Chapter Text
The lights in the conference room were a backdrop to the scratch of Olivia’s stylus against the digital slate. Shay stood near the head of the long table, tablet in hand, posture stiff. She hadn’t slept more than three hours the night before, but no one needed to know that. Tony sat opposite, legs crossed, fingers templed against his lips like he was holding back commentary. Olivia sat beside him—quiet, focused, efficient. Always efficient.
And at the end of the room, two translucent blue projections hovered above the embedded holo-disks: Steve and Natasha, both remote from Sokovia, their backgrounds rendered in ghosted detail. Natasha’s was a neutral tent interior. Steve’s had half a collapsed street visible behind him.
“Okay,” Shay said.
She tapped the tablet and projected the first frame—a blank sheet, for now. Clean slate. Controlled entry point.
“You’re about to hear a dozen different takes on this from a dozen different people. I need you to hear mine first.”
Steve leaned forward slightly in the projection field. “We’re listening.”
She nodded. No pleasantries.
“They’re calling it the Sokovia Accords. It’s a multi-national regulatory framework. The draft, as of this week, proposes mandatory registration for enhanced individuals engaged in combat or response activity—”
“Registration?” Steve’s voice was already tight.
“I’ll get to that. Let me walk it through first.” She continued. “The framework includes a central deployment body—currently being negotiated under UN purview, but the language is elastic. There are approvals for mission clearances, response protocols, and the potential to deny or revoke operational status at any time.”
Natasha raised a brow. “So they’re building a leash.”
Shay didn’t disagree. “They’re calling it accountability. Public trust. Prevention of another Sokovia.”
Steve looked like he wanted to speak. She cut him off with a lift of her hand.
“I’m not defending it. I’m informing you. Right now, this is a policy vacuum. If we don’t define it, someone else will. Someone who doesn’t understand what we are. Or what we’re trying to be.”
Olivia was already transcribing, annotating. Shay felt the pressure behind her eyes intensify—half magic, half migraine.
Tony finally spoke, voice casual but edged. “They’ve been drafting it behind closed doors. I got a copy. Shared it with Shay.”
Steve’s image shifted. “When?”
“Two days ago,” Tony said.
Shay took back the lead.
“The language is intentionally vague. It starts with active operatives, but it can—and likely will—expand. We’re looking at a system that could label Wanda a national security threat by virtue of existing. That could declare Vision a weapon of mass destruction. That could list me—” she tapped her chest lightly, voice flat “—as an unregistered magical entity.”
Natasha’s expression didn’t shift, but Shay caught the narrowing of her gaze.
Steve shook his head, arms crossing. “This isn’t about safety. It’s about control.”
“Agreed,” Shay said. “But I don’t oppose regulation.”
That made him blink.
“I oppose overreach. I oppose structures built to punish rather than protect. But if we’re going to operate publicly—if we’re going to intervene in global crises—then we need to own the consequences. We need insurance, mental health care, rules of engagement. Oversight doesn’t have to mean subjugation.”
Natasha looked between the two holograms. “And who decides the line?”
Shay looked down at her tablet. Then back up.
“We do. Or we try. I’m building a legal response team.”
There was a long silence. Steve’s jaw tightened.
“So you’d register?”
Shay didn’t look away. “I’d disclose what’s necessary. Not everything. But my power? My limits? My role? Yes.”
“And what if they ask for more?” he pressed.
“Then I tell them no,” she said. “But I do it from a seat at the table. Not from the rubble of whatever they build without us.”
Tony leaned back in his chair. “She’s not wrong.”
Steve looked like he was balancing a weight across his ribs. Shay could see it—see him folding inward and outward at once.
“I’m not asking you to like it,” she said. “I’m asking you to help me keep the worst parts of it from passing.”
Another silence.
Then Natasha said, “What do you need?”
“Support. Time. Witnesses.”
Natasha nodded. Steve didn’t. Shay returned to the screen. She tapped the stylus. The blank sheet filled with redlines. Her edits. Her resistance, clause by clause.
She didn’t look away from the projections and she didn’t apologize.
Steve’s voice, when it came, was quiet—but sharp around the edges. “You already filed this?”
“Yes.”
“This morning?”
“Yes.”
He leaned forward slightly, jaw tight. “Without bringing it to us first.”
“I did bring it to you. Right now.”
“No—you’re telling us. After the fact.”
Her eyes flicked to the screen. “I submitted edits to a draft that was already circulating behind our backs. A draft that classified Wanda as a threat and Vision as property. That’s what I was responding to.”
“It’s still a decision that affects all of us,” Steve said.
“And that’s why I’m sitting here explaining it now,” Shay replied. “Because I didn’t have time to wait for consensus while Ross built the gallows.”
Steve’s jaw clenched. “So you went through Tony.”
Tony raised a brow but didn’t look surprised. “Because I have the clearance. And because she asked.”
“You backed this?”
“I backed her.” Tony’s tone cooled. “Because she’s the one actually treating this like a political structure, not a moral crisis.”
Shay didn’t look at either of them. She looked at the redlines—words she’d written through sweat and exhaustion and fire. Words she hated having to write.
“I’m not choosing the government,” she said. “I’m choosing leverage. And if we don’t claim some now, we’re going to lose the right to even argue later.”
“You think regulation is going to protect us?” Steve asked. “You think it’ll stop another Ultron?”
“No,” she said. “But I think it might stop the next Ross.”
That silenced the room.
The projections shimmered. Her stylus hovered, then dropped gently onto the table.
“I don’t want to do this,” she said, finally meeting Steve’s eyes. “But I’m going to. Because if someone like me doesn’t shape this thing, it will absolutely be shaped without us. And when they come for Wanda, or Vision, or you—it won’t be with warning. It’ll be with laws we let them write.”
Steve said nothing. His silence was a thousand unspoken things. None of them easy.
Natasha looked between them, then back to the screen. “Then we better start preparing our own clauses.”
Tony nodded. “Welcome to politics.”
And Shay, quietly: “Welcome to war.”
___________
The room felt too big once Tony stood and left, tossing her a half-wave and muttering something about scheduling lawyers. Natasha clicked off without ceremony, just a flash of static and then gone—leaving Shay alone with the ghostlight glow of the hologram.
Steve remained. Silent. Solid in the blue shimmer.
Her stylus stilled in her hand.
She didn’t look up right away.
His gaze pressed against her—it was the look he gave when something hurt, and he wasn’t sure if speaking it would make it better or worse.
Shay set the stylus down. Rubbed her hands over her face. Her headache hadn’t left since morning—it had just changed shape.
“I should’ve told you earlier,” she said softly.
The words felt fragile in her mouth. Like glass. Steve didn’t move. His voice, when it came, was quiet. Even.
“This is the same thing you did with Ultron.”
Her breath caught. She looked up, cut—the kind of hurt that was deeper than shouting. The kind that pulled history up like blood from a reopened wound.
“You didn’t tell me until it was already started,” he said. “And now this.”
Shay’s mouth parted slightly, but no sound came. He wasn’t wrong.
She had made the call. Again. She’d made the choice to do it herself. To protect the process, to control the outcome, to shield him from the mess—until it was already underway. She’d done it for the same reason as before.
She didn’t trust that he could love her and still stay, if he saw the whole truth.
Her voice was unsteady. “I thought I was protecting—”
“Who?” he asked. “Me? Or you?”
That landed low. Her throat burned. She turned her gaze back to the holographic document on the table. Redlines, margins, clauses she’d bled over. All of it shaped by the memory of Sokovia. By the possibility of what might come next.
“I didn’t want to fight you,” she said.
“You didn’t even give me the chance to stand beside you.”
That was the part that broke something. Shay’s fingers curled tight in her lap. The redlines on the projection blurred. Her own words—her own careful, defensive architecture—mocked her now. Everything she’d tried to shape into protection felt like proof of betrayal.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Her voice cracked. She hated how small it sounded. Steve didn’t speak. His image just stood there—solid and righteous in blue light—and she could feel his disappointment even from an ocean away. She looked down again. Shoulders hunched. Like a child scolded. Like the bad one. Always the bad one.
Zola stirred.
“There it is,” he purred.” His love is conditional. Just like always. Just like your mother’s. As long as you behave. As long as you don’t make them uncomfortable.”
She pressed her lips together.
“But you make them uncomfortable by existing, meine Maus. You think you’re protecting them, but they cannot be protected from you. And that terrifies them.”
Stop it, she thought. But it was weak. Not even an argument.
“He wants a version of you that doesn’t exist,” Zola whispered. “He wants goodness, simplicity. You offer fire, complexity. Vision. And that is what he cannot stomach—not because it is wrong. But because it outpaces him.”
She looked up again. Steve hadn’t moved. He didn’t look angry. Just… hurt. Staggered. All she could feel was the gravity inside her chest—the slow spiral of shame and certainty.
She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” she said again, quieter. “I thought I was doing what was right.”
Zola was silent now, patient. Letting the shame do the rest. Somewhere, far under the shame, she felt the old, familiar thought surface:
Maybe you really are the problem.
Steve’s expression didn’t shift, but something behind his eyes tightened—a flicker, fast and weary. Like he wanted to reach across the ocean and pull her out of whatever dark place she was spiraling into. But didn’t know how. Or didn’t think he had the right.
“I know you thought it was right,” he said. “That’s the part that hurts.”
That cracked her a little more. Because she did. She always did. Even when she failed, even when she crossed the line—her compass was never careless. Just… damaged. Bent in the places where love should have grown without condition.
“I needed to control it,” she said. “I thought—if I could shape it early—”
“Then no one could take it from you,” he finished. Quietly. Not accusing. Her eyes stung. She nodded, a tiny, broken movement.
Zola coiled like a cat in her ribs. “See? He pities. He doesn’t understand. And he never will.”
Steve’s voice came again, lower now. “Shay…”
She couldn’t look at him.
“I’m not the enemy,” he said.
But it didn’t land the way he wanted. It still made him the other. Her breath scraped raw against the back of her throat.
“It won’t happen again,” she said.
Not a promise—because promises, she knew, were only useful when you believed in the person making them. And she didn’t believe in herself. Not right now. Maybe not ever. But it was the most she could offer. The quiet bend of her spine. The concession in her voice. The shape of love, even if it wasn’t enough.
He nodded slowly. “Okay.”
And that was it. Just the ghost of acceptance between them, hollowed out by everything unsaid. They stayed on the line a few minutes longer. Neither speaking much. Like they didn’t know how to hang up without breaking something else.
Eventually, Shay said, “Get some rest.”
“You too,” Steve said.
She ended the call.
The silence after was thicker than grief. Space in the shape of absence.
She stood slowly, legs stiff, headache thudding behind her temples. Her fingers trembled as she reached for her tablet, but she didn’t take it. Didn’t go back to work.
Instead, she left the room and headed for the bar.
The fridge opened like muscle memory. Mango. Always mango.
She didn’t even have to think. She just cracked the can and sat on the floor.
___________
The floor was cool beneath her. Not cold, not uncomfortable—just cool enough to make her feel separate from the rest of the world. Like she could press her spine into the tile and vanish.
Shay was on her fifth seltzer, cracked open twenty minutes ago. It sat beside her on the floor, half-empty and sweating through its label. Her phone hovered over her chest, the screen tilted toward her face. Her thumb flicked absently—scrolling past news updates, public commentary, a half-written email she wasn’t going to send.
She was supposed to finalize three memos today. She was supposed to onboard two new lawyers. She was supposed to eat lunch.
Instead, she lay on the floor behind the bar, properly drunk, rereading old text threads she shouldn’t be looking at.
The light shifted. A shadow passed over her. She rolled her eyes without looking.
“FRIDAY ratted me out, didn’t she.”
Tony crouched beside her, slow and careful like she was a wounded animal.
“She worries.”
“Uh huh.” Shay let the phone drop onto her chest. “That’s not a denial.”
He sighed. “You want one?”
“Nope.” She took another sip. “Just wanted to know who the snitch was.”
Then she pointed upward, wrist wobbling, and squinted at the ceiling like it had personally betrayed her.
“Snitch,” she muttered. “You snitched.”
Tony followed her finger to the empty air where FRIDAY lived. Then looked back down at Shay, one brow raised.
“You’re drunk.”
She squinted harder. “You’re avoiding the point.”
Tony didn’t answer right away. Just slowly sat on the floor beside her, legs folding long beside hers. A beat passed. Then he tipped his head up, addressed the ceiling.
“She’s not wrong, FRIDAY. Bit of a tattle.”
FRIDAY’s voice was diplomatic. “Mr. Stark, I log behavioral anomalies for wellness and safety protocols. As per the directive you set.”
Shay gave a slurred little scoff. “See? Tattle.”
Tony looked over at her. “If I deactivate the system, you’ll be dead in a week.”
She snorted. “Then don’t deactivate it. Just reprogram it to ignore me when I’m mourning democracy on the floor.”
Tony didn’t rise to that. Not yet. He just studied her, hair a mess, mascara faintly smudged, magic clinging to her like humidity. She looked like a fallen star, scorched and glittering. She took another sip. Then, eyes still on the ceiling, she pivoted.
“Why do you like it so much when people call you Mr. Stark?”
He blinked. “What?”
“You know,” she said lazily, turning her head to look at him. “Mr. Stark. Like it’s a performance. Like you’re someone worth announcing.”
He gave a short huff of breath. “That’s rich coming from you, Director Quinn.”
She smiled. “I didn’t say I was innocent.”
Tony leaned back on his hands. “I don’t know. It’s a boundary. A bit of armor. You say Mr. Stark, and it’s like—bam. You’re talking to the name, not the man.”
“So you don’t have to be real.”
“So I don’t have to be wrong,” he corrected. “Names don’t bleed. People do.”
Shay let that sit for a moment. The seltzer can sweated in her hand.
Then she nodded, like she understood. “Still pretentious.”
Tony grinned. “Absolutely. That’s half the appeal.”
“Thought so.” She tilted the can in his direction like a toast. “To the myth of Mr. Stark.”
He tapped the rim with his knuckle, dry. “To the reality of Director Quinn.”
Her smile dropped just a little. The moment shimmered. She took another drink. The silence stretched between them for a beat, the kind of silence that didn’t demand anything. It just was. Companionable, in a lonely sort of way. Then, without turning her head:
“Can I ask you something?”
Tony’s eyes flicked toward her. “That’s usually how this works.”
“No, I mean—personal.”
He didn’t joke this time. “Yeah.”
Shay ran a thumb along the rim of the can. Her voice dropped, thickened slightly—not from the alcohol, but from the risk of the question.
“Is Pepper still mad at you?”
She felt it in the air before she saw it in his body. The way his shoulders shifted. The way he inhaled once, shallow. Not surprised—but bracing, maybe.
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
Shay turned her head to look at him.
“She didn’t say it outright,” he added. “But the silence says enough.”
The seltzer hissed softly in her hand.
“I didn’t tell her about the Accords until after I told you,” he admitted. “Didn’t tell her I was coming back here, either. Just… did it.”
“Because of me,” Shay murmured.
“Because of this,” Tony corrected, gesturing at the empty cans. “Because someone had to. Because I couldn’t not.”
Shay nodded, but it didn’t feel like relief. Just another brick in the pile of weight on her chest.
Tony gave a tight, hollow laugh. “She said she understood. But I think what she meant was: she expected it.”
Shay looked back at the ceiling. “That’s worse, somehow.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
Shay let it settle for a moment as her fingers traced the condensation on the can. The sweat from it had soaked a circle into her shirt. She didn’t care.
Then, softly:
“You can ask me something too, if you want.”
Tony turned his head, brows raised—wary, maybe, or surprised she noticed he’d been holding something back.
“Something personal?” he asked.
She nodded. “Fair’s fair.”
For once, she didn’t dress it up in sarcasm or edges. She didn’t look at him when she said it. Tony watched at her for a long time.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
Shay blinked, then glanced over. “What?”
He clarified, but didn’t soften it. “Zola. How bad is it, really?”
The question hit deeper than she expected. Maybe because he asked it without fear. Maybe because he was the only one who hadn’t, until now. She let out a quiet laugh, strange and raw and a little breathless. There wasn’t an easier reaction.
“It’s the worst thing,” she said. “And the best thing that’s ever happened to me. All at once.”
Tony didn’t interrupt.
“When it’s bad, it’s like…” She searched for the words. “Like living with a ghost that knows your triggers better than you do. Who whispers when you’re low and guides your shame.”
He winced slightly at that. But still said nothing.
“But when it’s good?” Her voice shifted. “When we work together—when we really sync—it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I can’t even explain it, Tony.”
She looked at him then, eyes sharp but open. “He can access my entire mental library before I’ve finished forming the thought. He doesn’t think faster—he connects faster. And when I lean into it, when I really let myself work with him…”
A pause. She didn’t smile, but there was awe in her voice.
“It’s like I can see the shape of the whole board all at once. Every variable. Every outcome. I don’t always like what I see. But I see it.”
Tony was quiet for a long moment.
Then: “And the cost?”
She didn’t answer right away. Just took another sip of the seltzer and stared at the ceiling like it might answer for her.
“Still calculating,” she said. “But I think it’s going to be high.”
Shay let the silence settle. Let it stretch out, soft and strange, between two people who never let it stretch this long.
Then she tilted her head, just slightly, and said, “My turn.”
Tony gave a small nod, eyes still on her, resigned. She didn’t pivot this time. No lead-up.
“Do you blame yourself for what happened to me?”
The words cut the air clean. Tony didn’t move. At first, he just stared straight ahead—at the bar’s edge, at nothing, at something only he could see. His mouth tightened. His fingers curled against the floor like they wanted to punch through it.
Shay waited.
Then, quietly, he said, “Yes.”
She closed her eyes for a second.
“I shouldn’t,” he added. “I know that. Logically. I know Ultron made his own choices. I know you didn’t walk into that party asking to be taken. I know I didn’t hand you over.”
“But you built him,” she said gently.
“I built him,” Tony echoed. “And I didn’t stop him. And when he came for you, it wasn’t random. It was personal. He wanted you because of what I built. Because of what we almost built together.”
Shay looked over at him again. Drunk, exhausted, softer than she should’ve let herself be.
“Is that why you’re here, ruining your relationship?”
Tony’s laugh was quiet—dry and bitter, the sound of someone who already knew there was no good answer.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”
Shay watched him.
“I told myself it was about the Accords. About doing the right thing. About getting ahead of the fallout before someone else writes the rules. And all of that’s true.”
He turned to look at her now, eyes dark and bare.
“But yeah. Maybe it’s also because I couldn’t sit in a penthouse pretending I hadn’t broken something I can’t fix.”
Shay let her head tip against the cabinet behind her. “So this is your penance.”
“No.” He shook his head slowly. “This is my consequence.”
That hung there, heavy.
She blinked, eyes wet but unshed. “And me?”
“You’re the one who lived through it.”
Her throat tightened. He didn’t say survived, and somehow that made it worse.
“And now I get to rebuild,” she said. “From the floor.”
Tony nodded once. “Figured I’d meet you here.”
A beat passed. Then she nudged his shin lightly with her foot. “Could’ve brought a better floor drink.”
He gave a ghost of a smile. “FRIDAY stopped me from walking in with tequila. Said it was a ‘psychological hazard.’”
“She’s not wrong.”
“No,” he said softly. “She’s not.”
Another beat.
Then Shay tilted her head toward him, just slightly. “If you’re staying, I’m ordering pizza.”
Tony nodded. “Only if I get to pick toppings.”
“You pick olives, and I swear to god—”
“Pineapple.”
She gasped. “Monster.”
He smiled. Just for a moment. And for a flicker of a second, the heaviness between them didn’t go away—but it settled. Shared. Livable. Shay drained the last of her mango seltzer and set the can on the floor with a clink. Then she let her head fall sideways against the cabinet again, cheek pressing into the wood, her eyes half-lidded and glittering with that sharp, exhausted honesty she only got when drunk or bleeding.
“Alright,” she said. “You get one more question.”
Tony glanced over.
“Make it count,” she added. “Then I’m going back to being emotionally unavailable and vaguely hostile until at least Wednesday.”
His brow quirked. “Wednesday?”
“Maybe Thursday if you make me talk about my feelings again.”
He huffed a soft laugh, but she could see him thinking. Actually considering it, like he knew he only had one window left before the shutters came down again and the defenses kicked back in.
The moment stretched.
And she didn’t take it back.
She just waited—quiet, resolute, and, for once, completely open.
Tony turned his head fully now, shoulders still braced against the cabinets, eyes steady on her face. Not the performative glance he usually gave, not the flash of ego or wit. Just the full weight of his attention. Focused. Gentle. Human.
“I’ve got a thousand,” he said, voice low. “But most of them can wait.”
Shay blinked once. Slow.
“Do you think he’s changing you?” It came out like a worry he hadn’t meant to voice. Like he hated himself a little for needing to ask.
Shay’s fingers curled against the hem of her shirt. She didn’t ask who he meant. She let her eyes close for a second, just one, before opening them again.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, and not always in ways I can name yet. Some of them are good. Some of them… scare me.”
Tony nodded once, like he’d expected that, but needed to hear it anyway.
“I still feel like me,” she added. “But the me I am with him is—” she stopped, searching, “—faster. I can see outcomes I shouldn’t be able to see. I don’t always stop to ask if I should.”
Tony looked away. “And you’re okay with that?”
Shay looked down at the can and the circle it left on the floor. “I don’t know if I’m okay,” she said. “But I don’t think I get to opt out.”
Tony was quiet. Then he nudged her knee with his own.
“Okay,” he said. “Wednesday.”
She smirked faintly, eyes still lowered. “Thursday.”
And for a while, neither of them said anything more.
___________
The TV cast soft blue light across the room—Top Gun playing low, the volume just enough to fill the silence without asking to be heard. Shay lay stretched along the length of the couch, legs tossed up and over Tony’s lap like it was the most natural thing in the world. One of her arms dangled toward the floor, fingers curling and uncurling like she was dreaming in slow motion. Her cheek pressed into the cushion, and her hair, still damp from a quick shower, curled at the edges of her temple. She was half-asleep. Not fully under. Just drifting. The kind of drifting where the world sounded far away but still reachable.
Tony’s fingers moved absently against her ankle. Reassuring, maybe. Distracted.
Then his hand stilled. She felt the vibration before she heard the sound. A soft buzz against his leg. His phone. He shifted, slow and cautious, like he thought she might stir. She didn’t move. Just kept her breathing even. He didn’t speak right away. But she heard the change in the room—the way his body went still, the way the energy around him changed.
Then, low:
“Hey.”
Another pause. His voice dropped further, more cautious now. “No—I can talk.”
Shay kept her eyes closed. Let her toes rest against the hem of his hoodie.
Tony’s voice was controlled.
“I didn’t hide anything. I just didn’t say it yet.”
Another pause. Longer this time. Shay heard the faint hiss of Pepper’s voice on the other end, unintelligible but unmistakably angry.
“I’m not choosing her.” Then, quieter. “It’s not that simple.”
Shay’s stomach tightened. She kept still. Focused on the feeling of his knee under her heel.
“I told you why I came back,” Tony said. “This is bigger than—” He broke off, frustrated. “No. You don’t get to do that.”
Shay could feel the silence that followed like a crack in glass.
“I didn’t lie,” he said. “I’m not apologizing for showing up where I’m needed.”
Another beat.
Then:
“She almost died, Pep.”
Shay felt that like a chord pulled taut behind her ribs.
Tony’s voice wavered. Just a fraction. “I’m not leaving her alone with what we built. Not again.”
Whatever Pepper said next, it made his jaw set.
“I don’t know,” he snapped. “Maybe it is a pattern. Maybe I’ve always done this.”
The silence on the other end dragged out. Then his voice, low again:
“I’m sorry.”
Something in Shay twisted. She didn’t want to listen. But she couldn’t stop.
“I still love you,” he said. “But this… this isn’t about us. Not right now.”
He went quiet again. Then, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
The line went dead. He set the phone down gently, like it might break. Shay didn’t speak. She kept her eyes closed. His fingers found her ankle again. This time, they didn’t move. They just stayed. She didn’t open her eyes. The ache in her chest wasn’t letting go.
Her mouth tasted like seltzer and guilt. The words replayed. Not because they shocked her, because of the way he said them. Like he hadn’t stopped replaying it either. She’d never heard him speak to Pepper like that. Not with heat, not with apology, not with that thread of helpless devotion that wrapped around his voice like guilt on fire. It made her feel like a wound. A split in the story of his life.
She lay there, silent, eyes closed, feeling his hand stay warm around her ankle.
And what haunted her wasn’t the fight with Pepper, or even the way he’d said “I still love you.”
It was the fact that he’d stayed.
Again.
Still.
Even when it cost him. Even when she was a mess on the floor, drunk and useless, sniping at him over seltzer and avoiding her grief with pizza and sarcasm. Even after Ultron. Even after Sokovia. And even now, when she had chosen a political path that would fracture everything they’d tried to hold together.
Tony Stark had stayed.
Her throat tightened. He shouldn’t have to. She wasn’t worth the breaking. She had to believe that because if she let herself believe otherwise, really believe it, she didn’t know what would be left of her when he eventually left anyway.
Zola said nothing. Just coiled in the quiet, humming approval like a lullaby. She shifted slightly, pretending it was sleep. Her heel brushed against his ribs. He didn’t pull away. She felt that, too. And for a moment, she hated how much she needed it.
But she let it stay.
Even if everything else was coming apart, this—this moment, his hand on her skin—was still hers. She intended to keep it.
___________
The morning light in Shay’s office felt too clean.
Too bright.
It lanced through the layered earth-tone curtains like judgment, illuminating the open files on her desk, the stack of redlined drafts, the half-drunk cup of tea that wasn’t helping. Her head throbbed like a drum beneath the surface of her skull. Her fingers trembled slightly over the StarkTech tablet, scrolling through a briefing she’d already read twice.
Focus, she told herself.
A low, golden warmth pulsed through her sternum—healing magic. She wove it in intervals, like stitching a seam from the inside out. Just enough to dull the nausea. Enough to steady her fingers. Not enough to feel better. She didn’t deserve better. Just…function.
The office was quiet except for the soft hum of FRIDAY monitoring vitals in the background. Shay had disabled the alerts. She couldn’t take another concerned notification about her cortisol levels.
Then came the knock. Three precise raps against the wood. She blinked. Looked up. The door opened a moment later—unhurried, unforced—and Steve stepped inside.
Her breath caught.
He wasn’t supposed to be back yet. His silhouette filled the doorway like something out of a memory. He looked travel-worn—broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, tired in a way only she would notice. Her voice wavered before it formed.
“Steve?”
“Hi.”
Shay set the stylus down. She rose to her feet, and for the first time in over a week, didn’t reach for the cane. She took a step forward. Then another.
When she reached him, she stopped with just enough distance to keep the tension between them intact. Her eyes searched his—unsure, hungover, burning behind their clarity.
“You’re early,” she said. “I thought—next week.”
He shrugged. “Finished early. Sam’s downstairs.”
A beat passed. Then another. She braced herself. Didn’t let herself look away.
“Are you here because you’re mad at me?” she asked, low and raw. The magic flickered behind her ribs.
He looked at her. Took in the gray tint beneath her eyes, the faint shine of sweat at her temple, the way her shoulders were held stiffly upright like she’d bolted them into place. There was magic in the air, barely-there but unmistakable, like the ozone before a storm. It clung to her skin.
“No,” he said at last, his voice low. “I’m not mad. But I’m not…” He stopped, searching. “I’m not not hurt either.”
That landed like something brittle between them.
“I know,” she said. Her voice was small.
Steve looked past her for a second—at the cluttered desk, the half-drunk tea, the way the light cut through the air like a blade. Then back at her. He stepped forward—one slow stride—and his voice dropped. “I don’t need you to be perfect,” he said. “I need you to trust me enough to be there before you are.”
Her throat burned.
And still, because it was Shay, because the shame hadn’t cleared yet, she said, “Even if I advocate for a hero registry?”
Something behind his eyes flickered—like her words had hit a bruise he was trying not to protect. He looked at her, like a man standing in the middle of something he didn’t want to run from.
“I hate it,” he said simply.
Shay held his gaze. Didn’t look away.
“I know you do,” she said, quiet.
He nodded once. “It scares me. Everything about it. The precedent. The control. What they’ll do with the information after.”
“I know,” she said again. Her voice didn’t crack, but it wavered.
Steve stepped a little closer—just enough that she could feel the warmth of him now. Not touching, but near.
“But I know you,” he said. “And I know you wouldn’t sign off on anything unless you believed it was the only way to protect people. To protect us.”
Shay’s throat tightened.
“I need you to hear me,” Steve said. “I don’t agree with it. I still think it’s a mistake. But I also know you’re not doing it for them. You’re doing it for the people they’ll hurt if no one like you’s in the room.”
Shay blinked hard. Her hands had curled slightly at her sides without her noticing.
“And I don’t love that this is where we’re at,” Steve said, quieter now. “But I’d rather be on the opposite side of the table from you than not in the room with you at all.”
She closed her eyes. That—that—was what undid her. He stayed. Even knowing. Even hurting.
“I don’t know how to do this without breaking something,” she whispered.
Steve’s voice was steady. “Then we break it together. And rebuild better.”
A silence hung between them, thick and honest. Then, finally, Shay stepped forward. He let her come to him. She pressed into him, slow and cautious, like a tremor still lived in her bones. Steve wrapped his arms around her without hesitation—one hand at her back, the other bracing the base of her head like he could hold her there long enough for the world to stop spinning.
Shay folded into it. She let her face press against his collarbone, grip the back of his shirt. Her eyes burned. Her breath hitched. Her throat closed. And she held herself as still as she could, like movement might shatter whatever kept the tears in check.
Zola stirred. Slow. Icy.
“Weak,” he murmured. “Look at you. Reduced to clinging. He disapproves of you, meine Maus. Do not forget that. He tolerates you because it suits his image of himself. But he will never—”
Shut up.
He fell quiet.
Steve didn’t seem to notice the shift. Just tightened his arms around her a fraction. His chin brushed the top of her head.
“I’m here,” he said, quiet but solid. “Whatever you need. I’m here.”
Shay nodded once, small and tight, not because she believed it completely but because she wanted to.
And right now, that had to be enough.