Archive of Our Own ^beta

God must be very brave, making babies with fontanelles like that. What if their souls should escape before they've joined? What then?

-- Eva Ibbotson, A Company of Swans

Go figure that when Baby breaks down, it's in the middle of New Mexico in July.

"This is what we get for trying to see the Grand Canyon, huh, Em?" he says as he crawls into the backseat. She makes a face at him from her booster seat. Her face is red and her hair's sticking to her cheeks in wet curls. He blows on her flushed cheeks absentmindedly as he scoots back out of the backseat with her under his arm, the sun-heated leather burning his knees even through his jeans.

The afternoon's so hot that the air above the asphalt of the two-lane highway wavers above it as he squints left, then right. The last gas station they passed was at least twelve miles back, and he can do the walk, but shit, he really, really doesn't want to.

He sighs. Emma, on his hip, tries to push his sunglasses off her face. He pushes them back on. "I gave these to you out of the goodness of my heart," he tells her. She squints at him doubtfully, just pursed lips and big dark sunglass lenses he can't quite see her eyes through.

From behind them comes the sudden sound of a motor. Dean turns to squint through the sunlight beating off the asphalt. It's a motorcycle with a single rider, and the roar of its engine immediately decrescendos as the rider decelerates upon seeing them. He's not wearing a helmet, but he is wearing aviator sunglasses that make him look like a pervy cop, Dean sees as the guy pulls over on the shoulder next to them, only a few feet ahead of the Impala. He immediately stiffens at the spray of dirt and gravel that goes up from the tires, but none of it hits the Impala.

The guy slides off his bike, turning toward them. He's wearing a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the hem tucked into his jeans, though his shoes are sturdy-looking boots and not loafers or some shit. "Hey."

"Hey," Dean says, angling himself so the hip Emma's on is angled away from the guy, toward the grassy knoll sloping down from the road and into scrub brush.

The guy's eyes flick to the Impala with its propped-open hood. "Looks like you could use a ride."

Dean leans back against the Impala, going for nonchalance. He succeeds until the metal sears his ass through his jeans and he flinches forward with a hiss. "Thanks, but we're good. Already called for a tow."

The guy looks kind of pained, his eyebrows drawing up above his mirrored aviators. He looks up and down the road, then at Emma. "You sure she's not going to get overheated?"

"Em's tough," Dean says, jogging her once on his hip even as he wonders if maybe she is getting too hot, can Amazons get heatstroke? "Thanks, though."

The guy's quiet for a minute, thumbs hooked into his belt loop. Then he holds out his keys. "Take my bike."

As Dean looks at him, he takes a fancy-looking phone out of his pocket and presses some buttons on it. "The GPS says there's an exit about seven miles up," he says, looking up. "Go find somewhere to cool off there and I'll wait for the tow truck and meet you there."

Dean stares.

"Uh," he says.

The guy looks uncomfortable again. Shifting, hand going to the back of his neck. "I'm not tryin' to scam ya," he says, the shadow of a city accent creeping into his voice. "Promise." He reaches into his back pocket again and pulls out a brown leather wallet, pulls something out of it and hands it to Dean.

Dean adjusts his hold on Emma to take it automatically. Then he stares some more. Looks from the card up to the guy, with his aviator sunglasses that suddenly seem a lot less sketchy and a lot more like attempts to avoid unwanted attention and feels immediately really fucking embarrassed.

"Shit."

Emma sticks her tongue out at him.

"Yeah," Captain America says. He still looks embarrassed. He's also holding his hand out for Dean to give his Avenger ID card back, and he does, clumsily, accidentally hitting the guy's palm with his fingers. His hand is big, bigger even than Dean's, and softer than his, like calluses don't form on his skin. Dean wonders what it'd be like to hold Emma with hands like that, not to be worried he's going to snag her hair or skin with the rough parts of his fingers, his hands, when he holds her or brushes her hair.

"Uh," Dean says finally into the silence between them. "I guess I'll. Take you up on that."

There's a McDonald's, several gas stations including one with a repair shop attached, and a Village Inn at the next exit. Dean pulls the motorcycle into a space near the back of the parking lot of the Village Inn, hoping to keep out of sight of anyone who might look out the window and see him on the bike with a kid way too young to be riding in any sort of vehicle without a car seat. "C'mon, kiddo."

Emma eyes the bike wistfully as Dean swings his duffel over his shoulder, reaching out to catch her hand with his free one. She twists around to look at it as she trots along beside him toward the diner doors.

"Yeah," Dean says. "I feel you, kiddo." He's never really ridden motorcycles before, unless you count a few dirt bikes at Bobby's, and Captain America's Harley was a completely different monster, like having a tiger under him, sleek and powerful and gorgeous.

Cold air whooshes into his face the moment he pushes open the diner door. Emma makes an actual sound, some mixture of relief and disgruntled joy, and lifts her arms as if to catch the cool air. It makes Dean smiles as he watches her, letting her trot forward ahead of him into the hostess area. She presses her cheek against the cool glass of the bakery display with another pleased sound.

"Scorcher out there, huh?"

Dean looks up to meet the hostess's eyes. "The scorchiest," he agrees, and holds his hand out to Emma so they can be seated at a booth in the back.

He orders a coffee for the captain, then has second thoughts--duh--and changes it to a milkshake. Vanilla, 'cause that's appropriate, right? Chocolate doesn't quite seem wholesome enough for Captain America. Maybe strawberry would've been a better choice?

Whatever. It doesn't matter. The thing's turning soupy, anyway; Dean checks his watch again and looks out the window, also again. What was he thinking, letting Captain America give him his bike. Is this real life? Is this just fantasy? Seriously.

They should've at least traded phone numbers. Then Dean could have texted the guy to ask if he'd decided to run off with his baby.

Have you run off with my baby, sir.

A loud hydraulic hiss from outside. Dean looks back out the window and sees a tow truck turning its lumbering, effortful way into the repair shop parking lot across the street. His car's hitched behind it, not looking visibly worse for the wear, although you can bet Dean's going to be having a look at the undercarriage the second he gives Cap's bike keys back.

Speaking of the devil. The captain himself swings down out of the passenger side of the tow truck. Dean wouldn't have even recognized him if he hadn't been expecting him; his hair's dark with sweat, and the collared shirt has disappeared to show a white undershirt clinging close and damp to biceps and pectoral muscles and sharp, tapered waist. He reaches up to shove his sweaty hair out of his face; his knuckles are skinned and dark and Dean's suddenly back at that gas station where everything was still naked from Hell, his knuckles raw with blood and dirt, where he could taste himself in his mouth.

Nausea rippling through him. The breathless terror of those minutes, those days, months after Hell.

By the time he shakes himself free of it, the captain's pushing in through the door. Visible relief sweeps through him as the diner's fans and AC hit his sweat-soaked t-shirt. He looks around, pulling off his aviator sunglasses and pushing his hair out of his face again. His eyes meet Dean's, and his face breaks into a smile that seriously, literally lights up his face, white teeth and all, and Dean feels a little bit like he's been hit by a two-by-four.

The captain's face lights up even more when he sees the milkshake waiting in its puddle of condensation on the table. "Is this for me?"

"Sorry--lemme order you another one--" Dean raises his hand to catch the waitress's attention. His ears  are stupidly hot.

"No, it's okay," Rogers says. "I like them melty."

"Melty," Dean echoes.

"Melty," Rogers repeats, raising a brow at Dean like he's daring him to say anything more. His face is sweaty and slightly flushed from the heat. There's dust on his temples, too, and streaks through it where sweat must have washed some of it away as it trickled down his face. This close to him, separated by only the table, the heat radiates off of him, accompanied by the smell of hot car and evergreen air freshener and oil, and Dean should've ordered some food with their milkshakes because there's too big a pit in his stomach for this.

"Let me buy you some pie," he says.

Rogers shakes his head as he takes a long slurp of the milkshake. The waitress brings a big sweaty glass of ice water over, and he gives her a grateful smile as he gulps practically half of the glass down in one swallow. "You don't have to."

"I want to," Dean says. "Or--" Realizing, "I guess you're probably headed somewhere for something important."

Rogers' mouth curves in this rueful, almost bitter curve. He pulls off the straw, eyes flicking away for a minute.

Emma belches.

It's one of her longer burps. Dean turns toward the window, torn between laughter and long-suffering embarrassment because his kid has no shame.

But Rogers looks mildly impressed, if startled. "Wow."

Emma hiccups. Her mouth is covered in chocolate. There's some on her nose, too, accompanied by some of the whipped cream that came on top of her shake. Dean dabs a napkin in some of the puddle from the captain's water and wipes at it. She makes a face at him and wrinkles her face, pushing him away with a sticky hand.

"Uh-uh," he says, and holds her hand fast in one of his as he wipes her off. She tears a strip off the napkin with her teeth in protest. He rolls his eyes.

Rogers watches with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. It makes Dean abruptly embarrassed and gruff. He pulls two twenties out of his wallet and puts them on the table, slides out of the booth. "We better go get the car figured out."

The wistful look Emma shoots the rest of her milkshake before scooting down the leather booth is swift, but they both see it. Dean with an internal wince because things go too fast for Emma as it is, and what the hell kind of shit human being is he; and Rogers with a blurted-out, "I could keep an eye on her here."

Dean's eyes snap back to him. The captain looks abruptly younger under the scrutiny, his shoulders hunching awkwardly.

"While you go get the car sorted out across the street, I mean."

He looks at Emma. She's studying Rogers consideringly. She doesn't look interested, exactly, but she doesn't look violently opposed to the idea, either. If she had a problem with Captain America, she would have been long-gone out the door to hide in the closest safe crawlspace, the way she always does whenever they're within a mile radius of Sam.

"Uh," Dean says slowly. "Aren't you kinda…busy?"

That almost sharp twist of Rogers' lips happens again, the downward sweep and flick of eyes before they return to Dean's. "Not really."

"…okay," Dean says after a minute. "I guess I can trust Captain America not to kidnap my kid. I mean. She'd gut you if you tried it."

The captain sort of smiles, like he thinks it's a joke but not a very funny or appropriate one. Emma just bares her teeth in a soundless snarl as she reaches for her milkshake again, like a confirmation to Dean that yes, she will gut Rogers if he tries anything, so go and leave her and her milkshake in peace, please. She sticks her face into the tall glass and emerges with ice cream residue smeared across the tip of her nose.

Dean looks at the captain, like are you sure you know what you're getting into? Rogers just smiles back reassuringly. Somehow it feels like the smiles Dean used to give teachers when he went to Sam's conferences for Dad. The I promise I'm qualified to take care of this kid grin to cover the fact that they were living out of a motel room he'd jimmied his way into with two bobby pins and the only dinner he had for Sam to eat that night was a couple squares of ramen.

But he says, "Okay. Thanks. See you in a bit, Em," and goes outside.

(Sam would say that it's because he's tired. "No one can deal with this alone, Dean," he'd said, looking as damn tired as Dean felt, with hollows under his eyes and his cheekbones. "Please don't pull a Dad on me here. Don't pull a Dad on her."

He understands now how shitty his dad had it. How fucking hard it must have been, every fucking day. To keep going. Knowing there was nothing better coming down the line.

"Shut up," he'd said, and strapped Emma into the car, and drove away.)

Baby's injuries aren't too serious. A busted timing belt, nothing Dean can't fix himself. The problem is getting a new belt, 'cause Baby's not exactly a spring chicken. He swipes his hand across his sweating upper lip as he straightens up from the engine, glancing over at the mechanic. "I don't guess you've got any timing belts that'll fit a '67 Chevy lying around?"

"Yeah, you guess right," says the guy. "Found one two states over, they're overnighting it."

Dean makes a face. "How much is that gonna run me?"

"Man, I'm letting you fix your car in my garage, you really gonna give me guff?"

"Dude, I'm not against paying you for the space, I just don't want anyone  but me touching my baby's insides."

The guy rolls his eyes, tears a receipt off the pad in his hand, and hands it to Dean. Dean pockets it, wiping his hands off on his jeans, and glances back at Baby in farewell before he heads back out into the sun to cross the street to the diner. The sun's finally starting to head for the horizon, providing some shade to walk through instead of the beating glare of before. Dean's still a sweaty mess by the time he pushes back through the diner doors, though, blinking in the relative dimness after the sun until he can make out Emma and the captain in the back booth. There's a basket of fries between them now, and Emma's industriously coloring on a big white napkin. Rogers is drawing something on another napkin with a little kid crayon that looks ridiculously small in his big hand, and there's still a halo of sweat on his shirt collar, wings of it between his shoulder blades.

Neither of them seem to notice as Dean comes closer, able to make out that Emma's coloring in a neatly drawn monkey with her blue and purple crayons. The captain's drawing an alligator on his napkin in the same black ink the monkey's drawn in.

He clears his throat. "Guess we're gonna head out."

Rogers looks up, straightening. "Oh." He looks down at his napkin, then pushes it toward Emma. She considers it, then bangs the dull point of her purple crayon on it, leaving purple freckles across the snout. "They got it fixed already?"

"Nah, we're gonna wait a day for the part to come in. There's a motel down the road." Dean holds his hand out for Emma, and she gathers her colored napkins against her chest and starts to scoot out of the booth. "Thanks, ma--sir," he corrects himself. "Seriously. For." He sticks out a hand inadequately. "You know. Everything."

The captain takes Dean's hand after a moment and shakes it. "Hey," he says, holding Dean's gaze. "Let me give you guys a lift to the motel."

Dean hesitates. "It's only three blocks."

"It's hot." Rogers nods at Emma, smiling at her. "And Emma's full of milkshake."

It's completely unwieldy, and probably unsafe, but they climb onto the bike behind Captain America. Dean clamps his legs more tightly around the guy's hips than he would otherwise, simply to keep himself secure so that Emma won't go tumbling off. It's nice to have the excuse, anyway, and the guy's abs are like fucking washboards under his hands as he keeps Emma safely trapped between his arms.

When they get to the motel and slide off the bike, the captain says, "Good luck."

"Thanks," Dean replies. "It's just a timing belt, I'll have it done in no time."

The captain's eyebrows going up slightly. "You're going to fix it?"

Dean bristles a little, not quite sure why. "Yeah."

"Oh," the captain says, and is quiet for a moment. "I could keep an eye on Emma for you."

It's Dean's turn for his eyebrows to go up. He glances at Emma, who has rolled up her drawn-on napkins  and tucked them into the front of her overalls. They stick out like chocolate-spotted treasure maps.

"You know," the captain says, "so she's not bored while you're working."

It's on the tip of Dean's tongue to say Emma's used to being bored. Then he realizes how douchey that'd sound and modifies it to, "Dude, you're Captain America, not Captain Babysitter."

Rogers looks wistful and bashful and determined all at once, his hands pushed into his pockets. "I used to help watch my friend's little sisters. It's…" He shrugs, looking like that much younger guy again. "Nice."

Dean looks at Emma. She looks back, her little eyebrows lifted. At times like this, he thinks that the sixteen-year-old her is still in there somewhere, and he needs so badly to know what she thinks, what she wants. What she doesn't want. Maybe she could use some time away from him. Maybe she's fucking sick of his sorry mug.

She pulls one of the furled-up napkins out of the front of her overalls and hands it to him. He unrolls it. An apple tree stretches branches out across the paper toward him. It only has a few leaves and round red apples on it. The rest are waiting to be drawn.

He looks up at Rogers. "What's your going rate?"

Rogers looks confused.

"For babysitting," Dean clarifies, pulling out his wallet. "I hear ten bucks an hour's fair."

Rogers smiles. It’s abrupt and startling and wonderful. It makes Dean's insides turn over. "How about you just buy me another milkshake?"

The timing belt doesn't arrive until early afternoon. Dean changes the Impala's oil, rotates her tires, and switches out her air filter while he waits for it. CCR is in the tape deck. He plays both sides twice over as he sweats in the still, unmoving air of the garage, trying not to notice how strange it feels not to have Emma to the side, watching him. It's been weeks since he's been more than a few feet from her at any given time, and it's not as if they talk, exactly, although the younger Emma got, the more she met his eyes with hers, the more she allowed herself to be picked up, the more she clung to his shirt, his hands, his neck.

They rattle around in his brain as he works like the Legos in Baby's vents, thoughts of her at twelve, at nine, at six. The younger she gets, the more like Sam she looks, and the younger Dean feels, the more helpless he feels, like holding Sammy in their front lawn all over again and watching everything burn down.

The hiss of hydraulics. Dean blinks exhaust fumes from his eyes and swipes a hand across his sweaty forehead. The belt is in, replaced, and he throws the old one into the trash.

When he gets back to the motel, Emma is stretched out across the ugly comforter on the bed closer to the door. She kicks her legs back and forth, using one of the old, leather-bound books from the bottom of Dean's duffel as a flat surface on which to color. Rogers is at the little table in the corner by the radiator, drawing with that careful, hunched-over posture Dean noticed him in at the diner when he was drawing, too.

He looks up, smile warm and wistful. "Done already?"

"Yeah," Dean says. "Sorry to break up the party."

"All good things must come to an end." Cap looks at his drawing for a minute, still with that wistful look, then pushes away from the table. He meets Dean's eyes, a little bit of humor making its way into his own. "Ready to pay up?"

Dean half smiles back. "Yessir."

At the diner, a family of tourists is sitting in the booth they used yesterday, a high chair pulled up to the end of the table for a toddler with bright red hair. The hostess leads them to a table with chairs on the other side of the diner instead, in view of the coffee machine and the bakery display case. It's a reminder that nothing can stay the same, and this time, the waitress brings a booster seat for Emma. The plastic is bright red and slightly sticky with leftover syrup. Dean sees the flicker of desperation across Emma's features before she schools them away.

He orders her chicken tenders and a fruit cup. She doesn't do much more than push them around on her plate.

"Sorry," Rogers says. "I may have bought some snacks for us this morning… I guess we ruined our appetites."

"It's fine," Dean says, because he'd really like it if that were the case. It's not, but that's not Rogers' problem. "Thanks again, seriously."

"It was my pleasure," Rogers says. He reaches across the table to tap on the picture Emma's coloring in. "Hey, Emma?"

She looks up. In the later afternoon light shafting through the window, her eyes are achingly hazel.

"Could you sign one of your pictures for me?" Rogers says. "You know, so when you become a famous artist, I can show it off and say I knew you when."

Emma looks at Dean. He can't tell what the look is saying. Whether it's asking him to tell him, or asking him not to. So he sits motionless and useless as Emma wordlessly shakes her head. Watches Rogers softly say, "Okay," and tuck his sad wistful look behind a smile.

In the Impala that night, after the captain has gone. Dean struggles with the seat belt and the car seat. There's too much slack in the belt, hanging loose around Emma's middle, and she watches him in the dark with her hazel eyes as he tugs, and tugs, and tugs. As he finally gives up, and drops his head against the plastic frame of the seat.

Ten miles down the road. A Wal-Mart with baby aisles strewn with teething toys in loud primary colors and soft stuffed animals in mute pastels. A car seat for thirty-eight dollars. He sits Emma carefully in the passenger seat while he unhooks the old one and rigs the new one into the backseat. Tosses the old one into the dumpster at the back of the parking lot. They won't need it again.

Emma's drawings have fallen out of the front of her overalls. They slide around on the backseat in the dark, quiet rustles of noise, as Dean drives through the night.

- - -

(That first night after Seattle, the Motel 8 they checked into. Sam with his hand on the door knob, giving Dean a meaningful look that said  figure this out. Sam closing the door behind him. The silence left behind, Emma standing next to the bed and Dean standing next to the other.

"You can have first shower," he said. "I'll order some pizza."

She eyed him. Resentfully, the way Sam used to look at Dad, and Dean didn't realized he remembered it so well until that moment, until the same look was turned on him. The familiarity of it seized him like a riptide dragging him down. He stood there, and she shoved past him to the bathroom.

Later. When both their necks were damp from their showers, dressed in jeans and t-shirts again. Emma sat on the edge of the bed with her fists on her knees and watched him from the corner of her eye as he pretended not to do the same. The TV played in front of them, two bars away from muted.

"Look," Dean said finally. "Don't Amazons sleep?"

"Amazon," she bit out.

"What?"

"It's already plural. Like fish. Don't add an s."

"Okay," he said. "Amazon. Sorry."

She didn't say anything. Brought her knees a little closer to her chest, digging her fingernails into them as though to keep herself awake.

"Look. If I was gonna kill you, wouldn't I have done it back there at the other motel?"

Emma didn't reply. Dean didn't have anything more to say, to give, so he shuffled down in the bed with his boots still on and a pillow hugged over his chest and closed his eyes.

Woke up. To fast, frightened breathing. The weak white light over the bathroom sink. He rolled upright like a flash. Emma stood at the sink. Something was off. It took him a minute to realize what. That she was shorter. Not by much, but just enough to notice. She looked at him, and there was something different in her face. Her eyes.

"What happened?" His voice hoarse with sleep.

"I'm not--" She looked down at her hands. Her voice trembling so slightly. "I think--"

The mark on the inside of her wrist. Redder than he remembered. As he watched, it gave another pulse, and then Emma seemed to strobe, to flicker, and then shrink a little more. She looked, he realized, younger.

"Oh," she breathed. Horror.

"What?" he said. "What?"

She wouldn't tell him. Wouldn't say anything. It was only Sam, later, who found the parchment, got Morrison to translate it. The sentence about how Amazon who don't kill their father gradually…recede.)

- - -

By the time they get to the Grand Canyon, Emma's not old enough to toddle more than a few steps at a time. Dean's gotten a stroller, a green one with Winnie the Pooh characters scattered across the visor and the seat, and even though it's still cold this early in the spring, there's people packed everywhere, crowds that Dean has to navigate the stroller through carefully.

Sammy wasn't young enough to need a stroller when they were here that first, last time. Dean can remember shouting at him over and over again to quit runnin' off; quit it, Sam! How Dad just laughed and said he couldn't fall over the edge, they had big clear plastic barriers to keep people from doing that. Dad didn't laugh a lot, even back then, but he'd bought them both sweatshirts, 'cause it was so damn cold, and ice creams even though it was, and then he'd found that damn donkey, and had them both take rides on it. Dad laughing, and Sam laughing, as Dean pitched wildly and tried not to fall off or to breathe at the same time, and he knows now how stupid it was (is) to want to go back to that, like it was the place that did it and not some incredible coincidence of events that had led to Dad being in a good mood and not drunk or on a hunt or spoiling for one. He knew (knows) that the magic wouldn't be there again if they went back, but that didn't stop him feeling like it would, like if he could only just back to there, that place, he could capture it again.

It's not there. The feeling, as he pushes Emma through the people with their cameras and their water bottles and their bags. He can feel it, a little, like an orgasm just out of reach, and he looks around more widely, takes in the blue sky more fully, closes his eyes and tries to inhale the scent, taste the air, like just one more sensation can push him over the edge.  But it doesn't, and he opens his eyes to disappointment.

Meets blue ones staring back at his from beneath a baseball cap.

He goes still.

Captain America's eyes flick downward, taking in Emma in her stroller. His mouth opens, and then his eyes narrow.

Dean's hands tighten around the stroller handles. He backs up, one step, two; and then he's pivoting the wheels, pushing through the crowd back in the direction he came, pulse pounding fast. For the first time in a long time, he feels like prey.

(For so long he's just been road kill. On the side of the road, bloating slowly, peck peck peck.)

Voices behind him. Indignation, offense. Dean goes faster. Breaks into a run. Emma's weight jouncing up and down in the stroller. They're starting to attract attention. No one trusts a man running with a baby.

Breaking through the crowd. Out to the wider space outside the visitor area. He unstraps Emma quickly, scoops her up against his chest and breaks into a run. The stroller topples over behind them.

"Hey!" comes the shout from behind him. "Hey!"

Emma's fingers dig tightly into his neck as she hangs on. Sharp little crescents of pain. She makes no sound. He thinks about putting her down, telling her to run. That he'll find her. He doesn't know if he can, if he will. Isn't sure whether it's safer to let her go or to hold on and he sees his dad again, lifting him onto the donkey at North Rim. Strong hands lifting him up, making him feel small and taken care of like he hadn't in such a long time. Like he was Sammy, precious and important.

"Em," he pants as he runs toward the parking. "I'm gonna put you down. I want you to run. Run to--"

She's shaking her head. Digging her nails in harder; he feels the bright sharp heat of blood and snarls, "Emma--"

Something hitting the back of his boots. He hits the ground hard. Skin tearing off the front of his arms, his elbows; his knees through his jeans. He rolls, keeping Emma safely caged. Rolls all the way back up onto his front again to scramble back to his feet, but something tackles him.

"Stop," pants the captain's voice in his ear.

Emma pounces. There's flashes of claws and kicks and hissing and Dean saying, "Emma--Emma, stop--"

Rogers looks shocked, then grim, then determined. Everything in Dean's chest goes tight.

"Stop." He somehow can't get his voice out of his chest. It comes out quiet and strangled. "Stop--don't hurt her!"

Rogers looks up, panting hard. Blood courses from his nose, startlingly dark against his pale skin and paler eyes. Emma is pinned to the ground by his big hand on her back. She's snarling but she's crying, too, ugly snotty tears into the dust that's all over her face, hiccupped sobs between the growls.

Rogers sits back carefully. He releases his hold on Emma gingerly, eyes on Dean, and she scrambles out from under him to Dean, throwing herself at him, trembling wildly.

"What's going on here?" Rogers' voice is Captain America's voice, military-sharp. "What did you do to her?"

Anger and guilt flare in Dean, mixing sickly because it's not his fault but it is. It is, it is, it is. "Look--"

Rogers' eyes flick back to the kid huddled against Dean. "Are you Emma?" It's gentler, despite coming out still with the commanding tone, but Emma hisses and bares her teeth at him. Yellow gleams in her eyes, and Rogers' eyes fly to Dean's.

Dean tenses like a kettle about to go off. There's a knife in his left boot heel, but he hasn't got a gun on him. "She's not gonna hurt anyone. I swear. I wouldn't let her." He doesn't add, she won't be around long enough to hurt anyone.

Rogers stares steadily back at him. Then at Emma, again. Then he swipes his knuckles across the stream of red under his nose and rocks to his feet. "Where are you staying?"

Where is a tiny motel room with two twin beds and a tiny fridge. On top of the fridge is an ice bucket half-full of melting ice cubes and teething rings. Winchester sets Emma down once he's locked the door behind them, looking warily at Steve.

Emma seems, somehow, to have gotten even smaller between leaving the North Rim parking lot twenty minutes ago and getting here; she plants her feet on the ground without giving even a second glance to Steve or her father and careens straight for the fridge on chubby legs. A crayon is on the floor next to the fridge. Dean lunges for it and snatches it up from the carpet before Emma can pick it up.

She topples backward onto her bottom and glares up at him. Winchester shoves the crayon into his pocket and picks her up, setting her against the side of the nearest twin bed. She hangs onto the dark coverlet, starts to pull herself along it toward the nightstand with its pad of paper and laminated channel guide.

Winchester looks back at Steve. Steve looks back from where he stands by the door, crossing his arms before realizing how belligerent a position it is and forcing himself to uncross them. They hang awkwardly at his side instead.

"So," he says meaningfully. Can't keep his eyes from sliding back to Emma, where she looks impossibly younger than when he saw her only a few days ago.

"So," Winchester echoes. Bitter. He drops down onto the edge of the bed. He pinches the bridge of his nose for a minute, then turns and twists across the bed to grab the small flat box of tissues there. He tosses it to Steve, who catches it out of reflex, not expecting the motion.

"What--"

"Your nose. You look like you did twelve rounds with the Hulk."

Steve grimaces automatically. It doesn't even hurt anymore; he's pretty sure the cartilage has reknit itself, but he'd forgotten the blood is still there, tacky and salty on his upper lip. He wets a corner of the tissue with his tongue and dabs at the dried blood, keeping his gaze expectantly on Winchester, whose  eyes are on Emma. She's trying to pull herself up by the bathroom counter to reach the wrapped bar of soap next to the faucet.

When she makes a sound of frustration and plops back onto her bottom, glaring at the carpet, he closes his eyes and exhales. Scrubs a hand through his hair. "I'm not sure how familiar you are with weird shit."

"Familiar enough," Steve says dryly from behind his tissue.

"Yeah, well," Winchester says quietly. He opens his eyes, gaze sliding back to Emma. "Crazy space aliens are real; so is a lot of other stuff. Emma's half…other stuff."

"Hence the eyes," Steve says. "And teeth." He leans his shoulder blades into the wall, arms crossing over his chest again, unable to keep from glancing at Emma again. He remembers the pictures he's seen in files of the growing mutant population, some of them with fur or blue skin or fangs or wings. "Why does she look half as old as she did when I saw you a few days ago?"

Winchester's eyes are on the wall now. "It's a long story."

"I've got time."

Winchester's mouth twists. Steve can almost read the fuck you in the slant of his shoulders, the tense, furious slope Bucky would get when--

A gagging sound comes from the corner. Steve spins, and so does Winchester, to see Emma with the miniature bottle of hotel shampoo in her hand. The cap is missing from it, and Emma's eyes are very wide and alarmed.

"Fuck," Winchester says. His face is white and bloodless. He's dropping down next to her, grabbing her face.

Steve squats behind Emma and plants the heel of his palm under her tiny breastbone, shoving up and in.

Her whole body retches. Then she's coughing, the white shampoo cap tumbling out of her mouth. It's covered in spit and she wails, dragging in shaky, half terrified and half outraged draughts of air. Steve lets go of her, and she crawls into her father's arms, burying her face in his neck. She sobs angry, terrified sounds into his skin, and Winchester still looks white, frozen, inches from being sick.

"Hey," Steve hears himself say. "Hey, hey. You're okay. You're okay." Getting his hand on Winchester's back, smoothing it up and down. Maneuvering them both up, onto the bed. Under the covers. "She's okay."

Winchester shakes his head into her hair. His shoulders are very, very tight, and they are shaking.

Dean wakes up the next morning to the soft sound of breathing. He's lying under the sheet and comforter of the motel bed, the starched sheet stiff against his foot. Emma's foot is lodged in his armpit, twitching as she sleeps. He can hear the breath whistling in and out of her nose somewhere in the vicinity of his hip.

He turns his head on the pillow. Captain America is sitting up in the other bed, leaned against the headboard and reading something.

He looks up when he senses Dean's eyes on him in the dim light through the thin curtains. He holds up the book in his hand. It's one of the grimoires from Dean's bag, the black leather worn and old.

Dean turns his gaze back to the ceiling.

"Two days after she was born, she was sixteen." He can feel Emma's pulse in her foot against his chest, against the beat of his heart there. "We were--she came to me for help."

Rogers is quiet for a minute. "It says in here they're supposed to kill their fathers."

"Yeah," Dean says to the ceiling. "And because she didn't, she's…"

He trails off. Presses his arm tighter against his side, feeling the throb of Emma's pulse closer there. Breathing, and feeling it.

He can only bear it so long. Another few seconds, and then he sits up, pulling his legs out of the blankets. His kid is so tiny in her clothes, only her tiny fingertips peeking out of her sleeves, and her hair has gotten shorter too, the soft dark blonde tendrils just brushing the back of her neck.

Dean tucks his hand carefully under her head, cradling it, and one under her stomach to lift her up and lay her right-side-up on the bed. But Emma jerks abruptly when he lifts her, a sudden spasm of muscle that sends his heart and his guts right back into his mouth. He nearly drops her.

"It's okay." Rogers is suddenly very close, his hands under Dean's as though to catch Emma in case he drops her. His voice is low, too, soothing. "Babies do that."

"I--" Dean can’t get anything else out of his throat.

"It's okay," Rogers says again. He's guiding Dean's hands, lowering Emma slowly back onto the bed, onto her stomach. "Bucky's ma used to call it the parachute. They do it when they feel like they're falling."

There's pain in his voice, and in his eyes. Dean finds himself watching him, over Emma's head as Rogers pulls the blanket over her.

"Just," he says, and sets his finger next to the little curl of her fist. "Give her something to hold onto." He brushes his finger against the tiny knuckles, dwarfing them, and they open up, curl around it. He stares at it and then, looking almost guilty, looking almost dismayed, looks up at Dean.

Dean shakes his head. At himself, at Rogers.

They're quiet for a while.

Rogers is the one to break the silence. "What are you doing?" he asks softly.

Dean shakes his head again. Sinking back into the pillows against the headboard, holding one tight against his chest. "I just--wanted her to have something." He's not sure why he's sharing it. When he couldn't share it with Sam, when it seems like he sometimes can't even admit it to himself. "Before..."

He trails off.

"Something to hold onto," Rogers says quietly.

Dean doesn't say anything. Just exhales, dragging his hand across his face.

"If I leave," the captain says. "Will you still be here?"

His eyes are quiet and serious. Dean feels himself nodding.

Rogers gets up and leaves the motel room, shutting the door almost soundlessly behind him. Dean sinks back into the mattress and listens to Emma's breathing.

There is a twenty-four hour grocer's several blocks away. Steve pushes through the door into the tired fluorescent lighting, nodding from under his baseball cap to the tired-looking woman at the cash register.

There is a stack of red shopping baskets next to the detectors flanking either side of the doors. Steve picks one up, heading down the first aisle with its rows of cheese and yogurt and milk. Emma is too young now for any of the first ones, he thinks, but in the next aisle there are jars of baby food, and teething rings, and he studies each label carefully, turning the tiny jars and packages in his hands, before picking ones to put in the basket.

There's music playing on the overhead intercom, "Only Forever." Becca loved it, and Bucky crooned it completely off-key sometimes, to get her mad and yelling at him to stop ruining it, you big lump! Which only made him sing louder. Becca used to alternate between hollering for their ma to make Bucky stop and making puppy-dog eyes at Steve to try and get him to make Bucky stop, which only made Steve laugh until he was wheezing and Bucky's ma was scolding them both.

When he wasn't trying to get Becca's goat, Bucky's voice wasn't half bad. He used to sing to himself when he was doing things with his hands, like lifting crates at the docks or binding ears of corn at the grocer's where they both worked for a while. It was on the front that Bucky turned silent, eyes and lips constantly narrowed as he stared straight ahead, like they'd never crinkle in a smile or purse in a whistle ever again. It used to keep Steve up at nights, staring at the slope of Bucky's shoulder in the next bedroll and wondering when it had happened, Bucky's silence: if it was in Basic, when Bucky's hands got used to the feel of a rifle inside them, or the nights he'd spent in Zola's lab, being tortured to the score of his own screams.

- - -

(Over Kamenets-Podolskiy. Stark at the controls of the plane, again. "Get your men ready, Cap!" he shouted over the racket of the engines and propellers.

Dum Dum gave a whoop, grabbing Morita by his chute harness to clap him on the back.

"We could be about to die, you know," Morita informed him. "No need to be so jolly about it."

"Worse ways to die than flying like a bird!"

"You mean splattering like a bug?"

Stark called, "Mark!" and Dum Dum's retort was cut off as Monty and Gabe stepped forward and jumped through the open bulkhead.

Dum Dum and Morita were next. Then Dernier on his own with his rucksack of explosives, and then Steve glanced over at Bucky, met Bucky's eyes looking back. He raised an eyebrow, and the corner of Bucky's mouth ticked up in response. They jumped.

The roar of the plane's propellers away from them, of wind in their ears and faces. The neatly ordered opening of the Howlies' parachutes below them. Then:

Gunshots. Pop pop pop.

Steve heard shouts from below them. Then a grunt from much closer, and he twisted around in his harness to see the fabric of Bucky's parachute sinking, swallowing itself, a huge hole torn in the billowing fabric.

"Bucky!" he shouted as Bucky began to plummet.

Steve folded up, trying to reduce the resistance of his body in the air. Then struggled to scrabble himself out of the parachute harness when that didn't work. Bucky was gaining velocity below him, his body no longer visible beneath the white-gray fabric.

He tumbled in the air, trying to twist so that he could maneuver himself under Bucky, but the timing was off. He crashed into the treetops right after Bucky, a riotous chaos of branches snapping and limbs jerking and leaves being crashed through.

He must have blacked out, because he came to to familiar voices, and a pair of arms under his own, hauling him down out of an upside-down position. "Bucky," he gasped.

"Yes, yes," said Falsworth's voice. "Dum Dum is pulling our dear Sergeant out of his own perch."

He gave another heave. Steve tumbled onto the ground, shoulders impacting root-filled soil.

He blinked up at them. Blood was streaming from a cut above Monty's eyes. He looked disgruntled, wiping it away as he bent to help Steve to his feet. Then there was swearing and crashes coming from somewhere above and slightly to the left of them. Morita, Gabe, and Dernier came crashing through the underbrush.

A moment later, Bucky dropped down out of the trees, followed closely by Dum Dum. They both landed more or less on their feet, but Bucky looked slightly dazed, the side of his mouth already swelling. A long thin cut ran from the cleft of his chin up through the purse of his lips to the corner of his nose.

"Christ, Barnes," said Morita, who looked a little pale himself. "We thought you'd punched your last dance card for sure."

Bucky still looked shell-shocked; his eyes traveled across all of them not quite comprehendingly; then they landed on Steve, and seemed to clear a little. "Soon. But not today, fellas."

Dum Dum grunted a laugh. Dernier muttered something in French that made Gabe snort, and then they both set off the same way they came, the others falling into line behind them. Steve fell in behind Bucky and stared at the back of his neck, the leaf-strewn hair at the nape of it, realizing for the first time, the way he hadn't even when he'd found Bucky in Zola's table, because then he was still flushed warm with the power and possibility of the serum, that there was no magical bubble keeping them safe. It hit him like a cold Brooklyn wind through shutters, biting through every layer of his clothes to find his bones and sink deep inside them. The sudden, horrible awareness that the dead boy they tromped past this morning, sightless eyes splattered with mud, could have been Bucky.

Bucky scoffing when he brought it up, later. "The hell, Rogers? I coulda died any of the times I took a lickin' for your sorry ass. Frank Laskey's fists weren't exactly givin' me love taps, y'know."

"This is different, Buck--"

"I. Ain't. Leavin'."

There were ice and metal in Bucky's eyes. Narrowed on Steve like he was an enemy soldier Bucky had sighted through his scope.

Steve didn't say anything more. And Bucky, after a minute, stalked away.

After that.

The fall.)

- - -

When he gets back, he can hear Emma's breathing through the motel room door before he opens it. It sounds congested, and there are weird suction noises accompanying it, interspersed with breathless crying, like she's struggling to draw enough air between wails. Winchester, when he opens the door, is holding the baby's head steady with one hand and holding a bulbous rubber instrument to her nostril with the other. Steve had seen them in the baby food aisles at the store but not realized their use.

"Sorry," Winchester is murmuring. "'m sorry, kiddo, I'm sorry--"

Emma snuffles in another breath, between aspirator suctions, and wails in rage, trying to twist her red face free of Winchester's hand.

Steve shuts the door quietly behind him. Winchester glances back at him. He looks pale and tired, freckles and the exhaustion smudges beneath his eyes standing out in his face. He takes in the bags hanging from Steve's hands, and something in his face collapses, like the bones of his skull giving way beneath his skin.

He lowers the bulb from Emma's nose. "You don't even know us."

"Must be my Captain Babysitter side," Steve says, and it's not really that funny a joke, but it makes Winchester smile, a tired smile that tugs at the corner of his lined mouth. Steve takes it, and moves forward to take Emma from him.

Steve calls S.H.I.E.L.D. to send someone to pick up his bike the next morning. Winchester's eyes follow him as he does, and so do Emma's dark ones, knowing despite the infancy of the face they occupy. He doesn't say anything, though, and doesn't say anything, either, when Steve crams himself into the back seat of the Impala with Emma to read the book he found crammed in the glove compartment aloud. "The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane."

He reads to her until his voice goes hoarse, as the sun climbs higher and higher above them, as the yellow stripes on the road roll past. He reads until she is asleep, her eyes darting restlessly beneath translucent lids. He reads until Winchester says hoarsely, "Stop" and rubs his eyes. "You're puttin' me to sleep up here, too, man."

Steve laughs quietly, tucking his finger into the book to mark their place. Winchester pulls over, down into a mildly shaded copse of trees on the side of the highway shoulder not so unlike the one where Steve saw the Impala's black body that first day, through the dark lenses of his glasses. He unlocks his door and climbs out.

Steve follows him. The ground is dappled with the trees' shadows, a slight breeze wisping past every few minutes or so as cars speed past on the road above them. Winchester opens the back doors on either side of the car to let the breeze in to keep Emma cool where she still sleeps in her cat seat, tiny mouth parted. Then he rounds the car to the trunk, shouldering it open. Steve catches a glimpse of a toolbox and a pile of neatly folded tan fabric before Winchester pulls a green cooler to the forefront of the trunk. He pulls out two beers, holding one out to Steve.

Steve begins to shake his head, then stops and takes it.

Winchester takes an old fraying blanket out and spreads it on the shade-dappled grass, close enough for them to lean against the Impala as they sit. He drops down onto it, back to the rear passenger tire, and sighs.

Steve sits beside him. The breeze blows across them. It touches the sweaty spaces under his arms, behind his ears. The crooks of his elbows and knees. He lets his eyes fall shut. Fingers of warm air brush across his eyelashes and lips.

"What were they like?" Winchester asks after a while and a few pulls of beer from his bottle. Steve can hear his mouth each time it unseals from the glass, a near-silent pop, and the exhalation of his breath across the rim. "Your friend's sisters."

"Loud." Steve smiles as he remembers their chatter. "Kind. I was sick, so--other kids avoided me. But Bucky's sisters treated me the same way they treated Bucky." They had grown up with him; had grown up being taken care of by him, having their skinned knees mended or hair braided or walked home from school by Bucky as much as by him. It never occurred to them not to ask him for things, to come to him for help when they needed it, or piggyback rides when they wanted them, no matter how many times Bucky's ma told them not to go putting any extra weight on Steve's poor back. Bucky had been able to give all four of them piggybacks at once, when they were little, and one of Steve's first, stupid, thoughts after the serum was that he'd be able to give the girls a ride all at the same time now. It was an idiotic thought; they were all too old for piggyback rides by then.

He presses his palms against the round curve of the bottle and looks over at Winchester. "You got any?"

"Any what?"

"Sisters."

Winchester shakes his head, takes a swig. He holds it in his mouth for a second, cheek pouched, before he swallows. "A brother."

"Oh."

More silence.

"He didn't fit in so good growing up." Abrupt. "We moved a lot, and--he was always making things harder than they needed to be."

Steve smiles against the lip of the bottle. Why can't you just leave well enough alone? Why you always gotta pick fights, huh?

Sometimes I think you like being punched.

"Where is he now?" he asks after a while.

Winchester drains his beer. "Somewhere good, I hope."

Steve nods.

"I used to be able to use him as an arm rest," Winchester says out of nowhere. Like he can't contain it; it bursts out of him. "And then one day, it was just--bam. He sprouted two feet overnight. Taller'n me."

He sounds indignant and wistful at the same time. It makes Steve smile again. "When Bucky--"

He breaks off.

Winchester looks at him shrewdly.

"When Bucky…?"

Steve takes a breath, and a swallow of beer. It tastes nothing like the alcohol he drank his way through in that bombed-out tavern in London; that was cold, and this is warm, like old sunlight on his tongue. "After the serum, whenever Bucky turned around to tell me something. He was always looking down instead of up, and when he remembered, he'd get this look on his face--" The smile comes back, stretching his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes as he blinks rapidly, still able to see that half-affronted look Bucky got every time he realized Steve wasn't down there anymore, but up here, Buck. "I don't think he ever got used to how much taller I got."

Winchester turns his bottle around in his hands. "You loved him, huh."

Steve is quiet for a long time.

"I didn't deserve it," he says finally. "What he gave up for me."

Winchester doesn't say anything. After a minute, he creaks to his feet and goes to the trunk. He's there for a long minute, staring at something inside it. Then he shuts it, and returns to Steve with two more beer bottles, handing one to him.

They sit there silently over the bottles, staring at things the other can't see.

The early afternoon light creeps slowly into late afternoon. A sound comes from the car behind them, a little thump, and Winchester twists around to see Emma looking back at him from her car seat. She has one of her socked feet in her mouth. She eyes him expectantly and kicks the back of the bench seat with her other foot.

Winchester cracks a smile. "What're you up to, troublemaker? You tryin' to eat a toenail sandwich?"

She makes a sound that startles Steve, making him glance around for an animal that might have made such a squealing sound, before he realizes it was a screech of delight. She kicks at Winchester's elbows as he creaks to his feet to unstrap her and tries to push her hand into his mouth.

He blows a raspberry into her hand, and she makes the screeching sound again, kicking wildly. Then he says, "Ow!" as she gets her chubby fist in his hair and pulls it. "No makin' me bald! You don't want a bald dad, do you?"

Steve cracks a smile despite himself. Winchester sees it and tells Emma, "I'm gonna give you to Cap. See if you can pull out super-soldier hair, huh?"

Emma gives Steve an assessing look. Her chubby fingers open and close in her dad's hair.

"Uh," Steve says.

Winchester hands her over anyways. "Smells like she could use a diaper change."

"What? Hey," Steve protests.

"What?" Winchester says innocently. "Sounds like you've got more experience changing them than me." He wrestles open the box in the footwell and hands a disposable diaper to Steve.

"We used cloth ones," Steve says. Jogging Emma on his hip as she tries to reach his hair. "Completely different."

Winchester ignores him and hands over the wipes.

Emma's asleep when they check into a motel that evening. Her clothes have started to look big on her again, her hair shorter and lighter golden wisps around her head. Winchester's started to look haggard again, and Steve offers to go buy a fold-up crib for Emma to sleep in.

Winchester shakes his head. "Don't need one," he says, slinging his duffel onto the floor. He crouches down in front of one of the bureaus opposite the bed and heaves one of the drawers off of its runner. He sets it down on the floor between the two queen beds and pushes back to his feet to strip the soft brown under-blanket from the bed closer to the door. He folds it up and sets it in the drawer, rolling up the edges so that they form a soft barrier against each of the wooden sides. Then he holds his arms out to Steve, who hands Emma over.

He settles her carefully into the little nest of blanket, murmuring, "shh shh shh" sounds when she flinches a little and stirs. She fits just perfectly into the bed of the drawer, balled-up fist flung out to rest on one of the rolled-up corners. Dean pulls off her tiny shoes and lays one of her pink elephant-patterned blankets over it, tucking it in around her white-socked feet.

Steve watches it all from the opposite bed, feeling big and clumsy in his boots and jeans. There are times he feels like an intruder into this space, wondering why he pushed himself into their lives, and this is one of them.

Winchester hunkers back onto his heels. He pushes a hand through his hair, looking suddenly infinitely tired, and Steve shoots to his feet. "I'll go get us food."

Winchester looks up at him. He looks a little crazed, his eyes bloodshot.

"On second thought," Steve says. He sits back down abruptly. "I could use a nap. You wanna go?"

Winchester says nothing but takes the car keys from Steve. He leaves the room, locking the door behind him, and Steve studies the line of salt in front of the door as he listens to the rumble of the engine starting and then accelerating away.

Steve settles on his side, well back from the edge of the bed, frightened of rolling over it onto Emma but also of being so far from her that he won't notice if something's wrong. He drags a pillow under his head, knuckles scraping against the beard he hasn't shaved in over a week, and pushes his head into the pillows. The hard metal of Bucky's old dog tags, the ones he sent home when he got promoted to Sergeant, digs into his breast through the inner lining of his jacket, and he curls around the hard edges, and closes his eyes.

He's not sure how much time has passed when he wakes up to the sensation of being watched. He blinks slowly, pushing himself up on his elbow to peer over the edge of the bed. Emma has her foot in her mouth, sucking happily and watching him above it with her big hazel eyes that are beginning to show hints of blue.

He rolls up into a sitting position. "Hey, beautiful."

She flails her free foot as though in acknowledgement of this greeting. He grins and picks her up, thumbs under her arms. She's so tiny; he can feel the tiny snappable curves of her ribs and between them the curves of her organs and the flutter of her beating heart. Her skin feels like little more than a piece of paper separating the fragile parts from his big clumsy hands, but when she latches onto his hands, her tiny grip is strong, and she draws his thumb into her mouth, sucking greedily. The first time she did that, Steve's finger came away bloody, her fangs easily piercing his skin, but now she just gums on his thumb, eyeing him reproachfully for not having something better to offer.

Steve makes an apologetic sound, bouncing her gently on his hip. She releases his thumb, leaning away from him in that boneless way small children have and throwing herself against his opposite shoulder, beginning to gum on her fist again as she focuses on something over his shoulder.

He turns his head to see what she might be looking at but sees nothing except the mirror on the wall, reflecting him as he holds her, the too-big man with sleep-mussed hair and a beautiful baby at his shoulder.

It's the sort of thing he imagined of Bucky a thousand times, and always with wistfulness and bitterness, seeing Bucky walk off with dames and imagining how one day Bucky would look like the boys they saw grow up on the docks, who got married and grew bears and came down the same streets they'd played baseball on with Bucky and Steve now with babies in bonnets held curled in their arm, or clinging to their hands as they trotted alongside them on the curb. He could see Bucky holding a kid the same way he'd held Steve, those muggy nights broken by wet coughs, except no kid of Bucky's would ever be as sickly as Steve; he'd better not be, Steve had thought fiercely, because even if he could resent the dame who Bucky would love so much he'd choose to marry her, Steve couldn't resent any kid who had even an ounce of Bucky in him or her. He'd imagined how he would spoil that kid, take them to Coney Island and buy them whatever they wanted, draw them whatever they wanted; imagined taking them home at the end of the day and them clinging to him, Uncle Steve, Uncle Steve, don't go home, and Steve ruefully shaking his head and sticking his hands in his pockets and walking away down the street, his slouched back a silhouette in the lights of the streetlamps as night fell.

Except that was all ridiculous fantasy, because even if Steve could somehow afford a place without Bucky to split the rent with, he wouldn't make it that far. That image, his silhouette outlined in the hazy yellow lamplight, was usually where the fantasy was cut short by a cough ripping out of his throat. When he would shake and tremble in his bed, in fever and in rage at his body for being too weak to do it. To live long enough to see the kids that would call Bucky Pa and grab Steve tightly by his hand and swing from it.

Emma is warm and heavy against his shoulder. She smells of soap and the fabric of the car seats, old and too-sweet.

He begins to rock her. "Do you think I'll remember," his voice isn't anywhere near as good as Bucky's, more a whisper than a song, "how you looked when you smile?"

He presses his nose to her hair, their eyes on each other in the mirror.

"Only forever…that's puttin' it mild…"

She stares at him like she can see him, like there really is someone older trapped inside that gumless mouth and tiny nose and hazel eyes, the way Dean seems to think there is, the person Dean whispers apologies to every night when he thinks they're both sleeping. Steve meets her gaze, and then he presses his face to her hair, instead, hiding from it. It's easy to feel the pulse of her blood through the fragile fontanelle in her head, his cheek against it, and to feel the soft tiny palm patting the side of his ear, like a benediction, like it's okay, Stevie.

When Dean gets back, bearing several takeout containers for dinner and feeling like an ass for having left an Avenger to take care of his monster kid, he stops short in the doorway, narrowly missing the salt line. "The hell're you doing?"

Rogers flinches back with the feather he was brushing against the bottom of Emma's pudgy bare feet. Dean can't even begin to guess where he got it, considering this is definitely not the kind of motel where the pillows are goosedown or whatever shit. "I can't get her to laugh."

He says it with a crestfallen face, like it's a personal failing, like he lost the Battle of Berlin.

"Yeah," Dean says. "She's like her uncle that way. Bitchface extraordinaire."

He gets two glares for that. One from Emma, like she knows exactly who she's being compared to and doesn't appreciate it, and one from Rogers, who doesn't appear to approve of using the word bitch around a baby. "Language."

"Sorry," Dean mutters, and sets down the take-out.

Rogers picks Emma back up off the bed. The abandoned feather on the coverlet catches the back of her ankle, and a bubble of a laugh bursts out of her. She and Rogers both look equally shocked by it for a moment; then Emma kicks her feet, searching out the sensation again and booting Rogers in the groin in the process.

He grunts and bursts out into a huge grin at the same time. "She laughed!"

"You want some ice for that?" Dean says dubiously.

"She laughed!" is all Rogers says again, in wonder, and Dean rolls his eyes, and goes to take a shower.

They stay up late that night, Rogers hanging over the edge of his bed to hold the feather above Emma so she can strain to reach it with her fat fists. She makes angry sounds as well as laughter, these low grunting noises like she's trying to take a particularly hard dump that make Dean and Rogers both cry their eyes out with laughter. Dean falls asleep with the corners of his eyes still damp with tears, and dreams:

walking up the rickety front steps of Bobby's porch, Emma's skinny legs dangling on either side of his ears, her heels digging into his armpits as she strains upward on his shoulders to reach the porch eaves before they go in, tracing the splintery runes there with her fingers

pushing a shopping cart down the aisle, arguing with someone beside him over what brand of mustard to get for the hamburgers

blue eyes squinting at a girl in a khaki jacket

squinting blue eyes turning to his

He rolls over, out of the clinging strands of his dreams, swiping his hand down his face and digging the heel of it into his eyes. He pulls it away and looks sightlessly down into Emma's drawer-crib. It's a full minute before he registers what he sees: Emma, eyes wide and white-edged, her face turning purple as she stares up at him.

He's out of the bed in a flash, lifting her up, sweeping his thumb into her mouth to pry it open and see if she's swallowed something again. His hands are trembling, he notices peripherally, and then Rogers is beside him, sticking the ugly blue aspirator into her nose and sucking. An awful sound of suction, and then Emma's sputtering, a glorious noise of sound, and coughing, and retching, and Rogers is thumping her back with a strength that seems too forceful for a baby but that gets a scared, hoarse wail coming out of her.

She cries through the rest of the day. She cries when they pick her up and when they set her down; as Dean walks back and forth in front of the two beds, and as the captain does. She cries with the TV on and with the TV off; she cries before a diaper change and after it; cries when they try to feed her formula and when they don't; cries when they take her outside to walk in the sunny parking lot and when they come back into the air conditioned room as night finally falls, a whole day gone; cries as a knock comes on the door.

Dean glances at Rogers, whose mouth has gone tighter and tighter the longer Emma cries. The captain motions for him to stay seated with Emma and goes to the door, glancing at the salt line and through the peep hole before pulling it open. "Yes?"

"Hey--hi," modifies the man, who is wearing a crookedly pinned-on name tag with the logo of the motel, as he tilts back his head to take in Steve's height, his muscles that are bulging beneath the tight, tear-stained gray t-shirt he wears. "I've been getting some complaints about all the noise goin' on over here."

Rogers' back is to Dean. The outline of his spine stiffening is clear through the gray fabric.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Are you here to offer us a different room?"

The motel employee shifts slightly. The movement brings him far enough to the right for him to see Dean, his eyebrows rising as he sees him, and the baby shrieking in his arms, and far enough to the right for Dean to see, behind him, a man in what appears to be a rumpled-looking pajama shirt, face creased and expression disgruntled.

"Where's her mom?" demands that man, seeing the same thing the employee does.

The captain moves over, blocking Dean and Emma from both their sight. "That's none of your business."

"The hell're two guys doing with a kid?" says the angry voice. "No wonder the damn kid won't shut up--"

"Maybe you should leave." There's menace in Rogers' voice beneath the thin veneer of courtesy.

"Are you threatening me?!"

"Yes."

"Look--" the employee tries to intercede.

"Cap," Dean says at the same time. Coming up behind him, Emma still twisting in his arms, writhing like one of the creatures he used to flay apart in Hell. He's so tired of being rejected, ejected, abjected. "Cap, let's just--"

The stab of silence and realization. Closing his eyes as he realizes what he did. The employee's and the other man's going wide with recognition.

"Oh my God."

"Holy shit."

"Captain America, I'm so sorry--" Words stumbling over themselves.

"I appreciate the apology." Rogers lets go of the door and stoops, looks around, grabbing Emma's blanket and things from the bed, putting them into the bag and shouldering it. Doing the same with Dean's things on the bathroom counter, and his duffel. "We'll be checking out early."

"Sir--I'm sure we can work something out--"

"I'm sure we could have," Steve says, with a tight-lipped smile, and puts a ten on the dresser for the maid.

"Gonna make TMZ," Dean says as they pull onto the interstate. Already Emma's sobs are quieting, her breaths smoothing out and tear-stained face beginning to dry as she sucks tiredly at the bottle Dean holds to her mouth. Dean smoothes his thumb across her warm forehead and thinks of nights with Sammy, tucked up in the Impala's backseat with musty-smelling hotel comforters and stolen pillows. He looks up and meets Rogers' reflection wearily in the rearview mirror. "Captain America shacking up with a dude and a kid."

"You really have time to worry about that?" Rogers' voice is tightly controlled fury. "After what happened this morning?"

Dean looks away. Rogers says nothing more, and they speed through the night, the dashboard lights reflected in the dark windshield, and eventually, Dean falls asleep against Emma's car seat, cradled by the familiar rhythm of the road.

The next morning finds them on the side of a road overlooking the Colorado River. Mist still curls over the water, the sun still hidden by the rising red slopes of the bank. Steve sits leaning against the rusting hood of the car, the metal wet and cool with the morning dew.

Winchester gets out of the car at dawn, shaking a bottle of baby formula in his hand. He looks sleep-tousled, his hair flattened out of shape and the imprint of a seat belt running down the left side of his face to disappear into his stubble. Steve hands him the last bottle of water from the twenty-four pack in the trunk. Winchester accepts it, taking a gulp and swishing before spitting it out into the grass beside them. He hands the bottle back to Steve and pats his jacket pockets with his free hand, finding a pack of gum and pulling it out.

He folds one piece into his mouth and holds the pack out it to Steve. It's a peace offering, as much as anything, for the night before. "Do super soldiers get morning breath?"

Steve pulls a foil-wrapped piece from the pack, raising a brow wryly. "Wanna find out?"

Winchester makes a face at him. Steve exhales loudly in his direction. Winchester punches him in the shoulder.

"Ouch," Steve says, deadpan, and Winchester socks him again.

After that, they're quiet, watching the orange sunlight spill over the horizon. It scatters the light across the gleaming blonde-dark bristles of Winchester's scruff in the corner of Steve's eye, catches in the wet dip of his lower lip as he turns his head suddenly, tilting it back toward the car. Steve, pulling his eyes away from Winchester's profile, hears what he must have: a contented smacking sound.

They round the car to the back seat door Winchester left open. Emma gazes up at them from her car seat, her toes fastened firmly in her mouth.

"Aw, gross," Winchester says. "Toes again, Emster?"

"Why don't you see what toe breath smells like?" Steve suggests.

Winchester shoots him an eat dirt and die look. Steve laughs, loud, head tilted back and hand coming to his chest.

The first diner they find is a Village Inn, with signs advertising pie plastering the windows and no one inside yet but a few old men sipping on coffee and squinting at their newspapers. Winchester beelines for a booth in the corner, not waiting for a hostess, Emma's car seat lodged between his arm and hip. He heaves it into the booth, grunting as he wedges it in securely. Emma's socked foot narrowly misses his nose as she tries to flail out of the carrier.

"What a treat," the auburn-haired waitress says softly as she comes over, leaning over Emma. She glances up at them, eyes tired but kind. "Y'all need us to microwave any of her formula?"

"Would you?" Winchester says in some relief. Emma had refused any of the room (or car)-temperature formula he'd mixed for her in the car, turning her face stubbornly away.

"Sure thing, sweetheart." The waitress, whose name tag says Marie, trades him the bottle he wrestles out of the diaper bag for a pair of menus. "I'll be back in a jiff."

Steve slides into the booth on Winchester's other side, the curved shape of it leaving them elbow to elbow. Winchester's still in the rumpled shirt he slept in inside the car; Steve is, too, and glancing at their reflection in the window beside the table, he sees they look like the scruffy dock workers who would come out of bars late at night, smelling of whiskey, chins dark with stubble and loose with exhaustion. He rubs his hand down his jaw, looking over at Winchester. The other man is studying the breakfast menu with his brow knit, little crinkles radiating outward from the corners of his eyes. His lashes are very long, and his green irises very light, in the soft yellow light from the lamp above the table.

"What're you doing?" Winchester says, and Steve flinches before realizing the other man is asking about his order, not why Steve is staring at him. "Belgian waffle again?"

"I--was thinking pancakes this time."

"Awesome." Winchester sets down his menu with a thwack. "I can get the chicken-fried steak, then, and just steal some of your pancake when I need something sweet."

"Get your own pancakes," Steve says, offended.

"Fuck you," Winchester retorts good-naturedly. "I let you have the rest of my milk last time."

"Yeah, and it was like drinking water," says Steve, who had been not at all impressed by the fat-free milk. He hadn't drank milk often when he was a boy; it made him feel bloated and sick, but he knows it hadn't tasted like what Winchester had ordered alongside his coffee.

"Whatever, man, whole milk is gross. It's like drinking cottage cheese."

Steve cocks a brow and shrugs. "I guess we know why you're so short."

"Dude!" Winchester looks genuinely outraged. "You were like four feet tall, you've got no room to talk!"

Beside him, Emma gives an emphatic kick of her legs as though in agreement. Winchester's eyes meet Steve's, and they break into grins.

Marie returns with Emma's bottle. Winchester takes it gratefully, dabbing some of the milk from it onto the back of his hand to see if it's too hot as Steve gives Marie their orders and hands back the menus. When she leaves, the table is left in silence again, except for the sound of Emma sucking hungrily from the bottle as Winchester holds it to her mouth. His green eyes rove around until finding the television above the counter, running a news station, and Steve takes the opportunity to pull the napkin from the place setting in front of Emma's car seat and begin doodling on it.

After a while, the silence becomes oppressive. He lifts his head to look at Winchester, his eyes tracing the profile now outlined on the rumpled white napkin. Winchester's lips are compressed, the skin around them white, and Steve glances at the television to see what has him looking so tense.

"--authorities continue to investigate the massacre of Senator Michelle Walker and her staff," the anchorwoman is saying. "It is still unknown whether--"

Marie steps between them and the television, plates balanced on her arm. "Blueberry stack," she pronounces, setting the pancakes down in front of Steve. "Chicken-fried steak--" She leans over to give it to Winchester, who straightens up, gaze finally breaking away from the TV. His face is gray, and he doesn't thank Marie for the food, nor, when she is gone, does he do much more than cut it up on his plate.

Steve watches. But he doesn't dare say anything. The easy camaraderie that sat between them before, a comfortable fourth presence at the table, is gone, burned away like the morning mist.

They pay the bill and pack up in silence, Steve wedging the takeout container with Winchester's uneaten food into Emma's diaper bag. Winchester wrestles her carrier into the backseat and takes the car keys back from Steve, starts driving. Steve doesn't ask where they're going. He looks down at Emma instead, shaking her toys above her nose, trying to keep her entertained, but she seems as listless as her father, distracted, fist crammed worriedly into her mouth, and soon enough, she begins to cry.

She has another apneic episode that night, preceded by her breath rattling so loudly in her lungs that Steve, dozing on the next bed, is woken by it. Dean is holding her upright, thumping her on the back so hard that even Steve winces. She's absolutely silent, eyes huge and mouth wide as in trying to scream out a breath--then, as suddenly as it started, she's sucking in a rattling breath that comes back out as a wail.

Dean holds her with trembling hands. Away from him, as he doesn't dare to compress her lungs even enough to hug her.

Steve thinks he knows why. Looking at Emma, it's impossible not to notice that the onesie that stretched snugly across her that morning now hangs loosely from her.

- - -

(When Emma was about thirteen. Face freckled and eyes huge in a face that was suddenly round instead of oval. Dean woke up in the motel bed closer to the door, to the sound of rubbing water and the dim glow of a cell phone screen in the dark. He sat up. "Emma?"

The water stopped. The cell phone light disappeared.

He sat up further. "What's going on?"

"Nothing." Her voice was strained. "Go back to sleep."

"No, I--"

"Go!" she shouted.

Dean laid back down. He stared into the dark, waiting for his eyes to adjust, and the darkness was briefly broken by the white light of the bathroom being turned on, and then it disappeared as Emma locked herself inside. The shower began to run.

She stayed inside for a long time.

The next morning when he woke, Emma was already outside, sitting in their most recent junker's back seat and staring determinedly out at the road. Sam gave Dean a what's up with her now look. Dean shrugged, toothbrush in his mouth, then waited for Sam to go outside to load his own duffel into the car. He spat out his toothpaste and studied the bathroom. The wiped-down counter and door knob and the discarded towels on the floor. One stuffed into the trash can next to the toilet.

He toed it up with the edge of his boot. Underneath was an unmistakable red.

His insides plummeted. Oh God. Oh God. She did it, she attacked someone. Fuck, fuck, fuck--

He crouched, heart beating hard in his chest. He lifted the towel the rest of the way. Underneath were Emma's sweat pants, crumpled into a blood-stained ball, and guilt whooshed in even as the panic drained out.

Steering the Impala out of the parking lot with white-knuckled hands on the wheel. Brain firing nervously. How would he even begin to bring it up? He couldn't. She'd crucify him. And it wasn't like they knew any women he could take her to for The Talk.

He thought in despair of Lisa, who didn't even know him anymore. Who thought he was just the drunk guy who--

Mind shutting down as it skated too close to Cas. He lurched back into himself, hands tight on the steering wheel. Sam was looking at him, he could feel it. His eyes went to Emma in the rearview mirror. God, she looked so young. Her freckles were getting easier to see the younger she got, and they stood out then in the paleness of her face, her pressed-together lips.

"Look," he heard himself say. "One of those mermaid coffee places. You want me to drop you off, Sammy?"

Sam gave him a weird look but acquiesced. "Sure, Dean." His tone said, you're explaining whatever the hell is going on later.

Dean dropped him off. In the same parking lot as the Starbucks was a plaza with a Target. He turned the Impala down the rows and parked closer than he usually would, so Emma would have less distance to walk.

She didn't say anything. Her silence said, why are we here. Dean rarely took them to Targets; Walmarts are cheaper.

"Figured it's time for you to have some clothes that aren't from Goodwill," he said to the unspoken question.

"No, thanks."

Silence as he deliberated. Then:

"Em. I saw the trash can this morning."

She was very still.

"Did they…tell you about this?" He watched her, feeling like he was watching a rabbit quivering in the corner of a cage with a snake. "It's--it happens at a certain age. For everyone."

"I've never smelled blood on you and Him." Sam is never Sam. Only ever Him.

"Uh. That's because it only happens to girls."

She didn't say anything. He could tell that she was listening, though, from the white-knuckled clasp of her hands in her lap.

"It means. Um, it means--well, forget what it means," he said. "There's stuff they make for you to wear when it happens so you don't have to sit on a wad of toilet paper."

She flushed.

"You want me to go in and get them?" he asked gently.

For a minute she didn't say anything. Then, quietly, "Yes."

There was a moment, as he stood in the aisle, faced by the wall of colorful packages and boxes. Despair opened up beneath him, endless and gaping like a canyon.

Cas, he thought, and cut it off. Stuffed it away, like Emma crumpling her stained sweat pants and pushing them deep into the trash can. Picked a few boxes, and went to pay.)

- - -

The younger she gets, the more she struggles to breathe. Spluttering and coughing like there's water in her lungs, like she's trying to be born instead of to die. Dean paces the room with her, patting her back so gently, smoothing his hand up it; sometimes thumping it so hard he fears he'll break her, so hard that tears spring to his eyes. He thinks of his mom, he begs her wherever she is to help him; god please Mom come help me; god please Mom don't look at me, I don't want you to see me doing this, god please Mom I'll give you anything if you just help me help her help her help me please what do I do

"Hey." A hand touches his back.

He jerks up, uncurling from his crouch over Emma. Wiping his face across his sleeve.

Rogers looks understanding, that sincere look on his face. He doesn’t hold out his arm, though Dean half expects him to; just puts his hands under Dean's elbow, bracing him to help him down off the hood of the car, where he brought Emma in the hope that the humid dusk air in the parking lot would help her more than the dry recycled air inside the motel room. His ass has gone numb from sitting there so long, the sky dark and moon well-risen amid the scattered clouds. Emma is finally sleeping, and Dean stumbles into the motel room with Rogers' guidance, keeps a fierce hold on Emma when the captain makes to take her from him.

Rogers lets go immediately. You're good, he says. You've got her, he says.

Dean floats into something like sleep, body and thoughts collapsing into the plateau of the bed. Steve, settling onto the opposite bed, watches him, and when Emma twitches and Dean spasms awake, eyes white-rimmed and terrified as he looks around for her, a space deep inside his ribs aches, and aches, and aches.

To fight so hard. To be a parent and know your child will not outlive you.

Steve watches, and misses his mother with a fierceness that is a hand around his throat, tight and squeezing.

"God's got a lotta reasons to punish me," Winchester says some time during the night. Quiet, almost a murmur. Steve, not sure who he's saying it to, stays quiet where he lies curled up on the next bed.

"I shoulda let her kill me," he says a while later.

Steve is very cold on top of the bedcovers. He stares at the dark shape Winchester makes on the bed, a dark mountain range against the thin curtains.

I don't wanna kill anyone, Bucky whispered one night. When he thought Steve was sleep. A few breathless minutes; Steve's eyes and ears straining in the darkness. Lungs burning as he tried to hold his breath, wanting Bucky to think he was asleep and wanting him to know that he wasn't. Steve, I don't wanna die.

There was silence. Then the sound of ragged breaths, shuffling against sheets and Bucky gasping, Bucky crying, and Steve stayed very quiet and very still, and burned with the pain of Bucky behind him.

Steve remembers babies he kissed on their foreheads, babies he held in too-big arms, while films rolled and cameras flashed. He dreams of it, those days in the USO, and he dreams of a honey-haired girl with Dean's eyes, whispering I don't want to kill anyone as she falls away from him in the dark. I don't want to die--

Yanking awake. Breathing harshly, slick with sweat, stumbling out of the bed so he can make sure Emma is still breathing, propped against Dean's chest.

He sinks back onto his own bed, hands slippery against the coverlet. Clutching the collar of his shirt. God, he remembers so many nights. So many nights of fear, please, please, God, I don't want to die.

And the reckless ones. The angry, infuriated ones, just kill me, see if I care! as he cried angrily into his pillow, punched it, ignored the pain on his mother's face at the sounds, at the way he turned away from her hugs because he hated the world, he hated everyone, everything.

Emma cries ceaselessly, colicky. She cries like she can't bear not to be looked at, to be looked away from. He rocks her as Winchester looks on, exhausted and bleary. He rocks her as infomercials play on the TV, as a magic blender gives way to a miracle microfiber cloth. The gray and blue lights washing across the room.

Don't you dare, he remembers Bucky saying. A fist tight in his clothes, his hair. Don't you dare let me sleep through it. His eyes like a madman's, his eyes like someone much older, red with rage and something else at having fallen asleep and woken to Steve trying to reach his inhaler. Face blue, lips blue. No breath coming in, none going out.(Why didn't you wake me. Why didn't you wake me, Steve!)

Don't. Much later, much more broken. His voice shaking. Don’t let me sleep through you leaving.

Steve crying harder. He didn't want to be alone.

He didn't want to go alone.

When she falls into a restless sleep. Twitching in his arms, mouth parted to show pink gums that no longer have teeth. Steve looks back at Dean. The shadows cast across his eyelids with the darting eyes underneath, the parted grimace of his mouth. Then he slips out the door, into the cool air that is damp with dawn.

It is quiet outside. A sudden open stillness to the cramped confines of the dark room with its not-quite-muted television.

Emma goes a little stiller in his arms. His heart skips, and he tilts his head back to stare into the sky, past the weak orange glow of the sodium lights in the parking lot.

"Thor?" he says. Voice very quiet. "Are you--" Stopping. Feeling ridiculous. He won't-- He exhales. "Thor." More loudly this time. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I need your help."

For a minute, there is nothing but the distant sound of cars on the freeway. Then an abrupt, doppler-like sound approaching. And. Two forms crashing down onto the asphalt in front of him.

The one that isn't Thor is the first to rise from his crouch. He looks at Steve curiously from behind his beard, and then Thor is striding past him, heavy cloak and bright hair blown back by the velocity of his stride.

"Captain," he says.

"Thor." Even to Steve, the relief in his voice is palpable.

"I did not expect to hear from you again so soon," Thor says. And then, not waiting for an answer. "What is this you hold?"

Steve tilts his arm, allowing Emma to be seen as Thor leans closer. Thor goes one step further, though, reaching out to take her from him. She is a tiny thing in his huge hands, her head dwarfed inside his palm.

"Wretched thing," remarks the bearded man behind Thor.

Steve stiffens.

"She has been abandoned," Thor says. It's not a question.

"It happens with litters," the bearded man tells Steve. Confidingly, like he is being kind. "Runts. The mother can sense when a whelp won't survive."

Thor smoothes some hair back from Emma's cheek, his thumb gentle. "Sometimes a runt need only a different family to flourish."

The regret in his quiet voice wicks the rage from Steve. He takes Emma back when Thor offers her.

"You know what she is."

It isn’t a question, but Steve nods anyway.

"She's aging backward," he says. "I need to know how to stop it."

"You don't," says the man behind Thor.

"Volstagg."

Volstagg raises his eyebrows. Walks away a few paces, then returns. He leans down to peer at Emma's face.

"There is strength in her," he says finally. Grudgingly. "The Lady Sif was not so much larger than this, when her mother bore her."

Thor continues to hold Steve's eyes. "The child made her choice not to kill for her mother goddess. Would you rob her of it?"

Steve shakes his head. "That's why I called you."

Volstagg makes a sound like a snort. Thor glances toward it, the touch of a smile finally brushing the corner of his mouth. Then he looks back at Steve, and his expression is solemn and steady. "There is a way I know of. A spell in which one splits their lifespan so that another may have the other half."

"I'll do it."

Thor doesn't say, Captain! Nor are you sure, or you can't. He just studies Steve for a moment longer and then says, "I will return with the spell."

("I can't ask you for that," Winchester says when Steve has explained it to him.

"You didn't," Steve says.

Winchester looks crazed and frustrated. He runs his hands through his hair. "You know what I mean."

"Dean," Steve says. Waits until the silence has lasted long enough to drag Winchester's eyes to his. "There was someone, when I was young. He gave…everything for me." He remembers the nights on the front, when Bucky was feverish with infected wounds, when he was delirious, when he begged Steve in his sleep to let him go home, please, I wanna go home, Stevie. "He--he's not here for me to return the favor, and I--" His voice breaks off. It takes him a minute to gather it again, to push it out. "Please let me do this."

Winchester's green eyes search his face. Then they slide away. His fists clench, and he says, so quiet that even Steve can barely hear, "Okay.")

When Thor returns, Winchester is outside waiting next to Steve. When Thor nods at him, Winchester walks cautiously closer to the god with Emma in his arms, his eyes flicking back and forth between him and Steve like he expects the god to lash out, to swipe him aside. He keeps Emma tilted away from Thor, too, his body between her and the Asgardians like a shield. She's too young to do anything much but sleep, now, and her cheek is mashed against Winchester's shoulder, her eyelashes casting long shadows across her cheek, the bow of her lips where they part slightly for her thumb. She sucks on it intermittently in her sleep, mouth working as if in silent words, in a dream the rest of them can't see.

Steve wonders, for a minute, if he's doing the right thing.

"Master Hunter," Thor says. Voice gentle again, like it had been before, when he was holding Emma. "Are you ready?"

Winchester's eyes flick to Steve. "Guess he's the one you should be asking."

"No," says Thor. "He was the one who asked me for this."

Winchester's eyes flick back and forth between them, his Adam's Apple bobbing. "Will it hurt her?"

"No."

"Are you just saying that?"

"I am not."

Winchester seems steadied by Thor's direct gaze. He nods once, swallowing. "All right. Let's do this."

He kneels to set Emma in her blanket down on the grass. Her limbs flail; she jerks awake, looking wildly for him, and he moves to pick her back up, but Volstagg holds him back with a hand to his chest.

"Captain," Thor says.

Steve hunkers down next to Emma in the grass. He touches a fingertip to her forehead, right between her eyes. Her eyes cross, focusing on it. Steve closes his own.

The spell takes only a few seconds. Steve squeezes his eyelids tighter, feels the wick of energy, of time, from him like a bullet being pushed out of his flesh. A strange relief, as he feels the years taken away which will bring him closer to Bucky. He can taste them like a memory, like the smell of funnel cake and popcorn on a muggy August night.

The feeling dissipates. Steve opens his eyes.

Thor and Volstagg are gone. There is only a girl in front of him. Tall and wide-eyed, with Winchester's brown-blonde hair and familiar, brown-flecked hazel irises.

 A huge grin spreads across Steve's face that he can't stop. "Emma."

"Um." She swallows. Her voice is hoarse. "Hi."

Her eyes flick past him. To Winchester, who is suddenly there, grabbing her and crushing her to him. She stares at him, then around, her eyes still the wide terrified white of a frightened animal. Then she submits to the hug, her hands coming up tentatively to her father's back, saying something muffled that Steve can't hear.

He watches for another few heartbeats, then slips out of the room.

Natasha finds him in a bar afterward. Leans against the counter and watches him swirl the liquid in his tumbler, trying to remember the exact shade that Erskine's schnapps had been, wondering how they would have tasted.

"Not like you to hide, Rogers."

Steve takes a swallow. "I'm not hiding."

Nat makes a noncommittal hum. "Hard thing not to be needed," she says. "Wham, bam, thank you ma'am--used up your usefulness, huh?"

"Anyone ever tell you you've got a way with words?"

"I'm a regular Tolstoy," she says. Holds out her hand until he puts his drink into it, and she drains the rest of the glass, smacking her lips.

"Thanks," he says dryly.

"Didn't want you setting a bad example," she says, "you've got a young, impressionable mind looking for you."

Steve looks around, forehead creased. He catches sight of his reflection in the mirror behind the bar for a second, the silver streaks at his temples, and then he sees Emma pushing open one of the heavy double doors, looking around uncertainly.

Her eyes catch on his. She tenses, then hunches her shoulders, lifting her hand in an uncertain wave. He lifts his in a wave back.

She makes her way to the counter. "…hi."

"Hi," he says back, standing up automatically. It puts him looming over her, and he abruptly sits back down, bringing them to more even heights, not wanting to seem like he's trying to intimidate her. He glances over his shoulder, and Natasha, predictably, is nowhere to be found.

"Um," Emma says. "I didn't get to. Say thanks, before."

Steve nods. "You're very welcome."

Emma nods back. They stand there, for a minute, nodding at each other like a pair of bobble heads. Steve can't get over the echoes of Winchester he sees in her face, in the shape of her chin and the line of her nose. The almost invisible freckles beneath her hazel-brown eyes.

Emma swallows. There's something in her right hand, Steve notices for the first time, clenched tightly there.

She notices his eyes on it. "I--it's pretty stupid."

Steve raises an eyebrow.

"Agent Romanov said you might be heading out for--the stuff you do. I wanted--" She breaks off, shaking her head. "Never mind."

He catches her sleeve as she turns to go. She pauses, and looks up at him.

"Please," he says.

Emma lets out a breath. She hands him the thing clenched in her hand.

He looks down at it. It's a white napkin, damp with sweat from her hand.

"Don't open it?" she says. Her voice quavering a little. "Until I'm gone."

"Okay," he says. Closing his fingers around it.

"So." Her eyes flick away from his and back again, like she can't look at him too long. To his ears, until Steve realizes that she's looking at the streaks of silver hair there.

She whispers, "I'm sorry."

"Hey," Steve says. Fierce for the first time. "Don't apologize. I chose this."

His eyes search hers. Looking for the eyes of that little girl he'd seen, getting smaller and smaller as her teeth receded into her gums. "You know how important that is, don't you? Choice?"

"Yeah," Emma whispers. Her eyes flick this time to his chest, the pocket that lies inside his coat holding Bucky's tags. "You do, too. Right?"

Her eyes look searching for the first time, scanning his eyes the same way he did hers.

Steve smiles. Ruefully. He offers her an arm. She lets herself be pulled under it tentatively, wraps an arm up around his back to curl her fist against his shoulder blade.

"You and your dad take care of yourselves, Emma."

"We will." Her voice is muffled by his collar.

He holds her a minute longer. Inhaling the smell of sun-baked leather and soap. Then he lets go. "Get outta here before Captain America gets in trouble for bringing a minor to a bar."

Two weeks later, Fury finds him sitting in a park, watching joggers and ducks and kids running on the playground, and tells him they could use a man like him running STRIKE team operations.

Steve looks away from the line of ducklings following their mother. Then he nods and stands up.

There's a new uniform. They have it ready for him on the jet, after the briefing. Steve gets the locker room all to himself; Rumlow and the other members of the STRIKE team to whom he has just been introduced are already in their blacks, strapping on their parachutes in the converted cargo bay. He opens the locker and studies the sleek blue fabric, the silver star and silver stripes, for a long minute. Then he shrugs off his coat, shirt, trousers. Pulls up the Kevlar and fabric. There's a helmet, too, and he hesitates before putting it on, flexing his knuckles in the new leather gloves.

Emma's napkin is still in the coat pocket, tucked alongside Bucky's tags. Steve takes it out and uncrumples it, smoothing it against the metal of the locker.

It's the colored-in drawing of the apple tree. Dark green and yellow-green dappling the leaves, splotches of red in the green grass underneath it, apples that fell out of the tree.

At the bottom of the picture, nearly hidden in the exuberant green lines of grass, is a tiny signature. Emma Winchester.

Steve smoothes the curling edge of the napkin. Then he folds it neatly back into fours and tucks it back into his coat pocket.

He pulls on his helmet and goes to jump.