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Steve Rogers was alone.
For the first time in his life he was well and truly alone.
The moment he opened his eyes in this new century and discovered the deception that was the hospital room, he knew he was alone.
He didn’t know not what to do.
They gave him an apartment, money so he could buy food and told him the basics of this new world. Some young fresh intern was assigned to teach him how to use a computer and phone. Steve didn’t really understand why on earth anyone needed them, but he took it all in stride. He got told about history, learnt about all the wars since, someone even gave him the files of all the howling commandos and Peggy. He’d sit there lifelessly staring at all the files marked deceased.
How on earth are you supposed to think, how are you supposed to feel, what you do when you wake up one day and everyone you ever knew was dead.
Steve found he didn’t quite like the future. The people weren’t as kind, gentlemen didn’t open the doors for ladies anymore, and people didn’t help their neighbors. On dates, people looked at their phones more then the other person, kids no longer ran around, but stayed inside playing video games. He didn’t like it one bit.
Steve went through the motions, attending the meetings where they taught him about the world, going to the supermarket, trying new foods, he even downloaded some apps on his phone.
But none of it was enough, without Bucky here what was the fucking point, just days ago his best friend died before his eyes, but for them it was so long ago it felt like they had forgotten that for him it was just the blink of an eye. That for him, when he closed his eyes welcoming the cold embrace of death, he could pass on, knowing that the short few years that was his life was this, a zero sum, he spent the first 19 years trying to be someone who could say the world and the last five years dying to save it. He paid his debt to the world, he played his part.
Now all he was, was a relic, a leftover piece, something that time had forgotten.
Steve didn’t want to be a relic anymore.
He spent his time in the gym, it was one of the only places that look familiar to him, he beat punching bags till he bled, reliving the nightmares that kept him from sleeping like a cycle he can’t escape. Every time he closed his eyes all the could see was everyone he ever cared about dying around him. Every time he tried to sleep his biggest failure would become imprinted in front of his eyes, and he would be forced to relive Bucky’s fall night after night.
Not long after that he stopped going to bed.
Was there really any point to this anymore.
After the battle of Manhattan Steve felt even more lost than before. Putting on the uniform felt a wrong, it wasn’t his anymore. The Captain America that the rest of the world knew was no longer him. The Captain America they knew was the result of 70 years of stories, passed on from generation to generation. Those stories no longer represented him.
He’d don the suit as he fought to save people’s lives and at the end feel just as alone as he did the day he woke up.
It was a month after the battle of Manhattan that Steve finally decided that enough was enough.
He grabbed a fresh bottle of industrial strength painkillers that SHIELD had developed for him, no one noticed.
He went to a fitness store and bought some of the heaviest weights you could find, he knew no one would blink.
He filled up his bath tub with lukewarm water, and down the pain meds in as fewer mouthfuls as he could manage. Once he could feel the drowsiness begin to sit in he grabbed his weights and sat in the bath tub.
Steve lay down in the water and placed the ball wait on his chest he could feel it weighing him down slowly he let out the lungful of air, his last lungful of air.
Steve lay there in the water looking up and the distorted ceiling his bathroom ceiling, knowing it was the last thing he’d ever see.
And just as the black spots behind his eyes began to grow to fill his field of vision he realises to himself that that was okay, that is okay with dying, like you should have on the Valkyrie 70 along years ago.
Steve Rogers was buried for the second time in the military cemetery in DC.
His tombstone said simply;
Steven Grant Rogers
Here lies the price of freedom
People were left wondering why exactly their hero seemed unable to hold on, despite the simple truth lying in the note that Steve had left on the kitchen table of his apartment.
To whoever reads this, I’m sorry that you were the one to find me I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone. I closed my eyes in 1945, content in the arms of death knowing I’d lived my life in the service of others.
This world void of any one I had ever loved was not what I wanted to live in, but I realised it was one I was willing to die in. I lived my life a long time ago, the Captain America this world wants is not the Steve Rogers I am.
Please make sure the world remembers me for who I was them not who I am now.
Give the shield to someone who deserves it, let them carry it with pride knowing I’ve passed along the burden to another’s shoulders.
Goodbye and please tell Peggy I’m sorry we never got that dance.
Steve Rogers’ suicide became a rallying point for the mistreatment of returned solders, a case study in how even the bravest of survivors needed help sometimes. In the end even his second death wasn’t for nothing. It brought vital attention to how the governments of the world often fail those who served them, and ensured they received the help they deserved. Solders like Sam Wilson who never got the chance to meet him… never realising the profound impact Steve rogers has had on his life.