red, white, & blue

I'm loyal to nothing except the dream.

[supersoldierwithashield-archive]

scvietwinter‌:

Bucky had tried, in the beginning. He had tried to listen to the words in his ma’s letters, telling him to keep faith, that Hashem would guide him to greater and better things. He had kept the Star of David tucked under his shirt, had flipped off those that commented on it, had pretended that the feeling of it pressing against the back of his dogtags and into his chest wasn’t suffocating him. The things that he did, the things he saw, they ruined it all for him. He had walked through fields that stunk of poppies, and he had seen the red of blood seeping through the ground, had seen the faces of men whose lives had been cut dramatically short. He had walked through the valleys of death a thousand times over with a gun slung over his shoulder, and he had known, then, that if Hashem was there, he had forsaken them long ago. Given up hope while he still could. Bucky wasn’t sure he could blame him.

After all, Bucky knew more than enough himself. He was an angel of death, the ones that were forbidden from the kingdom. During the day he fought with honour, followed the Howlies’ code, never shot a man in the back. During the night, though, that was something different. During the night he got a telegraph from Colonel Philips, or even from Carter - something he wasn’t much in the mind for revealing to Steve then, and definitely not now - and he would get a knife and go into enemy territory, put it across the throat of their leader.

He had done it, so he said, for the reason that anybody did anything in that war - to stop someone doing the same thing to their countrymen, to their blood, to their family. Truth be told, though, Bucky had always found his home in war. He hated it, but it suited him, sat well on his shoulders in a way it never had with even Steve. “You were too trusting, that was all,” Bucky said. “Probably heard your Ma in the back of your head telling you gambling was the Devil’s pastime, too.” Bucky had heard it as well, his own ma’s voice, but he was well adept at ignoring it even before he shipped out.

Perhaps it was pathetic, racing for scraps, trying to get anything that fell off the table, but that was all Bucky had to receive now. It was all that would make him a person again, all that would make him capable of existing in a world where he didn’t have continuous orders, where his path wasn’t laid out right in front of him, and his focus could be entirely on a target. He needed something to live for, and right now, Steve was promising that. It wasn’t fair, asking him to do that when Bucky knew he would still take a bullet in an instant, and for a ghost at that. It wasn’t fair, it was selfish, and if Bucky was a better person he would’ve never come back to New York.

“Guess we weren’t joking when we said that,” Bucky said, remembering how the words had come through him easily. At Steve’s ma’s funeral, the pastor had said something that Bucky had turned over in his head for an hour or more. Sarah had fought well, had helped so many people, but she had reached the end of the line, and now she would ascend. Bucky hadn’t known even then about ascending, but he had known that he was gonna be there for his best friend until the time came when they were separated by the big guy himself. “Never really pictured it extending to 2018, but I guess we were thoroughbreds. Might’ve lived this long even if we hadn’t died.”

Bucky had aimed for the joker during the war. He knew that often, the guy that was cracking jokes and laughing the loudest was the guy that was shitting himself the most, and it was clear as day. That wasn’t the case with him. He did it because for a long time, especially after Zola put whatever he did into him, war came natural. The bitterness didn’t resurface. Violence felt almost like a release. Steve had said that good became better, bad became worse, and that was true. Of course, at the time, Steve hadn’t known that Bucky was the same thing, or a bastardisation of it. He thought he was telling a story that affected nobody else, a story that he could be self-deprecating in as always.

Bad definitely became worse for Bucky. It kept getting worse, too. He wasn’t sure how much was him, how much was the serum running through his veins. “Yeah, like a red book. Maybe black, I don’t know. Had a star on it like this one. The star - it was silver. I think.” The colours blurred in his mind, but he remembered something about Vasily Karpov, as well. That name, though, wasn’t uttered out loud. He would take the risk of forgetting it again if it meant Steve never had to hear it. “I’ve already been hunting down Hydra,” he admitted. “Being a bartender only got me so far. Always find myself called back to it, you know? Every dickhead I’ve taken out had nothing. Just money and connections. Can’t take either of those to the grave.” You could, though, take secrets. Books. Who knew where the hell it was now? “Yeah. Yeah, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Father. It still seemed strange, somehow, to picture it. Strange to think that Howard had grown and aged. Bucky still remembered him in a vintage car, sunglasses on, models in the backseat. “What way different?” Bucky asked, raising an eyebrow. Then Steve kept talking, and Bucky’s gaze darkened. “Yeah,” he said. “Howard always had that kinda thing in him, you know? Something that wasn’t quite wired right. Used to think it was his eccentricities, you know how rich folks are.” War changed people, Hashem knew it had changed Bucky, but a part of him wondered whether it just brought out your true self, or a paradox of it.

“There’s going out in a blaze of glory, and then there’s what you did.” Bucky had listened to the tapes. Of course he had. He had frequented every Captain America exhibit this side of Manhattan, and the ones over the water in Europe, where they worshipped him with less of a reverence, even before the Civil War. He’d heard Peggy’s desperation, her heartbreak. “The cold must’ve got to your head,” Bucky said, voice laden, “‘cause no deity would ever put you and me in the same place. You saw the things I did. You didn’t see the others.” That had been the whole point, after all. The Howlies needed someone who was willing to do the dirty jobs. Philips had always trusted that Bucky would never refuse.

That was why he was reluctant to say that everything he had done with the Winter Soldier had been entirely Hydra’s doing. Bucky had always been good at following orders, at doing the things no one else wanted to know, no one else’s soul could bare having on it. “I would’ve been happy going out that day,” Bucky said, looking at him seriously. “I made a stupid mistake, let them get the best of me, but I still would’ve been good to go. Think we both knew there was no going home for me.”

The idea that the conversations they had at night over a smouldering campfire, or in a tent that definitely stunk out the entire forest, had some kind of impact on Steve almost made Bucky burst out laughing. He had progressed well in the army, he knew his opinion was worth something, but the idea of Steve following him rather than the other way about seemed impossible. “You know, before I knew Captain America was you, I used to hate the guy.” It seemed like a confession that didn’t need to be made, but it was a memory. A vivid one. “Used to stand out in front of the stage watching these newsreels, wondering whether the poor son of a bitch they put in that getup had any clue what it was like to be out here. You proved me wrong, Steve. You proved the whole damn world wrong.”

Steve had to know that trusting Bucky, that putting this much weight in him, was a dangerous thing to do. “They’re still looking for me,” Bucky said finally. “I got some friends, people I can trust, but the government still wants to see me in cuffs, wants to see me pay for what I’ve done - and I did do it, Steve, no two ways about it.” Bringing up everything that he had been through, everything that he had put other people through, and everything that he couldn’t remember while people stood and judged him, that was nothing other than a nightmare, but maybe that needed to happen. Maybe he needed to spend the rest of however long his life was in a cell. “I know. I – I saw in the news. I wanted to see her before, you know, but it didn’t work out that way.” Probably for the best. Peggy would’ve shot him, all likelihood. He had been instrumental in destroying her life’s work, even if it was corrupted. “That’s why I came back,” he admitted. “To get those memories back. To – reaffirm them, I guess. Make sure I wasn’t creating them in my head. They took a lot of things out of there, Steve. A lot of whoever you knew before.”

His mother, and Bucky. That was all Steve had gone to war with, all he’d had his entire life. Even after the serum, after everything changed, when he had the Howlies, and Peggy, and Howard -- it still felt the foundations were the part that mattered. Bucky, and his mother. When he couldn’t remember a prayer on the battle field, he could still picture his mother bent over in church, hands clasped tight together, lips murmuring words Steve couldn’t understand, but wanted to. He held onto that image, held onto the sound of Bucky’s laugh distant in the camp, and that kept him going another day, no matter how bleak the night. 

“Too trusting,” he repeated, a strange smile on his face now. “Yeah, I’d say that was probably true. Still is.” Some things never changed, even seventy years in the future. “Your ma said the same thing,” he said, shaking away the pain, as if it were that simple. As if he could just banish the tragedy and sorrow that clung to them in those days. Just as often on the battle field, he’d remembered his mother, curled up and sickly thin, coughing so hard her entire body trembled with the aftershocks. That image still came back to him sometimes, in the same nightmares where he saw Bucky falling over and over and over again. Even in his dreams, Steve couldn’t save him. 

They were soldiers. They would always be soldiers, even if they stopped following orders, even if their country turned on them. Because they were loyal to something much more important than any of that. They were loyal to each other, and that -- that was the dream Steve believed in. That was the dream he held onto. Bucky, Bucky was the dream. Rising from the dead, coming out on the other side of war and pain and horror -- broken, but not defeated. Dreams didn’t die.  There was some comfort in that. A reliability in it, that soldiers like them desperately needed.

“Course we did,” Steve said. It’d never been in doubt for him, but he had super-soldier serum in his veins. Healing factors that made bullet wounds minor inconveniences. Even plunging into the ice, he’d wondered -- will this actually kill me? Just a brief flicker of doubt, one that’d proven true. Maybe it was easier to believe in walking to the end of the line when you couldn’t imagine the actual  end of it. “Might have,” he agreed. “And if we didn’t, we would’ve been together, Buck. I believe that.” If they’d both gotten to go home, if they’d gotten to live after the war -- they would’ve done it together. He knew that much without even thinking about it. He could barely picture what that timeline would’ve looked like, but he knew it was a possibility out there, somewhere. 

It was supposed to be a joke, and somewhere, Steve knew that. But it was serious to him, it meant too much to him to joke about. He’d let Bucky tell his jokes during the war, let him get the Howlies roaring with laughter, because they needed it. But Steve didn’t join in so much. He was too focused, too intent on the mission to see what was happening in front of his eyes. To see the real fears and doubts creeping through his best friend. He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive himself for that. All the things he could see, and he was still blind in so many ways.

But his eyes were open now. And he was ready for whatever he saw, no matter what was there. Because he refused to accept, to believe that Hydra had taken everything from Bucky. He refused to believe there was nothing left of his best friend but a weapon -- why else would he be here now? At the admission, Steve found himself smirking. “Once a soldier, always a soldier,” he said, nodding once. “But from now on, we do it together. No more lone wolf,” he said, softly, almost a joke, but falling just a little short. “We’ll get the bastards, Buck. We’ll get them.” 

Steve shrugged, the idea of Howard so uncomfortable now. Once upon a time, he’d relied on him, believed in his work, needed the man. Now... now he was starting to think that Howard liked that. Being needed. A little too much. “Was he always like that?” he asked, looking to Bucky to affirm the memories this time. He bit his lip, then continued.“Read this book once, because Hawkeye’s protege said I had to,” he murmured. “There was this line, about grief. How it doesn’t change you, it reveals you. Wonder if war’s the same way, or if it’s... it’s different.” War was grief times a thousand, it was indescribable until you’d actually stood on those front lines, stared down the bullets raining towards you, heard the explosions and the screams, and smelled the thick, wet smell of blood mixing with mud. “I think war could change any man, you know?” Wars were different these days, even Sam didn’t fully understand. But Bucky -- Bucky was always different. Bucky always got it, even now. 

“Wasn’t about the glory,” he agreed, shaking his head slowly. “Think a part of me was just... done, Buck. I was tired,” he admitted, speaking words aloud that he’d never admitted even to himself. “There was no end in sight. You cut off one head, two more...” He trailed off, sighing lightly. Neither of them needed to hear the end of that ever again. “What others?” he asked, brows furrowing in concern. “What do you mean? What happened with Hydra -- Buck, that doesn’t count. They’re the sinners, not you.”  He said the words firmly, but the desperation broke through anyway. He couldn’t keep the dam up forever. Not when it was this important. 

He shook his head again, more fervently this time, and he stood up, crossing to the window. “We grew up ten blocks that way,” he said, pointing to it. “And every day we were out there, I thought of it. I thought of home, and I thought about getting you back there, Buck. I wanted to get you back there, so bad.” He stopped because the emotion was too thick in his throat, it was choking everything else off. He felt the stinging in his eyes, glad he wasn’t facing Bucky right now, so he could blink it away without the look. “I should’ve gotten you back. There was a home waiting for you, there were people waiting for you.” Now he glanced back over his shoulder. “Dot, for one. She would’ve loved to kiss you on the docks,” he said, a twisted, bittersweet smile on his lips, equal measures pain and happiness. 

He laughed, strangled and weak, and shrugged. “Didn’t like him much myself, until Azzano,” he said. “I proved the world wrong, but that’s not why I did it. I would’ve gone back to being a dancing monkey if they asked, Buck. I didn’t do it to prove myself. I did it for you, because I knew we needed you.” The country, the war, his family, Steve. All of them, they all needed Bucky in a way no one really knew until it was gone. But that was life, too often. Missing out on what you oughta be cherishing, until it was too late. 

But it wasn’t too late. Not anymore. And Steve felt the emotion click inside him, change from sorrow about the past, to determination about the future. “I won’t let them,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “I don’t care what anyone says, not even you. I’m not letting anyone throw you in a cage. No one takes your freedom again, you understand me?” His eyes were steel, his jaw clenched, but it was all sprung from desperation, a desire to make the impossible reality. “Don’t let them take you down, okay? Whatever it takes, you fight, you run, you keep going. You’ve paid your debts, paid ‘em every day Hydra had you, and then some. You’re free now, Buck. You got nothing left to pay back.” He crossed back over, sat down beside Bucky now. Only a few feet between them on the couch, but it still felt like miles to go. “You shoulda said something in your letters,” he said quietly. “I would’ve taken you. If you wanted.” He sighed softly, glanced up at his best friend. He clasped a hand on his shoulder, gripped it tight, like he was afraid Bucky would turn to smoke and slip away. “And there’s still a lot left,” he promised. “Whatever’s left in there, Buck, it’s worth it. So we find it, simple as that.” 

[supersoldierwithashield-archive]

scvietwinter‌:

Bucky wasn’t entirely sure what it was supposed to feel like, reclining back on Steve’s sofa that wasn’t Steve’s sofa. It was too soft for that, didn’t stick into you in places you’d rather forget, didn’t have stains from years’ worth of Sarah’s shaking hands spilling coffee all over it. (She always felt the cold, until she got a bandage or syringe in her hand. Then, she might have given him a run for his money as a sniper.) He supposed that relief was the right answer there. He was supposed to be happy, at least, that he was free, that he was able to be here, able to see his best friends live. Truth was, though, he was far from either of those things. The government continued to hunt him down, and Steve hadn’t lived the life that they had been fighting for everyone else to live. He had been drawn into this century by a pure fluke, and although Bucky was relatively pleased that he wasn’t the last of the Howlies alive, that didn’t undermine the fact that he was pissed at the universe for dragging Steve down with him.

“Sarah liked me ‘cause I caught the spiders,” Bucky said with a grin. He’d always been taller than both of the Rogers, had been able to catch the critters without a chair propped under him. Sarah felt bad about killing them - she was just that sort - at least until they came within a foot of her. God, Bucky missed her sometimes so much that it burned. He wished he could think of his own family with the same emotion.

He watched the side of Steve’s face, heard the softness in his words. “You can’t make the right call every time, Stevie,” Bucky reminded him, “and out of all of us, you were more than due your fair dose of stupid. Your intentions were good. The Accords - they would’ve taken away the freedom we fought so damn hard for. People … people can’t be trusted. People can’t be trusted with the power you guys have. So if I had been here – yeah, I would’ve been with you. Even if you did deal with it all wrong.” It was impossible for Bucky to think that was the truth, Steve had always been harder on himself than he was on anyone else, but it was something that needed said regardless. To the end of the line didn’t just mean the straight line, after all, it meant following each other around the curves, jumping over the roadblocks.

“I noticed a bit,” Bucky said. Neither of them were paying any attention to the movie, Steve preoccupied with his pencils, Bucky preoccupied with his best friend. Still felt weird, seeing him with wide shoulders, a square jaw, straining against a t-shirt. “After Azzano, though, I – I didn’t notice much that wasn’t someone pointin’ a gun at us. Or a tank. Kinda spaced out for a few years, honestly.” Whatever Zola had pumped him with, it had messed him up, had made things brighter, louder, more dangerous than they had been before. “Yeah, ‘cause I already knew what a weirdo you were,” Bucky said, picking up a couch cushion, throwing it lightly at Steve to punctuate his point. He only threw it at his legs, though - he didn’t want to disturb the sketch. “Were the other guys okay?” Bucky asked, voice betraying the fact he might not want to know. “When I – you know. Fell.”

Bucky and Steve, they had always shared everything. Fights, train money, and most especially, family. The Barnes had all but adopted him after his mother died, and before she did, she always made a plate for Bucky at the dinner table, even if it meant going without herself. Neither of them had a whole hell of a lot, but they always knew they could count on the other to make up for the difference. Despite the depression, despite the rationing, Steve never really felt lacking. Bucky had given more than enough to stave off that feeling. (And literal starvation at times.)

“I forgot about the spiders,” Steve said, laughing gently. They both hated them, him and his mom. Steve could never reach them in those days, but Bucky could casually reach up and swipe the cobwebs off the ceiling, cupping his hands gently around the arachnid and carrying it outside. He wasn’t always a killer. Steve wondered if he remembered that much. 

He swallowed hard, paused his sketching and reached for a doughnut. He picked at it, nibbling more than actual eating it, just a stalling method. “Don’t know about all that,” he said finally, smirking up at Bucky. He set the doughnut aside and went back to drawing, let his mind settle into the rhythm of it. “Seem to remember you calling me an idiot more often than not whenever I told you my battle plans,” he joked lightly. Bucky was more tactical, more pragmatic, but Steve always wanted to take a chance, push it just a little further than standard protocol called for. In the end, it had cost him more than he was willing to pay. So much more. And not just on that train. “I trust people,” he continued, shading the edge of Bucky’s jawline, like he’d done a thousand times before. “Some of them anyway. It’s agendas I don’t trust, because agendas change.” He paused, pencil still on the paper, and looked up at him. “I know you would have,” he said simply. “You would’ve told me I was being a stupid pain in the ass, but you would’ve been right beside me the whole time. I wished you were,” he admitted, eyes dropping back to the drawing, biting his lip for a minute. As if he could translate the ache into his chest into something more physical, something real.

Nothing felt real anymore. The world inside the city borders wasn’t real. The stars in the sky, the sweltering summer heat -- none of that was real. But this moment, this was real. The people were still real, and Bucky, he was real most of all. “Yeah?” he prompted, though he didn’t need to. It was getting easier and easier, for Bucky to keep talking. Even when it was hard, he kept going, didn’t clam up and stare blankly back at him like he used to. “Think we all lost our minds for a while there,” he admitted, letting out a long breath, not quite a sigh, but not quite anything else. “War does that to a man. Or woman,” he added, because even Peggy had gotten that glazed look in her eyes sometimes. “Can’t afford to focus on anything else.” But Steve had, he had kept drawing. Even after all the terrible things they saw, even when leaving the light on was dangerously foolish. Did that make everyone else messed up -- or just him? He felt the pillow coming towards him, and he let it hit him, smirking playfully at Bucky. It’d been a while since they’d had a moment like that. “You wanna have a line across your eyebrows?” he asked, holding up the pencil to make his own statement. He kicked the pillow back Bucky’s way, like they were kids with a ball again. (Or more often, an old pillow case stuffed with too-small clothes. You made due back then.) His fingers kept moving, even though his mind went blank for a moment. “You said, before,” he finally managed to choke out. “That you wanted to... reaffirm memories. But this isn’t one of yours,” he pointed out, abandoning the sketch and looking up at his best friend. “We missed you, Buck. We all did, we all felt it. After you fell, it was like... like there was this hole, deeper and scarier than any trench.” He swallowed hard, but the lump wouldn’t move. “You were our eyes in the sky. The one watching our backs. Made the other guys feel safer, knowing you were out there.  It was hard to keep going, knowing you weren’t. But we did,” he said, taking a deep breath and going back to drawing. He closed his eyes for a moment, just a second. “We did, for you. To make them pay for it.” 

[supersoldierwithashield-archive]

agcntcxrter‌:

If they had been standing on solid ground, Sharon would have rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm, but as it was, she allowed a sound from the back of her throat to suffice. “Rebellious,” she said, though she wasn’t entirely sure that was the right word to use. Excited, perhaps. Invigorated. The fact that she was part of the reason he was feeling that, a reminder that they were both alive, both people, both ‘not empty’ just like he had said all that time ago. It had been only a year, at most, but it felt as if it had been a century. So many things had changed, but others had stayed the same.

Sharon nodded and then, realising that the darkness may have hidden that, said, “Sounds like a plan, Captain.” She lifted her watch up, allowing it to illuminate the path that she was about to take, scanning it for any kind of danger. Peanut didn’t pick up on anything, though its signal was definitely wavering, interference preventing it from searching the area completely thoroughly. “Yeah. We’re in this together, right?” Sharon said, even though she knew somewhere deep down, instinct perhaps, that if she saw someone who had been involved with those bastards, she would punch them in the face.

She walked forward with purpose, not hesitating for a moment. The corridor seemed to go on for an age, and she was inclined to look down at the watch, but Peanut would go off when the fifteen minutes was off. Sharon didn’t bother to look back, either - it wasn’t in her style, and it would only affect her gut if she saw how far the darkness was behind her. Eventually, she reached the end of the corridor. A door stood in front of her, and upon further inspection, she found it was locked. Without stopping to think about whether she should return, she picked the lock and went into the room, purposefully keeping the door open.

Of course, her life was a mess, and so the wind from the corridor behind her slammed the door shut. Sharon went for it as quickly as she could, but it was closed before she could turn around, locked once again, and there was no way to pick it from the other side. “How is that even possible?” she muttered, mostly to herself. She sighed, looking down at Peanut, who was now completely offline. “Great,” she said. She turned around, and that was when she saw a figure at the other side of the room, shrouded in shadows, outlined with an almost fluorescent green.

“Agent Carter,” the voice said, sending shivers up her spine. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to visit us.”

Steve twisted back to look at her, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Haven’t you heard?” he quipped. “I’m a real rebel-without-a-cause these days.” She had helped him to get to that point. Without her support, without Peggy’s memory, without Bucky -- he might still be a perfect soldier. But the world didn’t need perfect soldiers anymore. He was loyal to nothing but the dream these days, and the people who could make that dream a reality. People like her.

He remembered that, as he landed on the ground. They were here to keep the dream alive, even if he had a hard time putting it into words lately. The dream had changed too, but Steve was still clinging to it. He didn’t have much else to cling to, even with Registration and Skrulls in the past. “Together,” he agreed, with a single, firm nod.

But even as they said it, they went their separate ways. Steve made his way forward, in the opposite direction, and his grip on the shield tightened each step they took away from each other. He rounded the corner, and realized how oppressively thick the shadows were, the silence deafening. The darkness opened up before him, he could feel it in the air. Steve felt along the wall, until his fingers found a switch, and he threw it. 

It was a warehouse, or maybe a lab, or maybe both. He couldn’t be certain, but he knew Banner and Stark would’ve had a field day in a place like this. Huge and expansive, expensive looking equipment scattered throughout. But not a single person, just the vestiges of life left behind -- and in a hurry it seemed. Steve furrowed his brow, frowned deeply. Leviathan was running some kind of experiment, judging from the wires and medical paraphernalia, but he couldn’t say for sure what. 

He moved to take a closer look, but something made him stop. A shiver ran down his spine, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He glanced back the way he came, but there was nothing there. He hesitated a moment, wondering if he should go back, tell Sharon what he’d found. And then, there was a hissing sound. Steve glanced up, saw a spigot on the ceiling, spewing some kind of gas. Steve threw a hand over his mouth and nose, and bolted for the exit, but the doors shut before he could reach them. He pulled, but even with his strength they didn’t budge. He felt himself growing dizzy. “Sharon!” he shouted, but he was too far for her to hear. 

His heart was pounding, but he forced himself not to panic. He had to think his way out of this one. He glanced around the room, spotted an oxygen tank and mask. He ran for it, slipped it over his head and sucked in clear air. All right, he was trapped, but no one had shown up. What was the goal here? 

[supersoldierwithashield-archive]

agcntcxrter‌:

Sometimes, sitting with Steve felt as if Sharon was having a familiar, normal conversation with an old family friend, or maybe a work colleague that she hadn’t truly appreciated until she had moved onto the next best thing. Other times, it was as if he was looking at a ghost, though she assumed he looked at the entire world like that, on bad days when everything seemed to pile up on him. Sharon knew what it was like to have her entire world uprooted, her perspective of things changed. She had been trapped behind enemy lines, and no one had came for her. She had fought for her country, and they had abandoned her. She learned then to fight for ideals rather than people, but Steve – he was changing things.

He had an uncanny ability to do that, to shake up the natural order. SHIELD had fallen because of him, allowing something new to rise up in its place under Coulson’s leadership. The Avengers had been split because he refused to bend the knee. “Really? That sounds like something. Now I’m thinking about it, Peggy might have mentioned something like that once or twice.” Sharon had always been under the assumption that Barnes and her aunt weren’t particularly close, given how little she spoke of him. She always had respect for him, though, that was never in question. “He was my honorary godfather,” Sharon said with a laugh. “Mom never would’ve let it be legal, but for all intents and purposes, he was in there.”

Sharon laughed, bright and unencumbered, something that was rare. “Good. I was aiming for offence, even if it does happen to suit you a little.” Joking, even flirting a little, that was safe. Anything else, anything resembling what Foggy had talked about, that was where the danger came in. “That list is only getting longer,” she teased, “but I appreciate it. Roots are always the best place to start from, right?”

He didn’t know what they were, how to categorize their relationship. It didn’t fit into any kind of box, but that was the way things were now. Nothing and no one was ever just one thing. It was more complicated, for sure, but the possibilities it opened up... those were endless. There was a lot about the future that confused him, but this at least was a pleasant sort of confusion. Like being lost in a foreign city, but finding enough bars and enough beauty to make it worth it. 

“Did she?” Steve asked, surprised. “I just -- never thought she liked him much, honestly.” It was the strangest part of the whole experience. A woman like Peggy looking at him, not even noticing that Bucky was standing right there. Before the serum, before Captain America, that had never happened. But it wasn’t the serum Peggy had been looking at, Steve knew that much. “Dugan was good like that,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment, sending a silent salute and prayer upwards to him. “Always there when you needed him most.”

He laughed with her, couldn’t help it. This kind of laugh, free and unchained, it didn’t happen often these days, and he let it take him. “I’ll take it,” he said finally, catching his breath and taking a sip of his milkshake. It was almost empty, somehow they’d eaten through most of the food on their plates already. But he wasn’t ready to go yet, didn’t want to give up this moment. “I imagine it’ll keep going that way,” he said with a small smile, running a finger along the edge of his plate. “Gotta have a foundation, or else the whole thing crumbles, right?” She had become a part of his foundation now, maybe it was just in her legacy. Or maybe it was in his -- to be a part of hers.

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And I like to think... I can cheat it all To make up for the times I’ve been cheated on And it’s nice to know, when I was left for dead I was found and now I don’t haunt these streets I am not the ghost you are to me

[stevhharrington-deactivated2021]

There is nothing more. That is all there is. — Nathaniel Orion G. K.

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@scvietwinter

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agcntcxrter‌:

It didn’t seem fair that in summer, the season when Peggy had always flourished the most, they would be burying her, surrounded by people in black clothing, veils shrouding their faces. It didn’t seem fair that she was being put to rest in London, the city that she had long since forsaken, rather than the country she had fought for and within for more than seventy years. It didn’t seem fair that her legacy would be destroyed mere months before she faded from life herself, that she would die without the full understanding of what she had done, without the time necessary to process such a betrayal fully.

None of it was fair, but Sharon knew that the world wasn’t fair, that it never would be. She fought to make it different, fought to bring justice to those who had been denied it for so long, but she was only one person in an entire army, and not everyone was as dedicated as she was. Ideals would carry on, the future generations would continue the good fight, and maybe they would reach the finish line sometime, but she honestly doubted it. Sharon didn’t have the same faith in the future as Tony did, didn’t have the same faith in anything that most of her companions and friends did. She was fighting the same battles as Peggy had been nearly a century before, they were winning, but then the snakes slithered in through the cracks in the floorboards, reminding them that the source had never been extinguished.

That was why Leviathan continued to plague her mind. Everything that Peggy had looked into, everything that she had ever fought against, seemed to go back to one shadow organisation. Leviathan was associated with Hydra, with the Red Room, the Soviets, even Mussolini at a stage. Evil was much easier to spread than good, it plagued people that would otherwise be kind and non-violent, filled their hearts with hatred. Sharon knew herself who easily it would be to succumb to the darkness, having felt it when she returned, but then there were people like Steve, like her aunt, who had suffered so much and still kept smiling, kept believing.

Maybe it was something to do with the generation they were a part of. Maybe it was just what had drawn them to each other in the first place. Maybe it was hero worship, or something of the kind, though Sharon considered herself to be immune to that now after Fury’s betrayal so many years ago. “Feels a lot like I am.” That was the goal in espionage, after all - to be a paper doll, capable of changing and adapting to any situation. Sharon’s personality was strong, always had been, and that was a danger because it meant that she stood out. “It hasn’t given me anything for a long time,” Sharon said, somewhat sadly. It was rare that she admitted to this much cynicism out loud, that she allowed someone to see past the humour and the laughter, the teasing that always characterised her when Peggy was alive, and undoubtedly would a week after she was gone as well, once Sharon managed to put the mask back on.

Absentmindedly, Sharon wondered whether this would change Steve’s opinion of her, whether it would make him realise that she was nothing like her aunt, nothing like him, nothing like the heroes he fought alongside. Still, though, she was continuing to speak, and he was still standing there, which had to count for something. “Yeah,” Sharon said, looking up at him for a long moment. “The people aren’t half bad.” A small smile appeared on her face when she said that, thinking of Clint and Nat in particular.

“If you promise something, you’ve got to follow through on it, now,” Sharon said, keeping her voice light, as if it was nothing more than a jokingly said warning, rather than something she felt deep down in her gut. “I won’t just call for you to bring Indian, you know. I’ll call with life threatening situations, and maybe if I run out of milk.” Sharon had called Fury, back in the day. She had been trapped, she had formed her own communication system, she had risked everything to get a message back, and he had ignored her. Left her to fend for herself. She understood why, couldn’t resent him entirely because of that, but she was sick of being the one left behind.

Steve’s laugh wasn’t the same as his awkward ones had been across the hall, when Sharon had joked about the laundry, talked about her scrubs like they were something she knew intimately. It wasn’t even the same as the laughter she heard when he had Sam in his apartment, and she could tell that he was feeling lighter than he had for weeks. It was something different, something strained and unnatural. Sharon reached out, touched his arm, a silent reminder that she knew what was happening with him, that she could feel it too - the loss of reality that came with a constant reminder that even the people who were most alive had to die at some point.

“Family matters,” Sharon agreed, touching the coin that hang around her neck, the reminder of her aunt that had been left behind. So many of her other family members had argued over the money, the homes, the possessions. All Sharon had wanted was the one thing that she had been given, and she was grateful for it. “The family that I care about, though, is dead. Tony – he would understand that what matters most now is following her lead. Making sure that what she fought for mattered at the end of the day, that she didn’t screw up too bad.” Sharon didn’t follow Steve’s gaze, but instead kept looking at the side of his face, the sharp angles of it. “You’re not alone, Steve,” she said softly, squeezing his hand gently. “You never were.”

Steve remembered the wartime summers, when the heat was oppressive and bore down on them during the day, when the humidity rose at night until the sky finally snapped, and poured down a biblical rainfall. The only biblical thing about those days -- nearly. Peggy had always been a little more optimistic in the summer, her hair shining in the sun, making a fiery halo around her head. More than one of the boys had called her ‘angel,’ but they only ever tried it to her face once. After that it was ‘yes ma’am, no ma’am, right away ma’am.’  Still, remembering that, the sight of her -- he’d trade those summers for this one, if he could. But time travel, it seemed, only worked one way.

Which wasn’t fair. None of it was fair, but Steve had known that a long time. It wasn’t fair that Bucky had been the one to fall. It wasn’t fair that Steve had been the last one on that airship with the Red Skull. It wasn’t fair that he missed their dance. It wasn’t fair that Sharon had to bury Peggy today, and it wasn’t fair that no one had to bury him yet. It wasn’t fair that he was the only one with a perfect serum in his veins. But fair or not, it was what they had. They had to stand their ground with everything they had, because nothing would ever be fair otherwise. 

Was he a hopeful person? He was symbol of hope once upon a time, though that was quickly changing. Now people were seeing his ‘miraculous’ recovery from the ice as something that should’ve maybe been avoided, something they would’ve been better off without. Because he’d brought down SHIELD, and people had trusted it. Even after they saw that they shouldn’t have, that didn’t change the fact that they wanted to. People needed something to believe in, and Steve wasn’t sure he could be that anymore. He wasn’t sure if he had a lot of hope left to give.

But for Sharon, god -- he would try. He stared at her for a moment, just felt the pain radiating off her in waves, tidal waves the crashed and swelled and crashed again, drowning them both. Then he pulled her into a hug, even if maybe he shouldn’t have. But that’s what you did when someone was in pain -- you reached out to them. You threw them a life line. He might have been short on hope, but he’d give what he had left to Sharon. “That’s okay,” he said softly, the smell of her hair filling his nose. “Feel empty, if you need to. Let it happen. But it won’t feel that way forever,” he said. A dangerous promise to make, but one he believed in. He had enough belief for that. He believed in her, so it was almost easy. Almost. “Then take it,” he said, pulling back to meet her eyes. His hands were on her shoulders, gentle but firm. “Take it, Sharon. Sometimes, you’ve got to remind the world where you stand, what you deserve.” 

He’d taken Bucky back. Snatched him from death and time and Hydra. He was taking his own life back now, standing against the government that wanted to regulate his every move, give him more orders. He was making a stand, and that meant taking from the world. It wasn’t what people thought of, when they pictured Captain America, but he was undeniably selfish. “You’re one of them, you know,” he said, smiling softly at her, letting his hands fall. “If you’re in my corner, I feel better already. And I’m in yours,” he added, giving her a pointed look. 

Steve chuckled lightly, though there wasn’t much humor in it. “I promise to keep my promises,” he said, with a single nod. It was that simple for him. He owed her so much, had a life debt to her, and even if he didn’t -- he’d probably still be making impossible promises. “Indian, life-threatening missions, and milk. Makes me feel like Agent Milkman, but I’m okay with that,” he said. If he had his way, she would never have to face things like this alone. She wouldn’t have to face anything alone. 

But her hand on his arm, the touch far more gentle than most people might’ve assumed she was capable of -- that reminded him of how alone he felt at times. He had people he trusted, people he would die for, but sometimes he wondered if he was a lone soldier, fighting a war no one wanted to fight anymore. Peggy’s death had kick-started something in him, snapped the last pure thread to the life he’d known before. And that left him adrift, out at sea. He’d never been much of a sailor. 

His eyes drifted to the coin, the coin he recognized, and his heart skipped a few beats, lurching in his chest. It twisted, and it hurt -- but that was life. That’s what being alive meant. Suffering through the pain to get to the other side of it. The end of the line, that meant never feeling anything again. “I don’t know if he would,” he said softly, gaze falling for a moment. “He’s never had anyone to follow, he’s forged his own path. There’s something to admire about that,” he admitted quietly. It felt like he was mourning more than just Peggy. Like he was mourning the end of an era, though it was far from how he imagined the end of the Avengers. (They all imagined it, he knew. Right before they jumped out of a plane, right before they landed in the middle of a fight. They all pictured the end, but it never came how you expected it to.) He held Sharon’s hand tightly, swallowed down the lump in his throat, and nodded. “We’re not alone,” he said softly, barely a whisper. “We’re not.” As long as they had each other... well, the odds went up anyway. 

[supersoldierwithashield-archive]

captcinmcrvel‌:

Even after all of the battles that Carol had faced over the years, the suns that she had swallowed and the armies that she had felled, she still maintained that the hardest time of her life was those first few weeks in basic army training before she split off into the Air Force branch. Her commanding officers were determined to break her down and mould her back into what they wanted her to be, and that meant that the physical aspect was only one difficulty. Truthfully, the military had formed her into who she was today just as much as her transformation into Ms. Marvel had, and that was something that she was sure Steve understood more than anyone else.

“Doom. Big guy, kind of sour faced, has to try really hard not to convince us all he’s a secret super villain? I mean, his parents must’ve really hated him. At least change your name before you procreate, guys!” Carol had learned a long time ago that relying on her gut and her gut alone was as good an option as any, and right now, her gut was telling her that the president was not to be trusted. The more mistakes he made, the more inclined Carol was to throw caution to the wind and just punch him herself. If she did it quick enough, they would never know! “Everyone has their off days. I’m sure we can spare you a few weeks or so,” Carol teased. Steve’s service had never been something that was in question, even when they were on opposite sides. “Do I detect a hint of hesitation there?” Carol asked, leaning against the bag, hand on her other hip. “I know we were on opposite sides of things for a bit, but you’re still my friend. If there’s something you’re struggling with, you have me.” She paused for a moment, a grin coming onto her face. “So long as there isn’t a free burger giveaway happening in Central Park or something, because no friendship is strong enough to keep me away from that.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, laughing under his breath, even if it wasn’t exactly humorous. Carol had that way about her, made it possible to laugh at the impossible. “I know him.” He sighed heavily, rolling his shoulders back. They felt tight, like the atmosphere was all wrong, and it was. But he hadn’t expected to feel it like this. “Maybe he likes irony,” he shrugged, trying for another jab. It went wide, and he wasn’t even surprised. 

He let his hands hang by his side, clearly in no form to continue sparring. His mind was too distracted, racing from problem to problem, not letting them in and letting them go like Murdock had taught him, but just sifting through them. Sitting in them. “Don’t have anyone to approve my leave these days,” he said, smiling gently. “Guess I’ll just have to get over it.” He blinked, opened his mouth and shut it again. “It’s not that,” he said quietly. “I know... you were doing what you felt was right. I don’t begrudge you that.” Just like he didn’t begrudge Stark, or any of the other heroes who’d been pro-registration. “I would never stand in the way of a woman and her burger, I promise,” he said, crossing his heart for good measure. “They’re just... not all mine to talk about.” He bit his lip, met her eyes. “Heard a rumor though, that’s been keeping me up. About Doom and his list -- specifically the ones not on it. Public wants it to be mandatory.” He stopped, shaking his head. “History keeps repeating itself, and you never get used to that.” 

[supersoldierwithashield-archive]

notdaredcvil‌:

“You’re definitely skirting on the safe side of avoiding history book,” Matt reassured him. “They were all pretty bleak. Took out anything interesting that actually happened, replaced it with what they wanted people to know.” Captain America had always been a symbol of hope, patriotism, justice, but he had also been a symbol of honesty. Matt had been sceptical as to how much of that to believe, heroes were still people at the end of the day, but now, he could tell that Steve Rogers was inclined to the truth just as often as his counterpart. It was somewhat refreshing, even to someone who found comfort in secrecy. “Maybe because you were a permanent fixture on them,” Matt said, a grin forming. “You were on my fifth birthday card. And my sixth.” That was weird to think of. “Law professors, probably. He never actually told us who ‘they’ were, but the lecturers were definitely the villains of my story for a good four years.”

Matt hadn’t exactly expected the cynicism in Steve’s face. Of course, he hadn’t really expected anything of the man, had never even considered the chance that he would meet him, but everyone had their preconceptions. Matt wouldn’t be human if he didn’t have some kind of thought about the First Avenger, after all. It made sense, considering the fact that SHIELD had fallen down around the other man, and he had no doubt seen even more horrific things than Matt had and still came out victorious, but most of all, still came out standing. Some days, that was enough of a victory, because it was the only one you were going to get.

“Yeah, they mentioned it.” The nuns had made a big deal of it once one of them recognised that was the case, as if to say ‘look! An orphan that made it!’ Matt decided to keep that particular fact to himself. It didn’t seem like something that would be particularly complimentary. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I turned to God when Dad died. He turned to God when Mom left. Or died.” Matt shrugged with just one shoulder. Jack had never talked about his wife, had only said that she was too good for him, that anything in Matt worth anything came from her. Matt had assumed, if that was the case, that was the reason why he could never be happy in a good situation, why he always felt the need to run. “Are things different from when you were a kid? With God, I mean? Sometimes I feel like I’m the only self flagellating Catholic this side of the Hudson.”

If Jack had still been around to meet Captain America, everything else might have been different. Matt might not have become Daredevil, scared to put his father’s respect for him out of action, scared to put him in the line of fire. He might ever have become friends with Jessica, if that was what they were now. He might never have returned to Fogwell’s after it was shut down, simply because he wouldn’t need that constant tie to his father, because he would be right there. “Dad would’ve passed out the second you walked through the door,” Matt said, more certain of that than anything else. “Oh, I know so. Maybe if they could tell me where they were hitting me from before time, I could block it. Kinda hard when you’re in the dark.”

There was something in Steve’s voice, though, something like questioning. Matt hoped that he had brushed over it quickly enough that he wouldn’t go through with it. This guy was a legend for a reason, he worked with heroes on a regular basis, and knowing that something was off was basically his job description. “Think about your brain as a muscle, then,” Matt said. “You can exercise it just the same as everything else. You can control what it does, up to a point.” Stick had always reaffirmed that the body was controlled by the mind, and the mind was controlled by the man. Matt had believed in that too, at least until the capital ‘D’ gripped him, and he realised that control could be undermined, too. “Sight is overrated,” Matt replied, in response to the story. “People rely too much on one sense, forgetting the other four, and the sixth - instinct. Just because you were missing your eyes, didn’t mean everything else went out of commission too.” Especially if the serum had affected other aspects of his sensory input as well, which seemed possible. “That’s the question everyone asks. No, I wasn’t always blind. Have been longer than I wasn’t, though.” Matt nodded. “Exactly. The way my mentor put it was even easier to get your head around, though.” Matt cleared his throat, and then said, “‘Get your head out of your ass, Matty, because if you don’t, someone else is gonna shove it even further up.’ Gotta tell you, it was real motivational.”

Steve nodded, a small frown on his face. “I’ve read some,” he said softly. “And watched these movies and -- video games, right? That’s what they’re called. And they’re all about the war, but they make it seem... I don’t know,” he said finally, biting his lip. The history books made it seem too bleak, too dark. The video games, the movies, they made it seem too glorious. “History doesn’t feel like history when you’re living it,” he said finally. He blinked up at the grin on Murdock’s face, genuinely shocked. “Oh,” he said. “I guess I should’ve -- I mean, I saw a kid the other day wearing a Halloween costume of me,” he murmured, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. He was glad for the familiar scent of a well-worn gym, the quiet and dark surrounding them. This place, Fogwell’s, it felt so insulated from everything happening. Like it was stuck in time, too. “Every story’s got a villain,” Steve agreed. The problem was, it wasn’t always obvious who. Or what. He was starting to believe more and more that villains weren’t people -- they were ideas. Symbols, just as much as he was. But symbols of desperation, hopelessness, greed, power. Even Zola -- Zola had just wanted to live, in the end. Like the German soldiers Steve had faced down on the battlefield. They weren’t fighting for Nazism, not in the trenches. They were fighting to survive. 

What did that make heroes, he wondered? Were they really just opposite forces, opposing each other as much as they needed each other? If there were no villains, would there still be heroes? If there were no wars, would there still be soldiers? Did humans even know another way to exist? 

“Made it,” Steve repeated, laughing under his breath. “More like, they made me. I wasn’t even allowed to enlist before Erskine found me. Before he tapped me for the serum,” he said. He nodded, then realized how useless that was, and swallowed hard. “Yeah, yeah that makes sense,” he murmured. He stopped himself short of shrugging this time. “People don’t look to God as much these days,” he agreed. “Guess somewhere along the way, they stopped trusting he had a plan for us. But there was plenty of doubt back in my day, too. We were just quieter about it,” he said softly. 

He had plenty of doubt himself. He’d listened to the sermons, the psalms, the hymns, but none of it hit his heart. None of it really touched him, and by the time he was out on the front -- God was so far removed from the things he saw, that Steve couldn’t remember a single prayer. They cried out for him a lot, the other soldiers. The wounded, the dying, they screamed his name to the sky, but there was never any answer. War was loud, noisy, but it could be impossibly silent at the worst times. 

“Had that happen once or twice,” Steve admitted, laughing more genuinely this time. He stopped, studying Murdock carefully for a moment. Wondering what he was so keen to hide, because there just seemed to be something, right under the surface. “Hard,” he agreed. “But not impossible. World’s seen stranger things.”

Maybe he was overthinking things. He tended towards that, the serum made his memory photographic and the details screamed out at him wherever he was. It was overwhelming at first, but it came with a rush that Steve couldn’t deny he enjoyed. “Up to a point,” he repeated, nodding for his own benefit. “They didn’t cover how to exercise the mind in basic,” he said, smirking to himself. “They were more about teaching us to stop thinking, to follow orders and go no further.” He’d shirked that part of being a soldier a long time ago. Maybe learning more about his own mind, how to expand it, how to use it -- maybe that was the next step. Towards what, he wasn’t sure. But slowly, he moved further and further from soldier, and closer towards something he didn’t really have a word for. “Instinct. I think that’s most important. You’ve gotta be able to trust your gut, or it won’t matter how well you can see or hear or shoot,” he said, closing his eyes again. Focusing more slowly this time, letting things come into his mind a little bit at a time, instead of all at once. “That’s a weird feeling, isn’t it?” he asked, keeping his eyes closed. “I’ve been like this longer than I haven’t, even if it doesn’t feel that way to me.” Time was always a tricky preposition around him. He laughed, shaking his head slowly. “Your mentor -- now he sounds like a drill sergeant. He would’ve liked some of my superiors.” 

[supersoldierwithashield-archive]

the-m3chanic‌:

With each passing day, Tony was finding that things were becoming easier and easier to manage. The world was falling apart, New York was in another dimension, but he was talking about his personal life. His relationships with his teammates had never been better, he and Pepper were going strong, and he had so many kids looking up to him, trusting him with their training, that he almost had to pinch himself sometimes to believe that it was real. Sure, everything could be seen as bleak, but Tony knew that together, they could face anything. Being divided was an issue that he hadn’t foreseen, even with all of his futurism allowing him to see some of what was coming, but now that was resolved - at least as much as it was ever going to be resolved - the Avengers had to be stronger than ever. Strength in numbers, and in loyalty.

“You? Awkward? Never would have pegged you for that descriptor, Winghead. Are you sure you aren’t confusing yourself with Banner?” Tony had made a point to drag Bruce to the party despite arguments, and although he liked to tell himself that was because he knew the other man would have a good time, he knew that was about as likely as New York just falling back into place on earth. “Oh, I enjoyed it for the first four hours. Then it got to the encores. People just kept asking for more. I’m pretty sure even the musicians didn’t enjoy it by the end.” His mom, though, had been at the edge of her seat the entire time. It had given her a sore back to sit like that, but she hadn’t cared. Music had been for her what a good engine humming was for Tony - as close to heaven as either of them were likely to get. “Agreed,” Tony said. “Not talking about things is my go to. Or used to be.” He didn’t pay that expensive shrink for nothing! “He looks constipated,” Tony surmised, raising an eyebrow in Doom’s direction. “I know that look.” He’d seen it on too many people to count in his lifetime. “He’s gonna blow this whole party to shit in T-minus five minutes, and I just got a new lemonade.” The list flashed on the screen, and Tony’s prediction came true - three minutes early, as well.

“You’ve seen the pictures of what I used to look like, right?” Steve replied, smirking gently at Stark. “Let’s just say my dance card was never full.” He glanced around, saw Banner in the corner, looking exactly as uncomfortable as anyone would’ve predicted. “I can’t believe you talked him out of his lab,” he said, arching a brow. But if anyone could do it, it was Stark. He had his father’s gift with words, and Steve wondered if he realized it. The effect he had on people, the way he made them want to impress him. Even Steve had felt it, especially in the beginning. Of course, it was a little bit of a pissing contest then, they hadn’t yet learned to lead together. But despite his title, Steve didn’t want to captain alone. He’d already proven he wasn’t exactly up to the task -- captains were supposed to go down with the ship. And here he was, standing when everything else had faded away, buried in the oceans, the snow, the time. 

Steve laughed, running a hand through his hair. “I bet they didn’t,” he said. He knew what it was like, to be a circus monkey, forced to perform. So did Tony. “Used to be?” he asked, not prying, just... curious. But they didn’t have much time to talk about it, as Doom took the stage. “Constipated is one word for it,” Steve said, frowning deeply. “He looks excited to me.” There was an undeniable thrill in Doom’s voice, a grin on his face as he unveiled the list. Steve’s jaw clenched tight, and he felt the crowd around them shift and squirm as the tension rose. Then the shouting started. Circles formed around some of the listed, some of the unlisted -- civilians were equally angry with both kinds of heroes. Why aren’t you helping us? Why aren’t we home? Their demands weren’t unreasonable, but Steve knew a riot was the last thing they needed right now. “Your math was off,” he said to Tony, rolling his sleeves up. His eyes met Stark’s, firm and steeled. “We’ve got to find Doom. Keep these people calm, find a way to --”

Before he could finish the sentence, he was shoved from behind. Steve barely moved, but he felt the fury in it. He turned and saw a kid, no older than he was when he first enlisted. “Some hero you are,” the kid spat, crossing his arms, jaw set. “We’re stuck here, almost starving, and you don’t wanna sign up to help? You’re Captain America!” he screamed, drawing the attention of others. The kid wheeled on Tony. “Take him in! Make him help us!” he demanded. “That’s your job, isn’t it?” 

[supersoldierwithashield-archive]

scvietwinter:

Bucky didn’t really remember his own ma. Didn’t remember anything of his pa, either, or his sisters. He knew enough from the textbooks to know that one of them had died young, when he would’ve still been a kid. They weren’t sure back then what it was, whether it was the polio, or the same thing that had taken Sarah. Bucky figured it was something he probably should’ve remembered. The books said he had been devastated, and they said it often enough that they must’ve heard it somewhere, whether from Bucky himself or from one of the Howlies in their interviews after the war. They had been heroes, especially those who were dead, they had been legends to hold up in the highest and so their lives had been sold to the highest bidder. Anyone with a secret was jumped onto.

Bucky figured he made for greater pickings than Steve had, after he was ‘dead.’ After all, he had enough secrets to come out his goddamn ears with, and that was the closest thing to the truth as he had uttered in a long, long time.

He didn’t remember his family, though. Sometimes little snippets came back to him, arguments over the breakfast table, sayings from his father that were repeated often enough that they might as well have been an aphorism, things that he was pretty sure he had heard on the TV while he was drifting off to sleep and had just decided was a memory instead because he was grappling so furiously for them. He didn’t remember his family, but he remembered Steve’s Ma like she was standing right in front of him. Calloused hands, the tiniest things Bucky had ever seen, working away at the washboards or peeling from hot water at her work. Starched white aprons covered in blood at the end of the day, blonde hair scraped back into a bun, red cross on her hat.

Sarah didn’t take no shit, that was for damn sure. When Bucky was at her kitchen table holding frozen peas to his bust lip, she had leaned over, asked if they deserved it. When Bucky said yes, Sarah had nodded once, firmly, and told him that no matter how many times he got knocked down, he better get the hell back up again. Her words had followed him across battlefields in Europe, had helped him pull her son back over enemy lines after that Kraut got him in the neck, and they had followed him to Prague, too. To Russia, Romania, Budapest, all the places that mattered, and all the places that didn’t.

“I’m sure the fellas could ask them out on a good day too, provided they play their cards right.” Not that Bucky knew much about modern day dating. The most that he had managed to do was get into someone’s bed and disappear before the morning was out. He had done it twice before he felt as if he was gonna crawl out of his own skin. His body wasn’t his own, some days. Other days, he needed to prove to himself it was. “You can promise something, though,” Bucky said, something like pleading in his voice. No one else could reduce him to this, he convinced himself. No one else could be a weakness like this. Since they were kids, always dragging him into trouble, never making him regret it for a second. “Promise me something, Steve.”

Promises, though, were dangerous things. They always had been, between them. Before, it had meant nothing if they were broken, if Bucky actually did end up kissing Missy at the end of the street before Steve got up the nerve to ask her out, if Steve started that fight with Grady before the night was out. On the battlefield, though, breaking a promise meant breaking a life. It meant breaking a trust that had spent years in the making. Promises now were like little death wishes, especially if you meant them, especially if you believed them. Promising to protect each other in the war had been like asking the Almighty to smite them. Bucky wasn’t half surprised that he did, although not in the way that either of them expected. Maybe neither of them deserved that peace.

“Hard to pick up on the meaning behind the words when I could barely understand what he was saying half the time.” Sometimes, Bucky woke up out of the ice like a new man. Invigorated, eager to please, ready to fight to the bitter end. Other times, he came out Iike a zombie, an empty shell there only to follow orders and nothing else. “He had a book.” Bucky furrowed his eyebrows together. “Wrote shit down in it, sometimes. When he got me to agree to something, wrote another thing down. Dunno where it got to. Probably just writing his shopping list, for all I know.” Steve going back to art classes, albeit seventy years later, was just what Bucky had wanted for after the war. Give or take the aliens, robots and demons. “Glad he got ya back into it,” Bucky said. “Sounds like he knows ya pretty well, huh? Better than Howie. That man wouldn’t know anyone ‘cept his own reflection.”

Bucky had liked Howard. He really had, liked him a bit too much sometimes, let him get away with too much shit. Howard pushed the boundaries, made everyone’s expectations waver, made people fall in love with him all over. Picturing him with a kid, picturing him with a wife in particular, was almost impossible. Bucky had always seen something of a sharpness to him, even if he’d liked him. Maybe Howard would’ve said the same thing about him, if grace had spared him to comment.

“You had the boys,” Bucky said lowly. “You had Carter. They all took care of you, right? Didn’t let you bite off more than you could chew? Until –” Until they had. Until they let him go down into the ice, into the ocean. Until they let him die, for all they knew, until they saw him for the very last time and still let him walk out that door. Bucky knew that there wasn’t a goddamn thing on earth that would prevent Steve Rogers from walking out a door if he wanted to, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry enough at the people who couldn’t have stopped it. They had been there, after all, and he hadn’t. “No one shoulda went down that day, Steve. I was reckless. Stupid. Let them get behind me. Didn’t think through the plan before I went for it.” Desperation, perhaps. They’d been fighting for a couple years at that point and Bucky, more than anything, was tired as shit. “Nah. Nah, we needed a leader, and that was always you, Steve. Think anyone would follow a guy like Dugan, with his bowler hat? Nah nah.”

Some of the other boys hadn’t wanted to fight either. Gabe had been too smart for that shit. Dum Dum had a family. Falsworth wasn’t even an American. The rest of them, Morita included, had a nationalistic pride that kept them going. Bucky had Steve. He had his parents back home sending him letters. He might not have had the opportunity to bring their son back to them in any way that he had left, but he had the chance to put Hitler in the ground, or at least knock the Red Skull off the board. He was helping his people. That was enough, he told himself. That was enough.

Bucky didn’t flinch when Steve reached out. He jumped when people moved too fast, still avoided eye contact on the street, but Steve’s hand on his shoulder was as natural as breathing. “Don’t say that too loud,” Bucky said, same time as Steve’s warning came in. He smiled at the fact their minds went to the same place. “They’ve probably got snipers around this building waiting to hear you offend them. They’d get a pretty price for Captain America’s head, all things considered.” It had been the same in the war. Steve had shown them then, as he did now, what it meant to underestimate him. It never ended well for any of them.

“That because I’m the best, or because you’re a sap?” Bucky asked, a grin forming on his face as he did so. It was easier to tease, easier to joke, than to talk about the scrambled mess of his own mind. “You might not wanna see what’s in my brain, Steve,” Bucky said. There was no point warning Steve once he set his mind to something, but after seventy years of friendship, probably more (did you stop counting when one was dead, or did you say my friend of twenty years, though he has been gone for fifteen?) Bucky hoped that one of these days Steve would stop and listen. “You might not wanna know what I’ve done. Hell, I don’t even wanna know what I’ve done, but I gotta. You don’t need that.” Mostly, Bucky didn’t need to see how Steve would look at him. Going back to joking was safer. Made him more like the old Bucky. “Hey, now, I was a perfect gentleman. Kissed her on the doorstep and everything. Given it was the next morning, but that’s beside the point.” It seemed, for a moment, that Bucky had reminded Steve of something he had forgotten. He made a mental note to categorise the look on his face, because there was a strong possibility Bucky was never going to see it again.

Steve had never been religious, no matter how many times his ma dragged him to church. The sermons never really made sense to him, and the sentiment was lost on him. God was an abstract concept, a nice idea, he didn’t hate it – he just had never seen the point.

But now, he was ready to fall to his knees and pray as long and hard as God wanted him to. If there was ever proof of a miracle, it was this moment right here. Not only was Bucky still alive, still safe, but he had finally shown up at his doorstep, like it was seventy years in the past and they were going to catch a train down to the water. Steve didn’t know what he’d done to deserve a miracle like this, something most people couldn’t even dream of – but he knew one thing. He wouldn’t waste it. He wanted to savor every extra moment, stolen away from fate itself.

Maybe Bucky wasn’t the same person he’d been. Maybe he wasn’t that figure in the museums, the face smiling back from old photos in the history books. Steve didn’t care. He wanted him just like this, wanted him real, wanted him sitting on his couch. It’d taken months to get to this point, but after seventy years in the ice, seventy years of thinking he was dead and gone – Steve could be patient. One step at a time. They’d keep walking one step at a time, right up to the end of the line. Just like they always did.

“Never did learn how to play that game,” Steve said, shuffling his feet. “Always needed you over my shoulder, telling me when to play the Ace.” Bucky had done his best all those years ago, but mostly their ‘double dates’ were two girls both interested in Buck, drawing straws to see who’d be stuck with little Steve Rogers for the night. Steve didn’t really mind, except for a couple of very pointed exceptions, girls who caught his eye and made him really wish he was bigger, stronger, that he could breathe without wheezing. Wishing that he was more like Bucky, really. That’s what it came down to. Things were different now. They were so incredibly different, sometimes it still made his head spin.

The tone shifted suddenly, sharply, and Steve’s eyes locked onto Bucky’s, the desperation and sorrow he felt reflected right back at him. Both of them had so much weight on their shoulders, such heavy burdens, mostly made up of their responsibility to one another. He would never set it down, not in another hundred years, but he knew the weight of it. Maybe, if he didn’t, if he didn’t know Bucky so well, even this version of him, he might’ve been confused by the plea. But it clicked instantly in his mind, and he nodded. “I promise,” he said, reaching out and grasping Bucky’s shoulder tight. “I promise you. There’s something, there’s always gonna be something. To the end of line, there’s something.”  

Something to hold onto. Something to connect them. Something to keep them going. Something worth fighting for, something worth remembering. Something to laugh about, even when they didn’t want to. Something to apologize for, even if neither of them would accept it. There would always be something between them. Something to help, something that hurt, something to love. Steve could think of a thousand ‘somethings’ he would do for Bucky. Because there was something alive left in those eyes, because Bucky wasn’t nothing, even if he might’ve felt like it. Steve wouldn’t let him go again, wouldn’t lose him. Never again.

Of course, that was a promise the world had made once. And failed spectacularly to keep. His father had died for that promise, the war to end wars. Steve would die for this promise if he had to. He wouldn’t even hesitate, if it meant keeping Bucky safe. If It meant giving him something of a life. After all, it was his fault that Bucky had lost so much, that they’d taken everything but his life in the end. And the life they left him with… it wasn’t much of a life at all. But now Steve had a chance to fix that. To make things right, to give Bucky the second chance he really deserved. Whatever anyone said about the Winter Soldier, whatever they thought, Bucky Barnes was a good man. Bucky Barnes was his best friend. And Bucky Barnes deserved something.

The words cut through him, but Steve forced himself to listen. He owed Bucky that much at the very least. Probably more, if he was honest, but he couldn’t go back in time. He couldn’t stop Hydra’s experiments, couldn’t change what happened on the train. “A book?” he repeated, brows furrowed. He knew Bucky was being facetious, a book that Pierce carried around constantly, wrote in – that had to be important. “Maybe we should look for it,” he suggested quietly. “Might… jog some things. Make them clearer. If that’s what you want.” Remembering their childhood, that was one thing. This was an entirely different part of the past, darker and more twisted, full of forgotten horrors they might not even be able to imagine.

“He does,” he said quietly. “Not as well as you do. But he definitely got his father’s brains.” Among other things – not that Steve would ever say so. It was strange to think that Tony and Bucky had never met, that these two major parts of his life had yet to collide. He couldn’t imagine what would happen if they did. “Howard – he was different than we knew him,” he said softly, biting his lip. “I don’t know it all, Tony doesn’t talk about it much. But it sounds like it changed him. The war, I mean.” He paused, sighing softly. “Guess it changed all of us. The whole world.”

The serum and the war, they’d changed a lot of things for him. Transformed him inside and out. But one that had never, ever changed – Steve Rogers was a stubborn son of a bitch. “I didn’t have you,” he insisted, jaw clenched for a moment. Not out of anger, but because he felt the sharp, jabbing ache in his chest, and it hurt remembering. Thinking about that night, all the ways it’d gone wrong, all the ways it went wrong afterwards. “I didn’t have you there, and I got on that plane knowing I wasn’t coming back.” Maybe not consciously, not at first, but there was an air of finality to the entire mission. “And as I was sinking in the ice, I thought – if it had to be the end, at least you’d be waiting on the other side for me.” He had never told anyone that, the history books only had his last exchange with Peggy on the record, and Steve didn’t talk about it. How it felt to hit the water, to feel the ice surround him. He barely remembered it, it only came back in flashes.

Bucky was spouting excuses now, Steve had heard it all before. Back when Steve would start a fight, need bailing out, and Bucky would get hurt in the process. He’d always say it was his own fault, that he hadn’t ducked or swung fast enough, something. Steve never believed him, but Bucky Barnes was his own brand of stubborn when it came down to it. “Peggy came to me that night. After it happened. No one else would get close, I think they didn’t know what to say,” he whispered, staring down at his hands. “She told me to ‘respect the dignity’ of your choice. And I tried, Buck, I did, but –” He clenched his jaw again, fighting off a wave of emotion, welling up in his throat, choking him slowly. “But it was still my fault. At least some of it, I can’t – I can’t let you carry it all alone,” he said firmly, looking up at him. “You could’ve been a leader,” he said simply. “They would’ve followed you. I followed you. That whole time, I was always following you.”

The serum had made him stronger, faster, more durable. It had amplified him, but he still had limitations. He knew he could be impulsive, that he thought with his heart more than his head, so whenever there was a decision to make, he talked it over with Bucky. He listened to him, even if they were just joking around. Did Bucky never realize how much Steve needed him, serum or no?

Steve laughed as they both spoke at the same time, saying essentially the same thing. “Probably,” he said, smirking at his best friend. Despite all the pain, all the messiness in their past, there was one simple fact. Bucky was here. Steve could put a hand on his shoulder and feel how real he was. “Good thing I’ve got you here, to watch my six.” Just like they always had. Just like they always would.

“Both,” he replied easily. He wasn’t ashamed of being a sap – they’d called him ‘sensitive’ back then, as Bucky knew. His mother fretted about it, but Steve didn’t much care what anyone thought. He was going to be a soldier no matter how ‘sensitive’ he was, and in the end, it was that quality that made him what he was. “I need you, Buck,” he said. “Pretty sure I’ve made that much clear. And I don’t care what you’ve done, what happened to you. I want to know everything you want to tell me. Whatever it is, I’m with you. To the end of the line, that’s how it always is. No matter where that line goes,” he said firmly, squeezing his shoulder tight once more before letting his hand fall. He laughed under his breath and clasped his hands together. “I can’t do this with anyone else, you know,” he said softly, looking over at Bucky. “Peggy’s gone. Howard’s been gone, the other Howlies – we’re the last ones left. The only ones who remember what it was like back then. How it felt to buy ice cream for a nickel. What it’s like dodging bombs in the trenches. All these memories…” He tapped his finger against his temple. “And no one in the entire world gets it like you, Buck.” He smiled and let his gaze drift away again. “She was pretty,” he said. “And she was happy you asked her out. Her brothers weren’t as thrilled,” he said, smirking lightly. Even then, Bucky had a reputation.

[supersoldierwithashield-archive]

notdaredcvil:

If Matt knew a year ago what he knew now - about the world, about the people he loved, about himself in general - then things would have ended up monumentally different. If he had known that all Foggy and Karen wanted was the truth, that they were capable of handling it, that they actively wanted to be a part of his life even if it put them in the line of danger, he would’ve been more honest a lot sooner. If he had known that Daredevil was a massive part of his life, that he couldn’t be two separate people, that the angels and the demons inside of him were there at all times no matter which one came to the surface at tha t specific moment, then maybe he would have realised he couldn’t keep two lives going on in one body. It hadn’t been easy, realising any of this, but it had changed him for the better, and he had vowed that it wouldn’t happen again. “You sound like a fortune cookie,” Matt said, grateful for once that he was the one able to say it with a grin on his face. “Progress doesn’t happen without change, right? First thing our professor said to us when we walked into Law 101. The second thing he said was, ‘turn around now and run before they get their hooks into you.’ He was an interesting guy.”

The specifics of Captain America’s adventures during the Second World War were lost on many people, overshadowed by the PSA videos shown during history classes and gym alike. People knew the legends, they knew the big battles, but the little details, the things that made up a person rather than a mask, they were delegated to the fine print of history books that people didn’t exactly make a habit of reading. Matt Murdock, though, was a nerd through and through. When other kids were out playing hopscotch and smashing bottles on street corners, he was in a tiny studio apartment, fingers racing over pages, taking in everything, reciting it under his breath until he could quote it verbatim.

They didn’t word it quite the way that it happened, he had noticed that when he was twelve. Gradually, he began to learn how to read between the lines, a vital lesson for his career in law, when he would be the one curving words to suit his own purposes. Steve Rogers had not followed all of the rules. He wasn’t square, he wasn’t a cookie cutter action hero, he wasn’t perfect. That, in Matt’s young opinion, made him all the more heroic. “Yeah, just the two of us,” Matt said. “Mom left pretty early, never really knew her.” It was a quick addition, shrugging off the pity that often came with being an orphan. Somehow, he didn’t think it would come, and that was a relief. Steve knew what it was like, after all. “Try to be,” Matt said with a laugh. “Comes easier some days, harder others. Christmas, it’s always a good day. Easter, memories of first communion, that sort of thing. Days that are meant to be holy. The days in between, though, when you need the faith the most – that’s a little harder.”

New York didn’t turn to God as much as it used to. Jack said when he was growing up, people used to whisper the Father’s name with a reverence. Young Jack Murdock, Irish immigrant with bust knuckles and a bleeding lip, had bled out over the confession box more often than not, scared of the Lord’s wrath. He grew up, though, as did the rest of their generation, and they left their Lord behind. Matt had never been able to leave anything behind, and it made sense that would extend to his religion.

In the beginning, he supposed, it had been a way to feel close to his dad. Jack hadn’t made much of a thing about praying until Matt’s accident, and then he did it every night, kneeled on the floor with Matt and clasped their hands together. Jack hadn’t been good at remembering the Holy Prayers, the words that every priest could recite in their sleep. He didn’t have the brains like Matt, he said, but he was real good at thinking on his feet. His dad’s prayers, the genuine emotion he put into it, were some of the best Matt ever heard. He wished he could remember them now. “That was Dad,” he said with a laugh. “He did well by me, though. Left me enough that I could go to college, get my degree. Not many parents could say that.” It had only taken his life, but that wasn’t going to be discussed today. “Oh, I’d go out first round. Wouldn’t even see them coming for me,” Matt quipped.

Was he selling it too hard? Matt didn’t exactly have experience being this close to the issue at hand. With Foggy and Karen it had been bad enough, but they were representative of his other life, his civilian life. Captain America firmly belonged to the world of Daredevil, even if he was way out of his league, and to pretending to be helpless lawyer Matt Murdock was a little more difficult, even if he hadn’t dispelled ‘helpless’ when he took on the Castle case.

“Think of it like a drill,” Matt said, “except I’m way more charismatic than army C.O.s. They basically defined the term ‘taskmaster,’ right?” Frank had said once that Matt would make one hell of a soldier. Technicalities aside, the scariest thing was the fact that might just be the truth. Stick certainly thought he was a warrior, after all. “After the accident, the world was dark, but it was louder than I’d ever heard it. Hypersensitivity, they called it, it’s typical after a traumatic loss of function. Meditation helped me to control that, get back on my feet again. It doesn’t bother me anymore.” Smooth enough. Lying always did come natural.

Steve laughed, mostly at himself. “Better than sounding like a history book,” he said with a shrug. “Or a greeting card – I get greeting card a lot. I have no idea why and I’m afraid to ask at this point.” It wasn’t just the technology that had changed, or the threats facing the city, or the music, movies, clothes – it was the people. All the other things, they only changed because people had changed. People were almost like foreign creatures to him now, Steve didn’t know what to think sometimes. Every now and then he just stopped and stared down at a crowded street, full of people who walked differently, who talked differently, who thought differently. And he wondered if there was really a place for him in this world anymore. In a lot of ways, he was still just a symbol, this time of the past. And sometimes he felt like an anchor to another time period, slowing down the progress around him. “Your professor’s a smart guy,” Steve said, ignoring his own circular thoughts for now. “Who’s ‘they?’” he asked curiously. “The law? The government?” That probably sounded paranoid. But given the fact that the government agency he’d been employed by tried to kill him and his friends multiple times, he felt entitled to a little tinfoil-hat talk.

He was getting used to the strange imbalance that existed now. Where people knew so much about him and his life and his background, while they were little more than strangers to him. It made him slightly uncomfortable, but he’d been through worse. And mostly the history books were kind to him – kinder than his current reputation, anyway. Which was part of the reason he needed a new gym, one like this that was more… exclusive. But he couldn’t help but wonder why. It was clearly intentional. Murdock preferred to work alone, it seemed. But he’d had a partner before, during the Castle case. Maybe solitude was a new preference, one borne out of necessity.

“It was the opposite for me,” Steve said, the sudden honesty surprising him. “I don’t know, maybe the history books mentioned it, but my dad died before I was born. Figure that’s why ma was so religious, ya know? Nothing brings people to God like grief.” It was maybe an unkind thing to say, not something a ‘hero’ or ‘American icon’ should believe. But Steve hadn’t been the perfect hero, soldier, or icon in a long time. His legend was changing, and maybe that was a good thing. Some things needed to change. He wanted to ask about Murdock’s mother, whether he ever found out what happened to her, but there was a tightness to his voice, the way he glossed over – he figured they were better off letting it lie. “Ain’t that always the way,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “The middle, that’s always the hardest part of anything.” The start of the wars, they were flashy, shiny new uniforms and men kissing their sweethearts goodbye. The end of wars, at least in his day, meant parades and fireworks, singing and dancing long into the night. But the middle? The middle was bleak. Dreary, and full of death. The middle was where they lost more people than they saved, where the ground squished beneath your boots from all the blood, and the air stank with the smell of decay. Murdock was right – those were the moments they needed God the most, and yet, those were the moments it was hardest to find Him.

“A hell of a man,” Steve agreed, smiling at the poster, a little bittersweet in that general sort of way that hit him sometimes. “I would’ve liked to have met him,” he said simply, tearing his eyes away from the poster. He wasn’t sure why it made him feel so sad, why the details were burned into his mind now. “Yeah,” he said. “Not many can.” He’d known Howard only as a bachelor, but the things he’d learned now… It tore him apart. “Good dads are hard to find, especially nowadays it seems,” he mused lightly. Not everything changed for the better. He arched a brow, then shrugged. “You think so?” he asked, tilting his head. Murdock seemed a little reluctant to accept how capable he was – and yet, he eschewed pity in any form. Steve recognized that much, but he didn’t quite understand why. Maybe he was just humble – humility was a virtue, wasn’t it? Steve really didn’t remember much scripture at all.

Steve laughed under his breath, thinking of Phillips. Thinking of Peggy. “They weren’t all bad,” he said, opening his eyes. “But the drills were about building muscle, tolerance, endurance. They weren’t about… this.” He didn’t know what ‘this’ was, and maybe that was part of the problem. He wasn’t a good soldier when it came to orders, but he needed to have goals, clear-cut and defined. Needed to know what to work towards. He watched Murdock carefully for a moment, listening to his story, heart beating for the little boy Murdock had been so long ago. “I know the dark can be loud,” he said suddenly. It was pitch black, and we were moving towards an enemy camp across a field. We couldn’t use our flashlights, couldn’t strike a match, or they’d see us coming.” He remembered it vividly, remembered everything post-serum in crisp, clear detail. “I don’t even know how I knew, but I realized there was someone behind us. Managed to take him down before he could make his move.” He took a breath, realized the memory had actually settled his heart rate. “So, you weren’t always blind,” Steve noted quietly. “I’d say that’s a pretty traumatic loss of function, yeah.” Phrasing it that way, the technical feel to the words, that was another way to cope. Tony always talked most technical when he was upset. Steve had a tendency to start mapping out battle plans when he was stressed. “It’s about taking the emotional, and making it rational,” he said, reaching out to try and understand this. “If everything’s temporary, then the rational response is to let go. Right?” 

[supersoldierwithashield-archive]

agcntcxrter:

Sharon knew a little more about grief than the next person. SHIELD was filled with it, new recruits falling on their first mission, her first love along with them. Her family were all agents, and that meant that when they died, they died doing something that was worth dying for, whether their family could hear the specific details of that or not. Death was seen as something honourable, as something worth being revered, as something that was the best possible end to an agent’s life. People like the Carters, they didn’t get retirement. They didn’t get a white picket fence, a nice house with cheap insurance, kids that grew up well adjusted. They got war and fire and brimstone in their veins, and it burned hot until it burned out. Sharon saw the same thing in Steve, felt it in his every movement. He didn’t give up, didn’t give in, would never stop until the war was won, and the war would never be over.

This, though, this was different. Sharon had lost people before. She had mourned for them in the way that most agents mourned - she got angry, she shot things (and people), she got revenge, she carried on the legacy. Peggy, though, was her hero. She was untouchable. She was her mother, in all ways that mattered. Peggy Carter had raised her into the person that she was today, and most times, Sharon loved that person. She was grateful for her. Watching Peggy fade away, seeing how her memory faltered, was painful enough, so painful that she expected her death to feel like a relief.

It didn’t. It just felt empty. Someone had reached into her chest and pulled whatever was left of her heart out of it, had stepped it into the pavement, or thrown it into the ground with her aunt’s coffin. Her family, the family that had been betrayed and divided by SHIELD’s fall, wouldn’t meet her eyes. Her father barely remembered who he was. Her mother had always been more complicated a relationship than most. She had no siblings, no cousins that she still spoke to often, no one but Steve Rogers, the man out of time, the only person perhaps who understood what it felt like to lose the sun and keep on pretending that there was light at the end of the tunnel anyway.

Sharon couldn’t give up. She knew that the grief would pass. But yet, at that moment, it felt as if Peggy had taken everything good and bright and worth fighting for with her. It made Sharon feel sick to imagine a world without her, how she would go on without her advice, or a listening ear. She had friends, she had family in the form of her team, but Peggy would still be gone. There was no replacing that. “Not all change is good,” Sharon said lowly. She looked up at Steve, searching his face for something. “Does it get easier?” It wasn’t fair, asking him this. All she had lost was one person - he had lost an entire world, an entire time. “Feeling … empty?”

She told herself it was because it was her aunt’s funeral. Because she was back in London, surrounded by memories of her less than happy childhood, because SHIELD had fallen and even the Avengers seemed as if they were about to split right down the middle. The truth was, though, that she felt comfortable with Steve, safe in a way that belied the danger in the world. He only reaffirmed that with what he said. “I’ve got you on speed dial,” Sharon said, a small smile on her face. “You better pick up if I call, Rogers. We have scales to even up.”

Then, in the midst of all that emptiness, there was a small flicker of something in her chest, in her gut. At least, there was, until Steve kept talking, and Sharon swallowed back what she had been about to say (which was what, exactly? She was at Peggy’s funeral, for Christ’s sake). “Yeah, I did. The path of a righteous man. He really hammered it home with his epitaph, huh? He couldn’t have picked something simple. Suppose it fits the kind of guy who wore a glorified cape.” Nick would argue that, but Sharon had seen his coat blowing in the wind. It was a cape, comparable to Thor’s. Everyone knew it.

“It sucks,” Sharon said, feeling as if she could read in between the lines of Steve’s words. “Some people come back and don’t deserve to, like that wizard dude Stephen Strange keeps kicking back into the mirror dimension. Then you get people like her, and they’re just gone.” Sharon nodded, following his eyes down to his hands. “I figured she was always the better one at speeches,” she joked lightly. She still remembered her family coming to her, saying that she was the best person to give the eulogy. She had to agree with them. “It might look different on the outside,” Sharon said, turning her hand over so they were palm to palm, placing her other one over his, “but you know who I’m standing with. Accountability means something, and I agree with it, but things can go wrong. We can’t have another SHIELD.” Together, though, she was confident they could prevent that. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but today that was in short supply.

Steve had lost people in a thousand different ways. He’d lost Bucky in an instant, one terrible second that haunted his dreams. He’d forever remember the feeling of Bucky’s fingers slipping through his, the sound of his scream as he fell. He’d lost his father before he ever knew him, to a war that ended before Steve was born, only to be carried on again by the time he was a young man. Grieving a memory felt so strange sometimes, more an idea than anything else. He’d lost men on the battlefield, sometimes right before his eyes, blood spattered on his cheek. Sometimes, he didn’t realize until they were back at base, a few less than they’d been before. 

But it was his mother’s death that he thought about right now. Watching her get sicker and sicker, and never taking a moment to rest. She’d always been more concerned about her patients, about Steve. It wasn’t until she’d been coughing blood and gasping for air that she’d finally slowed down, just long enough for Steve to feel the helplessness of it all. All he’d been able to do for her was sit with her, hold her hand, put a wash cloth on her forehead. He’d known it wouldn’t save her – just ease her passing. He hadn’t held onto her for very long after that. And eventually, he’d lost everyone, everyone and everything he had ever known. Some people escaped death, but you never escaped time.

Peggy had faded, just like his mother, but she had more life in her than anyone else he’d ever met before. She shone like a shooting star, like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. Even at the end, when her mind wandered so easily, when the fog clouded her eyes and sometimes she looked at him and thought they were still fighting the war – even then, she’d been a force to be reckoned with. Steve had held her hand when he could find the time, but not as often as he would’ve liked. In the end, even Peggy Carter could die, and no one could stop that.

The only person who came close to what Peggy had been was sitting right beside him. Shrouded in grief, maybe, but for the first time, Steve understood what Peggy saw when she found him trying to get drunk after Bucky. She saw a soldier ready to get back out there, ready to make things right anyway he could, ready to take his pain and turn it into justice. He just hadn’t known it yet. Maybe it was different for Sharon, with no train or shadow organization to blame for Peggy’s death. It was just time. Time and illness and age, and there was no fight to be had there. Nothing to rally around. But Sharon would rally, he knew that. He could see strength in every fiber of her being. Peggy was her aunt, not her mother, but in every way that mattered, Sharon was the spitting image of her. “No, it’s not,” he said softly. “But maybe that’s the price we pay, so that some change is good. Maybe that’s just how the world works.” Her eyes were searching his, and he didn’t know if he had any answers for her, if she would like what she found in his gaze. “I don’t feel empty,” he said quietly. “And you aren’t empty either. Believe me when I tell you, this world will take from you. It’ll take and take and take, but eventually – it gives something back. It gave her back to me,” he said, glancing towards the church. “For a little while, anyway.” He turned back to her and sighed softly. “I know it feels like – like there’s this hole in your chest that won’t ever be filled, and thing is, it probably won’t. And it won’t ever get any smaller. But maybe, you start adding things around the hole, you meet new people that take up space in your heart. And one day, the hole seems smaller, because it’s surrounded by so much else.” He took a breath, smiled softly at her. “I lost everything when I went into the ice. And I’m sure I’m not done losing, either. But I’ve got a lot in return. I got Bucky back. I got to see Peggy again. I got to meet a new team, and – and you,” he added, rubbing the back of his neck. “So, I can’t feel empty. Not when I’ve got all these people.”

But she wasn’t wrong – not all change was good. The Avengers were about to go through some major changes, and he had a feeling it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience. Things were about to get rough, a storm was coming. Steve was preparing the best he could – but you couldn’t tell where lightning was going to strike until it was too late. “Speed dial. I know how to work that one,” he said, smiling gently at her. “If we’re trying to even the scales, I’ll owe you for about another seventy years,” he pointed out. “But don’t worry. I’ll keep the phone on, and I’ll always pick up.”

Maybe that was a dangerous promise to make. Especially going into everything they were about to face back home. Nick Fury was proof that even the best laid plans could go sideways at the last moment. Of course, Fury’s solution was to have even more plans, contingencies upon contingencies. “It kind of was a cape,” he said, tilting his head to the side. “I… I never realized that before.” He laughed before he could stop himself, just a quick, strangled sort of sound. Maybe he really was losing his mind like Stark was saying.

He nodded, quiet and solemn as his laughter faded away. “There’s no better way to say it,” he agreed softly. “But I don’t think she would’ve liked living forever. Maybe she would’ve, but I feel like the Peggy I knew had too much respect for death to turn away the reaper.” He glanced over at her, their hands entangled now, her fingers so cold compared to his, so he held on a little tighter. “I thought you did a pretty good job yourself,” he said quietly. Her words sunk in, confirming his wildest hopes, and he felt a wave of relief wash over him. He’d always known, just like she said, but it was something else entirely to hear her say it aloud. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Not about accountability, or another SHIELD – you’re right. But… you’ve got family on the other side of this. Family matters more than anything sometimes.” He bit his lip. “I don’t want you throwing something away that you’ll wish you had later.” He paused a moment. “But I’m also pretty selfish,” he admitted, eyes falling to their entangled hands. “I don’t really want to do this alone.” 

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scvietwinter:

With one word, Bucky felt as if he had been hit in the face. The full force of a memory came back, the first time they had gone out on a double date that had actually ended somewhat well for Steve. A quick kiss and no follow up would be a failure for most, but for Steve, that was pretty monumental. He remembered the girl looking at him for a long moment, then asking if he was going to kiss her, and how Steve had blinked a few times and said ‘yes’ so quickly that the poor girl almost got whiplash. Bucky blinked a few times, coming back to the present day with no smell of popcorn in the air and Betty not hanging off his arm, and received yet more affirmation that being around Steve was bringing things back.

Whether that was a good thing or not was yet to be determined, but thus far, there had been no bad memories that had resurfaced with Steve that he hadn’t already remembered on his own, so that was enough to encourage him to continue. “Don’t think anyone’s been that goddamn happy to see me,” Bucky teased, stepping into the apartment, looking around at the place as he went. He hadn’t focused that much on it the last time, but now he was taking everything in. “Now you’re makin’ me feel bad for skimping out on getting the cream filled donuts, Steve.”

The Registration Act. Bucky wasn’t sure what he felt about that. After Azzano he had hidden his abilities, had purposefully ran slower than he could, lifted less than he should be able to. He had been instinctively private, and he reckoned that would’ve continued if he had lived. “You had a point with that whole thing,” Bucky commented, looking at the sofa for just a moment before sitting down. “Orse was an alien, Spider-kid got demasked, the whole thing turned into a shitshow, just like that frontal assault on … Normandy?” That didn’t seem right. “Yeah, I know. Shame really. You have just the right face to be one of those showgirls.” The smirk on Bucky’s face continued to grow, and slowly he settled down into the cushions. “Better than the alternative,” Bucky chimed, rooting around for the remote. He found it tucked behind the cushions, and got up Netflix. “Winter Soldier is definitely melodramatic, right?” Bucky made a point of scrolling through the menu, typing the search in, but he was watching Steve out of the corner of his eye. Sure, he was built like a brick shithouse, but to Bucky, he looked every inch like the Steve he remembered moving in with.

The movie began to play in the background, and Bucky pushed himself back on the sofa again until he was almost lying down. Steve had that persistent cowlick sticking up to high heavens, his face pulled together in concentration, the pencil sketching out over the paper. “Make me look good, wouldya?” Bucky said, turning his gaze from his friend to the ceiling. “Those wartime pieces they got in the museum, they weren’t half bad. Never remembered you drawing half of them.”

Bucky was quiet for a moment too long, and Steve wondered if he’d pushed too far. But then the other man blinked, and stepped inside, and Steve felt relief wash through him. Along with a few questions, questions he could never ask. Was he remembering more? Was he coming back to himself? Did he want to?

Thing was, Bucky had always walked around with an unshakable confidence, but Steve had been one of the few people to see through the facade. To glimpse the real insecurities beneath that charming smile, the hesitation when he buttoned up his uniform. It faded on the battlefield, there wasn’t time for uncertainty when seconds meant the difference between life and death. But Steve had always wondered if it was still there, buried beneath the surface. “I can think of a few people,” he said, smirking lightly. “Sarah. She was always happy to see you home in one piece.” She’d said as much when they came home after one of Steve’s scuffles, repeated the words to him after wrapping them both in hugs. “I can live without the cream. Don’t need nothing fancy,” he said, smiling gently.

Steve couldn’t get the last summer out of his head. When his friends and former teammates had been enemies, when ‘hero’ became a dirty word -- unless you toed the line and kissed the ring. But Steve hadn’t trusted the boots or the hands that were ‘feeding’ them, and now he knew that trusting his gut had been the right move. “Yeah,” he said softly. “But maybe I went about making it the wrong way.” There were some things he said to Tony and the others that he could never take back. “Hannut,” he corrected, on instinct. “Normandy went a lot smoother than Hannut. That was...” He shook his head, the sound of tanks and gunfire booming in his ears, the smell of smoke thick in his nostrils. “You could’ve pulled it off. Everyone always said how pretty you were,” Steve shot back, smirk turning to smile as Bucky sat down. He wasn’t going anywhere, he wasn’t running. Steve wouldn’t have to chase him anymore. “It’s not bad. Don’t expect me to be Watson, though,” he joked lightly. “Melodramatic. That’s one way to put it,” he said, eyes never leaving Bucky as he set up the movie. Steve couldn’t help but feel like if he’d blink, his best friend would vanish again, right before his eyes.

The pencils felt right in his hands, the familiar scratch of the tip against paper was a sound he didn’t realize he missed quite so much. His muscle memory remained, he remembered sketching out the shape of Bucky’s face so many times before. Sometimes he protested or groaned, but he always sat for a portrait once Steve started. “I’ll do my best,” Steve laughed. “Can’t promise nothing.” He paused a moment, glancing up at Bucky. “I don’t think you noticed half the time,” he admitted. “Used to calm me down, before a mission. After. Figured the other guys would get weirded out if I drew ‘em too much, but you were different.” 

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agcntcxrter:

If Fury had been presenting the protection detail of Steve Rogers to any other agent in the facility, he would have hammed up the fact that they would be working in close proximity to Captain America. Hell, they would basically be working with him, if they played their cards right, the only catch being that the man himself would have no idea. With Sharon, Nick hadn’t tried any of that - thank God. He knew about her family’s history, believed in her in a way that few others did, and that meant that he just had to nod at her, slide the file over the desk and trust that she would get the job done. Sharon doubted he had envisioned her being an instrumental part of saving his own life, but maybe he had. Nick Fury had always been perceptive, a visionary, and his loss continued even if she knew he was not dead.

Sharon had known that she wasn’t working with Rogers. She was protecting him. She was seeing who he was under the mask, and maybe if she hadn’t been working, she would’ve liked that enough to say yes to that coffee. Now, though, she was a part of his team. She was with the Avengers, she was heading up the Panel, she had so many new roles that she was spending every day trying to get to grips with them, and being part of Steve’s life wasn’t one of them. It came naturally. “I bet he could,” she teased. “Tall, dark and brooding. And Dugan, with that mustache? No woman could resist him. He used to be the main attraction at my birthday parties.” Sharon grinned, and without thinking too much about it, reached out to touch against where Steve was gesturing. “That’s some insane scar tissue, though,” she said. “That nose couldn’t be broken by the Rhino, now. We could call you Captain Nose, instead.”

The thing that she had been ignoring for the past few months - hell, the past few years, or maybe even four - flipped over again in her stomach, and Sharon, an old hand at this by now, continued to smile through it. “I really appreciate it, you know,” Sharon said, looking down at her milkshake, stirring the remnants of it in the bottom of the cup with her straw. “Leviathan - it’s personal. It’s always been. It’s the one thing that Aunt Peg wouldn’t tell me about, and now that I have the chance to get those answers, it’s – it’s a relief.” She looked up again, met his gaze. “What, even a Hulk?” Sharon teased, a grin coming onto her face. “Clever boy. Always root for the underdog.”

Steve still wasn’t thrilled that Fury wanted him babysat, but if it had to be someone -- he was glad it was her. It was funny how often that sentiment came up. Sharon wasn’t an Avenger, but Steve felt he could trust her as much as any teammate. She was sharper than any person he’d ever met, except maybe Natasha, and she had the determination of an entire squadron. If you were up with your back against the wall, she was a handy person to have in your corner. 

Tall, dark, and brooding -- it sounded strange, but it fit Bucky. At least who he was now. “He wasn’t always dark and brooding,” he said softly, running a hand through his hair. “Used to have this smile that could light up a whole room.” It made every girl -- and some of the boys -- stop and stare. “Dugan at a birthday party, I don’t even want to ask, do I?” he said, shaking his head as memories of the man flashed through his mind. Then her finger was on his nose and his whole brain went blank for a minute. “Captain Nose?” he repeated, once he found his voice again. “I’m -- I’m honestly a little offended,” he said, but he was grinning the whole while. 

His heart was beating even faster than normal, and he was pretty sure that he’d started blushing the second her finger touched his skin. At least she wasn’t looking at him now. “I owe you,” he said simply, taking a sip of his own milkshake. “We’ll find them, Sharon. We’ll get your answers and we’ll take them down. Whatever it takes,” he said, nodding firmly. “Even over a Hulk,” he laughed. “Kind of have to. Stay true to my roots, ya know?” 

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agcntcxrter:

It was somewhat ironic that for the number of years that Sharon had been looking into Leviathan, tracking their every possible movement, predicting where they would go next (something that proved ultimately impossible), she would choose now, when the city was suspended in another dimension, to look into it more tangibly, to follow physical evidence and get her hands on a piece of her family’s shadowy history. Perhaps it was because New York in itself was a world now, and that the city being separate allowed her to narrow it down, think of a definitive place to start. The world was so wide, smaller than people thought but still impossible to entirely navigate, and by narrowing that world down, it made it bearable.

Having Steve beside her made it a whole lot more bearable as well, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. Since Peggy’s funeral - since before that, since before he knew her real name or even what she was doing across the hall from him - he had felt like family, like someone she could rely on, something solid to lean against. Sharon had never needed that, had always thrown herself headfirst into danger whether she was alone or in a team, but sometimes, it was nice to just want something. She wasn’t going to deny herself that entirely.

“I like seeing you like this,” Sharon teased, seeing the glint of his grin in the darkness, matching it with one of her own. “Overrated. Instinct works a hell of a lot better, and right now, I say we’re onto something.” Sharon looped her leg around the cable, using it as a winch to lower herself down. Her feet touched the uneven ground, wet and damp from years of disuse, but something told her they weren’t alone down here. Sharon touched the watch around her wrist, and the holographic display lightly bathed the corridor in blue light.

It was empty, yet again, though this time there were two doors, one on each side. Sharon stepped forward, and that was when she heard it. Something like wind, then tapping, and then the scraping of a chair against concrete. “Someone’s here,” she said, pulling her gun out again. “I can’t tell what direction it’s from. If they hear us coming, they’ll split.” It went without saying that she’d come too far for that. “We need to split up.”

The worst kind of enemies were the ones operating right under your nose. The ones living in your backyard. Secret and subversive, their insidious ideas spreading out and poisoning everything it touched. If he could help Sharon put an end to that poison, clean out old wounds? Then Steve was ready, two hundred percent. No matter what it took. He was with her to the end of the line, wherever it led.

“What?” he asked, grinning at her. “Jumping down elevator shafts? This is nothing, you should’ve seen me back then -- Bucky nearly had a heart attack whenever I went out on the field.” At least, that was the joke, and the reason Bucky always hugged him so tightly it cut off his air when he came back. Away from prying eyes, of course. “You would say that,” he said, flashing her a smirk. “But right now, I think you’re right. There’s definitely something down here.”

When they landed, it was dark, cold, empty. More like a cave than a facility, even with walls and a floor. He sensed it, too, that presence lurking somewhere in the shadow, just beyond the reach of her light. Steve grabbed the shield, positioning himself in front of her, but then she said they should split up. “All right,” he said, following her lead on this one. “I’ll take that way,” he said, pointing left. “You take right. We meet back here in fifteen, agreed?” He met her eyes, firm and steady. “Don’t take them on alone, okay? You see someone, you come back. I’ll do the same,” he promised. 

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agcntcxrter:

( ✉ → national anthem ) Depends what way you spend it, I guess. My family was never one for fireworks we didn’t create, put it that way. Oh no, not the baseball cap of subtlety!! That thing gives me nightmares, Steve. ( ✉ → national anthem ) Good choice, big guy ;)) ( ✉ → national anthem ) I might not be as good at swing as Aunt Peg, but I’ll give it a whirl. Get it?  ( ✉ → national anthem ) I guess I could stomach having you as a partner. Maybe. ( ✉ → national anthem ) Fair enough. But tonight, we’re not fighting or broke, so we’re going all out. ( ✉ → national anthem ) Nightclub dancing probably doesn’t really count as dancing, huh? Just don’t break a leg. No one has insurance to pay for Captain America being out of action.

(✉ → Sharon): You made your own fireworks? Somehow I’m not surprised. Why? It’s a good hat! Why does no one ever like my hats.  (✉ → Sharon): Big guy, that’s still weird to hear  (✉ → Sharon): I get it :) But don’t worry. I never did that dance with her, so I won’t know the difference. (✉ → Sharon): Oh thank god. Good, glad you’ll lower your expectations for me. Maybe. (✉ → Sharon): We could go out on patrol, but I’m kind of attached to this dancing idea now. (✉ → Sharon): I don’t know, never seen it. I don’t know if I actually can break a leg. Not for very long anyway.