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Steve can't remember a time when he was afraid to die.
All his life it had been an obvious eventuality, an expectation. When he was little the doctors would talk in hushed voices, try to keep the worst from him. But he wasn't dumb. He knew that everyone he knew would be mourning him before long.
He didn't really mind all that much. He thought it was a shame, sure. It was kind of a disappointment not to get the chance to grow up, to know his dreams would only ever be dreams. But he wasn't scared.
It was the mourning that bothered him. To know that his mother would outlive him, that she would have to live with the loss of her only child. Once, when he was real sick, he asked Bucky to look after her when he was gone. Buck told him to stop being so melodramatic, that he wasn't going to die this time around, and that in any case his mother could take care of her own self. That hadn't been what Steve had meant, and Bucky must have known, cause he was crying.
Steve didn't die, every time it looked like he would he just didn't. He reached his tenth birthday to the surprise of everyone involved.
Then. Mam died.
It was like world had turned upside down. It didn't make sense. His whole life Steve had known he would one day break his mam's heart, but never, not once, had it occurred to him that she could leave him. It wasn't fair. It wasn't how the world was supposed to work.
But the world never behaves the way you expect, and the more sure you are of something the more it blindsides you.
Steve continued to not die, but he knew that he would. He thought if he was going to die he should at least die doing something worthwhile. So he joined the army.
The thing is, after the serum, after everything, Steve still always assumed he would be the first to die. That was simply how his mind was wired. His mother's death hadn't changed his reality, the change in his reality couldn't change his world view. He imagined so many times all the ways he might die for his friends. It never occurred to him that his friends could die for him.
Bucky died.
If there was ever a person that Steve thought was immortal it was James Buchanan Barnes.
Bucky died and Steve didn't know what to do with himself.
He kept fighting, kept expecting to die. He didn't want to, not even in a world where Bucky could die before Stevie. He still had the rest of the Howling Commandos, he still had Peggy. Oh, how he longed to live with Peggy. But he expected death now as much as ever.
His last thought as he crashed was, "at least I won't have to outlive anyone else."
He wakes up in the year 2012 and wonders if he's finally learned not to make stupid assumptions.