"You ready?" asked both the doctor and Tony in unison.

Steve sat in the middle of a hospital room, his hands clasped in his lap while his doctor and lover both paced around the room, too nervous to be comforting but too caring not to be. Thick bandages wrapped around his eyes; despite the pressing sensation and the knowledge that something was on him (his sense of touch was still very strong), Steve felt no real difference from his normal, everyday life. Everything was still dark. Everything was still missing.

He shifted in his seat and shrugged. "Ready," he said. In all honesty, he wasn't sure he'd ever be ready; if the surgery didn't work, they were back at square one, and then what was there left to hope for? There were no cures lingering out in the nine realms, no secrets buried in the mind of any human Natasha or Clint could find, and if Tony, Bruce, and the doctors combined all came up with nothing, then Steve would be forced to concede; he was blind. This—the darkness, the counting, the listening for every footstep around him—was his life. This was permanent.

In the days leading up to his surgery and the moments just before he'd fallen under anesthesia, Steve had convinced himself that he could live without his sight. Everyone told him to be hopeful—to believe that the surgery would work, and then it would—but it was the worst case scenario that got him out of bed every morning. It was the simplicity of a survivor's instincts that kept him pushing on. If this didn't work, he could still survive, still fight, still navigate and be part of a team, still be normal—or as normal as their lives would allow. He could still love.

From that first day post-blindness, Steve had learned to survive, and from that moment on, he refused to be helpless. He was blind not dead, after all. If this was his life, so be it.

But all the determination in the world couldn't quite kill the hope, that small flame somewhere deep inside that said, "Maybe this is it. maybe this will work. maybe you'll see again."

The doctor crossed the room—Steve counted the footsteps—then Tony followed. Steve shivered when the first glove-covered finger brushed his temple then he stilled entirely. He waited as the doctor peeled off the bandages, layer by layer, and, as each layer disappeared, so did a bit of the darkness. At first, it was nothing but a bright, disorienting white light, then, as the last bandage fell away, spots of blue appeared like the first drops of color on a white canvas.

Steve blinked, and the blue became clearer—a bright and familiar light, an aura of of sorts that surrounded a splotch of brown and tan and black. Lines appeared from the brown—hair, he guessed—and words he couldn't yet read materialized over the black blur. After a long moment where he simply blinked repeatedly and hoped to God that what he was seeing was a good thing—that it was progress—the black and white thing became a shirt. Tony's shirt. Tony's oh-so-familiar Radiohead t-shirt with the reactor burning a blue glow right through the center. Then there was Tony's hair. And Tony's jeans. And Tony's tan skinned, and before Steve had time to adjust, there he was. Tony, in the flesh, standing above him, looking more worried than Steve had ever seen. Tony's brown eyes, and messy hair, and grease stained t-shirt.

And then there was everything. The doctor in his white coat—a short man with red hair and a very freckled nose—, and green and blue and red and orange posters on the wall. There was a white sheet beneath Steve, and a blue pillow, and Steve swore in that moment that he would never take simple colors for granted again. The hospital room held a whole lot of sterile white, but it was beautiful. Visual and beautiful.

He blinked again, and again, and again; he pinched his arm and his leg and anywhere else he could reach just to make sure—absolutely positively sure—that this was not a dream. He could see. The procedure had worked, and he could see. When he'd dreamed of this moment—in those small hopeful moments of fantasy he'd allowed himself—he'd never quite been able to pinpoint what it might feel like, what he'd do if this moment actually came. He knew he'd be excited, knew he'd be happy.

What he didn't expect was to jump out of his seat and almost knock Tony off his feet in his haste to kiss him.

He grinned as he pulled away and began to trace the lines of Tony's face. He touched his beard, his cheeks, his jaw—everything Steve had felt so many times over the last few weeks, everything he'd seen long ago, but it was all somehow different now. He and Tony were different now, and after everything that had happened between them, Steve just couldn't help but revel in the moment.

Luckily, Tony allowed it. He stood still as a statue, an amused smile playing at the corners of his mouth, while Steve ran his hands down his chest and arms and waist. The doctor stood somewhere off to Steve's left, and Steve meant to thank him—would thank him—but for the moment, his attention was completely and utterly fixed on the man in front of him. On Tony. On that fact that he could actually truly see Tony, and not just in his imagination.

"Everything as you remembered it?" Tony asked. Steve knew that tone—the one that meant Tony was amused when he thought he should be serious. Suddenly, the last thing in the world Steve wanted was to be serious.

He gripped Tony's shoulders, very conscious of his strength, but smiling more than he had in ages. At least, he'd thought it had been ages, but now that he remembered back, hadn't it been just yesterday that he'd been laughing until his stomach hurt? Hadn't he grinned until his jaw ached just a night ago when Tony had told him a truly awful joke, or earlier that afternoon when he'd caught Natasha and Bruce baking in the communal kitchen? He hadn't seen a bit of it—hadn't seen Tony's laugh or Natasha's smirk, or the cupcake batter streaked in Bruce's hair—but he'd still been there. He'd still laughed along, still joined in on the cupcake making and been part of the team. He hadn't needed his eyes for any of that.

"You alright?" Tony asked. Sometime during Steve's dazed train of thought, Tony had buried his hand in Steve's hair and was now stroking it back from his face. Steve could only imagine what he'd looked like; a man with new eyes, staring off into the distance, a million miles away.

He nodded and smiled reassuringly. "I'm great," he said. He'd truly never meant the phrase more than he did in that moment. He kissed Tony again, just because he could, then turned to shake the doctor's hand.

Later, as he and Tony left the hospital together, Steve watched the world pass by like he was seeing it all for the first time. The birds, the trees, flowers, and the passersby on every street and every corner—the whole world, a vivid canvas of color and movement. He ached for a pen and paper to eternalize it all right then and there.

Tony played with Steve's fingers as they walked. With his other free hand, Steve reached out for a crutch he no longer needed.

"I'm not going to need that cane anymore," he whispered.

"Yeahhh," Tony said. "You're not going to want it now. I never told you this, but it's actually covered in little American flags. But pink, purple, and lime green instead of red, white, and blue."

"So patriotic gummy bears." Steve shrugged. He knew it was a lie—he knew Tony's joking voice far better than Tony thought—but still the ridiculous image came as some small comfort. Something normal to hang on to; seeing or not seeing, blind or not, it was still just the two of them—stupid jokes and long walks through the city. He could do this. This was normal. This was right.

They reached the tower and took Tony's private elevator up to his room. Steve had his own floor, and sometimes—in the afternoons mostly when he went to change after a long day in the gym—he still used it. But Tony's room was the place he slept, his side of the bed dented in just enough to tell you exactly who had been there night after night.

Steve turned in the doorway and pulled Tony in by the belt loops of his worn out jeans. Steve had missed seeing the stains, the rips—all those little imperfections that said Tony Stark was off the clock and the Tony that remained was all his. Tony always tasted like coffee and smelled like metal and something natural Steve couldn't place; though Steve no longer needed to rely on his other senses to navigate, he appreciated their use in that moment all that much more. Once upon a time, he'd relied only on what he could see; now he wanted everything.

"Are we about to have celebratory 'I can see' sex, because I'm a hundred percent in for that," Tony said.

Steve pulled away and made quite a show of looking Tony up and down. "Wait, are you the guy I'm dating? Huh, different than I imagined," he said.

Tony raised an eyebrow, though the smile had yet to leave his face. "Oh yeah, what'd you imagine?"

Steve forced himself to keep a straight face as he said, "I thought you'd be taller."

Tony shoved him playfully across his shoulder. "It's called 'fun-sized,' you giant."

"Whatever you say." Steve wrapped his arms around Tony's waist and pressed a kiss to his neck first, then his jaw, then finally his lips. Then he pulled away to admire his work—to see Tony's kiss-bruised lips and the gentle red marks on his skin. "Will you do something for me?" Steve asked.

Tony nodded without a moment's hesitation. Steve did not take the action for granted, all too aware of the sort of trust such an instant reaction must mean for Tony; it was an honor Steve would never take advantage of. He crossed the room in two short strides and picked up his sketchbook from the spot where he'd left it, abandoned and untouched for weeks on the bedside table.

The first week after he went blind, Steve had attempted to throw it away; what good were his sketches—a very visual medium of art—when he couldn't see what he was drawing, what he'd already drawn? Steve found it in Tony's drawer a month later. He'd sworn up and down and sideways that he hadn't opened it, hadn't even peeked, but he couldn't just let it all go to waste. He was saving it, he said. When Steve had asked what for, Tony had simply shrugged and said, "For you."

Now, Steve couldn't have been more grateful for Tony's foresight. Scanning his eyes over the worn cover, flipping through the first few wrinkled pages, Steve sighed contentedly then pulled the sketchbook close to his chest. For a moment—just one small second—he stopped. He stopped thinking, stopped planning, stopped doing anything at all but appreciating the brand new chance he'd been given.

Then he held up the sketchbook.

Tony's eyebrow quirked up and he gave Steve his best sultry face. "You going to draw me like one of your French girls?" he asked.

Steve laughed. He flipped open the book and placed it in Tony's hand. "It's always been you," he said. Page after page, sketch after sketch, they were all the same: Tony in the Iron Man suit, Tony working, Tony yelling at a coffee pot, Tony's hands and the arc reactor, Tony playing with Dum-E or You, Tony arguing with JARVIS. The others were there too—short sketches of Natasha's smile and her battle face, Clint's laugh and his arrows, Thor's hammer and his grin and his pop-tart crumbs lining the floor like some fairytale crime scene. Bruce meditating or smiling across the room. The Avengers had all played a part in Steve's life—both post ice and post blindness. They'd made him feel like a part of a team and gave him purpose in a wide and confusing new world, and Steve owed them each tremendously.

But it was Tony that dominated the sketchbook and Tony that Steve kept coming back to; it was Tony that he needed. It was Tony that he loved.

"There's one more page," Steve explained. He flipped the sketchbook to the back, to that one small expanse of ink-less paper—a white canvas begging to be filled. Tony traced his fingers over the empty space then looked back up at Steve.

"If I have to," he said, even as his eyes shined happily and his mouth turned over into a bright, face-splitting smile that Steve was quite overjoyed to be able to finally see again.

"Alright," Steve said. "I'll see what I can do."