Work Text:
Sarah is what gets him on his feet. What keeps him on his feet, after Bucky.
He hadn’t been able to look at the body of his oldest friend, torn and mangled, for it made bile rise in his throat, sour and just awful. The nausea even lingered after that, when Steve had donned his old uniform and taken up his shield, the one Bucky had just used. The one that hadn’t been enough.
Steve gets up, tells Tony he’s ready when he isn’t sure he is, and thinks of nothing but Sarah. He can’t afford to do much less, and thankfully, it carries him through. He tells himself, reassures himself that Darcy would have gotten her some place safe before the Avengers Tower was destroyed. He hopes, no matter how many thousands of miles away he is from her, and remembers that he is not the only one feeling this way. How many hundreds of thousands of people were wondering where their sons or daughters or husbands or wives were, whether they were dead or alive. So Steve tried not to be so centered on himself. Yes, Sarah, but millions of other people were grieving for their lovers too, and waiting to go home to their daughters.
He fights. And for what it’s worth--for what it’s worth--they win. Or they come out on top; Steve can hardly call this winning, with so much of the entire world drowned in momentary chaos, Bucky and Thor gone. But he corrects himself, because they could all be dead, or the Serpent could have gotten what he wanted. It was a victory, however much it didn’t feel like it.
They start the cleanup, do what they can in Oklahoma. Prepare to put Thor to rest, though Odin disappears when Steve comes to find him. He stays patient, confident in the thought that Sarah was safe. She was safe. She had to be. Somehow, a surviving helicarrier arrives to take them back to New York. On the trip back, Tony contacts Pepper for a ‘damage assessment’ more or less, and she lets him know that both Darcy and Sarah are with her, and they’ll be there when the helicarrier lands. Steve doesn’t think he’s ever been more relieved, save for maybe when he’d found out Bucky was alive again.
He does his best not to think of his friend, because the pain is...inexplicable. So yet again, he thinks of Sarah, alive and just fine in New York. It takes a few hours, and by the time the New York skyline comes into view, Steve is on his feet, ready to get the hell off this thing. The helicarrier lands on a rooftop of one of the remaining buildings in Manhattan, and Steve is surprised that many have survived. He stands before the door of the carrier, waiting for the familiar feel of it hitting the ground.
The sunlight seems a bit bright, after the night, and the helicarrier ride, so it takes Steve a little while to focus on the figures standing on the roof. He makes his way down the ramp anyhow, squinting at the welcome party that seems to have gathered for them. He sees Luke, and the other Avengers who had stayed behind, Pepper, Darcy, and yes, Sarah pressed up against her legs, looking expectantly at the entrance of the helicarrier.
When Steve and Bucky had left, it had been in a rush of activity and moderate chaos (at that point). Sarah had picked up on the flurry of and commotion, and it no doubt had scared her. She’d clung to them both, made them swear up one side and down the other to be safe, before letting them go. As with the thousand other things that weigh on him, Steve feels like he’d let her down, too.
But that is washed away momentarily when Sarah pushes Darcy’s hands from her shoulders, and runs across the roof to meet Steve halfway. Immediately he kneels down to sweep her into his arms, holding her tight against him as she wraps her little arms around his neck. For a long, long time Steve stays that way, face buried against her shoulder and arms very nearly squeezing the breath out of her. She makes no protest, just hangs on as tight as she can in return. Everyone else is very nearly silent, save for the shuffle of feet around them, and Tony’s whispered words to Pepper, but Steve can’t make himself care about much more than the girl in his arms.
He can’t bring himself to pull away first, because he knows there were tears in his eyes, can feel their burn, and he knows if Sarah saw, she’d be upset.
“Daddy,” She whispers finally, voice cracking a little. Steve knows Bucky’s absence won’t just slip past her, and so when she draws away, he sets his hands on her shoulders, and looks down at the pavement between them, “Where’s-where’s-...” Without finishing her sentence, Sarah looks over Steve’s shoulder to the gaping, empty ramp of the helicarrier to see if anyone else is coming.
“Sweetie Bucky isn’t...he’s not um-” Get a hold of yourself, have the courage to look her in the eye for God’s sake, you’re all she’s got left. “Sarah, he’s not coming back.” He doesn’t have the strength yet to say he’s dead, because he has barely come to terms with it himself. Sarah’s hands toy with the mail of his uniform, and she searches for an answer.
“What?” is all she can manage, her voice watery already. Steve watches the tears well in her eyes, and it’s not surprising how easily she catches on. She’s always been quick, smart, and she’s old enough to know now, what Steve meant.
“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers, squeezing her shoulders. His brow knits in a pained expression, and he can tell his composure is cracking, “I wasn’t there with him, I would’ve-...” Made sure he came home to you, would’ve protected him, like he’s always done for me. Us.
Sarah shakes her head, bottom lip quivering just slightly, before she leans in to embrace him again. They stay like that for a while longer, but this time Steve can begin to feel her shoulders shake with quiet sobs she stifles against the side of his neck. After much longer, Steve lifts her up, though she’s a bit old now to be carting around, but still he does, because letting her go now would feel like letting go of...everything. He’d slide right off the roof.
*
They bury Bucky on Sunday, in Arlington. Captain America, not Steve, is there, and on the other side of the casket, Darcy holds Sarah’s hand. It’s terrible, but Steve is...he’s numb. He hasn’t cried since that day on the roof, because he can’t, he has to say strong for Sarah, whatever that entails. It’s still too soon to really...feel, for him, but he knows that when they have nothing left to do, when the city is cleaned up and moving right again, it’ll hit him. One night when he’s laying in bed, or when he and Sarah are watching a movie. It scares him almost as much as the fact that, while they’re lowering Bucky’s casket into the ground, he can’t feel anything. He feels like theres a hand inside of him, grasping blindly for something to feel, painful or otherwise.
When the service is over, Steve waits for the small crowd that gathered to taper off, and so do Darcy and Sarah. Soon it’s just them, so Steve pulls back his cowl and Sarah comes to his side. He kneels down, as usual, to be at her height, and puts an arm around her. She does the same, setting her own little arm on Steve’s shoulders.
“Dad,” She asks quietly, though it’s not like she needs to. They’re alone as alone gets in a cemetery, “Are you okay?” For a few moments Steve pauses, staring at the hole in the ground, the flowers.
“Yeah sweetie, I’ll be okay. How um. How about you?” It seems wrong to ask, but he does.
“I miss him a lot. And I’d like to go home, I hate staying at the mansion.” Sarah breaks the tiniest bit, tears threatening to flood her eyes again.
“I do too, more than anything,” Even though he doesn’t feel much yet, he can feel Bucky’s absence. It isn’t like anything he can explain, no metaphor fits, it’s just a gaping nothing where Bucky used to be, “We can’t go back just yet, I’ve still got a lot to do with the Avengers, there’s a lot to do in Manhattan. But I promise we can go home soon.” He gives Sarah a gentle squeeze, pulling her into his side.
“Good.” She whimpers, and breaks again, begins to cry.
*
It’s a while before they can go home. The Avengers help do what they can with cleanup, make sure looting doesn’t occur. But they can only do so much, and after that point, Steve lets them all go home for a while, even those who don’t have families to go back to. Those few stay at the mansion, but they do have each other, so Steve feels alright about it. About them, anyway; he’s a bit scared to go home.
All the windows are broken. It’s most likely from a blast, or just about anything that had happened here not long ago, but all of them are gone. Steve is thankful for something to do, to be able to have something else to clean up, because it spares him a little more time. He sleeps on the couch while the windows and some of their frames are being repaired, because he just can’t sleep in their bed yet. When everything is fixed, he will, he’ll let it all in at once, everything he’d been holding at bay for the last few weeks. Sarah does alright, Steve can see she’s a little worried for him, but other than that, she’s coping with it. Not long later, she goes to school, and Steve is left alone in the house for a while.
That’s when he decides to go back to the bedroom, and opening the door feels like opening the door to a crypt. The bed is still messy from when they’d climbed out of it in the middle of the night, yet now it’s covered in a fine layer of glass, and it smells like smoke. That, he’s almost glad for, but he passes that thought, and starts to clean up. He throws out the sheets, sweeps the floor, flips the mattress, gets new glass in the windows. He puts new bedding on the mattress, but doesn’t have time to dwell, before picking Sarah up from school. She’s been back for a few days now, and Steve’s glad she’s got more things to occupy her now, aside from mourning.
That night though, is probably the hardest Steve has after Bucky’s death.
He lays in their bed, on the fresh cold sheets in the dark, and thinks he’s alright, at least for a little while. Then he closes his eyes, and there is Bucky. Brow wrinkled, just waking up, peeking an eye open to look at Steve. In the low light of the lamp, reading, licking his finger when he turns a page. Head pressed into the pillow, eyes screwed shut and mouth open in a gasp, and Steve is kissing his throat, grabbing his hand from where it’s twisted in the sheets. He’s there, laughing at something Steve says, napping with Sarah at his side, cleaning his gun, tracing idle patterns on Steve’s skin, waking up screaming from nightmares.
Steve can’t stand it, he can’t, and when he wakes up, after not realizing he’s been asleep, his eyes are wet and he’s gasping for breath. His whole body is stiff with tension, and god he can’t breathe, he’s not getting enough air, and that hasn’t happened since he was a kid. Sitting up, Steve turns on the light and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, face in his hands. He expects Bucky to sit up to, mumble something, press up against against his back, and pull him back to bed, but it doesn’t happen. His hand clutches at his chest, pulling at his shirt, but it isn’t as if he’s grasping for the space in his lungs, he’s grasping because it’s excruciating. He only wished it was physical pain because then at least he’d be able to do something about it, but this is just blinding, and inescapable.
A few nights and even days pass this way, and Steve just can’t sleep. When he does, he sees Bucky. Doesn’t dream, just relives, and it kills him to know he won’t see or have any of that again. He simply doesn’t sleep. He paces, and he runs, trains, there are one or two missions he gets called out on. One afternoon, while Sarah is at school, Steve goes to the closet. It’s full, of course, with their clothes, and it doesn’t hurt as much he thinks it does. He pulls down one of Bucky’s shirts, and rubs his fingers over the fabric. It doesn’t smell like him because it’s clean, but Steve can see Bucky in it, clear as day, rolling the sleeves up to his elbows, frowning at himself in the mirror.
He’ll have to put it all away one day soon, but he can’t yet. Instead he goes through Bucky’s things, his shoes, his shirts, some that still smell like him, and it breaks Steve’s heart. Bucky’s cologne is still in the bathroom, so is his razor, and a few other odds and ends that Steve doesn’t, but should, get rid of. He ends up spending that afternoon wandering through the house, really seeing for the first time in a while, where Bucky had left his mark. The things in his bedside drawer, the little tool kit under the sink that he used to patch up his arm once in a while. The purple unicorn on the top shelf of their closet that Steve won Bucky a long, long time ago, feels like lifetimes ago, at Coney Island.
It feels a step in the right direction, though, going through all of that stuff, the traces he left behind.
And then Tony brings back his shield, telling him the “Uru-infused enhancements” make it a little stronger, but Steve just wants to tell him it’s a bit too late.
When Sarah see’s it when she gets home, she silently goes to it, runs her hands over the surface, silent as ever, and then walks away like nothing in particular happened. Steve aches at the sight, but it feels like it’s getting better. He’s able to sleep, little by little after that, not much at first, then the hours begin to pile up. He still sees Bucky in his dreams, but it doesn’t cause him to wake up anymore, and in fact he feels comforted by them, because somehow it makes waking up alone a little less agonizing. Steve still pulls Bucky’s pillow close and inhales deeply, chasing his scent as if it has lingered.
One night, Steve can’t sleep again, and he stares up at the ceiling wondering; where Bucky had gone, if it was better, worse, or no where at all. It’s been one of those days he’s missed Bucky’s simple presence so much, just missed the weight of him against his side, or the brush of stubble when they kissed, his laugh, the feel of his metal hand on Steve’s skin. So he stares up at the ceiling hard, as if he’ll stare straight through it and see Bucky somewhere.
“I miss you,” He says suddenly to the darkness, eyes searching, “I miss you so much. And I can’t remember the last time I told you, but I love you.” More than anything, Steve hopes Bucky knew that, “Same goes for Sarah. I don’t know why I’m talking to myself, but. Maybe you’ll show up, and call me a dope for doing it. I wish you would.”
His eyes burn a little, but he sucks in up, takes a few breaths, and sighs to calm himself.
“Maybe you’ll come back to us again. You did it once,” Something in his throat stops him, so Steve stops for good. He shouldn’t be saying things like that anyway. Just then, theres a quiet knock on the door, one that Steve nows well. He sighs, a slight smile curling the corners of his lips, “Come in.”
Sarah peeks her head in first, eyebrows raised. “I couldn’t sleep.” She said simply, and padded into the bedroom. Steve reached over to turn on the bedside lamp, then pulled back the covers for her as she walked to the bed.
“How come?” He asked, sitting up a bit more. Sarah climbed into bed next to him, into Bucky’s spot.
“Same reason you can’t.”
It was one of those statements that Sarah would make that just. Shocked him into absolute silence because he couldn’t really believe she’d just said that. And he had no idea what to reply with.
“Want to go um...watch TV or?” Steve raises his eyebrows at her, because that’s usually what they did, or had a midnight snack.
“No I’m okay. Can I lay here for a while?” She asks. A few years ago, Steve and Bucky had started telling her she had to sleep in her own bed, because she was getting big and all, so it had been a while since she’d done this.
“Of course.” Steve says, and Sarah begin to get comfortable, still facing him.
For a while they lay in relative silence, Steve not exactly sure what to do or say, because Sarah is still very awake, and he’s just not sure. He wonders if she heard him speaking to nothing and no one.
“My teacher told me something today,” Sarah says suddenly, and Steve looks over at her
“Yeah?”
“About papa.”
The blond’s jaw clenches, but he forces himself to nod, because it’s okay to talk about this with her. They have before, when it was harder for both of them, but necessary.
“What'd she say?” Steve asks, turning on his side to face his daughter as she pauses, looking down.
“She said he’s. Well he’s not gone, is what she told me. You and I still love him. So he’s not gone.” She says simply, just stating another fact, simple as anything. Steve smiles, a subtle small thing as he processes that; it was true of course, Bucky was still very much with him, in his dreams, his closet, his sketchbook, things he caught himself doing from day to day.
“She’s right,” Steve nods, reaching out to brush Sarah’s hair back from her face where tendrils of it fall from her ponytail.
“I know,” Sarah nods, pulling the pillow under her head a little. Bucky’s pillow, which she probably knows, “I just wanted to make sure you knew.” Again she surprised Steve with that, so he had to pause for a moment or two. He smiles at her, suddenly filled with pride for their daughter, because she was still Bucky’s as much as she was Steve’s, and neither of them were going to forget that any time soon.
“Well I do now. Thank you, sweetheart,” He sighs and brushes his hand over her cheek again fleetingly, “Try and get some sleep.” With that, he turns over, and shuts off the light.