loneliness is a cold familiarity by now.
he wonders, absently, often, how do the others accomplish overcoming this behemoth breathing heavily down upon burdened shoulders? steve carries ghosts in his eyes, freeing them with each terse breath and powerful strike. tony buries himself in the mistakes of the past calling them notes and thinking of new means of proving to ghosts that he was right, that he wasn’t the villain. bruce vanishes inevitably alongside him, hands curled and polite as though frightened one ill-placed noise might set free the beast in his veins. natasha is absent entirely, a whisper on many minds but a ghost in presence (she had things to do, a mission to accomplish, to what end though). the rest, well, the rest he does not care enough to notice.
his sister keeps to her room and he keeps to his training.
repetition should have been a saving grace. wake, eat, shower, run, eat, shower, sleep, rinse and repeat. though it wears at him. it eats away layer by layer until he feels too tightly wound, until there is static in his veins and no way to set it free.
wanda’s fingertips across his brow do little to settle him.
it breaks one day, too sharp, too fast, too him. a misplaced word sets it off like a fuse itching for flame. steve’s hands keep him from finishing the job of turning tony’s smart mouth into a broken mess of blood and sarcasm. his chest heaves, his tongue acrid with a ready insult, but it falls short. a roll of his shoulders frees him from warm hands, from contact he’s starved for and back into the comfort of being alone.
“You’re all idiots,” he spits out, gaze stern, blazing with agitation and fixated upon stark’s prone form. “Following him? He will always be bent upon destroying himself all to say that he tried to be a hero.” steve reaches for him, some quiet word on his breath, and pietro dances away from his touch with a step, a twist of a shoulder.
loneliness is a familiarity, certainly, but the look of disappointment in steve’s gaze is a fresh wound. it should drive him to apologizing, yet pietro savors it, stands undaunted with a squared jaw. somehow-- feeling shame was preferable to feeling nothing at all.
