Chapter Text
When Carol returns after only a little over a week with a burnt-out spaceship in tow, Steve realizes he hadn’t been expecting for her to return of her own accord at all.
Not unless she found Tony.
It’s hard to read her expression as the ramp of the ship descends. She looks sorry, and as two figures appear at the top of the ramp he understands why. One of the figures is definitely Tony, but he is leaning heavily on this blue humanoid cyborg for support. Steve rushes forward and grabs onto Tony’s other arm just as the two are reaching the bottom of the stairs, and he almost freezes in place as he realizes how much of his friend’s weight he is taking; and how little of it there is.
“I couldn’t stop him.” Tony says as the two of them step off the ramp and onto the ground. He is practically drowning in a borrowed leather jacket, his face is gaunt, and Steve knows that were he to let go right now he would crumple to the ground.
Yet the first words out of his mouth are of self-loathing.
“Neither could I.” Steve says, trying his best to cushion the blow.
None of them could. Now having Tony here – emaciated and still blaming himself – it’s easier for Steve to see that fact than it was before. They did everything they could, but even with all their power, they just couldn’t stop Thanos.
Tony manages to stand straight for a moment, and to look him in the eye.
“I lost the kid.”
Steve swallows. He’s been wondering about Peter; they all have. There’s been no answer at his apartment, and when Happy drove out there the day after Thanos, he reported the place looked as lived in as ever, but there was no sign of May or Peter. He said he staked it out for hours, before Pepper finally came and dragged him back to The Compound.
“Tony we lost.” Steve says, because he is sorry, but it seems like Tony isn’t grasping the scope of what happened.
It was more than him and the kid. They all lost so much. So many teammates, and friends. Family. The world – the whole universe - lost so much and is losing more every day.
Plain and simple; they lost.
Tony starts breathing rapidly again, working up the strength to speak, and for a moment Steve worries he is going to be sick.
“Is… Is um…”
That’s when Steve catches sight of Pepper bounding up to them. He’d almost forgotten she had led the charge out here.
“Oh my God.” She gasps, tears in her voice as well as in her eyes. She wraps her arms around Tony, and Steve relinquishes his hold on his arm and lets Pepper take over supporting him.
He takes a step back, and watching the two of them cling to one another, something inside of him turns sour.
Steve clenches his teeth to keep himself from shuttering, or maybe it’s shouting. He can’t watch as Tony presses a kiss to Pepper’s cheek, but he can’t leave the two of them there for Pepper to help Tony limp back into the compound. He feels like if he were to do that, the others would see his bitterness. So, he stands resolute whilst the two of them reunite, and in doing so he catches Nat’s eyes. She is standing not fifteen feet away, with her thumbs hooked into her jacket pockets, and she inclines her head to him when she catches him looking her way.
Even from partway across the compound’s field at ten o’clock at night, Nat can see the tension in Steve’s jaw as Tony clings on to Pepper. She nods to him in silent invitation, and so later on, after they’ve recapped for Tony everything that happened in the battle and what has been happening on Earth in the three weeks since, she isn’t surprised in the least when he knocks on her door.
She opens it quickly. He’s finally shaved off his beard, and one would think that would help him to look less ragged, but instead it only serves to pronounce how sunken and wet his eyes are.
He hasn’t changed into any pajamas yet, and for a moment a pang of disappointment flares in her chest. It’s ridiculous, because she very purposely didn’t change either. She isn’t so delusional as to think he came in here to crawl into bed with her, nor is that why she invited him.
She just… Well, it doesn’t matter right now.
What matters is the hitch of his breath and the way he scrubs a hand over his face as she gestures for him to come in and he does. What matters is the way he paces left and then right as she closes the door, his eyes flitting from her bed, to the chair at her desk, and still he paces a small circle around her floor.
Nat crosses her arms as she watches him. It’s like all this pent-up energy is radiating from him with nowhere to go. She’s seen him angry before when things don’t go his way. She has seen when he so badly wants to hit something, but there is nothing suitable to take the brunt of his strength.
“Do you want to take this to the training room?” She suggests, and when he looks at her he practically deflates before her eyes.
There are tears already spilling onto his cheeks, and immediately she surges forward. She wraps him in her arms. She stands on her toes and wraps her arms tight around his shoulders. She winds up pulling him down a bit, trying her best to bridge the height gap between them so that he can bury his head into her shoulder as he clings desperately to her shoulders and his breath starts to hitch, and the shuttering sobs begin to make their way out.
“It’s ok.” She promises him in a whisper. “It’s ok.”
She decides that walking the two of them to the bed is going to be her best option. She steps back, but doesn’t let go or loosen her grip on him. He stumbles along with her, and after she guides him down to sit on the edge of the bed he lets out a particularly unfiltered cry.
At this much better angle, Steve lays his head against her shoulder, with his arms still wrapped around her in a hold he doesn’t seem intent on breaking anytime soon. She brings one of her hands to the back of his head. Her fingers disappear almost completely as she begins to comb through his hair. She wonders if he was planning to cut it tonight after he’d shaved, but then Tony’s return got in the way. Or maybe he isn’t planning to cut it at all. She thinks back to that night at the bus stop, and how she had studied him in the pale glow of the streetlight as they sat. She was able to stretch ever-so-slightly over him on that bench, and to note all the changes time on the run had brought in him.
She feels like they have changed more in these last three weeks than they ever could have in those two years.
Well aware there are no words which can help, Nat continues to card her fingers through his hair. With her other hand she reaches over and rests it on his forearm, her thumb moving in gentle strokes. She goes so far as to press a kiss to the crown of his head. She all but curls herself against him, bending a leg up and behind him so that he may as well be in her lap, and she rocks the two of them back and forth ever-so-lightly.
Eventually – with trembling shoulders - he begins to will himself into calming down.
“I’m sorry.” He sniffs, pulling his head off her.
“Don’t be.” She tells him, chasing his face with her hand as he tries to straighten his posture and compose himself, and so she unfurls her leg and rights herself as well.
Still, she lays her hand on his cheek. It feels strange under her fingers now without his beard. She strokes her thumb over his skin, getting used to the new texture. It’s damp from his tears, and for a moment Nat envisions herself leaning closer and kissing that moisture away. The heat of his skin, brought on by the tears. She wonders what he might think if she did that; if she crossed that threshold here at the compound.
She sighs and chases that thought away. She settles for bringing her other hand up so that she can frame his face properly. She wipes his tears away with her thumbs and her forefingers, and in response he breathes evenly for the first time since he came in here.
He closes his eyes and leans forward until his head rests against hers. Nat doesn’t dare breath or move too sharply. She is careful to follow his lead and not step an inch further. She closes her eyes against much like him, and moves one hand to scratch lightly at the base of his scalp.
“It’s hitting you?” She asks, though she knows the answer.
“I think so.” He confesses in a whisper. “Worse than I thought it would.”
She opens her eyes, and finds his cast down in sadness.
“How so?”
He shutters at her question, and so she buries her fingers deeper into his hair. He drags his head up as so to look at her properly, and Nat finds herself looking into two walls of glassy tears. She suddenly finds it impossible to ignore the burning behind her own eyes, but she does it anyway. As for him, she moves her thumb to brush away the tears threatening to spill from his eyes and back onto his cheeks.
This time, however, he intercepts her hand.
His hand is much larger than hers. It seems impossible he is so gentle as he intertwines their fingers and guides their joined hands to rest in his lap.
“I thought I’d be sad.” He murmurs his confession. “And I am. But, I didn’t think I would be this angry.”
Nat quirks her eyebrow; both at his words, as well as the furious tremor in his voice.
“At Thanos?” She asks, even if she knows it’s the wrong answer. Angry is the weakest of words for how they are all feeling towards Thanos. Better options would be furious, livid, homicidal… the list could go on and on.
But it’s the best guess she has. Even in the darkest parts of her mind, she can’t imagine he means he is angry at her. For all the scenarios in which losing their baby could have been either her fault or the fault of her past, this isn’t one of them. This is - in fact - the one scenario she can come up with in which she is in no way the reason the baby is gone. They couldn’t beat Thanos, and that isn’t on any one of them alone. He was the one who snapped his fingers and destroyed everything. They threw everything they had at him and then some. The fact that it wasn’t enough and what their failure took from them isn’t you can blame on only one person.
“No.” Steve says, swallowing thickly. “Tony.”
In an instant, he’s pulled away from her. The wild look he’d entered with is back in his eyes, and as he rises to his feet Nat allows him the space to go. Her hand falls from his hair, and her other one detangles from his fingers as he moves to lean against her desk.
For a moment, he just stands there. He keeps his eyes trained on her cream-colored area rug. He has his arms crossed and tension is practically wafting off his shoulders, and she can easily hear the unsteady, slowly drawn breathes coming from his lips.
Nat scoots a hair closer to the edge of the mattress, but otherwise she remains where she is. She listens carefully for a change in his breathing; a sign that he may need her to help him compose himself before he is ready to explain his anger any further.
“I know we all lost different people.” He very slowly manages to say. “And I know that kid was important to Tony. And I’m sorry he was one of the ones we lost.”
He looks up at her then. It’s like he needs her to see the earnestness he feels before he can say anything more; like it’s a warning he is about to contradict it all.
She nods, and he breathes out a deep breath.
“But Tony got to come back here tonight.” He says softly. “To Pepper still here, and their baby still here.”
It’s quiet; deadly so. What is she supposed to say to that?
“It isn’t like he knows.” She manages around a lump which she can feel forming in her throat.
“I know.” Steve agrees, “And don’t worry, I’m not going to tell them.”
It should make her feel better, but instead Nat’s shoulders and heart sink as she realizes she hadn’t considered until now that he might say anything, to anyone.
She told Bruce about the pregnancy because she didn’t have any other choice. She had needed to confirm the loss more urgently than she’d needed to confirm its existence in the first place, before her mind could creep to fears of sepsis and drive her insane. Besides, she told Bruce the details of her damaged past years ago. She didn’t think that continuing on as normal after the fact of asking for his help would be an issue.
She was wrong.
Ever since her ultrasound, Bruce looks at her in much the same way Steve does; like he is just waiting for her to fall apart.
His eyes linger on her with this sorrowful gleam every time she walks into a room. He does it to Steve too. Then, to make matters worse, he looks at the two of them together like they are an equation that he can’t solve. He doesn’t know what their history is, only that they have one, and it is infuriating her more and more every day. It feels like it is only a matter of time before someone else notices and starts asking questions.
Most days, she wonders who and when it will be, and how much time she has before the rest of the team learns exactly how broken she is.
“Do you want to say something?” She asks, the lump in her throat that much harder now to speak through. She never considered Steve might tell someone; that it might help him to have someone else who knows what she and him lost.
How is she supposed to stand in his way is that’s what he needs?
She can’t describe how big a relief it is when he shakes his head.
“No.” He says, “You didn’t tell Pepper, and you’re right; there’s no point in making them feel guilty.”
She nods in agreement, though she feels like that wasn’t exactly an answer, and the relief she is feeling starts to fade.
“I’m sorry.” Steve says through a sigh, cutting off her train of thought as he scrubs a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean to dump this on you. How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.” She says, furrowing her brow, if only because she thought they already talked about how she is handling Pepper’s pregnancy.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” She answers, maybe a touch more forcefully than what is necessary, but in her defense, they have had this conversation before. More than once. “Why?
He frowns, his teeth grit like he is debating whether or not he really wants to pick this battle.
“It hasn’t hit you yet?”
Evidently he does.
With a sigh Nat gets to her feet. There is a part of her which wants to reach out and wrap her arms up and around his shoulders again. She would really love to just hug him, and promise him that no, it hasn’t hit her the way it’s hit him, and it never will. But that’s ok, and if he needs to fall apart some more, then go on ahead. She can handle that.
Another part of her thinks it might be better to settle for taking his hand and promising him all that. But, then it would be all too easy to intertwine their fingers, and that – right now – feels like it’s crossing a line into something which the two of them really are not.
In the end, she settles for leaning beside him; her back against the desk, and her arms crossed in a mirror of his posture.
“I was never supposed to have a baby.” She reminds him, “Even when I was kid, I knew what was waiting for me.”
“Nat-” He says her name with so much heartache, she can’t stand it.
“Please let me finish.”
He swallows, and nods for her to continues.
“I know it was real.” She says, through a sigh. “But it wasn’t supposed to be. I hadn’t adjusted to that yet.”
“I understand that.”
“I don’t think you do.”
The words are out before she can really think them through, and Steve is looking at her with eyes so hurt, all she wants to do is splutter her way through an apology and forget this whole part of the conversation ever happened.
But, she never has been good at sorry.
“It’s getting late.” Steve finally says, after what feels like hours of the two of them standing there, those five words hanging in the air. “I should go.”
She doesn’t say anything, apart from an exchange of murmured goodnights as he leaves, and it’s only after he’s gone that the first of her tears finally slips past her lashes.