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[ When Riley died, Sam remembers losing an entire month. Well, remember is the wrong word, perhaps. He has a dim awareness that a month passed in which he barely got out of bed. After the blip, he didn't have the luxury of losing it that badly, so he shortened his breakdown to a day locked inside a hotel room in New York. Here, there's even less time, so he'd had to lean on Bucky for a while, just let the white noise and hollow grief swallow him for a tiny little while as the trenches of his grief re-opened all over again and he bled dry right there.

So perhaps it's because he had his miniature form of a going through his feelings before he had to put them in a box and bury that box beneath his ribs hurriedly to move on and be there for the people who need him. Perhaps it's because Sam doesn't share himself easily with others, is better at putting up a front and swallowing the glass shards of his own broken heart. Either way, he does that now, shoves it all down as he steers Tony towards the palette stack, gentle but firm, and maneuvers him to sit down. ]

I know it hurts.

[ Impossibly so. A second time, for all of them, and that's just unfair in so many new ways. ]

Breathe. Let it out, it's okay.

[ He crouches down in front of Tony, looks up at him. He can't drown while there's others he needs to keep from drowning. ]

She's... I made sure. I'm so sorry, Tony.

( He's had no time to mourn.

At home, they were hell-bent toward finishing the mission, not allowing themselves anything more than the immediate aftermath. Natasha died believing they were going to succeed, and her sacrifice would mean something. Tony never expected to follow her, never expected to end up making a chthonic bargain at what was supposed to be the end of his life, and he never expected to find Natasha here.

Time spent in the infirmary, tended to and looked after– losing it, letting everything sink in, grieving the stack of losses; that couldn't happen. It couldn't happen on the mission, not while they're listened to at all hours, not while he has people depending on him to keep it together. Don't think, just do, keep going.

He can't anymore.

Seated now- when had they moved? -pulling in a ragged breath, Tony cards his hand back through his hair. )

She was, um. She was my regret.

( His expression crumples and, quietly, that dam bursts. )

She wanted to come back to us. Shit, Tony...

[ And yeah, he gets it. To Sam, the circumstances of her death are a nebulous thing, but while Tony wasn't on that weirdass planet that took Natasha from them, he was on that mission, and that hits different. And from the timeline the others vaguely sketched of events, it sounds like there was next to no time between Natasha's death and a time travelling Thanos rolling in to ruin the day a little more, again.

Sam knows what it's like not to be given time to process loss. Hell, there are times he's run away from taking that time, himself. He lost around a month to grief after Riley, just lying in bed for most of it. After losing Natasha and Steve, by contrast, he'd run. Throwing himself into the pardon mandated contract work with the AirForce, shoved grief and other burdens far down. Wept through one night in a lonely hotel room immediately after Steve left, too, but kept his shit bottled up until tonight, and allowed Bucky in a little closer than anyone else, allowed himself to break down and let the undertow of grief take him away for a little while.

And now he's providing the same space for the others. Yelena first, because Natasha was her sister and no one even knew about it before, and now he's here with Tony. Providing a space monitored by Redwing, away from prying eyes and tears, from bugged bed rooms. It's not the nicest place to process loss and grief - but it's far from the worst, either.

Sam shifts his grip, curls his hand better around Tony's shoulder, thumb rubbing back and forth while Tony cries. Notes, quietly and to himself, that it was Natasha, not Tony himself. A conversation for another day. ]

Edited 2021-10-03 06:39 (UTC)

( For all his showmanship, Tony isn't a demonstrative crier. He's eerily quiet about it, even when his shoulders shake, his breaths hitching as grief closes like a vice around his throat, and he drops his head to his knees, like if he makes himself a small enough target it'll all be over faster. Like he's inconveniencing Sam by falling the fuck apart, even as Sam's very presence grounds him, holds him here and now so he doesn't do something wholly stupid, like convince himself he's still back on that battlefield, and all of this has just been some desperate hallucination while he's still dying painfully against an uprooted tree.

Natasha shouldn't have had to die. Neither of them should have. Tony clenches his teeth against a sound that might have been a scream of rage or a despondent wail of grief, muffled against his knees.

He misses Pepper. He misses Morgan, and Peter, the very reason he agreed to leave his safe little enclave at all, and right the fuck now he just wants to go home.

A minute or an hour later, when Tony feels wrung out, eyes swollen, he manages a slow breath and pushes himself up again, wiping haphazardly at his face. )

Sorry, I, uh... ( Talking, turns out, is a really stupid idea, because his voice just wobbles into silence until he tries again, steadier, )

Does Yelena know?

[ Sam doesn't say that Tony has nothing to apologize for here. They both know that. He just remains present and steadfast, willing himself to be the rock, the anchor, that his people need.

That his team needs, and fuck, when has he started thinking of them all as his. This fierce little emotion in him. He remembers the last time he was the one in charge and someone was his not just as a person but also as a team mate, as someone Sam was in charge of.

He wrenches his thoughts away from that. ]

Yeah. She, uh. I didn't wanna put an order on who I break the news to first, but... figured most of you might appreciate not having too much of an audience...

So. Yelena knows. [ He needed her to know, because they didn't know about her back home, and so no one told her back home when she should have been told. A small thing to rectify in the most painful way, now. ] Bucky, too. [ Because Sam had needed him. ] Uhm. Newt knows - I needed someone in Lionetta to... help confirm this. Needed to be sure before I told you.

( Tony wraps his metal arm around himself and scrubs at his face with the heel of his opposite palm, lapsed into silence as Sam talks. Focusing on him, because what is any of this for, if they can just take us away without warning wants to slither to the forefront of his mind, and Tony can't think about that, can't think that maybe everything they're doing is futile. )

Good.

( It's not, just a neutral affirmation that he's heard and processed what Sam's relaying to him. Anything more complicated is suspect. )

[ Silence falls for a moment. There's not much to say, not much that you can explain that would make this any easier to bear. ]

I've had six months. To... mourn her. The first time around. You didn't. We can make time and space for that, now. Just... you ain't alone. You got your people here, alright?

[ Sam shifts his hand to the back of Tony's neck, leans in to chase the man's eyes a little bit. ]

We carry this together.

( Some, he wants to say, Not everyone, but it's knee-jerk, bitter because it sounds too much like we'll lose together, and Sam doesn't deserve it, wouldn't know why Tony is almost afraid to hear that. He smiles, a reflex, so fake and tight it looks like a grimace as he slides his hand over Cap's. )

I want to go home, Sam.

[ No, not everyone. It's not so different back home, with a fractured and splintered Avengers. Rhodey tried. Bucky's the first one, strangely, who managed to actually show up and be there for Sam. And Sam knows, now, that it falls on him to show up and be there for the others, because otherwise, no one will.

Tony, meanwhile... sounds an awful lot like 'I want to die' from where Sam's sitting, and he holds Tony's gaze. Sees the fake reflexive smile and wants to gag, because he knows that kinda smile, has seen it on Bucky, too. Not a fan. ]

Tell me what you're tryna fix and how.

[ Is he coming home, after all of this, or is Tony just headed to death... like Natasha? ]

I don't know.

( Fragile, fleeting, his smile is gone. Tony rubs his hand over his face, pinches the bridge of his nose, and then takes Sam by the shoulder, a mirror of their previous arrangement. )

What the Hell are we even doing here? What guarantee do we have that this, this- wild goose chase for magic space rocks even works, and Nat and I, we... we don't come back?

( He scoots to the edge of the pallets, his voice pitching low, because there's nowhere that's safe to talk but he has to say this aloud, at least, candid and fearful in a way he doesn't let anyone see that isn't Pepper, but she's not here and Sam is, the offer of support made and accepted. )

We had... maybe fifteen minutes between putting the gauntlet together and Thanos leveling the facility. What happens when these orbs come together? What if something worse is coming?

[ Sam is good at this. Pushing down his own hurt and focusing on others, being the rock they need. And it's nothing he resents either - makes it easier for him to handle his own grief, to push it under like this, instead of letting himself get pulled under.

Besides, for once he has someone who holds him up, too. Sam is strangely relieved that he'll get to go home to that tonight. ]

I don't know.

[ The admission pains him, because Sam hates flying blind like that when it comes to this kind of scale. It's a recipe for disaster. ]

We got to make deals in our dreams. Ain't exactly the kinda shit where you get to read the fine print. And Viveca feeds us what she's programmed to say. Can't imagine she can do more than that.

[ Sam licks his lips. ]

She claims we can't go into the north wing because at best those orbs would drive us mad or hurt us. There's apparently special ways to contain them up there.

( They don't know how right Viv is about that, they don't know what's coming. Still, even without knowing, only sure of what he's heard of their last mission, it does make a kind of sense. He contained the Infinity Stones in a specialized chamber to assemble the gauntlet, after all, not knowing what would happen once they were placed. So Tony sighs, wets his lips, and sits back again. )

When I came aboard for the "time heist", after time team number one conducted some very, ah, questionable experiments in time travel... I told Steve that I didn't want us to die trying. Part of, of keeping what we gained meant us too, our lives.

( Tony says it so vehemently he looks like he shocks himself, but proceeds, insistent: )

Natasha and I, we should have made it. I want Yelena to have her sister back, and I want to see my family again, at the end of all this. That's it.

//Xim inbox

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