hiraeth

"I know that road,” Tony said, and Steve saw it then too, the path that he had been on this entire time. He had been stupid enough to think that enough turns off of it would lead him somewhere else when all it did was turn him around so that he was back where he had started.

He could see it in the way Tony shifted restlessly, hear it in the tight, sharp way Tony spoke that he could sense danger was approaching even if he couldn’t see where it was coming from. A prey animal’s instincts kicking in, awful to witness, almost blasphemous—Steve had seen many men like this but not Tony. It was obscene and distressing enough that he wanted to look away.

He shouldn’t be made this small. Not him.

Not by Steve’s hands.

The terror that gripped Tony was something that couldn’t hurt him. Wasn’t supposed to anyway, not when so many years, so many lies and omissions, had buried that night. Steve wanted to tell him that.

And yet.

Here they both were, Steve careening forward, the brakes useless and broken, Tony in the middle of the road.

There was a fork and he had gone down the wrong way, realizing too late what choice he had made by not choosing. There was no turning back now, the time to course correct long gone. Tony was in his path, a startled deer with synapses firing cross-wired, looking at Zemo with distrust and fear, not knowing it was Steve in the driver’s seat, moments away from hurting him.