough to survive the revelations?

The Return (pt.1)

The Proposition (pt.2)

The Ambush (pt.3)

Vengeance (pt.4)

The Truth (pt.5/final part)

[losingmymindtonight]

Whump: Hostage

AN: Y’all I mean it when I say that this one is long. It’s over 11k. So, if you’d rather read it on the AO3, I’m linking it right here.

Just a little housekeeping before we proceed! This is set post-Endgame, but with a few tweaks to pieces that I didn’t like, because this is fanfiction and I can do that. For one, Tony’s alive. Steve did not go back to Peggy. Bruce is not... that weird Hulk/Bruce thing.

This is technically a continuation of my last bingo square, which was AU: TV/Movie! You don’t need to have read that for this to make sense, but it would definitely help! If you haven’t read that other fic, just know that May died sometime after Endgame and Tony adopted Peter.

There’s a little ‘bonus scene’ at the end of this, from Natasha’s POV. It’s my version of an end credit scene, I guess. If I’m being honest, I don’t even know why it’s there, but it is.

This boy is long, and some parts are edited a lot better than others. Did I mention that this thing is 11k yet? Because it is, and I think I’ve gone insane.

EDIT: I’m a dumbass and I forgot to mention that this one is based off of a West Wing episode, just like the last square. If you’re a West Wing fan and it feels familiar, that’s why!

WARNINGS: kidnapping, mentions of date-rape drugs (but no sexual assault, just a brief mention near the end, and not in reference to something that actually occurred), non-consensual drug use, a couple mentions of alcohol, lots and lots of ruminations on a missing persons case, discussions of death (I don’t think there’s anything too graphic, but it’s there).

--

“Suma cum laude from Columbia. Columbia, Rhodey. Did you know that their acceptance rate is 5.1%? That’s the second most selective college in the Ivy League.”

Rhodey didn’t look nearly as impressed as Tony thought was appropriate. He just took a sip from his whiskey, tone dripping with sarcasm. “So you’ve told me.”

“That’s more selective than MIT.” He gestured with his own glass, although his was filled with some of Morgan’s apple juice. “Their acceptance rate is 7.9%. That’s a 2.8% difference.”

“Yes, Tones. I, too, am capable of basic math. Even though I did graduate from MIT, which is obviously the inferior institution here.”

He glared. “Yeah, well, did you know that Peter graduated on a 4.0 GPA? You know how hard it is to graduate on a 4.0 GPA at an Ivy League school?”

“I don’t know. Probably about as hard as graduating on a 4.0 GPA at MIT. Which I did, by the way.”

“Are you ever gonna let that one go? I’m the visionary of a generation, but I got one B in an English class and my best friend does a mutiny.”

“Yeah, well, your son managed to make an A in English.”

“He did, didn’t he?” He grinned, still drunk on the memory of Peter in his cap and gown, leaning down so that Morgan could adjust the tassel. “I think he made a 99 in that course, too. He’s smarter than you and me, Rhodey. I’ve been telling you that for years.”

Rhodey held up a hand, stalling him. “I’m sorry, you remember the exact number?”

“Of course he remembers the number, Rhodey,” Pepper sighed, slumping down at Tony’s side with a glass of wine in her hand. “He used to pin the screenshots from Canvas up in his office.”

Used to? He thought, a little incredulous. He still had them there.

“Listen,” he griped, “there are worse crimes than a father being proud of his child. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Sure,” Rhodey said, not even trying to conceal his amusement. “By the way, I thought that his security detail did a good job of blending in today. If I didn’t personally know all of them, I wouldn’t’ve suspected a thing.”

Tony snorted. “Let me tell you something: when it’s your kid, you don’t want them to blend in. You want them carrying a sign that says, I’m carrying a loaded gun and the safety’s off.” He swirled a finger around the rim of his glass. “But, yeah. I think Peter even managed to forget about them for most of it, which was the goal.”

“His speech was lovely as well,” Pepper interjected. “Very polished. He’s grown up a lot.”

A dagger of nostalgia pierced through him. “Oh, don’t remind me. I swear that I was coaching him through his first awkward date just a couple of days ago. What the hell is he doing going off to California all alone? It’s ridiculous.”

Rhodey snorted. “Sorry, I don’t get it. Are you proud of him or are you trying to lock him in the house and never let him out? I’m just trying to make sure that we’re all on the same page here.”

A chime from Rhodey’s phone interrupted the conversation. The man glanced down at the screen, expression darkening at whatever it was that he found there, and then quickly excused himself.

Tony didn’t really think anything of it. Rhodey got a lot of calls and texts that weren’t pleasant. It came with the territory of being such a high-ranking Colonel in the military. Nobody on Earth would call that a relaxing job. Plus, he still flew the occasional mission as War Machine. Not every superhero was quite as ready to leap into retirement as Tony had been.

Minutes trickled past with Rhodey out of the room, and Tony and Pepper found themselves constantly circling back to their favorite topic: their kids. They (well, it was mostly him, but Pep joined in occasionally) reminisced and complained, in the pride-struck kind of way, about the bittersweet upheaval that the upcoming months would bring to their lives. It was nice. It was quiet. It was a taste of the peace that he’d fought for through all those years as Iron Man.

Isn't that the mission? Isn't that why we fight? So we can end the fight? So we get to go home?

He’d ended the fight, and the endgame had been so much better than he could’ve ever imagined. When he’d said that to Steve, he hadn’t even had a home. His home had been the Avengers, even if he wasn’t ready to admit that to himself. But after Thanos, after hanging up the armor and looking into a future, a real future, he’d built a home. He’d built a home out of a dozen scattered bricks: the scarred shambles of his and Pepper’s baggage-laden love affair, a pregnancy test that was never meant to be positive, and a frightened, orphaned teenager with nowhere left to go. He’d taken those foundations, and he’d built and built and built until they were sheltered. Until they were home.

The pain of letting Peter leave, of releasing his grip and watching him run off to California to be his own person, to build his own home, his own life, was such a new, privileged kind of pain. It hurt, but in a gentle way. In the way that good things sometimes ached in the beginning, before they settled into a normalcy.

Tony had just decided that he’d be happy to live through a hundred moments of Peter graduating college (just so long as he could feel this proud with each repetition) when Rhodey surged back into the room, chest heaving.

He knew, somehow. He knew from the moment he saw the look on his best friend’s face. He knew even before Happy, who was not supposed to be here, who was supposed to be with Peter at some graduation party in the city, came barreling in at his heels. He knew.

Maybe it was a father’s intuition, maybe it was just paranoia, but he knew, and that knowing was the absolute worst thing in the world.

Everything froze.

“Rhodey?” He set his glass down on the coffee table, half-rose from the couch, wanting to ask but desperately not wanting to hear the answer that came after the asking. “What’s-”

“Tony, it’s Peter.”

--

The world had broken into color and chaos. The drinks had been cleared away, the coffee table in the living room swiped clean. Pepper was in the kitchen, babbling on the phone to about a dozen different people at SI, trying to organize whatever and whoever she could. The team was on their way: the new and the old. He’d spoken to Steve for a stunted 30 seconds, had pulled himself out of his adrenaline just long enough to process his promise of I’ll be there in an hour before hitting End Call.

He was sitting on the floor, now, back pressed against the couch, clutching the TV remote in his left hand for no reason other than to be holding something.

“Is Morgan still in her room?” He whispered, because that was… that was all he had left. God, he couldn’t live without one of them, how would he possibly survive losing them both?

“Yeah, Tony.” Happy seemed hesitant, like he wasn’t sure how much information he was meant to be revealing. “Pepper checked on her. We’re letting her sleep.”

“Okay. Okay.” He closed his eyes. Tried to steady himself on a home-grown foundation that had just lost one of its most vital supports. “Okay. Tell me everything.”

Rhodey knelt beside him, hand heavy on his shoulder. “Tony, are you sure that you shouldn’t-

“Yes, I’m sure,” he snarled, although he wasn’t really sure what he was sure about. He wanted his child back? Yeah… Yeah. He was sure about that. He was sure about regretting the fact that he’d ever let Peter leave his sight. “Now, will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”

Happy sighed, pushing the coffee table out of the way and joining Rhodey on his knees in front of him. It was funny, in a horrible, morbid, stomach-twisting sort of way. Three of the most high-powered men in the country were kneeling on the floor, falling to pieces because a single kid was missing.

“He was with his friends, at a club,” Happy started slowly. “We had two of his guards in there with him, blending in and keeping their distance, and a group of six more stationed on the outside. He got up to go to the bathroom. One of the guards followed, the other stuck by his friends so they could have eyes on him when he came back. We don’t really know what the hell happened after that. As far as the guards saw, he never came out of the bathroom. One of them went in after about ten minutes, checked all the stalls. His phone was on the floor, but he wasn’t there, so they raised the alarm. We scanned the perimeter, and found skid marks and one of the external guards down by the kitchen’s loading area-”

Tony hated panic, hated situations that threw him in the deep end like this. He wasn’t used to being slow, to being one step behind everyone else, but that’s exactly what this was. He was handicapped, stuck in molasses because this was his child. There was nothing… There was no way that the word efficiency could slot into the haze settling over him.

“What, uh,” he shook his head, trying to clear it, to knock his thoughts into something orderly and complete, “what do you mean, one of the guards was down?”

“They’re dead, Tony,” Happy breathed, and even though his own turmoil, Tony could see the pain on the man’s face. “Whoever took Peter shot them in the head. By the time we got to the scene, there was nothing we could do.”

Peter’s never going to forgive himself for that.

He didn’t even have the presence of mind to feel guilt over the fact that his only concern was for Peter. The guard… he’d feel bad about that later. He’d compartmentalize it, because it was selfish and horrible and very unheroic, but nobody mattered more than Peter. Nobody mattered more than his kid.

“Why… Why didn’t he hit his panic button?”

“That’s the question.” Happy scrubbed a hand down the front of his face. Every inch of him looked tired, like he’d been running on empty for weeks and weeks and weeks, except it hadn’t been weeks. It had only been a few hours since Peter had been taken, only a few minutes since Tony had been told, but it felt like… it felt like decades. “We found it out in the alley, a few feet away from where we think the getaway car must’ve been parked. He never pushed it.”

“He didn’t push it?”

“No.”

It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. Sure, Peter could be a brat about security sometimes, but he did use the resources he was given. He’d hit the panic button multiple times before. Why didn’t he do it now? Why?

He shook his head again, swallowed hard past the lump growing in his throat. “So… So he knew them. He must’ve.”

“Or… Tony, you know I don’t wanna be the person to break this to you, but he was drunk. He’d already had about half a bottle of champagne and a few shots by the time he was taken. One of the guards said he was stumbling when he got up to go to the bathroom, and his friends told us that he seemed pretty wasted.”

That shouldn’t have mattered. Peter was… he was 22, for god’s sake. He’d just graduated valedictorian from Columbia. The kid was allowed to drink some champagne, to get a little-

“Wait, no.” He ran a few numbers through his head, cold and ice and dread sprouting up in his lungs as they refused to compute. “That… he was stumbling?”

“Yeah. That’s what one of his detail said, at least.”

“No, that… that doesn’t make sense, Hap. He… He shouldn’t’ve been that out of it already. His… His metabolism. It’d take more than some champagne and a few shots to get him that drunk. He’d need… He’d need something else.”

Realization snapped over Happy’s face, and he lunged to his feet, kicked the leg of the coffee table irritably when it got in his way. “Fuck. Shit. Why didn’t I think of that? They drugged him. They must’ve.”

Rhodey rubbed Tony’s shoulder, his calm presence the only anchor in wave after wave of helplessness, failure, fear. “Then they were inside the club. Or they had someone helping them.”

Happy was nodding restlessly, already working furiously on his phone. “I’m gonna call the guys on the scene, tell them to detain the bartender and anybody else who might’ve had access to the kid’s drink. And I’ll have someone get his glass and that bottle of champagne for testing.”

“You go,” Rhodey said, slipping forward to settle down at Tony’s side. “I’ll stay here. Hold down the fort.”

“Got it.”

Happy was rushing for the door. Tony could still hear Pepper talking in the kitchen. The team must’ve been most of the way to the cabin by now, scrambling over themselves because this was… it was all too much. Too awful to comprehend. Tony’s brain couldn’t process it. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that Peter just… wasn’t going to come home. Wasn’t going to walk through the front door, a little tipsy and a little unbalanced but fine. Safe and loved and present. Ready to fly off to California at the end of the summer and leave a very, very proud Tony behind.

“Happy?” He called out, voice rough. The man went stock-still in the doorway, just barely turning to let him know that he had his attention. “Call me as soon as you know anything? Even if… Even if it’s bad. Just… please. Call me.”

That’s my baby, he thought, chest constricting at the bone-crushing loss of it all, if he’s dead… if he’s… if he’s never coming home, then I need to know. I need to know.

“I will, Tony. I promise.”

--

The Avengers blew into the cabin like a choreographed hurricane.

Tony had rarely had a chance to admire their efficiency from afar. He was usually on the outskirts of the disasters, working alongside them. But now he was the disaster. He was ground zero.

Rhodey brief them on what they knew so far, and the living room was quickly transformed from a haven of fireplace and colorful throws and family movie nights into a control room. The only thing that wasn’t touched was the couch Tony was leaning against. He didn’t even realize that it was because of him until Steve sat down on the carpet, brow furrowed in concern as he set a cautious hand on his knee.

“Tony, I want you to let Bruce examine you.”

He scoffed at the suggestion, bitterness rolling over him so suddenly that he felt swamped by it.

“And I want my child back,” he snarled. “Guess tonight’s just gonna be full of disappointments for all of us, huh?”

“Tony.”

“Don’t even start with me, Rogers.” He didn’t know why he was being so cruel to Steve. The man didn’t deserve it. He was just… the closest target. The easiest thing to despise. “I’m just not in the mood.”

“Tones,” Rhodey whispered, dropping down pacifyingly between him and Steve, “listen to me. You know that your heart’s weaker after the Snap. If I’m hauling your ass to a hospital, I’m not looking for your kid. We’ve gotta prioritize, here.”

Even in this state, Tony was clever enough to know when he was being manipulated.

Luckily for Rhodey, he was just too goddamn tired to care.

“Fine,” he growled. “What the fuck ever. Just do it.”

Rhodey was right, unfortunately. He didn’t have time for a heart attack right now, didn’t have time for his body to be anything but functional. After they brought Peter home, well… then it didn’t really matter anymore.

He blinked up at the ceiling, ignoring Bruce as he tugged out his arm, clipped something onto his finger.

Bring him home, he prayed, although to who, he didn’t really know, please, just bring him home to me.

--

Apparently, his blood pressure was high.

Everyone seemed pretty damn concerned about it, which was just… honestly, it was hilarious.

Did they think it wouldn’t be high? His child was off god-knows-where with god-knows-who, probably drugged and confused and afraid and desperately in need of his father, and Tony was supposed to be calming down for the sake of his blood pressure?

His blood pressure could go screw itself, for all he cared.

Of course, nobody else seemed to share his viewpoint. They all fussed over him. Pepper tried to get him to do some bullshit breathing exercises, while Bruce called Cho and bickered with her about medication and preventative measures.

He really didn’t know how to explain to everyone that there was only one cure, and it was his child, safe in his arms.

Until that happened, there wasn’t a drug or a pill or a yoga technique in the world that could save him.

--

Happy burst into the room without any ceremony.

“I’ve got the results from Peter’s drinks.”

Tony staggered upright, shoving Clint’s hands away as the man tried to steady him. He felt breakable, like a single touch might send cracks down his spine, into his bones and down through the ground. Like one wrong move might split him apart.

“And?”

Happy winced. Physically winced, like the words he was about to say weighed a thousand tons. “They found gamma hydroxy butyrate, more commonly known as-”

“GHB,” Tony finished, and he was surprised by how numb he felt at the news. It should’ve terrified him. At the very least, he should’ve felt something. Instead, he just stared at it clinically, chemical formulas and sterile facts filling his head in place of the things he just couldn’t think about. The things he didn’t want to face. “It’s degreasing solvent mixed with drain cleaner.”

God. Drain cleaner. Someone… Someone had given his kid drain cleaner.

“Exactly,” Happy said, voice small and unsure. “And in low doses-”

“In low doses,” he breathed, “it’s a date-rape drug.”

Pain streaked across his old bodyguard’s face: a cocktail of guilt and terror and shame. “Yeah, Tony. It’s… It’s a date-rape drug.”

He swallowed. “That’s, uh, that’s why he was stumbling. Why he didn’t hit the panic button.”

Happy nodded. “Yeah. From the looks of the doses, it was probably meant to knock him out, but with his metabolism…”

Tony finished the sentence in his head. With his metabolism, it probably just made him feel awful, sick, confused. He probably wondered what the hell was happening to him. He probably wanted me.

“He was awake when they took him,” Tony whispered, nauseous. God, he was awake when they took him.

“That’s our best guess. And, uh, Tony…. Listen, I don’t really know if I should be telling you this, but-”

“Tell me,” he ordered, voice somehow sharp and resigned all at once. He… He had to hear it. He had to hear everything. It didn’t matter if it gave him nightmares for the rest of his life, didn’t matter if it was the worst thing he’d ever heard.

It was the only link to Peter that he had.

Happy was silent for a few seconds, then let out a defeated breath. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Peter’s phone. Tony knew it was his because of the case: pink and green and godawful to look at. The kid had only bought it because Morgan had liked it so much.

“We’ve gotten all we can from this, so I thought I’d give it back.” He handed it over, and Tony slid his fingers over the case, borderline reverent. He could still imagine it in Peter’s hands, or charging on his bedside table, or getting tossed onto the couch in favor of playing a boardgame with Morgan. Tiny, insignificant snippets of life, and yet they mattered so much. They’d mattered so much. “We think he was using it when they grabbed him.”

He tilted the phone to the light, watched his reflection warp in the glass screen. “What was he doing?”

“He was texting you.”

Something icy gripped his chest. When he finally managed to force words up his throat, his voice came out hoarse.

“What’d he say?”

Happy just gestured at the phone, expression pinched. “Bathroom didn’t have any service, so none of them sent, but it’s all still there. We didn’t delete anything. D’you know his passcode?”

“Yeah,” he said. Peter just doesn’t think that I do.

“Okay. Well, I’m… I’m gonna get back to work. I’ll come back if we find anything.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t have to read it, Tony.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Alright.”

He heard rather than saw Happy move away, just barely caught him murmuring, “don’t let him spiral,” to Rhodey before he left.

Sure enough, Rhodey was right beside him within a few seconds, voice lowered in a guise of privacy, despite the fact that the room was still packed with Avengers, all pretending not to watch but definitely watching.

“Tony, it’s late,” he whispered. “Don’t do this now. Get some rest, and you can face it in the morning, if you really have to.”

“No,” he said, more forceful than he’d intended, but then again, Rhodey just didn’t understand. He was holding his child’s last words in his hands. How could he not read them? What kind of father would he be if he didn’t? “No. I need to do this now.”

He left the living room before anyone could stop him.

Happy’s car was already gone by the time he got to the front porch. He briefly considered settling down in one of the rocking chairs, or the porch swing, but every one of them carried a dozen memories of Peter, of summer days and fall nights and laughter and warmth and the kid’s head pressing heavy on his shoulder and he just couldn’t. He couldn’t face them.

He sat on the floor, back pressed up against the cabin, knees drawn to his chest.

He unlocked Peter’s phone. The brightness was up, but it automatically adjusted after a second or two. He opened the messages app, clicked his contact icon, and read.

hey tony? i thimk i fucked up (ERROR: not delivered)

i feel super super gross (ERROR: not delivered)

:( (ERROR: not delivered)

plz dont be mad i didnt mean to grt thsi drunk (ERROR: not delivered)

ugh fuck batgroom service (ERROR: not delivered)

i just kinda wish u were here to yell at me rn (ERROR: not delivered)

--

The front porch was nice at sunrise.

He’d spent so many hours out here, with Morgan and Peter. Both of them tended to be up early: Morgan because she was a child, Peter because he carried things that no child ever should. He’d sit with them, curled up under one of the afghans Pepper liked to buy from pop-up markets, and watch the sky become an oil painting.

That’d be a pretty smoothie, Morgan would say, pointing at the horizon, and Peter would laugh like she was the funniest thing in the world.

And what would it taste like, Mo?

Like a smoothie!

He heard the door swing open to his left, and while he knew it wasn’t Peter, a tiny part of him wanted to keeping pretending.

“Tones?”

Rhodey. Right. Of course it was Rhodey. Who else would come out here this early, ready to pick his ass up off the floor?

“Did you find anything?” He rasped, still staring out at the lake, watching the daylight step into the clouds, wishing he was watching Peter instead.

“Not yet.”

He just barely inclined his head in response. The answer should’ve hurt him, should’ve stung or panged or something, but it didn’t. After a while, pain just become pain. There wasn’t a scale anymore, wasn’t any room for additions or levels. There was just pain. Pain, and a family missing child. That’s all Tony had.

“I need you to tell me something,” he whispered, then swallowed. His throat scratched, dry and hot, “and I need you to be honest with me when you answer.”

Rhodey sat down beside him, leg braces glowing gently in the yellow-red dawn. “I can do that,” he responded, solemn.

“Do you… Do you think he’s already dead?”

Rhodey’s answer came immediately. “No.”

“Are you lying?”

“If I thought he was dead, I’d tell you.”

“Do you promise?” He balled up a fist, resisted to urge to slam it through the nearest object. “If you… If we reach a point where you think he’s dead, do you promise to tell me?”

He knew he was asking a lot. He could tell, because Rhodey’s breath caught, and he paused. Considered.

“Yeah, Tony,” Rhodey murmured, with all the enthusiasm of someone bartering away their soul. “I promise.”

“Good.” It wasn’t, but it felt like the right thing to say. “This is… This is bad, Rhodey.”

“Yeah, Tony, I know.”

He dropped his head into his hands, strained and exhausting and defeated. Peter was all it took, and Iron Man was down, decimated, conquered.

“If… If they show me a picture of him alive,” he whispered, and he knew he was saying something awful, admitting something dark and frightening, “and then they tell me to aim missiles at… at some hospital full of refugees on the Syrian border, they’re counting on the fact that a father would-”

“But you wouldn’t.”

His head snapped back up, and he nearly laughed at the conviction in Rhodey’s voice. God, had everyone really forgotten who he truly was? The heroism of Iron Man was an act. It was a stage curtain, drawn down to hide the monster underneath. Tony Stark was not a good man. He was certainly not a selfless one.

Yet he was so good at pretending that even his best friend believed the ruse.

He turned to stare at Rhodey, voice low. “I might.”

And that might be the most important thing I’ve ever said to you.

The corner of Rhodey’s mouth quirked up, like some part of this was actually amusing to him. “There are people around you who won’t let you.”

He couldn’t possibly be this good at deception. Had Rhodey actually forgotten? Had he forgotten that Tony hadn’t always been an Avenger, that the Merchant of Death was still a title that haunted him? Somedays, he was almost certain that he was more Merchant of Death than he was Iron Man. More a war-profiteer than he was an idol.

“What about a picture?” He said, because he didn’t know how to stop. He’d never known how to stop. “They’ve got a knife to his throat, and they tell me to send a Jericho missile to a bunker in Afghanistan?”

Rhodey shook his head. “You shouldn’t think of images like that.”

This time, he did laugh. Rhodey flinched, concern etched in every inch of his face, because yeah, Tony probably looked like he was losing his mind. And wasn’t he? His child was missing. There was no sanity to this.

“All I can think of are images like that.”

“Tony…”

“I know it's a strange time to bring this up,” he said, and he knew it was abrupt, but nothing seemed quite so linear anymore, “but I forecasted this once. I made up a scary story a few years ago for Peter so that he’d take his protection seriously, and I… and I went too far. And I scared him.” He let out a breath, years-harbored shame rising in his chest. “And he cried. And this… this was the story.”

“Tony-”

“I’m supposed to keep him safe.” His shoulders jerked, his breath hitched. He bit his knuckles to hold back a sob, ribs creaking under the strain of keeping it in. “That’s… fuck, Rhodey, that’s my only job. I’m supposed to keep him safe.”

“You can’t protect him from everything.” There was a pause, hesitant. “The world doesn’t stop spinning just because he’s your child. He’s gotta find his way just like everybody else, and you were letting him do that.”

He wished it was as easy as that, as straightforward and simple to navigate, but it wasn’t. Once again, they’d found their way back to the same frustration he’d been helping Peter cope with for years: being a Stark was not normal. Nothing around them would ever be normal. Sure, the world didn’t stop spinning, but they had to operate differently inside of it, just because of Tony and his curse of a last name.

The money was nice. The fame was even pleasant, every once in a while. It certainly had been when he was young. But now? God, Tony just wanted quiet. He didn’t want this for his children. He’d give anything to drop off the radar, live in some middle-class neighborhood, buy a lawnmower, argue with Pepper about school districts.

“But they took him because he’s my child,” he pushed. They took him because they know it’ll break me. “This… This wouldn’t’ve happened to another kid, Rhodey. You know that.”

“Maybe not, but it did happen, and that’s what you’ve got to work with. Now, come inside,” Rhodey ordered, slicing a knife down on the conversation, as if ending the words could end the horrors still playing through Tony’s head. “Come inside, sit with your wife, and let us fix this.”

There is no fixing this. This will never be fixed.

But instead of staying that, he just did as he was told, and hoped that the next few hours wouldn’t bring him doing something awful in Peter’s name.

It was such a pure name, washed clean by kid who carried it. It didn’t deserve to be sullied by Tony’s true nature, by the darkness he dragged behind him like a chain.

God knows that enough had already been sacrificed on that altar.

--

It was daylight, and there were reporters outside.

Happy and his guys were keeping them back. Apparently, they’d released details of Peter’s kidnapping to the press in the hope that someone might’ve seen something, that they’d come forward with information. In these kinds of cases, one detail, one first person account, could be the difference between life and death.

They’d set up a hotline, and the team was already chasing a few leads, but the reporters were chasing the story, the sensationalism of it all, and Tony hated it.

His child wasn’t a headline. His child was a child. A living, breathing, precious person. Something be cradled and adored and protected. Not something be exploited for a melodramatic hook.

Pepper and Steve would talk about it in tense, hushed tones. A couple of the Avengers had gone out to talk to the gathered press, just once or twice, but Tony didn’t have a clue what they were saying.

What did other parents do when this sort of thing happened? When their child was taken from them? He remembered a few high-profile kidnappings, all distant and wobbly in his head. What did they do? Did they print flyers? Did they give interviews? Did they beg?

Wait. Wait. That’s… That’s exactly what parents did.

They begged. They pleaded. They told the kidnappers that they’d do whatever they wanted, as long as they got their baby back.

He staggered to his feet, a little wobbly but emotions finally hardening into something tangible, something he could focus on.

There were only a few things on Earth that Tony Stark was willing to swallow his pride for, and this… this was one of them. His children would always be one of them.

He was going to beg.

He only made it about four steps towards the cabin’s door before the team noticed. There were a solid few seconds of scattered glances, a rapid exchange of responsibilities, until Natasha stood and took the lead.

“Tony?” She grabbed at his arm, expression somehow soft and fierce all at once. “Tony, what are you doing?”

“I’m gonna make a direct appeal.”

The whole room went silent. He made the mistake of glancing at Clint’s face, and the raw pity there made him want to scream.

“Tony,” Nat said, voice quiet, coaxing, lowered like he was stupid, “you can’t.”

“I’m his father,” he choked out, because at the end of the day, that was the only thing that mattered, the only explanation that he should ever have to give. “I-I don’t even know why I’ve waited this long. I-”

And then Steve was there, reaching for his other arm, voice as calm and solid as it always was.

“Come on, Tony, let’s think this through-”

“Get away from me,” he snapped.

“Tony-”

“I’m going to make a direct appeal,” he repeated, and even he knew that he sounded like a broken record, but he just… all he could see was Peter. The stupid grin on his face earlier that day, when Morgan had barreled into his chest and he’d scooped her up off the ground, spinning her like she was the one who just graduated, like she was the most valuable thing he’d ever held. “I don’t know why I waited this long.”

Nat sounded a little desperate now, pulling hard at his sleeve, warning. “Tony, I know that you’ve convinced yourself that you’re doing what’s right, but you’re not thinking straight-”

And then there was Pepper.

She planted herself between him and the door, firm and solid and Tony knew, he knew that he wasn’t getting past her. He knew it from the moment he saw the look on her face: devastated and loving and calm.

“Stop it, Tony,” she said, soft and kind.

He grabbed for her, taking fistfuls of her shirt and clinging. He felt like a little kid, confused and lost and alone. He was navigating whitewater rapids without a map or a paddle. He couldn’t… He couldn’t do this. People weren’t built to survive this kind of thing. It wasn’t possible.

“I… I have to make a direct-”

“No,” she murmured, cutting him off. “No, Tony, Natasha’s right. You can’t.”

“Why not?”

He had meant for the question to be abrasive, angry, but it just came out broken.

“It can be seen as negotiating with the people who took him,” Pepper said, not apologizing, not pulling punches, “and if their goal is to destabilize us, or Stark Industries, or the Avengers, then they're going to see you and know that they're succeeding.” She let out a breath, composure cracking just a little, just at the corners. “You… You can’t make a direct appeal.”

He knew she was right. He’d known she was right long before he’d even made the choice to do it.

It still felt like he’d been torn in two.

He sank to the floor. He was vaguely aware of Natasha grabbing his elbow, guiding him down so he didn’t hurt himself. She pushed him up against the wall, then stepped away, gave him the room he needed to crumble.

“Honey,” Pepper whispered, voice hitching, hands tracing down his face. He didn’t know when she’d joined him on the floor, but he… he was so glad she was there. He was so glad that someone was still there. “Honey, I…”

“I’ve seen other fathers do it,” he croaked. “Before. In… In other kidnappings. I’ve seen other fathers do it.”

“I know.”

“I thought… I just thought that, that maybe if I tried, then I would’ve… then I would’ve done something.”

“I know.”

“I can’t stand not doing something. I have to be doing something.”

“I know that, too.”

His eyes jerked up, meeting hers in a clash of long-harbored panic. “Pep… What if he’s…”

“He’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re not other fathers,” she said gently, a sad smile on her face. “Other fathers make direct appeals because that’s all they can do. They’re going to want to negotiate, Tony.”

“I… I can’t negotiate, Pep. Not… Not for him. How could I?”

“I know that. That’s why I’m going to do it.”

He blinked. That was… a good idea. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. Pepper had never, ever lost a deal that mattered. Ever. She had a spotless track record. And while she loved Peter, she wasn’t as shredded by this as he was. Her head was still above the water, at least for now.

Pepper had joked, once, a little bitterly, that Peter was all Tony’s kid, she just helped out with the details. He knew that wasn’t entirely true, of course. She’d stepped up for Peter in ways that had mattered beyond her comprehension, but she wasn’t entirely wrong, either. Peter had been his kid long before he’d been Pepper’s. And that changed dynamics. It had to.

“You have to bring him home.”

“We will, Tony,” Pepper said, and Tony wished with everything he had that he could drown himself in her belief, her faith. “We’re going to do everything we can to bring him back to you.”

He tried to ignore the fact that, as promises went, she’d just given him a pretty unstable one.

--

Tony was still sitting on the floor, staring blankly into nothing, when the alert chimed in.

He didn’t think anything of it, at first, and he supposed that he’d been doing a lot of that tonight. Staring past the obvious, overlooking the signs because ignorance was so blessed and calm compared to knowing.

But then Natasha’s face went hard, and she was waving for Steve, and then he was waving for Rhodey, and then he was waving for Pepper, and Tony realized that something had just gone very, very wrong.

He staggered upright, making a beeline for the rapidly growing group huddled around Natasha’s laptop. He couldn’t see past their shoulders, couldn’t even hear what they were saying, because so many voices were intersecting and overlapping in every other beat, and it was enough to make him want to scream.

“Is it Peter?” He snapped, and Steve swung to face him, face a mixture of pity and concern.

“Tony…”

That was all the answer he’d needed. It was Peter, then. Hell, what else would it be?

Something else had happened to Peter. Somewhere in his gut, he knew it was bad. Awful. Nothing that he wanted to see.

And yet he knew that he had to.

He tried to push past Steve’s restraining hand, craning his neck to catch of glimpse of the screen. “What is it?”

“It’s a ransom note,” Natasha said, forever to the point. He’d never appreciated that personality trait more than he did in that exact moment.

“And they sent a picture,” Steve added.

The world snapped to a halt. He felt hysterical. Unhinged. And Steve… Steve didn’t understand. None of them did, except maybe Clint. He was a father and he’d been torn away from his child. He just… He just wanted him back, even if it was in the form of a picture. Even if it was through a ransom note.

“Is it of Peter?!” He tried to lunge forward again, and failed. Damn Steve’s super strength. He wished he had the suit. “The… The picture. Is the picture of Peter?”

“Yeah, Tony, it is, but you have to understand-”

“Let me see,” he snarled. “He’s my kid. It’s for me. So let me see it.”

To his surprise, the group all exchanged glances, different people in varying degrees of sympathetic pain, and parted.

The image had obviously been taken with a polaroid camera, and then scanned or faxed alongside the handwritten ransom note. The quality was bad, but it was clear enough to show details. It… It wasn’t grainy enough to spare him.

Peter was tied to a chair, a dirty gag shoved into his mouth, digging into his cheeks. The kidnappers had tossed a newspaper into his lap, proof of life with the date clearly shown, but that wasn’t what caught Tony’s attention. No, it was Peter’s face that ached, somewhere deep in his gut. If he was a spiritual man, he would’ve said that it ached in his soul.

He knew his kid. Knew his eyes like he’d never known anything else. And that photo? It was wrong. Peter wasn’t just scared: he was drugged out of his mind. In fact, it was the general lack of fear in the kid’s gaze that disturbed him the most. He looked too incoherent for any emotion other than exhaustion.

He’d seen Peter high before, always after Spider-Man related injuries, but it’d never been like this. It had always been monitored, consensual, safe, and nothing they’d given him had ever made him vacant. He was usually just sleepy or giggly or both. He’d… He’d never looked so detached.

It made Tony want to hold him, shield him, but now he couldn’t do either of those things and it hurt.

“Oh, god,” he gasped, panic attack smacking right into him without warning, without a single chance to batten down the hatches. “Fuck.”

The world tilt-a-whirled. He felt Rhodey grab him, push and pull and tug him until he was sitting on the couch. His head was shoved between his knees, and conversations pinged around above him without any of the words computing. All he could hearseethink was Peter, Peter, Peter.

If I was a better father, none of this would’ve ever happened.

Eventually, someone grabbed his shoulders, hauled him upright, and it took him a full minute to realize it was Rhodey.

“Tony,” the Colonel said, and he sounded serious, like whatever he was saying was final, no arguments allow. “I’m going to call Bruce, alright?”

Yes. Yes. Bruce… Bruce would be good now. He’d heard them whispering about sedating him earlier, off in corners and hallways, when they thought he was too absorbed in his grief to notice. At the time, the thought had made his heart race, terror and revulsion making him paranoid. He couldn’t check out. He couldn’t. What use would he be to Peter like that?

Now, he’d lunge for just about anything that would take this feeling away. That would let him pull back from the grainy images of Peter’s eyes: glassy, unfocused, afraid and confused and lacking in that spark that would lull Tony into moments of forgetfulness. Moments when he’d genuinely have to remind himself that Morgan was the one with his DNA, not Peter.

“Tell him,” he gasped, eyes squeezed shut against the things he didn’t want to see, the photo that he’d never be able to forget, “tell him that I want whatever it is that Peter got.”

--

He didn’t know how long he slept for, but he knew that when he woke up, he woke up groggy. Groggy enough that, for a shamefully calm half hour, he forgot that Peter was missing.

And then he remembered, and he lost his child all over again.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. must’ve alerted Pepper when his heartrate spiked, because she slipped into the room within two minutes. She sat beside him, hand resting on his hip through their comforter. Her eyes were red, but she smiled like it was just another Tuesday, like their entire world wasn’t crumbling down around their feet, and he envied her. He envied her the composure. The ability to catalogue the things that were important and the things that weren’t.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Hey.”

“I thought you’d sleep longer than this.”

He pursed his lips, ignored the implicit suggestion in the words. “Anything new?”

“No.”

He nodded, took in the disappointment slowly, wondered how long he could survive living in limbo. There were thousands upon thousands of unsolved missing persons cases in the United States alone. Every hour that crawled by lessened their chances of bringing Peter home alive, or even bringing him home at all. How could Tony possibly be one of those parents, the ones who spent the rest of their heartbeats agonizing over their child’s loss?

Are they still alive, hidden somewhere out in the world, vulnerable and unprotected? Are they dead? Which option is better: knowing that they’re alive, and suffering, or dead and free? Oh, god. What was it like, at the end? Were they afraid? Did they cry? Did they call out for their dad, because he was the one person who was always meant to save them?

Tony hadn’t been there for the start of Peter’s life. And now it might be over, Peter might be gone, and he hadn’t even been there for that, too. Couldn’t even say if it had happened.

“What time is it?” He asked, just to distract himself. Besides, every hour marked a dwindling statistic. Tony needed to know if they stood a chance, if there was still even a sliver of hope, and someone must’ve closed the curtains after he’d gone to bed, so he couldn’t quite see if there was daylight or darkness behind them.

“7:30.”

“Oh,” he whispered. That was later than he’d thought. The graph in his head nosedived. “Bruce gave me something.”

Pepper’s face twitched, eyes bleeding sympathy. “I know. I’m so sorry, honey.”

“They gave… They gave Peter something, too,” he choked out, “and… and he said that it made him feel sick and I wasn’t there to take care of him.”

Pepper’s blink lasted a good few seconds longer than it should’ve, as if watching Tony crumble was too much for her to watch, but the rest of her stayed steady. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He swallowed, trying to stamp down the perpetual helplessness that had taken residence in his gut, replace it with something else, something he could hold.

“How’s Morgan?”

“She’s okay. She’s been asking to see you.”

“I wanna see her.”

“In a minute.” Pepper slid her hand through his hair, voice soft, the kind of tone she used with Morgan or Peter when they were upset. “Try to relax a little first.”

“I had a dream,” he blurted. He knew that this was probably the opposite of what Pepper meant by relaxing, but he couldn’t help it. “I was in Peter’s bedroom, but it was… it was before. Right after May died. Remember… Remember how he wouldn’t get out of bed?”

For a split second, Pepper’s face flashed from composure to devastation, but it was so brief that it was easy to imagine that it had never happened at all. “Of course I remember. He wouldn’t get up, so you used to go in there and sit with him.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, and he smiled despite himself. He treasured those memories just as much as he wished they’d never happened. Helping Peter grieve for May was an ongoing tragedy, and one of the hardest things he’d ever had to watch, but once the initial aftershocks ended, Tony had gained a second child. “He’d curled up in my lap, and I was holding him. We didn’t… We weren’t even talking. I was just holding him.”

He swallowed, breath hitching. He met Pepper’s eyes, trying desperately to convey something that just wasn’t possible to capture in words. A loss, a fear, a weakening hope.

“Pep,” he whispered, hoarse and crackling, “Pep, I was holding him, but then I woke up and he wasn’t there.”

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t apologize, or promise that they’d get him back.

She just reached out and took his hand.

--

It was just past 11:00 when Rhodey pushed into the bedroom.

For a split second, Tony assumed the worst. But then,

“We found him,” Rhodey breathed. Beside him, Pepper gasped, like she couldn’t believe it. “Happy got a lead and, well, it doesn’t really matter. But we’ve got him, Tones. Steve’s got him.”

--

The flight from New York to Calverton, Virginia took an hour. They left Morgan back at the cabin, with Clint’s wife. Tony half considered bringing her, but he didn’t know what shape Peter would be in, physically or mentally. And he… he didn’t want to frighten her, although he supposed that was a moot point after the last 48 hours.

When this was all over, Tony promised himself that he’d apologize to both his children, for lots of different things.

For now, he just wanted Peter. He wanted to hold him, like in his dream but real. He wanted a moment that he couldn’t wake up from.

He mostly ignored Rhodey’s explanation of how they’d tracked the kidnappers down. It was complicated and had something to do with a gas station and a random college kid who’d seen Peter’s picture on the news. Happenstance, really. They’d gotten lucky.

“Is he alright?” Pepper asked, and Tony was glad that someone rational was thinking of the important things. “Did they hurt him?”

“The medics think that he may have a clavicle fracture,” Rhodey said. Tony could feel his eyes on him even though he was staring at his feet. “His kidnappers set off some tear gas and stun grenades when the team went it, so he’s got some irritation and ringing in his ears. No sign of sexual assault, but he’s still pretty out of it. They’re running a tox screen to make sure we’re not in danger of any overdoses.”

Tony looked up. He flexed his hands out in front of him, wincing when his wrists popped. “Is he asking for me?”

“Yeah. Steve said that that’s pretty much the only thing he’s said, too. Asked where you were a couple times and checked out.”

Tony bit his lip. Peter had been drugged, beaten, surrounded by doctors he didn’t know and thrown right into the chaos of a crime scene, and yet he’d still looked up at strangers and asked for him.

“Does he know I’m coming?”

“The medics told him.” Rhodey reached across the seats and grabbed his elbow as they started to descend, engines whining. “Hey, look at me. You sure you’re good to do this?”

He blinked, barely even processing the words.

What kind of question is that?

“This,” he started, quiet enough that there was no way Rhodey would’ve heard him if they didn’t have headsets, “is my job.”

“If he sees you upset, it’s gonna make him even more upset.”

“He won’t see me upset.”

Rhodey groaned, and it kind of hurt that nobody seemed to believe he was capable of parenting his own goddamn kid, no matter what emotional state he was in. “Tony, you’re-”

“Very good at this,” he finished, cutting off whatever Rhodey actually meant to say. He imagined he wouldn’t’ve liked it much, anyway. “I’m very good at this.”

“I know you are, Tony, but this has been a rough-”

“He won’t know I’m upset,” he snarled, voice dangerous, and it felt so good to have a purpose. To have something to curl over and protect. “He won’t.”

Rhodey sighed, defeated. He didn’t look like he believed him, but Tony didn’t really care. “Alright. Just be careful, okay? Don’t go overboard.”

Overboard. Of course he was gonna go overboard. He was gonna go overboard with absolutely everything for the rest of Peter’s life.

He didn’t bother walking when the helicopter landed. He just bolted, weaving through police and paramedics and FBI agents and what felt like a thousand other pointless uniforms. Pepper and Rhodey both tailed him, not missing a beat.

Nobody had told him where Peter was, and it was pitch black outside, midnight having only recently come and gone. The only light came from the dozens of different emergency signals spread out across the field, blue and red and yellow and every other color of the rainbow, all blinking at their own dizzying frequencies. There was no logical way that he should’ve been able to find his kid in that chaos, and yet his feet just took him there, like they’d walked this path a million times, even though he wasn’t sure that he’d ever been within a hundred miles of Calverton before.

He saw the security before he saw his kid. There were about ten guards holding a perimeter around the solitary ambulance, and Tony made a mental note to give Happy a goddamn raise once this was all over.

And then there was Peter, and every single mental note he’d ever made evaporated into thin air.

He was slouched over on the back of the ambulance, orange shock blanket folded over his shoulders. He was bloody, bruised. There was dirt and ash all over his face, but none of that mattered at all because he was still the most beautiful, wonderful, breathtaking thing Tony had ever seen.

“Peter!” His voice broke with the force of the shout. “Peter!”

Despite everything, Peter recognized him right away. His head turned towards the sound, and his arms lifted up, fingers curling weakly in the air.

“Tony?”

“Here,” he gasped, skidding to a stop in front of the kid. “I’m right here, Pete. I’m right here.”

He grabbed Peter’s face between his hands, dragged the pads of his thumbs along the curve of his cheekbones, brushing away tear-smudged grime, and all his anguish evaporated. Gone. He knew it’d return, at some point, probably in the folds of night, far away from where anyone but Pepper could see it, but for now he was calm, capable. He felt in control, because that was the only thing he was allowed to be. Because that was exactly what Peter needed him to be.

He’d meant what he’d said to Rhodey. He was good at this.

“Hey there, buddy,” he whispered. He sniffed hard against the tears building in his throat, but he was grinning so wide that his cheeks ached. “You really got yourself into a mess this time, huh?”

“He’s been a little too close to unresponsive for our tastes,” one of the medics offered, and he glanced up to her. She had a sympathetic smile on her face, soft and kind, “but we were hoping that having dad here might help.”

He nodded, hoping that his expression conveyed the thanks he didn’t have the breath to voice, and turned his attention back to Peter. “Hey, hey,” he cooed, shifting Peter’s face a little, trying to get a reaction. “You with me, squirt?”

Peter looked dazed, pupils blown so wide that Tony could barely find any brown in his eyes at all, but there was recognition there, too. Drowsy and subdued, but recognition all the same.

“‘M with you,” he slurred, blinking hard. “I don’ feel very good.”

“I know, squirt. We’re gonna fix that, okay?”

Peter nodded, then slumped forward into his chest, nose digging into the crook of his neck. “‘M sorry. Didn’… Didn’ mean it.”

Tony had expected the apology, but it still felt like a slap in the face. “Shh, shh. None of this was your fault, kiddo.”

I’m sorry I didn’t do enough to protect you.

“‘M so glad you’re here,” Peter mumbled, and Tony wondered if he even knew that he was talking. “Kept asking for you. They said you w’re coming.”

Tony could feel each one of Peter’s breaths on his skin, warm and slow and relaxed. He’d heard about hostage victims being keyed-up on release, jumpy and paranoid, and just here his kid was: practically dozing off in his arms, murmuring apologies and sermons of faith, easy and relaxed just because Tony was here. Because Tony was holding him.

“Of course I was coming,” he managed to choke out. “I’ll always come for you, Pete. I’m always gonna come for you.”

“Mm. I know. Always got me.”

He’d never deserve this. Never. He could spend the rest of his life devoted to charity, to selflessness, and yet there would never come a day when he would deserve his children.

It should’ve been a disheartening thought, but it wasn’t. It was humbling. It made him feel grateful.

He found the gaze of the nurse who’d first spoken to him, fingers threading slowly through Peter’s hair. “Can I take him?”

“Of course,” she said. “But he’ll need x-rays to confirm that fracture, and fluids, and I wouldn’t let him go unmonitored until his tox screens start coming back clear. You have someone back at base who can do all that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then he’s all yours.”

He wrapped the shock blanket more firmly around Peter’s shoulders, dreaming of the moment he could tear it off, burn it, and replace it with one of the red fleece ones Pepper had brought back from a conference in Colorado at the end of Peter’s senior year. He couldn’t wait until they could finally peel off the layers of this night and replace them with new memories, with new things, with good, peaceful, mundane things.

“I’m gonna take you home now, Pete,” he whispered, fisting his hand desperately in the back of the kid’s shirt. “We’re gonna go home.”

--

Peter slept straight through the helicopter ride back to New York, legs stretched over Tony’s lap like a cat. He woke up just long enough for Tony to guide him to his bedroom (Tony had to coach him up the stairs like it was his first encounter with the concept), but he was out again as soon as he reached his bed. Cho and Bruce both assured him that there was nothing to be concerned about, that his body was just burning off the drugs, but it didn’t stop him from laying Peter against his chest and keeping a finger on his pulse.

Cho and Bruce must’ve sensed that he wanted nothing more than to be left alone with his kid, because they rushed through the process of converting Peter’s bedroom into a makeshift hospital suite. Peter roused a little when Cho placed his IV, but only enough to make a mild noise of displeasure and bury himself more firmly into Tony’s arms. Otherwise, Peter seemed perfectly content to let Tony deal with the world for him.

That was fine. That was more than fine, actually. It was exactly what he’d been wanting to do for days.

Pepper wandered in and out of the room, spreading her time between them and Morgan. Bruce popped in to give him the tox screen results, but he left almost as soon as he came. He didn’t know what the rest of the team was doing, but he knew that Rhodey had stayed behind in Calverton, with Happy.

The longer he spent unwinding, the more he wished he’d asked better questions.

He didn’t have a clue what had actually happened to Peter, didn’t know if his kidnappers were captured or dead, or if they’d escaped. He didn’t know anything.

Steve knocked on the doorframe after a few hours of pointless wondering, shifting nervously on his feet. It was as if Tony had put an impassable barrier around Peter’s bed, the kind that no one could see but everyone could feel. Nobody was brave enough to touch it.

“You can come it,” he said, amused. “I don’t bite.”

Steve took two steps forward, then stopped, clearly having no intention of moving any farther. “I don’t mean to intrude-”

He rolled his eyes. “What do you need, Steve?”

“The press is clamoring for a statement,” Steve said, after a brief moment of hesitation, “preferably in person.”

Tony pushed some of Peter’s hair back from his forehead, forcing himself to ignore the tiny cuts and bruises littering the kid’s face. “Giving a statement would involve leaving this room.”

Steve just nodded. “I understand.” He gestured in Peter’s direction, stiff and unsure, like he was treading on ice. “How is he?”

Tony smiled. He really didn’t know why everyone seemed so determined to dance around the topic of Peter, especially now that he was home. It wasn’t a touchy subject, it was Tony’s favorite subject.

“He’s sleeping, safe and sound.”

“I’m glad.”

“They ran a tox screen,” he offered. “He’s got GBH and ecstasy and a couple other pretty nasty things in his system. Cho’s confident that the fluids should help him metabolize it. F.R.I.D.A.Y. confirmed that he’s got a small fracture in his collarbone, but his healing should take care of it pretty quickly once his body recalibrates.” He smiled, eyes never leaving Peter’s face. “He’ll be back to playing Mario Kart with Morgan in no time.”

“Good.” Steve walked around to his side of the bed, steps slow and measured. “Do you want me to give you the details of everything now, or later?”

“Give me the essentials. Are they dead?”

“Yeah.” Relief shot through him. “Clint got two with his arrows. The other one was sleeping when we came in. He tried to grab a weapon, but Nat got to him first. Sam found Peter locked in a closet in the back bedroom.”

The rage he felt at the detail conflicted with the tenderness that rose with every second he spent with his children. In the end, he set the anger aside. He didn’t need it, right now. It wouldn’t made Peter heal faster.

“You sure there were only three?”

“We’re looking into it, but we’re nearly positive.”

He dipped his head in Peter’s direction. “How was he when you found him?”

Darkness swooped over Steve’s face, and his voice went hard. “Not great.” A pause. “You think he’ll be alright?”

“Without a doubt,” he said, and he meant it. “He’s a tough kid, and he’s got a good therapist. Pretty sure there isn’t anything he can’t tackle and come out the winner.”

“And what about you?” Steve asked, as sincere as Tony had ever heard him. “Will you be alright?”

He smoothed his palm down Peter’s back, and thought back to his dream. He’d imagined the whole thing wrong, he realized. The joy he’d felt then hadn’t captured even a single fraction of the joy he was feeling now.

“Of course I’ll be alright,” he said, like it was obvious. “I’ve got the best family in the world.”

--

--

--

Natasha had never been in Peter’s room before. Then again, she’d very rarely been the cabin, either. Tony had gone out of his way to keep his family shielded from everyone, even the team.

After everything they’d been through, she had a hard time blaming him for that.

Tony and Peter were both asleep when she poked her head through the door. She guessed that it was probably the first time either of them had had any real rest in days. Even unconscious, Tony had placed himself between Peter and the door, arms wrapped tightly around the kid, as if someone was going to try to steal him when he wasn’t looking.

Bruce and Cho had turned the bedroom into a makeshift hospital room, monitors and an IV pole tucked up in a corner, but it didn’t change the cozy atmosphere. A few framed sci-fi posters littered the walls, but there were family pictures as well: everything from photobooth strips to professional portraits.

For a brief few seconds, she let herself wonder what it would’ve been like to grow up in a place that felt like a home.

Pepper ended up catching her attention before the thoughts could go too far. She was the only other person in the room, and, unlike Tony and Peter, she was actually awake. She beckoned for her to come in, posture as relaxed as Natasha had ever seen it.

“Hey,” Pepper greeted, voice just above a whisper. “Are you here for Tony?”

“I am.”

“Can it wait?”

Her eyes flickered up to the pair curled around each other on the bed, and she made her decision without a hint of hesitation. “I’ll make it wait.”

Pepper shot her a genuine smile. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. How are they?”

Pepper leaned forward in her chair, and brushed the back of Peter’s hand gently. It was a mother’s touch, kind and adoring. She tried not to stare.

“Peter’s still pretty out of it, but he’s been talking to Tony, so that’s a step in the right direction. It might take a while for his metabolism to clear out all the shit they pumped into him, but his vitals are holding steady.”

“Did the tox screen come back?”

Pepper sighed. “It did. It’s a miracle Tony didn’t have an aneurism when Cho read it to us. They gave him GHB and ecstasy, among a few other things, but there’s nothing we can do about it except wait.”

That certainly wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. She hadn’t said it out loud, but she’d been prepping herself for the possibility that by the time they found the kid, they’d have already OD’d him.

She’d seen those kinds of bodies before, and they weren’t pretty. She wasn’t sure how Tony’s would’ve handled it.

Speaking of which…

“And how’s Tony?”

Pepper’s face softened even more at the mention of her husband. She reached out to adjust his shirt, tone warm. “His baby’s back, so all’s right with the world again. At least for now.” She let out an exhausted breath. “And after everything that’s happened, I’ll take for now.”

She wondered if Pepper had slept since Peter’s graduation. The more she analyzed the past few days, the more she came to the conclusion that she hadn’t.

“I doubt Peter’ll be allowed out of his sight for the next few weeks.”

“Weeks?” Pepper snorted, a rare slip of her polish. Natasha guessed that she saw it more than the boys did. “Oh, Peter’s going to have Tony following him around for the next decade at least. It’ll be sweet for a while, because at first he’ll actually enjoy the coddling, but then both of them are going to make my life a living hell.”

Natasha just smiled. There wasn’t even a hint of genuine aggravation in Pepper’s voice: just relief. “You can’t wait, can you?”

Pepper’s face lit up. “God, Nat, I’ve never been more ecstatic over the thought of the two of them snipping at each other in my life.”

She laughed, careful not to disturb either of Pepper’s charges, then took a cautious step towards the door. As much as she enjoyed Pepper’s company, there were still a million things to be done. She’d handle the paperwork, and she’d let the parents handle the kid.

She wasn’t really qualified for the gushy stuff.

“I’ll let you spend some time with your family.”

“Actually, Nat, before you go…” Pepper paused, chewing on the words, “just, well, thank you. People are never able to forget that Peter’s Tony’s child, but they tend to overlook that he’s mine now, too. He’s been mine for nearly six years. And I know that I’ll never love him like Tony does, but… but I still love him, and I’m still grateful.”

“I’m just doing my job,” she said, smile tight.

“It’s a good job, Nat.”

She backed the rest of the way into the hall. “Yeah, it is.”

The door clicked shut, and she just barely inclined her head to the security guard that was stationed outside of it. They’d be a common presence around here, for a while, at least until Stark re-found that tenuous balance between keeping his kids safe and letting them live.

She’d been worried about Peter, before. If there was anyone in the world who understood trauma, understood what it could do to your soul, it was Natasha Romanoff, but she knew now that Peter Parker had something that she’d never had.

He had people who gave a shit. People who’d make sure that he was fine.

She wondered if he knew how lucky he had it.

[enchantedlokii]

History Has It’s Eyes On You

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: language, mentions of death

Characters: Tony Stark, Peter Parker, Stephen Strange, Peter Quill, Mantis, Drax

Mentioned: Thanos, Wanda Maximoff, Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Adrian Toomes, Ben Parker, Obadiah Stane, James Rhodes, Richard Parker, Mary Parker, May Parker

“I was younger than you are now. When I was given my first command. I led my men straight into a massacre. I witnessed their deaths firsthand. I made every mistake. I felt the shame rise in me. And even now I lie awake knowing history has its eyes on me.”

Tony peeked over the rock, looking at where Stephen sat, floating in the air. He wasn’t fond of the idea of letting the wizard man take charge, but he was grateful to get a moment alone with Peter before Thanos got there. He looked over at where the boy was sitting beside him, fidgeting with his webshooter out of nervousness. “You alright, Kid?”

Peter looked up at him and smiled. “Yeah, I’m good, Mr. Stark,” he replied. Still, there was something else there. “Just. . . I’m worried I won’t be much help here. There’s not really anything for me to swing off of and my senses are all out of wack with the weird gravity.”

“You’ll do fine,” Tony assured him. In reality, his stomach twisted thinking of Peter being here. He couldn’t get that d*mn vision out of his head of everyone he cared about being dead. He knew this was it. This was what Wanda had showed him years ago.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen,” Peter murmured guiltily. “Again. I know it never goes well and I really should have just went home and if something happens—”

“Hey, Pete, listen to me for a minute, okay?” Peter looked him in the eyes and nodded slightly to show that he had his full attention. “I’m not mad at you. Honestly, I’m kinda glad to have someone I trust here. And I don’t think I could have gotten Strange out of that mess without your idea.”

Peter smiled at that, his cheeks turning red. “It was a good idea, huh?” he chuckled.

“It was, Kiddo. I’m proud of you,” Tony replied, reaching out a hand to ruffle his hair. “And hey, I mean that wholeheartedly, alrighy? I know I mentioned the shame cycle thing before. It’s not just that. I really am proud of you.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stark,” Peter said softly, shuffling a bit closer. “Hey. . . Um, if things go south. If anything happens, just. . . Thank you. For everything. Really, I know it probably doesn’t seem like a lot to you, but it. . . It means a lot.”

“Of course, Pete.” He wanted to believe that Peter’s worries were senseless, but as he looked over and saw their company crouched behind another rock, he wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the Guardians, as they called themselves. Quill was funny. Mantis was kind and honestly reminded him of Peter. Drax. . . Well, he wasn’t sure about him yet but didn’t think he was a bad guy. He just wasn’t confident in their abilities. He would feel much better with the others. Even Steve and his runaways.

God, did Bruce call Steve?

“Let me tell you what I wish I’d known. When I was young and dreamed of glory. You have no control. Who lives, who dies, who tells your story.”

“Hey, Pete?” Tony asked after a moment. The boy looked at him immediately. “Whatever happens in a bit; if anyone gets hurt, don’t think a bit of this is your fault.”

Peter glanced down uncertainly and Tony cursed himself silently. He knew that he was the one who put that thought in his head. After the ferry incident, when he had taken his suit. He told him it would be on him if someone got hurt because he wasn’t experienced and shouldn’t be taking on such big threats. Thanos was a much bigger threat than the Vulture.

“I mean it, Kid. Look at me.” Peter did as he was told, but stayed silent. “You probably weren’t old enough to remember any newscasts from Afghanistan, were you?”

“I mean, I remember, kinda. I didn’t know what was going on at the time, but I remember Ben watching it when he got home from work,” Peter told him.

Tony took a deep breath before he started. He wasn’t completely sure about telling Peter, but it was too late to back out now. “Before we were attacked,” he started. “Before we were attacked, I was with a younger soldier. Had to be in his twenties. He was probably a great guy, but I wouldn’t know. Sh*t, the last thing I said before we got blown up was that I wouldn’t have a company if there was peace.

“That was the last f*cking thing he ever heard. The woman who was driving too. Neither of them survived. It killed them on impact.” He paused to look at Peter. The boy was listening intently with wide eyes. “And here I am, the one person who should have been killed and the only one who survived it.”

Peter started to protest but Tony stopped him with a hand. “No. I know that you know what I was like then,” he said sternly. “But that’s not the point. The point is, they weren’t targeting me. Stane— he paid them to kill me. And for the longest time, I blamed myself that they were killed. And I don’t even want to think about the fact that Rhodey wanted me to ride with him. I don’t what I would have done if he was there with me when they attacked. If he was killed because I was targeted.”

“But it wasn’t your fault,” Peter protested. “You didn’t know what would happen.”

“That’s the point I’m trying to make,” he told him. “If anything goes wrong today, it’s not on you. It’s not on you. It’s not on me. It’s not on any of us, okay? We can’t predict the future. We just have to grow from it. You’ve been great in that department so far, but I just want you to remember that.”

“I know that we can win. I know that greatness lies in you. But remember from here on in. History has its eyes on you.”

“I’ll try,” Peter breathed. There were conflicting emotions showing in his eyes. Tony could only imagine that he was thinking of his parents and his uncle. The boy never really mentioned them, but he knew that it was a weight on his shoulders. Especially Ben. Peter had his powers when Ben died, and he was sure that was one of the many reasons the boy decided to become Spider-Man in the first place.

“You’re going to do great, Peter,” Tony said softly. “You’ve already beat some pretty amazing fighters, you know. I mean, you stole Capsicle’s shield easily. This will be a piece of cake for you.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “A piece of cake, huh?” The amount of recognition in his eyes surprised Tony. “I know that you’re nervous.”

“Excuse me?”

“I have enhanced hearing,” Peter shrugged. “I can hear your heartbeat. It’s going crazy right now. More than I’ve ever heard it.”

And Peter was right. He was beyond nervous. He was afraid that none of them would be going home. But even more so he was afraid that he would be going home without Peter. And that was worse. He didn’t even want to think about calling May Parker and telling her that her nephew was dead because of him.

“It’s okay,” Peter continued. “I know this is bad. I know. I. . . We might not make it out of this. I get it. And that scares the h*ll out of me, but it’s worth it, right? For-for everyone at home? For the little guy? That’s why we do this.”

Tony gave him a small smile. Even though it hurt him that a fifteen year old was able to accept that when he barely could, he didn’t think he had ever been fonder of the boy. “Yeah. Yeah, Kiddo,” he agreed. “You know, you really are better than me already. When I said I wanted you to be. . . I already knew then that you were. You’re the best of all of us.”

“Mr. Stark. . .”

“Nope, you’re not arguing,” Tony stopped him. “It’s true.”

Peter smiled, but it fell quickly. Tony noticed him stiffen, dropping down to make sure he was fully hidden. He was suddenly pale, his eyes wide as he looked at Tony. “He’s here.”

[seriouslyblacklikemysoul]

An Ephemeral Eternity in Seven Parts - Steve Rogers x Reader.

MASTERLIST Warnings: Gifs aren’t mine. My English. Word Count~ 3.3k.

Part I Part II Part III Part IV

PART V

How ephemeral life was? How was it that its fleeting beauty meant more as her life came to an end? Why hadn't she stopped to look around her before? Why had she been troubled with thoughts of suicide? Why did people come to value their lives just before they die? She felt so small in such a huge universe, she never liked being a pone to someone's game. But there she was; she would be their downfall. He had expected her to flee - he had planned everything so no one could ever leave. For the first time, she thought of herself as stupid enough not to have seen through. She hadn't question herself, she hadn't used her powers, she had listened to her mind and it turned out to be the stupidest of things. Never again, she thought but chuckled lightly. It wasn't going to be a next time. She wasn't worried she was going to die - maybe the opposite, really. She was worried about them. She knew they would all come, she knew what he wanted to see - an empire fall, he had said. All the years with Madam B. and HYDRA seemed to offer nothing now. She had already given up. If there was one thing she could wish for, that would be for her father not to over-react when he would found out. But she knew that it was just wishful thinking.  " If it's any comfort, they died in their sleep. Did you really think I wanted more of you?" Zemo's cold voice pierced through the speaker and her entire body tried to stop the chills. They were here already. They didn't realize it was a trap, she thought.  "What the hell?" Bucky said confused but she tried to get his attention with a muffled scream. He turned his head towards the direction but saw nothing. It was too dark.  "I'm grateful to them, though. They brought you here... Well, she plays a huge part too" his arrogant voice informed them while he appeared in the control room and illuminated one of the capsules with her inside, tied and muffled. Three pair of eyes were staring at her in terror. Steve hurled his shield to Zemo but it flied back. Tony tried to blast the capsule but it remained perfectly untouched.  "Please, Captain. The Soviets built this chamber to withstand the launch blast of UR-100 rockets" he remarked, making her blood boil and little by little regaining fragments of her powers. She needed time to recover from whatever he had injected her with. "I'm betting I could beat that" Tony said without taking his eyes off of his daughter. "Oh, I'm sure you could, Mr. Stark. Given time. But then you'd never know why you came" he went on, stalling them on purpose. She had to break free before he played the damn video. Concentrating every bit of her power to one sole thing - she had to break the capsule if she wanted to help them. She heard the video playing and she realized it would be now or never. For better or for worse, it was now. They heard the explosion and saw a purple color piercing through the room. The moment she got out, it was already too late. Tony lunged towards Bucky but Steve stopped him. She run towards them hoping she could help, but she just made it worst.  "Dad, stop" she tried to calm him down. He seemed happy she was okay but he was too lost in his own little world. He looked at Steve, with tears glistening in his eyes.  "Did you know?" he simply asked. How was she gonna tell him she knew too? "I didn't know it was him" Steve tried to smooth things over but he wasn't having it. Steve moved towards her, something that aggravated Tony even more.   "Don't bullshit me, Rogers! Did you know?" he demanded again. She whispered a no but she wasn't heard.  "Yes" Steve answered truthfully with remorse in his eyes. Tony stepped back, his chin was jutting upwards twitchy. He reengaged the Iron Man helmet and punched Steve to the floor while deflecting gunfire from Bucky, disarming him. He grabbed Bucky and flied him across the chamber. "Tony stop, stop. He wasn't himself" she was screaming but her words meant nothing. An angry answer came back to hunt her. "You are not my daughter" he said coldly as he slammed Bucky onto the floor and proceed to jump on his arms. Steve's shield hit him and she used her powers to put some space between him and Bucky by pushing him away. A blast from Tony sent her flying across the room, hitting her head and causing her to remain down.  

Steve barged him backwards, Tony shouldered him to the floor and shackled his ankles. Bucky punched Tony, who just lifted him and slammed him against a machine. Tony raised a fist but Bucky twisted it. She got up, trying to regain her strength and decided to wait, just a moment. She had hoped that they would behave like grown up men, not like children, but no one was stopping. She didn't know if someone was to blame, but Tony wasn't making things easier. Neither was Steve. Bucky pushed them both from the walkway,  while Steve jumped into them to deflect their fall. Bucky landed on a platform while Tony and Steve landed on the concrete floor besides an opening in the wall where snow drifted in from outside. She followed them, using her powers to mild the fall.  "This isn't gonna change what happened" a bloody and messy Steve offered for the last time.  "I don't care. He killed my mom" Tony answered as if he was ten.  "What about my mom, huh? And what about my dad, Tony? What about me?" she asked him, out of the blue, distracting all of them with her wounded appearance but fierce eyes and jolts of power rushing through her veins, creating lightings in her fingertips. Steve looked at her as if she was God. One look like that could ruin or rescue, depending on which fairy tales they read, but she had never believed in them. Eyes like those could never lie, he thought, so when he looked at her, he saw all the devastation he would cause in her name, and all the inevitability of their demise, and all the people who chose peace over passion. To hell with peace. She felt like a hurricane or a lightning strike. Love should leave no survivors. He made a silent promise to her. If they got out of there alive, if they ever saw each other again, he wouldn't let her go. She saw that in a single glance.  "You chose your side when you slept with him" he simply barked at her and she felt all the anger in the world building up in her.  "You don't get to talk to her like that" Steve threatened him. They traded punches but Tony ended up pinning Steve down. Bucky picked up the shield and leaped down to help while he told her to get out. Tony managed to zap Steve who was thrown back into the wall and blow away Bucky's metal arm. Tony raised his left palm ready to fire but Bucky grabbed his leg and Tony spun, kicking him in the face. Steve grabbed Tony  and lifted him over his head, throwing him down, punching him and bashed his mask off with his shield before striking down hard on the suit's core. Tony looked horrified and glowered fearfully at Steve who panted for breath. Both had blood spattered across their faces.  She couldn't stand it anymore. Every time she tried to push them apart, a blast sent her down. She took a deep breath and let out a cry of anger and agony, releasing every bit of her powers as Steve was sent flying away from Tony, with the concrete walls cracking from her powers. They looked at her in terror and awe. Steve's shield was stuck in the center of the Iron Man Suit. Looking at her, as if he was asking permission, Steve took hold of the shield, gripping the edge and pulling it free. She stepped closer to Bucky who was there, bloodied but conscious. She mouthed an apology but he was just looking at her, never wanting an apology from her. There was nothing she could do about it anymore. She knew things wouldn't be the same. But she had things to say before each took their separate ways. 

"You are all children, punching and throwing down one another because you cannot use your minds. How mature and heroic you guys are... Guess what Tony...  you're not the only who lost a mother but you don't see us running around looking for revenge now do you? I am sick of this. You have disappointed me and let me down with your stupid decisions. You were right, I am not your daughter, Tony. And Steve, I am not your girl. You had to fight for that, not fight my father. And Bucky, I am sorry" she poured her final thoughts and left them trying to understand how was it that she had become the wiser of them all. 

With nothing but an idea, she walked away, never even daring to look back to what she might have lost. Her mind was empty but her heart was squeezing in a painful way that made her want to get rid of it all together. But she knew that they needed time and she was wiling to remove herself form the game if that meant they would come to terms with the past. She also knew, deep down, that they didn't have the time they needed but she chose not to say anything. Her powers were sensing a greater threat but her mind was always trying to help the situation already before her. She had to be the one to step back because no one else would. And it was too much watching her family fight one another. She felt the desperation sinking in. The darkness and the cold taking over. No one would tell her fairytale. Of how girls can be dangerous and still win. This world, she thought, is only capable of digesting the stories where girls are sweet and kind and reject all sin. Maybe it was terrifying, a tale about a woman who knew exactly what she was doing when she invited the wild in, a story of a powerful individual knowing when to retreat and when to attack. She smiled at the thought of Steve promising her a future just with his eyes. But the universe never promised her this would be easy. She knew it because she was the hero of her story. And heroes were meant to be forged golden from the blaze. She would rise again from the shards her family left of her. She would take on her demons and kill them. She would break all the chains that had been brutally placed on her. And she would do show while showing everyone else that she was the person they thought she would never be. She wouldn't  give up on herself, ever again. She was made out of steel. 

It had been months. She hadn't received any calls from Tony, not that she expected to. She kind of hoped that Steve would reach out but it hadn't happened. It was easy for her to hide in plain sight and nothing was quite new. Last month a weird looking guy had offered her to help her tame her powers. Ironically enough his name was Strange. She had nothing to lose and so she had agreed. It wasn't that bad, he was so tense all the time but other than, she didn't mind. He provided her with anything she needed and she was free most of the time to go outside Sanctum Sanctorum. She had to be honest; having the time-stone keeper to teach her how to master her powers had been helpful, showing her there were more to it than she believed. She had understood the origins of the powers, found out that she was just a host to them but somehow those ancient forces of nature liked her enough to let her use them. She understood Wanda's powers as well. 

She was strolling around the streets with a beer in her hand, trying not to think about them; it was just before midnight and the night was cold but she didn't really care. Why was it that difficult not to think of him? Why were his eyes constantly messing up her mind?  "Damn you, Rogers" she whispered to herself, but destiny had another plan. "You're right" a soft but ragged voice came behind, making her forget everything she ever learnt. She just froze, believing she would never hear that voice again. She didn't turn. "I am so sorry. Please, come back" his voice was softer and more broken this time as she finally turned to face him. It might have been dark but she would find his eyes even without her sight. He was different. It had cost him a lot.  "I like the beard" she commented shortly after. He offered her a small smile but his eyes were burning with one question while taking her figure in. She had changed to. She nodded to him to follow her as she disappeared into an abandoned building, one that she had found out it existed when she was looking for any relatives from  her mother’s side. He did, without asking why.  It was an old, aristocratic mansion, with elegant and delicate furniture. Everything seemed to be in place, like nothing had been moved in ages. She saw his puzzled eyes and smiled. How easy was to fall for him again? She climbed the huge, marble staircase to the attic. They didn't talk, not even a word but his eyes hadn't left her. He felt like they were invading, something she noticed.  "Don't worry, no one is gonna come here. You can sit wherever you like" she offered as she plopped down the bed. He carefully sat down too, so close to her, he could smell her perfume.  "We are not supposed to be here, are we?" he asked while he was still taking in his surroundings. Everything felt as if the owners were about to return from a walk in the park. She looked deep in his eyes. He was her Steve. She took a sip from her beer, offering the bottle to him. He gladly drunk.  "Well, the grandmother died a while ago, the mother was murdered and the daughter is right in front of you. So technically, I am exactly where I am supposed to be" she honestly told him, tired of hiding herself from the one person she wanted to talk to for hours. He was left looking at her in complete amazement. She chuckled at his perplexed expression and before she could think about it too much, she reach out and caressed his beard with her slender fingers. It was the luck of breath and the electricity that caused her heart to beat a bit too loud and his eyes to travel to her lips before settling on her eyes.  "Walking away was one of the hardest things I have ever done, Steve. How can I ever come back?" she finally told him, her hand still cupping his cheek. He glanced at her and all it took was one god-damn look for them to feel even more desperate the burning need. He gave in - her eyes were too intense for him, too honest.  "In my dreams, I am kissing you and you're whispering 'where have you been?' and if I try to answer you disappear. I know that it will be hard for you to come back. I know that what I am asking is selfish and by asking you to come back with me you would be against Tony. I never got the chance to apologize for the overwhelming amount of pressure I placed upon your arms which caused you to act like you did when Bucky found you. I am sorry for every scar I have caused" he rambled on and on. She knew he was stressed and she also knew that it wasn't his fault. They were so close, his breath falling hot upon her face, his new, darker look made her weak at the knees, all the time she spent trying to get over him meant absolutely nothing now that he was in front of her. He let down the bottle and played with strand of her hair. It was longer. "You know that I nearly missed every word you said?" she whispered, leaning in just a bit. She wasn't doing anything on purpose. His breath became deeper.  "And why is that?" he questioned, already knowing the answer, as he too leaned towards her. She knew it probably was stupid but she didn't really control herself that moment.  "I was wondering if it has change" she faintly said, out of breath with her heart hammering in her chest, loud enough for him to hear. His eyes were roaming her face, trying to carve every detail in his mind. She was still the person he first fell in love with, only stronger. Her eyes held secrets he knew that hurt her. He couldn't muster the strength to ask her 'what', he just mouthed it. His hand was already wrapped around her waist, bringer closer to him, heat and power radiating from her body.  "The way you kiss me" she replied before their lips collided into a battle of agony and lust. It had changed, she thought. They were more desperate, more needy, more angry, more passionate, more fierce. There was a burning anticipation in his tongue that slipped through hers and went right to her heart. They craved each other more than before and it took her by surprise how gentle but strong he was. To hell with peace, she thought.  His hands roamed her body, slowly undressing her - before he removed every piece of clothing, he looked at her for permission. It had been a long time since that night. He didn't want to rush things, he wanted to treat her exactly as she deserved but she wasn't having it. There was a burning need to feel him, to be with him, to hold him and love him. Her bones craved him. He hadn't planned it; he wasn't even sure she would talk to him. Seeing her for the first time in months was too much. She wore darkness and gold and she looked like the Goddess of the Underworld, like Persephone, with roses in her hair and magic in her veins. She was nor a God, neither a monster; she had indeed told him the truth that day, she was a monstrous God. With every kiss and every bite, every scratch that left behind a map to their bodies, the night gave its place to another morning, which for a while at least, was peaceful. Right before they fell asleep, she whispered five small words that would never leave his heart. Ever. And he said four in return but she was already asleep. "I think I love you". "I know I do".

Taglist: @accio-rogers @coffee-with-orion @moli1497 @stydia-4-ever @smilexcaptainx

[mecommentating]

So taking a tiny tiny break from Red Rising content. 

I watched Endgame last night for the second time and first of all its a fine movie. It could have been soooo much better but whatever. I have no serious problems with most things that happen in the movie.  

Except for the ending with stupid Steve Captain America Rodgers 

As I was watching it I remembered this rant wrote about Captain America after I finished season one of Agent Carter and wanted to share...

Agent Carter is an old show that was made before they screwed everything up with Endgame. It gives Peggy real character development and shows how she moves on from Cap, learns to rely on and trust people, and prove her place in a field of work dominated by men. Endgames throws everything that happens in this show down the drain and then spits on it.

If you’re ever bored take a good solid look at how they characterize Captain America through out the movies.

He’s supposed to be selfless motivated by a righteous passion for freedom and justice. 

He was never selfless.

He wanted to join the army because that was the thing to do at the time and the fact that he couldn’t made him feel worthless. This feeling of worthlessness was why he jumped on the fake grenade which got him the position of Captain America.

He then jumped into enemy territory for his best friend Bucky. Not because it was the right thing to do but because his best friend was stuck there and he couldn’t take the idea that his friend might be dead. He went on a suicide mission that could have gotten Peggy and a ton of other people in trouble and if it had gone really badly could have potentially cost them the war. That was how he became the “real” Captain America and I would bet millions on the fact that if Bucky had decided to leave the army after he was rescued Cap would have followed.

The reason Cap put the plane in the water wasn’t because it was the only option and he was going to self sacrifice to save millions. BECAUSE YOU BET YOUR PANTS THERE WAS ANOTHER WAY. The dumbass put the plane in the water because Bucky was gone and he didn’t have anything left to live for. He liked Peggy but Bucky was the reason he was Captain America and being that guy without him was something he didn’t want to do.

Then he lives and comes back out of the ice and he doesn’t want to get caught up in the fight again he wants to be left alone. He probably has ptsd and all his friends are dead and the worlds gone crazy. He’s living in the future. But Fury convinces him to come back because the thing Cap died to end is back.

He does his job and gets back in the fight even though he doesn’t want to be there. He has no choice.

And that’s where he stays until civil war. Guess who comes back in that movie? THATS RIGHT BUCKY.

He also doesnt have any character development and his character is very different movie to movie. One movie has him the old fashioned, clean mouth dude when that’s not even close to accurate because he was basically a street kid from Brooklyn and you can bet your life that that kid could curse better than any sailor.

He’s bland and doesn’t think. He works on impulse.

He won’t sign the accords when that is clearly what they needed. Yes the accords aren’t perfect but the avengers can’t keep running unchecked. They blew up an airport over a petty fight on who gets to keep the criminal.

Tony didn’t handle it right either but he realized there was a problem and was trying to fix it while Cap sat there blind as a bat and ran after his friend.

At the end of that movie Cap drops the shield because he had Bucky back and didn’t need to be the hero anymore.

He then becomes a vigilante when there is no freaking way he would have done that.

That moron would have stayed with Bucky because that man is his life. It’s his only friend from before. Yes he has Sam and Nat but they’re different from Bucky.

Also notice that the only people he gets close to are the people who are just as messed up as him but is that fleshed out? No because Captain America is strong and not weak doesn’t need anybody. 

Infinity War. INSTANTLY comes back to fight in the war. Yeah maybe he realized this was bigger than him but again I don’t think he would have become a vigilante in the first place. He would have been living far away trying to have a normal life even though he knows deep down he can’t have that.

They keep setting him up as this selfless guy. He fights in the war, he keeps helping after the war and doesn’t get a life. He tries to bring everyone back when any IDIOT can tell that that is a stupid ass idea.

People are supposed to move on. That’s how life works. Bringing half of the population of the universe back 5 years later is not going to help anything. It’s going to make the population problem worse. People remarried, kids grew up, jobs were taken. He just wants his friends back and hate to break it to you BUT ITS NOT ALL ABOUT YOU

And then he takes the infinity stones home and decides to stay with Peggy making the ultimate selfish choice. He knew she moved on and had her own life. He knew she had become her own woman and yet goes back anyway.

It was supposed to show he developed in the opposite direction of Tony Stark except Cap was always selfish with a facade of selflessness. That selfless facade stayed right up until suddenly oh look now you can see my true self as I leave the best friend I always chose first behind and go and live with my childhood crush.

NOTHING ABOUT CAP MAKES SENSE! 

They put all the eggs in Tony’s baskets and forgot to give Cap any. Everyone was able to interpret him the way they wanted in whatever movie they were directing which created a shallow, one dimensional character that everyone likes until they actually pay attention. 

[ks-caster]

The Future is Infinite (Chapter 5)

Start || Previous

Chapter-specific warnings: None. 

Urgent knocking at the door woke her, and Octavia rolled over, frowning in the pre-dawn half-light to squint in the direction where the noise had originated.

“Octavia,” Bucky’s strained voice called. “You in there?”

“Yeah,” she called back, voice raspy either with too much sleep or not enough, she wasn’t sure. She fumbled to her feet and opened the door. “What’s going on?”

“Strange is gone,” Bucky explained hurriedly, as Steve joined him from his own room, pulling on a shirt and reaching inside the door for huge metal arm-shields he’d been using as a weapon yesterday. “Signs of a struggle. We needed to know if anyone else was taken.” Without further ado, he headed off to pound on her other neighbor’s door. “Thor, you in there?”

“Skrish,” Octavia swore, ducking back into the room to pull her clothes back on and grab her sword before heading out and following where everyone else was headed.

“I said clear the room!” Tony was shouting. “This is a crime scene, not a museum. Yes, you too kid.” He added, making a shooing motion towards Peter who, to his credit, was stuck to the wall and therefore not underfoot. He maneuvered lithely across the room and through the door to crouch on the hallway ceiling and watch as Tony scanned things with different colored lasers and asked questions, only to be answered by a woman’s disembodied voice.

“What happened?” Thor demanded.

“Dr. Banner went to see if Mr. Strange was still up because he saw lights under the door,” Peter recited, with the air of someone who’d given this talk a couple of times to different waves of people. “He didn’t answer, but then Mr. Stark thought maybe he was using the time stone thingy to look at the future again so he picked the lock, but when he got in, Mr. Strange was gone, and there was blood on the wall and the bed, and the lamp was broken.” He pointed to the two halves of a tall floor lamp. A smaller splatter of blood was soaking into the carpet near it. It had been broken over someone’s body, most likely.

“The guy can see fourteen million futures but not someone breaking into his bedroom?” She checked rhetorically, already wondering if he had seen this coming, if it was part of the plan. 

The lamp post. A guide. A landmark, showing the way home. Broken on the floor.

She shook herself a little, knowing that she was being ridiculous and reading too much into things. He’d been attacked, he had or hadn’t seen it coming, and he was gone. Probably still alive - she knew she didn’t carry around dead bodies without a very good reason. 

“Think this is still the one where we win?” Rocket commented darkly.

“I am Groot,” the tree said sadly, before returning to his game.

“Tony, is there any chance he didn’t have the stones on him when he was taken?” Steve asked, leaning on the doorframe but very carefully not setting foot in the room.

“If he didn’t take off his unnaturally loyal cape of destiny to sleep, I doubt he took off the infinity time necklace,” Tony responded, never pausing in his sweep of the room.

“Boss,” the disembodied voice addressed him, “I’ve finished scanning the room. Some of the blood belongs to Dr. Stephen Strange - the blood on the carpet isn’t his. From the dirt patterns on the balcony, the outer door hasn’t been opened in the last couple of days, and as you saw yourself, the inside door was locked.”

“I’ve seen three different guys make magic portals in the last 12 hours,” Octavia reminded everyone. “Not exactly a locked room mystery.” 

“Oh, good point!” Peter exclaimed, a glimmer of hope in his voice. “Maybe he used magic to run away from his attacker?”

“He would’ve clued us in by now,” Natasha countered. 

“I am Groot,” the tree added helpfully. Rocket did a double-take.

“What!?” He exclaimed. The tree looked up from his game.

“I. Am. Groot,” he repeated slowly. “I am Groot.”

“Care to translate?” Steve asked Rocket, but Thor answered first.

“He says that Strange gave the soul stone to Quill earlier this afternoon,” he explained quickly, then frowned. “Why would he do that? Quill’s not exactly…”

“Hey, he just lost the love of his life!” Rocket growled. Thor raised his hands placatingly.

“That’s what I meant, of course!” he backtracked. While man and beast (and tree) growled at each other, Octavia turned to Bucky.

“Has anyone checked to see if he’s still here?” she asked. He nodded.

“Nebula did that wing,” he gestured towards the blue woman. “Quill’s still here. And Shuri was able to remove the Mind Stone from Vision - she’s here, and confirmed that the stone is still safe in her lab. Anyone come after you?”

Octavia shook her head. “I was out on the balcony practically all night, and I left the doors open when I went to sleep. May as well have painted a target on my face - never saw a single threat.”

“But,” she added, frowning, “that makes perfect sense.”

“Care to share with the class?” Tony asked, and she realized uncomfortably that all eyes were on her. She wished she’d put her armor back on instead of the soft clothes she’d been given.

“If I was fighting an opponent who could see the future, who could see fourteen million futures and find only one version where I lose,” she explained, “then really my only real threat is the guy who can see the future, right? Eliminate him, make a few unpredictable moves, and then I’m almost certainly into one of the millions of futures where I win.” She shrugged. 

“And if I only had one opportunity to use the element of surprise,” she continued as looks of comprehension dawned on her audience’s faces, “then I’m not going to waste it on people and things who, in the absence of the future-seeing wizard, aren’t a threat, am I? So now the real question here is, why not just kill the wizard? If it had been me, and if everything had been riding on this, I would’ve just stabbed him in the head so that I’m guaranteed a victory.”

“Not necessarily,” Tony responded. He looked like he was going to be sick. All eyes turned to him. “When he was taken the first time… Squidward was saying something about how if he delivered the stone to Thanos while it was still attached to Strange, it wouldn’t go so well for him. And that the spell wouldn’t just wear off after Strange died. They’re, ah. Probably working real hard to convince him to take it off.” He looked really, really sick.

This time Steve did enter the room, followed closely by Rhodey, but Tony waved both of them off, walking quickly out into the crowded hallway as if he was trying to walk away from his own thoughts.

“So Thanos does have the time stone, but he can’t use it for the length of time it takes Dr. Stephen Strange to break under torture,” Octavia caught up calmly. “From what I’ve seen of him, that buys us some time.”

“You’re disturbingly okay with that,” Tony exclaimed, breaths agitated.

“I’m disturbingly experienced,” she shot back. “But there is one positive we haven’t noticed yet - if Thanos was still able to surprise Strange, then clearly fourteen million wasn’t the total number of possible futures.”

“So,” Peter said, his voice sounding so, so young, “we might still win after all?”

“I make it a point never to rule that out until the end,” Octavia assured him, trying to remind herself that not all of the people around her were hardened the way she was. Not everyone had survived what she had.

“So,” T’Challa summed up rubbing his temple, “Either this is part of Strange’s plan and we’re still winning, or it isn’t and that means we still have a chance. Thanos has 3 infinity stones, and so do we, and we need to get the fight off of this planet and away from its people.”

“And we need to rescue the wizard. Again.” Peter added with a small, breathy laugh. Octavia watched the faces of all the adults who didn’t have the heart to tell the kid that they wouldn’t even know where to start, and saw Rhodey usher Tony a few steps away, rubbing his back… and then a thought burned through her brain like an alarm tone.

“Where do Strange’s loved ones live?” she demanded, glancing between Tony and Peter, since they were the only ones who seemed to know him. Everyone stared at her blankly. “His pressure points, people he’d give up the universe to save,” she clarified, hoping they’d get the picture without her having to say the word ‘torture’ again and risk making whatever Tony was going through worse.

“He used to work at New York Hospital,” Rhodey supplied helpfully. “But that was a few years ago - I don’t think he’s been back much.”

“Wong. Wong would know,” Tony muttered, pulling out his phone. The air around Thor crackled. 

“I’m going to London,” he announced, striding quickly through the now vacant crime scene and flinging open the balcony door. “Rabbit, Tree, will you accompany me?” Rocket and Groot followed him, just in time for him to whirl his ax around a few times, and a blinding column of multi-colored light shone down from the sky, vanishing all three of them, and leaving a curling tracery of sparks singed into the balcony. 

“He has an ex he’s still in contact with,” Tony was repeating from someone - presumably Wong - on the other end of the phone. “Dr. Christine Palmer. Still works at New York Hospital. I’m sending in the Iron Legion.” Everyone was yelling at once.

“Don’t draw attention—” 

“—Alerting the local authorities—”

“Can you find her number?”

“—Hospital might be in danger!”

“Any other family? An ex can’t be it—”

“He’d need access to the planet, right?” Octavia murmured, and she saw Nebula’s eyes flit to her. “He brought a whole space fleet here - if he was gonna do that again, then he wouldn’t go too far with them… especially if there are a bunch of other, more powerful planets around who wouldn’t like what he’s doing; people who’d get in the way when he comes back. He’d need somewhere out of the way to regroup, but he’d hang close to the planet. 

“Where nearby could you hide a battle fleet?” She asked, looking at Nebula who by now was clearly paying attention, having levered herself off the wall she’d been leaning on and taken a step forward. 

“The closest planets are called Mars and Venus,” she recited, pressing her temple. Her eye lit up and projected out a map of the solar system - nine planets, and a debris field that might have been the ruins of a tenth. “Mars’s rotation cycle keeps one side dark at all times - Venus’s atmosphere hides the whole of the planet’s surface… and the heat and light make it an excellent location for recharging a number of different kinds of engines without being observed.” 

“Venus will also remain within easy flying distance of Earth for the next few weeks,” Vision’s voice commented - out of a completely normal-looking man with tired eyes and mousy hair. Octavia did a double-take, but she had seen the red man’s face and heard his voice, and she supposed that she saw and heard the resemblance. Maybe his skin had turned red because of the infinity stone now conspicuously absent from his forehead.

Was her skin going to change colors too?

Not the time.

“We need a ship,” Nebula announced. Everyone was listening now.

“Or a Wong,” Tony countered, tapping a colorful square on his phone and holding it back to his ear. “Hey, on second thought…”

“You won’t survive Venus’s climate dressed like that,” Shuri commented, running her fingers over the beaded bracelet on her wrist and generating projected symbols into the air. “Luckily for all of you, I came prepared. Everyone planning on rescuing the doctor, to my lab right away.”

-0-

“We need to slow down and think this through for a minute,” Steve was demanding as everyone crowded into Shuri’s lab in their pajamas. “First of all, this could very easily be a trap—” 

“The surface temperature on Venus holds steady at over 460 degrees celsius,” Shuri was explaining as Tony and Steve went at each other in the background. “The atmospheric pressure is similar to what we would find 900 meters below the ocean’s surface.”

“God, I forgot what it was like to try and save the world while tripping over an overgrown boy scout!”

“Because tripping over your massive ego is so much better!”

More and more of the crowd were moving to the Stark vs Rogers shouting match, either to join, intervene or rubberneck. Shuri glared in the direction of the crescendo of noise a few times, but when it became clear that they weren’t about to stop on her account, she turned her attention to the little knot of people surrounding her. Octavia, Nebula and Wong each took one of the pods she handed out, affixing them to the backs of their necks as she showed. 

“What about my suit?” Peter asked from inside a red and blue metallic bodysuit. He was hanging upside down from a white stringy substance stuck to the ceiling. Octavia ran a hand over the top of her now forcefield-encased head, pressing her palm against her skull like she hoped she could squash out the quickly building headache. 

“Pressure, yes. That level of heat, on the other hand, will eventually fry the electronics in the nanites of your suit. These are designed not only to withstand the heat…”

“No, YOU’RE wasting time with all of this POINTLESS DRAMA, but isn’t that what you do best—” 

“OH, I didn't realize that saving my CAPTURED FRIEND’S LIFE was an inconvenience, oh, WAIT I’ve HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE!”

“THAT’S LOW, EVEN FOR YOU!”

“You’re the one who can get us through to the fleet, yes?” Nebula asked Wong quietly as the man slipped a second suit pod into his pocket for Strange.

“I am,” Wong responded, glancing at the battle lines being drawn around the room.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Octavia muttered, already imagining what a pain in the ass it would be to break up that fight and get everyone to work together.

It was safe to say that she did not miss being queen one bit.

The three of them shared a look, with Peter detaching from the ceiling and glancing rapidly between them and the (so far still largely verbal) fight.

“That room over there is safely insulated,” Shuri continued, accepting that she was only briefing four people instead of a room of them. Octavia noticed that the case she’d opened only had a total of eight slots for suits, so she supposed it was probably better for the team to be chosen quickly and quietly, rather than let the arguing masses debate who should go. “Don’t open the portal until the door is closed; don’t open the door until the portal is closed when you come back.”

“But… Mr. Stark,” Peter started helplessly.

“Is otherwise occupied - with being an idiot,” Nebula finished for him. “Are you coming or not?”

“I… yes,” Peter decided, fixing the pod to the back of his suit and following the adults toward the little room Shuri had pointed out. “I’m coming. Let’s go save the wizard.” 

To Be Continued... 

[a-tale-of-two-comics]

Just wondering when I can read part 7 of I can't save her?👉👈😗

Hey love! I don’t know why @supportTumblr hasn’t responded to my message yet about re-instating the post. They apparently flagged a gif, that they deemed offensive... even though the people had clothes on :| anyways, in the mean time -- here is the chapter while we wait for them to hopefully respond to them:

I Can’t Save Her: Part 7

The following weeks began to fall into a routine. Bucky and Steve were mainly gone on missions. No one would talk about what they were actually doing, and they didn’t seem overly willing to give any information to the group. Bucky was particularly mercurial which wasn’t anything new – usually I would confront him about it and snap him out of it, but I felt like his kiss and subsequent behavior put me at a disadvantage, and I spent most of my time actively trying to avoid being alone with him. I was exasperated and more than ever I felt completely alone. What made the situation even worse was the fact that Steve wouldn’t look me in the eyes which told me more than I ever needed to know.

One night I awoke screaming out, drenched in sweat, and trembling. “Ms. Y/N is there a way I can assist you?” F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice permeated the darkness in my room. Tony had programmed F.R.I.D.A.Y. to respond to any type of distress – he said it was for the safety of the team in case a situation ever happened, but I knew it was really his way of looking out for me. In many ways we were alike – we struggled silently with our demons.

“Just find me something that will comfort me, please,” I responded to the bodiless voice.

“Waking Sargent Barnes,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. responded. Before I could protest I could already hear Bucky walking down the hallway and opening my door.

“Y/N?” he asked hesitantly as my bed shifted under his weight.

“I’m afraid F.R.I.D.A.Y takes my sarcasm seriously,” I replied meekly as I peeked at him through my eyelashes. “I’m okay… you should go back to bed.” It was quite apparent that I was not okay, but I still put on my best stubborn front.

“No,” he replied softly as he moved the covers to slide under them. I could immediately feel his warmth around me and it silenced my protests. My iciness towards him melted as he wrapped his arms around me. It was like being home when we had these moments, but now part of me tried to actively resist the comfort he provided. My subconscious was trying its damnedest to keep me from suffering further. I looked at him and realized I hadn’t noticed how tired and strained his face had looked since we had last spent time together. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked through my hair.

I gritted my teeth. “No,” I replied stubbornly.

He snorted into my ear. “Why do you have to be so stubborn?” At this my anger peaked and I managed to squirm out of his embrace.

“Me? Stubborn?... You kissed me, and then you disappeared on me. Why…why would you do that? If you thought it was a mistake… you should have just told me. Don’t throw away the friendship we have. I know you’ve talked to Steve about something… he won’t even look at me. Now I have Tony taking time to program F.R.I.D.A.Y. to take care of me…” I broke off with an angry huff.

Bucky paused and looked at me earnestly, “I’m sorry… I..” he stopped. He looked pained— like he was torn between wanting to tell me the truth and wanting to stay away.

“What is it that you’re not telling me?” I asked trying to keep my voice even.

He looked away from me and began running his hands through his hair. “I was so fucking terrified Y/N.”

“Terrified of what?” I asked impatiently.

“Of losing you,” he said pinning me under his gaze. His eyes showed so many emotions. Pain, urgency, sadness, and a desire to say all the things he had held back from me. “I’ve lost everything in my life that ever mattered. HYDRA took away my life, my choices, and everyone I ever cared about. My parents died thinking that their son died a war hero… when I was turned into a monster.... And then Steve found me and brought me back from the edge. He brought me here against my better judgment and I thought to myself that maybe this wouldn’t work…. maybe I’m always going to be a monster, and then you show up and you’re so perfectly imperfect… and you see me not as a monster… not as what I am capable of… not as a machine or a weapon. You see me. Just me.” He paused as I stared at him dumbfounded. “I knew you were mad at me the night that you got back from the party with Tony…. That’s why I tried to take care of you from a distance…” he broke off.

“That was you?” my voice came out more like a whisper. I was still processing all the things he had just confessed to me. The suddenness of his honesty made me feel dizzy. “The mission?” I asked. My thoughts were in fragments and I was finding it increasingly difficult to form words.

He diverted his eyes from me and his whole body tensed. “I can’t tell you doll. I’m sorry. I truly am. But it’s for your own good that you don’t know...” he trailed off.

“You get that I don’t need you to protect me from the world, right Buck?” Even as I was saying it I realized it was much harsher than I meant for it to be.

Bucky flinched at my words but found his resolve and looked up at me. “I am perfectly aware that you can take care of yourself. It doesn’t mean you should have to all the time,” he said through his teeth. I could tell his emotions were teetering on the edge of anger. “Some battles aren’t yours to face, Y/N. You’re too busy carrying everyone else’s burdens to even have a second of joy. And more than anything I want to give you joy. For the first time since I fell off that train… since HYDRA…  you’ve given it to me,” he continued with such urgency and emotion that I was afraid his metal hand would crush the headboard it was now clenching. He paused for a moment and finally whispered, “I care about you, and it scares me. It scares me for you because everything good that I touch turns to shit.”

“It was about you…” I responded quietly – looking at my upturned palms. Bucky looked at me – shocked out of his thoughtful monologue.

“What?” he said puzzled at first and then realization spread across his face.

“I dreamt that we were happy and you walked away from me… or you were ripped away… The dream varies each time I have it,” the words were bitter on my tongue. This particular nightmare had been playing on loop for days. Every night I had him ripped from me by unknown forces that I couldn’t control or fight. It was my own personal hell. It insured that I always woke up with a broken heart. “And it was like my heart had been ripped from my body…” I paused, looking up at him. My words came out as a small whisper, “I know you think you need me James, but what you don’t know is how much I need you. I know I have the others… but without you I don’t feel like I belong here. You were there when the others weren’t. You’re the only one that knows the things I love. You’re the only one that knows the things I fear, or how my past still haunts me.”

He was hesitant. It was one of the few times I had seen actual fear on his face. My fingers ached to touch him as I relaxed back into his embrace. His hold on me tightened at I traced his jaw with my finger lightly. This time it was my turn to take him by surprise. I couldn’t hold myself back – not after we had both laid our truths bare in front of the other. His answering kiss was reluctant at first – he was trying so desperately to hold himself back – to grasp his last shred of self-control. Slowly his resolve melted as I twisted my fingers in his hair and pulled him closer. His hands travelled down my body erupting every nerve as they went.  Suddenly his self-control snapped back into place and he broke away from the kiss – leaving us both breathless. He grinned at me shyly and pulled back slightly with an admiring look on his face. “So do you forgive me?” he asked – the humor fading from his face.

“You have to promise me something first,” I said.

“What would that be, doll?” he asked with a spark of triumph in his eyes. His revelation to me seemed to have lifted an invisible burden from him.

“You promise me, James Buchanan Barnes, that we’ll always be honest to each other. The only way you will ever lose me is if you push me away.”

His face lit up into a dazzling smile – the kind that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. “I think that’s certainly a promise I can keep. Will you promise me something in return?” he asked hesitantly.

“Of course.”

“Promise me you’ll be patient with me. Promise me you won’t leave,” his voice was sweet – like a child making his parents pinky swear there wasn’t a monster under his bed.

“I promise,” I replied and kissed him softly.

“Now… speaking of patience… let’s maybe just use this bed for sleep tonight,” he sighed as he snuggled closer to me.

“Whatever you say James.” I snuggled into his arms sleepily as he sighed with contentment. I felt a cautious happiness rise inside of me. I knew I was treading on dangerous ground, but for the time being we were both happy and I had him back. I wasn’t about to throw myself into worrying about the future – not yet at least. I yawned and slowly drifted back to sleep.

God I wish I had worried about the future.