This is based on a tiktok by ashleygotatiktok about how Tony probably grew up with Peggy
Steve has had a lot of bad days, but sitting in the front row of a London church, Peggy's lifeless body mere feet away, he's not sure he's ever felt more hopeless and alone.
Sam is here, at least. He was nice enough to come along. He was nice enough to pretend he hasn't noticed Steve crying off and on all day, too, which he appreciates more than he can say. Still, even with his friend by his side, he feels like he's completely alone in this world.
He doesn't pay much attention to the funeral. He doesn't want the tears to fall again. He's not sure he has any left to shed, but it's not a theory he wants to test.
When Sam nudges his arm, he lifts his gaze from the tile floor to the altar in front of him, and he's met with a shockingly familiar face — and the last one he'd expected to see here today.
Tony Stark stands before him, drumming a small stack of index cards against the podium. He wears a small smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes, the insincerity as glaringly obvious as the nerves he's trying so desperately to hide.
"I try not to speak in absolutes," Tony begins, eyes scanning the crowd but conveniently skipping Steve's row, "but I can say with certainty that my Aunt Peggy was the most amazing woman I have ever met."
Aunt Peggy.
Steve covers his mouth with his hand, awkwardly shifting to a gentle fist in a way he hopes will look casual if anyone notices.
My Aunt Peggy.
He doesn't know what to do other than just stare.
Tony doesn't seem to notice. His gaze drops to the cue cards in his hand, then he raises it to the audience of family and friends and continues. "I could go on and on about all the good she's done for us, for our country and our world as a whole, but if you're here today, you probably already know all that.
"What you might not know is that when she wasn't busy fighting Nazis and founding SHIELD, she was the greatest aunt a guy could ask for. She was my godmother for a reason — granted, she always said that 'reason' was that she was the only woman except my mom who could tolerate the great Howard Stark."
That gets a few chuckles from the room, and Tony pauses briefly, a small smile gracing his lips that fades once he returns to his speech.
"She used to love talking about her glory days," Tony says. "She was always proud of SHIELD and the work they did, but her eyes would always light up when she would talk about the war. They were some of the hardest times she ever went through, but she always said that with hard times come the strongest friendships. It's where she met my father, Bucky Barnes..." The corners of his lips twitch up in a wry smile. "Uncle Steve."
Steve's brows shoot up. Uncle Steve? Does that mean him? There's no way... Tony's Uncle Steve? That doesn't... That's not...
But then Tony's gaze flickers towards him, and for the briefest moment, they lock eyes, and he knows. He knows Tony was referring to him. And he can tell Tony didn't make up that name himself, too. Did Howard call him that? Did Peggy? Even after he'd been gone for decades?
Tony looks down at his cue cards, and he swiftly moves two from the front of the pile to the back. He takes a deep breath before raising his gaze to the audience again. "But as much as she'd talk about it, she wasn't stuck in the past. I usually credit my dad with getting me into inventing — good for marketing, you know? — but she was always so much more supportive. She always wanted to see the newest tech. I still remember when I was six, she bought me a circuit board set for my birthday, and we spent the whole day playing around with it, setting off alarms and lighting up lights. There was never any pressure to make anything. It was just fun.
"When I got older, my tinkering got a little more intense. After my parents died, she helped me clean out their place, and we found my dad's original blueprints for his flying car that never came to be. We spent a few hours looking over it, trying to figure out where my dad went wrong, even though I'm pretty sure she didn't understand a single word I was saying."
That gets a few scattered chuckles, and Steve huffs a laugh, too. He's been in that exact same position — with both Starks, actually. They both love to hear themselves talk, but hell if anything they said ever made any sense.
"For the record, that's never going to happen," Tony adds, grinning, earning a heavier laugh. "Flying cars are definitely not street legal.
"Still, she said if I could get it working, it would be SHIELD's new favorite toy," Tony says, growing more sincere. "She was always trying to get me to make things for SHIELD. She was good like that. She always knew that I could be — that I should be — more than a weapons manufacturer; a merchant of death. Obviously I didn't listen because I never listened, but she was right. She was always right. Did anyone else ever notice that? I can't remember a single time she was wrong about anything. Anyone...?"
Tony pauses, scanning the crowd for their answer. There are a few nods, a few shaking heads, no one rushing to disprove that. Steve finds himself agreeing, too. Off the top of his head, he really does think Peggy was right about nearly everything — everything that mattered, at least.
"That's the only problem I ever had with her," Tony says. "She was always right, you know? She really had me thinking for decades that you just naturally know everything when you get old, and you don't! 'Cause now I'm old and I don't know anything, so thanks for those unrealistic expectations, Aunt Peggy."
Steve chuckles, as do a few other people around him. It's a quiet response, but it gets a little bit of a reaction.
"You know," Tony says, "I told her that a few years ago and she thought it was hilarious, so if you guys want to laugh in her honor..."
That gets a more enthusiastic laugh, and not just because he asked for it. Leave it to Tony to turn a funeral into a lighthearted joke. Usually his flippancy is annoying, but right now, the humor is a welcome relief from the gravity of the day.
Tony looks around with a smile, letting them get their laughter out and enjoying every second of it. He looks down at his cue cards, casually thumbing through for a few moments as he waits for the room returns to its usual solemn silence.
Tony's smile falls abruptly, and he shakes his head, lowering his cue cards to his side. "I'm sorry, I can't..." He ducks his head and rushes off the altar, but he doesn't return to his seat. He heads all the way down the aisle and out of the church.
Like the rest of the mourners, Steve watches him go, sitting in awed silence while they figure out what to do now. After a painfully long pause, the priest clears his throat, politely demanding the attention back to the altar.
Steve ducks out of his row and follows Tony down the aisle. He's acutely aware that everyone is looking at him, and part of him feels like he should just go sit down again. He almost feels like he owes it to Peggy to stay here, after all they've been through. But Peggy's not here anymore, and Tony is, and the living have to come first.
Steve pushes open the front doors, and he doesn't have to go far to find Tony. He's sitting on the church steps, his head in his hands. Steve closes the door behind him as quietly as he can, and if Tony notices, he doesn't mention it.
Should he do something? Maybe he just wanted to be alone. Maybe Steve's presence is just going to make this worse. He's never seen Tony like this, and he's sure that's on purpose. Maybe he doesn't want anyone to see that he actually has feelings. It definitely looks like that sometimes.
But he's already here and it would be weird to leave now, so Steve sits down next to him, leaving a nice foot or two between them so he's not crowding him. He's not sure what to say, so he doesn't say anything at all.
Tony doesn't look up when he speaks. "You have no idea how many times I practiced that eulogy so this wouldn't happen." His voice is quiet but not broken, not quite sobbing just yet — or not sobbing anymore.
Steve lets out a long breath, trying to find the right response. "No one's going to blame you," he says. "I think most of us would have done the same."
"That's why Sharon wanted me to do it," Tony says. "She thought I would make it more..." He trails off with a minute shake of his head.
Steve furrows his brows. "Sharon?"
"Aunt — err, Peggy's great niece," Tony says.
"Ah."
It grows quiet, and Steve awkwardly drums his fingers along his leg, not quite sure what to do now. He didn't even know Peggy had a great niece. If Tony did, though, he feels like he should have, too. The fact that he didn't...
He shakes that thought from his head. "You never told me you knew Peggy," he says, doing his best to keep his tone light and conversational, though he means it almost accusatively. Tony has to know how much Peggy meant to him — how much she'll always mean to him. Why wouldn't he tell him?
Tony runs his hands down his face and wipes his eyes before lifting his head, and he turns his gaze to Steve by his side. "You never asked."
That's a pretty lame excuse, but he'll let it slide. Now feels like the wrong time to press about that. Maybe later, when they're both in a better place.
"So you grew up with her," Steve says, and he's acutely aware even as he says it that it's a stupid thing to say. Of course Tony grew up with her. He was just talking about that.
"Yeah, yeah, I..." Tony nods, maybe a little too quickly, revealing the discomfort he's trying so poorly to hide. "She was always around, you know? She and my dad were pretty..." He sighs. "Well, she was family. I guess that's all there is to it."
Steve nods slowly, trying to show that he's listening but he doesn't know what to say. This is the last thing he expected to hear today.
"I just..." Tony swallows hard. "I just can't believe she's gone, you know?" His voice cracks and he squeezes his eyes shut, but not before a tear slips out. He buries his head in his hands again.
"I know," Steve says quietly. "It's so... surreal." He's always had Peggy. Even after he came out of the ice, he knew she was there for him. She didn't always know who he was, especially towards the end, but she was there. And now she's not.
"And here I am crying like a baby when she was your girlfriend," Tony mumbles, his voice muffled by his hands.
"I've been mourning the Peggy I knew since I came out of the ice," Steve admits. "I've had more time to adjust — and I've still shed my fair share of tears these last couple days, too." He wouldn't have said that to anybody else in any other situation, but if Tony is being vulnerable for possibly the first time ever, Steve can do the same.
They lapse into silence, and Steve looks around, fiddling with his thumbs, doing anything to keep himself occupied before his mind starts to drift. He doesn't want to fall apart, too.
Tony chokes out a sob, his shoulders bouncing and then immediately pulling back in on himself. He sniffles and gently brushes the tears from his eyes before he takes his hands away from his face again.
"She used to talk about you a lot," Tony tells him, his voice shaking with every word, threatening to crack once more.
"Yeah, you said that," Steve says, and a small smile graces his lips as he thinks back to the eulogy. "'Uncle Steve.'"
Tony returns his smile with a small one of his own. "Uncle Steve."
"I bet you never thought you'd actually meet your Uncle Steve," he quips.
Tony snorts. "Maybe at the gates of Heaven when 'Uncle Steve,' the perfect saint he was, turned me away for not living up to his greatness."
Steve huffs a laugh, but he senses an underlying seriousness even in that lighthearted remark. "All good things, then?"
"An annoying amount of good things," Tony says. After a pause, he amends, "Well, I guess it was really only annoying from my dad. Aunt Peggy was a lot less..." He gestures helplessly, trying to find the word. Eventually, he settles on, "judgemental." He smiles sadly. "She really did love you. You know, in case you ever started to doubt that."
Steve shakes his head. "Never."
Tony nods slowly. "You two really had something special, didn't you?"
"I'd like to think so," Steve says. No amount of time will ever change that for him. He loved her. He still loves her. And he knows she loved him until her dying day, too — and if she's out there somewhere in the great beyond, he knows she'll love him long after that.
It grows quiet again, but he finds it more comfortable than the times before. He knew it would happen. He knew it was allowed to happen. They're both in mourning, after all, mourning different versions of the same wonderful woman. They can do it together, but they can do it separately, too. That's how mourning works.
Tony props his head up on his fist, gazing out absentmindedly at the street. "You know what the last thing she said to me was?"
"Hmm?" Steve hums.
"She said..." Tony sighs, swallows hard, and tries again. "She just — she grabbed my arm and she looked at me and she said... She said, 'You're going to do amazing things, Howard. I know you are.'"
Steve drops his gaze to the ground. What is he supposed to say to that? How is he even supposed to process it?
"That was months ago," Tony continues, still looking straight ahead. "I just — I couldn't go back after that. She was looking at me, but she was seeing my dad, and I couldn't... I didn't know what to do, so I just... I stopped coming. I must've been in D.C. three, four times after that, and I never went in to see her."
Steve looks at him sympathetically. As much of a wreck as he feels, Tony looks and sounds even worse. He wishes there was something he could do, but he knows grief and he knows it only loosens its hold with time.
"Was someone there?" Tony asks quietly. "Do you know? Was someone there when she...?"
Steve shakes his head. "I don't know."
Tony sighs. "I should've been there."
"Tony..." Steve gives him a look. "Don't do that to yourself." He's been thinking the exact same thing about himself, but Tony shouldn't. It wasn't his job.
Tony meets his gaze, tears filling his eyes. "She was always there for me," he says. "When my parents died. Moving to Malibu. Taking over Stark Industries. She was always there. And the one time I should have been there for her, I just — I wasn't. I wasn't there."
"But you know what?" Steve says. "You were there when it mattered."
Tony scoffs. "When it mattered?"
"Yes, when it mattered," Steve says. "When she wasn't on her deathbed. When she knew what was happening. When she could remember it. And you know what? I feel pretty damn good knowing that when I couldn't be there for her, you were."
Tony just looks at him for a few moments, a small smile on his face, then he rubs his eyes. "Stop that," he says, a lighthearted remark. "I'm not hydrated enough to be crying this much."
Steve chuckles. "I'm just being honest," he says. "It's not her last moments that mattered. It was all the little moments before then. And it sounds like you got a lot of those."
Tony nods. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I did." He sniffles and wipes his eyes again. "This is why I always let you give the pep talks."
"Hey, I am always more than happy to give the pep talks," Steve tells him. He glances behind himself at the doors to the church. "Do you think you're ready to head back in?"
Tony shakes his head. "I think I'm just..." He sighs. "I don't know. I think I'll just go back to the Compound. We still have to talk about the Accords."
Steve fights back a sigh. He'd nearly forgotten about the Accords. He knows how he feels and he knows how greatly it differs from how Tony feels, but now's really not the time to argue about it.
"I still have to carry the casket out," Steve tells him. "But if you want to stay for the burial, we could always, I don't know, grab some pizza or something before we head back."
"Ride out what little's left of the calm before the storm?" Tony says.
Steve gives a small shrug. "I think we could both use it," he says. "I don't know what's going to happen when we go back to New York, but right now... I mean, Peggy's gone and I don't really have anyone else to talk to about it. So if you have the time..."
Tony gives him a small smile. "You know, I think I'd like that."