The admonishment to not make Bruce Banner angry had reached most ears by now. The one that really needed to still spread further was, 'Don't make Tony Stark afraid'.

He'd been afraid of his captors in Afghanistan and they'd died in flames at the hands of his first Iron Man.

He'd been afraid, panicking and isolated and suit-less when setting out to seek the Mandarin and had built a lethal handheld arsenal out of hardware store oddments.

He'd been afraid of the failure that Wanda had shown him and there'd been Ultron.

Tony is confident, quick-witted, stubborn and none of it makes him immune to fear. Tony can be frightened. Tony can be broken into pieces by fear but the broken pieces are all sharp edges and splintered points. Dangerous. Weaponizable.

He's been missing for three days although no one in the new Avengers compound which he'd set them up with had seen him in three weeks. Steve isn't quite sure when he realised that he hadn't entirely believed Tony's claim that he was leaving, or retiring, or consulting only, or whatever he was calling it. Perhaps it wasn't until Pepper called the compound, asking for Steve, ten minutes ahead of the news report to tell him Tony was missing.

He hadn't come back from some trivial press conference about some new gadget. They'd found the car he'd left in, battered and run off the road, found scorch marks and had not found Tony. When Steve arrives at the scene he recognises the scorch marks as repulsor blasts and not all of the blood the police find is Tony's. He'd fought and had not been entirely unarmed but apparently it had not been enough.

The search processes swing into action but it's three days later and they have nothing. FRIDAY is analysing traffic camera footage, looking for a vehicle which would have crossed paths with Tony's but then taken longer than reasonable to reach the next camera. There are multiple roads, not enough cameras and the data volume is enormous, but it's one avenue.

Steve wonders if Tony would have had other ideas for solving the problem. Wonders if he's afraid by now that they've missed something and aren't going to find him. Wonders if he's alive at all and reminds himself he has better reason to believe Tony still alive that any other friend he's known go MIA, and he's known far too many.

He gives the same reassurances to the team but as he looks around he realises that almost of of them already know this game. Rhodey even makes a joke about it, though his eyes are tired.

"I swear this time I'm going to stick a GPS tracker up that man's ass when we find him."

"Language," says Natasha, in the absence of Tony to do so.

On day four they get a signal, just coordinates, no message. FRIDAY relays it to them. She tells them it was a noisy broadcast. That there was interference across any number of frequencies, drowning them out to send that one string of numbers. There's discussion about whether it's a trap. Whether it could have been fake coordinates. Whether Tony could have been coerced into sending it.

This discussion happens en-route because of course they're going anyway. Whether or not it's a trap is only incidental information.

The signal leads them north and it's snowing heavily by the time they start preparing their arrival. In spite of the risk, they fly almost to the exact coordinates. The weather and terrain would make the last leg from the Quinjet to the location too time-consuming. No one mentions the other reason for getting close – the problems with the return journey back to the jet should they find Tony significantly injured. Clint just flies them closer.

He brings the jet to a halt in the air when the view ahead changes from the ceaseless snow.

"Something's on fire out there."

There's an orange haze, lit here and there by flickering yellow and red light. Smoke rises to join the low snow-bearing clouds. A building is intermittently silhouetted by the flames and concealed by the smoke and drifting snow. A transmitter tower looms visible for a second through the swirling combination of snow and smoke and Clint swears.

"This visibility is getting dangerous, Cap," he says and Steve nods.

"Okay. This will do. Put us down."

Perhaps it's the effect of the snow that makes it seem quieter than it should be but it only adds to the sense of 'trap' because they aren't attacked. The fire burns on with no one running to or from it, neither fleeing it nor trying to suppress it. No one in sight.

They're a lot closer before they spot someone. There's a man silhouetted at the base of the transmitter tower. Crouched down, or kneeling or sitting, almost invisible against the clutter at the base of the aerial, working on it perhaps as his back is to them.

"Hey!" Steve calls because he has to admit it he's starting to be a little disturbed by the silence and the emptiness and the un-regarded flames, and even if this is an enemy he'd rather face him head on.

The man jumps at the shout and his head snaps round. The movement seems to tip him off balance even though he's already on the ground and he falls back, catching himself on one elbow and raising the other hand. For a split second Steve thinks it's in surrender but Natasha, that more expert reader of body language is already heading towards the figure on the ground.

"Tony!"

And it is Tony, waving in greeting even as he slumps back in the snow.

"Hey," he says as Steve and Rhodey crowd in, while the others take up watchful positions nearby. "Welcome to the hopefully extremely temporary headquarters of Radio Stark."

Steve watches Tony gesture at the scatter of equipment on the ground, where wires trail from the aerial, wires wrap around other wires, bared cable protrudes here and there and individual components lay in the snow. Steve recognises a car battery in the middle of the heap but nothing else.

He turns his attention back to Tony who's bloodied and shaking in spite of the smile on his face and the fact he's still talking. And it is shaking, not shivering because they're well within reach of the heat from the flames.

"Had to send a signal," Tony says. "No transport. They helicoptered everything in. Supplies, guards, me, them. Everything. No walking out either, no running off, they got that dealt with early." He waves vaguely towards his feet without looking. "Snowy hike on a broken ankle was never going to happen."

Steve does look and has to hide a wince. Compound fracture and untreated for days. It's been splinted, rather haphazardly, but he's still amazed Tony got himself this far from wherever he was actually held.

He glances at the burning building and Tony follows his gaze.

"Yeah," Tony says. "Stupid, right? Should have thought of shelter before I did that. I know."

The smile drops from his face and he trails off. "I just… I knew I wouldn't get far and they would have come after me. I had to stop them."

The reason for the complete lack of resistance to their rescue attempt lands like a stone and Steve finds himself staring.

"You killed everyone in there?"

The words leave his mouth before he can moderate them and he realises how judgemental they sound when Rhodey glares at him. Tony, by contrast, sounds calm. Quiet. Perhaps he's in shock, Steve thinks, because he doesn't even seem to realise that it wasn't a question of logistics.

"It wasn't difficult." Tony says. "My cell was secure but the… other place they took me wasn't. Eventually they were wrong about whether I was unconscious or not so the guard got a share of what he was dishing out. Out of there, overloaded the lighting circuit, enough smoke to set off the sprinklers, knocked out the GFCI and wired the power to the piping. That was anyone who'd ended up ankle deep gone. Then the genny. Lit up the fuel, took out the rest of the power." He glanced back at the building. "Electronic locks. Supposed to fail-open if the power goes. Because of that. Because of fire. I rewired the batteries from the solar array on the roof to the locking circuit. No one got out."

He pauses perhaps finally noticing the look on Steve's face at this disjointed recitation.

"There's no need to do the surprised indignation at the lack of heroic, magnanimous mercy, Cap." His voice is no longer quiet, it's bitterly furious. "That's why they grabbed me after all. That's the skillset they wanted from me, isn't it? 'Build us something to kill lots of people, Stark. That's what you're good for.' Right? So don't look surprised that I don't get to stop doing it!"

He crosses his arms over his chest, tucking his fists into his armpits and the gesture snaps Steve out of his shock because Tony's shirtsleeves are sliced to the elbow and there are burns running up and down his forearms that aren't from the fire. Incongruously neat, evenly spaced lines of burned and blistered skin, bookended by bruises marking out where someone had held his arms to inflict them. Tony sees him looking and picks up a damp bundle of cloth from the snow and presses it to the marks, as though he's only now remembered them.

Steve swears.

"Language," Tony says, though his voice is flat, all levity gone along with the anger.

"Sorry," Steve says, and he means it, although it's not in apology for the cursing. "Come on. We're getting out of here."

He hesitates a moment over how best to do this without aggravating the existing injuries but Tony already has it worked out.

"Hey, Rhodey, how're you at the three legged race?"

Rhodey smiles. "Kindergarten champ."

And they proceed back to the jet that way, Tony standing with his good foot on one of Rhodey's armoured ones, their arms looped around each other's shoulders, a few feet above the ground. Tony's as white as the snow around them and being held up more by Rhodey's arm than his own by the time they arrive but he's triumphant at not having been 'carried like some sort of fainting blossom' so everyone goes along with not remarking on it.

They stabilise the splint on his ankle, dress the other injuries, try to decide whether to offer rest, or company.

"Don't let it get to you, Stark," Natasha offers bluntly. "They made their choices. They chose wrong."

"I know." Tony shrugs. "It's not new. I'll be fine."

She leaves for the cockpit. Tony looks from Rhodey to Steve.

"Well that's our Black Widow's view on bloody vengeance. Shall we get Captain America's out of the way? I mean, you're the one with the moral high ground so probably you'd rather wait until I'm not bleeding into these lovely fresh bandages and smelling like overdone pork to deliver it, but honestly I'd just rather have it over with."

"Jeez, Tony..." Rhodey interrupts and gets cut off.

"No! Come on, Rogers, say your piece. Set it out for me again what the Good Guys Don't Do and Why We Have To Be Different From Them, and I can remind you that's why I tried to pack it in and then we can all agree that's still for the best and move on."

"Is that really what it was?" Steve asks.

Tony falters. "Huh?"

"Revenge?"

"I killed them all, Rogers. And they weren't aliens or robots or genetically modified terrorists. They were just rather nasty humans and I killed all of them. The ones who did it, the ones who held me down so they could, the ones who told them to, the ones that were only there to make notes, or make sure I didn't die by accident before they had what they wanted. All of them. What else would you call it?"

Steve shrugs. "You tell me."

"Why can't it be that?" Tony demands. "You're the one who told me I'm no hero. Why can't it just be simple revenge?"

Rhodey looks about to interrupt again and this time it's Steve who raises a hand to ask him to wait.

"I didn't know you yet when I said that."

Tony laughs, harsh and startled and disbelieving.

"Oh, and you've seen something since then to make your change your mind? When the hell was that? When I built an ideal power source for powering Loki's alien invasion? When I picked a fight with fire-breathing maniacs and nearly got Pepper killed? Or the genocidal AI? It was the genocidal AI, right? A whole city destroyed, god knows how many dead and Bruce driven so far off the deep end we might never find him again – that's your proof I'm a good guy, right?"

The sarcasm is furious, even self-directed and this time Rhodey doesn't stay quiet.

"Tony," he says. "Stop it."

Steve shakes his head and opens his mouth.

"Don't," says Rhodey but Steve's already answering.

"It was when you put yourself in harm's way to fix those things, Tony."

There's a moment's silence but Tony looks baffled, not reassured.

"But I didn't..." he murmurs. "I didn't fix them. I can't. We stopped them. It's not the same. I can't fix it. It's too big. I can do damage limitation. But I can't fix it."

He drops his head into his hands. After a moment he raises them without looking up. It's a gesture of utter surrender.

"I was scared to death," he says. "That's your answer. That's why I did it. Not Ultron, I mean..." He hesitates. "Well sort of that too I guess. Honestly. But back there..." he waves vaguely. "I killed them because I was afraid of them. That what you want to hear? They'd been at me for days, I'd started to think no one was coming, and all I could think of was what they hadn't done yet. What might work, what might make me… do what they wanted."

He lets his hands fall into his lap and stares at them. "'I've had worse' sounds like great tough-guy talk but all it means is that you know what else could still happen to you. It doesn't help." He sighs, sounding exhausted. "So when I got out I made sure I wouldn't be followed. I couldn't… I couldn't stand the idea of them..."

He stops and looks up, and his eyes have dark circles under them as they flick from face to face.

"So there it is. Pretty unheroic, right?"

There's another silence but it's brief and broken by Rhodey flinging himself down to sit beside Tony.

"Hey." He throws an arm around Tony's shoulder and squeezes. It looks, to Steve, like far too tight a grip for the state Tony's in, although he doesn't flinch.

"At the risk of sounding like a mash-up karaoke song," Rhodey says. "I didn't come out here looking for a hero. I traipsed out here in this crappy weather to make sure my best friend got home in one piece. Anything you did to keep that piece as undamaged as possible? I don't have a problem with. Got it?"

Tony passes a hand over his face for a moment then nods.

"Got it." His voice is shaking but it doesn't stop him forcing a grin and adding, "You can leave my pieces out of this."

Rhodey makes a sound that's half outrage, half relief and leans away again. "You can't not make it weird, can you?"

"Rhodey's right."

Tony hangs on to that devil-may-care grin as Steve speaks but it's visibly a close run thing.

"About my bits and pieces?" Tony drawls, eyes hard in spite of his words.

Steve refuses to be suckered in, too used to the tactic by now.

"About doing what it takes to survive," he says instead. "You did what you felt you needed to and if I anything I said makes dealing with that harder I'm sorry."

Tony stares at him a moment. Steve knows for certain he's looking for any trace of the instinctive aversion to the take-no-prisoners approach which Steve knows had been all over his face back in the snow. Looking for any new evidence of condemnation.

Steve makes sure he doesn't find it. They're none of them perfect after all. Nobody's hands are spotless.

Tony looks away first.

"Okay," he says, quietly.

"I'm glad you made it, Tony," Steve says, needing to add something else into the silence that follows.

Tony looks back up.

"That's the resounding Captain America sincerity I like to hear," he says and although the words are still sarcastic, his tone has softened. "So am I."

He fiddles with the edge of the tape holding the dressings on his arms for a moment then adds, "Thanks for coming to make sure though."

Steve smiles because as faint a thank you as that is, coming from Tony it might as well be a brass band and a parade.

"Every time," he says.

Tony nods but then abruptly shakes his head.

"And on that note of appalling team sappiness are we done? Because I'd really rather be making up for lost dining and sleeping right now if we are."

Steve shrugs and smiles, willing to go along with the change in mood.

"One thing," says Rhodey. "They were full of crap, Tony. You're good for more than making weapons."

"Yeah," says Tony and smiles mechanically though his voice is flat with disbelief again.

"Yeah," Rhodey hesitates a beat. "The coffee machine at the compound is screwed. That needs sorting out too."

And Tony's face transforms. Dissolves into laughter that wipes even the haziness of pain and painkillers from his eyes for a moment.

"Rhodes… You are a.."

Rhodey gives him a look of carefully acted innocence and cuts him off.

"What? It's true. This lot wore it out in two days when we were looking for info to try and find you."

"We did," Steve remarks and doesn't elaborate on the endless, caffeine-fuelled sleeplessness that underlies the joke.

Tony shakes his head, no longer laughing but smiling for real this time.

"No coffee, no workee," he says. "It's fine. I'll fix it."

Sometimes the broken bits fit back together. Sometimes the repairs show and sometimes they're stronger, reinforced at the broken places.