Articles of Surrender

Sirens from the facility’s internal alarms bled into the comm chatter, a high, grating whine that made Tony’s voice crackle in Steve’s ear. “This is either the worst club I’ve ever crashed or—”

“Focus,” Steve said, already moving down the concrete corridor. The flicker of fluorescent lights strobed over old HYDRA insignias painted onto peeling walls. He kept his shield up and read every shadow like it meant to kill him. “Left at the junction, then down.”

“Right, because when the ghost of Nazi R&D says ‘Authorized Personnel Only,’ I trust it.” Tony’s suit hissed past him, gold and red bright against the bleak gray. The HUD reflected off his faceplate, painting his jaw in cold light. “I’ve got a heat signature cluster two levels down. Could be servers, could be some beautiful, illegal generator. Could be nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” Steve didn’t say how the back of his neck had prickled the moment they breached. The intel had been too neat. HYDRA didn’t leave doors open; HYDRA left nooses, and they were already through the loop.

They entered a wide hangar-like space, steel beams webbed across the ceiling. An abandoned transport sat hulking at one end, half-dismantled, the guts stripped. The air smelled like coolant and something sweet that put him on edge. Tony hovered, scanning. “Well, that’s disappointing. No goons, no Dr. Doom knockoff. Just a whole lot of—” His HUD pinged. He froze mid-sentence. “Okay, that’s a lot of—”

“Tony?” Steve took two steps forward and saw it: square packages wired along the support columns, neat as presents under a tree. Red lights pulsed in unison. Not motion-activated. Remote. Watching. Waiting.

His comm filled with static and Natasha’s clipped tone, then nothing, as if a hand had ripped the line out of the wall.

“Jammers just came online,” Tony said, too calm. “That’s new.”

“Out,” Steve ordered, pivoting toward the corridor they’d come through.

The floor trembled under his boots. Not the sharp jump of a nearby blast. A roll, a deep-bellied growl, like the building itself was taking a breath.

“Steve—” Tony’s voice hitched.

“Move.” He didn’t wait to see if Tony listened. He ran.

The first explosion ripped the far wall apart, a bloom of light and heat that obliterated the door they’d used. Concrete became shrapnel. The transport shredded like paper. Shock hit Steve in the ribs like a battering ram. He heard Tony swear, heard his own pulse roaring between his ears. The air turned into a fist.

The second blast went off to their right. The roof groaned. Steel screamed, beams flexing like they were alive.

Tony dropped to the ground hard, the suit’s stabilizers flickering. A cascade of red warnings flicked across his visor. “Hey, Cap, quick status update—”

Steve didn’t think. He crossed the space in a straight line, the way a soldier throws himself into fire because he knows if he stalls he’ll die. He slammed into Tony, shield up, angling his body over the armor. He’d taken bullets for this man before. He’d take a building.

“Rogers—”

“Down,” Steve said, voice iron-flat, and bracketed Tony’s head with his bent arm and the shield while the world detonated again.

Heat licked over his back. The impact drove him into Tony’s chestplate hard enough to bruise. He felt the bite and slide of metal as fragments scythed into him. A square-edged piece buried in the meat of his upper arm, hot and merciless. He held the shield against the onslaught anyway. The rim shuddered. Something sharp struck across his shoulders, tore skin, lodged. It took everything to keep his body still and heavy, a wall over Tony as the air howled.

The light dampened. The roar receded into crackles and the groan of a dying structure. Dust and ash drifted down in a fine snow. Steve’s lungs burned. He stayed where he was for another two beats, listened for the whine of another trigger, heard only Tony’s ragged breaths echoing loud in the helmet.

“Steve,” Tony said, softer, and there was a thread of panic in it he rarely let anyone hear. “You can get off me now unless we’re making this awkward on purpose.”

Steve lifted his head. His shield bore scorch marks and embedded shards of concrete. The hangar was a butchered carcass. Their exit was a pile of debris choked with rebar and fire. He rolled off Tony carefully, felt the wet warmth spreading down his bicep, the sting across his back that told him skin had been peeled open in strips.

Tony’s faceplate slid back, ash streaking his cheekbones, pupils blown in the dim. He did a quick scan of Steve with eyes and sensors. “You’re hit.”

“I’m fine,” Steve said reflexively, even as blood trickled under his sleeve. His arm sang with every pulse. He flexed his hand, testing. It obeyed.

Tony slid to sit, the suit whining, and grimaced. “Comms are fried. My external mics are picking up absolutely no love from the outside. And—” He glanced toward the collapsed corridor. “That was an invitation to the party that we RSVP’d to like idiots.”

“Trap,” Steve said, swallowing copper. He took in the other exits. One door at the far end hung crooked, frame cracked, beyond it a stairwell. Smoke threaded out, gray and thin, but he could still see. The floor under their feet vibrated again, a warning tremor.

“Yeah,” Tony said, and there was anger under the humor now, clean and sharp. “HYDRA’s version of hospitality.”

Another light above them flickered and popped. A slab of ceiling at the far end broke loose and crashed down. Tony flinched. He planted his gauntleted hands and pushed, the servos coughing. The arc reactor in his chest flickered like a stressed heartbeat, dimming before it stabilized. Not good.

“On your feet,” Steve said, bracing his shoulder under Tony’s arm to help him stand. The suit was heavier than it looked when it faltered. Tony leaned into him without comment, jaw set.

“Not to be dramatic,” Tony said, breathless, “but I would prefer not to be buried under HYDRA’s very ugly architecture.”

“Agreed.” Steve adjusted his grip, ignoring the flare in his arm. He kept his shield up because not keeping it up wasn’t an option he understood. He stepped over twisted metal and broken glass, moved them toward the stairwell door. Each step felt like crossing a field of mines.

They reached the door. Steve kicked it, the rusted lock giving with a screech. The stairwell beyond was narrow, steep, lit by emergency strips that buzzed, the light weak and sickly. Smoke crawled down, thicker here. The building’s bones were failing.

Tony wheezed a quiet laugh that was more habit than humor. “Next time I say ‘easy in, easy out,’ punch me.”

“Noted.” Steve tightened his arm around Tony, the warmth of him a fact that cut through the cold edge of adrenaline. He filed away the pain because there wasn’t time to let it be real. There was only the next step, and the one after. The facility groaned like a thing with a voice. Somewhere behind them, something essential snapped.

They started down. The stairwell trembled under their combined weight, dust sifting down in gray veils. Steve’s blood tracked in thin lines behind them, marking their passage toward whatever came next. Tony’s arc lit dimly through the gloom, a steady blue pulse against the dark, and Steve followed it down.

The stairwell twisted down around them in tight coils, each landing a small, damp square with a rusted door and a sign in German that Tony didn’t bother reading. The building shuddered like a living thing trying to shake them loose. Steve kept his body between Tony and the worst of it, one arm steel around Tony’s waist, the other holding the shield high against falling debris. His wounded arm burned hot and sticky, blood seeping into his glove. He ignored it. He had trained himself to file pain behind duty; right now duty looked like Tony leaning heavy against him, breath fogging the air inside his helmet, arc reactor stuttering with a faint, frantic pulse.

“Suit’s doing a great impression of a dying flashlight,” Tony said, the humor thin. He took a step and his knee buckled. Steve caught him, took more of his weight before it pulled them both down.

“Slow and steady,” Steve said. His voice came out even. He didn’t feel even. “Focus on your feet.”

“I’m focusing on my everything.” Tony’s hand tightened on the railing. It vibrated under his grip, loose in its brackets. “We need to exit stage anywhere-but-here.”

“Working on it.” Steve kicked open the next door with his boot, sending it banging against the wall. A corridor stretched in both directions, low ceiling, old fluorescent tubes flickering like fireflies. Smoke lay in a lazy sheet along the ceiling, thickest toward the west. The east looked clearer. He turned right, pulled Tony with him.

The floor sloped. Water—no, coolant—ran in a shallow ribbon along the seam where floor met wall, slick under their boots. Tony’s suit scraped the concrete, sparks coughing from a chewed-up joint at his hip. The reactor’s light dipped again. Steve felt the tiny jerk of Tony’s shoulder as he tried to hide it and failed.

“How long?” Steve asked, scanning ahead for movement, for another red blink or the gleam of a lens.

“On emergency reserves,” Tony said, grimacing as he took another step, “I have, best case, fifteen minutes of assisted movement. Worst case, eight. If I have to fly? Don’t laugh. I can’t.”

“We walk,” Steve said. “I’ve got you.”

“You always do,” Tony muttered, too quiet for anyone else to hear. It punched through Steve with a heat that was not pain and not entirely comfortable.

A shower of plaster rained down from the ceiling. Steve raised the shield, took the hit across his forearm, grit stinging his face. Tony hunched under him instinctively. The corridor groaned. Somewhere a pipe burst, a hot metallic scream followed by a rush of steam that billowed out of a vent, turning their world into a white blur.

“Thermal optics are useless in this soup,” Tony said. “Congratulations, we’re blind.”

“Stay close,” Steve said, tightening his hold. His fingers dug into the seam where the armor met undersuit, found the line of Tony’s ribs beneath. He kept them moving, the rhythm of their steps syncing despite the drag of the suit. He listened hard—past the hiss of steam, the dull thunder of structural collapse—to the fine-grained sounds he knew: the cough of a failing generator, the thin whine of servos, the whisper of air moving where it shouldn’t. Left at the next junction felt right. He took it, trusting the small compass in his head built from too many exits under fire.

They passed an open doorway. Inside, rows of dead monitors watched them with dark screens. A map of the facility flickered once on one, a ghost image, then vanished. Tony paused, swayed. Steve hauled him along before the floor could make the decision for them.

“Cap,” Tony said, a warning. “Arc’s dipping.”

Steve didn’t look at the reactor. He looked at Tony’s face through the smeared faceplate—jaw clenched, pupils blown, sweat cutting furrows through ash. “Keep talking to me,” Steve said. “Tell me something useful.”

“Useful,” Tony repeated, fighting for breath. “The safehouse exit is at the south end of this level. We came down two flights. If their schematics matched the ones I saw, there should be a service tunnel intersecting with an access corridor. S.H.I.E.L.D. loves a service tunnel.”

“South,” Steve said. He couldn’t see the cardinal directions, but he felt the slope, the cold air from one direction versus the hot breath of ruin from the other. He angled them toward the cold.

They reached a section where the wall had buckled inward. Concrete pressed in like a fist. The gap left was narrow and sharp with rebar teeth. Steve pushed Tony through first, bracing the metal back with his shield, sucking in a breath as the movement tore at the skin of his back. The world tilted for a second. He steadied, shoved, and they were through. Tony stumbled, hit the far wall, and slid.

“Steve—” Tony’s hand shot out, grabbed Steve’s wrist, the pressure human and fierce through the glove. “You’re bleeding,” he said, incredulous and angry, like the blood personally offended him.

“Later,” Steve said. “Move.”

For a few steps, Tony did. Then his weight doubled without warning. The glow in his chest dimmed to a sickly blue. His knees hit the floor with a hollow sound. He made a frustrated noise that curled like smoke. “Damn it.”

Steve crouched fast, got his shoulder under Tony’s arm again, and levered him up. “I’ve got you.”

“You’re going to throw your back out,” Tony said, breathless. “Then we’ll both be useless and die in an ugly corridor in Switzerland, and I’m suing HYDRA. Posthumously.”

“Shut up,” Steve said, because if he didn’t, something inside him would shake apart. He adjusted his grip, took almost all of Tony’s weight, and moved. The corridor narrowed, then widened. The air cooled. Somewhere, the constant hum of the facility faded and was replaced by the dull, steady whisper of wind.

“There,” Tony said hoarsely, pointing with his chin. A metal door hung crooked at the end of the hall, the paint flaking, a frost rim on the edges where colder air leaked in. Above it, stenciled in peeling letters, were the words SERVICE ACCESS.

Steve didn’t let himself think about the weight on his arm or the heat crawling down his spine. He half-carried Tony to the door. The handle stuck. He slammed his shoulder into it, once, twice. It gave, a burst of freezing air hitting them full in the face. Snow whirled in the opening like a handful of torn paper.

Tony’s reactor flickered, caught a little stronger, as if the cold soothed it. He sagged against the frame, relief and misery written in the way he let his head fall back. “Congratulations,” he said, voice rough. “You found south.”

Steve looked into the white blur beyond and tightened his arm around Tony’s waist. The wind howled down the tunnel. The facility groaned behind them like an exhausted beast. “We’re not done yet,” Steve said quietly.

Tony’s mouth curled at the corner, brave and bitter. “We never are.” He pushed to standing on sheer stubbornness. “Lead on, Rogers.”

Steve nodded, braced, and stepped forward, drawing Tony with him into the cold. The door banged shut behind them, the sound swallowed by the storm.

The world outside hit like a fist. Wind sheared through the tunnel and into them, tearing heat from skin and metal alike. Snow clawed at their faces in hard, stinging flakes that found every gap and froze there. Steve ducked his head and kept Tony pulled tight to his side, angling them into the squall. The mountain loomed as a gray shadow swallowed by white. The only path was the one he remembered from a briefing: down along the service outflow, then east along the ridge line until the old S.H.I.E.L.D. markers took over. Last resort. He’d hoped never to need it.

“On a scale of one to hypothermia,” Tony said, voice muffled by his helmet and the wind, “I think we’re flirting with frostbite.”

“Keep moving,” Steve said. He felt the cold grip his lungs with every breath. The serum made him resilient, but it didn’t make him immune. He dragged the shield around his back to break the wind and used his body as a breakwater, letting the storm hit him first. Tony stumbled, the dead weight of the cape muscles in his legs clear through the armor. The suit’s servos had gone slack; the metal might as well have been an anchor.

Ice cracked under their boots. The ground tilted, treacherous and uneven. Steve gripped Tony’s forearm, fingers finding purchase on a joint in the armor, and guided him down the slope toward darker shapes that might be stunted trees or rocks. The roar inside the wind made the world feel far away. He focused on the simple math of steps and breath. Ten paces, then adjust. Ten more, then look for cover.

Tony huffed a laugh that fogged the inside of his faceplate. “If we live through this, I’m redesigning the entire alpine collection.”

“If?” Steve said, because talking kept Tony present. “We are living through this.”

“I like your optimism,” Tony said, stumbling again. His knee buckled. The suit scraped over ice and threw him sideways. Steve caught him hard, their bodies crashing together, the shield biting into Steve’s shoulder. Pain flashed across Steve’s back, bright and hot, and then the cold swallowed it.

“Careful,” Steve said, softer. Tony’s breath came fast against his cheek. Even through the armor, Tony shook.

“Hard to be careful when I’m a tin can in a freezer.” Tony’s teeth chattered audibly. “Arc’s barely keeping my chest warm. The rest of me is losing the negotiation.”

“Save your strength,” Steve said. He pulled Tony’s arm across his shoulders and took more of his weight. With his free hand, he reached down and unlatched a plate along Tony’s thigh, freeing the worst of the bind. Tony hissed, but the movement gave his leg more bend. “Better?”

“Define better.” Tony’s voice thinned. “I can’t feel my fingers.”

Steve swallowed hard. He scanned the white, found a darker patch where wind had scoured down to rock. He aimed for it, boots crunching. They reached the lee of a boulder and the wind dropped half a notch. The world shrank to their breaths and the steady, punishing cold.

Steve shoved Tony into the scant shelter and crowded in with him, shield angled outward. He tugged at the suit’s gauntlets. The manual releases were stiff with ice, but he forced them. When the glove finally came away, Tony’s bare hand hit the air and he sucked in a thin, shocked breath. The skin was pale, fingers stiff.

“Hey,” Steve said, catching that hand between both of his. He rubbed hard, forcing circulation. “Look at me.”

Tony tilted his head. His face was a pale smear behind the faceplate. “You look like hell,” he said, attempting a grin that didn’t quite form.

“So do you.” Steve shoved Tony’s frozen hand under his own jacket, pressing it flat against the hot skin over his ribs. Tony jerked, then stayed, eyes closing on a shudder. Steve worked at the other glove, got it off, and tucked that hand inside his shirt too, pushing past the burn of cold skin on warm. Tony’s fingertips trembled against him, desperate for heat.

“Efficient,” Tony muttered, words slurring with cold. “I’d make a joke, but my humor is frozen.”

“Save it.” Steve shifted them closer, chest to chest, using himself as a furnace. The faceplate was fogging. He found the emergency release and snapped it. The helmet split and retracted with a faltering whine, exposing Tony’s face to the biting air. His lips were blue at the edges. Steve swore and hauled the collar of Tony’s undersuit up, wrapping it higher. He cupped the back of Tony’s neck and kept him tucked close. “Breathe with me.”

Tony nodded once, compliance uncharacteristically easy. His breath blended with Steve’s, shallow and sharp at first, then longer as the immediate shock ebbed. Steve counted under his breath. After a minute, he felt a thread of warmth return to Tony’s fingers.

“We can’t stay here,” Tony said, hoarse.

“I know.” Steve looked east. He knew there were markers—little metal plaques embedded in rock faces and stunted poles with faded SHIELD lettering that would be buried now. The route bent along the contour of the mountain, skirted a ravine, then hooked through a stand of dwarf pines. If they missed it, they’d waste energy and time they didn’t have. He couldn’t let that happen. “When we move, we move fast between cover. Stay glued to me.”

“Not exactly a hardship,” Tony said, then blinked, the joke softening into something rawer. “I’m with you.”

Steve squeezed his hands in response and then let one go long enough to pull a ripped strip from his own torn undershirt. He wrapped it around Tony’s bare fingers before tucking them back into his jacket. “Ready?”

“Define ready,” Tony said again, but he squared his shoulders, and that was enough.

They pushed out of the meager shelter. The wind hit them like a wall. Steve leaned into it, kept his body a barrier for Tony, and moved. He counted paces again. The ground dropped away sudden and sharp; he yanked Tony back before his foot slid over an edge hidden by wind-packed snow. Below, there was only white. He angled them right, followed the curve he could feel more than see.

Tiny scoured flags appeared—metal stubs jutting from the ice. Relief spiked through him so abruptly his knees wanted to give. “There,” he said into the wind. “Markers.”

“You’re a walking GPS,” Tony said, voice thin. He startled on a shiver that racked his whole body. “Steve, I can’t—my legs—”

“I have you.” Steve stopped fighting subtlety. He bent, got an arm under Tony’s knees and another around his back—awkward in the armor, but possible—and lifted. The added weight bit into his already strained muscles. Pain flared across his back, hot and bright. He set his teeth and started forward.

Tony made a protesting sound that broke. “Put me down, you idiot.”

“Not happening.” Steve adjusted his grip. Tony’s face was right there, wind-lashed and exhausted. His lashes were clumped with ice. He looked at Steve like he wanted to argue, then didn’t. He rested his head against Steve’s shoulder, body going heavy in the way of someone surrendering to necessity.

“Don’t drop me,” Tony said, quieter.

“Never,” Steve said. He followed the flags, each one a small victory in the whiteout. He counted them like prayer beads. Five. Six. Seven. His breath burned. The serum kept his body moving, but he could feel the cost stacking up. He kept going. Tony’s breath warmed the side of his neck, a fragile, human heat in the freezing world.

A dark smudge resolved ahead—low trees, bent and crusted with ice. Beyond them, a blur that might be the cut of the service road leading to the safehouse. They were close. Steve set his jaw and crossed the last stretch, boots slipping, muscles screaming, and carried Tony into the thin shelter of the trees where the wind dropped enough for breath to come easier. Tony stirred, fingers flexing against Steve’s chest.

“Still with me?” Steve asked.

“Unfortunately for HYDRA,” Tony said, words clumsy but alive.

“Good.” Steve lowered him gently to his feet, keeping an arm around his waist when his legs threatened to fold. The line of the road cut through the snow ahead, faint but there. He tightened his hold, drew Tony close again, and took the next step. The mountain pressed in, cold and merciless, but they moved through it together, following the path that would, if the world had any sense left, lead to shelter.

The road turned into a shallow cut between drifts, then into a narrow shelf along a rock face. Steve counted his breaths and the crunch of their boots. Tony’s weight leaned into him, heavier every minute. The storm ebbed and surged. When the wind dipped, Steve heard the faint metallic clatter of something loose somewhere up the cliff.

“There should be a culvert,” he said, more to keep Tony moving than because he needed to say it. “Marker 12B, recessed in the stone.”

Tony’s laugh was thinner than before. “If you pull a secret lair out of a snowbank right now, I might marry you.”

“You’ll have to buy me dinner first,” Steve said. He squinted through blowing flakes, scanning the rock. The mountain played tricks, flat planes turning to depth when the snow shifted. He almost missed it. A rusted rectangle set back from the cliff, half-buried, the edges crusted with ice. A steel plate, maybe three feet tall, stenciled once with paint that time had chewed to ghosts.

Steve angled them toward it. Tony stumbled and cursed. The suit’s thigh plate snagged and nearly took him off his feet; Steve caught him under the arm, steadied him, and kept moving. Up close, the plate was a door. Not a main entrance. A utility access, almost flush with the rock. He brushed snow away with the back of his glove and found a frozen padlock, a manual latch beneath.

“Tell me you have a key,” Tony said, teeth knocking together.

“Sort of.” Steve braced his boot, grabbed the lock in one hand, and wrenched. The metal protested. Something inside his shoulder twinged, and the shrapnel in his back flared. He set his jaw and yanked again. The lock snapped with a sound that was sweet relief. He flipped the latch, got his fingers under the edge of the door, and pulled.

The hinges screamed. Ice cracked, the door grudgingly giving an inch, then two. Wind shoved at his back as if the mountain didn’t want to let go. He planted his feet and hauled until there was space enough to squeeze through. A gust sent a scud of snow into the black beyond.

Tony peered past him. “I’m not seeing a welcome mat.”

“Stay close,” Steve said. He slipped in first. The air was dead and stale, a breath that tasted like dust and cold metal. He lowered Tony down behind him into a narrow corridor, low and utilitarian, pipes running along the ceiling. His headlamp didn’t work; the generator in the suit was dead, and his own had gotten bashed in the blast. He felt for the wall with his palm and found a switch box.

He flipped the lever. Nothing. The silence pressed back. He flipped it again for good measure. Still nothing.

“Analog paradise,” Tony muttered, stepping closer until they were shoulder to shoulder in the dark. “Great. Spooky tunnel, no lights. My favorite.”

“We’ll manage,” Steve said. He led with his hand on the wall, moving slow until his eyes adjusted to the thin, gray bleed of light coming under the door from outside. The corridor turned once, then again, opening into a small anteroom where a heavier door waited, wheel-lock centered like the vault of a ship.

“Classy,” Tony said, voice echoing dull off concrete. He raised shaking hands to the wheel, then pulled them back, fingers clumsy and pale. “Okay, maybe not me.”

“I’ve got it.” Steve wrapped both hands around the cold metal. It didn’t move at first. He put his back into it. Pain radiated from the torn muscles under his shoulder blade. He heard his own breath roughen and forced it steady. The wheel turned with a reluctant groan. The seal broke, and a rush of stale air rolled over them.

The door swung inward. The safehouse revealed itself in a slant of dim light from a small, high window—just a main room with a concrete floor and two battered metal lockers against one wall. A folding table sat skewed, one leg propped with a brick. A steel stove with a little vent pipe hunched in a corner, cold and gray. Dust coated everything in a fine, undisturbed layer that softened edges and turned the air into motes.

Steve stood in the threshold for a heartbeat, then stepped inside. The silence felt different here—contained, heavy, but not malicious. A place built to disappear.

Tony exhaled, a sound that was almost a laugh. His face was drawn and windburned, the shadows under his eyes stark. “It’s hideous,” he said, and he sounded almost fond. He swayed on his feet.

“I know.” Steve reached back, tugged the door shut against the wind. The sudden absence of the blizzard’s howl was a physical relief. He spun the wheel until it bit. The room went still.

Tony’s knees gave, and he caught himself on the table. The metal clanged, rattling the brick. He closed his eyes for a second, breathing.

“Sit,” Steve said. He steered Tony to the nearest chair—wood, seat cracked, but it held. Tony sank down, his hands braced on his thighs. Without the helmet, his hair was a wet, frozen mess. Steve reached for the suit’s chest catches, then stopped. “Can you power it down?”

“It’s already a paperweight,” Tony said. “Pop the back releases. Top left, then lower right. They’re—god, my hands—”

“I’ve got it.” Steve moved around him. His fingers found the catches by feel, stiff from cold and slick with thawing snow. He released one, then the other. The backplate let go with a tired sigh, and Steve eased it away, setting it by the wall. The undersuit clung damply to Tony’s skin, black fabric slick against the arc reactor’s pale glow. It flickered, weak but steady.

“Hey,” Tony said softly, looking up at him. Gratitude moved across his face, unguarded for a second before the familiar lines of humor tried to stitch themselves back in. They failed. He looked small in the chair, stripped of metal and bravado in the bare room.

Steve’s chest tightened. He crouched, ignoring the pull in his side, and reached for Tony’s boots. The seals fought him. He pried, muscles protesting, until they gave. He tugged them off, one and then the other, and pulled away soaked socks to reveal cold-reddened skin. He rubbed hard, getting blood back into Tony’s toes, then pushed the cuffs of the undersuit up to check circulation.

Tony’s breath hitched, half from the return of feeling, half from something else. “You’re very… thorough,” he said, voice rough.

“Keeping you warm,” Steve said, straightening. He scrubbed a hand over his face and took a step toward the stove. The little door was jammed with old ash. He knelt and opened it, coughed as dust puffed up. “If there’s gas, it might be shut off at the valve. If not, we improvise.”

“Improvise is my brand,” Tony said, managing a ghost of a smile. He looked past Steve at the room again. A metal shelf held a dented kettle, a row of old ration tins, and a first aid box with a cracked red cross. A wool blanket lay folded on a cot against the opposite wall, a relic too small for Steve by half. “This is very Cold War chic. I’m tempted to ask if there’s a secret bar in the wall.”

Steve rose slowly, testing his legs. He crossed to the shelf and ran a hand over the first aid kit. It was light, but something rattled inside. He set it down. “We’ll take inventory in a minute,” he said. He went back to Tony, to the lines of strain around his mouth and the way he was holding himself together with sheer stubbornness. Steve rested a hand on his shoulder. Warmth bled through into his palm. “We made it.”

Tony looked down at that hand, then up into Steve’s face. For a second, the noise in Steve’s head went quiet. “Yeah,” Tony said, barely above a whisper. “We did.” He swallowed. “Close the vents. Keep the heat in. And, uh… maybe put a Do Not Disturb sign on the murder blizzard.”

Steve huffed a laugh. He moved to the small window, slid the rusted latch, and pushed. It shifted a half inch and stuck. He left it. The bed—cot—was against the far wall, its thin mattress sagging in the middle, the blanket scratchy but promising. He forced himself to look away before his mind imagined any softness it didn’t have.

He went back to the stove and found the gas valve, crusted but workable. He turned it. A faint hiss whispered. He grabbed the flint striker hanging on a nail and sparked it under the burner. It took three tries. Then flame bloomed, small and blue, catching with a hungry sound.

Heat touched the air, a fragile thing that felt like hope. Steve looked over his shoulder. Tony had his eyes closed, head tipped back against the wall, a line of tension easing from his mouth.

“Welcome home,” Steve said quietly, and the room, ugly and bare, held them.

The flame steadied, and with it the silence settled, thicker now that the wind was gone. Tony shifted, trying to stand, and the last of the suit’s servos gave a pitiful whine. The locking mechanisms in the arms released all at once with a hollow clack. The chest braces loosened. The weight slid off him as if the armor had decided on its own to quit.

“Wait—” Tony put a hand out, unbalanced. The cuisses slipped and hit the concrete with a heavy thud, then the torso dropped in a graceless tilt. The sound rattled the table and echoed down the narrow corridor like a door slamming shut three rooms away.

He was suddenly smaller without it—just Tony, stripped down to the undersuit, the dark fabric clinging to his ribs and hips, slick and cold. The arc reactor, dimmer than Steve had ever seen it, mapped a blue-white circle under the cling of fabric. His chest rose and fell too fast. He pressed his palm over it as if to hold the light in.

He looked at the pile of metal like it had betrayed him. “And that is the sound of an eighty billion dollar paperweight dying. Great.”

Steve took a step toward him and hesitated. The reflex to offer a joke caught in his throat. All he could see were Tony’s hands shaking and the pinched set of his mouth.

“Come here,” Steve said, voice gentler than he felt. He tugged the wool blanket from the cot and draped it over Tony’s shoulders, wrapping it around until he could tuck the edges under Tony’s arms. The blanket dwarfed him, scratchy against damp fabric, but it held the escaping heat. Tony’s fingers fumbled at the edge and then clenched in it.

The suit smoked faintly where melted snow met chilled metal. Steve crouched and cut the power line to the backplate to stop a spark that didn’t have anywhere to go. The act made his side throb. When he stood again, the room tilted for a second. He braced a hand on the table until it steadied. The smell of cold, old iron mingled with dust.

Tony’s eyes tracked that movement. “You’re bleeding,” he said, matter-of-fact the way he got when he was holding something else at bay.

“It’s not bad.” It was bad enough, a persistent, hot ache at his bicep and an angry pull under his shoulder blade where the shrapnel had lodged shallow and tore skin every time he lifted his arm. He took a slow breath. “We’ll clean it in a minute.”

Tony’s gaze flicked to the door, then the window, then back to the hulk of the disabled armor. All the noise of him peeled away, layer by layer, until what was left looked raw. “Comms are fried,” he said. “No generator. No network. No… anything.” He swallowed, throat working. “It’s just us.”

Just us rang in the room like a bell and didn’t stop.

Steve nodded. He felt the weight of it settle between his shoulder blades. “It’s just us,” he echoed. He let the truth of it in. No Nick in his ear. No Natasha’s dry voice. No Sam’s easy jokes. Just the two of them and a bed meant for one, a stove with a rattling breath, and the kind of cold that would take anything not actively fought. “We’re here. We’re alive.”

“On a sliding scale of success, I usually aim higher.” Tony looked down at his hands under the blanket, flexed them slowly. His knuckles were scraped where the gauntlet seals had stuck. “Sorry,” he added, quick and croaked, like the word surprised him. “I should’ve—should’ve kept it together until we got somewhere with a real door. Should’ve—”

“Tony,” Steve said softly. “You did. We’re inside.” He realized his own hands were shaking a little, not from cold but from the aftermath catching up.

Tony let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. It broke in the middle. He tipped his head back against the wall again and stared at the ceiling as if the right answer might be written there. The undersuit hugged every line of him, damp at the collar where melted snow had run down his throat. Steve made himself look away, made himself inventory: the stove that burned small but steady, the table, the lockers, the cot, the first aid kit. The room was built to be forgotten and to save the people who found it anyway.

He moved to the lockers and pried one open. It groaned, resisting at first, then surrendered. Inside were a few folded gray towels and a second, thinner blanket. He tossed the towels to the table and brought the blanket back, shook it out, and layered it over the first around Tony’s shoulders. The blankets smelled musty. Tony drew them tighter.

“Thanks,” Tony said, and it wasn’t flippant. He was watching Steve like he couldn’t stop, eyes snagging on the torn sleeve, the dark stain spreading slow along the fabric. “Sit down before you fall down, Rogers.”

“I’m fine,” Steve said automatically, then amended, “I will be.” He dropped into the chair opposite anyway when the room threatened its tilt again. Sitting made the ache in his back talk louder, like the pain had been waiting patiently for him to stop moving so it could take its turn.

They stared at the dead suit between them like it could start moving again if they wished it hard enough. It didn’t. The little flame in the stove clicked, and the heater’s vent pinged as the metal expanded the slightest bit with the heat.

Tony’s voice, quieter now. “They’re not coming for us, are they?” He wasn’t looking at Steve. His eyes had fixed on the arc reactor’s faint shimmer under his palm.

“They will,” Steve said. He didn’t add that it might take time they didn’t have. He didn’t add that if the mission had been a trap, it meant someone wanted them removed from the board. Those thoughts had edges he didn’t want to hand Tony yet. “We’re going to make it easier to be found. We’re going to be here when they do.”

Tony’s mouth pressed thin. “Right. Be bright, be loud. Except we’re in the Cold War’s idea of a bomb shelter with a stove and a cot.” His eyes went to that cot, then flicked back, the implication slamming into the space between them and sitting there like the armor on the floor. He grimaced, but not at the idea. At the intimacy of it, the fact of it. “Of course there’s only one. Why would there be two? That’d be too kind.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Steve said. He practiced steady, even like he would before a jump. “One problem at a time. Heat. Food. Your reactor—how long can it run like that?”

Tony glanced down. The light pulsed weakly. “Hours,” he said. “Maybe a day if I don’t ask it for anything. So I won’t.” He pulled the blankets closer. The blue-white glow threw soft lines on his fingers. “I hate this part.”

“What part?” Steve asked, even though he thought he knew.

“The waiting. The… being still with nothing to do but think.” Tony’s mouth twisted, confession in the shape of a complaint. “It gets loud in here.” He tapped his temple lightly. He looked up then, met Steve’s eyes, something unguarded and tired sitting there. “You okay?”

Steve almost said fine again. He looked at Tony’s damp hair, the shadows under his eyes, the way the blankets cocooned him and still didn’t make him look warm. He thought about the door wheel turning under his hands and the click of the suit dying. The quiet knocked inside him in a way that felt like an old house settling. “I will be,” he said. “We both will.” He reached over the table and put his hand over Tony’s, blanket and all, a firm, grounding weight. Tony’s fingers tightened under his.

The contact shot a line of warmth through Steve that had nothing to do with the stove. Tony stared at their hands, then slid his thumb along Steve’s knuckles in an absent, surprised stroke, like he hadn’t meant to do it and couldn’t have stopped himself if he tried. His breathing evened out a fraction.

Outside, the storm raged and pressed itself against the concrete walls. In here, there was the soft roar of a small flame, the stink of dust, the dead weight of armor cooling on the floor, and the two of them, breathing in sync because anything else felt like admitting defeat.

“Okay,” Tony said finally, almost to himself. He nodded like he’d decided something private. “Okay.” He squeezed Steve’s hand once and then eased it away to drag his palms over his face. “Inventory. We’re going to need all the cans we can get, and you’re going to need me to disinfect your everything.”

Steve stood, slow and careful, and moved toward the first aid kit, fingers finding the latch by muscle memory. He looked back once. Tony sat hunched in blankets, haloed in the arc’s thin glow and the stove’s soft, blue burn, naked of everything but himself. It hit Steve then with a clarity he couldn’t dodge: injured, isolated, and completely alone meant he was the only person in the world with Tony Stark in this moment. It felt like a weight and a gift, terrifying in equal measure.

He flipped the kit open. The lid creaked. The little bottles clinked. The storm went on. Inside, they learned the shape of the room and the edges of this new, solitary quiet.