Your brother had been standing by the window that looked out and towards the drive to the compound for hours, but to him, time was just as immobile as he was. His legs shook despite the tight braces that held them; so much so that FRIDAY had alerted Tony that there seemed to be a malfunction in them, leading him to find his best friend as quickly as he could. He had expected to find Rhodey on the ground and cursing his creation, instead stopping quickly at the sight of a man conflicted and berating himself in silence. He knew that sight all too well.

After the battle in Germany that left many of his friends confined on the Raft and had left him wearing these braces for the rest of his life, he had tried everything he could, pulled every string and called in every favor he could to get you back home with him. You had been dating Rogers for just over a year at the time, but he never thought that it would be enough to leave the two of you standing on opposite sides of a battle that never should have happened. You were both raised in the military, both had signed on and committed to the cause, but you had left the structure and rigidity of it when the Avengers offered you a spot on the team. It hurt to see you leave that behind as he stayed on, but now that he was injured none of that mattered, and this team was all he had left.

He wasn't sure if he had you anymore, and that was terrifying him into his immobility now.

"She's coming home today?" Tony asked softly, trying to approach carefully. His friend didn't flinch, so he continued towards him and took a stand at his side. Tony wanted to lend his support and would do anything that Rhodey asked of him, but the man was too damn stoic. He was about to put a supportive hand on his shoulder, but Rhodes waved him away.

"Yeah," he finally spoke, "the judge said she should have been here by now. Ross promised to have her here before noon."

"And we believe him?"

"It's all I have to believe, Tony. Once she's here, I don't know if she'll even talk to me," he answered silently, his voice shaking. "I'm on the wrong side, remember? I'm part of why Steve's on the run."

Tony scoffed loudly and shook his head in disgust at how this had all played out, disappointed in not only Rogers and his team, and that damn friend he just had to protect, but also for how he had handled it as well. "Yeah, and he's why she got thrown into the Raft in the first place."

"That was really more on you, Tone."

"I'm the one following the rules for a change!" he quickly defended himself. "And how is this now about me?"

"No, you're right, I'm sorry," Rhodes conceded in a huff, "I'm just nervous. It took a lot of convincing just to get her to come back here. She's on house arrest for the next two years, and she almost took Barton's offer to stay with him just to avoid me. Well, me and a lot of you."

"Hmm, fine," Tony gave in, albeit very reluctantly. The two men stood together and watched again in silence, the space between them heavy and nearly intolerable to maintain. All that Tony wanted for his friend was for this to go as smoothly as possible, after he had already been through so much. Harboring guilt was a specialty of Stark's, and where James Rhodes was concerned, he would let that guilt destroy him before he would cause any more pain for the man. Once he had realized that he didn't allow that same concession for you, and that Rhodey was right, he promised silently that he would never let either of you be forced to take his side by virtue of your relationship with him. Tony had known you for years, and you were his family, and it only took one look at you for him to take his guilt to new heights.

You looked nothing like what he saw of you in Germany; Tony felt the shift in Rhodey's demeanor as you came into sight, stepping out of the back of the government transport and waiting for your handcuffs to be removed. As the steel of the cuffs fell away, the deep bruises from their pressure was clear even from this far away. You looked gaunt and fragile, as if your body was barely holding itself up by its own power. Your skin looked dry, and your eyes sunken from dehydration or maybe even starvation. Tony watched in complete shock, appalled that they could have treated you this way, and appalled that a man he had dared to trust might be the reason for it.

"Jesus, Tony," Rhodey gasped, "are you seeing this?"

"Yeah, and you can be damn well sure that I'm going to do something about it," he snapped, leaving to hurry to the main entrance where you were being released. "Stay here, okay? Let me take this. You just get her in and settled."

Your brother waited as told, watching your every step as you were led inside, trying his best to not listen to the berating that Tony was giving to Ross only a few feet away and just on the other side of the door. Had this not been you standing in front of him, he might give them more attention; it sounded like it was one of Tony's top five verbal spars to date.

He held out a hand to you, offering to take the small bag of belongings that you still had, but you denied him. You didn't so much as look at him as you passed by, making your way to your room where there would be the solitude that you had come to know on the Raft, where being alone had become your life, and where you could get back to your nightmares in private.

~~~

"Not even a hello?"

"Nope," Rhodes sighed heavily, "she wouldn't even look at me. I told you. Maybe she should've gone with Barton-"

"No, she should be here," Tony argued, standing up to move from his desk. "It sounds like they put her through hell on that floating zoo to get information on Rogers and the rest of his team. Why would he break out the rest of them and leave her there? It doesn't make sense."

"You know as well as I do why, Tony. She probably told him to leave her there so she could come home and be a mediator between you. She had been trying to do that the whole time but you two stubborn assholes wouldn't listen."

"Hey, you didn't listen either."

"I listened to you."

"Then that's on you, isn't it?"

"I guess it is," he snapped, turning to leave. He wasn't about to let his only sister sit in her room, locked up again like a prisoner in her own home if he had anything to say about it. You had done your time on the Raft, and even though you were on house arrest, it didn't mean that you had to isolate yourself. He and Tony had agreed before you arrived that discussions about Steve and the others would be kept to a minimum, and well away from you. Ross had literally tried to beat the information out of you, and Rhodey would be damned if he was going to so much as think about asking you for more.

He made his way up to your room, the one you had come to share with Steve before everything fell apart. Rogers hadn't been able to come back to get any of his belongings, and it had to be killing you to sit amongst them now without him there. He decided right then that if you really did know where Steve was, and if you decided to try to sneak anything out to get back to him, he wasn't going to say a word about it. He would look the other way because you had been through enough.

"(Y/N)?" he asked softly, gently knocking on the door. "It's me, can I come in?"

"Go away."

"Honey, come on, I just want to talk to you. No business, I promise."

"I don't want to talk to you, Jimmy."

He couldn't hold back a faint smile at the name, the one that only you were allowed to use. "Okay, I'll go. But you can tell me if you need anything, anytime." He put a hand on the door, holding it there as if he could reach you through it, the coldness of the metal sending a chill into his skin. What he couldn't feel was your hand doing the same on the other side, and god what he wouldn't give for the warmth from it.

"Crap," you muttered under your breath. It wasn't exactly that you didn't want to talk to him, because you did. You missed him so much, and every day that you were locked away you would think you were seeing a glimpse of him in your periphery, showing up to finally take you home. You had never thought it would be Steve to come for you first, and when he was the one to arrive you had to fight him to leave you behind.

But then your brother never did appear. Neither did Tony. You had judged them wrong and regretted not running with Steve when he gave you the chance. Had you run, you wouldn't be so broken and battered now. You might even look like yourself when you catch your reflection in the mirror. You might even have a chance to be happy again one day. But the two men you had known the longest and trusted the most had let you down the worst, and happiness felt like the last thing you needed anymore.

"Fine, come in," you gave in, against your better judgment. "You've got five minutes." Turning to return to bed where you had been since you got home, you pulled the blankets up and dropped heavily onto the pillow, looking away as he crossed into the room and closed the door behind him.

He was scared to get close, so he held there, his back pressed to the door. "(Y/N), before I say anything else," he began carefully, "I want you to know that I had no idea about what they were doing to you. If I had-"

"Don't say that you would've gotten me out."

"I would've."

"Really? But anything short of beating the life out of me wasn't enough to bother you? Not enough to get you or Tony off your asses? I know that you knew within minutes that Steve had been there, and that you knew I stayed behind."

"Why did you, (Y/N)?"

That finally made you turn over to look at him, purely shocked at his absurdity. "Because you were supposed to be the one to save me, dumbass."

"Hey, watch that."

"Make me."

Rhodey took in a long breath and lowered his gaze to the floor, unsure of his next move. The two of you had never once had trouble talking to each other, but then again, nothing like this had ever driven a wedge between you before. It hurt him when you sided with Steve, and he might never tell you that, but you could see it in every movement and every look he gave you.

"I won't apologize for going with Steve," you finally said again, making him look up.

"I'm not expecting you to, (Y/N). We all had a decision to make, and that was yours. You've always stood out on your own for what you believed in, and if that was him, then...well, I have to accept that. Just tell me...just tell me that it was because of what you believed was right, and not just because it was him."

"Pick your battles, Jimmy. That doesn't matter anymore, does it? I left you, and no matter why I left, that's all it really comes down to for you. I left you, so why in the hell would I expect you to come back for me?"

"No, that's not it at all," he urged, pushing himself away from the door to step quickly across the room towards you. It wasn't that you were scared of your brother at all, because you could never be, but something in the look on his face or the heaviness of his steps caught your nerves and sent them into a dizzying panic. You pushed back against the headboard and brought your hands up to protect yourself from a strike, only to peek between them when it never came.

"S-sorry..." you panted, "just a...j-just a reflex."

"No, that's not a reflex," he said in a whisper. "Honey, it's me. I'm not going to hurt you, you know that."

"I'm sorry, I don't know why I did that."

"I think you do."

"I don't want to talk about it, okay? I'll be fine." Slowly, you lowered yourself back down and under the blankets again as he watched, his hand up at his chin only so that it was close by for when a tear happened to escape down his cheek. "Tears? Really?"

"Don't do that, (Y/N)?"

"Don't do what?"

"This lone gunslinger act, it's unnecessary. You don't have to do this alone."

"Well, contrary to popular belief, I know exactly what I'm doing."

"Hmm, well hell, I can't decide who you sound more like," he chuckled dryly, "Tony or Steve."

You wanted to be prepared with a comeback, but nothing came. Your attention was locked on the rarity that you were seeing, the stoic man beginning to crumble right before your eyes. You had been knocked around pretty hard when you were in lockdown, so it wouldn't be out of the question to have a little concussion going on, but the longer you looked at your brother, the more you were sure that your eyes weren't tricking you. You had never seen this side of him before, and it scared you more than anything they had brought on during your incarceration. "Are you okay, Jimmy?"

"Yeah...sure, I...yeah, I'm good," he lied, right to your face. "I mean...why are you asking me, (Y/N)? I should be asking you...I...I should be asking for you to forgive-"

"I will," you interrupted quickly, "I...I do. We'll be okay, eventually."

"Really?"

"Yes, and I'm sorry too. This whole thing got way outta hand, really fast, and we never checked in with each other. It was always us, all we had, and we forgot that somehow. I don't want to do that again."

"Neither do I," he agreed emphatically, sitting next to you and taking your hand. He opened his mouth to say more but was halted unexpectedly.

"Neither do I!"

The two of you exchanged quizzical looks that rapidly shifted to understanding and then to all-out amusement, allowing you both to genuinely laugh quietly together when each of you had believed that it was something that you might never share now. It was a tired, strained laugh, wrought with the pain you had yet to process, and the stories he had yet to hear even if you tried to refuse to tell them. But it was still laughter, a welcome sound that you feared was gone from your soul forever. 

 Of all people, leave it to Tony Stark to be sure that you would hear it again.