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“Systems critical,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. warned.
“Understood,” Steve said gruffly. Kneeling in the rubble with the weight of eight stories of unfinished parking garage on his metal back, he tried not to imagine what kind of pancake he would look like without the Iron Man armor. Even with the suit:
“Systems critical,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. stressed. “Alleviate burden or suit compromise will occur.”
“Alleviation—not—available,” Steve grunted. His knees were already bent. He had nowhere to go but the unyielding bedrock below. “Distress sig—outbound?”
“Distress signal outbound,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. confirmed.
“Great.” Grinding his teeth, he tried to plant his feet, but the suit was already redlining; it offered no further power. His back and shoulders did not move. Settling onto one knee, he let the building hunch over him. A glance at the crumpled darkness surrounding him, the sputtering light of cut electrical wires, the water dripping down from above, preceded the dark reflection: “Tony’s not gonna like thi—”
“Yeah, keep talkin’ like I’m not here; I always like that,” Tony murmured.
Steve’s heart thumped hard. A mix of emotions hit him. Relief. Surprise. Concern. Mostly—relief. He knew that sound: the static around Tony’s voice. Tony wasn’t on the ground. Tony was in the air.
Tony was inbound.
“A hail works, too, Tony,” Steve managed, the crushing weight lifting a bit from his heart. Tony was on his way. The mission was FUBAR, but Iron Man was coming. He wasn’t alone.
Tony said easily, “What, like I’m Hydra?”
“No,” Steve told him. Encouraged by the normal sound of Tony’s voice, he made a mistake: he tried to stand. “Like you’re—”
F.R.I.D.A.Y. said urgently, “Systems failing, Captain!” He had never heard the A.I. shout before, but he did not have time to respond, before she said simply: “Brace.”
It was a terrible word to hear, whether in a plane or when one’s suit of armor was the only thing between a rock and a very, very hard place. He didn’t have time to consult the head-up display for a clue: he felt the terrifically loud pop in the back plating, as the spine of the suit gave way somewhere.
It hurt, badly, even though the dislodged plate caught within the suit itself, sticking in the mud of other, still-intact plates. That was good news—Tony’s design was built not to impale him. But the ricochet was still painful, and it still sliced into him a little, as a titanic amount of building shifted downward, no longer held back by a wall of unbroken iron. The giant’s hand was pressing down, smothering him, and he gave way to avoid having the broken edge forced deeper and deeper into his back.
Crushed between two layers of tombstone, he thought, Fuck, I’m really dead this time.
Even as the logical terror crossed his mind, it felt detached from his body. He could not accept that he had anything less than total control of his destiny. His crevasse was not even large enough to kneel in, let alone escape, but as long as it was stable with breathable air and a vacuum to exist in, it was sustainable. He did not entertain that he could be evicted from his world.
He felt airflow on the back of his suit—The Gash. It scared him more than anything on his visual feed. The visceral reminder that everything around him was happening—not to someone two days ago, but to him—knocked him back into his own body, forcing him to accept that the situation was dire. No amount of enhancement could crawl out of the darkness. He swore he felt dampness, too, not blood but external water, dripping into the suit.
He started to panic. Tony noted calmly, “Heart rate’s elevated. Talk to me?”
“I’m down,” Steve said. He skimmed his metal belly against cold dirt, trying not to think about the fact that he was buried alive. Although he was not mortally wounded, if any more of the suit gave way, it would be a technicality. “Suit’s—compromised. Holding.”
“I’m there in twenty-three minutes, you said you’re holding? O2 looks good.”
“Yeah, oxygen’s—holding. Fine,” Steve echoed, staring at the numbers on the inside of his helmet. It helped. Calmed him down a bit, slowing his corrupted breath back to a crawl. Without the suit, he would surely be dead; the suit created a pocket for him, carrying enough oxygen to last for hours, assuming the internal pockets within it were not crushed. “Sorry,” he punched out, embarrassed by his moment of hysteria. “Sorry, I’m—”
“What?” There was real panic in Tony’s voice, even as Steve explained remorsefully:
“Tonight was your night, Tony, s’posed to be—”
“Forget about me.”
“No. No, Tony, I’m—sorry. I’d—” It was surprisingly hard to force out the rest of the sentence: “I’d rather be with you.”
Silence. Static. It was a familiar sound—an open mic. For once, Steve didn’t mind. It allowed him to imagine, in real time, being in the air with Tony. The blue skies around them, the white clouds below, safe from all danger, supersonic. So damn fast. It was a mesmerizing vision—a safe one. A taste of the world he knew existed, a world that was absolutely reachable.
He yearned to return to it, to escape the dark hell hole around him.
The open mic was proof that it was still viscerally there. Even Tony’s breath was comforting to him, proof that his world was not eternal, everywhere.
Tony, Steve realized, had no idea the true magnitude of the situation, or he wouldn’t have just stopped talking. Captain America needs you was enough, every time, to rip him away from whatever he was doing, including what should have been one of the greatest nights of his life. Tony Stark lived an exceptional life: he didn’t care about the extraordinary when his ordinary was on the line.
Even a Nobel Prize could wait. Although Steve ached at the thought of a man who had contributed so much to his fellow human beings being honored as a ghost, he recognized why Tony had run. Steve would have, too. There was no prize in the world worth Tony’s life; vice-versa applied.
Almost idly, Tony recorded, “I’m twenty-two minutes out, how’re you holding up?”
Steve said thickly, “Okay.”
More thoughtful static, more words internally exchanged. It was nice. Closing his eyes, Steve left behind the gray walls, the dark earth, the monumental pressure weighing him down—even the hard blue suit around him, more like a coffin than a comfort.
It’ll protect you.
I don’t care. I don’t want to live in a box.
Once they had reached the prototype fitting stage, Steve had couched all personal protests, because Tony had already argued—persuasively, rightly—that the suit would keep him alive when all his human strength failed. It had still been a hard sell—in the field, Steve often missed fresh air and hard leather chairs, the unimpeded swivel and kick of his own dynamic body—but he also appreciated not having to constantly surveil for bullets or worry about gas leaks or hail Tony for minor assists.
My father made you that shield.
Now it’s my turn to keep you alive.
“Check in, Steve,” Tony said.
“Holding,” Steve echoed simply.
“You’re characteristically quiet.”
Steve didn’t have an easy response to that, other than gratitude that the A.I. had only sent out a distress signal, and not a full mission report. He could easily remedy that—the A.I. had a full chat log, as well as the ability to compress the information into a standard, “elevator pitch” style report for him, no matter how crunched for time his final real statements were—but he refrained. He wanted Tony to fly easy. He did not want to compromise him, especially if—well. The building settled the wrong way.
“Just thinkin’ about—your night. Again.”
“Not gonna let that go.”
“Big night,” Steve impressed. He ached deep in his gut over it, in concert with the wound in his back, the huge weight over him. He should have been there. He could have made it happen—blocked off a three-day segment, ensured that nothing got in his way—but instead, he left Tony out to dry, and then pulled him from his own ceremony. “I’m sorry,” he insisted.
“I don’t care,” Tony said simply. “I don’t. Not about the—gosh.”
They were both quiet. Steve heard something shift overhead, held his breath as he waited, even as Tony said, “Two people are alive because you cared more about them than a piece of paper. I think that’s beautiful.”
Yeah, and I’m a goner. “It’s not a piece of paper,” he huffed, trusting the stable block to float a little longer. “It’s—”
“Two people are alive,” Tony repeated.
He wasn’t wrong. The mission had dragged far beyond its six-hour reconnaissance, because he had had an inkling that he had followed to its source. Steve could have been at the ceremony if he had followed the original parameters and left the follow up to another qualified agent. By staying in Egypt, ingratiating himself with the locals and learning more about the situation, he had rescued two people and returned them to their families. It had been a high-risk, high-reward mission that had hardly suited Captain America’s caliber but perfectly suited Steve Rogers. He was happy to fight a year-long battle for a single missing person. A three-day-run for two was a huge pay-off.
It did mean apologies over the phone and promises to make it up later.
Later was now.
“Jesus, Tony,” he said again.
“It’s fine,” Tony said, not quite harsh but almost there, because he probably wanted to be there as badly as Steve would in his shoes. “Eight minutes.”
Something shifted, and Steve muffled his groan as the wedged plate pushed hard into his kidney. “Talk to me,” Tony said neutrally.
“Just a—tight spot,” Steve said through his teeth.
“Knowing you, that means you’re bleeding out at the bottom of a well.”
Steve made the mistake of huffing a laugh. “Not—” he huffed, “bleeding. Not in a well.”
“Liar.”
“You don’t—trust me.”
There was static. Then the mic cut off for a minute.
It was a long, dark silence, as Steve heard the groans of the building, the pain reverberating through his body. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.?” he asked, as twenty-eight seconds passed without interruption.
“Yes, sir?”
“He’s up to no good, isn’t he?”
“I am not sure what you mean, Captain.”
“Never mind.” It was just good to hear her voice, know that she was still with him. “You’re not—hurt, are you?” he asked incongruously. He knew that there wasn’t any CO2 leak in the suit, but the pressure was starting to get to him, compressing his body, making each breath short. The black edges of his vision were alarming.
“I’m fine, Captain,” assured F.R.I.D.A.Y. “Emergency beacon relayed to Mr. Stark.”
Huffing humorless laughter, Steve could not stop until Tony returned to the line, abrupt, cutting, cool: “Sorry, you didn’t mention the collapsed building.”
Steve swallowed his last laugh like a gulp of whiskey, hard down his throat, and finished, “Suit did such a good job. Almost didn’t notice.”
“Don’t bull-shit me, Rogers.” Rarely had he heard Tony in such a mood. His fear always turned to anger, first: productive, astonishing rage, the kind that built Iron Man in a cave, because crying would only get him killed. He would raise hell if his world was at stake. It was one of the best and worst things about him. His reaction to fear verged on the insidious; he was cold, calculating, because he didn’t retreat, he regrouped and punched back hard.
Hearing the airy, All clear voice switch to the hard, I will burn this shit to the ground tone, Steve felt a different pain in his chest, the heartbreak of rattling him. He was, in a tiny, selfish way, relieved that Tony was all cylinders firing dedicated to his rescue. But he also wished he could have kept him ignorant of the situation entirely. “They’ll say it was faulty design,” he said at last, giving up the ghost, “but I heard something go.”
Growling audibly, Tony said, “I’m there in five,” and shut off the comm again.
For a dizzying amount of time that had to be just four real minutes but felt like four imaginary hours, Steve lay in the rubble, breathing compressed air, bleeding stickily across his back, trying not to imagine Tony’s shock when he beheld the rubble from above. He hoped that Tony didn’t lose his head, railing against the curious bystanders who would gather at the scene, the rescue workers who would probably already be trying to do something. He wondered what mayhem awaited above, if there were fires or ash to contend with.
“Captain?” F.R.I.D.A.Y. greeted.
“Mmm?”
“Vital signs depressed,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. noted. “Stay awake for search-and-rescue.”
Steve thought, My God, wouldn’t it be nice to wake up on the other side.
“Captain?” F.R.I.D.A.Y. repeated, a little farther away.
“Mmm?”
“Vital signs depressed,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. noted. “Strong advisory: stay awake for search-and-rescue.”
“’m awake,” he reported in, surprised at how slurred his voice sounded. “I’m . . . shield . . . suit . . . patch.”
“Repeat, Captain.”
The thought was gone. His head was too dark; he couldn’t find anything in it, knocking into empty drawers without useful thoughts. Then, blaringly loud in his ear: “On scene.”
“Who’s there?”
There was a tangible pause, followed by: “F.R.I.D.A.Y., report on Rogers.” He knew he was in trouble—not the literal kind, just the you ate my muffin kind; but possibly the literal kind, too, as he missed the bulk of F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s report, tuning in for:
“Main O2 tank 5% and falling.”
“Fucking fuck,” Tony said eloquently.
“Watch it,” Steve muttered. It wasn’t often, but occasionally, officials wanted a mission report to publish for P.R., and kids loved Iron Man. BLEEPING BLEEP made them giggle, but the Avengers were supposed to set some kind of example.
Perhaps the example was, In stressful situations, you may use BLEEPING BLEEP.
“Switch to auxiliary line?”
“Auxiliary cord entangled,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. reported.
“All right. Standby. On my way.”
Steve thought, pessimistically, You’re not gonna get through. He did not doubt Iron Man’s heroic nature. He did not even doubt, with enough time and equipment, that Tony could figure it out.
But there was just some odds, some things, that even Tony Stark could not do on a dime. He built Iron Man in a cave with scraps. It took him almost three months, and he had a car battery to jumpstart the process.
He felt awful, imagining the scene above, the stress, the panic inside that perfect, unflinching armor.
He chimed in, “S’okay, Tony. You know that, right?”
“Need to think, stay off the line. Standby.”
“I love you.”
The static meant the line was open. Then it shut off.
It hurt. Breathing did, too. He needed to get the helmet off; his oxygen tank was running empty, which meant the suit was now a literal coffin, full of entrapped air being recycled and converted into unbreathable carbon dioxide. To make matters worse, the clever design was actually working against him: the helmet was a separate unit from the body, with a cord leading to an oxygen tank in the back, like an astronaut’s suit. The idea was to prevent gashes in the body from leading to rapid deoxygenation; now, it meant that the very gash in his back could not serve as an emergency poked hole to the outside, allowing an influx of fresh air. He was vacuum-sealed inside the suit.
He had to get the helmet off, or he would suffocate in his own armor.
He tried to shuffle an arm up. He had had rheumatic fever, once—the child of scarlet fever. Although he had scraped through scarlet fever like many children, the consequences of rheumatic fever would prove profoundly impactful, leaving him asthmatic and with heart trouble. Only the serum eradicate the damage caused by that one stunning struggle. As he pressed against the weight bearing down on him, he felt the same degree of helpless incapacitation, made small against the titanic, mortal against the dread. The armor, beyond its limits, could do nothing for him. For the first time in nearly a hundred years, he felt utterly helpless: no amount of serum or technology to get his arm to move the ten inches from joint to jaw, to unlatch and free him from the hell of his own making.
He sucked in one smothering breath after another, ironically aware that it was not the building that would kill him but the shield designed to save him from it.
Don’t blame yourself, he entreated, as his thoughts became fuzzy, and F.R.I.D.A.Y. checked in again, her words an utter blur of sound, no coherent message in the string. This wasn’t your fault. This was mine.
I did this.
Then, without warning, the face-plate popped at the hinge—not off, just enough to let air flow through. Dusty, dry air rushed in; Steve strained his neck forward in his eagerness to breathe anything other than the emptiness inside the helmet, no matter that it was still borrowed time, his air pocket barely eight cubic feet of space.
It wasn’t much time, but it was time.
“Communication,” Tony said in his helmet, his voice echoing almost loudly off the newly liberated space, as Steve shut his eyes for a moment, woozy, “it works.”
“Write-it-up-later,” Steve agreed, words sliding together.
“Stay awake for search-and-research,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. chimed in.
“Listen to her,” Tony said firmly.
Steve called in a logged, You got it, before promptly passing out.
. o .
He awoke to a profound headache and a badger scratching somewhere at the concrete above him.
“. . .not already dead, gonna kill him,” Tony was muttering.
“Sir, vitals are increasing,” J.A.R.V.I.S. said, in a mix of reassuring and warning.
“Absolute—menace,” Tony seethed.
“Captain Rogers?” J.A.R.V.I.S. said.
“’lo,” Steve said gruffly. He meant the full word, but his tongue was heavy in his mouth, dried out by the dust. “W’a’s the . . . badger.”
“Just gonna put you on mute until I—” Steve heard the comm click off, followed by the familiar sound of the plasma beam cutting rock. He grunted sharply as the block over his back suddenly pressed down hard, driving the damaged plate further into his back and forcing the air out of his lungs.
No longer able to breathe, he could only hope that Tony wasn’t wasting time chasing cars up there, because even if he wanted to, he had no way of communicating his distress. It didn’t quite reach frozen in a block of ice for seventy years levels of terror, but being pancaked while Tony worked, with no timetable of rescue, was deeply unpleasant.
Since neither of them were comms on, it was impossible to know exactly how long it lasted. But in less than ten minutes, the block came off. Steve drew in a brief breath, then another, and then, suddenly, blue light appeared in his view. “Steve?” Iron Man said.
Still breathing shallowly, Steve heard the slightly frantic edge underneath the Save the world, then fall apart edge of iron hardness in Tony’s voice as he laid a metal hand on his side. How he had drilled a hole to the center of the wreckage without displacing more of the pile was nothing short of a miracle. He even had a rope around his own waist, indicating the extreme risk of it.
“Hey, come on,” Iron Man instructed. “Come on. Come on.” With worried jabs, he ran a metal gauntlet over Steve’s sides, trying to get a response.
Steve groaned, “Tony.”
“That’s my man,” Iron Man said, already working rope around his waist, supremely efficient. “Come on. You gonna make me do all the work?”
“Sorry.”
“You’re gonna make me do all the work,” Iron Man said, but he dutifully kept roping him off, then, “Ouch,” as a metal hand pressed down below the gash on his back.
“S’fine,” Steve said automatically.
With a hard metallic sigh, Tony said, “Sure,” and encouraged, “All right. Let’s go. Don’t hit your head.”
Reeling from the fact that he could move, Steve said, “You came.”
“Wow, can’t believe they make ‘em smart and pretty.” Already moving back towards his makeshift tunnel, Tony said, “Continue on the upstairs, all right?”
It was an impressive ascent—Tony had not only carved out a huge amount of rock, but also created an involuntary well that honed in on F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s beacon. “Even with comms on, would’ve taken me seven hours to scoop out the whole nest,” Tony said when they were inside ten feet of blinding white sunlight, too bright to even be blue. “Seven hours.”
Steve knew it was a tiny bit self-congratulatory—look at my suit, look what it can goddamn do—but also a sincere tally of the benefits.
Still, he was too focused on putting one handhold after the other to really absorb the implications. He was also too exhausted to do more than smile vaguely at the cameras that insisted on being there, even as Iron Man kept a very possessive arm around his waist that was borderline too friendly for teammates. Most people would assume it was just Iron Man looking out for Captain America. Ol’ Shellhead keeping an eye on his Winghead. The usual song-and-dance. Nothing-to-see-here.
They had put out no official letters stating their allegiance to one another, but Tony didn’t seem to care about maintaining ambiguity. He growled at anyone, medico or not, that so much as put a foot inside a three-foot radius. It was endearing. A bit overprotective, but the Avengers were known for sticking together. It was clear he wanted to just fly them the hell out of there, but Steve’s suit was far too compromised to handle multiple Gs.
No, he put up with the fuss with his usual snark, but when asked, “Iron Man,” like the start of an impromptu press meeting, he quipped, “I’m taking care of my guy,” with so little regard for how it read, he clearly wanted it to be known, Steve was his guy.
They made it to a car and didn’t stop until they reached an airport. Steve was dying for a glass of water, would have given his entire life savings just to take off the suit, but it wasn’t exactly doable in a small car, so he bore it.
Finally, finally, they boarded their ticket home. “Welcome back, Captain,” J.A.R.V.I.S. greeted immediately.
Steve grunted in acknowledgment, then forced out a, “Thank you. J.A.R.V.I.S.” He started to sink into a seat, jumping forward as his back touched the leather. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” he added belatedly.
“Yes, sir?” F.R.I.D.A.Y. chimed in.
“Thank you,” Steve told her.
“You’re very welcome, Captain,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. said.
He had just started to reach for his helmet when nimble fingers beat him to it. “Tony,” he murmured, hardly rebuking at all, as, fingers finely but visibly trembling, Iron Man removed his helmet for him. “Tony, Tony.”
Drawing in a short breath through his nose, Tony said, “Fucking hell. You’re gray.”
“Dust,” Steve told him.
Storming off, Tony reappeared with a bottle of water. Steve sighed and reached for it, grimacing as it pulled tenderly at his back. “Suit saved my life,” he said.
“Drink,” Tony ordered mechanically.
“Suit saved my life,” Steve insisted.
Tony glared at him through the armor. Then a metal paw landed on his hair, heavy but softly frantic, still vibrating a little. “You don’t know—” Tony began, and then stopped, like he could switch off the comms of his emotions, sifting his fingers once through Steve’s hair.
Steve leaned into it, eyes shut, appreciating the soft texture of the metal. Like leather was warm, the glove was smooth, streamlined. Despite wearing the armor himself, he was still charmed by Iron Man. He had been particular about avoiding certain redundancies. No reds, no golds. No wings.
Are you serious?
I don’t need to fly.
Since the flight power was mostly built into the legs, the suit’s appearance didn’t actually change that much; the shoulders contained the suit’s oxygen and the torso its mechanical engineering. It was navy blue from head-to-heel, but it could be re-coated in less than a day, if he changed his mind. Tony complained that it looked top-heavy without the leg circuitry and fuel, while Steve though it was the perfect compromise, a medieval interpretation of a modern design. And, he liked the illusion that only thin armored greaves separated his legs from the rest of the world, unlike the deep seated calves of the flight-worthy Iron Man.
“Modifications,” Tony murmured, talking to himself. “Have to—”
“Tony,” Steve interrupted. “It worked.”
Tony sniffed metallically, then, removing his hand, stepped back and fully out of his suit. Stepping forward, now free of his armor, flushed with a wild mix of emotions—rage, relief, joy, thawing grief, unbridled elation—he wrapped both arms around Steve’s neck and gently throttled him. “If you were dead, I’d be so mad at you right now,” he whispered.
Although it hurt, Steve managed to carefully lift a metal arm and splay a heavy metal hand gingerly across his back. “That’s why I’ve got you,” he said. Tony squeezed his neck harder, not trying to hurt him but convey his exultation, his sheer emotional overload. “I’ve got you,” he said simply, encapsulating everything.
It would be hours before they would actually be let off the tarmac, days before they would sort everything on the ground. Even the trusted doctor would not arrive until the wound had become nearly incorrigible, but it would not kill him.
In that moment—that eclipsing, generous second in time—it just felt like Steve could finally breathe again.