vulcansmirk:

i can’t stop thinking about the look on steve’s face as he watches tony process the footage of december 16, 1991.

he looks briefly at the screen, but isn’t at all surprised by what he sees, and before long he turns to look at tony, a little trepidatious, but strangely cold and considering, like i know what this is, i know what it will do to you, i want to see how you’ll respond.

and then tony sees the footage, watches it happen – bucky yanking howard’s head up by the hair, howard calling bucky by name, bucky rewarding him with two swift blows to the face, and howard falling, limp, to the ground; bucky circling slowly to maria’s side of the car, reaching out with his flesh hand, training his eyes coldly on something in the distance as he chokes the life out of her.

tony is heartbroken, he’s betrayed, and steve’s expecting that; when tony lunges for bucky, steve lunges, too, catching him before he can get any closer. and i think tony picks up on how quick steve’s reaction is, too quick even for a supersoldier, because he redirects his attention to steve then and asks him in this broken voice, did you know?

steve tries to sidestep the question at first – i didn’t know it was him – but tony’s too smart for that. don’t bullshit me, rogers! did you know?

and there’s this tense pause, because tony knows, we all know, what steve will say. he looks at tony and he’s totally shattered, his voice tiny and cracked in two as he finally says the word we all saw coming, but dreaded to hear.

yes.

this, finally, is steve’s dark side. it’s no angry, violent thing; it’s small and tender and sad. it’s the hole gauged out of him from too many years spent alone, and it’s all the terrible things he’d do – all the lies he’d tell, all the codes he’d break, all the people he’d hurt – to protect the one person who remembers what he was like when he was whole.