Thaw

Three

There was darkness. A cold, terrible darkness that seeped under your skin and into your bones. It clawed at your lungs, tearing them apart from the inside. It swirled around you in a predatory dance, watching your every move. It dared you to fight, dared you to thrash and scream against it. But there was no hope, no chance, not even a prayer that you would survive this.

And so you accepted it. You would have said some parting words, but who was there to say goodbye to? You laid yourself down to rest, closing your eyes for the last time as darkness pounced, digging its icy claws into you. You felt the burn of unfathomable coldness wash over you, but you were strong, to the end. You would not die weeping. You clenched your jaw and took a deep breath of darkness in.

It was in you. It enveloped and overtook you. You allowed it, because the only other option had the same outcome. Death in darkness.

It was black; glossy ink that darkened all your pages, assimilating you to itself. There was beauty in the permanence of it, the power it held. You were terrified, furious, anguished; and yet, it was intoxicating, that black ink. It strangled you with an intimate caress. It claimed you, possessed you, held you in its suffocating embrace, until its roaring lulled you to forever sleep.

There was darkness.

Then suddenly, there was light.

____

"I told you not to wake him without me," Tony snarled as she stalked towards the Director of SHIELD, standing sentry in the middle of the restricted access hallway. He'd been informed she was coming down, and he'd made sure to situate himself where they would run into each other privately. Somehow, he always seemed less foreboding when she was around, and he didn't take too keenly to that. She was messing up his groove.

"And I told you that you have no authority on the subject," he replied calmly, observing how high her eyebrows shot up to her hairline.

"No authority? NO AUTHORITY?!" She was seething now. "You brought me in to an agency I morally object to and overall hate, to contrive and oversee the goddamn resurrection of a ninety year old virgin with a spangle fetish in deep freeze, just so you can tell him that everyone he ever loved is dead, and that he has no place or purpose in life, and you have the audacity to tell me that I have no authority?!

"You owed me this, Nick! No....no. Actually, it wasn't even yours to owe in the first place! These idiotic searches were fully funded and organized by my father. He orchestrated the whole damn thing to continue as many aeons as it took to find his precious Captain. You have no idea what this meant to him. What it means to me! You just jump right in and take charge, stepping on people's lives and memories and waking the bastard up in the Twilight Zone, treating him like a prisoner and a relic and triggering only God knows how much PTSD in his newly thawed brain! He is not your lab rat, Director. He's a lost veteran and a victim of circumstance. And it's a really craptastic circumstance."

There was a silence that followed which would have been considered awkward by two people with weaker willpower. Tony had a glare that could reduce powerful men to whimpering fools, and Fury was more than aptly named. But eventually righteous indignation won out, and the man let out an exasperated sigh. "We may have been a little hasty," he admitted begrudgingly.

"That doesn't even scratch the surface."

"Fine," he continued darkly. "You were right. We were wrong. How do we fix it?"

"You don't," she snapped back, sidestepping past him to continue down the hallway. He made no move to stop her and she didn't look back at him. "I do."

____

He was hunched over a desk they'd put in the little room. It was comically small in proportion to his frame, a desk for ants. He won't get that reference. Save it for another day.

She knew he heard her come in, because he'd stopped rolling his pencil across the desk like he had been doing as she'd watched him through the one-way mirror. They've got him caged up like a criminal, she thought with disgust. He probably doesn't even know they can see through the glass.

Tony waited for him to look at her, but he kept his face turned away, the muscles in his back tensing visibly under the this white shirt they'd put him in. She noted how pale he was, his skin not having seen the sun in a lifetime. Still, he looks pretty good for a guy just coming out of deep freeze.

"Hey, soldier," she greeted with false lightness, closing the door behind her. She started to move into the room, but stopped as he spoke.

"More tests?"

His voice shook her to the core. It was raw, husky from lack of use, and full of pain. It was heartbreaking to hear him, all the more so because of what he had said. She was caught between rage for the people who'd brought him so coldly back to the world, and empathy for Rogers himself. He didn't look up, and she was glad for it. The expression she wore was more vulnerable than she wanted to admit, but at that moment she couldn't help herself.

"No," she replied softly, potentially the gentlest she'd ever spoken to anyone. "No more tests."

His shoulders relaxed slightly at her reassurance, and she felt angry all over again. How dare they treat him like this! What's next? Poke him with a stick and see what happens? He still hadn't turned to face her, so she walked slowly over to sit on the twin sized bed. Does he even fit on this?

"Not really," he replied, and she jerked her head up, realizing that she'd once again been caught thinking out loud. Still not looking at me?

"It's kind of ridiculous. I mean, did they even look at you? You're like seven feet tall! And what is wrong with this pillow? Did it have to fight to the death with other pillows to earn its spot here? It's got chunks missing! Is this even a pillow at all?! This could be a sack of beans. Or potatoes. What else comes in sacks? Oh good grief. Did they wrestle this blanket off a homeless man? This place is a dump. We have to leave right now."

She'd barely taken a breath through the rant she was having in an effort to distract and engage. When she looked up, she greatly regretted that fact, because Steve Rogers was staring at her and she forgot how to inhale.

"You're a Stark."

She didn't know whether to be proud or insulted at the instant recognition. "I am."

"You're, you must be Howard's sister, you look so much like him. He mentioned you at-"

He didn't finish his sentence, as she was shaking her head and smiling wryly. "I'm his daughter."

The man out of time blinked twice, and reality washed over him as it had a few times already that morning. "Right," he mumbled, ducking his head down. The tips of his ears were red and she tried not to get distracted. It was tempting to see how red they could get, but the poor man's sanity was more important than her childish glee. She got up from the poor-excuse-for-a-bed and drew closer, reaching out to him.

"Tony Stark," she said as her fingers found his palm. She started to shake his hand, but he reflexively pulled hers to his lips.

"Steve Rogers. It's an honour, Miss Stark," he murmured into her skin. A shiver ran up her spine and she tried to ignore it as she corrected him.

"The honour is definitely not yours, Captain," she laughed, pulling her hand back to its place. "It's mine. And it's just Tony. Miss Stark was my father."

He chuckled at that and she decided to continue making him laugh forever, at all costs. "It's just Steve, Tony."

My name sounds so good when he says it.

Please God tell me I didn't say that out loud.