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[aequitatis]

PREFERENCES

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[futurista]

After her brother had called her from the air, Shuri had arrived to the landing area at a dead run, and she hadn't moved much slower getting the wounded man to her lab. There hadn't been time for questions while his eyes had looked so glassy, but she gets him onto her lab table and all her focus goes to the arm. It's faster for her to do most of the work herself, but her assistants are keeping up as best they can. It isn't until she has the damaged sections removed entirely that she has a chance to look up at the other man, the friend who had refused to budge and had stayed out of the way while keeping his eyes on her patient without a pause.

"Captain Rogers," she greets him a little wearily, waving him forward. "My brother told me about you. I didn't want to meet you like this."

hoppin on the au train. choo choo

[holdplease]

[ This is the best and worst plan. Best because it's working. Steve Rogers, America's Former Sweetheart, is a war criminal. Tony Stark, angel of the limelight, is soaking up the good PR. No one should be surprised by this. Life should be good. Great, even.

Actually, it isn't. It isn't cause this lie they've been living for over a year now is a pain in the ass. It's a pain in the ass in the way that Steve usually is and not in any of the fun ways. It works, though. Steve moves places carefully on instruction with the others, and Tony soaks up the information Ross gives him, and deflects it. Tony only pretends to go along with the Accords because of course he would.

Of course he would.

This brilliant idea was Steve's. It's a good idea. Still is. Doesn't mean Tony has to like it. This week is one of the few times he can escape the spotlight cast on him, and travel out of the country under the radar. By under the radar he means in a suit that has a fantastic stealth ability that he's never going to share with anyone that isn't a part of the team. 117 countries signed the Accords, and Tony is sitting incognito in one of the 78 that didn't.

It's a dingy cafe that he usually wouldn't have been caught dead in, but it should be worth it. If the person he's meeting can make it, that is. ]

IW SPOILERS ( beautiful souls torn apart. )

[mottlediron]

[ It had taken everything in him after the blast of lightning that rained down from the sky, from the one whose brother had already failed his father, in order to try and climb back to his feet. Tony had been flung far enough away from the energy that he survived, clothes smoking and arc reactor sputtering in a way that caused his face to twist in pain. He calls his suit out from implants, mottled silver cresting over exposed skin as his vision clears.

In enough time to see the Asgardian bury an axe in his father's chest. His horror is muted only by what the Titan spits out at the much shorter man, snapping his fingers in a blinding flash that renders the gauntlet into smoking scrap. Tony's hesitation vanishes as the wounded man calls on a portal, and he uses the nanites that pour out of his skin to mold at his command into repulsors that drag the Titan the rest of the way through.

It closes and Tony slumps, weakness finally getting the better of him. He hears one of the others demand to know Thanos' location with a weak and hurried where is he, and laughs, settling back on his knees. ]

It doesn't matter. You've failed.

this is not the end, this is not the beginning;

[aequitatis]

Returning the stones hardly takes a few minutes, but for Steve it feels as if he’s gone for years. It’s cathartic, in some way, to go back in time and replace the stones from where they had borrowed them, but at the same time it feels like he’s ripping a wound open with every new place that he visits. Get in and get out, that had been the plan, but he lingers a little too long in the seventies, and then again in 2010. It’s tempting to stay, to try to find a way to save Natasha and Tony by altering events that he knows will be coming, but at the same time he’s very well aware that he could make things worse. What if he saves them, but gets someone else killed?

You have to respect his sacrifice, he remembers Peggy telling him in another lifetime, as he tried to drown his grief after losing Bucky. Or, after he thought he lost Bucky. He could try to save him by altering the timeline, and it would save Howard, and...he knows that Tony would chew him out if he could know what he’s thinking. If none of those things happened, would things work out the way they had for him, after all? Would he and Pepper have gotten married? Would he become a father? Would Morgan exist? He remembers the promise he had made, to not alter or undo anything that happened in the years after the Snap, and with a sense of defeat he finally takes the final trip back home.

And, when he arrives, he knows that his mission is finally complete. Not just to return the stones, but...he’s done. It’s not his turn anymore, to carry the shield and be Captain America. It’s time for someone else to carry that honor, and after sharing as much with Sam, he tells him that he needs to leave for a few days. He needs a break. He needs to mourn. He needs to just be, and maybe with that he’ll figure out a way to figure out what the hell is next.

By the time he comes back to New York a few weeks later, it’s hard to tell if he really has any direction of where he wants to go next, but he knows where he needs to be right now. He finds himself parked outside of an apartment building in Queens, leaning against his bike as he waits for Happy to send him the last piece of the puzzle - what apartment to go to. But, before his phone buzzes, he sees the person he’s here to see. Without the uniform, Peter Parker looks like just a regular kid, nothing about him screams Spider-Man, but Steve wonders how many people have noticed the change in him. How he doesn’t seem like just a kid anymore; how he had grown up, even if he technically ‘didn’t exist’ while he was gone after the Snap.

“Hey, Queens,” he greets as if this is normal. As if Steve Rogers stops by to see him on a regular basis, and a smile quirks slightly at the corners of his lips. “Good to see you.”