Chapter Text
“Steve, talk to me” Natasha brought two steaming mugs from the kitchen to the living room. She set them down on the coffee table and turned to Steve. He made a small moan from his position on the couch. She gently lifted his head and sat where it was, placing his head in her lap.
Steve turned onto his back and looks up to Natasha before his eyes glaze over again. She gently strokes Steve’s hair with one hand and sip her hot chocolate with the other.
“There was nothing I could do. It was like Sam and I were there just to watch . . . To watch it all happen.” Steve shut his eyes. “We knew he was in there. Any closer to the building and he could’ve heard us if we yelled.” Steve turned away from Natasha to wrap his arms around himself. “And then we watched the thing turn into dust. Not just blown up; vaporized, just like a Hydra weapon. They couldn’t even identify the remains of the building from the remains of the bodies. I made them do mass check. They— they said it wouldn’t tell much. I- I just wanted a shimmer of hope. Maybe we were wrong— maybe he wasn’t in that building, maybe he didn’t get tortured for info and then—then— ”
“Shhh, Steve” Natasha touched Steve’s face lightly, coaxing his mouth shut. Streams made their way from his eyes, but he remained quiet, refusing to sob.
It was the next day she set him up with Sharon. After weeks of putting himself back together with both of their help, he never stopped thanking Natasha for that stroke of match making genius until the day that he did.
--
“Steve! Talk to me!” Sharon rolled off of him, back onto her side of the bed. “Or what? You can’t? Is your mouth broken now too?”
Steve was laying on his back on his side of the be, mouth slightly open as he breathed heavy. His mouth felt dry, he wanted to explain himself, but the words fell away from him like boulders in an avalanche. “I told you; it’s just not something I want—“
“So get some Viagra if you need it! Talk to your doctor! This can be fixed, Steve.” Sharon was getting her clothes back on briskly in the heat of the argument.
Steve sat up at that, storming off the bed and over to his closet. “I. Am. Not. Broken.”
Sharon crossed the room in some easy strides to the door. “Well if you won’t fix yourself, I’m leaving.”
“Fine.” Steve turned away from her, making a show of digging in his closet. She huffed, grabbing her purse of the table by the door and slamming it behind her.
Steve slummed against the closet door, sighing into a ball of clothes in his hand. He slid down until he was sitting on the floor. Sharon’s words stung more than he would ever admit. These types of interactions made him feel like primordial soup. Of course he wasn’t broken, he knew that, but that didn’t stop him from feeling like a fake pocket sometimes.
“Jarvis, where is Natasha right now?”
“Out; I believe with Sam. Their last events in the tower have been redacted.”
This caught Steve’s attention. A perfect distraction. He felt his emotions getting buried, and he was thankful for a self-assigned mission. He started throwing on clothes. “And Tony?”
“Redacted as well, sir.”
“Just for me or for the entire system?”
“This information has been redacted from you, however awaiting approval for redaction from the entire system.”
Steve got out his secure line phone and ran out of his bedroom. Not much gets hidden from Captain America; when it is it’s only because some things need to get said in person and not through an AI.
--
Steve had a secure line with Natasha ringing as he headed to the garage. She answered without greeting. “We need you at SHIELD.” She cut the line before Steve could say anything.
He was on his bike heading up Broadway in under five minutes.
--
Hill greeted him by handing him a SHIELD iPad and directing him to follow her. “A group of American POW were located by a regimen of the French army within 20 miles of Saint Petersburg. They are set to land here sometime in the next hour.”
Steve could see on the screen a map of the exact location and descriptions of the conditions of the five prisoners who were liberated. Two had missing arms; three had mental disillusions; all had electric burn marks on their head and various other body parts. They were heading to an office by the roof of the building. “This is a POW intake, what am I doing here?”
“You are here as Steve Rogers, not as the Captain. I was told you would recognize one of the POWs” Hill walked cool and collected. Steve had avoided the images of torture victims but he opened them up now. And there he was. With a years worth of extra hair, a bloody stub where his left arm used to be, bleeding temples and a certain deadness in his eyes. His clothes were bloody and tattered and he looked drugged, but it as defiantly him, it was Bucky.
Natasha was the first to greet Steve when he came into the room. “We didn’t want to give you false hope. They just sent over the images.”
Steve nodded to her. There was a lot of information to process. The only thing left to do was wait.