[It had always been easy to hate Tony Stark when Pietro had stood there. Their pain had run through them, back and forth, a closed circuit. Her anger runs out of her now, homeless and bleeding away, never enough to fill her, no matter how much bubbles out of her heart and her memories.
It's one thing to know how many long hours he's put into his machines, but as he does the unthinkable and accepts, silently, her gesture, it's another to feel it. The roughness of his palm, the pattern of callouses from tools, little imperfections that could be natural or could be the remnants of scrapes or burns.
The work is branded into him. It's...startling, to find how deep it runs. It makes her fingers close on his hand, her thumb trace once over the back of his before it stills again.]
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It's one thing to know how many long hours he's put into his machines, but as he does the unthinkable and accepts, silently, her gesture, it's another to feel it. The roughness of his palm, the pattern of callouses from tools, little imperfections that could be natural or could be the remnants of scrapes or burns.
The work is branded into him. It's...startling, to find how deep it runs. It makes her fingers close on his hand, her thumb trace once over the back of his before it stills again.]
I think I am over my time now. We are even.