Work Text:
Day 1
Avengers Compound is just the same as when Steve last saw it. Rhodes’ coffee cup from before his call with General Ross is still in the sink.
Friday helps him find the equipment he wants. He doesn’t want to bother anyone else. Bruce and Thor are watching the news in one of the media rooms. Natasha and Rhodes are elsewhere, probably their own quarters.
“How are you, Friday?” Steve asks, suddenly guilty he hadn’t thought to ask before.
There’s a pause before she replies. The compound runs on its own arc reactor, she has backups all over the planet and on state-of-the-art Stark satellites, and processors faster than anything on the market outside of Wakanda. There shouldn’t, programatically speaking, need to be any pauses. “Working helps.”
Given her processing power, helping Steve find a microphone and an internet connection must take minimal effort, but maybe she appreciates the company. Steve does, even if talking with her reminds him of people who aren’t present. “Let me know what I can do.”
She doesn’t reply.
Steve looks at the little microphone in front of him. “Hello. This is Steve Rogers. I…” He trails off, staring out the nearest window. The sun is still out, but the sky is smudged gray.
He swallows. It tastes like ash.
“I don’t know if anyone will listen to this. Maybe no one wants to. But. We’re still here. Some of us. The Avengers. If you can make it to Avengers Compound, we have power, food, clean water, medical supplies...”
He breaks off again. There’s not much to see outside. Neatly trimmed grass. A treeline in the distance. He wonders how much of the smog is from fires, how much is from the feathery dust half of the world has dissolved into. He wonders how many peoples' remains he's breathing right now.
“Bruce says that the internet was developed during the Cold War to keep running even if other infrastructure failed. Decentralized, he said. So there would still be communications after a nuclear war.” Steve remembers learning about nuclear bombs. It was one of the first things SHIELD told him about. He wonders if that was the work of Hydra infiltrators, if it had been an intentional ploy to disillusion him with the future. We won the war, then your country used the new bomb your buddy Howard Stark and some cronies built to kill 100,000 civilians.
He doesn’t know how to go on, so he just says, “I’m sorry,” and posts the file.
Day 2
“We’re still here,” Steve says. He stares at his hands in his lap. He hasn’t slept since everything started. He’s still in his old uniform.
The microphone, of course, says nothing in return.
“Airplanes are grounded” —they have been since the day before, as soon as people started disappearing— “but if you can make it here. There are already some folks from town who have come to the compound. Everyone is welcome. War Machine, Thor, and Hulkbuster are working on clearing crashed vehicles from the nearby roads and picking up anyone they run into who wants to come. So, just get as close as you can, we’ll find you, okay? Don’t—don’t worry if you don’t have a, a background in something you think is ‘useful.’” A round of civilians had shown up early that morning, including a young woman who’d worked in a coffee shop. She'd spent breakfast apologizing for not being useful.
“It doesn’t matter if you aren’t a doctor, or don’t know how to cook, or fix a sink or—or whatever. We have resources to spare, so please, if you can get here, let us help.”
There’s dirt under his fingernails. Or, he thinks it’s dirt. It could be blood or ash or jet fuel.
“If you can’t get here, then. Send us a message, maybe we can get to you. And if you can’t get us a message, stay safe. There are a lot of people out there with guns who think bullets will solve their problems.” He closes his eyes and thinks of the footage the news had shown of so-called “looters” going down in a hail of automatic-weapons-fire. “Be careful on the roads. First responders are doing their best but getting crashed vehicles out of the way and fixing traffic signals has to come after putting out fires. I know a lot of you are still trying to go into work, but please, don’t risk your life. Losing a job is—it’ll be okay.”
It won’t, none of it will, and he’s sure he doesn’t sound like he believes it. But someone has to say it.
When did his job become to lie to people?
“Those of you still getting up and heading to help at hospitals, power plants, or emergency services—thank you. If there’s anything the Avengers can do to support you, we will.
“We made two lists. Everyone staying at the compound, I mean. I’m going to read them now. This first one is of. Of people who are missing, no one saw them disappear, they could still be out there, or their, their bodies.” Steve closes his eyes. His eyelids feel heavy, but it’s not physical exhaustion he feels. He could run laps for days, if he wanted to. Or needed to. “If you know what happened to anyone on that list, and can find a way to send us a message, we’ll pass it along. The second list is of everyone we know is gone. Friday alphabetized them for me. Uh, I’m going to say some of these names wrong. Friday’s helping me but. Okay.”
He takes a deep breath and begins reading the list of names.
Sam and Wanda are on the list of missing. Bucky, T’Challa, Groot, Peter, and Tony are on the list of the dead.
Day 3
“I have just two things to say today. I know I’m not in a position to tell anyone what to do, so consider this advice. Take it or leave it.”
It’s midday, but the sky outside the window is even darker than it was the day before.
Steve still hasn’t slept. Maybe he will after he finishes recording this message. He won’t even need to close the blinds, he thinks. It’s so dim it could be late evening.
“I understand why the national guard and FEMA have been called in. I even understand why the acting president has called for the military to be involved, despite the fact that the United States military is never supposed to engage on American soil this way.” Talking about it feels like chewing glass. “But the IRS, the USPS, and other government agencies are not branches of the military. If you are a member of any of these organizations that have been asked to take up arms and police the streets—” he has to cut himself off and rein in the anger in his voice.
He clenches and unclenches his fist. Tries to find words.
“If you are a member of any of these organizations, my advice is, get to the most secure location you can and stay there with whatever family and friends you have left. Cataclysm is no excuse for a police state or fascism. Being a government employee doesn’t mean you have to follow bad orders. Take that post office airplane and fly to your family across the country, instead.”
That’s what Steve would do. If he had anyone to visit, of course.
“My other advice is. Do not try to get fuel from the tanks under gas stations. Even if you think you know what you’re doing. Most of the new fires in the last 24 hours are from people trying to fill up their cars. This isn’t ‘Mad Max.’ Gas will go bad in a few months anyway. Consider a bicycle, skateboard, or scooter.”
He suddenly remembers schematics he’d once seen for an upgrade to the Iron Man armor and adds, “Or roller skates.”
Day 3, again
“Nat says it’s like Europe after the Black Death,” Steve begins. It seems, in many ways, a weak analogy. A third of the population of an entire continent, and it pales in comparison to what they’re dealing with. Some estimates say the plague killed as much as 60% of the population, but they’ve far surpassed that now.
Even if Thanos intended to destroy half of all life, the consequences have killed many more: the passengers in vehicles driven or piloted by people who vanished; the people hit by those vehicles; victims of the fires started by planes, cars, helicopters crashing; elderly people passing away from lack of care. People dying because of unsafe roads, because they’ve running out of medication or missing crucial medical treatments, because injuries that might otherwise be minor are going untreated, because fires are spreading faster than they can run.
“After the plague, there were far fewer people, but the same number of lordships. Younger brothers and distant cousins were inheriting titles and expecting to get the same amount in taxes from their serfs as their predecessors had. The smaller number of peasants couldn’t work the same amount of land to get the same results from their crops or livestock.
“So now, it doesn’t matter that companies only need to make half as many products to serve everyone. Because even the companies that make physical products have the same number of investors and shareholders. To the extent that inheritance law is still being enforced, corporations are trying to run on a third of their staff and produce the same returns to the same number of people. It’s impossible. And that’s not even getting into inflation, supply lines, all the insurance companies that are declaring bankruptcy, the places that make digital products or produce media, all of that.”
All of that is to say that, even if the fires are controlled, the global economy as it previously functioned will cease to exist.
Steve doesn’t say that.
Instead he says, “Yesterday I was telling you how the roads aren’t safe for vehicles. But if you aren’t familiar with horses, they aren’t necessarily much better.”
He and the Howlies had worked with horses fairly frequently. Mostly with mounts they’d liberated from German cavalrymen. They'd fought against them, too. He’d seen men get crushed by horses, bleed to death after being kicked or trampled, or be left behind after their horse had thrown them. He imagines encountering a stable, half-full of hungry, skittish horses, and not knowing anything about them. It doesn’t seem much of an improvement over accidentally blowing up a gas station.
“Anyway. I mainly wanted to get back on today because I have new lists. Updated since yesterday. I’m going to read them now, and then the news we’ve heard on the missing. You might—you might notice that some of the people from yesterday’s missing list are on today’s list of the departed.”
He reads the list of the names.
Day 4
“Please, if you can get anywhere near Avengers Compound, do it. We have insulin, inhalers, antibiotics. We have equipment for kidney dialysis. We have some medications to treat certain types of cancer. If you know what medications you take, we have people who might be able to make more.
“Even if we—even though we’ve failed you before, let us help now. The storm last night knocked out some power lines in town, and I’m sure that’s true all over.” He doesn’t know for sure, because Friday can’t access all of the usual satellites, and there hasn’t been any kind of formal radio or television broadcast for over 24 hours. She’s compiling what information she can from what’s left of the internet, operators of CB radios, and the accounts of citizens the flyers have been bringing back to the compound.
“There aren’t enough people to restore power, and to keep the fires from spreading, and clear the crashed vehicles, and bury the dead, and—and everything else. We’re on an independent power source, let us share it with you.
“If you can’t get here, be careful trying to find your own medications at abandoned pharmacies or hospitals. You can hurt yourself taking the wrong dosage. If you can get any kind of face mask, it will help with the smoke. Stay away from coal power plants, they’re starting to fail and causing more fires. Bruce says that nuclear power plants should be okay for another few weeks. And stay away from entrances to underground public transit. The New York subway is flooded, so it’s probably similar in other cities too.
“To those of you still providing healthcare and fire support, thank you.”
He licks his lips and gazes out the window. It's still splattered with raindrops. The sun is out now, and the window is open a crack. A single ant climbs the outside of the screen.
There’s less smoke in the air, now that it’s rained, but nothing smells right. Instead of the usual rich, earthy smell, it’s sharp and bitter. He wonders if it’s because half of the earthworms and gophers and mushrooms that normally fill the ground are all dead, too.
He squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop trying to blink ashes and smoke out of his eyes.
He realizes he hasn’t spoken in some time and clears his throat. “We didn’t get as many messages as yesterday but we have some new residents at the compound so. I have new lists for today.”
He reads the lists of names.
Day 6
“If you have some way of signalling us,” Steve begins. He doesn’t bother to greet his dwindling listeners any more. Most of the East Coast is on fire. The last transmissions from Wakanda were 2 days previous, a brief update about how they were handling royal succession. He hopes the country is just back in seclusion again, instead of falling into chaos like the US is.
“A hand-crank radio, or—I know most people don’t have power any more, or. Ways to get online. Just, find a way, and we’ll find you. There are new—there are some Iron Man suits here no one was using and Friday and Colonel Rhodes are helping people learn how to use them, so. If you see an armor, it might not be who you expect inside it.”
There was more he’d wanted to say after that, but he finds he can’t. He can barely read the day’s lists of names, but they’re so short he makes himself do it anyway.
Day 10
“Friday says there are still people listening, so. Hello. We’re still here.”
Some rallying cry. You haven’t killed all of us, yet! Steve wonders if it’ll be despair that gets them in the end, or something else.
There are fewer than 10 names on both lists combined, but in the end he has to signal for Friday to read them. No new messages have reached Friday or the compound, so every name on the list belongs to someone Steve had met. A teenager who’d drowned in one of the compound’s pools. A child who was stung by a bee and turned to be fatally allergic. A woman who died in childbirth—she’d been collecting seeds, he remembers. A couple who jumped from one of the roofs.
Friday finishes the lists and turns off the mic.
He doesn’t leave the chair all night. His sleep is fitful, but not, overall, much worse than it has been lately.
Day 14
“If you’re listening, we’re here. We have room to spare.”
Steve’s spent the morning digging graves. It’s how he’s spent most of his mornings in the last two weeks. Now he knows, for a certainty, that what’s under his fingernails is grave dirt.
“I was talking to Friday. She thinks—she says someone from outside Earth’s atmosphere is accessing these. So if you’re out there—we’re here. We already have two aliens, the more the merrier, right. Maybe you know what happened to Rocket’s friends. Peter, Drax, Gamora, and Mantis.”
They were on the first list Steve had read, but maybe whoever is out there in space, getting his messages, didn’t hear the first one.
That’s all he has for the day’s lists, so he signs off.
Day 17
“We got your message.” Steve stops. He thought he could do this. Whoever it is, they should know their message came through. He doesn’t need to bring anything else into it—things like hope.
Daring to hope hurts worse than remembering Bucky’s face when he’d called Steve’s name one last time.
“We got part of it. It was—damaged, Friday said, degraded, but, we hear you.”
Most of it had come through as blasts of static. The few distinguishable words were rough, the voice unrecognizable. Oxygen came through clear. Steve thought he caught water, nebula, strange, and listening. There’s a patch that Friday says is the word kid.
“If there’s a way for us to get to you, we will. I promise, okay?”
Not that a promise from him has any currency these days. But he knows he won't break this one.
Day 20
Steve’s listened to what Friday could clean up of the second message a dozen times now. He memorized it after the first time, but now he could recite it note for note, complete with the jagged distortion of the degraded soundwaves.
There’s a shrill beeping at first, then static, then finally a voice—probably a man’s, but Friday is careful to remind him that she could have adjusted the speed and pitch incorrectly—saying, Still here. Listen —and then it breaks off again. The voice returns to say Rogers, I’m not before bursting into static once more. It’s just snippets that come through: ran out; oxygen; cold; drift off; and then, dreaming of.
Whoever it is, they’re waiting for his answer. Reminding himself of this is what moves Steve to finally speak.
“Jim doesn’t think I’m crazy.” Nat and Thor do, he doesn’t say. He hasn’t seen Bruce in days, so he doesn't know his opinion on the matter. “If it’s you—oh god.”
He knew, he knew letting himself hope would break him.
He's sobbing and he can't stop. It's hard to breathe and his chest feels tight. He takes big gulping breaths, just to prove to himself he has the lung capacity, and nearly chokes on air and his own tears.
He'll have to ask Friday to edit this out. When he'd made the longer messages, she'd cut them up and edited chunks at a time while he was still speaking. But this, she must know not to include this.
If she doesn't cut it—if whoever's out there is having the same kind of time Steve is, maybe they'll appreciate having someone to cry with them.
If it's who he wants it to be though—
He gets himself under control enough to keep talking. “If it’s you, please come home. If—if you’re a stranger, come anyway.”
Day 21
“Jim says he won’t believe you’re dead until he sees you in hell for himself, and even then he’ll assume you’re just visiting.” Steve manages a wet chuckle. “He said he sent you a message too. Friday did you—do you have anything you’d like to say?”
It takes a moment for Friday to answer. Her pauses have been growing longer and more frequent as the days pass. “Come home, Boss,” she says at last.
“Yeah.” Steve chews on his lip. “Come home.”
Day 22
“If you can hear me—I. We lost. We lost, and I’m sorry, and there’s so much I should have said. I can’t say it all now, I can’t.”
Steve’s past the point of sobbing, now. There’s just tears. He doesn’t know how they keep coming. He wonders if the serum has improved his tear ducts.
“It can’t be you. You’re dead, like everyone else. The Colonel and I are just—it’s just grief, right? Some kind of denial. Even if you’re out there, how could you be listening? If you’re alive, why aren’t you here? Please, I—”
He has to stop again. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, inhales as long as he can. Lets it out in a slow gust.
“We weren’t together, and you never called, and I keep thinking—I know it’s my fault, and now it’s gone anyway, it’s all gone, but I just—if I could see you again. I could tell you, I could tell you everything.” He swallows and wipes his nose on his sleeve. Hope has cut him off from the refuge of numbness.
Maybe it’s not hope, he thinks, but desperation. “But you already know. You already know, don’t you? You knew this was coming, and I—so I keep thinking. You know what to do next.”
He lets his head fall onto the table. It’ll muffle his voice, but Friday can clean up the recording if she needs to. The microphones are probably so sophisticated it doesn’t matter, anyway. “You’ll know what to do.”
Day 23
“If you were here you'd—what would you say? Maybe tell me to quit feeling sorry for myself. Tell me that all this—it doesn’t bring them back, it doesn’t make it okay. Or would you even speak to me? Look at me? I don’t—if you were just here, and whole, I could take it, I probably deserve it, I just. Please come home.”
Day 24
“It’s not just because they’re all dead. It’s you, it has to be you. You know, don’t you? I. You know that I—”
Steve stands abruptly, paces to one end of the room, his hands on his hips, then back again. “Friday, I—sorry, can you delete that? I’m going to start again.”
“Sure thing,” Friday says.
“You think it’s him, right?” Steve asks.
Another of Friday’s long pauses. Then, “Sometimes I do. DUM-E thinks it’s him.”
Somehow Steve’s mouth turns up at the corners into something like a smile. “Does DUM-E have a message for him?”
“He says he needs more fire extinguishers.”
That jolts a laugh out of him. It’s more like a bark, but it’s the closest he’s come to really laughing in weeks.
“Okay.” He drops his arms, stares at his hands. “Okay, let’s start again.” He straightens his spine. “Tony. If you’re listening. We miss you. And it’s not—it’s not only getting worse. If you’ve been listening to all of these, I’ve been—it’s bad. I’m not saying it hasn’t been bad. But.”
Out the window, the grass has grown long. There’s clover, dandelions, thistles, and chickweed growing tall above the blades of grass. A horse freed from one of the local ranches is munching on it. There’s a small herd of them that passes through every few days. It won’t be long before they’ll be overdue for a farrier, though, and as far as Steve knows, they haven’t found anyone who knows how to shoe a horse.
“People are coming together. Small communities. Friday and Jim and Bruce have been putting some arc reactors together to get them some power. Thor goes out, most days, and—oh. You’d think it’s funny.”
The word funny stirs around in his head for a moment. He corrects himself. “No, you wouldn’t. But you’d approve. We’re loaning out some of your armors. Like a new Iron Legion, except no one wants to call it that. Ah, we haven’t exactly been trying to work on branding. But they, and Thor sometimes, fly out with supplies. Deliver messages. It’s something, right?”
He tries to think of other news that might sound pleasant. “We’ve been taking care of a dog. There’s a lot of dogs at the compound, actually, but this one is ours now I guess, mine and Nat’s and Jim’s and Bruce’s and Thor’s. He’s named Falafel—don’t ask.” The truth is, Falafel had belonged to a young boy who’d come to the compound with a big group of people. But after his sister died, the boy had disappeared. If he’d left the compound, Friday hadn’t seen it. That was nearly a week ago, now. Falafel had started following Bruce around, and then when Bruce went out in the armor, Nat had taken over, and now he belongs to the Avengers. “He has one blue eye and one brown and he’s very good at catching rats.”
Steve keeps talking. He sits down again and tells Tony about the vegetable garden, the solar panels, the rain barrels. About how he’s only dug 2 graves in the last 3 days. How he’s learning field surgery and welding. The treehouse some of the older kids are building. The puppies that were born in one of the hangars earlier that afternoon. The impromptu school a group of adults are putting together for the children.
He falls asleep talking.
Day 25
It’s audio-only, but the message is completely intact. It’s Tony’s voice, and it’s hoarse and quiet but it’s him and he says: “Miss me?”
Day 26
Smoke billows from the ship. The landing looked alright, to Steve, but he’s never seen a ship like this before and wouldn’t know how to tell if it’s damaged or not.
He runs toward it. He hears Jim cursing behind him, the sounds of him armoring up, then Bruce saying something about the engines.
Steve keeps running.
Metal shifts and creaks, and then a panel slides open and there’s a blue woman standing inside, dark eyes blazing with determination.
She’s holding Tony in her arms.
As an atheist, Tony would probably not think much of the comparison, but Steve can’t help but be reminded of the pietà. Her skin is practically the color of the Virgin Mary’s robes, even.
She has steel in her voice when she says, “Help him.”
Day 27
Tony’s still unconscious. He’s malnourished and dehydrated and on dialysis. He's gaunt, and his too-yellow skin sags off his bones. He looks tiny.
He should be loud and brash and taking up more space than a dozen of his armors.
Steve sits next to him and talks.
“I’m sorry,” he says, more than once.
He knows he shouldn’t but he’s selfish and takes Tony’s hand. It's so much smaller than his own. “Please get better,” he says, over and over.
He says, “You’ll know what to do.”
Day 34
Tony wakes up. He doesn’t let go of Steve’s hand.
He says, “I got your messages.”