Work Text:
Nothing he has ever went through could have prepared him for this.
Not any event back in Brooklyn in the 1940s.
Not anything from the war.
Not anything that Hydra had put him through within those 70 years.
After fighting those creatures from outer space, protecting the land that had helped him heal and save him, he hoped that it would be over.
That after this he would continue to live a peaceful life in Wakanda.
No worries other than what the goats are doing outside his hut.
But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
It starts inside of him.
A feeling of collapsing and in his mind...nothingness.
Different than the nothingness that the chair gave him, this one seemed more finite.
All he could do once he saw his hand start drifting away into the wind was look up and see Steve.
Not Captain America.
Not Nomad.
But Steve.
The punk from Brooklyn that could never run away from a fight.
So close just a couple feet away.
He could see the terror in his eyes.
The same look that he saw hanging from the train when he was plummeting farther and farther to his death.
The fear.
The heartache.
The despair.
This is what he wasn’t prepared for, seeing the hurt.
Before the nothingness took everything he had to say something, anything.
So he said his final word.
The only word that mattered,
“Steve.”