needles and pinches

everybody says you've got your man so just hold him

everybody says life should be beautiful, is it?
everybody says you've got your life so just live it
but i'm never forgetting the day
they told me you'd got away
from it all

three hours after

i feel like we've both failed. as husbands, and as fathers-to-be.

bucky had noticed it first, barely a week ago; how tony seemed to perpetually live in his workshop, how he wouldn't get lunch with us, how he slinked away as soon as we tried anything sexual. how he'd looked thinner, paler, his tan flaking off like cheap paint on a moulding wall. how he'd become much more irritable at the smallest of things.

how he'd gotten a bump big enough not to be covered by his parade of tees.

we'd both let it slide, chalking it up to a creativity burst. perhaps he'd overeaten and become rather bloated. perhaps he was doing weird experiments of some sort. looking back, i see nothing but pure stupidity. absurdity. heartless ignorance. we should've known better.

now tony pays the price.

bucky should be the one driving. i get pretty distracted when i'm in distress—we both know that a tad too well—yet he'd pressed me into the driver's seat, practically clamping my hands to the wheel. he clearly doesn't trust himself with a car right now. he's scared he'd crash the three of us into a tree.

maybe he would.

once again, it's a silent drive. tony's drowsy, worn out by the day's event, but sleep won't come to him the way it did last night. bucky latches onto him, fingers so tense the metal is screeching. outside, the wind howls its woeful requiem; spring is seeping into clouds and trees, yet in the dying hours of dusk, a siberian bite lingers. fallen leaves scratch the asphalt a bleary pallor mortis. somewhere, a frozen songbird lay, its mesmerizing hymn lost to the unending void of forgotten graves.

we have five children; we have none.

and i am empty in head and in heart
empty in belly and arms
breath and tongue

five hours after

tony isn't talking, still, but he's eating at least. bucky only glares at his plate, as if his favourite pasta has rotten into something vile. i think i've been chewing on this one mouthful for far too long. it tastes like mud, though i know better than anyone else that it's exquisite homemade sugo all'arrabbiata. maria had left tony a cookbook in her mother tongue, hand-written and leather-bound, so one day he would cook for his children the same as she did for him. i have dutifully followed her recipe down to a t, so there's frankly no reason for it to turn foul.

if only we can have children.

i look away from the food, suddenly nauseous. crimson swirls in my field of vision, murky blood and soiled gown and oozing bodily fluid and—

tony is crying. a fork lies helpless on the tainted tablecloth, its metal backbone snapped in half.

bucky screams.

two days after

the workshop is cold and dusty in a way that spells abandoned, as i help tony down into it. dum-e whirs to life at our arrival, but even his cheerful demeanour seems duller, dejected and slow. friday says nothing—she's seen this before, and knows not to speak to her creator unless spoken to. she works effectively, still, and before long holographic oceans are overlapping around us, a sombre blue bleeding all over furniture and walls. tony hums pensively, his doe browns brooding.

he doesn't feel up to it yet—the therapeutic pleasure of creating and breathing soul into pieces of machinery—but honestly none of us feel up to doing anything at this point. in his chair he sits, looking up at ideas and projects and visions with lukewarm eyes and heavy hands, as if they weren't his babies up until three days ago. one by one, he picks them up, crumples them into neat balls of rubbish, and throws them away carelessly. i can't help but watch them, rapt-eyed and worried. a design for my shield goes left. an arm-shaped blueprint goes right. a hologram of an obnoxiously large pair of pants aims straight for the ceiling. widow bites and arrowheads shatter into faded smithereens. there go hours of hard work and dedication; decades of passion and love. there goes his very self, his own being. they jumble down a bottomless trash can, and might never resurface again.

it doesn't mean a damn thing. tony lost his child. we lost our child. he has all the rights in the world to do whatever he wants.

yet when his shaky knees buckle and the proverbial dams in his tear tracks cave, i wish silently that i had half the heart to stop his prone self-destruction.

and i'm sad it would happen to us
i've found me that rock in my guts
that proved me wrong

four weeks after

pepper looks seconds away from butchering us, and weirdly enough, i find us deserving of her unrelenting wrath. colonel rhodes doesn't seem very far behind, despite not being able to walk. they have been tony's friends and family for years before any of us came into the picture; it's only fair they get to hunt us down after what happened.

in the end, thankfully, no bodies need discarding, and no forensic cleanup team needs to be called. pepper bawls her eyes out on the couch, her arms wrapped so tight around tony i think i hear him wheezing. on his other side sits the colonel, who's near tears himself but refuses to break down alongside his best friend and his wife. early on, when the pain was fresh and the miscarriage a burning piece of coal, we'd urged tony to confide in someone, anyone, but he turned down every suggestion, thus even pepper and rhodes were kept in the dark. four days ago, however, he started talking about telling rhodey and pep, and though we have not the faintest idea as to why he suddenly changed his mind, we encouraged it anyway. bucky had been ridiculously positive about the whole deal. i wasn't so enthusiastic, but i felt like this had been long overdue. it needs to be done, sooner rather than later.

which ultimately brings us here, in this one fragile moment, where tony uncoils like a fearful little hedgehog finding safety again after far too long, his spiny veil softening until there is nothing left but his true, vulnerable heart. he's hurting, the kind of hurt that wedges itself into flesh and bones like newly sharpened fishing hooks, the kind of hurt that no passionate lover dare dream of soothing. no, never can we work such magic; the miracle lies in the hands of those who love him dearly and unconditionally, with not the smallest amount of romance involved. his platonic soulmates, whose embrace is understanding and whose kisses bloom serenity, as tony mends under their tender touches.

huddled close to each other, we look on, me and bucky; there's not a necessity for words when i gaze into his eyes and see tony in them, sobbing heartbrokenly but less guarded, less tired than the last few months altogether. bucky's steely lapis lazulis waver, and i know he feels it too.

tony will be alright.