TONY STARK'S harsh breathing tore through the night, ripping apart the silent fabric the whole compound was coated with. From the bedroom, the seams creaked uneasily, and a shaky gasp put an end to the fragile hours of calm the man had sought in his sleep. You could have saved us, is what the voice said before he awoke with cold trembling hands and the soaked cloth of his t-shirt unpleasantly sticking to his back. Tony's convulsive panting filled the vacant space of the room, anxiety battling its way through his spasmodic chest and tense muscles. Air so thin it couldn't make it past his closed up throat.

The man rolled to the nearest side of the bed, feebly trying to raise himself up with the elbows once he had managed to take in several gulps of oxygen. "Jarvis, light," he managed to croak to chase away the spectre from his nightmare. He saw them again, the dead bodies of his teammates. He felt Steve Rogers' rough hands grasping his wrist, telling him he could've — no, Tony knew he should've — done more. Blinking a few times to adapt to the warm light the room lit up with, the man stared at the ceiling while trying to take steady breaths in. As much as he had fought against it, one thought still had a hold of his mind, trapped inside the loneliness of the night and his restless dreams. We all need family. The Avengers was yours, maybe more so than mine.

So Tony called. Perhaps because the Avengers were, indeed, his family and it was slowly killing him to lose another person he cared about. Or perhaps because he wouldn't have been able to find peace until he'd have thrown the hurt away, collected his scattered spiteful words, the pulsing pieces of his broken heart of steel, and handed them to Steve Rogers, watching them cut his skin from their sharpness. For once, he hadn't worked out the math in advance. He merely stood in the half-darkness of the room, the old phone pressed against his ear while pride was breaking inside his ribcage, and said: "come".

He came.

Steve came as soon as Tony's voice landed on their wound and unravelled the stitches. And now he was standing at the door of the place he once called home thinking when the hell did it all blow up. Tony was the one to open. No technology, no Jarvis involved. Tony let him in without a word, and Steve followed him through the corridors he had come to know so well. They entered the living room, lights flicking on as soon as they came in. Stark sat on the couch, darting his tired gaze at his ex-partner; the last time he had done so, the Captain had turned his back on him, giving a shoulder to rest on to the assassin of his family instead. 

"I trusted you, Rogers." He spoke first, the sight of the Captain making sore memories spring back up. He could feel the arc-reactor of his armour flicker as the other man relentlessly smashed it with the Shield his father had made; his father, who was killed by Steve's best friend, whom he chose over Tony, whom he walked away with.

"My father, he trusted you too" the brunette man spat. "You know, he praised you. He used to say you were a true hero, that I should be like you." Raging words bumped into each other in Tony's mouth. He wanted to hurt Steve, hurt him the way he had been hurt, the way he had been let down and abandoned. "Like you... A liar... No one should ever wish to be like you, traitor. Do you know how it feels, huh?" The man raised his voice, growing stronger, all the feelings he had bottled up bursting open. "To watch your family die, your friends turn your back on you? Do you know how it feels to be blamed, to feel so damn guilty you can't sleep? Do you, Rogers?" At that point Tony had got up again, pressing his index finger against Steve's chest, looking him in the eyes in such a way that the emotions going on rampage inside his iris screamed.

"Tony..." Steve's furrowed eyebrows revealed the tiny slit carved on his forehead, and there was sadness. A lot of sadness. "I'm sorry. As I told you, I thought I was sparing you by not telling you about your parents, when I was only sparing myself. I made a mistake. And there isn't a day, there isn't an hour, where I don't wish things would've been different. Tony, Bucky..." Steve remembered all at once Bucky's scared face. "He was brainwashed by Hydra." He remembered Iron Man's incontrollable punches, his best friend's arm getting blown off. And there was anger, rising from the sadness. "You think I don't know how it feels to be guilty? To spend every single minute thinking why him and not me? Do you know what I had before this?" The Captain was losing grip on his self-control. "Do you know? All I had was Bucky. I wasn't a genius like you, I wasn't strong, I wasn't anything. Just a stupid kid who picked unnecessary fights to prove the entire damn world that he was worth something. And do you know how it feels to watch the only person you ever cared about and who ever cared about you die in front of you? Do you know how it feels to see them again, only to find out that they were tortured and stripped of everything?" Steve abruptly paused, taking an unsteady breath in.

Tony had been slightly taken aback, perturbed by the man's behaviour. He had once thought that the Captain had no dark side, but now this dark side was tied around his neck and he couldn't speak.

"Tony..." The anger on Steve's face unclenched and tumbled down, only for sadness and exhaustion to climb back on. "I'm sorry. I was an idiot, and I do know guilt. I can't think about you without having it devour me from the inside. And I don't want the shield back. As you said, your father made it, and if you think that I betrayed him, keep it."

Tony slowly sat back on the sofa, Steve doing the same on the opposite side. Regret was seated between them. 

"I cared so much, Rogers," Tony finally said. "That's why it hurts. I spent my childhood looking up to you, to this heroic man my father told me about so many times. I really wanted to be like you, Cap. It's not only about the Accords. It's about who you chose, and it wasn't us."

As a matter of fact, Tony had cared since the moment they met. Through their arguments and though the tension between the two leaders had been undeniable, especially during the Avengers mission against Loki in 2012, a profound mutual respect had flourished in the course of their tumultuous relationship. Although Tony's first reaction had been reject, fuelled by a poisonous jealousy due to the fact that his dad had always spoke highly of the Captain but neglected his own child, he had realised that Howard Stark hadn't been wrong. Steve had made Tony believe in the Avengers. Together, he had said even when Tony was to blame for the creation of Ultron. Then, a year later, there he was turning his back on him and the team; the team Tony had finally accepted were his friends, something close to the family he had lost.

However Steve loved the Avengers. He loved them as much as he could, with everything he had left. Natasha had become his best friend, and he couldn't help but see in Tony the best parts of his father. But Tony was also much more than Howard Stark. His sharp intelligence, brilliant abilities and resilience, the selflessness nobody suspected he had in him, made the Captain admire Tony Stark. Steve had tried to fit in, to start from scratch. I never really fit in anywhere — even in the army. But then Bucky Barnes showed up, and Bucky had always been home. Even seventy years later, Steve could never let go of Bucky. Whatever his best friend was going through, the Captain would've been with him, through heaven and hell and 1944 Nazi Germany. He was not leaving him behind again.

"I had lost him." Steve's response broke at the tip of his tongue. Tony hadn't been the only one to scatter grief along the way. "He died before my eyes, and I couldn't catch him. I should've caught him. I couldn't leave him, Tony. He was innocent."

"He killed my parents." Tony whispered in an echo.

"Hydra killed them. They almost killed the three of them."

The brown-haired man remained silent for what felt longer than a mere minute. "But you saved him."

"I hurt you." The Captain's gaze met Tony's, mirroring the sorrow they both shared. "I'm sorry," he apologised sincerely once again, guilt knitting his stomach, sucking up every other ounce of emotion.

"I guess..." Tony swallowed, rubbing his forehead as if to appease his clouded brain. He saw himself hitting Steve again, metal knuckles stained with Bucky's blood. Then Steve was pinning him onto the ground, mercilessly digging through his chest with his vibranium shield. "I'm sorry too." Nothing made sense in the picture. "All I could see was your friend killing my mom and dad, I let my emotions take over me. I killed the Avengers."

"No one did, Tony. We were both wrong," Steve's reassuring statement somehow eased the pain. "But we'll make it through, together. This time, I mean it."

"Well," Tony sighed deeply, allowing himself to unwind slightly. The pain had numbed a little bit, just enough to let the next sentence form and escape his mouth. "You'll need a better phone for a start."

A moved smile crept its way upon Steve's face. "I trust you with that."

— 1677 words