Preface: Most of you have likely noticed that it's been rather longer than normal between Part 8 and Part 9. The delay can be directly attributed to my "real life"; I carry an academic & extracurricular schedule which can, at best, be characterized as heavier-than-average. As a result, I'm doing the grown-up thing and taking kijikun up on her offer to go back to soloing the fic (I signed on initially as a beta, back in the day, and got sucked into a more active role). Thus, as of tonight, I'm officially off the project. It was fun while it lasted, and I hope you've all enjoyed the ride this far. Thanks for all the lovely FB you've left in the last few months ^_^
~ Miriel

Title: All That Remains (9/?)
Previous Parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
Authors: kijikun & miriel
Rating: PG-13 (NC-17 Overall)
Pairing: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Warnings: Spoilers through "Fallen Son", references to an institutionalized childhood
Author's Notes: Marvel Time is always kind of flexible, so we're setting this somewhere in the first half of 2008. Secret Invasion does not exist in our universe. Nope, never happened. Oh, and I think this is a new record for ATR - over 5,000 words in this part. As always, con-crit welcome.

Summary: Things would have been easier if I could have hated you.

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"I'm listening..."

Steve had the decency to look, well, almost ashamed. "Tony, I…"

"You want me to start? Then we start with what is not open for debate. Because that does not, ever, happen in front of her again." Tony made a conscious effort to unclench his jaw. He was only partially successful. "Now, I don't care if you hate me, or you think I'm on some kind of evil maniacal power trip, but you will not take what little progress I've managed to make with her and throw it out the window just so that you can point out how everything is my fault. She doesn't deserve that." There was no need to point out that he did deserve it; they both knew he did, and Tony believed in picking his battles.

"Peter never would have registered if you hadn't encouraged him," Steve pointed out, determined to cling to the original topic even if it would just make things worse. It was like picking at a scab, and he'd never been one to let things go - part of him wasn't sure he was capable of it, although that was something he didn't like to dwell on. That would make his actions beyond his own control, and he couldn't - wouldn't - accept that.

"Do you think I don't know that?" Tony stood, running a hand through his hair and pacing to the closest wall and back before collecting himself enough to continue. "What do you want to hear, that it's my fault? Well, it is. Everything that has gone wrong since the mansion burned down is my fault. I've got access to every major computer network on the planet, and enough strategic background that of course I knew how everything would play out. In detail. And I didn't stop any of it, so that makes it my fault. What happened to Peter's family, registration, the cape-killers - all of it."

An expression flickered over Steve's face, almost too quickly for Tony to process. There was pain, and anger, and something else that Tony couldn't bring himself to identify. Then Steve closed his eyes, and it was gone. "Then how could you not know that it wasn't me you buried?"

"Because you were dead." Tony kept his voice steady through force of will, but it was a challenge. "I saw your body, the wounds - even you couldn't survive that." He swallowed hard. "Shouldn't have been able to survive that." He didn't want to talk about this, didn't even want to think about it. Because then he had to consider if it was really Steve he was talking to, and he couldn't go through that again.

"Well, I did." There was anger in Steve's voice, strong enough to convince Tony that they might have another fight coming - a real fight, not the tiffs they'd been dancing in and out of since Steve had shown up. The thought made Tony sick, and he was about to end it, cut it off, do something to keep the painful words from running wild, but Steve beat him to it. The former icon's shoulders slumped, his weight resting against the table as if he were unable to carry it himself. "I... I needed you. I didn't know who I was, where I had come from, and even after I did, I... Why didn't you know?"

Tony winced at the plaintive note in Steve's voice, and looked away. His gaze settled on Maria's empty chair. "I didn't even know about Maria until someone decided to use her as leverage against me, never mind the complex where she was being held. I should have known." Tony closed his eyes again, reflexively checking on Maria through Extremis. She was sitting on her bed with her knees pulled up to her chest and her face hidden. "I should have known." He wasn't even sure if he was talking about Maria or Steve. Wasn't sure it mattered.

"I don't hate you."

Tony opened his eyes, and found Steve a lot closer than he had been. "How can you say that?"

Steve raised a hand, and gently forced Tony to meet his gaze. A small voice in the back of Tony's mind asked when he'd fallen asleep, because that was the only way they had ended up at this hesitant, nervous stage again, instead of ripping each other's throats out. That kind of change never happened this quickly, this cheaply.

"Things would have been easier if I could have hated you," Steve admitted. "Even when I tried, and there were days that I did try, I could never hate you."

"I didn't mean for Peter to get hurt. I wanted to protect him, I thought it would be better for him to be on the inside - the winning side. Safer for him." Tony whispered.

"I know. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought him up." Steve sighed, and Tony had a flash of fictional 1950's domesticity with Steve's next words. "I didn't mean to ruin dinner."

Tony leaned into Steve's gentle caress, he couldn't help himself. But it only lasted a moment, and he forced his mind to more important things, like the look on Maria's face. Some things sweet-talking didn't cancel out, no matter how much he might want it to. "She was happy, excited…She's getting better, Steve, but it's still so rare. She deserves every bit of good that she can get."

"I know, and I am sorry. I don't know what I was thinking." He dropped his hand, letting it return to its former position resting on the table. "I'm not sure I was thinking."

"Tell her that." Tony straightened, and after a moment he settled for leaning his hip against the table, not bothering to suppress a sigh as he rubbed a hand over his face. "She probably thinks she's in trouble. I should go talk to her."

Steve stood, and placed a restraining hand on Tony's shoulder. "Look, can I... Can I talk to her first, apologize to her?"

Tony realized that his skepticism must not have been as well hidden as he'd thought, because Steve's own expression gained another degree of contrition.

"I do know better, Tony. I just, I don't even..." Steve paused, taking a deep breath to gather his thoughts. "Ever since I woke up in the river, even after I started getting my memories back, it's like there's this piece of me that doesn't fit. It rubs, and it grates, and it never quite settles. It's been doing unfortunate things to my temper. I should never have lost control of it, not around a child. It won't happen again."

Tony eyed Steve carefully, looking him over and studying his body language. That wasn't quite the kind of revelation that made him want to put Steve in the same room with Maria unsupervised, but despite the admission, Tony still trusted him not to hurt the girl. There was also the chance that this would be good for Maria. If she heard that this wasn't her fault from someone new, not himself or Jarvis, there was the chance she'd believe it. Or at least consider the possibility. Having reached a decision, he spoke quietly, letting the edge to his voice make his point for him. "All right, you can talk to her first. Just... be careful with her."

Steve nodded, and left without further comment.

* * *

Steve opened the door to Maria's room and hesitated just inside the threshold. Maria was huddled on the bed, her back to the corner. Though she didn't acknowledge him, Steve could tell that she knew he was there. After a moment of consideration, he knocked lightly against the door frame. "Maria? May I come in?"

She looked up when he spoke, muscles visibly tense but face impossibly blank. The behavior was familiar, in a depressing way, and brought back memories he hadn't remembered having, of orphanages cobbled together for children displaced by the war. Always too many bodies, and never enough to go around, the similarity was in the eyes and the tension of her limbs, though she seemed to shake said tension off as she noted his scrutiny. She swallowed visibly, and then seemed to unfold, straightening until she was sitting on the edge of the bed and staring at him as though at attention. It was almost painful to watch how hard she was trying to act like nothing was wrong. "Yes, sir."

Steve wanted to wince at the form of address, even though it wasn't the first time she'd used it. Now that he had started to understand where she'd been before entering Tony's care, the formality made him twitch. Keeping his movements slow and predictable, Steve carefully crossed the room to stand next to her bed. "Can I sit down?"

She blinked, and he caught a glimpse of confusion before her blank expression solidified again and she nodded, silently scooting toward the head of the bed to make room.

He took the offered seat, and decided to address the matter head-on. "I wanted you to know that you're not in trouble."

"Tony was angry," Maria didn't meet his eyes, staring instead at the wall across from them.

After a moment of consideration, Steve settled a gentle hand on her shoulder. "He's not angry with you. He was angry at me." He wished he could take back the events of the evening, restarting from Tony's arrival and keeping his temper in check. Watching Tony interact with Maria, remembering how Tony had once been with Peter before throwing him to the wolves, it had hurt. He'd wanted to remind Tony of how much Peter's loss had hurt, and for a moment he'd allowed himself to forget that Tony wasn't the only one there. It wasn't a mistake he would repeat. Maria wasn't Peter; she didn't have the ability to brush off the occasional spat of infighting that had been part and parcel with life in the Avengers, and she certainly didn't deserve to be the cause of such a confrontation.

He realized that Maria had stopped staring at the wall, and was now studying him curiously. "Why was he angry?"

"It's complicated - difficult to explain. I said some things, things that hurt him. And he was angry that you had to see us fighting." Steve frowned, and tried to decide if he was helping matters or merely confusing her further. "I'm sorry that I ruined dinner for you."

It was Maria's turn to frown. "Do you intend to injure Tony?"

"No, I would never-" Steve cut himself off, memories returning unbidden. "I don't want to hurt Tony."

"If you try, I will stop you." Maria voice was surprisingly firm, and the conviction in her eyes was far more grown-up than it should have been. The way her chin jutted out was familiar, and it took Steve a moment to realize that she looked disconcertingly like Bucky had, back when he'd been a child-soldier who still remembered being a child.

Steve shifted, and very carefully placed his free hand on her other shoulder and meeting her eyes. "I can't promise that I won't hurt him, Maria. But I promise that I won't do it by design."

She considered his words for a long moment before she nodded her approval. "That is acceptable."

"Good," Steve told her. He released her shoulders, bracing his hands on the bed as he moved to stand, but paused when she placed a tentative hand on his arm.

"Who is Peter?"

Steve laughed softly, pleased to find at least one consistency of childhood still belonged to her. Children always remembered the things you wished they'd forget. "Peter is Peter Parker. Sometimes, people call him Spider-man."

"You mean Franklin's Spider-man?" Maria asked, her eyes wider than he'd seen them.

"Franklin's-" Steve shook his head and laughed more freely. It shouldn't be a surprise that Maria had run into Reed's son; if there was anyone Tony was likely to be seeing socially, Reed was near the top of the list, and the only one who had a child anywhere near the right age, unless one counted Charles. Steve couldn't see Tony bothering with inter-dimensional travel just to organize a play-date, at least not with everything else that had been going on. "Peter's wife might disagree with him being 'Franklin's' but yes, that Spider-man."

"And he's a friend of yours? And Tony's?"

Steve hesitated at that. He could still count Peter as a friend, but could Tony? Did Tony? "Well..."

"Yes, Peter is one of our friends," Tony interrupted, lounging casually in the doorway. Steve fought down the urge to wince, feeling as though he'd been caught with his hand in some unknown cookie jar.

To his surprise, Tony didn't look upset, so much as, well, it was hard to tell just what was going on behind Tony's eyes at the moment. Aware that Maria was glancing back and forth between them as though they were the stars in some cosmic tennis tournament, Steve sighed and patted her shoulder gently before standing. "Remember what I told you, okay?" He leaned over, carefully brushing Maria's hair away from her face. "He wasn't mad at you."

Maria nodded, and he straightened before walking to the doorway. "I'm going to watch some TV, find me when you're done. " He nodded to Tony, and then shot a final glance back at the girl fidgeting on her bed. "Goodnight, Maria."

"Goodnight, Steve."

* * *

"I'm sorry about dinner, Maria," Tony said, sitting down beside her on the bed.

She nodded as if she'd expected him to say that, and it was possible that she had. It had been harder than he'd care to admit, but Tony had refrained from eavesdropping on her conversation with Steve. "Steve said that, too."

Tony shifted, and reached up to undo the end of her braid, setting the hair tie on her nightstand. "What else did he say?"

Maria pressed her lips together for a moment, as if contemplating how much to tell him. He focused his attention on untangling her braid, giving her the time she seemed to need to gather her thoughts. The braid was a new thing, something she'd started wearing now that her hair was long enough to get into her eyes, and he had to admit that Jarvis was demonstrating talents Tony had never realized the butler possessed. "That you weren't mad at me."

"I'm not," Tony assured her, finger-combing the hair back from her face now that it was free. "Anything that happens between me and Steve has nothing to do with you. I want to make sure that you understand that. Do you?"

She nodded, and looked up at him for a brief moment before settling her gaze on a poster of the launch of the shuttle Discovery that had taken up residence on the far wall. When she spoke, her voice had slipped back into what he privately called her 'hesitant-mode'. "Tony, can we...are we...will you look over my draft tonight?"

Tony relaxed at the request, and dropped his hand to her shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "Of course I will. I said we would, didn't I?" He patted her shoulder affectionately before getting to his feet. "Let's take a look at it right now. Sound good, genius?"

* * *

"I'm going to go watch some TV?" Tony parroted at Steve as he entered the living room, tone justifiably incredulous since Steve was sitting in the living room with the television dark, flipping through an issue of Popular Mechanics.

Steve shrugged, not bothering to look up. "There was nothing worth watching, and I've missed too much of Grey's Anatomy to tune back in now."

"I'll buy you the DVD set when the season ends." Steve didn't respond, and Tony let the silence settle as he studied the former icon. Steve was making a valiant effort to act interested in an article that hadn't even been able to hold Tony's attention when the magazine had arrived a week earlier. After a long moment of thought, Tony decided to address the issue head-on. There was nothing else for it, and it would only get harder as time wore on. "She comes first."

Steve looked up at that, expression somewhere between confused and angry. Under other circumstances, Tony would have called it cute. "I wouldn't expect otherwise. " Steve paused, looking away as he very carefully placed the magazine on one of the coffee tables. When he spoke, it was directed toward the box of Kleenex, and it wasn't a question. "She wasn't just a lab experiment, was she? She was part of a weapons project."

Even though Steve still hadn't looked up, Tony felt the need to look away himself, hands curling unconsciously into fists as he forced himself to confirm Steve's suspicions. "Yes."

Steve looked up, and Tony could feel his gaze as it settled on him. "She reminds me of Bucky at times."

Tony bit down on the hysterical laughter that was threatening to emerge, preying on his already frayed control. He swallowed hard, and then decided that avoidance was a perfectly valid approach in this particular circumstance. "I have some things to do in the lab. If Maria needs me, she'll know where to find me."

Tony was halfway out of the room before Steve spoke again. "How is Bucky?"

Tony paused, but didn't bother to look back. "He's coping. What did you expect? He was asked to take up a mantle he doesn't feel worthy of, one that I'd bet good money he wants nothing to do with at this point, and he thinks the man he viewed as a brother is dead." Tony felt bad about the sharpness of his voice, but Steve had asked, and Tony had been dealing with Bucky's bitterness ever since Steve had "died". He was allowed to be frustrated. "Look, I didn't want to give him the shield, but you asked. I couldn't say no to your last request." Tony didn't bother to wait for Steve's inevitable apology, he just walked away.

* * *

Tony woke with his face pressed against the worktable and someone shaking his shoulder. He groaned, blinking his eyes and trying to make sense of the bright blue blur in front of him. There was a moment of disorientation as his mind scrabbled about for anything resembling reality.

He'd had too many dreams like this while Steve was dead to trust blindly.

"Sleeping like that can't be good for your neck," Steve said, his voice carrying just the right hint of affectionate frustration. "Come to bed. Whatever you're working on will still be there in a few hours."

Tony sat up, wincing as his neck twinged and reminded him that yes, he was awake, and yes, he was not eighteen, no matter what Extremis might be able to do with his body. He groaned when he felt all-too-familiar fingers begin to rub away the tension coiled at the back of his neck. After a moment, he gave into temptation and leaned back into the touch. "I wasn't sleeping."

"Well, I know you weren't resting your eyes," Steve chuckled, the sound warm and rich as he leaned over to press a kiss to the base of Tony's throat.

"I could have been," Tony protested.

Steve's hands moved from his neck, down over his chest. His touch, though light, grazed over bruises that hadn't yet healed. Tony closed his eyes, taking a moment to suppress the pain and hoping that Steve hadn't noticed. He hadn't wanted to mention the afternoon's encounter with the villain du jour.

"You were drooling."

Tony smiled at that, and allowed Steve to pull him to his feet without protest. "So you always say, but you've yet to convince me of it."

"It's always true," Steve murmured, shifting so that they were facing each other before leaning in to trail his lips along the edge of Tony's jaw.

Tony let himself lean into the touch, trying to remember why this was a bad idea even as his mind pointed out that Steve had very predictable ulterior motives. He wanted Tony to sleep somewhere that wasn't the lab, because he didn't think Tony slept well surrounded by machinery at a desk. Tony spared half a moment to wonder if he could convince Steve to compromise on the cot in the corner, but there was really no point. Steve might have gotten better over the years, but compromise was still a conditional portion of his vocabulary as opposed to a fond acquaintance. "I don't drool, and this isn't going to work."

"What's not going to work?" Steve's hand settled at Tony's waist, sliding under the hem of his undershirt and placing just enough pressure at just the right spot to make Tony seriously reconsider his intent to argue.

"Trying to….ah...distract me," Tony struggled to force the words out as Steve continued to stroke the skin of his waist just so.

Tony could feel Steve's grin where it pressed against the skin where his shoulder met his neck. "But the real question is, are you distracted?" Steve asked, voice suspiciously innocent for someone who was currently making a concerted effort to give Tony a hickey that Extremis wouldn't be able to undo before the morning.

Tony thought about what he should do, should say. He was the adult here - he had to be, because he couldn't count on Steve to know what the right thing was right now, and sometimes Steve had to be saved from himself. They couldn't fool themselves into thinking it was this easy, because someone would get hurt. Someone - Maria - had already been hurt, and he couldn't let that happen again. If he let this go, just fell over that oh-so-tempting cliff, he knew where they'd end up in the long run. He couldn't risk that. But the sad truth was, he'd never been very good at denying himself the things he really wanted. "Maybe…"

"Then I guess I need to try harder, don't I?" Steve's voice was soft and husky, barely audible as he pressed a kiss to the skin just below Tony's ear. When Tony shivered and let out a breathless moan, Steve knew that the battle was won, and he pulled far enough away to shift his attention to Tony's mouth. It might not be fighting fair, but if Tony wasn't willing to take care of himself, Steve would take matters into his own hands. He cared too much not to.

Giving up the fight as lost, at least for one night, and promising his sense of self-control that they'd be having a long and detailed discussion in the morning, Tony allowed himself to sink into Steve's kiss. Every time he tried to think about what they were doing, he knew it was a bad idea, but just in that moment, he could convince himself that he didn't care. Reaching up, he fisted a hand in Steve's hair and deepened the kiss. If he was in, he might as well be all in. Just for a few moments.

By the time Steve pushed Tony up against the nearest wall, he'd managed to get Tony out of his oil-stained undershirt. The cool concrete was a welcome counterpoint to the heat of Steve's skin, and Tony let his eyes fall shut as he ceded the last of his control to Steve. It had been far too long since Tony had been able to surrender without worry of the consequences, even if the rest of the world was still buzzing away on the far side of Extremis and the consequences would still be there in the morning.

"Oh my God! Tony, what have you done?!" Carol's voice cut through Tony's moment of blissful escape, its tone sharp and surprisingly piercing. It took Tony a moment - exactly as long as it took Steve to pull away and turn towards the source of the interruption - to realize that he'd actually heard Carol's voice.

His eyes snapped open, only to find Carol standing in the doorway of the lab. Fuck. "Fuck." He didn't bother to restrain the sentiment, because really, it wasn't like he was going to make things worse at this point, and it seemed fitting. "Carol-"

Steve looked as if he wanted to crawl down the darkest hole he could find and never come back out, and Tony didn't think it had anything to do with Carol walking in on a potentially embarrassing situation. Though, if Tony was honest, that probably wasn't helping things. Tony would bet good money, and possibly one of his less-successful nano-tech subsidiaries, that Ms. Marvel had never, ever, wanted to see Captain America and Iron Man just this side of in flagrante delicto.

"Don't 'Carol' me, Tony! First you and Reed do that thing with Thor, and now this?" Carol sounded upset, which made sense, but there was something in her tone that didn't fit the situation. She kept shooting Steve the kind of looks that she normally reserved for Nick Fury when she was sure if he was really himself, or if she was just talking to an LMD. "I thought you were handling things better, Tony. I thought-"

"Carol, could you wait for just a minute before you jump to conclusions?" Tony sighed, and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, wondering where Steve had tossed his undershirt. Even though he knew that the scars were long gone, he still wasn't comfortable with his chest exposed; old habits died hard. "I know this looks bad, but-"

Carol glared at him, stalking over and poking his woefully over-exposed chest with her finger once she'd reached him. "But nothing, Tony. How could you do this to Steve's memory?" She stared at him for a long moment, before letting her finger fall and turning away. "I know you miss him, but this?" She waved a hand towards Steve, voice slipping into sadness from its initial anger.

Tony looked over at Steve, praying that he would spontaneously demonstrate a heretofore unknown gift for telepathy and understand that Tony needed him to say something. Unfortunately, Steve proved true to form and was giving every impression of being fascinated by the stained concrete at his feet. Tony shot him a glare for good measure before returning his attention to Carol. "This isn't what you think it is, Carol."

Carol put a hand to her forehead, closing her eyes for a moment as though steeling herself. When she opened them, she met his gaze steadily, her voice hesitant. "Tony, I...Maybe I should have asked this earlier, I don't know. It's been hard for all of us. Maybe I should have been around more, especially after I found out about Maria, but-"

Tony didn't flinch, but he knew where she was going with this. He couldn't even blame her, because she had every right to expect the worst from him. That didn't make the question any easier to hear, even if it was easy enough to answer.

"Tony, have you been drinking?" Carol's voice was soft, as was the hand on his arm.

"No, Carol. I have not been drinking. I can't, that's not somewhere I can go again. Ever. If I started again, I'd never stop, and I can't do that. Won't do that." He leaned against the wall, and wondered if he'd ever really woken up. This would certainly fit the bill for a nightmare, even if it was comparatively low-key. Maybe he was still asleep - maybe he'd been dreaming ever since Carol had woken him the last time he'd dreamt of Steve in the workshop, was it really only a few weeks ago? At least there was some kind of a pattern to it. "This, this is really Steve, Carol. He's not an LMD, not a an android, not a clone. He's real."

Carol's expression darkened, horror and pity both dancing in the shadows of her eyes. "Tony, I...Steve is dead."

"No, I'm not," Steve finally spoke, and Tony could have kissed him. Would have, if Carol hadn't been standing right there and looking more than a little disturbed. Steve was leaning against one of the lab tables, arms crossed. "I woke up in the Hudson about a month ago. At the time, I had no memory of, well, anything. It took a while for things to start coming back, and, well..." In an uncharacteristic display of nervousness, Steve ran a hand through his hair, smoothing down the mussed strands where Tony's fingers had been just moments before.

Carol looked back and forth between the two of them, expression slowly turning to one of cautious disbelief. "Steve?"

He nodded, shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot as if unsure what to do now that the secret was out. "It's really me, Carol."

Tony closed his eyes, blocking out the soap opera that was attempting to coalesce in the middle of his workspace. It didn't actually help, but then he'd known it wouldn't when he made the attempt. "Much as I'm thrilled that you don't think I'm crazy - and believe me, I am thrilled - I'm also absolutely freezing. So we are going to move this conversation upstairs, where I can get a shirt, and you two can prove that Steve is walking and talking under his own power."

~ Part 10</> ~