Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The day Tony Stark's wings turn black, the world swallows him whole.

He's 15, in a New York City mansion on winter break from MIT waiting for his parents to call and say they can't make it in time to celebrate again.

He knows his mother means well but he can't help but hate the flawless decorations and perfection of how celebratory the house looks. The scent of fresh panettone and gingerbread dispersed precisely throughout each room.

It constantly makes Tony feel uneasy when he see its, the image of a happy and loving American dream. As fucking if.

It's a Monday or Thursday, but fuck it if he cares. He's happier downing a bottle of Jack Daniel's and messing with signal processing instead of smiling at a fucking holiday party with Stane, stuck up business partners of SI and playboy models who care more about their next exposè on sleeping with a Stark than their wing pattern.

He wakes up to Jarvis knocking on his door, incoherently mumbling into the side of his pillow and the distinct scent of burnt metal and wires. He's barely stumbled to the on suite bathroom to throw up the remainder of his hangover and rinse out the taste of last night's gin and regrets when he sees it.

He wishes he would've listened to that uneasy gut feeling when he woke up.

It's like dropping and watching in horror a glass break in front of you as Tony eyes his wings from top to bottom.

Black. Pure black, the type your see when you close yours eyes for too long underwater or when your blackout for a moment. From the stem to the edges, a velvety darkness encompasses his wings and furthermore, whatever was left of his soul.

The feeling can't be described. It's worse than grief or isolation. It's a manifestation of a breakdown, a panic attack plus someone yanking your heart and all hope out at the same time.

(Even when Obadiah tears the arc reactor out of his chest after Afghanistan, it can't compare it to the pain of that moment.)

He doesn't know in that moment if his soulmate is dead or evil or just a person in the middle of Iowa. But he feels alone. So, so alone. Under his skin is the feeling of dread and self loathing because of course Tony was never going to have a soulmate. It's not like he could ever be loved or worth someone's heart. He's a Stark. He never deserved anything from the world.

He yanks his door out and let's out a half scream, half sob for Jarvis when his knees give out.

The Christmas lights are too bright and the scent of Balkan pine is too much.

He's not dumb despite his father's reiterations that he's useless and should've found his match by now that he'll never have someone who loves him.

No one has black wings. Very few have ever said to have black patterns on their wings. People like Hitler or fucking John Wayne Gacy. People that are the purest form of evil.

He doesn't tell anyone except Jarvis who holds that day as he cries in the house of pristine perfection the day before Christ's birthday.

Tony doesn't believe in God, but he damns anyone and everyone that commanded the force of soulmates.

He only prays for the God to strike him dead later that night after several bottles of tequila and a conversation with Jarvis about his parents being stuck in France that he won't remeber in the morning. It's only when he receives nothing, he realizes that his heart is never to belong to anyone.

He's supposed that's why Stark men are made of iron.

(The day he wakes up to a cave in Afghanistan hooked up to a car battery and his heart ripped out, he thinks he may be wrong.)

Chapter Text

Steve Rogers is too small, too fragile to search the world for his soulmate.

Unlike the no good punks who pick on him in crowded alleys and push him into chipped brick walls for being a small kid. The ones who tell stories 'round the block about combing the ocean, climbing every mountain and scouring each building across the world to find their one and only.

Steve who is susceptible to every illness you've never heard of; whether it's scarlet fever, smallpox or polio, asthma attacks from taking the long way home behind store fronts, or nearly breaking every bone in his body to push his way through the crowds of the subway.

Steve who is too scrawny to get up from being kicked down with his wings out without stumbling or fracturing his stem.

It doesn't stop him from trying, though.

He jogs at a slow pace past Brooklyn Museum, past Osbourne and all the crummy neighborhoods for years before his wings change color. Searching for a sign and for patterns to memorize.

Bucky laughs every time and tells him to wait for the universe to send him a sign.

Bucky's wings are a normal off white color, like the color dingy recruitment posters across New York, with dark navy in the center, shaped like a C.

Bucky says it looks like a butterfly and that he hates them. Steve says their beautiful.

People pick on him for being skinny and short. He gets kicked by idiots that are bigger and broader, with wings that are patterned and stronger.

He still get into fights for sake of the little guy even if his wings are deformed and gangly.

(With his red, white and blue wings after the serum, he still fights for the little guys. He just fights with more power and confidence in his bones)

Steve's wings turn black a week after he turns 13. His Ma sees it first and screams when she gets home just before she heads out for her morning shift.

Steve jumps when she screams and bolts to the only bedroom with a mirror in their dingy apartment. He nearly trips over his own legs and almost bursts into tears.

Black. His scraggly and uncoordinated wings that haven't fallen grown in are darker than the view from the balcony at midnight.

After his Ma calms down, she holds him and looks deep into his eye.

She says in a clear, melodical voice with watery eyes, “I don't know what this means, but your soulmate is out there, honey.”

Steve feels like God is sending him a sign, alright. He feels like an abomination. He tries harder after to be better after they go black. Helps his neighbors for groceries and looks after kids when their parents are bargaining ‘round Wallabout Market.

He's too poor to dye his sinner's mark and his Ma's love is just enough to keep Steve hopeful that someone is hiding as much as he is.

Some days wishes he was dead.

Maybe it's the blind hope that the black that drowns his wings is proof that God needs him to be more true and selfless than anyone. It's why he enlists five times from five different towns.

He wonders if his fate it to be a bad person. No one's heard of black wings and the anxiety makes him stumble over his feet at the realization that someone may never love him.

(When he hears during the war the rumour that Adolf Hitler's wings are black from the edges in, he nearly drops dead and shrivels back into Steve Rogers, the pint-sized kid from Brooklyn. He realizes after, that people admire Captain America because he's the Sentinel of Liberty not a sign of God's disgrace. His wings will never stop him from being America's son.)

Bucky doesn't understand why Steve won't talk about his wings or what the big deal is until he walks in on Steve with them out. He stumbles a little and stares, his eyes too wide and his posture too stiff.

Steve nearly loses his will to love nearly there.

Bucky later holds his arms around Steve's boney shoulders and says, “You're still the same old guy, punk.”

“Jerk,” he replies without any malice and a pounding heartbeat. When he pushes out of Bucky's arms, he sees a brother's love. Stuck together and connected, happily or not.

Steve doesn't show his wings in public after that. It doesn't stop him from being picked on for being gawky.

His Ma says later that the church would use him as proof of the devil. They would shame and hurt him into never loving someone. Stick him on a corner shop behind the glass display or at Ripley's. She would never want Steve to live without love. That's worse than any death, Steve knows.

Before she dies, his Ma tells him that she still loves him and his soulmate will cherish him when he finds him.

Steve knows when he gets enlisted into the war that he won't have that luxury of ever finding them.

(When he crashes into the Artic at the end of the war, he wonders if it would've been worth it to try.)

Chapter Text

Tony never searches high and low for his one and only. He figures by the time his parents die that he's damned anyway.

It doesn't stop him from scavenging for answers.

He travels the world for Stark Industries, hacks into the Pentagon and the FBI's databases to find something. Something that proves he's not alone. If he's a medical anomaly, he cannot be alone

He finds nothing to fill the hollowness in his chest.

Most cases of black wings are nothing but rumors and only TV tropes depict black wings on villains. There was even a racist theme during segregation in the 1960s of interracial couples' wings turning black.

Only Pepper and Rhodey know of his true wings. Rhodey nearly bursts into tears when he finally sees them; after a week of locking himself in his lab, he forgets to dye them and Rhodey bypasses JARVIS' security. Pepper pinches her nose and lets out a shaky breath when after an argument over schedules and his regular appointments for dyeing.

He never gets used the grieving reactions of hopelessness.

Though their love is obvious, it doesn't stop the spiral of his abundant breakage. His ego and image can't compare to the lonely, hopeless nights of drinking and the nameless faces with wings that will never be his soulmate.

Tony debates telling his mother but she dies long before his shame dies.

Stark men are made of iron, he doesn't need someone who will melt his iron heart with the acid that turns his heart so cold and wings so dark.

Tony knows the world would crucify him. Call him a freak. He knows scientist would test him like a lab rat until the sun turns black.

He knows he'd never live down being the damned son of Howard Stark.

Dyeing his wings isn't an aesthetic choice. It's a must. It starts from fear and self consciousness of what people would say. What doctors and research scientists would do.

He upkeeps the standard color of bright gold before Afghanistan; ostentatious and attention seeking, exactly like a son of Howard Stark.

Stane says he really is America's golden boy the first time he sees them.

Maybe he's Icarus, too blinded by his own judgement to notice he's flying straight into the sun, melting his fraud wings of wax.

The older he gets, the more he realize he's probably saving his soulmate by never looking for them.

*****

Tony is not Lucifer. At least he thinks so.

Not that'd he'd care if someone said it because he does not believe in faith or God or whatever the church spews.

But he's not.

(Maybe it's the subconscious blind hope that he'll find his soulmate or just the superego that justifies manufacturing and capitalizing weapons of death.)

The Bible says he must be a Fallen Angel or an archangel if not Lucifer.

Azreal is the angel of death. And though he's the Merchant of Death, it doesn't quite fit Tony. Azreal helps people cope with death. Tony just builds it.

He could be a traitor to society, like Judas, Cassius or Brutus. Building weapons and yanking soulmates from their own without caring and profiting off of agony.

But he's not Lucifer. He does not rule hell.

He can't help but feel eternally damned, regardless.

*****
He wishes his wings would have been rotten from birth in Afghanistan as his dye fades and his feathers fall out.
It would be a guarantee that he truly would be the Merchant of Death if his soulmate is dead.

But when he wakes up attached to car battery without a heart, he realizes he still feels love. If his soulmate is the bane of his existence and his heart was truly meant to never love, why would he be alive?

He decides then and there that his weapons of mass destruction will never take another soulmate away again.

He decides that even if his soulmate rejects him or dies, he won't be the ignition of the End Times. He won't let the symbol of predetermined fate rule him anymore.

When Yinsen asks if he has a soulmate, he responds honestly. Yinsen says, “So you're a man who has everything and nothing”.

He asks Yinsen on the day of escape, feeling like he could die ar any moment, point blank if he's ever heard of black wings.

He nearly faints when Yinsen speaks of the rumor that Captain America had black wings.

In his dying moments, Yinsen strains out, “Don’t waste it. Don't waste your life without your soulmate”.

His metal armor that flies out Gulmira can protect everything except his heart. But it's okay. His heart can handle breaks, the Last Days and a legacy of killers.

Proof of his soulmate just may able to make him a hero over a villain.

*****

(It's only after the Battle of New York he starts to believe that maybe he's not evil.

Saint Michael is said to have been a healing angel and lead the armies to defeat Satan.
More than that, he's said to arise during the time of the end. The Last Days and all that.

If the Last Days are the Battle of New York, and being the archangel was proven by flying a nuke into a wormhole and falling back out, then maybe, just maybe, he can believe it.)

Chapter Text

When he gets pumped full of the super soldier serum and becomes the world's first superhero, his wings turn red, white and blue. Bright red and blue stripes, stark lines vertically on the top half and pure white taking up the other half to the stem. More stubborn, more balanced and stronger than ever, he feels larger than life.

His asthma and fumbling stops, his confidence grows and his selflessness thrives. His patriotism and sentinel tendencies overcomes his desire to find a soulmate

It never stops the feeling of his heart breaking when he sees dames with their boyfriends and husbands embracing and holding onto each other like they can't let go.

He knows his appearance represents strength and freedom, but he feels lonely. No admiration from strangers during the USO tour could ever stop the sinking weight in his stomach

He doesn't truly fit in the army. When his parents and Bucky are dead, he wonders if he was ever meant to belong to someone.

Though his black wings break his heart everyday, the serum pushes the drive that he has hope.

He wonders while fighting in Europe against Nazis and Red Skull's army, if becoming Captain America and saving millions of lives will ever compensate for never finding his soulmate.

He doesn't think of his soulmate after that. He can't afford to. He has a mission and he has orders. He fights not for himself, his soulmate or his country, but the greater peace illuminating over humanity.

(The serum may have enhanced his determination and stubbornness but inflates his will to love. His Ma would be proud, he knows.)

His soul may not belong to someone, but his spirit belongs to liberty and freedom. What should have broken his resolve to carry on in this world proves his sacrifice to love the cruel world that made him unlovable.

Seconds before he crashes his bird into the ice, he wonders if this curse on his back sealed his fate or if he chose this path because of it.

He does choose to sacrifice his life, predetermined fate of wings or not.

He dives into the ice as Steve Rogers, not Captain America; the kid feeling lonely without a soulmate but prideful, never have learned his lessons for fighting for the little guy.

-------
Somewhere beneath the ice for decades, the black of Captain America's wings symbolize Saint Michael, leading the war through hell to salvation.

Chapter Text

The hurricane stops spinning as for a bit when the bits and pieces that are Tony Stark emerge.

When the dust settles, Afghanistan doesn't ruin Tony.

Ruining something refers to a certain animosity; destroying everything and setting it on fire so the pieces can't picked up and strewn back together;
burying the ashes and building an empire on top so no one will give excavation a second thought. Society will chalk it up to being one of the world's greatest unknowns or a sign of a higher power.

So no, Tony concedes, Afghanistan does not ruin him. Now the list that does would be a hell of a memoir and one remembered forgotten night too many.

Not so much a memoir more than a eulogy of how the world burnt a prodigal son into a traumatized shell of a man.

At least his shell gets him to the desert, the military helicarrier and Rhodey. Rhodey, who grasps Tony so tightly, like he's sand slipping through his fingers. Rhodey, who doesn't stop staring at the arc reactor and shrapnel where his sign of humanity should be. Rhodey, whose eyes burn with manic paranoia at Tony's wings.

What ruins Tony until Afghanistan are his wings; they are a sign of no choice, no love and no strength. Maybe he doesn't even have soul. It destroys every rational thought and human instinct for emotion.

Tony wonders if it makes him a psychopath; if all his life he imitates emotion and lacks the real empathy of holding part of someone's soul.

Tony, whose wings are scarred, bloodied and bruised and should be dead.

Though in that moment he knows he should feel like at a breeze that may slip away into oblivion at any moment, he feels renewed.

But he's too young to die after Afghanistan.

(And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. Revelation 9:6)

When Stane goes down, he says through gritted teeth, “You'll never repent enough to replace your soulmate”.

Tony may know that as true as the shrapnel in his body, but he feels he owes the world virtue instead of vice.

The infamy and sting of publically being Iron Man cause more speculation on his ulterior motives. He doubts being the Most Famous Mass-Murderer in the History of America screams superhero.

Maybe, the tabloids speculate, he becomes Iron Man to save himself from Gulmira or maybe to repent for his sins of murder. A hero is what keeps faith in mankind, after all.

But really, Iron Man isn't some grandiose delusion or a form of Noah's Ark. Iron Man is Tony's choice to be more than a warmonger’s legacy and more than a tin man without a heart.

He wants to be more than the black on his back.

Maybe he could choose to be Hercules, hiding in a suit from Medusa, persevering for the greater good, but still in agonizing fear of being turned to a hollowed out, emotionless stone.

When he sees Fury in his Malibu beachside mansion, he chooses not.

*******

Ironically, it's when the Stark Expo epitomises a legacy being blown up that Tony sees it.

The constant salvation. The power to thrive through war, horror and torture.

He sees his choice in the timeline of humanity, clear as his close encounters with death.

Tony's life, has been made of small unseen circumstances and opportunities. Thousands of last minute decisions and high stake events.
Even if everything does not happen for a reason, his life is complete chance.

(He will later chalk it up to probabilities and the butterfly effect if anyone so much as mentions God's plan.)

He has a choice. To impact his reality. To live, actually live, the life he has in front of him or not.

It's only after he almost dies from palladium poisoning, that Tony knows his soulmate is out there.

He promises, in a vow until death does his soul or his soulmate part, to search. His heart survives too much to be afraid of rejection or failure. He believes in Aristophanes’ story in the Symposium as he watches the Expo be blown to kingdom come.

Maybe Zeus saw his complete soul and, out of fear of its strength, split it in half and turned his wings the color of where his heart would be missing.

Maybe he saw Tony's resolution to survive and sent black wings as a sign, not a sin.

Maybe his wings symbolize his prevalence, his wit and fight against the world.

Maybe, he can do the whole soulmate thing one day.

And so, for once, he chooses choice, not destiny.

(In that exact moment, no one catches the beat that Iron Man's arc reactor and Captain America’s heart make.)

(In a way, his wings are not a sign he has forgotten God's grace, but proof he has been in forgotten gods’ graces)

Chapter Text

(He's not Judas, trading his devotion to the world for some pieces of silver. He's not a harbinger of doom or a traitor.

He simply is.)

*******

“I'm sorry,” Tony says after Vanko and nearly dying. “But I'm better off alone.” He's in his lab and staring into oblivion.

“That's bullshit.” Rhodey says furiously, stalking over trying to get a better look at his wings, clipped and gold dye fading like spray paint.

Perhaps Tony looks like a knock off version of the Devil, trying to pass like the forbidden fruit is the garden of Eden.

“Rhodes,” Tony starts, full of anguish and woe. “I've been damned for a while.”

“There is nothing is wrong with you,” Rhodey's voice is strong and decisive, his eyes blazing with something, like pride and love.

“Even if you think you don't have a soul, these,” Rhodey gestures wildly “are proof that you do. Even if you think you can't be loved, these are proof that you can,Tones. You are real. You're not damned and you're not soulless.”

There's no more malice that night. Just hope and tears. Tony feels something in his chest, where palladium was but days from taking him from Pepper and Rhodey. From taking Iron Man.

(He won't be taken anymore, he decides. Afghanistan and Howard did that enough. He won't let the world take his soul, no matter how ill fated it already seems.)

Chapter Text

Steve's wings are stalwart and balanced. They compliment his enhanced build. The serum changes them more than he could've ever imagined.

Steve's hears the color rumors thousands of times all his life. He memorizes them in hopes that he'll wake up from the nightmare that is his wings and finds a blessing from someone. He wishes some nights for physical proof that he could be a martyr instead of a sinner..

The meaning of wing colors is long a mystery to humanity, lost to evolution and religion. There are too many patterns and combinations to know for sure, similar to a fortune teller reading palm lines, but the colors encourage dames and Joe's into their personalities by age 12.

Vivid bright colors usually pair with outgoing personalities. Colors are not known to change for anyone. The general belief is that they represent one’s fate.

He's hears the talk of studies, beyond his skill level, scientists with needles and a human test subjects; theories if colors are by chance or biology and if it is a matter of constants and variables.

But the church sees brighter shades as proof of the resurrection of Christ and white being the purity of youth.

It's like seeing the devil in the mirror every time he opens his eyes and then attempting to forget it.

Steve wonders if God damned him from the start or if he is destined to fall, no matter his efforts. Is he apart of a prophecy or can his faith can be rewritten

Before the serum, his wings are in poor condition. He's only 5’4 and his wings are too short, barely extending in width to his wrists and just to his head. Dry from Brooklyn's weather swings and years of cramped suppression, matted and clumped. They constantly look fractured or broken from desuetude, slumped at strange angles and lopsided from his body weighing too little. His ashen and brittle feathers that fall out at the tremble of his immune system failing. The image resembles a bat being scavenged by rats the times he washes them out with water.

He doesn't let them stretch out more than a few days a month before the serum. After his Ma dies, he moves into a smaller apartment on the southside of Brooklyn Heights where he feels more strait than before.

Money is stringy and he lives frugally. With his list of maladies, he's lucky to make it through the winter with only a broken heater and a broken heart. He can barely afford a cheap bottle of Veno's Cough Cure.

He can't afford to dye his wings like those California dames or even wash them every day. He keeps them retracted and hidden. Out of sight, out of mind, he futilely reasons with himself, wide-eyed as he cries shivering at night, knowing his soulmates brand always burns at the back of his neck.

He worries sometimes he may be the wolf in sheep's clothing, leading the flock astray, his wings solid evidence of a predetermined.

In actuality, it’s he who fights the shame for years, the lamb as a sacrifice, so the lion of Captain America may rise.)
******

After his Ma is buried near Pa, Steve wanders a few times to Mass for guidance. He hears the whispers, slumping his head in the back pews and listening to the sermon on how He is constantly with him.

He sees the way older couples eye the space where his wings should glow. He sees mothers usher their children away from him, like looking at him will contaminate them with sin and illness.

He hears the preacher speak of Brooklyn's changing and the rapid growth of ‘the Jewish invasion” of Crown Heights.

Steve cannot understand how the same men who sneer at folks in their kippas and women in tallits outside synagogues supposedly want to lay down their lives. He wonders if it's a form of proof for some of the soldiers; that they're manly or strong enough; that they've cunning enough to make it back alive; or perhaps that they're scouting the world for the universe to bring them soulmate as the stars align perfectly.

It’s weeks after the Blitz begins. Every paper stand is filled with the New York Times and The Daily News, photos of London in turmoil and distress. Steve's stomach churns at the knowledge that England could turn into gas chambers and a faceless mass grave.

He sees Kristallnacht everytime he walks past small, family-run stores and the local synagogues. He sees small children shoving their yarmulkes on Sundays, passing TVs outside higher end stores.

Steve can’t understand it, the hatred towards a specific kind of people and religion. Steve knows the children being isolated and butchered didn't choose the families they were born into and how they were raised.

He recognizes his privilege as a American and is desperate to make a difference. He knows the American Dream; the equal opportunity to live freely; the hope that makes reality worth living.

He feels somewhere is his orphaned and lonely soul the fervor that he needs to his life to uphold the dream with true loyalty.

Steve knows what it's like to have an identity that's shamed and to exist without choice. His wings almost jump out at the thought.

He knows that Lucifer won't tempt him with the gluttony of hopelessness and burdened wings that scream blasphemy.

Whether his soulmate is dead, alive or a sinner, he knows volunteering to be the lamb of sacrifice instead of waiting to win the honor as the lion is his duty.

-----------

He visits Coney Island once after his Ma dies. Its November of 1940. He’s downtown and is rejected from enlistment for the first time. He's discouraged but he knows this isn't the end. His thoughts scramble to arrange travel to a new city and to try, just fucking try, to be more than the Devil's fallen angel.

The scent of sugary popped corn mocks his stomach that's never quite full and the mist of the beach revitalizes his nostalgia. He sees stand the swooning couples with wings outstretched, mirroring a chrysalis of matching patterns from the side. Joes in uniform stand with an arm wrapped around dames shoulders at concession stands, they resemble two angels, almost illuminating an aura of serenity.

They need not to be worshiped or prayed for, for they carry out the Lord's orders against Satan's presence and wats.

He does not know if God has chosen him to do the same or Satan has cursed him.

It's not the bristle of winter coming and the New York Bay's embrace that day that has Steve shaking that night.

It's also the only day in his life that strangers see his wings.

It's the day the tide changes.

He's been outside on the verge of an asthma attack, avoiding clouds of tobacco and hollering alcoholics in front sketchy bars near Bay Ridge. He ducks his face further into his Pa’s old scarf to avoid any confrontation and any homeless stragglers.

It’s around 1.A.M and he’s just wandering around, his wings restless and relentlessly screaming, trapped.

He's shuffling across the city when he sees a kid, at least 10 years younger than himself, several yards away, cornered by three leeches; they're all a little taller than the poor child in a dim cobblestone alley; they're all huddled behind a smoke store, the boys wings being shoved into a the ground, wings sparked with fire. He's pale and limp, shrinking back at the intensity of slurring pejoratives. Two of the asses are flicking matches towards him.

“A fucking fairy,” the leader boisterously sneers as his gang of merry thieves snickers. The young boy’s face is bloodied and crumpling. “What a cocksucker.”

“Hey!” Steve shouts. All four heads whip quickly to their left to see a shadowy figure. “Why not pick on someone your own size, you sons of bitches?”

God, Steve never learns his fucking lesson.

There's a loud crash as the young boy is slammed to the garbage tin next to him. He's heavily bruising as the seconds tick by and Steve's vaguely aware his ribs are at least fractured when he sees his wings.

The boy has bright, fluorescent blue woven pattern over entire span of his feathers. It's intricate and bold, the opposite of the vacant and terrified look in his eyes, embers and flames ablaze.

What makes it concerning to Steve is the gangs ringleader has the exact same pattern, stretched in every exact crevice, but the same color is more of a migraine inducing blue.

Steve's heart breaks then and there. Even if his soulmate is dead or unholy, Steve's not being tortured by the universe for a tangible attachment to a bully.

The anger and frustration burst through Steve without warning. It's like an electric shock all of a sudden; one second, he's bouncing on the back of his heels, his back lit form small and frail, ready for his fight-or-flight instincts to kick in; the next second, chaos ensues. Everything blurs together in his head, but his wings spread out completely and his posture goes rigid.

Steve can't control it, he dissociatively thinks, through his rage at violence.

The goons stare dumbfounded at Steve's sinister form.

His shadow hits the moonlight so perfectly so it grows intensively behind him as he slowly stalks towards the group.

He looks like the image of a demon.

His wings are menacing and the little luminosity shines black velvet with an almost red-like flesh in the alley lights. They extend up and out into the air, above his head and Steve becomes the truest image of The End Days.

So maybe Steve is the wolf, and maybe he is cursed by the Devil, but he's nothing if not stubborn.

The gang freezes and one of the henchmen start to retreat slowly into the darkness. Their hands are trembling and they shrink back, paranoid with fear.

There's just enough street lamp brightness that his face is barely discernible. His frame is barely discernible as he cautiously steps forward.

When he stops squinting and covering his eyes, a voice say in a bone chilling and aggressive tone, ‘Leave, you sons of bitches,”.

All three scamper away, scrambling and yelling to each other incoherently.

There's no time to follow as Steve rushes and kneels near the child. His wings are burnt at the bottom and the neon blue ashy as Steve pats them a frenzy with his handkerchief. He's bruised and covered in grim, but all things considered, doesn't look to need medical aid, Steve decides.

The boy is incoherently mumbling, teary eyed and crumpled. Steve attempts to help the boy up and he fumbles shakily out, “Are you the Devil?” at Steve's extended wings.

Steve shakes his head and smiles worriedly, “No, son. I just want to help. Where are you from? Let's get you cleaned up.” Steve compresses his wings, lays the boy's arm over his shoulders and drags him as they limp out of the alley.

They stumble into the bar; Steve pays for drinks, applying vodka and bandages to the bottom of his wings and washing the boy’s face clear of pain. Steve checks him for a concussion and makes sure he can adequately walk.

The boy is wincing and dazed, still in shock from the whole ordeal.

He learns the boy's name is George. His father is a baker and he has a younger brother, just 6 years old. Steve feels his heart ache for someone so loved and blessed to be cursed at the same time. The gang’s ringleader is from his school and mocks him everyday, calling him a queer.

“I'm no fag!” George blurts out, panicky. The bartender glares at the two boys at counter. “He can't be mine, it's a crime.”

“It wouldn't matter if you were, son.” Steve calmly tells him, strong and clear, picking ashes off of his feathers. “No one deserves to be attacked for their wings.”

George stared in disbelief and tilts his head. He asks in a naive voice, inquisitive and unfiltered, “It’s the same as your wings! It shows you're an abomination! A sinner!”

Steve breathes out, slightly frustrated, still trying to inspire hope. “We don't choose our soulmate, George. We only follow their mark as guide for our fate. Those punks chose to hurt you, not destiny.”

“You're not Satan.” George says suddenly, smiling proudly. “You're selfless, a saviour. His worst nightmare.”

Whether it's the electricity of him intimidating those punks in the alley or the rush of saving someone, for once he believes that his blind hope may not be so blind.

Steve walks George back home two miles near Midwood and his mother ushers both of them in. She drags George by his ear to their kitchen and shuffles him into a wooden chair.

The mother, Marsha, lights a few candles and speaks in a quiet tone to Steve as she tends to George, attempting to bat her hands away, as Steve eats small pieces of bread. The view of the sky from the window illuminates the eye bags on Steve's face and his furrowed eyebrows.

“We all try to get by”. Marsha smiles at Steve. George is half passed out on their table and looks mischievous, as a 10 year old boy should.

His mother grabs his arm before he leaves and her eyes shine with earnestly and murmurs, “Thank you, dear. God bless you. He may work in mysterious ways, but He brought you as the shepherd to my lamb.”

Steve feels the familiar swell and warmth of love that only family can bring.

As he walks home, he lets out a small prayer, thanking God for bringing him strength.

(No one knows in that moment how Steve Roger's wings are not hexxed with black, but a combination of every color, a balanced euphony of the universes' best qualities.)

(He is not who he feels, King Lear, blinded by ignorance, but Cordelia, the symbol of virtue and mercy in the stark contrast of society's greed)
********

Only Dr. Erskine and Peggy see his wings after that..

Peggy doesn't have the same pity in her eyes as Bucky, when he stays over at his apartment and small parts of his feathers peak through from carefree happiness. She had a burning strength in her face for the future and the war.

Abraham Erskine's shine with wonder and pride the night he comes to Steve with a bottle of liquor and a hope of salvation. There's no room for uncertainty, as he sings praises to his soldier.

“I knew you were special,” he toasts to Steve as the night turns black and the war truly begins.

(Near by, Abraham knows Steve is not Abraham, profiting off blessing and credit. Steve is Issac, the symbol of sacrifice so God may choose to have mercy for human sacrifice, still believing in the will of the Lord.)

*******

Steve should resent God if it is his destiny to sin with greed and envy. But he doesn't because his Ma raised him with love and hope for serendipity.

(Steve is only but the most holy, Job. He is of tested by God and tormented by Satan, suffering calamities and anguish, yet he condemns others as to never curse God; he does not demand but puts his faith in His will. He is man of heroic endurance.)

Chapter Text

--------------

Tony feels lost when the Avengers are pulled together.

He pines for proof of his heart, day by day before New York, desperate and disheartened.

He doesn't know if he's an oddity or an abomination.

They're not a team, exactly, nor working machine in general.

And in front of it all is Tony's worst nightmare.

Captain America, an undying optimist that should be too perfect to prevail in the 21st century. A man who solves wars instead of creating them. A martyr and a saint that flaunts everything Iron Man will never be.

He finds that he truly is the Tin Man, without a heart or an identity, only made of spare parts, always relying on others to fill the void, whether it be Pepper or Rhodey or the Avengers.

He may be the Wizard of Oz, a fraud and a sham with no real magic, disguising his actions as a solution to problems he invents and an Emerald City, a fabled paradise with shiny glamour serving as a distraction.

(Tony never sees it, but he is Dorothy, wanting to go home to his soulmate and making friends along the way, following the yellow brick road of faith, bridging and aiding his friends’ despair with family. He is simply a traveler making a difference in a world that he has no obligation to.)

But war is here, threatening the world that built, broke and rebuilt him.

(Somewhere distantly, Tony still feels like Ares, the Greek God of War and destruction, or Narcissus, in love with only himself.)

No matter who he is, as the wormhole swallows him and spits him back out makes him an archangel, redeemed and powerful.

(In reality, he is Shakti, a Hindu Goddess, the divine force, manifesting to destroy evil forces and restore balance)

**********
**********
The future is strange.

There's a mechanical or digital solution to every problem. Dames don't wait for men to come home every night and soldiers don't fight. Money isn't money, just numbers.

The war is over. They said the Aliies won. But at what cost? Steve doesn't think the battles are ever truly over.

Brooklyn becomes too Manhattan and Manhattan becomes a giant neon sign with copper passing off as diamonds.

The trolley tracks are gone, the phone wires are buried underground and the city's evolved. He doesn't really belong in the new century.

But home is home, Steve supposes.

When the ice beneath the arctic begins to thaw out, so does whatever feelings surrounds Steve's soul.

Steve's wings aren't black anymore; he can't help but wish that he knew for sure. Just to be sure that there is no one out there, hiding.

The serum corrects him, alright. His wings becomes stronger and almost as strong as his shield, a steel like material that stands up in battle. The colors of red, white and blue look almost metallic, don't so much as wash him out as the enhance the foreboding and effect of Captain America. He's what the Nazis fear; he’s the Living Legend.

Despite it all, he twitches at feeling like the man out of time. He wonders if Loki is right and if he really is anyone without a war.

They call him ‘Winghead’ because of his uniform. Even if it's not meant to be affectionate but he feels like the nickname is written in the stars, regardless of the fact that he's bluffing as the Sentinel of Liberty instead of the son of the Damned.

Steve's soulmate must be dead, Steve concedes.

He scours SHIELD's files for information when he first comes with the new decade; he flips through pages and pages of the international Index of partners. The internet connects people who are searching for their other half, proof that the universe is on their side.

And there is still nothing.

He tries to ask Bruce briefly during their first interaction, whose white wings are spotted deep green from gamma radiation on the very bottom, if there's ever been a case of someone without a soulmate.

Bruce twitches tells him that it's always possible but the science is too complex for Steve's outdated knowledge to understand.

He does not dare to ask about black wings.

He read encyclopedias, catches up on history throughout documentaries and deciphers as many classified documents as he can to do avail.

His soulmate isn't here or anywhere.

He cant help but see Iron Man as a sign that he's old fashioned and obsolete.

He's a carbon copy, no longer original or unique. The stakes aren't high and Tony Stark is the man he will never be, high-tech and a supernova in a galaxy of empty skies.

(Supernovas are indeed rare but there are billions of galaxies; so if you have a sample size large enough, rare things become common.
Steve will not realize that he is a supernova, a reaction in the galaxy, that only works in partnership and balance with the other half of the equation.)

He's Captain America, goddamnit. No asthma or bum heart and he's supposed to be better. But, damn the twenty-first century to hell if he's still as broken as fragile as Steve Rogers in a dingy, apartment mirror at 13.

He shouldn't let the color of the wings beat him. The same way he beats death in the ice and time travelling to the future.

It's not hopelessness that burns down his spine that day. It's a desire, a dream or a fantasy that could maybe have been. The wonder of what if. A house and children, a wedding and a rocking chair on the porch: a life after war.

It's discouraging to say the least.

It doesn't stop his hope in humanity, though.

There will always be new wars, Steve reasons, and always be manipulation and fear rhetoric to chase society to make bad decisions, whether it be Doom Bots or bank robbers, people who believe they're soldiers or saviours, and above all.

He may not be wanted in the 1930s but the world damn well needs him in the 2010s.

He's a part of an idea.

The idea to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when the world needed them to to fight the battles humans never could.

(In a way, he is Christ, dying for his generation’s sins and returning to believe in a new generations faith and prevent history from rhyming.)
---------------

The day Iron Man and Captain America meet, the world is falling apart over the tesseract.

Captain America sees Hydra’s secret weapon and that history doesn't repeat itself, but that it rhymes; a man who believes himself godly and an obsession with divide and conquer.

Iron Man sees fear stoking rhetoric and a man with a bigger ego complex than himself obsessed with power and vanity than the earth itself.

When Steve Rogers and Tony Stark meet, chaos erupts.

Steve sees an entitled man in a tin can with a status complex, an arrogant imposter of Howard carrying the brand name.

Tony sees an outdated soldier with an extreme messiah complex, ever the martyr in civilian life and a perfect prodigy manufactured out of war.

They clash on plan of attacks and argue over small details. Lives lost and battles won.

If it takes the end of the world for the two of them to accomplish anything, maybe they're the opposite of soulmates.

Not quite enemies or a nemesis, through fighting Loki and the Chitauri, but not exactly twin flames.

It's like the universe has sent each of them their worst nightmare.

Captain America follows orders, feels home in high stake battles, is capable of beating the odds, stays calm in the face of lost causes, a team driven leader and stays equally patriotic as he is hopeful.
Iron Man is erratic, narcissistic, spontaneous, anxiety prone, doesn't play well with others and is a (borderline pessimistic) realist.

May it be the law of attraction, the forces of praying to Gods they don't believe in or Loki's rampage that brings them together, but it is only after the battle of New York that balance is made; yin meets yang, the stars align or whatever you may believe in.

But most importantly is this: somewhere, two souls are beating and stronger than ever before.

Chapter Text

The Battle of New York is without mercy and yet, it creates something that wasn't there before.

------------------

So aliens and gods exist.

Tony figures as much years before Loki comes to earth and wreaks havoc, viewing and hacking into enough confidential files from the FBI, CIA or other special Intelligence agencies to erase doubts, but to know is entirely different.

To come face to face, close enough to feel the Chitauri’s dying breaths; to watch terror grip a planet so divided among petty politics and morals; to see the End Times stretched in front of a hollowed out suit and know that he stands on the tightrope of end or beginning of humanity; to know that he is what stands between salvation and perdition is all a bit much.

He can see it behind the mask of iron and gold, a suit harping on the saving grace that is hope. He sees two futures as he flies over New York in rubble. One stands as inconsequent humans, divided by triviality and worshiping false gods, devoting their existences for the universe to tell them they are better than all the rest. The whole of humanity thinking they have an impact on the rest of the galaxy.

The other shows a world without Loki's rule.

When Tony Stark watches the sky open and the Avenger unite, he knows there is nothing more important than that moment.

In that moment, despite it being the world that brought him World War 2, his bastardly father, took his mother from his grasp, Afghanistan, the arc reactor, Stane, Vanko and the world's eye constantly waiting for him to break, to crack and to give up, Tony sees it.

He sees Rhodey and Pepper. He sees Natasha and Barton. He sees Thor and Bruce (even though the Hulk is in peripheral vision). He sees Captain America leading the war.

And he sees his grief and his brokenheartedness and how the odds have always been stacked against him but fuck it, he wants that.

The universe is unfair and maybe God doesn't work for humanity, but goddamnit Tony will.

And the minute that Tony Stark, the man without a soulmate, flies a nuke headed straight for Manhattan into the wormhole that leads to the abundant emptiness and end of humanity, he feels his heart beat.

And in that moment, all is well in the balance of the universe.

--------------------------------------

They’re in the middle of the battle and New York is in ruins.

All Steve can think while fighting is that it’s all so very loud.

He thought that after he had woken up in a new century and quite literally had crashed into the ice that he knew loud. It's an overwhelming feeling, one where there's no option of escape or choice. It takes over every sense and drowns logic with existence. And after so long, he becomes the loud and there is nothing else.

When Steve Rogers awakes from seven decades in the ice, he is drowning In loud, from the change that is death to life.

It's like pulling teeth, like clipping wings.

But this is a different kind of loud, a loud which he’s more associated with.

The loudness of a war.

He doesn’t feel as fearless as he once felt. As much as he wants to run and be Steve Rogers again, a boy without a soulmate and a purpose, this is his time. His time to prove he’s no longer a prop for the war, a hero long gone and forgotten, a dancing monkey for the government. No, it's his duty to serve.

And so he fights and in the ruins and cinders of the Chitauri, somewhere lays the Steve Rogers that came out of the ice. Somewhere, the line between Steve Rogers, the boy from Brooklyn, and Captain America, the Sentinel of Liberty, is buried and he can no longer tell them apart.

The loudness is big. It is all encompassing and without remorse. But so is Captain America, fighting for the world to survive.

If God damned him from the start or he sinned so much for the Devil to take notice, it does not matter.

In the entire time Steve Rogers fights the Battle of New York, one thing is crystal clear: He'll fight for the preservation of the world, damned or not. He'll die for it again if he has to.

(When Steve Rogers sees Iron Man fly a nuclear missile into the wormhole and fall back out, he thinks avenging the world will suffice.)

----------------

(When the Battle of New York ends, the dust settles and creates what wasn't there before; an opportunity to rebuild.

For a man in a tin shell to get a real heart.

For a man out of time to reset the clock.)

Chapter Text

When the dust settles and the battle ends, Steve Rogers looks at the man on the cracked concrete and ash fallingl like rain, without a heart in his chest; the man who he had misjudged the first, second and third time they met, looking at but not actually seeing him.

He wonders, not for the first time, who his soulmate could be. For a man like Stark, there has to be someone who can truly understand the complexity and mystery that is the man behind the armour. There's an emptiness in his chest and something resembling envy is his mind as Steve breathes through his thoughts.

Steve pushes back on the envy that claws at his soul and throat; he’s Captain America, a war hero with power and a commanding presence, not Steve Rogers, an undoubtedly doomed soul of a hopeless hopeful in the new world.

At first it is because he can't wrap his head around it; why anyone would want to be with someone so… extravagant, vain, selfish or outrageous. The war teaches Steve about selflessness and remaining realistically positive. But seeing Tony lying in Manhattan's remains, having risked his life for the sake of humanity, he can't stop thinking that Stark- Tony -is some form of noble.. He doesn’t put himself first, but he likes to pretend otherwise. Why? Steve doesn’t know.

The Avengers debrief, Loki is gone and the united part ways. The world returns to its former disarray. Tony invites all the Avengers to stay at the Tower; only Steve takes up the offer soon after. Steve travels some around the country before he truly realises how much the world has changed.

He’s lost, he’s afraid and he’s alone. No family or army to lead. There's no hero needed. There's no war to fight right now.

It's the first time in Steve Rogers’ life that he candidly feels unsettled.

In the days he decides to stay at the Tower, he wonders if, maybe, Tony can be his saviour.

When he initially arrives at the Tower he sees Banner. Steve wonders how the engineer can be so private, yet convince the doctor who can't be pushed to join them.

Days pass; people come and go around the Tower. Steve starts noticing the true mystery that Tony Stark. He's arrogant and entitled, yet selfless in high stake situations. He refused in New York to listen on comms, directly ignored orders, and jeopardized the mission for such a small victory.

It's frustrating for Steve to say the least. Stark isn't a soldier and always has an agenda in mind. So, yes, maybe Steve isn't exactly up to date with everything in the 2010s but he knows a predator when he sees one. Despite it all, Steve doesn't feel threatened; just slightly on edge. He can tell Tony is hiding much more than he lets on; like how he flinches at the mention of his wings; or when Thor mentions how soulmates work in Asgard and Tony looks incredibly sad while hearing the god talk; how he walks away when Clint taunts him about making a show of his wings, hiding behind a smirk and an attitude of overconfidence and ableism.

Soldiers all carry baggage, but Steve knows a renegade when he sees one.

It's a lazy Sunday, most of the Avengers on other sides of the earth or with their families.

Steve stares blindly down from his floor's balcony, eyeing downtown Manhattan in a generation of quiet; he watches smoke plumes, electric yellow taxi cabs, bright lights and all.

He can't help but elusively eye Stark, hoping, somehow, that his side-eye would go unnoticed as he tried to figure out just how Tony worked.

Steve will deny it until his deathbed about how much attention he pays to this ‘teammate’; he notices just how shiny and plastic Tony's wings always are. He wonders at first if they're machines like his suit but notices how defensive he gets when Clint quips, “Your wings are as flashy as your suit, Stark.”

Regardless of the uncertainty about this ticking time bomb, he's become overly fond of Tony. His smile, his sarcastic banter, and even when they spar. The billionaire is charming and, without a doubt, handsome, but also caring and attentive to Steve's emotions.

Steve knows that teams always break when one member throws a wrench in the wheel.

He knows he shouldn't get attached. It truly is his worst trait; his undying ability to see the best in people, to care for people who could never love him back. He might have the strength to salvage parts of the broken pieces of humanity and hold it close enough to his soul. So close, that it’s capable of leaving him in pieces. It's how he lost his Ma. It's how he lost Bucky.

It's how he lost himself to a soulmate that didn't exist.

It stands that Steve knows he won't find them. The world is too vast and he's too optimistic; his heart break will again before a new war stitches it back together if he's not careful.

Steve can't help but wonder if he's Calypso by starting to begrudgingly like Tony, trapping others in his own hell and keeping someone who isn't his.

It's only after Tony has locked himself in his lab on his floor for three whole days when Steve goes down to force him to eat. It's not uncommon for Steve to be considerate for his comrades, despite his internal conflict to outright confront his... emotions about Tony. He sits in Stark's workshop, sketching or reading while intermittently taking mental notes about him.

Jesus, he's getting soft. One near apocalypse and he's practically shattering into a pieces.

He’s marching out of his private elevator before he can second guess himself. He's a Captain and his team won't fall apart on his watch. He stands in front of the workshop’s doors and notices that they aren't locked. J.A.R.V.I.S. is silent and the afternoon sunlight is absent.

Red flags are already going off in his head and his stomach drops about fifty stories down. He hardly inches open the glass door, not wanting to startle the billionaire, when the scent of wing dye invades his enhanced sense of smell.

It's still taboo for people to cover their wings with dye or tattoos. It’s less lews for individuals to walk in public without them out. Why banish God’s blessed mark? It’s as similar to a face tattoo, Fury remarks, when Steve first comes out from the ice, floundering and choking on this decade’s air. Maybe Steve is old fashioned but he's not stupid to think humanity's trends would get any smarter.

Widows and divorcees are incredibly radical for having plastic surgery for removing their wings; it's as blasphemous removing ribs for the sake of being skinny.

The feminist movement in the 1950s has single women hiding their wings, protesting their irrelevance in society as they wait for their soulmate. It's a fight that they should be able to work, soulmate known or not. The workforce booms with female workers rising and equal pay anthems, but the ‘concealed wings’ trend doesn't last very long.

It still gives Steve comfort that hiding one's wings without interrogation is an action more accepted in the 21st century.

Steve knows Tony never mentions his soulmate. It's curious, but not unheard of. There's always a chance of rejection, although illegal in some countries, or shame.

Steve knows the all too familiar shame of his soul belonging to the Devil, so he doesn't push his inquiry.

Tony's wings are a rare, brilliant gold like his suit; bold and eye-catching, but not too flashy or whimsical.

(In hindsight, it's his attention to detail that is his undoing that fateful day in New York.)

The workshop is in shambles, broken bottles of alcohol scattered and scraps an Iron Man suit model buried among the wreckage. There’s none of the usual liveliness or energy of the era of technology in the room. There are no small robots whirring around Tony's projects happily or complex machines finishing details for a new Widow's Bite. It's dark and somber and the feeling of despair looms in the air. Tony's back is facing Steve, passed out on a desk and that's when he sees it.

Black. Black like the wormhole or when you close your eyes for too long and small dots cloud your vision. Black wings with peeling flecks of gold rest a top Tony's shoulders, clear as the sun in the sky. A machine that resembles an airbrush is covered with dye the same shade of gold as his sham wings and malfunctioning.

The scent of something strong like rotting feathers causes Steve to reel back out of door and stumble to the floor outside Stark's workshop.

An overly anxious, weighted feeling seeps into his stomach and Steve knows no amount of years beneath the ice could have prepared him for this.

Three things occur at the exact moment Steve blinks away tears in his eyes;

1. I do not belong to hell
2. I am not alone
3. Tony Stark is my soulmate

It's the final thought that shoves Steve back into the elevator, biting on his fist to stop the tears and barricading himself on his floor for the rest of the day.

********************************

It's the weekend after Thanksgiving and the Avengers Tower feels empty and cold.

Tony's been busying himself in his workshop with new suit protocols, the Stark Industries New Year's Eve Gala and Pepper's constant reminders of eat and sleep. He's a somewhat functional human being even if he neglects those things, thank you very much Pepper.

He hasn't left his workspace in at least 24 (Or is it 84?) hours but that's beside the point.

Really, Tony's been having flashbacks of the day his wings turned black and the world swallowed him whole.

Maybe it's the Manhattan frost of November or the same loneliness he felt at 15, waiting for his parents and crying over a damned soul that's throwing him off.

Maybe it's the loneliness of being a Stark, knowing people care more about his name than who he truly is. Maybe it’s the feeling of solitude, that no one in the world has black wings like him and knowing that if he has a soulmate, they’re better of without him. Maybe it is just that he doesn’t know how not to feel like he belongs anymore.

The Avengers serve as a good distraction but he's isolated himself in the past few weeks. He gets like this sometimes, so stuck in his own head and self loathing to normally function. Although he feels like he is a burden to the Avengers, he knows a few days will pass and his anxieties flip to the back of his existence.

The curveball fucking him up is most likely Steve Rogers. He's moved to the Tower months ago and Tony still hasn't figured him out.

He's righteous and forthright, but unbelievably modest. He's a beacon for American values and annoyingly stubborn. Although he is more of a man than Tony ever feels he will be, Captain America is unexpectedly human. Despite his front of ‘ask what you can do for your country’, his zealous morals and never quite dropping his captain role around the Tower, he's exceedingly average.

Tony's used to solely interacting with people at the top of their fields or finest in the world; endocrinologists and toxicologists; ex-KGB assassins and Avengers. Captain America is on that list but Steve Rogers is not.

Steve Rogers is just a man from Brooklyn, catching up with the rest of the world.

It's not exactly a letdown in Tony's opinion, moreso a drug trip. He can sense Steve is constantly moving in between punching or interrogating him, keeping everyone in the Tower on their toes. Tony's not exactly conventional and his tower is a little more than some new tricks for an old dog to learn but there is something Tony's missing. Something Steve is getting closer to deciphering the longer he stays in the Tower.

It's why Tony's locked in his workshop.

Tony Stark knows he'll want perfection more if he gets more attached than he already is; it's just a matter of whether he pulls the pin off the grenade or he's in the crossfire.

The more he's around Rogers, the more he's uncomfortably aware how the Captain America façade that he's spited for years is evolving into something more than admiration.

But he's afraid to destroy someone's soulmate, alive or dead. Once someone saw the real him, there might be no going back. Is he really that broken?

It's why he's careful letting anyone besides Pepper or Rhodey around him. Pepper, who doesn't entertain his bullshit and calls him out when he's drowning in his own head; Rhodey, who never stops reminding him why he's more than Howard and more than a warmonger.

His mind wanders farther into the dark rabbit hole of what Steve Rogers would say if he ever saw his true wings; evidence of the damned. He knows the great Captain America would deem him more than God's abomination.

Maybe the captain would think Tony's soulmate is the Devil or that he will never outlive the name of Merchant of Death.

But there is the hopeless romantic side of him, fantasising that Cap might have hope for his soul and lack of a heart.

Perhaps Tony is Atlas, condemned for all eternity to carry all the possible timelines and the world on his shoulders.

But right now, he feels more like Icarus than ever, a fraud with fake wings falling deep into the abyssal sea, dragging his twin flame along with him.

When Tony wakes up from a heavy hangover days after he's been outside his workshop, the entire Tower is blaring an alarm, red lights like flames as far as he can see. It's a call for the Avengers to assemble.

The lab is a mess and his wings are no longer gold. Dye is speckled across his and the scent of expensive gin and fresh paint is overbearing.

He doesn't remember much aside from drinking until he forgets how soulless he might be and J.A.R.V.I.S. disabling most of his machines and projects.

Regardless, Tony is on his feet in seconds, armour around his body and he's flying out of the Tower before he can blink.

It's 11 P.M., a week after Thanksgiving Day and Manhattan is being attacked by enhanced Doombots spewing toxic gas and fire. Most of the Avengers are already on scene. Doctor Doom is on top of the Empire State Building and the robots aren't going down without a fight.

It's nothing like the carnage of the Chitauri, haphazard and uncoordinated, robots malfunctioning and Dr. Doom looking equal parts villainous as awkward, waiting for an Avenger to interact directly with him.

Tony's barely manages to tune into comms as Iron Man blasts twenty of the bots from Times Square; the sound is deafening and disorienting as several voices fill his ears.

“- kind of gas do you think-”

“- working with the subway conditions-”

“- civilians are in the line of fire, Thor’s handling perimeter-”

“- ETA on Stark or -”

Iron Man lands behind of Hawkeye near Madison Square Park as he obliviates a swarm of bots cornering him.

“Need a lift, Legolas?”

Clint's wearing some biohazardous mask and is prominently wearing an assassin’s glare when he asks, “Fashionably late for everything, Tin Man?”

The remark cuts deeper than Tony will ever admit but Iron Man suddenly lifts fifty feet in the air with Clint in tow, letting out a steady fire of chemically altered arrows exploding in the heads of droids.

He drops Barton off on top of the Rockefeller Center and takes to the skies, battling with an exoskeleton of steel and a heart of war that's constantly bleeding.

Tony thinks in that instant that this is his team; his family and his home. Even if his heart is destined for war, this is his, soulmate or not. The Avengers are dysfunctional and imperfect, sure, but they’ll avenge the world so no one ever doubts the universe's power for good to prevail.

Damned or not, Tony will prove himself beyond a legacy written in blood.

The Hulk is suddenly in Tony's eyesight, smashing Doctor Doom into concrete while Captain America is suspiciously quiet.

Tony's used to his company in the workshop, a constant presence of responsibility and gentle, unwavering attentiveness. Steve will bring coffee and sandwiches when he's locked up alone for too long, convinces him to shower and sleep and has the power for Tony to go weak at the knees for anything he asks.

Steve has more power over him than any god or demon.

It's only in mid battle that he notices Steve's been ignoring him for a few days; he doesn't entertain the engineer's antics but Tony can feel the tension radiating off of him, replying to none of his typical quips or banter at Tony's sarcasm.

“Cap, do you need backup?” Tony is more than willing to volunteer in combat next to him as a team member (and not to memorize every detail of his childhood idol’s body, thank you, Rhodey), but he’ll admit it over his own dead body.

There's a thick strain before a voice through gritted teeth enunciates, “Stick to your duties, Stark. Don’t get involved here.” Steve's tone is cold and uncharacteristically protective, with no room for Tony's usual ignorance to orders, “Stay where you are.”

Tony feels his heart break. He tries so hard to be a better man for the sake of his new found family, but more so for Steve Rogers than Captain America.

The fact that he'll never prove himself enough of an Avenger to Captain America is somewhat shattering, to say the least.

Tony spends the rest of the night wishing he hadn't fallen back out if the wormhole.

The crusade is draining and lengthy but there aren't many casualties. It's just a scratch in comparison to the cataclysm of the Battle of New York.

Jesus, Tony thinks, shielding tourists with their phones and tablets flashing from being burnt to ash, villains aren't getting more original, are they?

Media helicopters hover in the distance and military vehicles stand by the perimeter from the Hudson River to the Brooklyn Bridge.

The end of the fight is in view and most of the city is clear. Romanoff is attempting to calm down the Hulk and Iron Man is aiding the military in Doom's arrest for NATO when the comm crackles with tightness.

“- Cap, is Grand Central Station clear?” It's the last area with robot stragglers and expanding fires. Clint's voice is frantic and there's no response.

Tony ducks in a deep breath. Be professional. He sternly commands through his heartache, “Cap, we need status upd-”

The Grand Central Station suddenly starts to collapse and Iron Man whizzes to the other side of Manhattan with supersonic speed, suit integrity flashing brightly in front his eyes.

J.A.R.V.I.S. is scanning for heat signatures as Tony plunges in front of the disintegrating structure.

A small family is huddling outside the ruins, shaken and breathless, when the youngest boy, tears down his face, cries out, “Mommy, where's Captain America?” in anguish.

The building is coming down fast and Tony doesn't even hesitate as he soars through wreckage, past disintegrating columns and crashing bricks. The fire is burning the suit and he's hysterically screaming into comms, “Steve!”

Tony Stark's empty heart stops right then and there.

Steve is on his back, gasping and bloodied near a window on the seventh floor, trapped under part of a subway car as a 100 ft support beam begins to descend straight for Steve's chest.

It's all happening in slow motion and Tony can't handle this, he can't bear the thought of leaving the world without their hero and hope, he can't, he just can't-

Iron Man blasts Captain America out the window as a steel beam impales into his chest, where his heart should be, and the building buries Tony Stark alive.

And then the world goes black.

********
(In the end, they aren't Romeo and Juliet.

They aren't star crossed lovers or destined for death marked love.

They are not Macbeth, fatal flaws leading to their impending doom.

In that moment, they are merely pawns of Puck, dreaming and dreaming into his mischievous plans for fate.)

Chapter Text

(When Tony Stark sacrifices himself for Steve Rogers, Ananke cackles and sighs with bemusement.

Two men, defying the constant odds of death and struggle, inner strife and outer judgement inundating their providence.

Fate sends the Morai to certain souls, perhaps to extinguish their lifelong suffering or to prevent them from the future that looms in the horizon.

Fate knows Iron Man and Captain America are twin flames, polar opposites destined to be enemies and perpetually be at each other's throats.

Fate also knows that they belong to each other.

And so, in spite of the rest of the firmament bombarding two condemned black sheep, Ananke ignores her daughters’, The Fates, calls for Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, smiles and waits.)

----------

Is it better to know or not know?

Steve is so used to the catastrophe of loud that quiet is numbing and off center.

When Steve Rogers watches his wings turn black, the world was at war. Maybe that in itself is a sign from the beyond, but regardless, he can't afford to let his fantasy of a soulmate or the possibility of ‘what if” control him anyway. His service to his country.

A S.H.I.E.L.D. hospital lowly buzzes with doctors’ murmurs and an unnerving

When Captain America reviews news footage and watches Iron Man sacrifice his life on CNN, he is proud of his team and a battle well done. Minimal casualties and miniscule city damage with Doc Ock in the hands of NATO and the UN.

But when Steve Rogers sees his soulmate nearly die to keep a man out of time around a little longer, his heart violently rots to the same color of his old wings.

Steve can't help but let the cynicism of irony fester; a damned soul fights and dies for freedom and awakens to the war in his soul never ceasing.

Steve spends ages in S.H.I.E.L.D. medical fighting tooth and nail with Fury and Hill to see Tony. The serum takes a hit but he's healing fine, solely a mild concussion, some broken bones and a lungful of carbon monoxide. He's rested and released reluctantly after passing several cognitive and physical exams.

Fury attempts to diffuse Rogers’ state of a mental breakdown by lighting a match to a different fuse. The public and missions and the Avengers.

He is Captain America; he's never belonged to a person, solely the ideals he represents and defends to his dying breath. He’s Captain America, leader of the Avengers, who need him uncompromised and relentless to put the world first. Tony deserves someone who would treat him as his priority and someone's person.

But then, the battle flashes like a camera shutter behind his eyes, and Steve sees Tony almost die. He sees Tony's moribund figure, impaled and surrounded by a bloody halo.

(If only he knew , Steve is Gabriel, an archangel sounding the horn of resurrecting a dead man and the procession choir to rapture.)

Steve's more than ready for the ice to take him back in that moment.

But he wouldn't go back. He can't when his soulmate is down a corridor on life support. It wouldn't shock him to learn that he knows Steve is his. Perhaps, it's shame, hate or rejection. Perhaps, it's Tony fighting his belief in God. Perhaps, Steve is better off to keep running.

Tony's in the worst condition Steve's seen; the arc reactor has to be completely dug out of his body and the suit literally has to be torn from his skin, piece by piece. The staff are barely certain he's still alive when they pull him out and send him into surgery. His lungs fully collapse and his body has to endure extensive blood loss. There are more broken bones than Steve can memorize. His nervous system makes slow progress, tediously reconnecting to his brain.

Not to mention the likeliness hemodynamically instability and the possibility of developing respiratory failure that keeps his prospects for complete recovery low.

It settles sickly in Steve's veins how Tony may never be okay again.

Steve isn't the smartest but he knows damn well Tony should be dead. He'd been sick enough to know how small the odds were in the 1930s to make it to 18. Project Rebirth saves Steve's immune system then and there during the war.

Stark may be a man of iron but he's still human; he bleeds, he breathes and he dies.

The last thought rattles in Steve's head for days like water stuck in his ears; he wonders if the beam had been angled slightly more or the suit hadn't used emergency protocols to save Tony fast enough if he beats the likeliness that isn't burying his other half in a coffin, walking down a procession march.

So, maybe Steve is an idiot for still believing in God, he can't help but cry and pray the entire day he sees Tony's near lifeless form, paralyzed by tubes and wires working overtime to save him, a hole in his chest where a soul aches from years of neglect.

The days are difficult, to say the least.

For days he avoids debrief and the rest of the team, holed up in Tony's hospital room. His mind submerges into confusion and the greater meaning for the both of them. The meaning behind the pair of black wings that can be anything; it can condemn two souls working against fate or serve as an omen, their fates predetermined

Maybe, just maybe, Steve thinks, it can save their souls and bond forever. He knows that if he faced Tony, he will crumble and give his heart, mind and soul to the genius, willing to end with a broken heart if it meant his soul could truly belong to Tony.

Aside from Fury breathing down his neck, Steve is lost.

He knows he's not a queer because it's wrong and against every fiber that believes in justice and God. Because he can't be. Good lord, what would the world think? Captain America at the beck and call of love for a man. It's not conventional and it's against everything he kn-

Steve knows what it actually is and what he is ashamed to confront. He's scared. He doesn't know how to love in the twenty-first century.

His thoughts he suppresses rise until he's suffocating in them. He barely knows Tony but he feels like they've known each other for years. There's a cozy and natural feeling around him; nothing is coerced or fraud. It's a way of life that Steve grows more comfortable with throughout his time in present day Manhattan.

He's overwhelmed and a little burnout at the foreignity of the world, a domain of idolized chagrin and repackaged greed, but Tony makes it home. He's accommodating and sincere. He's lively and intellectual. He's strong and an anchor for Steve to cling to when he's drowning.

Shame boils in his stomach and the ‘what ifs’ of Steve being a fag in the 40s stop him cold in his trust and faith in the universe's power.

But it's a different era to be alive. Homosexuality is a form of righteousness, not a sin.

All his life with black wings, Steve searches for signs, be it from the devil or God. He searches for meaning and a fight and beliefs to physically attach to his character. Steve fears his entire life until his death that he isn't searching or doing enough and that he isn't enough for Christ to find empathy is humanity's sins.

Steve crashes into the ice and regrets never truly searching for his soulmate. In his gut, he understands something in present time. If he was alive now, perhaps this was God's force, willing him to serve for his duty, to find his other half.

The wings on Tony's back are blanketing his broken form and Steve can't help but stare.

He's loved the man even before he knew he was alive; he’s wanted him before Steve's wings turned black. It's written in the stars, somehow. Tony's kindness always there to shield him from the horrors of the new century, the uncertainty of waking up in the middle of an entirely new battle and the feeling of loss he carries from the ice.

If he is son of the devil or reprimanded by God, he'll take it. For once, he'll take it so no one can take the only thing that is guaranteed to be his in the world. He'll suffer and take humiliation to keep his soul. He'll fight for the freedom to hate and love because those are all a young Steve Rogers sacrifices for the greater good. If there's a future for Steve, he wants it now.

And so, he will fight; be it death or judgement or green radioactive monsters or the universe pulling Tony away from him but he will no longer fight love. Because it is a sign.

And in that moment, waiting in hard plastic chair next to Tony's fading embers and praying to Mary Magdalene for her watchful eye, that is all he needs.

This is a sign and he is enough.

And so, he gives himself into blind hope, so it may guide him to salvation.

He can't help but blindly hope God is on his side. He wonders:
Is it better to know or not know?

(If you believe it, there's a small possibility that it is a sign from Athena, goddess of wisdom and protectress of heroes. She very well knows this is no Trojan War and Ares need not to be defeated.

But she's seen the Trojan Horse approaching Tony, Steve's facade of wings or fake content with loneliness.

And maybe, just maybe, she's cheering Steve on, to win the war Tony feels, the world against his soul.)

------

It's been a long time since Tony has seen white.

All his life is coated in black; wings, a cave in Afghanistan, the space where his arc reactor lies, a wormhole, the color when he shuts his eyes and the legacy of a Stark.

It's a somber and sobering familiarity; he accepts its icy grip and its emptiness, no depth or variation.

The existence isn't good or bad. It isn't comfortable but predictable.

So, darkness is his home. It's not a place where anyone else can break into or destroy it. And after so long, whether it's from bottling emotions or years without someone to call his own, he becomes the darkness.

Imagine Tony Stark's incertitude to a foreign world full of white.

Vaguely, he can tell his eyes aren't even open. There's a ringing in his ears, not from a plethora of sound but abundance of nothing. Time doesn't exist and Tony can't feel any emotions.

Nothing is not darkness and his mind is spinning but not really because there's nothing to spin at a-

Sensation abruptly blares through the side of his temples and Tony can discern his entire body. His mind is foggy and there's a forced tranquility.

Heavy drugs, Tony figures, and the good ones, too. There's a disconnect and fading confusion where concern and anxiety should be. He can feel air going through his nose as his takes what he anticipates are deep breaths. There's no sinking weight in his stomach or screwed-in tight chest feeling of disquietude and the muscles Tony can gauge control of attempt to respond.

He doesn't quite know where he is, and just that, it's unfamiliar territory, beating around dysfunction and a ‘team’ on the brink of turning on each other. He rips it off like a bandaid, cracking his eyes open swiftly and white overcomes his sight, smell and hearing.

He squints. Everything is uneasily quiet and untouched. An oxygen mask lays over his mouth and nose. There's a soft item huddled around his body like he's fragile and a few tubes rattle as he shuffles in this cocoon. The smell is sterile and overly sanitized it makes Tony's eyes burn with too much. Several machines in his peripheral are wired further than his visions lies on his left. In front of him is his body and guard rails, a wall with a clock and a door. Hospital walls are a blinding white and royal blue curtains frame a wide window and block any sunlight. The ceiling lights remind him of the sun, burning and radiant.

He truly is Icarus, he decides, overconfident and staring death in the soul.

He's safe but that's not a comfort. In S.H.I.E.L.D.’s medbay, waiting for something sinister that he can't connect.
Memories crash like glass, sharp and a slow motioned chaos before the inevitable flinch.

Tony fumbles like he's been restrained, and a heart monitor beeps faster and louder, when he realizes he's not swaddled with a blanket but his wings.

His wings splay out on the bed and hit the rails; they are stripped of dye and neatly maintained. The feathers that Tony always assumes are coated in the aftermath of dyeing for so many years, bruised and breaking, are somehow more intense with color. It's like his immune system is sending his soulmate a message, pulsing with energy and life.

“Alive, alive, alive,” they say.

He's managed to yank his face mask off in bewilderment after his wings extend when he notices his chest. A hospital gown is full of holes where his rib cage is, IV lines and some sort of electrical cord attached to a machine that resembles a computer.

White isn't his home. It brings light to problems and flaws; it ruins everything and hurts everyone. Tony hates it and almost retreats back into the darkness and inebriation.

To his left lays the last person he expects; Steve Rogers is curled up on two white plastic chairs, his legs elevated like a makeshift bed. Disheveled doesn't cover his appearance; his stubble is patchy and his skin is sallow. He's wearing a worn leather jacket with an embroidered black and-white American flag with sweatpants. His eyelids are closed and wrinkled, a butterfly bandage near his cheekbone and small scab with stitches. His left arm is propped at a strange angle in a cast and his blond hair is heavily grimy. It seems he hasn't left the room from his sketchbook on a side table and empty Coca Cola bottles’ dried stains on spruce wood

It's not acceptable to Tony that Steve still looks good in this state.

If Tony didn't know any better, he would think the Captain is in mourning. The sight shatters him to his core. It's most likely his guilt complex working him into a stupor, he concludes. With a quiet, steady gasp, he aches in his mind and intrusively wonders; what is his endgame for staying here? Is he here to reprimand him and tell him he’s no longer part of the Avengers for being reckless?

“Or maybe, he’s here because he cares,” A nagging voice inside his head barely whispers, and Tony just wants to shut it up. Because it’s not true. Steve cares about the team, not him particularly. It's purely professional, despite Tony's attempt to cut the tension down between him.

Tony hasn't thought of anyone else on the team besides Steve since awakening, while Steve is here neglecting himself to ensure a teammate's health.

The heart monitor starts beating harder, and he blushes, hating the physical effect that Rogers has on him.

It's not fair how much his mind wanders into what ifs and domestic familiarity for Steve's wellbeing.

It gnaws at his core how much he wants that; intimate ease. It blooms in his lungs at the knowledge that he'll ruin Steve if he tries to love him.

Steve has shown he cares when he brings him sandwiches or while he spends that much time in the lab, unintentionally diminishing the mechanic's self loathing. Despite what many people think, he does enjoy harmony and calm, which is exactly what Steve brings to the table every time he hangs out with him. There's an airy waft of order and protection, a shoulder to lean on and a stable person.

And maybe, he is a little selfish for thinking that way, knowing that Steve probably has a soulmate out there, assured of that same comfort, kindness and warmth that Tony so desperately craves.

The universe would never disgrace whoever Captain America's soulmate is, probably a martyr, savior to those in need, beautiful and strong willed.

He looks at the sleeping form one more time and, not for the first time in his life, three little words make their presence known inside his head. He so ardently wants to say them and not because the man is unnaturally handsome; his kindness, his smile when Tony rants under his breath through failed programming trails, his eyes when he sees something beautiful and his face when he’s drawing something he wants to capture.

Steve is enhanced in every way, good attributes and beliefs outweighing the bad in society. He fills Tony with hope and motivation to be better. He helps Tony turn buried ashes into diamonds.

Steve's sketchbook is opened, a page lightly shaded, eraser marks pooled at the sides and edges serrated. On it showcases a man's eyes closed, a serene look and an oxygen mask.

He wildly scans Steve's face as he stares at the portrait of himself, dark hair, eyebrows deliberately precise and all wrinkles smoothed out and pristine.

It physically mimics his face but it's not right. There is no brokenness or Merchant of Death in sight.

The picture looks soft and ornate, an aura of light and beauty; almost, just almost, emanating element of fondness.

Tony still doesn't know what Steve was looking for.

The drugs must be fucking him up more than he thinks.

Three little words are on the tip of his tongue and spelled out, heart on his sleeve; he knows their truth because he would give his life for that man without a second thought. He would rather be in this state than ever see the world lose the Captain again. He may be damned, but a world without the physical epitome of justice is a world where evil has truly won.

He doesn’t dare to say it out loud and wonders how long will Steve stay here. He can treasure those few moments for when he’s eventually left alone, like he always has. No one ever sticks around long enough.

And then it strikes him with lightning.

Steve has seen his wings. His black, eternally damned reminder of God's life sentence.

Panic replaces the peaceful demeanor of the room as he twists his wings, attempting to constrict them away from the world. Grief and woe wash over him and the room is spinning.

Now he'll surely force Tony to quit the Avengers, his only redemption and family left in the world. He's an Irish-Catholic from the 1940s and the last thing the all nationalist Captain America needs is a commando without a soul.

How soulless is he in Steve's eyes? Does he believe Tony is worth a world of white? Or will he leave Tony to the wolves, to be dissected and run over, scavenged by vultures and his own inner demons once again?

Is it worth it anymore for Tony to cling to blind hope?

Because that's what it's been since the beginning of the end. Blind hope to get through Afghanistan and palladium poisoning; to have remarkable individuals fight the battles the world never could.

Blind hope in that moment is hopeless.

Blind hope could never persuade Steve Rogers to love what remains of Tony Stark.

Tony attempts to remain neutral in his distress when a boiled kettle sound escapes from his mouth. It's half a cry and half cynical scoff.

Steve bolts upright before his eyes open and Tony freezes and shuts his eyes, biting his cheek to stay silent.

A sigh of relief screams from Steve's mouth and Tony can hear him shuffle slightly and the click of a button when heeled, even footsteps begin to approach outside the room, muffled by Steve's shallow breaths.

Pepper, Tony's mind supplies hazily, but she's supposed to be in London not babysitting one of his many screw ups. But for all he knows this is it, the last his involvement in the Avengers and a goodbye to a family that was never his.

In the space where his heart used to be, he knows as a Stark, he was always meant to be alone.

A door creaks open and Tony holds his posture rigid. If this is his moment for judge, jury and executioner, he's glad it's with Captain America. He might as well be Hades bound to the Underworld, outcasted from Olympus, doomed for all eternity.

“How'd it go?” Steve's voice is crackling but startlingly calm.

“Fury's annoyed that you didn't tell any of us,” A female voice sounds annoyedly bored and footsteps methodically waltz closer towards Steve's body. Tony's mind is offline and he can't remember anything, “but we can salvage PR through a statement and maybe a couple press conferences. No one needs to know but S.H.I.E.L.D. wants analysis tests. The serum’s effect on your wings isn't reversible and there aren't photos of them before 1940, so it shouldn't be-”

Steve's voice is hard and bitter, his mission tone seeping through with anger and his boots hit the floor with a definitive stomp. “Whether or not we tell the public is not your decision, Hill. I know my goddamn rights for Don't Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Hill’s voice amusedly sneers and protests, “He can go back to dyeing his wings! It's just for guaranteed good press, what you two do in priv-”

Steve takes in a large, grounding inhale and Tony can feel him hovering over Tony's body, knees pressing the rails and fingers ghosting around his chest.

Tony feels the world stop.

Is this it? Steve Rogers taking out a soulless killer and a legacy of shame, a spotlighted antihero for evangelists and believers.

“If you value the Avengers’ work under S.H.I.E.L.D., who incidentally seems to avoid mentions of possible end of the world events,” Steve's voice switches from his ‘we’re on the battlefield’ to a tone of exasperation before Tony can stop his mouth from twitching, “you better stop talking and tell your boss to stop. Our relationship is going to be our decision, not some middle-class government employee’s for your benefit. He's my soulmate.”

Tony's never heard so Steve demanding or hard. He can picture his expression, definitively defiant and eyebrows furrowed. Maria huffs out an annoyed resignation and says, “Maybe you should see if you two even have a relationship, Captain.”

Loud clanking shoes grow quieter as the sound of a door slams shut and Steve's weight sinks to the bottom of the bed. He stays stanstill there for a solid five minutes before shuffling.

Everything inside Tony is frozen and it takes all his willpower to not yank every tube out, punch Rogers in his face and run as far away as possible, crawling back into the same corner of the world that cursed him.

Tony tenses and subtly inches his hand for the remains of an arc reactor prepared for scalding pain when he feels his entire body beat.

Tony knows soul biology more than he cares to admit; it's rare that when soulmates escape near death encounters, their souls become entwined for a brief period. Tony thinks it's all talk and it's such an anomaly that a majority of scientists think it's a legend for unhappy soulmates to prove their own destiny or something.

He can sense an angry heartbeat, a throbbing fury at the back of his head through breathing and it perfectly syncs with Tony's insides.

It's from his hairs on his necks to the space in between his toes; not quite a presence but a simmering oncoming. It fades and buzzes pleasantly, fiercely potent and temporary. It's

Oh. He can feel someone's soul.

Not just someone. Steve.

What the fuck is this joke, Tony bristles. It's not real. It's not funny that he's half dead in a undercover base with morons who hate Iron Man and drugs in his system that are making him hallucinate.

He needs a drink. He needs several drinks.

Tony is blinded with narcotics by synching with Steve's matching presence that he is unintentionally indulging in this nonsense. That has to be it.

Because it ruins every ounce of bravado in his twisted core that someone could fuck with his anatomy like this. That he could be a test rat for a drug that S.H.I.E.L.D. is developing to imitate a soulmate. To play on his deepest hopes and fears, secrets so tightly vaulted away that he would never have to worry over again.

It's not okay and Tony feels like Papa Legba, loa of fate and Keeper of the Crossroads, is playing tug-of-war with his heart.

He holds his breath for a few seconds to stave off an oncoming panic attack when he discerns that Steve's chest stops heaving. He goes still and Tony can imagine his heart stop beating through his shirt.

The thought terrifies him and he's intensely aware that Steve can probably feel fear chilling down his body.

He continues to let out evenly paced breaths and tries to stay still before Steve whispers out a prayer.

“Ma, Bucky, if you're listenin,” His voice is shaky with a twinge of Brooklyn dialect and nervousness. Steve's hand barely brushes his fingernails and all Tony wants to do is grab it and never let it go, “I found him, just like you said. I know you'd love him and he's perfect.” He sounds vulnerable and on the brink of tears, a stark contrast to his earlier conversation with Hill.

“Father, forgive me, for I have sinned; envy and wrath have come between my gratitude for your grace and presence.” Tony could never think of Captain America as a deadly sinner or a man beseeching for exoneration. The event is putting him at unease and he feels like he may throw up, knowing of Steve's Ophelia complex.

“I show not often my thanks, contrition or adoration. I am sorry. You are the Potter, Lord, and I am like clay in your hand. I may not understand your ways, Lord, but I am blessed for finding my other half.”

The formality soon disappears from a soldier in church and back from the war into a young boy, forlornly praying under autumn nights and Brooklyn stars for love.
“After my wings turned black and serum, I didn't want someone. I was afraid, God, of who I may belong to. I was ungrateful because I didn't place my belonging to you or faith in your hands. After the ice, I didn't think it was even possible for someone to be out there anymore, much less a man.”

It really would have been easier if Steve had ripped out Tony's chest before; maybe then, he could be beside himself.

Steve pauses and is choking on tears, “If I am an abomination, Lord, then forgive me. But I take this as your blessing and sign of your watchful eye.”

There's tears cascading onto Tony's perfectly poised arm and a fidgeting, battle scarred soldier pleading into his hands, muffled pleas and mumbled orisons. “I repent for my sins, David, Mary and Jesus. Please forgive me, for I only want to see my other half open his eyes. Amen.”

Tony dissociates and he knows Steve takes tremulous gasps of air before shuffling out of the room and footsteps descend away from the door.

Tony's eyes flutter open and he sees a room, lived in and expectant. There's an established relationship, one sided of someone waiting, a bible, sketchbook and blanket spread around like it belongs, the other person empty and vacant. But they compliment each other; they belong.

Steve belongs with him.

When Tony Stark sees a room of white, he nearly jumps out of a medbay window, pulls the tubes from his body and runs.

-----

Steve blinks.

His heart is so full, but of what he doesn't know. There's so much emotion in his chest and feeling in his body that he begins to cry. Everything is loud. Something in his body is pounding booming like thunder, blinding like lightning.

But it's not the loud he's used to.

It's an orchestra, woodwinds and brass, percussion and strings. A cacophony that transforms into an euphony, bells and piano notes, a constant rhythm and melody overtaking his everything.

He's never been to a symphony or a ballet, too poor and too sick, but his Ma would always talk about where the rich folks she treated would go on Saturdays. Steve imagines this is what it's like.

The walls fall down and there is no man without a war to fight.

Love. It's a strange word and not one Captain America ever associated more than his country and Lord with.

Steve is scrambling when S.H.I.E.L.D's alarm goes off, crimson flashes and ear-splitting pitches.

He's drying his tears and observing Natasha’s uncharacteristic care, handing him a coffee and a fresh shirt to change into when it happens.

He's felt a weak presence, afraid and alone, all day, Tony's lifeform calling for help to Steve's soul.

And he wants; to help to love, to cherish and to protect. He wants to exist in unity with Tony and erase every doubt with 'I love you's and promises. He knows it won't be perfect, that they will fight tooth and nail, argue like assholes and feel hate outweigh love sometimes

But it's all he wants.

The Steve Rogers that dives into the ice seventy years before is not the one present, here and now. He is a new man, with a family and a soulmate. His kinship will always be for God and his country but his heart…

For the first time, his heart isn't only his.

It's a suckerpunch of pain, worry and fear when he gets wind that Tony is missing.

It's not safe and Tony is barely out of the woods and it's all the captain cannot do but run as fast as his legs can carry him past agents and specialist,

He finds Tony on the roof.

Upstate New York is sitting pretty, a landscape from a postcard in another time, undisturbed and ungentrified. The sun is setting, a base of periwinkle, blended with orange, yellow and pink commanding the sky, the shadow of night emerging at the edges of the celestial sphere, acres of dark hunter green oak trees and bright amber, blush and cobalt flora bordering beneath the obscure skyline of New York City. The railing is silver and reinforced; Tony is collapsed at the edge, swaying and crying, as he heaves into the evening light.

It's a juxtaposition in the worst way to Steve.

He about to sprint and wrench Tony away from the edge when the engineer whips around, reddened eyes and inebriated composure slipping.

His fear is to be rejected and shamed. To not belong. He is no captain or comrade, no man out of time or war hero; just a soldier in a new battle.

Maybe Captain America can be as brave as Steve Rogers needs to be right now.

He's still afraid. He's a stranger in a strange world, really.

But he's no longer alone; and that's all that matters.

Head up, soldier, he tells himself and he steps towards Tony.

“Steve,” Tony jumbles out, slurring and desperate, “You're wings- I mean, you're not- we can't-”

He steels himself and states clearly, posture rigid as he convinces himself more than Steve,
“I'll ruin you.’ Paranoia paints his tone and there's an anger and fight in his eyes. “I'll destroy your soul and no God will see me as enough. You only want this because of some drug. No one will see us- I mean, me-”

Steve's never moved so fast in the time he crashed his lips to Tony's. It's everything he's ever dreamed of, fireworks and a sentiment of perfection. The stars are aligning and damned or not, he's clutching Tony's body from jumping like a life preserver in a world of only water.

“I love you, Tony,” is whispered like a prophecy, holy and precious, through tears and Tony shaking his head. “I've been damned, unloved and banished my whole life. This is my home; with you. The only thing left that can ruin me is a life without you.”

It's the truth. He's never belonged to someone or something, be it God, the army or America. But this is his.

And only his.

Steve knows Corinthians and trusts the Oracle as he repeats the words of a church that shuns an asthmatic, broken boy.

“Love can move mountains. But even with all these things, if I do not have love, then I am nothing. I gain nothing if I do not have love. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, and it is not proud. Love is not rude, is not selfish, and does not get upset with others. Love does not count up wrongs that have been done. Love takes no pleasure in evil but rejoices over the truth. Love patiently accepts all things. It always trusts, always hopes, and always endures. Love never ends.”

Heart in his throat and soul on his sleeve, Tony gives in to love and kisses Steve with a frenzy and warmth, a flawless calibration in the planets, the stars and the black holes.

As the sun sets in the horizon, days of dread and horror impending, Steve clutches Tony, two broken souls that are bound and destined to fix each other.

----------

When Tony Stark opens his eyes that day, he see white. And somewhere, deep in his soul, maybe he believes that white isn't so bad after all and the black on his back isn't as homey as he thinks.

When Steve Rogers opens his eyes that day, he sees black. And somewhere, across the expanse of the universe, he begins to believe that it isn't the nature of the damned, but the behaviour of a rebellion brewing against all odds.

When Tony Stark's wings turn black, the world swallows him whole. But Steve Rogers will always be there to pull him back out.

(Somewhere, Hera reminds Zeus that he should fear two halves finding each other, two men with the power of a titan.

And yet, it is Hades who laughs at the very concept that two men with love and divine purpose so pure could ever belong to the Underworld.)

***********

(Is it better to know or not know?

It is better to know. You cannot walk blindly in the dark. It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Do not hide your light under a bushel; you simply set it up on a high place so that it may light those around you.

To be the supernova in the galaxy. For a supernova is no longer rare in the cosmos when you have a large enough sample size, thus rare things become common.

But to know is never common enough and knowledge’s candle is always dying and never overabundant.)

-----------
(Not that it matters, but it's Bruce Banner that dissects black wings’ true science in the end.

He's off the coast India a year after New York, with an isolated community too small to consider a town, when he finds it. He's been working with containing an outbreak of a rampaging illness with UNICEF.

The disease is unstoppable, with no cure or way to delay the effects of imminent death. The village is contained and the victims are already long dead.

The last two subjects sit across from Bruce.

A young girl, no older than eleven, is staring at him teary-eyed in a makeshift clay hut. She wears pure white wings and a solid black feather on each side, resting at the very bottom. Protectiveness and hesitancy radiate from her towards the figure below her.

A boy the locals call ‘zombie’ is laying drugged and dazed, identical feathers sprouting from his wings. Neither child dons a black soulmark until they are terminally infected in the final hours before their death. They mustn't have long now, UNICEF figures.

And yet, Bruce stares at them, huddled on the ground as they pray to Lakshmi for their survival.

The girl, Chaandra, named after the the word moon in Hindi, and the boy, Rav, the beginning of the Hindi word for the sun, have no family left from the disease and their wings a pulsating in synchronicity.

Bruce watches Rav stop breathing for a whole fifteen minutes in the shack. Rav's heart stops and so does Chaandra's when Bruce is about to declare him dead and unrevivable. When their pulse comes back moments later and their symptoms of danger begin to fade, their wings turn black before his very eyes.

Each black wing represents the times that they will face near death and the odds they will be together again.

The pair has slim odds of beating death, a near miracle, feathers to prove it, and, nonetheless, they breathe, they bleed and their hearts beat for another day. Bruce doesn't grieve for them; this will be the only time they face the prospect of death in their lives. They will live relatively normal lives after today.

It is a symbol of The Great Flood not The End Days. For they are Noah's Ark, hope for humanity and deliverance come hell or high water.

Days later, Bruce emerges from Tarmugli Island with a new perspective and knowledge of an undiscovered science.

Damned or not, Bruce knows the world will doom their lives, cursing the black on their backs

As Bruce Banner leaves on a fisherman's boat towards the docks of Port Blair, he emits the details of survivors.

He decides that this time, the world need not to know. For once, it is better not to know.)

Chapter Text

It's days before Christmas at the Avengers’ Tower.

Assassins and soldiers are spread out in the lounge, a Norse god is feasting and scientists are singing.

A low hum of Christmas music is playing in the background and on a TV screen, a cheesy Hallmark film is playing.

The room is warm and the scent of hot cocoa evokes a peaceful serenity. A Balsam pine tree piled with a variety of presents sits underneath homemade ornaments and a topper that resembles a certain spy's bow and arrow gleams from above.

It eliminates the opposite of some twenty years ago, a boy's wings vacantly deemed soulless and a soldier's soul numb in Artic rime. A time of hopeless blind hope, no greater dumb as it is a prayer to gods and deities, titans and saints, or saviours and sinners.

Tony Stark is sprawled across a loveseat, head in the lap of Steve Rogers and wings outstretched lazily.

Both sets of wings are extended out, one black and the other red, white and blue. Tony can't help but self consciously pick with scarred nails at his feathers. Steve bats away his hand every time, smiles genuinely with devotion and passion in his eyes and continues to run his hands across Tony's wings, memorizing every crevice and corner.

Tony eyes are twinkling, as he stares up into Steve's face, basking in domesticity.

Only one thought crosses his mind as the remains of Christmas crackers and stolen cookies and milk decorate the floor.

He is home.

---------
Judas, Icarus or pawns of Hermes they are not. Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are only and purely human.

Tragic flaws, blind hope and all that, for better or for worse, they simply are glued together though the universe tries to pull them apart.

Damned or doomed, they live, they breath and they die as each other's.

You want heroes? So be it, for your own comfort, but when the snow falls in the Manhattan celestial skies, they are human.

Perhaps the Hindus are right and the Christians commit blasphemy every Sunday at Mass. Perhaps the Muslims are being laughed at by the loas of Voodoo. Perhaps, deities are sneering at Buddah and Judaism in their holiness.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Religion or righteousness, true or false, in the end, it doesn't matter if black wings are a devil's kiss. It doesn't matter which group of humans clinging to blind hope in their made-up beliefs are right. It doesn't matter if a higher being is a puppetmaster or a sham Wizard of Oz.

It simply matters that the world has hope. Blind or not, hope is the most human you can be.

And so, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark cling to hope, 'til death does them part.

And human, they are.

-------

(Somewhere, Elpis, the Greek personification of hope, is ablaze and thriving, kindling her eternal flame with the love from purest of soulmates in a Tower in New York)

Chapter Text

Things I didn't use:
The Crow Mother (Angwusnasomtaka) from Hopi mythology with black wings
Mercutio's Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet
Hermes,
Momus (Greek) Personifaction of trickery and satire
Comes (Greek)
Four horsemen of the apocolypse in the Bible (third horse, famine, black wings)
Dionysus (Greek) God of Wine
Drinking game; Take a shot at every spelling eroor or repeated metaphor
P..S. Author is not trying to be offensive with religious imagery.

All of these are Greek
NYX (Goddess of the night) and her children:
Herwmra (Day), Aether (light), Nemesis (retribution), Moros (doom/fate), the Hesperides (sunsets), Oizys (misery), Eris (Strife)
The Oneroi (God of Dreams) Morpheus, Phobetor (or Ikelos) and Phantasos.
The Fates
Thanatas, sounds like Thanos, God of death
Rati (Hindu)
Sacrifice of Issac (Bible)
Diwali (Hindu festival of lights)

Church scene with Steve. It was going to be after Sarah Rogers' funeral and Steve was supposed to second guess his faith (or meant to be in a chapel in hospital while Tony is dying)
I was also going to make Tony possibly die but never mind, angst really hurts
Drunk/passed out scene for Tony where Pepper/Rhodey finds him
Public conference on Steve/Tony to media outlets and homophobia

Wing Anatomy in more depth
'The Scale' was the metric I made up for wings, their patterns and meanings. I never fully developed it but it was a concept to reinforce society's reinforced view of black wings.
The chapter with Steve and George (completely bs of a name) was meant to reinforce homophobia and a redemption arc
Iron Man 3 was originally a part of my first map out but what is canon
Age of Ultron and Civil War never happened