Minor language

It didn't take long for Steve to gather the team, each of them now sitting around the conference table and doing a very poor job of concealing their stares at both you and Tony. He wanted answers for himself, but felt that the team had the right to know too, given that two of it's members had been hiding a major secret from them for years.

"We made the conscious decision together not to tell anyone, and this wasn't just her or I. It was a plan laid out by us and Nick Fury several years ago."

"Okay, I can understand that, Tony," Steve replied sternly with his hands resting on his lap, "but what I don't understand is this entire relationship. I thought that you two were just close friends, but now this is all coming together. This explains so many things. This is why you're so protective of each other."

When Tony faltered, you leaned forward into the conversation, resting your hand over his to signal your intent to try to explain. "When I was younger, my parents were really poor and had no way to raise a child on their own. They were just barely adults themselves, so when they befriended Tony, they were in awe of his wealth and abilities. He was a stable, secure and knowledgeable person who they believed could give me a much better life than they could."

"When they never came back for her, I adopted her as my own," he agreed. "But it didn't..." he paused, sighing deeply and shifting to look down at his feet, his expression saddening, "it didn't last as long as I thought it would."

"Okay, you lost me," Clint broke in. "Did you...un-adopt her or something?"

"I ran away when I was fifteen. Tony wasn't exactly the kind of dad that was very involved, if you can imagine."

"Hey, watch it," he gasped, "you had everything you ever needed or wanted."

"Except an actual father, yeah."

"I had responsibilities that pulled me away often, I'll give you that. But when I was there, I was involved."

"Sure, involved in being a friend. You didn't know how to be a father, Tony. It was a job that you weren't ready for, so you shouldn't have taken it." You leaned back and away from him, crossing your arms over your chest to bring distance to your interaction. "You were never really there. When you were home you were in the lab working on some innovative way to kill people. Not exactly someone to look up to."

"I feel really uncomfortable," Clint mumbled into Natasha's ear, trying to be subtle.

"You never wanted for anything, (Y/N). Never once did you go without."

"I went without you for years!"

"Okay," Steve interrupted, raising his hands to pacify you both, "let's just stay calm and on topic here, alright? You two can get into that later. Tell me how Fury plays into this whole thing."

'We're definitely getting into this later,' Tony mouthed to you silently. "Fury was the one who found her."

"When SHIELD took an interest in him, Nick knew that Hydra would too, along with anyone close to him. He helped Tony find me so that I would be protected." You gave a look to each of your teammates around the table, trying to read their faces; it was a varying degree of responses, mostly of shock but when you looked at Steve, it was if everything was making sense. You could see him replaying the years together in his mind. "As you all can imagine, I'm not the kind to take well to babysitters," you smirked, "so I told Nick that they only way I would come with him was to be trained and a part of SHIELD in my own right, and no one could know about Tony."

"Yeah, the shame runs deep," he groaned.

"That's not it and you know it!" you snapped back. "I didn't want preferential treatment, and I didn't want it to compromise the work. Don't make this about you."

"Okay, now even I'm uncomfortable," Natasha whispered back to Clint

"Apparently, everything is!" Tony shouted, standing and slamming his fists against the table top. "I've gotta go, I can't argue with you right now. I thought this shit was in the past, but what the fuck do I know, right? I thought we had gotten to a better place, (Y/N), that we were different now." When you held your silence and your closed posture, he could only take a deep breath and shake his head, leaving the room much colder than when he had entered it.

~~~

"That was heavy."

"That was nothing. We didn't even get into the deep stuff."

Steve slowly shut the door to your room behind him and leaned back against it, watching you preparing for bed. He had moved himself back into the room with you now that you were reconciled, but now he was acting like he was unsure about how to approach you. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

"Does it really matter?"

"Did you seriously just ask me that? Yes, it matters, (Y/N)." He knew that it wouldn't take much to get this to escalate into an argument with you, but that was the last thing he wanted. Steve wasn't about to let something that he couldn't change anyway become a wedge between you after everything else that had happened. He cautiously walked up behind you, wrapping his strong arms around your waist and resting his chin on your shoulder as he spoke.

"You're not leaving me much time before the wedding to come up with some really great names for the guy. I can't exactly go with 'old man', given my age and all. So maybe 'pops'? 'Daddy- wait, no," he grimaced with a shake of his head to clear the thought away, "that's just wrong."

You shuddered at the unexpected sensation of his teeth on your skin, jumping at the small bite he left on your neck. When he spoke, the vibration from the drop in his already deep voice left goose bumps behind and a satisfied smirk on his lips. "The only man who's getting called that around here is me."

~~~

The next morning when you woke, you were filled with regret; it had been anything but a restful night, filled with tossing and turning and a dreamless sleep. You had hurt Tony, just as you had told yourself that you never would, after the terrible pain that you had caused him years before. You had promised him that you would never bring those days to light again, but here you were, determined to apologize and seek his forgiveness for breaking your word.

When you entered the kitchen and saw him with Thor and Natasha at the breakfast table, you froze, feeling as small as you had so many years ago as a child, preparing to tell him that you had broken an irreplaceable tool in his lab. He had yelled with a volume that you didn't know he could even reach that day, and the cold tone in his voice had sent a chill through you; it was the only time that you were truly scared of Tony. It wasn't that you were scared of him now, but rather scared of the idea that you had hurt him beyond forgiveness in shattering his trust.

"Good morning," you greeted quietly, moving to grab a coffee cup from the shelf. "Has anyone seen Steve yet? He snuck out before I woke up."

"He didn't tell you?" Natasha replied, her head snapping towards you in surprise. "He's been in his office for hours. I think you should probably go see him, (Y/N)."

"Oh, god, now what?" you groaned, taking down your first cup fast enough to leave you with a burning tongue, but not so much so that you delayed your second. "Haven't we had enough drama around here for one lifetime?" You took a quick look towards Tony, finding that he was watching you without a care as to who saw and what they were thinking. With a quick burst of confidence, you turned to leave the room past him, resting your hand on his shoulder and leaning down to plant a quick kiss on his cheek.

"I'm sorry, Tony," you whispered, "I was out of line. Forgive?"

His smile instantly relaxed you, even though he was now looking down at his plate of food and turning it over mindlessly with his fork. With a small clearing of his throat, he lifted his other hand to rest on yours with a small pat. "That was never a question, sweetheart."

~~~

"Can I come in?"

Steve was facing away from you when you reached his office, his chair turned to watch out the windows that overlooked the woods near the training center. He didn't turn around at your greeting, so you slowly made your way towards him, not sure of what his mood would be, or really, what was even going on. When you stepped into his eye line and finally saw him, his eyes were puffy and red, and he looked completely exhausted.

"Hey, what's going on?" you asked gently, kneeling next to him. "Steve? What happened?"

You could feel the tremor in his body from crying when you placed your hand on his leg, and even more so when he put his hand over yours. Something in your touch released more pain in him and his tears started again, and you could see the struggle he was having in maintaining any form of composure. "I'm going to ask you something," he began with a soft sniffle, "and you can say no, okay? I mean it. I'll understand."

"Okay..."

"(Y/N)," he sighed, "will you come to Peggy's funeral with me?"