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When you’re all on the helicopter, Steve being doctored by a medic who acts exactly like a mosquito buzzing around his head, he asks you, “Where’s Tony?”
You knew he was going to ask sooner or later. It’s Natasha who breaks the news to him, sombre and quiet as she makes eye contact, lays a hand on his knee, tells him what she knows of what happened.
Steve just stares at her, stunned, while she talks, and when she finishes, he gets this awful helpless look on his face like he thinks he should be doing something and he just doesn’t know what. So you reach out, pat him on the back, do your usual thing and act like a jerk.
“You know,” you say, “for a guy who was kind of an asshole sometimes, he was a good Avenger. A good friend.”
You’re thinking Tony’s not the one who’s acting like kind of an asshole right now, but maybe the dose of reality will help.
And the rest is just truth. Iron Man was a good Avenger, and despite everything, Tony Stark was a good friend.