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persage · 2 years

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My Responsibility - S. Harrington

Pt 2. Dead Man

Whump!SteveHarringtonxReader

Summary: After the events of Season 4 Steve has to deal with the consequences of his injuries and only the reader realizes his condition are getting worse.

PART 1 Masterlist

Words: 2.4 k

Tags: whump! angst! romance! Steve Harrington x Bestfriend!Reader. Protective!Steve andJim Hopper being a good dad for the group.

Taglist: @ducky-is-dead-inside @carpediem1219 @lexiecamposv @gloryofroses19

A.N (feel free to skip) : thank, you all for your support on the previous part! I didn't expect it at all. The story will have at least other 2/3 chapters, if you wanna be added to the tag list just ask❤️

He is a dead man walking, Steve Harrington has known it for a long time. Even while you were in the Upside Down trying to find a way out, he already knew he was gonna die soon.

The demobats had just attacked him and you were running away, scared as hell. All he could think about in those moments were his burning wounds, fire exploding in his veins. He couldn't stop moving, because you would have stopped with him and he couldn't let you. You were his whole world, he needed to keep you safe. As you were running by his side, turning from time to time to check if he was still with you, he had pictured both of you in his bed lying together in an indissoluble hold. Dreaming was the only way not to collapse. Every step he took made him want to cry out in pain and he felt his wounds contorting on his stomach. Keeping up with Nancy, Robin and Eddie was hard, but you were beside him making sure he didn't keel over which, honestly, seemed quite likely. The bats screeched again and as he turned Steve saw that they were swarming towards the five of you.

"Go" He screamed at you "I'll be right behind you ."

"I won't leave you Harrington."You weren't going to let this self - sacrificing man get mauled for your safety.

Steve was already doomed, he has been since those monsters ripped through his flesh, Something had changed in him, he felt the infection growing and expanding, moving in his body like a poison and he was exhausted in a way he never experienced before. He wanted to sleep forever.

I need help.

Steve Harrington had already made his decision when Nancy was taken by Vecna. When all of you barely came back through the portal in Eddie's trailer, he had decided not to reveal his condition to anyone. Then things evolved quickly and there was no more time to waste. He had to carry on with his mission - a crazy suicidal plan- and he couldn't let go, he couldn't be weak, not when Max was putting herself on the line for the world, not when Vecna was ready to take each of you with ease, not when you were walking in front of him with an axe in your hands and two guns in your belt ready to set that bastard on fire. You were armed, capable, dangerous but that was never enough to stop Steve from worrying about you. He thought back to when you disappeared, during the mall massacre, and for hours he had believed you were dead.

A hole in his chest, a part of him ripped away. The Harrington boy didn't want to feel anything like this ever again. He could relax back in the real world, without Vecna, knowing kids and the rest of his friends were safe. For now he simply had to get to the Creel's house without loosing consciousness or being attacked again.

Watching him as they settle his unconscious and trembling body on the bed is awful. It's like having shards stuck in your throat. Joyce closes the door gently, to grant him some privacy in that tidal wave of people. You haven't even noticed your friends around you: Will, Mike, El, Jonathan, Nancy and a guy you don't know. They are all here. Hopper has to practically detach you from the door of El's room - where Steve has been placed - by force.

"The boy is strong. He'll be fine, don't worry." You take a moment to actually look at the man and feel guilty for not doing it sooner. He is much more thinner than you remember him, his hair has been shaved off and God knows the horrors he must have seen. Everything you know about how he's here is just a few snippets of the conversations you managed to gather while worrying about your best friend. Something about Russians and a labor camp, something scary.

"I'm sorry." You say. You're sorry because you haven't even bothered to hug him, greet to him properly or tell him how sorry you were for his death and that you are happy to see him again. Hop has always helped all of you, he has seen you grow up and you have learned to love him. Jim Hopper is a hero. Somehow he reminds you of Steve and can't help but remeber that time when, right after high school, you advised him to consider a career as a cop if the one a babysitter didn't go well.

"Working with Hopper, God that man would kick my ass." Now you really want Steve to be awake, not only because you know how happy he would be to learn that no, you haven't lost Hop too, that there is hope, but also 'cause you desperately want him to see the way the man cared for him, the way he gently grabbed him, hugged him like a baby and carried him safely into the house.

"I'm happy you're here and ... I don't know how it's possible ... But now I feel safe. With you." You throw yourself at the man in an unexpected hug. Jim stands still for a while before wrapping his arms around you. This is the first time you have hugged each other in many years.

"What happened to Steve?" Nancy asks, concern is clearly visible on her face.

"His injuries were more serious than he led us to believe." You let a hand run through your dirty and sweaty hair. You know it's your impression, you know they don't think so but you feel judged, like they are silently saying. "It's your fault."

"Why didn't he say anything?" It isn't really a question, Nancy Wheeler knows Steve well enough to understand his reasons but Robin answers anyway, letting go of a nervous laught that you recognize right away. It's the same as when she was taken by the Russians, the same as when things are going really really bad and she doesn't know how to react.

"We're talking about that dingus. He might come to us with his head cut off and still say that everything's going to be fine and he's totally safe. And he would ask us if we are okay" You smile because it's true and no one could have said it better.

"I should have known." You let the words slip from your lips.

"Don't be too hard on yourself kid." Hopper comforts you.

"We should have known." You appreciate Nancy taking a piece of your distress, sharing the burden of responsibility with you. It's absurd, because if there's one person you've been dreading lately it's Nancy: brave, beautiful, and more complicit with Steve than you in the last few days. During your mission you couldn't tolerate the way in which those two supported each other, finding a long lost harmony between them, the same one that made you you suffer deeply when they were still a couple. She was the first one to dive into Lovers Lake while you had that extra second of hesitation that was enough to make you feel inferior. She was the one who bandaged his wounds, the one who collected his secret dreams before the battle: a family, six kid and a trailer. Steve has mentioned it to you once but the tone in which he talked about it to Nancy was different, it seemed more like an invitation, a way to tell her: do you want to be part of my dream?

But now jealousy doesn't matter, you're just thankful that there are so many people who care about him. When he wakes up, he will finally have to understand that he is loved. You turn to the door, biting your nails until blood comes out. Joyce has told you to wait, to take a moment for yourself to breathe but it is physically impossible. You need him like air

She have looked at you like she wasn't sure you were okay, searching for wounds on you."

You are just like him." Eleven have told you, approaching slowly. " You always put someone else before yourself" You have hugged her gently, when thing will get better you will ask what happened to her.

"Don't you do the same? With Mike, with Hop, with ... Max"

"But they know how I feel, they know why I do it. Does he know?"

"I think so. Not the way I want to but he knows it."

Now El's words ring in your ears. Does he know?

"Enough now." You say, rushing to the door, only to be stopped by Hopper's gentle hands. "Y/ L/N. Either you calm down or don't enter."

Robin approaches you, shakes your hand and you immediately feel better 'He doesn't need to see you worried. Now put on a calm expression, you enter first and I'll go in later." Robin Bukley , I think i love you. She is probably giving you the only minutes of solitude you will have with Steve before Dustin arrives with the others, who have gone to get him in the meantime. Once Henderson is here, he will stick to Steve all the time. You just want a moment to make sure he's better and whatever Joyce is doing is working. You open the door and against your expectation his big, brown, beautifully alive eyes are on you.

"You're awake." He nods weakly. He is still pale, sore and sure has a fever but he is awake and this is enough for you to feel your heart lighter. Your legs move before your mind, you are immediately beside him and squeeze him tightly. "You scared us"

"Sorry". He replies, turning away when you break away from the embrace. Something is bothering him you know, you understand it but you will have time to discuss about it later, now you look at Joyce happily.

"I have cleaned his wounds and gave him something for the fever, it should subside soon. We'll have to keep an eye on him." You sigh relieved, with a new hope that you don't find in Mrs. Byers's gaze. She seems sad, worried. "What else?" You ask, with a lump in your throat. Joyce lets her gaze slide between you and Steve. "I noticed some ..." She doesn't know how to tell you. "They are like black veins, starting from the wound and spreading along his body." The woman pulls back the bandages that cover the wounds slightly so you can see them: black pumping veins widen along the stomach and chest.

"They weren't there before." You say arching your eyebrows in confusion. He is not surprised and he's avoiding your eyes. You put a hand on his arm as Joyce walks out of the room.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"They only come out sometimes ... When I feel bad."

"Steve, I didn't ask you this." Your tone is harsh and you don't want to be mad at him, yet you already know what he will tell you. It's scary, honesly.

"The war isn't over. We don't have time to worry about this." To worry about me.

"But we do have time to let you die, is that what you mean?" You feel the tears sting, but you don't let them fall. "Steve." You beg him, grabbing his face in your hands and forcing him to look at you. You are so close you can feel his warm breath on your lips. He remains silent, his eyes flow over your face and his look is intense, full of so many untold feelings. He would like to kiss you, he would like to finally let himself go in your arms, he would like to tell you what has been tormenting him for months. He would like to tell you that he loves you and you can take everything he has, everything he is. He's yours. He has always been yours. He hates seeing you sad and concerned because of him. Steve Harrington is a dead man and the last thing he can do for you is walk away, make it easier for you. Silly boy.

You lean your forehead against his and he moves away with a sorrowing expression. Getting away from you hurts more than any wound or any poison in his body.

"Everyone saw me, didn't they?" You nod. "We needed help."

"You shouldn't have brought me here. You shouldn't have let them see me like that. Those kids don't need any more trauma" You close your hands in two fists in need to to beat him to the point he will not be able to say certain bullshit.

"And don't you think that if...you die it wouldn't be a trauma for them? For Dustin? He has already lost Eddie!"

He doesn't answer.

"Go away, I'm tired."

"What?"

"Go away Y/N I don't want you here." And as he says these words his voice trembles.

"No." You grab his hand.

"Y/N. Go away." He finds the courage to look you as he breaks your heart, his words are cold and there isn't a single emotion on his face. Slowly you let go, get out of bed and with unstable steps you leave the room. You've never hated anyone like you hate him right now, him and his stupid lack of self-care. Also you've never loved anyone like you love him right now, with your throat full of tears and stomach twisted in a grip. There's a muffled sob coming from his room.

"Thanks for leaving me there." Dustin says entering the shelter. He looks angry, nervous but you don't care. "Go to him." That's all you can say before you go out to get some air in the woods. You need to be alone, if you stay there, if you opened your mouth you would scream, cry or beg. And you're too tired even for that.

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steviewashere · 8 months

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Let's Go Find Ourselves by steviewashere on AO3

I've been working on this one for a hot minute. An angst and hurt/comfort fic of course between Steve and Eddie. Where they talk about their trauma, their suitcase of issues they've packed, death, and leaving home. Roughly 3.5k words, rated Mature for some of the content, and a one-shot. Read the tags and take care of yourselves. Summary is below, happy reading! <3

"Because, if Eddie faces the music, he’s able to note that Steve is too much like him. Running and running. Then faced down with horror beyond comprehension. Pulling weight like an ox. Throwing himself in the line of danger, if it’ll save everybody else. With no regard taken for oneself.

They’re both a couple of self-sacrificing bastards."

OR Steve and Eddie Are Parallels, And Also a Couple of Messes

OR Talking about death and dying and finding something else in the meantime.

#stranger things #steddie #ao3 #fanfiction #angst #hurt/comfort #steve harrington #eddie munson #hopeful ending #angst with a happy ending

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genyasglockk · 2 years

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so in love with every author that works cursed!steve into their stories. steve is such a perfect target for that slimy bastard and it makes way for so much angst. especially bc we all know that steve is a self sacrificing idiot that wouldn't wanna tell anybody he's been cursed bc "there are more important things to be worried about" yeah each and every one of y'all deserves a fat kiss. MWAH

#stranger things #steve harrington #ao3

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steddie-fanfic-recs · 8 months

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To love soft lies (like petals from my lips)

by OhlioOh

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationship: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson Character: Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson's Parents, Wayne Munson, Robin Buckley, Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, Mike Wheeler, Will Byers, Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Eleven | Jane Hopper Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hanahaki Disease, Hanahaki AU, Betaed, Minor Character Death, RIP Eddie Munson’s mom, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eddie Munson Whump, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hiding Medical Issues, Eddie Munson Has PTSD, eddie munson is a self sacrificing bastard, perpetuating the Steve Harrington is a milk drinker agenda, shamelessly self indulgent rose imagery, obligatory garden metaphors, pepperings of religious imagery, Wayne Munson is The Dad of all time, Idiots in Love, because when are they not let’s be real, baking as a love language Words: 10,633 Chapters: 1/1

Summary

Steve deserves better than a coward, laying broken behind a shield of his own bullshit. But he stays anyway, tending to the front yard roses he’d planted for Eddie. Blissfully unaware of the other garden growing in a steady, deadly march toward Eddie’s heart.

#steddie #steddie fic rec #oneshot #10-25k #hanahaki disease #angst with a happy ending

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finalslay · 1 year

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@bbysttr

she hasn't been able to get it out of her mind. the visions, the horrific things vecna had showed her. hawkins burning, the monsters climbing up from the ground, her loved ones dead in terrible ways. the horrors are playing on-loop behind her eyes, another reason that nancy is determined to go along with this plan. determined to kill vecna, no matter the cost. right now though ... there is something equally as important. someone else who's been hurt by that bastard and his monsters, yet has not once stopped to properly tend to his own injuries : steve.

that's why, the gang still currently in max's trailer, nancy has dragged steve off to max's bedroom, why she's made him remove eddie's vest so that she can properly inspect the severity of his wounds. there's a damp cloth in her hand and the first aid kit is sat upon the floor, bandages and disinfectant uncovered from within it. expression is one of the utmost concern as brown eyes take in the injuries scattering steve's body : the bruised and bloodied mark around his neck, the scrapes on his back and arms, and the haphazardly bandaged bites from the bats. a shaky breath as she reaches out carefully, first lightly wiping at the blood along his neck with the washcloth. “ i'm sorry. i know it hurts, ” nancy murmurs, expression apologetic as steve winces. “ i'll do my best to be gentle, okay? ”

the sight of steve covered in blood like this, bloodied and bruised ... she can’t stand it. not in the slightest. the panic and fear she'd felt when he'd been snatched down into the gate, when she'd saw the bats attacking him ... nancy does not want to experience that again. she cannot lose steve harrington. she doesn't think she could bear it. and in the visions from vecna ... steve had been there, too. dying. slain by monsters in an attempt to protect her. it horrifies her. not just the thought of losing him, but the thought of him giving himself up for her.

and god, nancy knows that steve would do it without hesitation if it came down to it. knows that the boy who held her in his arms when vecna released her, the one who sat there and stroked her hair and held her as she cried, would do anything to keep her safe, even if it meant sacrificing his own life.

... just as nancy herself would for him.

they both would give everything up for those they care about, both would jump into the fire and flames for their loved ones ... but there is something different about the level of self-sacrifice involving doing it for each other. something deep, something more layered than nancy cares to think about. and it has always been there, hasn't it? even when nancy thought she no longer felt it, it was still there : deep down and buried underneath the surface, yes, but never gone. not as bullshit as she assumed, apparently.

reaching for the disinfectant, she pauses, glancing back in steve's direction and softly uttering, “ you did good out there, by the way. really good. ”

#bbysttr #╰ * nancy wheeler : ic ⧽ not just another suburban girl.#╰ * nancy wheeler : ship ⧽ steve harrington / bbysttr.#// hi. ily. i finally got around to rewatching s4 so u get this starter finally.#// it's months later but WHATEVER.

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platypanthewriter · 3 years

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Human by Day

Day FIVE of Harringrove AUgust: Fantasy AU. When the curse hits Billy, Steve has hold of his hand. He doesn't know it affected him too, until later.

It all started when Billy Hargrove got thrown in the dungeon.

No, Steve corrected himself, it all started when the Court Magician decided Queen Susan should marry him, and started firing spells everywhere when she said no. She’d thrown he and all his supporters in the dungeon, and he’d turned everyone else in the dungeons into rats, and started firing curses up through the ceiling in hopes of catching the queen.

Mostly they’d bounced off the solid granite rockwork, but a few rats—guards, or prisoners, or perhaps a combination of the two—had been turned to stone as well. The Captain of the Guard, Robin Buckley, had been standing near the water wheel that brought the castle’s water, and a curse had bounced up and turned her into a dragon—not that she minded, once she asked her lady love about it.

Steve was the last to hear, it felt like, and he was running down to the dungeons when Queen Susan grabbed his arm, and told him to stop.

“I need to go down there,” Steve told her, his heart pounding, and the Queen said he might look through the door of the dungeons, just so they’d know where the Court Magician was. If Captain Robin could still fit her yards of scaly tail and wide spiky haunches down the narrow stairwell, the queen said wryly, she wouldn’t allow Steve anywhere near, because everyone knew dragons were resistant to magic.

“I’ve written every magician in the nine realms,” she said, squeezing his fingers worriedly. “Someone will—someone will come to help. If we must blow the wall of the dungeons open to handle the problem,” she said softly, “—then we will, but there are so many people down there, and rats are small and fragile.”

Steve nodded, squeezing her thin hands in return, his throat closing at the thought.

The Court Magician saw him through the bars, and started calling to him, since his brilliant plan to turn everyone into rats had not opened the cell doors, and his genius plan to then turn them to stone had also not opened the cell doors. Steve could see Billy in the cell with him, looking exhausted in the corner.

“You’ll beg me for release when my plans come to fruition,” the Court Magician laughed, and Steve didn’t bother telling him that Robin would never sully her role as Captain of the Guard by using her new dragon strength to cause mayhem. The only screams since she’d become a dragon—happy ones—came from her bedroom, and her lady love glowed with blushing fervor now more than ever.

Turning Captain Robin into a dragon had still had no effect on the locked cell doors.

Steve watched Billy Hargrove, wedged into the corner of the cell. He was dirty, slumped to the side, and Steve bit his lips together, looking around for something he could do.

The Court Magician paced the floor, threatening to turn all the rats into elephants that could crash their way out.

“Even if they did,” Billy sighed, “—we’d still be locked in here.”

The Court Magician turned on his heel to glare at his son, raising his arms—they were already glowing—and Steve threw the door to the dungeon open and ran in.

“Billy,” he yelled, reaching in to beckon him closer to the bars. Steve stuck his sword through, uselessly, towards Billy’s dad.

He didn’t make it in time.

The curse hit Billy just as Steve’s outstretched arm brushed his shoulder, and Billy screamed, a sharp gutteral sound, as Steve dropped his sword—it wasn’t long enough—and hucked a stone rat in at the Court Magician’s head. The Magician dodged, ducking away, and Steve grabbed and threw more rats as he glanced at where Billy had been, and saw a...crow.

“Come here, you can fit through the bars,” Steve hissed at it, beaning the Court Magician with a rat to the head at last, at which point he spun to face him, raising his arms again. “Billy,” Steve hissed. “Come here—”

The crow watched him, its head cocked as it fluffed its feathers nervously. “Run,” it croaked.

Just as Steve dove out of the path of the curse—it turned a stone rat into what looked like pudding, and Steve stared in horror as it spread into a puddle, and began to soak into the floor—the crow flew wildly and smacked the Magician in the side of the head, then scrabbled through the bars.

Steve grabbed Billy in his cape, trying to hold the fragile bones gently, and he squawked.

“Run—Harrington, run—”

The magician blasted more rats into pudding as Steve fled down the hall—he’d been relieved to be able to see into the magician’s cell from the stairwell, but he didn’t dare try and run back out of the door with the Court Magician five feet away, turning living beings into pools of chocolate, vanilla, and a nauseating green slime he suspected was pistachio.

The crow in his arms started shouting—half caws, half words. “What are you doing down here,” Billy croaked at him. “Why would—you’re stuck now, why are you down here—”

“Sssh,” Steve told him. “If we can sneak by him through the door, we can get out of here.”

“He won’t let you get to that door,” Billy croaked, fluffing his feathers like he was cold. “You’re the only target left. He won’t even sleep. No one else would be stupid enough to come down here—”

“Ah,” said Steve, imagining the days of waiting until more magicians arrived, and trying to resist the lure of pudding. He stopped to think.

“...why did you come in,” Billy chirruped softly, cocking his black feathered head to focus a bright black eye on Steve’s face. “You shouldn’t’ve come in.”

“I couldn’t just stand there.” Steve told him, rolling his eyes. “He was doing something to you.” He trotted down to the deepest, dankest parts of the dungons, past the wine cellars and the old disused castle barracks, from before they added the upper floors.

“You could have,” Billy said darkly, and Steve sighed, and then saw the door he was looking for. “You should have...why the hell are we going into the privy drainage,” Billy asked, flapping irritably, and Steve snorted a laugh, breathing through his mouth as he walked down the stone ramp, and stood against the bars. His boots sloshed in the ankle-deep sewage.

“Here,” Steve said. “I, uh. You—you’ll fit through the bars. I can just—I can toss you to the side, so you don’t fall.” They looked down at the mountainside where the privies drained into open air, and the rising fog far below.

“What,” Billy croaked.

“There are bushes and things around the sides, you won’t fall. You can go,” Steve told him, pushing the hand Billy was clinging to through the bars. He waved it within brushing distance of the jutting rocks that supported the drainage pipe. “Go on.”

“I—I can’t just leave you down here,” Billy squawked, scrabbling at Steve’s gauntlet as Steve tried to shake him off. “We don’t know when they’ll find someone to undo his curses—”

“Go,” Steve insisted. “You can’t help me here—”

“I can’t help you out there, either,” Billy cawed, pecking at him. “I’m a crow—”

“Just go,” Steve said, laughing a little, because Billy’s anger sounded funnier as a bird. “It’s getting dark.”

“I’ll come back. I’ll bring you some food, at least,” Billy said, clinging to Steve’s fingers with his talons, and sounding a bit muffled as he grabbed Steve’s sleeve with his beak as well.

“Turn around! Aim for the bushes!” Steve hissed, laughing, and wondering whether he’d ever see Billy’s real face again. He set his jaw. “Let go. We don’t know whether you can fly—” he said, sternly, trying not to smile, when the whole castle lit up with a purple glow.

There was a whud of air pressure, and Steve went deaf, clinging to Billy with both hands so he didn’t fall down the mountainside. He could see Billy cawing, but couldn’t hear anything for a few moments, and then there was silence. No voices from the guard stations above on the bridge, no wagon wheels, no voices chattering in the kitchen above, only the ponderous grind of the waterwheel.

“What,” Steve whispered, staring back over his shoulder towards the dungeons.

“Are—are you—how are you still human,” Billy whispered, clambering up his arm to stare him down with ond beady eye. “That—I felt that. I didn’t change. The curse before, it must have hit you too—”

“You should go,” Steve told him again. Billy clutched at his hand, scrambling with his black bird feet, and Steve realized his hand was shaking, and Billy was trying not to fall. “You—you can get out.” Billy was barely visible in the last rays of the setting sun. “You have to go,” Steve said, shoving him through the bars again as Billy squawked and clung.

“No, no, wait—” Billy cawed, “We need to know if something happened to you—” but something was wrong, and Steve just shoved him at the bushes as his legs shook and collapsed.

He banged his face into the bars as he fell, and blinked at the floor of the tunnel, his skull aching.

He had paws.

Billy kept yelling, and finally Steve whined, a rumbling, high-pitched wheeze, as warm hands pulled him through the bars, and he buried his face in the smell at Billy’s neck.

“Self-sacrificing bastard,” Billy whispered. “...jesus, your ears are soft.”

Steve chose not to dignify that with a response, partly because Billy was trying to climb across the cliff face to the castle gates carrying a dog, and he probably needed to focus.

“I have you,” Billy mumbled distractedly. “I won’t let you fall. We—we’ll go somewhere and—” he took a shaky breath. “We’ll—take a rest,” he said, hefting Steve against his chest. “Wait for someone to—to fix this. I—I’ll find you something—something a beagle can eat,” he said, laughing a little hysterically, and Steve licked his jaw. Billy laughed harder, or maybe he was crying.

Steve was one of the royal hounds, then, he thought. It made sense in a way, as a royal guard, but he wondered why it had taken nearly half an hour after the curse hit for him to change—or several minutes after the wave of magic, when all the other castle noise had stopped instantly.

“I’ll keep you safe,” Billy said, scrambling up through the scrubby brush and jagged rocks to the road.

Steve whined again, trying to get down, because there was no need for Billy to carry him, not now that they were on the road.

“Shut up,” Billy muttered, creeping along in the dark. “You don’t wanna look around.”

Steve could see, some, the colors drained from the magic lanterns by his hound’s eyes, or maybe the darkness. He stared over Billy’s shoulder at the frozen shapes of the guards, and the horses that had been hauling the wagon. Other than Billy, he could smell no living creatures at all.

“If you hadn’t opened that door like an idiot, I guess you’d still be in that stairwell, cursed,” Billy muttered. “What in the seven hells did you think you were doing, Harrington?”

Steve tried to huff a reply, but no hound can mimic human voices in the way a corvid can, and he just made a growly groan.

Billy snorted a laugh. “Good, you can listen for once. When everything’s...fixed, when you’re a guard again, you have to take me back in Take me to the guard. You’ll end up in the dungeons too, otherwise.”

Steve barked, growling, and Billy laughed again.

“It’s funny how I can guess what you’re saying,” he said, adjusting Steve’s weight in his arms. “But this was never gonna work. I thought it might,” he said, going a little hoarse. “I thought—before my father—” he cut off, taking a shaky breath. “But you’re in the royal guard, and they’re going to kill me, with my father, as soon as they can.”

The whining noise kept going without Steve really intending to make it. He growled, resorting to licking Billy’s whole face since he didn’t have hands, or a human voice.

Billy found an empty stall in the gatehouse, and sat down in the hay with Steve in his arms. He leaned his head back in the straw. “Your eyes are the same,” he whispered, stroking Steve’s ears as he fell asleep.

Steve woke with hands, and patted his face, looking around frantically. The crow he knew was Billy was perched on the stall door, looking ruffled. “Are you well,” Steve whispered, getting up to smooth the straw out of Billy’s black feathers.

“It’s the sun,” Billy croaked, turning his head a little towards Steve’s hand, and then sidling clumsily away. Steve stepped closer again, smiling, and ran a finger down the soft feathers of Billy’s head. Billy stilled, watching him. “It—it’s the sun,” he said again, tipping his head as Steve petted him. “It—I,” he chirruped, fluttering his wings a little, and making garbled bird noises.

“I know you love it when I stroke your head,” Steve told him, watching him fluff up in annoyance.

“I changed back at sunrise,” Billy cawed, turning away. “So did you. That must—that must be what he did. The curse hit both of us. It’s—it’s divided somehow. That’s why you aren’t a stone rat in the sewer pipe.”

“We’ll fix this,” Steve told him, running a finger down between Billy’s wings. “I’m not losing you.”

“You already have,” Billy croaked, but he leaned into it as Steve carefully picked him up.

“No,” Steve told him, kissing his feathers. “You’re still here.”

“...I flew around and found some food,” Billy said, stepping a little closer, and Steve wished he could kiss him, the way he had behind the glass house in the gardens.

“Her Majesty will see reason,” he promised aloud, to Billy and to himself. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I could have seen the signs,” Billy croaked softly, as Steve scratched around the base of his skull. “I should have seen this coming.”

“I could sneak back in,” Steve said, and Billy climbed him in a panic, his wings fluttering wildly.

“No! No! Harrington!” he cawed, just like a crow, Steve thought fondly.

“Billy,” he said, stroking his feathers. “If—if something—” he winced. “If your father died,” he asked, with a grimace. “Would the spells dissolve?”

“...hard to say,” Billy said, sounding calm, but his heart was pounding like a rabbit’s against Steve’s fingers. “Don’t go back in there. Please.”

“I could shoot him. Aim a crossbow through the bars of the door,” Steve whispered, and Billy tried clambering up his collar again.

“That stairwell is so damned small, that grate is too small,” he croaked. “What if you miss. Harrington. Please.”

“...hrm,” Steve said, unwilling to completely surrender.

“At least we’re together,” Steve said that night, just before he changed, and Billy’s shiny black eyes glittered in the light of the magic lanterns as he watched Steve drop into the straw, groaning softly as his body rippled and changed.

“We aren’t,” Billy said, once he was human again, “—not really.”

Steve relished it, though—he and Billy alone for days, a week, a week and a half, talking as much as they liked. Billy was furious at his father, and kept talking about his own imminent execution, but Steve—secretly—kept hoping for more time with him. Billy wasn’t a noble anymore, he thought guiltily, not with his father stripped of all rank.

The son of the Court Magician had been out of reach, for a guardsman.

“We’re going to run out of fresh food,” Billy said one evening, as they picked at the potato soup Steve had made.

“I can go in to the gardens,” Steve offered cautiously. “Or get a chicken.”

“Don’t even think of going back in the castle,” Billy told him, and Steve sighed.

“I won’t.”

Billy perched on a stone horse as Steve ate, ruffling his feathers in agitation.

“I won’t go,” Steve told him. “You have my word.”

Steve took Billy to three different bookstores in the town, stepping around the stone inhabitants, and then they raided the houses of two priests and a local witch.

“Read this to me,” Billy said, scrabbling at a book, and Steve read the table of contents, and then the chapter marked with a moon. “...alright,” Billy said. “Is there a calendar somewhere?”

Steve wandered around with his bossy crow on his shoulder until they found one, and Billy fluttered his wings again, chirruping.

“You’re acting like a bird again,” Steve told him, and Billy nipped his ear.

“This curse has happened before,” he said, “—and it was unbreakable, until the caster saw the two cursed under the light of an eclipse.”

“Oh,” Steve said. He could still be a guard, he thought, even if he was a dog every night, but he imagined Billy trying to live his life as a crow, and bit his lips. He didn’t think being with Steve was enough to want to live as a crow.

He tried not to think about Billy’s lips, either, or how it felt in his arms. It is unbreakable, he told himself, and took a steadying breath.

“There’s an eclipse in two days,” Billy said, dully.

“Then we can save you,” Steve burst out, laughing with relief. “We can save you!”

“No, we can’t, Harrington,” Billy said. “There’s no one here to help, yet. You can’t fight him on your own, he’ll turn you into—”

“We need Robin,” Steve said, dropping the scroll and running out of the house. “She’s a dragon, now. We need Robin.”

“I’m no help as a crow—Harrington! Wait!” Billy cawed, flying after him. “Wait, you can’t go in there—”

Steve ignored him, dodging around the stone figures on the road as he ran back to the castle. “Be quiet,” he told Billy. “He’ll never know we’re here.”

“It doesn’t matter about the eclipse, we can’t use it,” Billy croaked, swooping at his head. “Go back! Go back—”

“It matters for you,” Steve said, dodging, and running through the gates. He tried not to look at his friends, the stone guardsmen on either side of the gates.

Billy was silent by the time they found Robin, lying on her back on the battlements, singing a sad little song. “Magician,” she hissed, and Steve yelped “Steve Harrington! Steve Harrington!” as he dove back into the tower.

“Ah,” she said. “Come out, then. Where have you been?”

“We need your help,” Steve told her. “Or Billy will never see the sun as a human again.”

“Billy Hargrove,” she said, tonelessly, and Steve nodded, staring her down. After a while, she breathed out a curling, trailing plume of smoke. “You could die.”

“I know,” Steve said, shrugging a little. He dreaded the idea of trying to help Billy live his daily life as a crow, all the while watching him grow angrier.

“Don’t do this for me,” Billy croaked softly. “Wait it out. Wait for help, Harrington—”

“I was thinking Robin could tear the grate off,” Steve told them. “Climb in the way we escaped. It’s not that narrow.”

“Hrm,” she said. “Billy?”

“...here,” he cawed.

“What are your thoughts?”

“Sit on your guardsman until help comes,” he said. “He’ll be unhappy living as a dog at night, but he’ll be alive.”

“...a dog,” she said.

“A beagle,” Billy agreed.

“We can’t break the curse unless he sees us both human, in two days,” Steve told her, scratching Billy absently. Having a hand on Billy was habit, after so long, and it was bittersweet thinking of him uncursed, with no need of Steve to read books for him.

“...a beagle,” Robin said, with a suspiciously amused rumble in her voice, and Steve sighed.

Every morning, Billy braced himself—no matter what pose he was in as a human, the daily transformation into a bird always left him in midair, squawking indignantly. Robin laughed and laughed, big steaming tears running down her scaley cheeks.

“I wonder if you can be turned back,” Steve said aloud, as they roasted a deer she’d caught, later that day.

“I don’t mind either way,” she said, letting fire flicker between her teeth.

The day of the eclipse, Robin yanked the grate off like it was soft clay. They burst into the dungeons to find the Court Magician nearly unconscious with thirst, and Robin ripped the bars away and stood with one foot crushing the man’s head into the floor as he blearily regarded Billy and Steve. When the eclipse ended, Steve grabbed Billy’s hands and kissed him, laughing and crying with relief, but Billy was tense against him.

“I’m turning myself in, then,” he told Robin, squeezing Steve’s hand.

“To what?” she asked cheerfully, stomping on the magician’s kneecap as he screamed. “Turn them all back,” she said, and he moaned, trying to curl into a ball.

“I’m turning myself in to you,” Billy said again, his voice dull. “To the captain of the guard.”

“Nonsense,” Robin said, lifting the magician’s head with her enormous talons, and pointing him at various stone rats that swelled, and groaned, and returned to being people. Two dried puddles of pudding grew out of the floor, and Steve heaved a sigh of relief. “You two saved the kingdom,” Robin said. “You’re heroes.”

“What,” Billy said, and Steve kissed him again, squeezing him around the shoulders as hard as he could. It felt good to hold him. “No, what,” Billy whispered, bewildered, his voice hoarse as a crow’s.

“It’s over,” Steve told him, kissing him again, gentler this time, and Billy relaxed into it with a shuddery sigh, closing his eyes.

“Thank god you can stop licking me,” he muttered, and Steve stuck his tongue in Billy’s ear.

Billy squawked.

#HarringroveAUgust #harringrove #Ladyhawke AU #Neil's an awful mage #Billy's a crow and Steve's a beagle #Sometimes #In shifts #Silliness

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giorno-plays-piano · 4 years

Text

At all costs

Pairing: dark!Steve Rogers x Reader (Survival Games AU)

Warnings: obsession, depiction of violence, death of minor characters, swearing, slight allusion to non-con.

Words: 2959.

Summary: What was the reason to keep fighting when there was no end to all of this? Yet every time somebody chased you with a gun you were ready to rip their throat out if you needed to. Your sense of self-preservation and vital capacity were way stronger than you had ever anticipated.

P.S. This was written for Shameless hoes for Chris challenge! Dear @navybrat817 and @stargazingfangirl18, hope you will enjoy <3

Dialogue prompt #12: "Don't you dare take another step."

____________

You had never moved that far to the North, but the ones following you cut all other ways out, forcing you to enter territories you had never been before. Although Wanda had warned you about it, there was not much you could do - you almost ran out of both bullets and food. It seemed the game masters had finally paid attention to you and wanted you to move, and it was a damn bad sign.

Carefully hiding an empty can in a heap of garbage just like Wanda taught you, you glanced around again, checking your surroundings with Beretta in your hand. Apparently, there was nothing much in this area apart from ruined buildings just like everywhere else in this abandoned city. You were in desperate need of bullets since you had precisely two left in the magazine of your gun. You wasted most of your resources to fight off three men following you, but then suddenly game masters more coming after you.

You didn't know how much time you had already spent there, fighting every goddamn day just to stay alive. If not Wanda, you would die shortly after you were brought to the abandoned city.

She called it a sick game for sick people. All of the ones in this place were brought here against their will, you included. The last thing you remembered was walking home after going to the grocery store in the evening, and then you woke up on a dirty mattress in the back alley with a gun in your hand and a small bag with food and water supplies. No medication, no hygiene supplies, nothing else. Well, there was a possibility to find or buy a few things like painkillers and bandages, for example, but it was so rear you only really saw a little pack of Tylenol once.

When Wanda found you, you had already eaten all your food and finished your water, hiding behind a huge garbage bin in the alley, trembling so bad you couldn't hold the gun properly. Funny enough, you didn't even know how to pull the trigger as if you had never seen it on TV thousands of times. You were so pathetic that you didn't really deserved to die from a bullet in your forehead. A stone from the ground was enough to smash your head to pieces - this is what Wanda told you, dragging you to her hideout. She didn't try killing you, though.

She used to be a child soldier, she said. Sokovian civil war, a conflict you barely heard of. Although Wanda looked fairly young, maybe even your age, she had the eyes of an old woman. Unlike you, she had been kidnapped with a purpose of making the game more interesting - Wanda knew everything about surviving in the middle of chaos. You, on the other hand, were snatched up and used as cannon fodder for this little artificial war.

It was a game, Wanda said. There were cameras everywhere in the city, and all players were tracked with the chip-things buried in them. The only purpose of the game was to stay alive as long as you could. Maybe there was a chance to be released if you killed enough people, but she didn't believe it. Wanda was sure there was no way out.

All those apocalyptic and Hunger Games type of movies could never live up to the real thing. You were always moving from one place to the other, never staying somewhere for too long. Hiding wasn't easy, but it couldn't be compared to the mad chase when other players discovered where you were. Even Wanda who handled rifles and guns as if she were born with them in her hands wasn't able to predict who would come out alive. So, your main goal was to remain hidden as long as you could. The game masters didn't like it, but with so many players, many of whom were either soldiers or dangerous criminals, no one really paid attention to the two of you.

You often asked Wanda why she was taking care of you. Indifferent, unfriendly, unsympathetic, she seemed the perfect soldier to you while you were too normal to be able to live long in a place like this. Wanda stayed silent despite all your attempts to learn her motives. The only thing she was willing to talk about was how to stay alive.

"Steal. Kill. Open your legs of you have to. Do whatever it takes to survive." That's what she once told you after she shot a dying man asking for help and took all his posessions.

There was no justice, no moral, no honor, no sense of right or wrong, nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for except seeing another day. All of you were just animals fighting for your life every fucking second.

There was no meaning behind it, you thought. What was the reason to keep fighting when there was no end to all of this? Yet every time somebody chased you with a gun you were ready to rip their throat out if you needed to. Your sense of self-preservation and vital capacity were way stronger than you had ever anticipated.

When you thought about her words, you found it odd that Wanda who cared only about survival took you, a dead weight, to take care of. Wasn't it literally the opposite to what she taught you? Why diminish her own chances to stay alive just to save you? Maybe she wanted to team up with someone, but there were much better players for that, not some girl who had troubles even pulling the trigger. Nevertheless, your grim savior had never opened up to you about the true reasons behind her actions, and, eventually, you just stopped asking.

Wanda kept teaching and guarding you until the day she died, shielding you with her own body when someone tried shooting you. She broke the most important rule she set herself, and you couldn't understand why. There was so little human left in her, and yet she sacrificed herself to give you a chance to pull through.

Suddenly, you froze, feeling you were being watched. You couldn't see anyone around or hear anything suspicious, but you had that uneasy feeling of something crawling under your skin. Your instincts were telling you somebody was very close, and you didn't fucking like it. With two bullets, your chances to stay alive were minimal.

There was a shift in atmosphere, and you ran to the next room of the abandoned building, hearing the sound of gun firing. Shit.

"If somebody is chasing you, don't think." Wanda said, watching your eyes opening widely at her. "All this TV bullshit makes you feel like you'd be able to make a right decision in a second while they shooting at you, but that's not true. It will slow you down. Keep your eyes open and trust your instincts instead. If you're lucky enough, you will survive."

She said to reserve time for thinking when you would break away from pursuit, and her advice had never even once failed to save your life. Maybe you were damn lucky just like Wanda said.

But where could you run from here? The room where you were now had just one door. There were a few windows, too, but jumping from the third floor to the cemented road would probably cost you a broken leg or even a spine.

Shit, shit, shit.

You could hear the sound of someone's footsteps and hurriedly hid behind an overturned table to your left, keeping your finger on the trigger of your Beretta. The one who was going to enter the room in a few seconds would first see a huge wardrobe lying on the floor to their right, big enough to hide behind it, too. If you were lucky, the player would first pay attention to it, giving you a second or two to shoot. When the man set his foot inside the room, you quickly stuck your head out for a second and aimed your gun at him. When you fired the first bullet, you knew you missed his head right after you pulled the trigger. Fuck. The second bullet was gone the next second, but it hit the target perfectly, and then you saw the wall covered in blood as if it were a picture made by action painter. Well, now you could probably call yourself that.

Turning away, you exhaled loudly when the body hit the floor with a loud thud. You were still alive.

Carefully lifting yourself up, you glanced at the corpse of a player, the feeling of being watched finally gone. He was alone here. However, the sound of guns firing could be heard by others, and you needed to relocate immediately. The next moment you were looking through the man's belongings, finding two cans of chicken - you preferred to have something more nourishing, but any food would do now - a water flask, and two combat knives. No ammunition. He waisted all his bullets trying to kill you.

Biting your lower lip, you hurried to the first floor, doing your best to avoid windows. Knives weren't bad, but most of the time you preferred not to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Any decent soldier would easily outpower you, and you couldn't risk it. Damn, you waisted all your bullets to kill the bastard with no ammunition left. How lucky was that? Cursing under your breath, you carefully observed the street, seeing no one, and moved as fast as you could, a gun still in your hands to make players believe you could still shoot.

You wanted to return to the South so bad. You knew that part of the city to perfection while here everything was new. More than that, here the players teamed up in a big groups, guarding their territories like animals, while in the Southern part everyone always moved around and worked in a pair of two or three people maximum. It was a shame you couldn't return because of game masters chasing you like a mad dog.

All of a sudden that feeling of being watched returned, and you hid in a little alley where huge metal dumpsters were - or what was left of them. Somebody had spotted you, but you couldn't stay in an alley for long. It was a dead end.

"I know you ran out of bullets." Somebody's deep voice cut the eerie silence, and you shivered, gripping your Beretta. "Please come out. I'm not going to hurt you."

The stranger was either guessing or bluffing. He couldn't really know you had no ammunition whatsoever, so you stayed where you are, trying to locate him.

His loud sigh sounded closer to you than you had expected.

"Y/N, I'm telling the truth. You have just wasted your last two bullets, haven't you?"

The next second you were clenching the combat knife Wanda had long passed to you. There was a tall beefy man coming to you with a rifle in his hands, apparently, Kalashnikov or M16, you couldn't see well from a distance. However, you did see he was oddly handsome with his well-built body, his arms solid, covered in dirt and what seemed like ash. But what truly made you grasp was that he had no beard. The man had a clean shave, his dirty blonde hair cut. Except for game masters, you had never seen a man looking so civil.

But he didn't look like a game master at all. Who the fuck was he?

"Don't you dare take another step." You growled like an animal at him, gripping your knife. It was a pathetic weapon against a rifle, but it was the only thing you had.

He stopped for a few seconds, his expression heavy and dark, but then the man kept coming, and you took a step back in return.

"I just said I'm not going to hurt you. Stop looking at me like I'm a butcher and you're a little lamb." He sneered and narrowed his dark blue eyes at you while you clenched your teeth. Whoever he was, it wasn't going to end well for you.

"How do you know my name?" You barked back at him, thinking what he's going to do next.

"From the game masters, of course. How many times do I have to tell you I won't hurt you?"

"What the fuck do game masters want from me, then?"

His handsome face darkened, and you realized he could fire his rifle any second. Moreover, even if he had no bullets, with those arms of his he could probably break you in half, and no knife would save you.

"Don't swear, Little Red. This your one and only warning."

As you made a step back, staring into him and understanding nothing at all - how the fuck did he call you just know? - you had stumbled upon something and fell on your back, crying out in despair. Shit, you were out of luck, weren't you? You would probably die today.

Before you could react, you saw the stranger's large body hovering over you, the muzzle of his rifle pressed into your stomach as his angry eyes pierced through you. He was clearly done with you and your stubbornness. "I came to offer you join my group." He said, furrowing his brows at you, laying on the ground. "The Howling Commandos. Ever heard of us?"

"And who the f... who would I be there? Someone's whore?" With your face burning with deep hatred and humiliation, you were ready to spit in his face. "You think I don't know how little women are left here and what you do to them?"

Obviously, you hit the nail on the head as the man grabbed you by the collar while still having the muzzle aiming at your stomach. He was clearly mad.

"Do you also know what's gonna happen if you keep up with that attitude?" The stranger snarled, his eyes furious. "I know you've got fire, and I like it. I want to keep you. But if you're not going to submit to me right here, right now, I will shoot you. Don't make me do it."

Both of you fell silent, your chest heaving up and down as the man waited, not moving an inch. You needed to have a minute to gather yourself.

What other choice did you have? He'd shoot you dead before you even blinked.

Steal. Kill. Open your legs of you have to.

"Alright." You said through your teeth, feeling the smell of gunpowder and gasoline coming from him as he kept you close, still gripping your collar with his huge hand. "I'll come with you."

"Good."

The man raised you on your feet in the very next second, pushing your combat knife on the ground away with his leg and gesturing you to move forward. However, he did put the rifle down as he took you by the elbow, leading you somewhere to the huge parking lot and watching you intently. However, he didn't radiate anger as before, seemingly content with your submission, so you kept your mouth shut despite all those questions in your head. Why did game masters give the man information about you? You had never heard of them interacting with any players aside from chasing them from one location to the other. Besides, why did this bastard call you Little Red? What the fuck was that?

"What's your name?" You asked, turning your head to him as you kept walking.

"Captain Steve Rogers."

"So, you're an ex-soldier, huh? A war vet, maybe?" You coughed a little, your mouth feeling dry like the Sahara Desert.

"Something like that, Little Red."

"Why are you calling me that?"

"Little Red? This is how the ones watching the show call you." Steve chuckled. "Wanda Maximoff was the Scarlet Witch, and since you're her protege, they called you Little Red. Kind of sweet."

You wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but decided it was safer to stay silent. Sick bastards. They treated Wanda as if she were a character in some silly video game. Her death probably made them happy.

Blinking the tears away, you bit down on your tongue and felt metallic taste filling your mouth. This was not the time to mourn your dear friend, this was what Wanda would say to you. You had to gather yourself and think what to do after. You were in Howling Commandos now, and only God knew how many men were there. Would you have to sleep with them all? Fucking hell. It was better to die than go through this.

"Why the hell everyone's paying so much attention to me?" You grunted as Steve hummed, crossing the parking lot and turning you to pass under the bridge. "Do they want me dead so desperately?"

"No. They want you to team up with someone who will take care of you just like Wanda did, and I fit the role perfectly. I've been wanting to have you for a long time."

"Are you fucking insane?" You hissed angrily at him, becoming rooted to the ground right where you stood. "Take care? Is that how you take care of women? Throwing them to your men to be fucked to death?"

"Language." His iron grip on your arm made you squirm as Steve pulled you closer to him.

You stared at him with disgust, your dirty face distorted, and then you saw familiar fire in his deep blue eyes as Captain loomed over you, grabbing you by the chin.

"Don't tell me you have forgotten what I just said, Little Red. I will keep you for myself."

__________

Tags: @finleyjayne @alexakeyloveloki @helenaeisenhower @villanellevi @hurricanerin @void-hoechlin @abyssaint @heeeyitskay @chris-evans-indian-fanfic @navegandoaciegas @rosalynshields @brattycherubwrites @sllooney @lovelydarkdaydream @angrythingstarlight

#steve rogers x reader #dark steve rogers x reader #captain america #dark steve rogers #steve rogers #yandere #depiction of violence #obsession #death of minor characters #slight allusion to non-con #swearing #shamelesshoesforchris

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tangentiallly · 3 years

Text

reading the ds manga for the first time years after reading the original book 5 and having feelings all over again .....

anyway, kurda is truly one extremely calculative, scarily cold-hearted bastard, and i say this as someone who loves him. while he tried to avoid leading gavner and darren to the direction of the vampaneze and kept arguing with them to take his way out of the mountain, to avoid the situation of running into them, when eventually they ran into the vampaneze kurda did not hesitate even for a fucking moment before stabbing gavner with fucking goddamn precision. like, even though he didn’t want to, even though he had tried to prevent it by urging them to take another route, when he decided he had to, he just did it. kurda could be really warm and kind but when he decided the plan came first he could be so bloody fucking cold ................ the duality of my favorite morally grey pacifist traitor.

kurda is very, very “plan comes first” and the only other person in the saga with this level of coldly-calculated commitment to their plan was probably ...... ironically ..... steve leopard. sure it’s a vastly different plan with vastly different goal and steve’s was much more self-serving and vengeance oriented, but it’s interesting, in a way, that they are similar in this one aspect.

“sacrificing few for the lives of many” was always a complicated subject, and some may only agree when it’s “i’m willing to sacrifice myself for everyone else” but it’s quite another to not ask for permission and just sacrifice someone innocent for it, and it complicated things when that someone was a friend. and even then, there’s still “thinking you could be able to do it” and “actually being able to do it”.

the fact was, gavner probably, most likely, was going to die in that cave either way. the vampaneze outnumber them, and as good a fighter gavner was, even without kurda’s involvement, his chances of survival was not good. if kurda didn’t kill gavner, gavner would still most likely die. kurda decided to do it himself, quick like lightning, because, according to him “there was no time to let him die a noble death -- you might have gotten away if I’d left him for the vampaneze”. Even for someone who decided to sacrifice few for many, not everyone could actually do it, and if he found himself incapable of coldly stabbing him he could’ve let gavner fight the vampaneze and die because of the vampaneze having advantage in numbers. but then amidst everything, he was first and foremost thinking of the plan, he had no hesitation and it just .... even if it’s for the goal of saving many, one has to be quite stone cold, very calculative to even make a decision like this.

and i’m just ... he went out of his way, risking his plan, to save darren, and continued trying to save him, and at the same time while he regretted having to do it, didn’t hesitate at all when he had to kill gavner for his plan, even though killing him had never been part of the plan like poisoning the princes, he made the split decision and just ... did it ......... how does anyone do that ......

i don’t usually like comparing him to wester since they had such different goals in mind and frankly i agree with kurda’s eventual goal but not wester’s, but remember how wester let sylvia live, and while i hate to say it, i feel like kurda, had his plan been threatened in the same way, would more likely kill someone innocent like sylvia rather than risk his eventual goal, if he believed his plan could end up saving more lives. and it’s not a pleasant realization, but it’s ... true to his character. he’s truly just so complex, capable of being gentle and kind but also capable of killing someone innocent for his goal - even if the goal was noble, it didn’t erase the fact that he coldly killed him. and to add to everything, he himself was also part of the sacrifice for the plan, “there was nothing ‘in it’ for me, mika”, like he said.

he’s good and he’s terrible and he’s so so smart and terrifyingly calculative and he only wanted to save both clans from war, only wanted to save more lives ............. i love him so much

#ds #cirque du freak #long post #kurda smahlt #gavner purl #vera reads ds manga #v.txt

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elwenyere · 3 years

Text

Call My Bluff

(Stony ficlet inspired by the prompt from @wired-heartbeats, “Why are we the only two people relatively good at strip poker here damn it guess I gotta lose on purpose to get this rollin huh”)

“All right, chumps,” Clint said, flicking cards expertly across the table from his perch on the kitchen counter, “the little blind is a sock, and the big blind is an item of outerwear of your choice.”

Of course, since Clint hadn’t suggested they play strip poker until the team had already made a substantial dent in Bruce’s latest batch of home-brew IPAs, some of them didn’t have many choices left at this point. Bruce had managed to hold onto both socks but was otherwise down to just his boxers, a white tee shirt, and a watch. Natasha had discarded a jacket, a headband, and a boot. And Thor and Clint were both surrounded by piles of clothing, though Tony suspected they were actually stripping at a faster rate than they were losing.

Steve, on the other hand, had yet to shed a single item.

It was infuriating, really, because Tony had spent all day reviewing the World’s Most Soul-Deadening Slide Presentations ahead of the Board meeting tomorrow – a meeting for which he’d also promised Pepper that he would stay sober – and so the very least he deserved for so much good behavior was for the supersolider with whom he’d been hopelessly infatuated for the last two years to show a little skin, for Christ’s sake. Instead, the only consolation available was that Tony was playing about as well as Steve, having sacrificed only his tie and a pair of cufflinks to win a button-down shirt from Bruce on the previous hand.

Tony folded early this time around, partially because Clint was squinting one eye in a way that meant he was going to bet big and partially because Tony wanted to watch Steve’s face as he checked the bet. Tony had learned more and more of Steve’s tells over the years: the furrow between his brows that meant he was worried, the crossed arms that meant he was remembering something he couldn’t talk about. The data set grew regularly these days, filling out with the little signs that let Tony predict how Steve was going to move and what he was going to need. But still, for the life of him, Tony could not read whatever it was that flashed across Steve’s face in moments like this one, when he glanced up at Tony as he thumbed the edge of his cards. The expression came and went, leaving a sensation like a hot coal in the center of Tony’s chest.

“It’s my deal,” Steve said finally, and Tony snapped out of his reverie in time to notice that Thor had won the last hand, and Clint was now heading to the pantry to grab potato chips wearing nothing but a pair of purple boxer-briefs.

Natasha, meanwhile, was taking much longer than seemed strictly necessary to relieve herself of a pullover sweater, and Tony suddenly froze in the act of picking up his cards: because how had Natasha given up a sweater? Tony had lost every bet he’d made with her since the days when Natalie Rushman was clearing his schedule for lunch at Carbone, and she had just abandoned her second-largest item of clothing to a pocket-nines bluff from Thor, God of Incurable Credulity? Not fucking likely.

Tony narrowed his eyes as he watched her twirl the discarded sweater in a few graceful circles with her wrist. Noticing his glare, she gave him the tiniest of smirks, her head inclining across the table. Tony followed its direction and saw that Bruce was staring openly, mouth hanging slightly ajar, cards lying untouched on the table.

Well that was an interesting development.

Tony felt a slow grin spreading across his face, and he looked instinctively back toward Steve to see if he had noticed Natasha’s adaptation to the game as well. But when he met Steve’s gaze, the grin stuck, only halfway formed. Because Steve was staring directly at him and wearing an expression that (as Tony had learned through painful experience) roughly translated to: “wearing a parachute would only slow me down.”

Steve dealt the river card without even glancing at it.

“I’d like to raise the bet,” he said. “Nothing shy of two yards of fabric.”

“A rousing challenge!” Thor yelled, slapping his cards down on the table. “I would hate to give way under any less brave an assault.”

“I’m out,” Natasha smiled. “I don’t think I have the kind of action this round calls for.”

Tony twirled his cards between his thumb and index finger, doing his best to pass off the sudden firing of his nerves as indecision over his hand. Steve had leaned back in his chair, but his eyes hadn’t left Tony’s, and whatever look Tony had caught a glimpse of earlier was fixed in place now, making Tony feel vaguely like the arc reactor was overheating.

“I’ll call,” Tony said, drumming his fingertips on the table. Steve finally broke eye contact to look down at the movement, and Tony watched in disbelief as his jaw somehow set even further: like concrete getting pressed into granite.

“I’m uhh – I’m out I think? Yeah, I’m going to fold,” Bruce said.

“Probably the right choice, Banner,” Clint nodded sagely, now back from the kitchen and tossing barbecue chips to himself in the air.

“Okay boys, show us the goods,” Natasha demanded.

“Full house,” Tony announced, laying down a king and a queen.

“Well, you’ve got me there, Tony,” Steve replied. Slowly and deliberately, he turned over his cards to reveal a king and a ten.

A pair of kings? But that was a garbage hand. That meant that Steve –

Steve was reaching down and peeling off his undershirt and sweater in one smooth motion.

“Bad luck, I guess,” he said. And then he gave a shrug that sent an absolutely criminal ripple of movement across his bare chest.

Oh. Oh: that smug, chiseled bastard.

“Deal the cards, Nat,” Tony said, taking care to wet the tips of his fingers with his tongue before he plucked his off the table.

One hand later, Tony was slipping the waist of his pants slowly over his hips. Two hands later, Steve was using more muscles to remove a pair of socks than Tony had known the human body to contain. When Tony retaliated by rolling up his sleeves before peeling off his own socks, Steve ripped his belt off with a speed that made Tony feel like the armor had taken a blow to the head. By the time Tony shimmied his way out of his dress shirt, Bruce had to pretend to bump into the table before Tony remembered there were other people in the room.

“I’m going to head to bed,” Steve said abruptly, tearing his eyes away from Tony’s forearms as he stood up. “Gotta know when your luck has turned.”

“Oh someone’s getting lucky, for sure,” Clint smirked, and then he ducked — almost in time to avoid a projectile potato chip from Natasha.

“Yeah, so I’m just going to…go be over there now,” Tony said, in what he felt was an impressive display of self-possession for someone staring at the retreating ass of Steve Rogers.

“Don’t say I never did anything nice for you, Tony,” Natasha called after him as he scurried out of the room.

He barely made it around the corner and into the hallway before he was being swung around and held against the wall, one of Steve’s hands planted firmly against his chest.

“Took you long enough to get out of that shirt,” Steve growled.

“I could have gotten to the shirt faster if someone weren’t an unrepentant cheater who was dealing from the bottom of the deck – again,” Tony shot back, gripping the loops of Steve’s jeans and pulling their hips together.

“I must have misread your signals then, because I was pretty sure you were interested in what I might do from the bottom,” Steve whispered, his lips teasingly close.

“God, Rogers,” Tony groaned, “how can you be so corny and so hot at the same time? It drives me completely nuts.”

“It does?” Steve asked, the pressure against Tony’s chest lightening as Steve pulled back to search Tony’s face.

“No, Steve,” Tony said patiently, “I just wriggled my hips in front of Clint Fucking Barton because you fill me with incredibly casual, ordinary thoughts. Of course you drive me nuts, you idiot. I’ve been crazy about you for years.”

And that was probably more of a revelation than a race to lose at strip poker merited, but Tony couldn’t regret it, because a totally new expression had bloomed over Steve’s face. As Steve leaned down and pressed their foreheads together, one finger tracing the line of Tony’s jaw, Tony tried to memorize it. Tell: the smile that meant Steve Rogers was happy.

#stony #stony fic #stony fanfiction #steveandtony #avengers as family #avengers play strip poker #it goes about as well as you would think #I tried to make it sexy but it got corny at the end because I am who I am

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athenasbloodyspear · 3 years

Text

The Viper: Chapter 5

Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

Find this fic on Ao3.

This fic is 18+ for violence and eventual sexual content. Please read at your own risk.

Master list

You woke up in the middle of the woods frozen to the bone. From the position of the moon you assumed it was somewhere around three in the morning.

Your whole body ached. You felt like you’d been hit by a truck.

I guess the force of an explosion will do that to a person.

Groaning, you pushed yourself up to a sitting position. Well, it’s time to assess. You could tell you didn’t have any broken bones. That was a miracle.

You were genuinely shocked that no agents had ventured into the woods and found you. You must have taken down more of them than you thought.

Nice. The fuckers deserve it.

You strained your ears, and you could make out faint voices in the distance. You pushed yourself over onto all fours and crawled slowly and silently in the direction that the voices came from.

As you got closer you recognized the voices to be two top agents that had not been stationed at this location. They’d likely been dispatched to clean up your mess, and see if anyone had been left behind. You smiled a little bit to yourself. Idiots hadn’t even thought to check the woods. You were a loose end that they could have tied up so easily while you were unconscious.

Not today, bastards.

You crawled into a thicket of bushes and leaned your back against the trunk to listen to their continued conversation and catch your breath.

Your ears perked up when they began to speak of the hostages, and their locations. A bolt of fear, a rare emotion for you, struck you when they spoke of a particular hostage and a particular location.

You had planned on laying low, nursing your wounds and letting the Avengers do their work, but this information was too important to not act on immediately.

You waited for the two agents to leave the area before rolling to your stomach, pushing through your aching bones to your feet. Speaking aloud to yourself once you caught your breath.

“I’m sorry Soldat, but I can’t wait for you any more.”

Bucky felt hollow. It wasn’t a rare feeling for him, it had just been a long time since that ache had run so deep. At the same time, he felt ridiculous. He had seen his fair share of death and sacrifices on the field. Had sacrificed his safety time and time again for a greater cause. He didn’t understand why this particular moment had impacted him so much.

It felt personal. That he had left you behind. Why did it feel like this wasn’t the first time he had made a decision that had this same outcome?

Natasha had been up for thirty-six hours straight trying to decrypt the flash drive that you had handed to them in the scuffle. They’d flown back to the compound rather than the tower so they could all have a little peace. She hadn’t moved from her super computer since they’d returned, except to use the restroom. Bucky had made sure her coffee mugs were full and that every few hours food was placed in front of her. She still barely looked up.

Bucky still sat in the lounge chair behind her. He had brought a novel along with him, something he had swiped off Steve’s bookshelf a few weeks ago in a fit of boredom. He only managed to read a few paragraphs at a time before he realized his eyes were only glossing over words without reading them. Then he’d stare at what Natasha was doing on screen, but the strings of ones and zeros and various windows of code didn’t make any more sense to him.

He felt restless. Helpless.

Guilty.

A soft intake of breath from Nat knocked him from his self pity spiral.

“What?” he muttered. His voice crackling with disuse.

“I’m in.” Nat breathed. “Well, halfway in. Friday, get everyone down here.”

“What?”

Nat glanced over her shoulder at Bucky. “I got half the file decrypted. The rest I’m going to have to have Friday continue to work on while we look at this stuff. It’s even more intensely protected than this section. Whatever it is that our girl found, they really didn’t want anyone to know. I assume this was what she had knowledge of that they wanted her dead for.”

“What did you find?” Bucky huffed impatiently.

“Bad shit.”

Just then Steve burst through the door, with Sam hot on his heels. “What is it? Friday said it was important.”

“I’m in.” Nat sighed. She chugged the last of her cold coffee and Bucky handed her his long since cold cup. She sucked that one down too.

“Friday, can you put everything on screen?” Tony quipped as he strolled into the room. His hands were full of carriers of fresh coffees which he plopped on the table. “Figured you could use a warm up. Had an extra suit run to that diner down the road that bionic man haunts when he’s feeling moody.”

Bucky grumbled a thank you to Steve as he grabbed the cup with his name on it. The waitresses did always know exactly how he liked his coffee. They were also no stranger to an empty Iron man suit showing up for takeout.

“So what are we looking at?” Steve piped up.

Tony was quickly using his fingers to swipe windows side to side along the walls, expanding certain windows and flipping away others. His eyes were scanning quickly through information. Nat was next to him, reading over his shoulder. Steve, Sam and Bucky waited behind them, knowing it wouldn’t do them any good to try to read all the complicated language on screen.

“Friday, translate this file for me.” Tony muttered. Swiping a file that looked like a bunch of scans of handwritten notes. They appeared to be in Russian. Bucky squinted at the screen. The handwriting looked like it belonged to a child.

“What the hell is this stuff Tony?” Sam piped up from where he was leaning against the desk. His eyes were scanning across the various documents as the foreign languages quickly shuffled letters into English as Friday translated.

“They’re…” Tony trailed off as he stared at the screen. His eyes widened and his jaw hanging open.

Nat suddenly dropped into the chair behind her, as if her knees had given out on her. Steve lurched forward and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Nat are you-”

“They’re combining the Winter Soldier Project with the Red Room.” Nat choked out, her hand covering her mouth. “They’re working together. Hydra and the matrons at the Red Room they…” Nat was sucking in deep breaths.

“It looks like our little snake friend was a test subject. Their first attempt at taking a Red Room agent and wiping them like the Winter Soldier.” Tony muttered out.

“They didn’t just take her. The matrons sold her to them. That’s what that Polaroid of her in the Red Room was. They created profiles for all their viable subjects and Hydra offered them compensation for taking the agents they wanted.” Nat choked out.

“It looks like they’ve been experimenting with some genetic modification.” Tony continued. “They bought five agents from the Red Room and Viper was the only one to survive their training.”

“Where did they train them?” Bucky had to ask. He needed to know if what he suspected was possibly true.

Nat turned slowly to look at him. “Siberia.”

Bucky felt his lungs contract as every ounce of air left him. It was his turn to fall into the chair behind him. Then he must have known you. He must have trained with you at some point.

“It looks like they were going to try to use the Red Room agents to fill in missing holes while they finished the Winter Soldier new recruits. They were to be trained exactly the same, just without the serum, only some genetic strength modification. To help them withstand the brainwashing.” Tony continued. “It looks like the Red Room placed a limit on how many agents they would sell to them. Hydra must have gotten greedy as they killed test subject after test subject.”

“So what are they doing now?” Steve piped up. His hand remained on Nat’s shoulder, but his concerned gaze was on Bucky. Sam took a step closer and put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder as a mirror image to Steve and Nat. Bucky shook the hand off and stood to pace. He felt like he was going to burst out of his skin. He could remember bits and pieces of the new recruits with serum. Why couldn’t he remember a single thing about you?

“The timeline cuts off here. The rest of the information is still encrypted.” Nat said. “My guess is that they are kidnapping people across eastern Europe to continue this experimentation. The question is why and who?”

There was a long moment of silence as everyone processed that information.

“Well we know what they’re doing over there.” Tony finally started. “I guess we just work on decrypting the rest to figure out what we’re gonna do about it. Romanov you will not continue this. I am demanding you get eight hours before continuing. Friday can work on it while you rest.”

“Says the man who stays up for days at a time building suits…” Natasha muttered.

“Yes. Which is why I now have a nanny suit that will come up here and drag you back to your room and keep you in there if you don’t go willingly.”

“Mr. Stark. There’s been a breach at the south property line. Two heat signatures.” Friday suddenly cut in.

All at once, everyone bolted. Tony pressed a button on his watch and his travel suit took off from the basement to travel his direction. Everyone took a quick pit stop in the armory to grab whatever weapons they could quickly strap on before they all went hurtling out the back door of the compound.

Tony and Sam took to the skies while Steve, Nat and Bucky followed them in formation on the ground. As the tree line became visible, two forms came into view. One was carrying the other.

“It’s her.” Tony yelled through the coms. Bucky almost burst into tears. He had to swallow the lump that instantly formed in his throat, relief coursing through his veins at high speed.

“Who’s she carrying?” Steve asked as they continued to run toward you.

“Don’t know.”

As they hurtled in your direction, Bucky watched you stumble over your feet and collapse to your knees. Careful not to jostle the person in your arms, even though it caused you to take the weight of both of you right in your knee caps.

As they approached, he noticed you were both covered in dust and blood. It was unclear whose blood. The adrenaline in him allowed him to pull away from the group. Again determined to be the first to reach you. An instinct he didn’t understand but he was following blindly.

When he reached you, you had fallen sideways, the other person curled up against your chest.

The child, he corrected. For you held a young girl no more than eight to your torn bloody chest. Tears streaming tracks down your face, leaving clean lines of skin between the blood.

“Are you okay?” He whispered, his voice shaking. He wished he knew your name. Your real name. He refused to refer to you as the Viper now.

“Please help her.” You choked out through tears. The rest of the team crowded around you then. Sam and Tony lowering slowly from the sky to flank behind you. “Please you have to help her. She needs medical attention.” You continued to sob.

Steve bent down slowly and carefully lifted the young girl out of your arms. Your hands followed her slight body as Steve gently removed her from your arms until he had pulled her too far from your grip. “Please.” You choked again.

“I’ve got her.” Steve said softly. “Sam go tell Banner we need him.”

“Got it.” Sam took off toward the compound as Steve turned and started to run as fast as he could while still holding his tiny bundle carefully.

Bucky never tore his eyes from you.

You coughed and sobbed again and he watched as more blood bubbled up and dribbled down from the corner of your lips to your chin.

“Fuck.” Bucky whispered under his breath, snagging you into his arms and turning to follow in Steve’s footsteps toward the compound. When he heard you chuckle softly he turned his gaze back down to you. “What?”

“Just like old times.” You muttered before he watched your eyes roll back in your head and you lost consciousness.

His heart dropped into his toes.

Bucky sat just outside the room that Tony decided to hold you in. It was an upgrade from the glass box they’d locked you in at the tower, but not by much. It was a fully bullet proof glass room that they had quickly turned into a hospital room. You were on a hospital gurney but, just like the cage they’d put you in before, you were strapped down. Even though they all knew it was mostly a ruse at this point. Even after Bucky had cussed out Tony for an hour. Tony had told him it was non negotiable. Until they could speak to you, you would stay locked up.

So Bucky sat just outside the room, staring through the glass window watching you sleep. His eyes scanning your face and watching your chest rise and fall, willing his memory to come up with something. He had been so sure that he remembered everything from those years in Siberia, but you spoke as if you’d known each other more than a little. Your comment as he carried you into the compound was ringing in his ears. What did you mean, just like old times?

He was silently reliving every horrific memory he had from Siberia. The brutal and bloody training sessions. The torture he’d inflicted and those that had been inflicted on him. He scanned every memory, trying to find your face. He even jumped as far back as the ill fated mission that started the resurgence of the Winter Soldier project.

“Stop torturing yourself and wait for her to wake up.” Nat said as she sauntered into the hallway that Bucky had parked himself in.

“I just don’t understand why I can’t remember her when she clearly knows me. Normally I at least see faces or vague things. I have nothing.” Bucky whispered.

“I’m assuming there’s a reason for that, Buck.” Nat sighed as she sat in the office chair next to him. “Don’t push it.”

Bucky put his head in his hands. He felt the same as he had before going to Wakanda, like his mind was not entirely his own, and it was making him feel sick to his stomach.

“Hey.” This came from Sam as he walked into the room, tossing a questioning look at Nat seeing the state that Bucky was in. “Um, if you’re feeling okay, Banner asked us all to come to his lab. Said it was important.”

Bucky only grunted in response.

Once everyone had finally arrived at Banners lab, Tony snapped.

“Alright buddy, what’s up? I have some very important decryption to get back to.”

“I was running blood tests on the little girl to see if I could figure out where she’s from or how Viper got her hands on her.” Banner started.

Bucky snarled at the way Banner phrased the statement. You had clearly not been kidnapping the child, but saving her. He hated that even with all the evidence of your good will, they continued to frame you as an enemy.

“You’re never going to believe it but…” Banner trailed off.

“Spit it out big guy.” From Tony.

Banner turned toward the screen and pulled up what appeared to be a scan of an old photo from a disposable camera. The photo showed a girl around the age of six, sitting on a ratty couch, cradling an infant in her arms. The little girl's face was elated, a huge smile with a missing front tooth on display.

“That little girl is Vipers sister.”

Taglist:

@maxsaturdayhatesnarwhals

@daddysfavoritesexkitten

@creator-appreciator

#bucky #Bucky Barnes #bucky x you #bucky barnes x you #Bucky Barnes x female reader #Female reader

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wiypt-writes · 3 years

Text

Stark Spangled Destiny

Ch 2- Touche, Kiddo.

Chapter Summary: Tony and Natasha take Katie back to the first of several key points of impact in her life- the day Tony returned from Afghanistan…

Chapter Warnings: Bad Language words.

Chapter Pairings: Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark

A/N: So these chapters contain flashbacks of sorts- but they’re not flashbacks as Katie is watching the events unfold in front of her-a “Time heist” of sorts. However, to keep it clear and hopefully not confusing, the events she is watching are depicted in itallics instead of me trying to keep calling her 2010 v 2030 Katie…

Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this series bar Katie Stark and the other OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.

Stark Spangled Destiny Masterlist // Main Masterlist

You’re dead.” Katie spluttered, looking at Tony.

“Yeah, so they tell me.” He mused, taking a look around, observing his surroundings. “Which is kind of a bummer.” “So what the fuck is this?” She swallowed, shaking her head. “Am I dreaming? Having some kind of mental breakdown hallucination? Or are you a ghost? And where the fuck have you been for the past seven years, asshole?”

“I wasn’t needed.” Tony shrugged. “But, this is your party so to speak. I can be whatever you want to be if it makes you feel better. I mean, you did have strange dreams at times when you were younger. I distinctly recall one about a giant white rabbit chasing you through the streets of London with an ice cream cone as a hat.” “I was high when I fell asleep.” Katie shrugged, then she gave a moan. “What am I doing talking to you? This is insane, I need to wake up.” She closed her eyes, pinched herself, yelping at the pain. When she opened them, she saw Tony leaning against the tree trunk, one knee bent as his shoe pressed flat against the trunk behind him, arms folded. “Yeah, sorry Kiddo. Still here.” “This is all inside my head.” Katie took a deep breath “This is all inside my head, this isn’t real.” “What was it that Dumblebee dude said? You know the Wizard from Harry Potter?” Tony clicked the fingers on his right hand, pointing at Katie as she rolled her eyes.

“Dumbledor."

“Whatever, the point is what he said. You know, that quote you loved ‘Of Course this is happening inside your head, but why on Earth should that mean that it is not real?’ You can’t have forgotten, you had it stencilled on the wall in your apartment.”

“I haven’t, trust me.” Katie said softly. “It’s Jamie’s favourite too. He has it above his bed, Steve did it for him along with a painting of the Hogwarts Castle"

“Wow, he read them all already?” Tony raised an eyebrow. “He’s smart.” Katie smiled. “A real bookworm, and an artist. Announced the other day he wants to write and illustrate kid’s books now, not be a Baseball player anymore. Steve insists there’s time for him to come to his senses but…”

"Cap still with the giddy optimism huh?" Tony arched an eyebrow and she felt her eye begin to prick, and that familiar stinging sensation associated with trying to stave off tears filled the upper inside of her nose and she looked at Tony before she rushed forward and he stood up straight. At the last minute, before she threw herself at him she stopped dead and reached out with a shaky hand, her palm pressing against the pin striped material of his waistcoat. He was solid, warm, she could feel his heart beating.

“I-“ she looked up at him, the tears once more pouring from her eyes, “I don’t want this to be in my head."

Tony smiled, his own eyes brimming with tears as Katie slid her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. She breathed in his familiar cologne, a smell she hadn’t forgotten but one that hadn’t filled her senses in a long time. His hands gently rubbed at her back as he held her close, one hand creeping upwards where it rest on the back of her hair as he dropped a kiss to her head. His familiar fatherly-brotherly touch was seeping into her bones, quelling the deep, dark aching she’d been feeling since, well, she couldn’t remember. Steve was her home, her safe place, her rock, there was no denying that, but Tony was her childhood pillar of strength. He was the man that had band aided her knees and palms, tucked her in, fought the monsters under her bed and for that reason, he would always be a source of comfort and strength.

Even if this was just some whacked out hallucination.

And then, she felt another emotion. An emotion she remembered feeling before many a times watching Steve catapult himself off buildings, bridges, hanging off helicopters before dropping into rivers. It was anger. Anger at the self-sacrificing nature that drove her soldier to act first and think later, but she was feeling it here at her brother. Unable to quell it she pulled back and her right hand laid a stinging slap to Tony’s left cheek. His head snapped to the right and he gave an angry yell.

“Jesus Kiddo! What the fuck was that for?” “For dying, dickwad!” She yelled, the tears falling down her face. “You died and you left me!” “It wasn’t like I had a choice.” Tony sighed, dropping his head. “This was always the end I was going to get, not the end I wanted but…”

“She took it well then.” A voice drawled and Katie stiffened in her brothers’ arms, and looked up at him, eyes wide as she turned slowly to see another familiar face looking back at her, green eyes sparkling, red hair shining in the stray rays of sunlight that crept into the thicket as it fell forward around her face and shoulders over the top of a black leather jacket with a bounce Katie hadn’t seen for years.

“Nat,” she swallowed, wiping her eyes, “you look-”

“Yeah, better.” Natasha shrugged, “Whatever this is, it took us back to a time before it all went to shit. I think this was my hair in 2015 or 16…” “Leipzig you looked like that.” Tony mused as Katie stepped away from him, to scan Natasha up and down. “I, on the other hand, I’m not sure. But I look good so…” “Modest as always.” Katie grumbled as she stopped in front of Natasha, before they embraced as well.

How’s my little man?” Natasha asked and Katie smiled.

“Not so little anymore. He’s like up to here now.” She held her hand up to a point at the top of her rib-cage. “Growing like a weed and he looks just like Steve.”

“Yeah, we actually know.” Tony cut in. “We know about all five of them, she’s just making conversation. I gotta say, I’m kinda liking the fact Emmy hooked up with Parker. They'll make cute babies"

"Oh God, don't. Steve's already freaking out about them wanting to move in together." Katie laughed and Tony grinned before he pondered something.

"Henry, that wasn't after Hank Pym was it?" He asked and Katie shook her head.

"It was a name Steve liked. I picked his middle. And it was the other way for Flossie."

Natasha snorted. “I gotta say you gave Aurora a perfect name. After a princess.” “The Star Spangled Diva." Katie shook her head before she grinned. “She’s awesome, they all are.” “She’s a Stark that's for sure.” Tony smiled proudly.

“Steve says that. Says she looks like me and has your attitude. Drives him insane.” Tony smirked. “Good to know. Been dead seven years and still bugging the crap out of Spangles.” He nodded, clapping his hand together, rubbing his palms against one another in glee.

Katie looked at her brother for a moment before she shook her head. “Okay, so is this the part where the two of you give me some kind of pep talk, you know about the kids and my outburst before or…” “Well, we could.” Tony wrinkled his nose, “but you always responded better to visuals, so we’re gonna show you.” “Tony I have no desire to see any of that again.” She shook her head. “I already know I fucked up.” “We’re not here about the fact you cussed out Jamie.” Nat said gently

Katie frowned. “Then what is this?”

“We’re more concerned with the fact you don’t seem to understand how much you matter to everyone.” The red head continued. “What was it you said before? Something along the lines of not seeing the point of being in their lives?”

Katie looked down at her feet.

“You’re human, Kiddo.” Tony said “Humans are flawed. They fuck up. Some of us less than others, granted.” Katie raised her head, cocking an eyebrow at Tony. “You’re such a conceited bastard.” “True.” Tony nodded, “But all things considered I think I have a right to be. I mean my best achievement is stood right in front of me.” He shrugged. “I’d like to include Moo in that but, well Pep’s done the hard work there really, bringing her up. You on the other hand, well that was all me.” He stepped forward and took both her hands. “And I’m smug as fuck about it, because you’re an amazing woman Kiddo, you just need reminding of that fact so we can get you over this sudden lack of self-worth you seem to be displaying.” Katie shook her head, tears forming in her eyes, “Tone…” “It’s true.” He shrugged, letting go of her hands. “But, you’ll see for yourself. Come on.”

He turned and started walking up the path towards the Memorial Gardens and Katie watched him before she turned to Natasha. Nat nodded her head towards Tony’s back and with a shrug Katie turned to follow him.

“Might as well see what whacked out journey my subconscious has planned.” She muttered to herself, following her brother as he walked ahead of her slightly. As they emerged from the thicket of trees, Katie noticed the Gardens were completely empty and it was eerily quiet. Eventually, Tony stopped by an orange Audi and Katie shook her head.

“What?” Tony asked. “I liked this colour.”

Natasha walked passed Katie and opened the door, folding the seat forward so she could slip into the back. Katie watched Tony as he settled in the driver’s side before she took another look around. The sun was starting to set, sending streaks of lilac and burnt red across the sky, and with another deep breath she climbed in and shut the door. Tony fired the engine and the familiar sounds of AC/DCs Back in Black hit her ears. Despite herself she gave a smile, glancing out of the window as Tony drove the car forward, the music filled her senses.

Suddenly, she frowned. Her head flicking to look out of the window to her side before she turned back to the windscreen as she recognised her surroundings which seemed to have changed when she blinked. “How…”

“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.” Tony looked at her as she turned her head to meet his eyes.

“No, we’re in fucking California!” She practically exploded. “How? That’s not possible!”

“Neither is seeing dead people but you’re managing that just fine.” Natasha drawled. Katie ran her hands over her face letting out a groan.

“I’m tripping. I have to be. Did someone spike my coffee before?”

Tony smirked as he pulled the car off the road onto the Military air base and drew up behind a row of blacked out SUVs, each flanked by an armed guard.

“Wait,” Katie leaned forward, looking at three familiar figures waiting on the tarmac as a huge C17 taxied towards them. “This, this is the day you came back from Afghanistan.”

Tony nodded as Katie opened the door and climbed out. She took a few steps forward stopping in front of the car bonnet. Natasha stood by her left, Tony by her right as she watched the aircraft come to a stop.

“Come on.” Tony strode forwards. “You know how I like to make an entrance, be kind of cool for me to actually watch it for once.” They weaved their way through the line of SUVs and Katie paused, stopping. Curiously, she cocked her head to one side and waved her hand in front of one of the guard’s faces. He didn’t even blink.

“They can’t see you.” Natasha informed. “Think of it as being like A Christmas Carol…”

Kate looked at her, before she took a deep breath. “So not quite a Time Heist?”

Nat smirked and nodded. “Almost, but not quite, no.”

“Fucking hell.” Katie shook her head and turned to make her way over to Tony who was now stood just behind Pepper.

“God her ass looks great.” He mumbled. Katie gave a snort as she stopped behind her 2010 self.

“Was I really that skinny?” She muttered, taking in her frame. Her waist was ridiculously tiny, emphasised by the sharp, black tailored suit she wore, her hair pinned back into a bun. She moved round to the side, taking in her profile. Her eyes were shining, her jaw tense as she held back the tears. “Mind you, I don’t think I ate properly for the entire time you were gone.” “You’re not exactly fat now.” Tony scoffed. Katie ignored him, her eyes still fixed on herself. As she watched, 2010 Katie turned to Pepper who looked at her, the pair of them sharing a smile as Katie extended her hand, Pepper taking it, squeezing her fingers.

The tars of happiness trickled down her face, as the ramp on the aircraft carrier opened to reveal her brother. His hair was longer, he looked thinner but he was alive and all things considered he looked pretty good. Dressed in a sharp grey suit, brown shirt and a brown tie sporting white polka dots. His face was a little bruised but his goatee was well groomed and he still wore that determined, arrogant look she knew so well. As Rhodey helped him down the ramp, he waved away the gurney that was being wheeled towards him and unable to stand it any longer, Katie shot forward. Tony was barely at the bottom before she flung herself at him, not caring that his arm was a sling.

“Hey, Kiddo.” He said softly as she buried her face into his neck.

“You fucking asshole!” She sobbed. “Next time, you ride with Rhodey, you got that?”

“Trust me, there will be no next time.” He chuckled as she pulled back and he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Afghanistan is a shit hole.”

“It was you know.” Tony mumbled and Katie turned her head away from watching her past reunion with her brother to look at him. “But there was one thing that kept me going in that hell hole. And that was getting back to you. I couldn’t leave you. Not after what happened to Mom and Dad.” Katie swallowed and turned back to see herself and her brother walking towards Pepper, her hand linked in his as they stopped.

“Your eyes are red.” Tony looked at Pepper. “A few tears for your long-lost boss?”

“Tears of joy.” Pepper smiled back. “I hate job hunting.” “Yeah, vacation's over.” Tony said simply, and he headed past Pepper towards Happy. Katie watched as the two men embraced and she turned to Pepper.

“Twenty bucks says the first place he goes is for a cheeseburger.”

“You know me, knew me, whatever, so well.” Tony looped an arm round Katie as they watched their 2010 selves climb into the car and set off.

“I didn’t even try and convince you otherwise.” She sighed, looking at him. “I knew you’d refuse to go to the hospital. I didn’t see the immediate press-conference coming though. That was certainly a curve ball.”

“Yeah, it was an interesting one for us too at SHIELD.” Nat mused. “As soon as Fury got the call about how you’d escaped and that you’d called said conference he dispatched Coulson.”

“God.” Katie blew out a breath. “This was like twenty years ago now. I was so young, a baby.”

“Well, now you don’t look a day over forty-six.” Tony said, patting her shoulder. She glared at him and he chuckled “Come on.”

Katie cast her eyes once more at the tail of the Rolls which was heading over the airfield tarmac and the three of them walked back to Tony’s Audi.

**** “Higher Daddy!” Harry giggled as Steve pushed him on the swing lazily with one arm, all the time keeping one eye on Rori who was currently with Jamie, the pair of them hanging off the climbing frame upside down whilst Stark sat at the bottom, barking at them. Whilst all his kids seemed to have inherited some of the serum’s benefits in that they were rarely sick and on the whole pretty robust, they were still fifty-percent ‘normal’ for want of a better word, and Steve’s heart was constantly in his mouth when they did stuff like that. To his horror, he watched Rori pull herself up and then tuck herself into a ball, flipping herself backwards off the frame, landing on her feet.

“That’s how to stick a landing.” She looked at Jamie, her tongue poking out at him before she trotted back over to her Dad ignoring her brother’s shout of “loser…” as she headed off.

“Can you not do that?” Steve sighed exasperatedly as she stopped by his side.

“Do what?” She looked up at him, her green eyes frowning a little. “Throw yourself off stuff.” “Momma says you did it all the time.” Rori looked at him “She said you threw yourself out of an elevator with her on your back.” “That, that was different.” He finished lamely.

“How?” “Because I had no choice.” “Why didn’t you just push the button to take the elevator down?” Rori looked at him like he was an idiot and he groaned.

“Rori, just, oh, I dunno, go and play on the slide or something. And by that I mean slide down it, not jump off it.”

“Hey Dad?” Jamie appeared by his side and Steve looked down at him. “You wanna play catch?”

“Why don’t you play with Stark?” Steve suggested. “I need to keep an eye on Harry and Flossie, buddy.”

“Stark just runs off with the ball. He never brings it back.”

“Well, try teaching him.” “I have.” Jamie whined.

“Jamie, don’t start.” Steve looked at him sternly “You’re skating on thin ice as it is. I’ll bring you out to play ball just the two of us one night next week, I promise.” “I’ll play.” Rori offered. Steve could see Jamie was considering his options before he shrugged.

“Okay.”

The two of them headed off towards the small sandlot to the side of the park, Steve watching as he continued to push Harry in the swing, his gaze then turning to Florence who was asleep in the stroller. Eventually, Harry got bored and wanted to play on the slide so Steve lifted him out and they made their way over, Harry’s hand wrapped around Steve’s as he pushed Florence with the other. He watched Harry as he climbed the steps and then moved to the bottom of the slide, crouching as the little boy whizzed down laughing, Steve smiled as he caught him and tossed him into the air slightly.

“Again!” Harry demanded. Steve let him down and he repeated the motion a few times before Steve checked his watch. It was getting a little late, granted it was a Saturday but he didn’t want to deal with the fall out of them all being over tired and cranky over dinner. There had been enough tantrums and tears today.

“Kids, think we should head back.” He said as he approached the older two. Jamie looked at him, about to protest and Steve glared at him.

“What did I say before?”

Jamie took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, Dad.”

Together they walked back, Jamie and Rori a little ahead as Steve kept pace with Harry. They took the path through one of the green parks that led to their road and Rori stopped at a bank of wild flowers.

“Hey, can we pick some for Momma?” She asked, turning to look at Steve. “The blue ones are pretty.”

Steve smiled. “I think that’s a great idea.”

“Make momma happy?” Harry asked, looking up and Steve nodded.

“Yeah, yeah it will.”

Steve watched as Jamie and Rori headed off to a patch to the left to pick a few and Steve crouched down consulting with Harry as to which ones he wanted to get. He helped him pick a few before he turned back to see Jamie and Rori clutching handfuls each.

“You leave any for the bees?” He quipped and Rori looked at him.

“There are looooads.” She gestured with her hands, giving an eye roll that was ridiculously comparable to those of her mother.

“Well that’s me told.” Steve arched an eyebrow. “Okay, give them here.”

He took them gently, adding them to Harry’s and he laid them on the little shelf at the bottom of the stroller before the five of them made their way back home.

**** Tony parked the Audi haphazardly in a space outside the Stark Industries HQ main building.

“Nice parking.” Katie quipped.

“It’s our company, I own this parking lot. Well I did. And besides, like you keep saying, this isn’t real so what does it matter?” He asked as the three of them exited the car. Katie glanced over to where Obadiah Stane was waiting with the press and their employees, laughing loudly and generally acting like the big shot.

“Dick.” She mumbled. “I never liked him.”

“Yeah, I know. You told me a lot. And it turns out you were right about him.” Tony shrugged. “Who knew?”

She snorted and Natasha gave a chuckle. “I’ll leave you two to this one.” She said gently, leaning against the car, folding her arms. Katie looked at her, before she turned and followed Tony as he strode forward, watching as the Rolls pulled up. The people stood round the turning circle all started to applause and when the car stopped and Obadiah strode forwards, arms open.

“Look at this!” He opened the door, presenting Tony to everyone and pulling him into a hug “We were going to meet at the hospital.”

“No, I'm fine.” Tony said, turning to Happy who offered him the Burger King bag from which Tony pulled another cheeseburger.

“Look at you!” Obadiah chuckled “You had to have a burger, yeah?”

“Which reminds me,” Katie nudged Pepper as they walked around the back of the car, “you owe me a twenty.” Pepper snorted and shook her head, “come on.”

Katie and Pepper headed inside, following Tony and Obadiah who were chatting away, the cameras flashing as they walked through the cool, marble clad reception area of HQ where the podium that the press conferences were held from stood to the side. Katie and Pepper stopped, Katie taking a breath as she watched Tony walking through the group of people, speaking to various until a voice by her side made her jump.

“Miss Potts, may I speak to you for a moment?”

Katie turned to see an unassuming man, with short dark hair and a kind face dressed in a black suit, a Visitor Tag attached to his breast pocket. She looked at him for a second before her attention turned back to Tony who was busy talking to a woman in a red suit.

“I’m not part of the press conference,” Pepper spoke to the man, “but it’s about to begin right now.”

“I'm not a reporter. I'm Agent Phil Coulson, with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.” The man spoke and that got Katie’s attention. She turned to look at him, smiling.

“That's quite a mouthful.” She grinned and Agent Coulson gave her a smile.

“I know. We're working on it.” He smiled as Pepper took the business card he was holding. Katie arched an eyebrow and smiled, once more turning her eyes back to her brother.

“You know, we've been approached already by the DOD, the FBI, the CIA...” Pepper continued and Coulson cut her off gently.

“We're a separate division with a more specific focus. We need to debrief Mr. Stark about the circumstances of his escape.”

Katie turned to him, frowning and wondering exactly how they knew about it. Reading her facial expression, Coulson shrugged slightly and Pepper nodded. “I'll put something in the book, shall I?”

“Thank you.”

Katie was about to quiz him more when she heard Tony calling for her. She looked at her brother and he gestured with his head.

“Excuse me.” She strode forward and Tony put an arm round her shoulder.

“I need to speak to you, before I talk to the world.”

“God, I remember this like it was yesterday.” Katie turned to Tony as they followed in the wake of themselves, everyone parting as Tony steered his sister towards the little break out room at the back, which housed the coffee and vending machines.

“Yup.” Tony said as they ducked inside the room with themselves. “It was a pretty life defining moment. For me anyway…”

“It was for both of us.” Katie watched as 2010 Tony clicked he door shut. “This is where it all began. Iron Man, SHIELD, all of it.”

Tony smiled and they both turned their heads to watch their past selves.

“I’m shutting down the Weapons Manufacturing.” Tony said and Katie frowned.

“What? Why?”

“I saw out there what our weapons are being used for.” Tony shook his head. “I don’t know how those terrorists got hold of them, because I sure as hell didn’t approve any bids to that particular group, did the Commercial Department negotiate them without me, using your delegated authority?”

“Of course not!” Katie replied indignantly “What do you take me for? They must have been traded on the black market…”

“And that is exactly my point!” Tony nodded at her. “We can’t police it all. So I want to shut it down. Focus our efforts elsewhere.”

“What happened to you out there Tone?” Katie considered her brother for a moment and he took a deep breath.

“For the first time I met my Jiminy Cricket.” He shrugged. “Tony Stark doesn’t want to be the most famous mass murderer in the history of America anymore.”

Katie frowned. “That Vanity Fair article. You read it?”

“Of course I read it, it was about me.” He shrugged “The reporter…erm..”

“Everhart?” Katie looked at him. “You forgot her name after you banged her as well?”

“Whatever, that’s not important.” Tony waved her off “But Kiddo, all those lives we’ve saved by advancing medical technology and the starvation prevented from intelli-crops, she mentioned none of that.”

“Because that doesn’t sell papers.” Katie shook her head “Whereas dubbing us Merchants of Death does.”

“War profiteering she called it. And she was right.” Tony implored “You know, Dad always said that peace means…”

“Having a bigger stick than the other guy, yeah, you told me” Katie looked at her brother.

“And it’s a great line coming from the guy selling the sticks.” Tony shook his head. “But what if no one was selling the sticks?”

Katie took a deep breath. “People would then just make their own sticks, and they’d be harder to police.”

“But what if I told you I had a pretty big assed stick of my own to stop that? The biggest stick anyone could have.”

“I’m not-” Katie sighed, rubbing at her temple. “Tony you’ve lost me”

“I wouldn’t have escaped if it hadn’t been for my cell mate out there. He saved my life,” Tony tapped his chest, “not only did he build an electromagnet to keep a bunch of shrapnel from shredding my heart, he sacrificed himself so I could escape. His last words were an instruction, not to waste my life, Kiddo, and I have no intention of doing so anymore.” He looked down at his feet taking a deep breath before he raised his head to meet her gaze. “I don’t want my legacy, our legacy, to be about how many deaths we may or may not have been indirectly responsible for.”

“You really did have an epiphany didn’t you?” Katie looked at him, not a shred of sarcasm in her voice.

“It was my moment of clarity” Tony nodded “And I have a permanent reminder, as you know already.”

He moved his arm gently, wincing as he did so, loosening his tie a little and undoing the top few buttons on his shirt. He gently parted it and Katie gave a gasp at the small circle of light in the middle of his chest.

“This thing powered a suit I made. A metal suit. I shrunk the Arc reactor down in a damned cave, and that’s what’s now keeping the shrapnel in place, but it powered a heavy assed suit for fifteen minutes. Just think of all the good we could do with it with it. Renewable technology, medical equipment, maybe some other form of potential peace keeping initiative with a slightly smaller metal suit.”

“Is this the big stick you were talking about?” Katie asked, arching her eyebrow. “A metal suit.”

Tony took a deep breath. “In a fashion, yes. It could remove the need for other sticks so to speak.”

Katie took a deep breath before she stepped forward and began to do his shirt back up for him, not saying a word as she mulled over what he had said. The fact they traded weapons had been something she tried not to think about, justifying it in her mind as a means to an end- if they didn’t someone else would. But if you were to remove that completely…

She re-knotted his tie and slid it up to his collar before she straightened it and stood back, rolling her eyes as Tony loosened it once more.

“I need you to trust me on this, Kiddo.” He said softly and she looked at him, her eyes searching his. There wasn’t a single ounce of doubt there, quit the contrary. This was obviously something he vehemently believed in. And for that reason, she decided to back him.

“Okay.” She nodded “We’ll shut it down.”

Katie watched as her 2010 self and brother embraced, turning to Tony. “You have no idea how much of a head fuck that was” she said as they followed themselves out of the room.

“Oh, believe me I do.” Tony said, as they stood at the back of the room, watching as Obadiah greeted the press, 2010 Katie walking up to stand beside him.

Tony sat down in front of the podium. “Hey, would it be all right if everyone sat down?” He asked, fishing the cheeseburger out of his pocket “Why don't you just sit down? That way you can see me, and I can... a little less formal and...” Tony took a bite of the cheeseburger as Katie glanced at Obi, giving a shrug, before she sat to Tony’s left.

“Good to see you.” Tony looked at Obi who smiled.

“Good to see you.” He said, reaching out and touching Tony’s shoulder.

“I never got to say goodbye to Dad.” Tony looked around. He glanced at Katie, “we never got to say goodbye to our father.” He swallowed his food and placed the half eaten burger on the floor as he considered his words. “There's questions that I would have asked him. I would have asked him how he felt about what this company did. If he was conflicted, if he ever had doubts.”

Katie glanced at the floor as Tony paused for a second.

“Or maybe he was every inch the man we all remember from the newsreels.” He once more turned to Katie who gently placed her hand on his back, giving a small rub over his suit jacket. Taking a deep breath he looked out over the room. “I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them and protect them. And I saw that we had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability.”

Out of the corner of her eye, as the members of the press began to call Tony’s name, Katie saw Obadiah shift slightly, frowning a little at what Tony had just said.

“Hey,Ben.” Tony nodded to one of the reporters.

“What happened over there?”

“I had my eyes opened.” Tony stood and moved behind the podium, Katie watching his every move. “I came to realize that I have more to offer this world than just making things that blow up.”

He glanced down at Katie and she gave him a small nod.

“And that is why, effective immediately, me and my sister are shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark International”

The room erupted in commotion, everyone standing and talking at the same time. Katie took her position by her brother as Tony simply continued speaking

“…until such a time as we can decide what the future of the company will be.”

Obadiah placed his hand over Tony’s shoulder, trying to cut in a little and mentioned something about selling a lot of newspapers but Tony ignored him

“…what direction it should take, one that we’re comfortable with and is consistent with the highest good for this country, as well.”

At that he turned to Katie and the two of them left the stage, Tony’s arm looped around her shoulder as he dropped a kiss to her temple.

Obadiah continued to speak as Katie turned to Tony, watching themselves as they left the room.

“Wanna go watch the follow up fireworks?” he grinned and she gave a chuckle.

“Why not, we’re here. May as well.”

They walked out to see their past selves climbing into Happy’s car and Natasha straightened up as they headed to the Audi.

“Have fun?” She drawled and Katie looked at her and shrugged.

“I suppose I never really understood the significance of that moment. Like I said to Tony in there, this is what kicked it all off. How Iron Man was born.”

Natasha looked at Tony, giving him a little nod “You were right to bring here her then.” “Just like I said.” He shrugged as he opened the door to the Audi, gesturing to it with his head “Now, get in Losers, we’re going Arc Reactor viewing.”

Katie rolled her eyes at Natasha as the two of them climbed into the car and Tony followed the Rolls that was working its way across the Stark Industries site. Eventually it stopped outside the large, glass fronted building which housed the Arc Reactor that powered the plant. The three of them exited and followed 2010 Tony and Katie inside.

“So this is a larger version of what was in your chest.” Natasha looked up at the huge power source, giving it the once over.

“Yup.” Tony nodded. “Pretty cool huh.”

Natasha gave a hmmm of agreement as Katie’s eyes strayed to herself as she stood with Tony, the two of them stood side by side, looking up at it.

“Not sure Obi is gonna be happy.” She turned to look at Tony who shrugged, his eyes not leaving the Arc Reactor.

“I don’t much care.” He shrugged. “We’ve bowed to him and the board for far too long.” “Well, that’s kind of the point of a board.” She looked at him.

“Yeah, but the two of us make the majority, as you know.” Tony shrugged. “Look, Kiddo, this is the right thing to do, we just gotta ride out the bow of this shit storm for a while.”

“That’s a mixed metaphor.” Katie snorted and Tony grinned. At that point the doors to the building opened and they turned to see Obadiah stood, cigar in his mouth, hands on his hips.

“Well, that..uh...that went well.”

“Did we just paint a target on the back of our heads?” Tony asked reaching up to undo his tie.

“Your heads? What about my head?” Obi asked walking behind them, pacing slightly. “What do you think the over-under on the stock drop is gonna be tomorrow?”

“Uh, optimistically, forty points.” Katie offered as Tony whipped off his tie.

“At minimum.” Obadiah nodded.

“Yup.” Tony agreed, hanging his tie over his jacket which was draped on the railings around the reactor.

“Tony, we're a weapons manufacturer.” Obadiah said softly, looking at him.

“Obi, I just don't want a body count to be our only legacy.” Tony turned to face him.

“That's what we do. We're iron mongers. We make weapons.”

“It’s our name on the side of the building.” Katie chipped in and Obadiah sighed.

“What we do keeps the world from falling into chaos.”

“Not based on what I saw.” Tony shook his head. “We're not doing a good enough job. We can do better. We're gonna do something else” “Like what?” Obadiah asked “You want us to make baby bottles?”

“Tony thinks we should take another look into arc reactor technology.” Katie spoke, clearing her throat. “And I agree.

“Ah, come on.” Obi looked at her, then shook his head, waving his hands towards the item in question “The arc reactor, that's a publicity stunt! Guys’ come on. We built that thing to shut the hippies up!”

“It works.” Katie said simply and Tony smiled, catching her eye for a second as Obi scoffed.

“Yeah, as a science project. The arc was never cost effective. We knew that before we built it.” He shook his head once more pacing behind the siblings, neither of who turned to face him “Arc reactor technology, that's a dead end, right?”

Obadiah’s tone was almost sarcastic and Katie understood instantly that he knew about the one in Tony’s chest. From the smile on her brother’s face he’d also reached the same conclusion.

“Maybe.” Tony said, his smile growing bigger as he looked up at the larger arc once more before he turned to Katie, his smile growing bigger. She gave him one of her own as they both turned to look at Obi.

“Huh? Am I right? We haven't had a breakthrough in that in what? Thirty years.”

“That's what they say.” Tony said, narrowing his eyes as Obadiah looked straight at him. Katie snorted.

“Obi, could you have a lousier poker face?” She rolled her eyes.

“Just tell me, who told you?” Tony looked at him.

“Never mind who told me.” Obi pointed towards his chest. “Show me”

“It's Rhodey or Pepper.” Tony continued

“I want to see it.” Obadiah continued.

“Okay, Rhodey…” Tony undid his sling and looking around he began to undo his shirt to show Obadiah the reactor in his chest. The older man looked at it for a moment, glancing to the larger arc before he chuckled a little

“Okay.” He said as he began to button Tony's shirt back up, the same way Katie had earlier.

“Okay? It works.” Tony looked at him.

Obadiah sighed, giving a smile and looped his arm around Tony’s shoulder. “Listen to me, Tony. We're a team.” He gestured to Katie. “The three of us, do you understand? There's nothing we can't do if we stick together, like your father and I.”

“I'm sorry I didn't give you a heads-up, okay?” Tony looked at him. “But if I had...”

“Tony. Tony, no more of this "ready, fire, aim" business. You understand me?”

“Wasn’t that another one of Dad's line?” Katie asked and Tony looked at her, nodding.

“You two have gotta let me handle this.” Obi looked at them. “We're gonna have to play a whole different kind of ball now. We're going to have to take a lot of heat.” He said as Katie helped Tony back into his jacket. “I want you to promise me that you're gonna lay low.”

Katie, Tony and Natasha watched the other figures leave the building and Katie sighed, her eyes flicking back up to the arc reactor.

“You know, that was a great trip down memory lane and everything Tone, but you’re gonna have to help me out here as to how, exactly, that’s supposed to relate to my apparent sudden lack of self-worth.”

“You backed my decision.” Tony stated simply. “You were one hundred percent behind me when I said I wanted to shut down the weapons manufacturing.”

“I know, but…” “If you hadn’t been, Tony would never have done it.” Natasha shrugged

“Red’s right, you were always my sanity check. Despite what you may have thought to the contrary, I trusted your opinions, Kiddo. Every key decision I made with SI was done with you by my side.” “That’s not true.”

“It is.” Tony pressed. “Think about it for a second. The Charities, the deals, the partnerships, the take overs, the Arc Reactor, not one single big thing I did with that company, with our company, was done without you. Even when you disagreed I took that into consideration and modified stuff so that it was more in-line with what you suggested or thought.” Katie swallowed, shaking her head slightly, lost for words. Eventually she took a deep breath and looked at her brother. “I didn’t realise. I always thought you did that simply because you needed my vote on stuff to make a majority…”

“Well you thought wrong.” He shrugged “But I’ll forgive you. The world only has space for one Stark genius.” “Good job you’re dead then.” She shot back and he looked at her, his eyebrow arching slightly, an incredulous smirk on his face as Natasha snorted.

“Touche, Kiddo. Touche.”

**Original Posting**

#stark spangled desitny #steve rogers #Katie Stark #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers fic #steve rogers x ofc #steve rogers x original female character #mcu #mcu fanfic #chris evans #chris evans characters

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imperialstark · 4 years

Text

breathe me in

a/n: this is the fic i promised for my 900 follower celebration! i’ve had this blog a for a while and it’s crazy to think that there’s people let alone 900 of them that care about my stupid opinions on stony. thank you guys so much!

summary: Tony tries to have a heart to heart with Steve after their fight on the Helicarrier and gets more than he bargained for. Set during The Avengers.

rating: Explicit, so explicit

warning(s): tony has self confidence issues but what else is new, heavy smut

edit: this fic has a sequel now!

choke on me—chapter one

—————

Almost dying, Tony decides, really puts one's life in perspective. They weren't kidding when they said your life flashed before your eyes, right up until your last breath. His life flashed alright, in a riot of color and noise, camera flashes, cheers, and jeers alike. And when he opens his eyes, he's greeted by Rogers kneeling over him looking distraught.

His almost death aside (he'll deal with that trauma later) Tony does what he does best to break the tension; he cracks a joke. And because today is just chock full of surprises, Rogers laughs. He laughs, and his eyes are as brilliant as the sky above them. Tony swears his heart stops again. It's happened enough for him to recognize the feeling.

Tony knows he can be an asshole. He can be rude and obnoxious and interruptive, all very much asshole behaviors. The majority of the time, it's just an act. People have come to expect a show from him, whether they know it or not, and Tony's never been one to half-ass anything. The public wants a rich, smarmy bastard? He can do rich, smarmy bastard. He's the fucking poster boy for rich, smarmy bastard.

But Rogers, laughing with him, smiling at him after dealing with Tony Stark: Peak Asshole Edition™? It makes Tony pause. The joke isn't that funny (you try coming up with a zinger after sacrificing yourself for the sake of the world), so why is Rogers smiling? It's not that Tony hates himself so much to the point where he immediately distrusts any signs of affection. But Tony's Tony. And Steve is Steve.

"That's why," he tells himself. "This is Steve Rogers. Being kind is in his blood." There's only death in Tony's.

"You're a real piece of work, aren't you, Stark?" Steve says, chuckling to himself. There's no heat to his words.

"You wouldn't like me nearly half as much if I wasn't," Tony says and immediately wants to shovel the words back into his mouth. He and Steve aren't friends. Steve isn't like Rhodey or Happy or hell, even Romanov, who Tony's still not sure what the status of their relationship is.

Instead of rolling his eyes or sighing, that slight smile stays on his face.

"Okay," Tony thinks. "That's new."

***

Tony's got a new perspective on things. Maybe Rogers isn't that bad. That doesn't mean that they're friends, not even close. But, Tony thinks, as he shuffles from foot to foot outside the soldier's makeshift quarters on the Helicarrier, that doesn't mean he doesn't want to at least try.

Tony knows how to be the bigger person when he wants to be.

He knocks on the door, and before he can change his mind and retreat to Stark Tower like a recluse, Steve is opening the door.

Tony must have caught him while he was stripping out of his uniform; Steve's still wearing the bottoms of his suit, utility belt and combat boots in all. Aside from that, Steve is shirtless. Which is fine. Tony isn't going to question why Steve is shirtless, but it is hard to make direct eye contact with him when his abs are right there in front of Tony's face. And it's not like Steve didn't have time to put on a shirt before he answered the door.

"Stark?" Steve says. "I'm surprised to see you up and running."

Right. Near-death experience. "I may have bribed the doctors in the med-bay into letting me leave early," he says.

Steve frowns. Tony's quite familiar with Steve's frowns now. There's the "I can't believe you just said that" frown and the "Captain America is disappointed in you" frown, but this one, Tony can't seem to pinpoint.

"Your heart stopped."

"After the second time, you get used to it," he says with a shrug. "Look, I didn't come to talk about my medical issues."

A muscle works in Steve's jaw. Tony shouldn't find it as attractive as he does. "Why did you come, then?"

"I wanted to apologize."

Steve arches a brow. "For?"

"For being an ass." It comes out sounding like a question. "I...said some hurtful things, and I want to own up to them instead of sweeping them under the rug."

"It wasn't just you," Steve admits. "We both were at each other's throats."

"Still," Tony says. "You're not a lab rat. Not even close."

Steve's lips quirk up. "I'm a step up from rat, now?"

"Yes," Tony says. This is good. Steve is smiling instead of punching him in the face. Tony can handle this.

"You know...what you did today, that took courage."

Oh, God. Tony doesn't want this to be about him. (Despite popular belief, his ego isn't that fucking big.)

"Don't even mention it. Please," Tony says. "If you're not gonna let me apologize to you properly, at least let me do something for you, or buy you something. I'm great at buying things."

Steve frowns again, but his interest is piqued. "Like what?"

"I don't know, like a vintage car or something. A blowjob. Whatever floats your boat." Why did he say blowjob, why did he say blowjob, why the fuck did he say blowjob?

Steve's staring daggers into him. "Did you just offer to blow me?"

Seriously, why the fuck did he say blowjob?

"It was a joke," he says lamely.

"Oh," Steve says, his face dropping and—is Tony crazy, or does Steve actually look disappointed?

"I'm sorry. You don't have to if you don't want to," Steve says. "I thought...you know what, never mind." Steve's retreating back into the safety of his room, a blush flooding his cheeks.

Tony has two options, and he has to pick fast. He can either let this whole thing go and pretend it never happened, as that seems like it's what Steve wants to do. Or...he can roll with it.

"Wait," Tony says, grabbing Steve by the arm. His skin is hot to the touch. "It...it wouldn't be a chore or anything."

Steve swallows, looking Tony up and down. Tony feels oddly naked in front of him like Steve is seeing past every mask he's ever donned. "You mean that?" Steve says.

"I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it," Tony confesses. His stomach twists into knots. During their fight he had thought about Steve pinning him against a wall, wrapping a hand around his throat, kissing his mouth like a savage—

"Yeah?" Steve says, and his tongue darts out, wetting his lips.

"Yeah," Tony breathes. The hallway feels like it's closing in on him.

Their eyes meet, and it's a matter of seconds before Steve's yanking Tony by his arm into the barrack.

Tony barely has any time to close the door and observe the room before Steve's on him.

He's kissing Captain America.

Tony Stark is kissing Captain America.

Steve kisses like he fights; All confidence and barely restrained power. Tony's back is pressed against the wall, but he can't find it in himself to complain as Steve's tongue finds its way into his mouth.

Tony doesn't know if they closed the door or not, and that sends an electric thrill running down his spine. Anybody could walk past and see him ready to fall to his knees and give Captain fucking America the blowjob of his life.

Steve slots his thigh in between Tony's legs, silently prompting him to spread them, and it's no skin off Tony's back to comply.

Steve's tongue is quick and clever, eliciting moans from Tony's mouth. Steve's a practiced kisser, and Tony's not sure if that bothers him or not. He had assumed that Steve was a precious virgin with 1940s sensibilities, but obviously, he had been with somebody. Tony wonders if it was recent and if Steve still thinks about them in his spare time.

The thought of Steve with another lover fills him with jealousy, and Tony finds himself kissing Steve harder. He winds his hands into Steve's hair and grinds his rapidly growing cock down on Steve's thick thigh.

Steve pulls back, chuckling as Tony chases after his lips.

"You're a needy one, huh?" he says, working at the fly of his tac suit.

"Like you're any better," Tony says, marveling at how out of breath he sounds. "You can barely get your pants down, you're so eager."

Steve raises his hands. "Alright, genius, you do it. I'll just stand here and look pretty."

Tony bites back a smile and instead makes quick work of Steve's fly.

"Oh, wow," he says softly when he pulls out Steve's cock, already hard and leaking precome. He's not a poet, but he's never seen a dick that looked so...nice. It's so hot in Tony's hands, like a brand. Steve keeps himself trimmed and neat, which makes sense, given the rest of his appearance.

Tony can hear his heart beating a rapid rhythm in his chest as the gravity of what he's about to do hits him. It's not like he's never given a blowjob before, far from it. But this is Steve. Steve, who lied on registration forms just so he could serve his country. Steve, who freed prisoners of war with little to no help. Steve, who plunged a nuke-laden plane into the ocean without a second thought.

"Hey," Steve said. "I meant it when I said you don't have to do this if you don't want to. Are you still okay with this?"

Something in Tony's heart softens at that, and he silently pushes it down. This is a one time only situation. He can't afford to get feelings involved, so instead, he nods. "Yeah," he says, "You think I'd say no to this?" And with that, Tony fully sinks to his knees.

He takes Steve into his mouth before he can ask any more questions. A sharp intake of breath escapes Steve's mouth. Tony's hands come up to rest on Steve's well-muscled thighs. It's hard to breathe at first—Steve is so big, Tony would bet his fortune that he had been like this before the serum too.

Tony takes his time, and Steve lets him adjust to the foreign weight in his mouth. He breathes through his nose because he's not a goddamn amateur, and settles into a steady rhythm, bobbing his head along the length of Steve's dick.

Tony savors the little gasps and moans that Steve emits whenever he swallows around him or flicks his tongue a certain way. He commits them to his memory like a raven collects shining trinkets.

Steve's hand curls into Tony's hair, not necessarily pushing him down, though. Just a steady, almost comforting weight on Tony's head that makes something in the back of his mind purr in satisfaction.

"You're doing so good," Steve whispers it like it's a secret.

Tony looks up at him, and Steve looks just as wrecked as Tony feels. The blue of his eyes is naught but a thin ring overtaken by a pool of black. His skin is sweaty and flushed, his lips red and swollen from where he had been biting them to stifle his moons. Tony wants to devour him.

Steve's fingers tighten in his hair, and Tony's moaning himself now. Steve's eyes flutter shut, his mouth dropping into a slight 'o'.

"How can someone be so fucking beautiful?" Tony thinks.

His own cock tents his jeans, leaking precome, but Tony will deal with it later. He's not expecting Steve to return the favor. This is an apology, after all. An unconventional one, sure, but an apology all the same.

"I'm close," Steve says. "Do you want me to—"

Instead of answering, Tony hollows out his cheeks and sucks. His teeth ghost over a vein along the length of Steve's cock, and Steve's coming with a muffled shout into Tony's mouth. Tony's careful to swallow it all, not wanting any of Steve's come to go to waste. He tells himself that it's just so that there's less of a mess.

"Jesus, Tony," Steve says, his voice all scratchy like he had been the one on his knees for the past fifteen minutes.

Tony pulls off of Steve and looks up at him with big eyes, his lashes shining with unshed tears. Something primal crosses Steve's face, and he snaps. The next thing Tony knows, he's being hauled to his feet, and Steve's tongue is down his throat like he wants to become a part of Tony. A pang of arousal hits Tony in his stomach like a sucker-punch at the fact that Steve would still kiss him after what he had just done.

Steve unbuttons Tony's jeans with deft fingers and shoves one of his hands down Tony's jeans. He finds his cock with ease. Tony wraps his arms around Steve's neck and digs his fingers into Steve's skin as he jerks him hard and fast like he's trying to punish him.

It should hurt. But a savage part of Tony's brain revels in Steve's loss of control. Steve isn't Captain America right now, America's golden boy. He's Steve fucking Rogers, and he's taking what he wants, consequences be damned. Tony doesn't even bother trying to hide his cry when he comes hot and wet into Steve's hand, pleasure lighting up every single one of his nerves as if he has been struck by lightning. Tony's knees tremble, and if it weren't for Steve pinning him against the wall, he surely would have fallen to the ground.

Steve breaks their kiss and tucks his head into the nape of Tony's neck.

"God," he says, his voice like sandpaper. "God," he repeats as if that says everything that needs to be said. In a way, it does.

"Hell of an apology, huh?" Tony says. He's always known how to ruin a moment.

Steve gives him a breathless chuckle in return. "If that was your apology, I'd kill to see your 'thank you,'" he says.

"Give me something to be thankful for."

"Yeah?" Steve says, lifting his head up to look at him. His eyes are bright, but there's a glint to his gaze that makes Tony feel like he's being hunted.

"Yeah," Tony says. Steve's smile cuts like a knife.

#stony #steve rogers #tony stark #stevetony #steve x tony #superhusbands #marvel #mcu #nsfk #imperialstark fic #imperialstark writing #my fic #my writing #this one isn't too long but i'll still put it under a keep reading #lemons #lemon

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