Work Text:
2018
He thinks about this day every second of his life.
He’s scared. He’s bleeding. The air is unnaturally still, and he can’t hear anything, he can’t hear anything, almost perfect. They said he was almost perfect.
But ‘almost’ means nothing. Not when he’s bleeding and he tastes ash and his best friends are dying beneath his fingers, is this what the end of the world is? He crouches, cries silently and tearlessly, whispers, oh, god, he’s falling apart. Half expects himself to drift away too. Following the wind until he’s part of the breeze.
*
He doesn’t know who’s gone, is the thing. He sees Bucky— oh, god, Bucky —he sees—he knows Bucky is gone. But when they board the quinjet, shaking and silent and just shock shock shock he looks around at the grey faces, and doesn’t—he doesn’t see—
“Natasha,” he says, lowly, because she’s here and he’s so grateful he wants to weep but— “Natasha, where’s Sam.”
And she looks at him, and she doesn’t even have to say anything, her eyes are shattered like glass, and he doesn’t even think he breathes, for a minute.
“No,” he says. He’s—he doesn’t—he can’t— “Don’t—” he’s crumbling too, ash and embers and dust— “Don’t do this to me—”
“Steve,” is all she says, and he’s in her arms, breaking apart, not caring about a single thing except that it’s true, he’s gone, they’re all gone, and nothing he did changed that, there’s nothing he could have done, but he feels like a failure all the same.
*
He wants to go home. He wants to go back to their tiny apartment in Zurich and Sam making breakfast in the morning because he was domestic like that, he wants Natasha to be free of burden, he wants Bucky, he wants—he wants—
He doesn’t get what he wants. They all go back to the compound, because the world—the universe is dying too, and someone has to pick up the pieces, someone has to be the superhero.
They make notes. He holds back tears, angry tears this time, because they have to write down all of this like it’s meaningless, like it’s just another entry in the book of history, he writes down James Buchanan Barnes and Sam Wilson and Wanda Maximoff and he feels like screaming, sobbing, tearing the paper into a million tiny pieces.
Tony’s not back. Steve—doesn’t want to think about that, because if he doesn’t think he can pretend there’s a chance, a chance that one missing person is alive, but what good would that do anyway, there’s four billion people gone and one person shouldn’t make a difference.
But fuck it does.
He doesn’t think. He takes the role of the leader, puts on a brave face, while inside he’s falling apart.
*
They find Tony.
When Danvers tells him she’s found him, he doesn’t move, not for a long time, long after she smiles sadly and leaves him there, in the compound, head spinning. Breath short and thin.
He promised himself. He promised and Tony’s here and he’s half dead but he’s alive and he’s angry, hates Tony and hates himself for being mad, because why is it always Tony. Why is Tony allowed to be here but Sam isn’t, Bucky isn’t, they’re both dead and they’re all dead and he’s selfish, wishing for impossible things, hopes that he knows before he even screams them are empty.
He crumples, later. Whispers apologies, because it’s not Tony’s fault, it’s no one’s fault, not even his, he can’t even be cruel enough to blame himself, not when the loss is so huge and unimaginable it runs over him like waves, crashing, pushing him into the ground.
They cut off the head of Thanos. They fail. They lose everyone all over again. At least, that’s what it feels like.
This is how it goes.
*
“My sister,” Natasha says. Her eyes are on fire. She’s sitting on the kitchen counter across from Steve, it’s dark out, they can be not okay here. They can fall apart here. “Steve, my sister. I don’t—”
Steve’s known Natasha a long time. He knows her habits, her favorite Russian curses, the things she whispers softly when she doubts herself.
He knows Natasha. And he knows she’s slowly burning, as he is. As they all are.
“Steve—” she says again, and she’s scrambling, her body is statue-still, she’s thinner now. Hiding herself in big sweatshirts and sweatpants. Usually Sam’s but he can’t think about that, not right now, when Natasha—
“Hey, hey, shhh,” he says, gets up from the stool, walks over. He takes her hands in his. “Natasha. Look at me.”
She does, and she’s alight, ashes and embers, he needs to say something, anything, any tiny glimpse of comfort he can, but he finds himself grasping at strands, hates that he can’t tell Natasha she’s wrong, that her sister is alive, hates that he knows nothing, can’t offer anything.
Instead he leans forward, tucks her head to his collarbone, where neck meets shoulder, and she stills for a moment, breathes, lets herself exhale. Cuts the strings on her figure.
“I’m terrified,” she mumbles into his shoulder, and he breaks then and there, because Natasha is the strongest person he’s ever met. “I’m so fucking terrified, Steve, I can’t—”
“I know,” he whispers, and he feels as she gasps for breath, shakes, and the night is for falling apart, is it not? Shattering into pieces. Losing them under the cabinets. “I know.”
They don’t talk about it. They’re superheroes. They put on a face for the world, read out lists and lists of names, hold back tears as distant screams ring. Grief is what they breathe, now, so aching and old they can barely live with the pain.
*
2019
“I thought you were dying, too,” Natasha says to him one day, in the common room, papers on the tables, miscellaneous holograms floating around her. She looks down at the table, away from Steve’s eyes. “I saw you, crouched on the ground, and I thought, he’s dying.”
Steve looks over at her, from the ground. He’s lying on the floor, stretched out. He needs space, always, and he’s too restless to sit.
He never really looked at the ceiling of the compound. At the wooden beams, the metal supports, the thin cobwebs along the joints.
He closes his eyes. He opens them again. He breathes. “So did I.”
*
The governments of the world are… healing, in a sense. If that’s the word for it. They’re cut in half, smashed to the ground by crashed planes and car accidents and abandoned children dying in hospitals. No one fights anymore. No one cares enough about scandals.
Steve remembers watching the black-and-white movies in the theaters, Friday night dances and popcorn stuck in his teeth. Grainy quality, basic ideas. Real-life dreams, they called them, fairy tales.
He wonders when his life became one of them. Simple. Grey. Missing something.
He runs his tongue along his teeth. He gets out of bed. Some dreams—most dreams—don’t come true.
*
It’s a terrible thing, survivor’s guilt. It makes you do things. Bad things. Stupid things, scream-into-your-pillow things, tearing up walls in abandoned warehouses things, stabbing yourself in the arm and watching it heal over and over again and wondering why didn’t this make a fucking difference things .
Natasha finds the knives. She’s angry. Her fists clench like they do when she’s trying not to hit something, and she takes him to the docks, makes him throw the blades into the ocean.
“Don’t do this to yourself, Rogers,” Natasha hisses after the last distant splash. “Don’t do this to me .”
He tries to listen, he does. But he’s past caring, really, because caring did nothing for him, he knows, he was meant to be a perfect soldier. A good man. And what did that get him?
Raw knuckles and bruised ankles. Shredded punching bags. Two dead best friends. One crumbling best friend. A tiny apartment in Brooklyn, a cot on the ground, windows sealed shut so the neighbors can’t hear his screams.
*
He never gets enough time, does he?
He lost Bucky. Falling, falling, down from the train and into the snow and he barely had time to scream before he was gone.
Peggy. The hopeful beginning of a new life before cold, before ice, before sitting at her bedside while she lived her final days.
And now… this. His friends. His family.
Pulled away, just out of his grasp, so slow and instant and not enough time he still feels dust under his fingertips sometimes, lingering ash that coats his skin.
He doesn’t like it. That the dust, the atoms, the particles that made up his whole life were just swept away in the breeze like nothing.
*
Steve moves in with Natasha in March, and doesn’t so much as talk about it with her as he just arrives on her doorstep like he always does and then just… doesn’t leave.
It’s nice. Having someone else. Another breath he can hear. Noises that are a comfort, not an anxiety.
He can’t cope with absolute silence anymore. Not after that day.
He doesn’t know how, but he learns more things about Natasha as the days go by—what tea she likes, the songs she blasts in the shower, that she wakes up at ungodly hours looking perfectly rested. He wants to know all these things and more, wants so desperately to not be alone in this fractioned universe.
Yeah, they fight. They fight a lot. Steve is self destructive and Natasha shuts people out and they’re both broken, tired people, too old to be in their twenties, too young to carry this much weight.
They go to the farmers market sometimes. Steve talks with the vendors, learns about their families, carefully doesn’t ask about the ones not mentioned. The ones still mourned.
Natasha slips off one time and comes back with a clay statue. Bowed head, thin arms holding up the world.
“Atlas,” Natasha murmurs to him as they walk home. “He carried all that he could hold, and more.”
Steve hears the unheard so do you . He ducks his head. Rubs his arms. He’s always cold, nowadays.
*
2020
“Hey, ma,” Steve says softly.
His mother’s tombstone doesn’t answer.
He shifts, sitting fully on the wet grass. For a few minutes he just sits there, twirling the lily between his fingers.
“It feels like I only come here when I’m at my lowest,” he says. “S'pose it makes sense.” Smiles, small and sad. “You always know how to make me feel better.”
It’s true—he can almost hear her now, reciting her favorite poem, written by an author long dead.
What is existence if not a time when someone makes their mark? She would smile, ruffle his hair. Go on. Make yours.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life anymore. He’s afraid. He’s tired. He’s lonely.
He wants his mom.
But she’s gone, and she’s been gone for longer than anything else, and sitting here in the rain isn’t going to make him feel better, so he places the delicate flower on the soil of his mother’s grave and walks away, leaving behind a person he shouldn’t have lost so soon, and going home to the crushing absence of people he never should have lost in the first place.
*
They talk about them, sometimes, more than they used to, at least. Natasha’s fiddling with the sleeves of her sweatshirt, unusually somber, and Steve—he has to ask. He has to say something.
“Is that one of Sam’s?”
Natasha looks up. Looks back down at the sweatshirt. It’s a band name, one Steve doesn’t recognize, and there are flowers and stars spread across the torso. Steve doesn’t remember ever seeing Sam wear it, but—he tries not to think too much.
“Yeah,” she says softly. Scrunches the front in her hand. “He—we snuck off. One night. There was a band playing, at a bar, and they had these.” She smiles, caught in the memory. “We fought over it. I let him win.”
There are things Steve doesn’t know about Natasha. He doesn’t know if she ever found out about her sister. He doesn’t know what she misses most, from before. He doesn’t know what sorrows she hides behind weak smiles.
He doesn’t know what her and Sam were.
He’s okay with not knowing, though—Natasha’s soft fondness is contagious, and for once he lets himself think, remember pink lips and soft wavy hair and eyes so blue he could lose himself there.
*
Sometimes he’s okay. Sometimes he can sleep for more than four hours, sometimes he cooks for Natasha instead of the other way around, sometimes he goes outside. Breathes.
Other times, he’s not. When the stab of grief is too much to bear, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself, not when he can’t even think for how much it hurts, when he wants to lie down and curl up and pretend someone is holding him, whispering to him, telling him everything’s going to be okay.
He just wants to be okay again.
The two-year anniversary of the Decimation, as they call it, comes and goes, and Steve wishes he could say it was just another day, but he’s long past pretending, and spends the day in Natasha’s room, watching stupid Hallmark movies and eating popcorn and oranges and pickles straight from the jar.
The day goes on. He goes on. Doesn’t move on, but. You can’t have everything. And Steve? He just wants more than he has. More than he’s scraping by with. More than the bare necessities.
*
2021
His birthday comes around like clockwork, and this year Natasha makes him a cake, red velvet with buttercream icing and little red, white and blue sprinkles along the sides. He smiles when he sees it, a real, beaming smile, and that’s one of the good days. When he laughs more freely, when his chest is just a bit less tense, when he can breathe and can feel okay.
It’s a good day. He’s grateful he gets to have them.
*
It’s odd, really.
For years he’d been on the run from someone who used to be his friend. He ran from something he should have faced long ago, and he suffered the consequences, didn’t he? More than anyone. More than he ever thought he deserved.
And now… he’s been pardoned. He could go home, if he wanted.
If he wanted .
Steve doesn’t know where home is. He’s not ready to find it, in a place.
*
He allows himself to imagine, sometimes. To close his eyes and pretend Sam is laughing next to him, punching his shoulder, man, shut the hell up. To almost feel Bucky’s smile as he kisses his knuckles, the tips of his fingers, his palm, every part of him he can reach. To remember running his hands through Wanda’s hair and parting it into sections, skilled and instinctual after years of practice, braiding the strands together, gentle and soft.
He pretends, and then he cries, and he’s so sick of crying, sick of the lingering feelings of grief and anger and emptiness that follow him everywhere. He wants his friends. He wants his family. He wants to touch them and hug them and tell them he loves them, tell them he’s sorry, that he never wanted this for them. Instead he says it to the sky, drives out into the country and into fields, screams it into the stars, tears at the grass around him so he doesn’t tear himself apart, and wishes against everything he’s ever sworn that he just had more time.
*
He hears Tony has a kid now, has for a couple years. Rhodey tells him, when they run into each other at the compound, sit down in the common area with coffee and buttered bread.
He’s glad he and Rhodey are on good terms. He’s grateful, and knows Rhodey owes him nothing, despite everything, and listens as well as he can, as if it’ll make up for everything he didn’t do.
Morgan, Rhodey says her name is, and Steve smiles, imagines little Morgan, all her dad’s charm and wit, and is hit by it all at once, that they’re moving on, that people are rebuilding their lives now. The news just talks about politics. The shops open up, house new businesses. People are forgetting. Going on with their lives.
He goes home after that, stares blankly at his phone, because how is he still a man out of time, after all this, after everything? He’s still in 2018, freshly torn in half, bleeding so slowly no one even notices he’s dying.
*
“I want to drive to Louisiana,” Natasha says one afternoon, and Steve looks up from his book, slides his bookmark in,
“Yeah?” he says, with a little bit of interest. He hasn’t—gone anywhere, really, for a long, long time.
“Yeah,” says Natasha, and finishes her coffee in one gulp. “Wanna go with me?”
*
It’s painfully familiar, being in a car with Natasha, on the road for hours at a time, but it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. He finds a couple T-shirts, though, in the trunk, and the smell of Bucky lingering on them is so vivid he nearly doubles over, throat rising with an emotion he doesn’t want to stay but also wants to hold onto, as tightly as he’s gripping the T-shirt, holding it to his chest like it’s a person instead of a years-old piece of fabric.
*
They stop at a couple parks along the way—it’s nice, actually, to be in the trees, to paint the muggy air with their whispers. Natasha points out a few constellations, retraces history with the sky, and for a brief moment Steve can imagine her up with them, a bundle of flickering stars, millions of miles away until seen from this place in the universe, when they all come together to make something worth noticing.
*
For the first time, she doesn’t tell him where they’re going that morning—in fact, she’s silent the whole morning, and Steve gets a feeling of apprehension when she breathes, a tension she can’t seem to get rid of, even when they check out of the hotel and get on the road.
They travel for a while, a couple hours at most, winding roads and hot August air. Eventually their twisting and turning slows, and something about this area seems to flicker, dance, as if Steve’s been here, as if he knows this place like his own home.
Natasha turns onto a gravel road, drives down for a while, looking tense. Steve doesn’t know why until they round a corner and oh, Steve’s seen this house before, in photographs, in grainy videos.
“Nat,” he says softly, and Natasha swallows, looks at the house with watery eyes. “ Oh , Nat—”
“Can we go inside?” she asks, and she’s so fucking young, it’s not fair, so Steve nods.
*
The door opens and the woman who must be Sarah Wilson comes out, and oh, is this what they all look like? Permanent bags under their eyes like tattoos, tired faces, smiles no stronger than they can muster.
“Steve,” she murmurs, and Steve is consumed with guilt, because he should have come sooner, shouldn’t have he?
He’s made a lot of mistakes in the past few years. He’s hoping he can try fixing them.
“Hey, Sarah.” He hugs her, doesn’t realize what she’s looking at until Natasha shifts awkwardly behind him.
Sarah smiles at her, a little bit sad, a little bit knowing. “Hi,” she says, and when Natasha offers her hand she ignores it and sweeps the redhead into a hug.
Natasha looks surprised before she melts, and Steve wouldn’t even need to know her well to know that her heart is breaking, mourning all the things she could have had if they just had more time.
*
“He wouldn’t have wanted this for us,” Steve says quietly that night, looking at Natasha on the pillow next to him. Her eyes glint in the moonlight from the window. He can hear Sarah rustling around downstairs, muffled by the door. “Neither of them would.”
Natasha exhales. Rolls to face him. There are a couple seconds of silence before she speaks. “You’re right,” she mumbles. Smiles, just slightly. “But when did we ever listen to them?”
Steve exhales. She’s right. And he loves that more than anything.
*
2022
Tony sends him a holiday card, and Steve thinks it might be a joke for a second, a cruel jab at his loneliness.
He sighs. Shakes his head. He promised he wouldn’t do this to himself, the what-ifs and the worse-case-scenarios.
He paints for the first time in years, sweeping watercolor, and finds himself rendering the Iron Man suit, long retired, gleaming red and gold.
He didn’t realize how much he missed those times.
He sends Tony the painting after brief hesitation. He doesn’t regret it.
*
“What would you do?” Steve asks. “If you could go back.”
Natasha exhales. The night is cool. Dark. Quiet. The balcony railings dig into Steve’s arms as he leans over, but it’s nice, the ache. Grounding.
Usually, she doesn’t indulge his questions. Pointless, she murmurs, strokes his hair. Go to sleep .
“A lot of things,” she says quietly. Her grief is… different, than Steve’s. She’s lived a long time. She’s seen a lot of things. She’s more tired than any person her age should be.
Steve wants to take her sorrows and let them go, into the sky. He wants her to feel relief as they fade into the stars.
He asks these kinds of questions anyways. Because he doesn’t want to move on. Can’t.
“Like?” He’s pushing. He usually never even gets this far.
Natasha huffs, and Steve realizes it’s a small laugh. “I don’t know.” She sobers, a bit. “I’d tell them I was sorry. That I did the best I could.”
The wind is soft, touching his cheeks and the backs of his hands. He looks up at the stars, the brightness magnified from so little light pollution.
“They know,” he whispers, partly to Natasha, and partly to himself. “They know you did.”
*
Here’s the thing.
Steve’s no idiot. He knows, he knows that they’re not coming back. He knows that they’re gone and it burns but he knows. He’s no idiot.
But he’s also human. He’s also tired, and sad, and so desperate for anything. Anything. A sign.
He’s no idiot. But maybe, maybe he is sometimes.
One government official visits his and Natasha’s apartment, in late February, a perfect suit and a perfect tie and a perfect smile. Steve gets a bad feeling the moment he opens the door, when the official calls him Captain, when the official says we’d like to have you back on the team .
Steve says no. Steve closes the door in his face.
The official opens it again. “They’re gone,” he says, and his eyes flash. “You need to put your country before yourself, it’s not about you—”
Steve wants to throw something. Preferably something sharp. At this man’s face. Because how dare he—
“What’s going on?”
Natasha pads down the stairs, body relaxed but eyes glinting.
The official takes one look at her and pales. “I–I apologize, I wasn’t aware—”
“Get out,” Natasha says softly, “ now .”
The official swallows and backs out, shutting the door behind him.
“Steve.” Steve can hear it in her voice, the pity, the sorrow, and he can’t do this right now. He can’t.
“I’m going for a run,” he says shortly, and it isn’t until he’s flat-out sprinting that he realizes this is the first time since before that he’s run without his best friend by his side.
He has to stop running, after that. He can’t see through his tears.
*
“I thought I could fix it.” Natasha doesn’t make a big deal out of these things—she isn’t an overly emotional person. But when they talk—they talk . For hours and hours and hours. “I thought if I pretended it didn’t happen then I would wake up and they’d still be there.”
Steve knows that feeling. He knows the denial.
“I wished I had gone with them,” she says softly, and oh aren’t they just the same person? Two sides of a rusted coin. Spinning on a table.
Steve looks over. Looks down. He doesn’t say anything.
*
2023
“Some people move on,” he says, in the dim light of the common area, desk littered with papers and pencils and bread crusts. “Not us.”
Natasha smiles, weakly, and it’s days like these when five years ( god ) feels like five days, five hours, they’re fresh with loss like it was moments ago.
They all cope in different ways, he supposes. Natasha pushes people away. Steve works himself to the bone.
Doesn’t matter, anyways. Not anymore.
*
He kind of hates Scott, and feels bad about it, too.
But it’s not fair; it’s not fair that this man gets to come in and give him hope, but he’s always been an idiot so he goes along, believes, hoping and hoping and gasping for breath as he allows himself to think, what he could gain, what he could lose.
*
They go back in time. They work, they adapt, Steve sees himself, he sees—
He sees—
He sees Peggy.
And he burns again. Folds himself up until he’s out of sight, heart hammering and eyes wet.
He doesn’t talk about it. Doesn’t think.
This is how it goes.
*
There are risks. He knows this.
He knows this, but—
Later, he looks back and he cries. Every time.
*
It only takes one look at Clint, alone, dead eyes, stone held loosely, carelessly, in his fingers.
Steve doesn’t breathe, because oh, god , not again, please. Don’t do this to me , he had said all those years ago, don’t —
“Where’s Nat?” Bruce says, soft and so hopeful he bleeds it, and Clint looks up and Steve wants to throw up.
Bruce destroys the floor. Steve wants to destroy himself.
*
He puts on a brave face again, again and again, holds himself together until he slips into the bathroom and screams, smashes the mirror, doesn’t care about the mess he’s making of the room and his knuckles, they’re bleeding, she’s not here. She’s not touching his knuckles, huffing disapprovingly, she’s everything. Was. Is. His voice cracks, and he breaks open.
Was it his fault?
Did he grieve too loudly? Did he make her feel like he didn’t appreciate her? Was she just as desperate as him and more to the point that giving her own life was the only way?
He breathes heavily. Looks at his fractured reflection in the shards of glass on the floor.
For once, he leaves the mess behind for someone else to pick up.
*
The battle is fought. They win. Thanos is gone. They’re all back, all of them , Steve is overwhelmed with joy and grief and exhaustion and shock.
They lose Tony.
He doesn’t think. He doesn’t move. He’s… he’s just so damn tired.
“Steve?”
Steve looks up. Falters. His fingers twitch.
“Bucky?”
Bucky smiles at him, radiant, and Steve is slammed with how much he fucking missed him, how desperately —
“Hey, Steve,” the light of his life says, for the first time in five years, grinning, soft and sad and Steve doesn’t think he just moves , surges forward and pulls Bucky to his chest. He’s real. He’s real and he’s here and he’s holding on just as tight, whispering reassurances muffled into his shoulder.
He’s not afraid to admit that he cries. He cries, because he’s lost everything, he’s lost everyone again and again and he just wants to hold his best friend so tightly that no force would ever be able to take him away.
*
Sam is… inconsolable.
Steve understands, in a horrible, twisted way. For Sam, he was gone for seconds. For Sam, he was caught off guard, and Sam looks around after strangling Steve with a hug, asks an innocent “Where’s Nat?”
He’s hit with a wave of deja vu so vivid he stumbles, grips Sam’s arm.
“Sam—” he says, and oh god, it’s a script, it’s the same thing again and again—
Sam tenses. “Steve.” No. Not again. “Steve, what—” Steve is sure he looks like a madman, clutching Sam’s arms, but the grief has only really hit him now, that she’s gone, she’s somewhere she can’t come back from, he’s never going to see her smile again, he’s never going to gently guide her to bed when she’s so tired she can barely stand, he’s never going to hear her humming a soft Russian lullaby as she dries the dishes, he’s never going to open his phone to sarcastic texts and don’t forget my Pepsi from the store, Rogers , she’s never going to be there when he stumbles through the door early in the morning, she’s never going to be there.
“She’s gone,” Steve says, numb, and he’s crying now, he’s finally fallen apart and the person who kept him together is gone, she fell apart too, she fell . “Sam, she’s gone, she’s gone —”
Sam is the opposite of Steve. Where Steve can’t breathe, where he shudders for breath, Sam chokes on himself, breathes so hard he looks like he’s going to fall to the ground.
“Don’t bullshit me, Steve,” Sam hisses, but his voice wobbles, he holds Steve so tight he’s going to have bruises. “Don’t—”
“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers, and Sam looks like he’s lost everything. And maybe he has. “I’m so sorry.”
They’re quiet for a long time, after that.
*
This is how it goes.
Steve is the one who has to tell the people who returned. Steve is the one who has to watch as their confused joy flickers and he is the one to hold them tightly as they realize and as they wonder why, why was it her, why was this the price to pay.
*
This is how it goes.
Steve has to change out his suit, the blood and the dirt and the dust washing down the drain in the shower, and he feels numb, doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t think, because he can’t , because the moment he allows his mind to run and his memories to play he doesn’t think he’ll ever make it out.
*
This is how it goes; there is never enough time. Never enough time to grieve because the rest of the universe is celebrating, swearing to remember this day with joy and love and hope, when Steve knows he will only remember this day with sorrow.
*
He is surprised, just slightly, that he’s invited to Tony’s funeral.
Part of him believed, that some wounds just didn’t heal.
Even after death.
But here he is, standing by a lake as Pepper pushes a heart into the water, and he’s overcome by a feeling he’d been holding back for days—grief and longing and just bleeding, bleeding sadness.
Because it’s over, isn’t it?
It’s all over.
*
He misses his mom. He misses his best friend. He misses his teammates, his old love, his old life, his old self.
He’s tired. So tired.
*
He lives. He goes on. Never moving on, simply floating along the river of life, flat on his back in a room he used to be someone in, in a place he used to call home.
*
He wants her to know, after everything. He wants her to know that she saved them. That her love saved them all.
He wants her to know he loved her long before she did. That she was worth so much more than she believed.
*
The sound of moving water is soothing. Calming.
“Do you think she’s proud of us?” Sam says suddenly, and Steve doesn’t even have to think, for a moment, what he’s talking about.
“No.” He exhales, looks up at the sky through his tears. “I know she is.”