steve rogers might be in the (wrongbusiness) wrote in remediumlogs, @ 2015-10-14 10:52:00 |
|
|||
Steve could remember every moment of his mother’s last days on earth. An endless waiting game that slowed the world around him to the rise and fall of a chest that struggled to maintain enough air to live. He’d been still a child by standards in the world he’d wake up in some years later - but a man in the world he’d left behind. Barely in his twenties, he’d already been born some kind of old that only a child who’d lost a parent before they’d even made their way into the world could be. He’d never known his father - a name on a wall, a story here and there, a medal that sat collecting dust on the wall. He’d known his mother though. Tough as nails, hard when she had to be but kind and patient enough to deal with the constant barrage of illnesses that seemed to plague his younger years. Sarah Rogers had been more nurse than mother most of those years, a cool hand against his fevered skin, a kind word when he fell behind in class, in life. A woman who had expected more than he could have ever given and only was able to because she expected it. It was only later in his life that Steve realized just how much she would shape how he viewed the world - and the women he found himself drawn to. He could remember every day that passed as the sickness his mother had tried to heal others of dragged her under. Before his very eyes his strong, brave, beautiful mother wasted away. In the end there was nothing but bones beneath shallow and paper thin skin. The constant red smear of blood on her alabaster skin. Once vivid blue eyes that danced with more fight than Steve ever thought possible for someone who had lost so much, became dull and lifeless. Any fight she had tried to give, the words she gave to try to convince her son, and herself, that she would be fine slowly died as she was consumed from the inside out by an illness no one could stop. In the end they both waited for her die and it was a moment in time he never recovered from. In a true twist of cruelty it seemed he was fated to stand witness to it twice more. The last time he’d seen Peggy had been particularly hard - the woman he remembered so vividly from barely a few years prior now a shell of that person. Lost and confused to the trappings of her own mind and age. There were moments of course, but it was waiting. Waiting for the phone call, waiting for the day when her body gave up and she was gone, just like so many he’d known. And now this. Some place removed from time itself and any world any of them had really known. Brought here only to be stuck in the same endless loop that his life had started to taken on. Watching someone he loved die, as the same horrible disease that took his mother found hold in Natasha. The word in his own internal thoughts came easy then. Love. He loved her. He knew that. He was in love with her and he had been - for longer than he knew he even realized. Somewhere between New York and the back of a SHIELD van where bleeding and broken she tried to absolve him of the guilt of what had happened to Bucky. Some moment when the grief of his own life let up for a brief reprieve and he found himself wanting. Not just existing, but wanting. He didn’t say it of course - he had more than convinced himself he was an idiot just for even having the thoughts. What the hell did he have to offer anyways. His life was a broken mess, fractured and split firmly between a life he had a life he had been handed. Natasha was the closest to home he’d had since he’d woken up and that wasn’t something he wanted to risk. He was content to continue with what he had - a friend, a teammate, a partner. The person who had started to fill in some of the gaping holes that had been left in his life when he woke up seven decades into the future. So he compartmentalized, put his feelings aside and tried not to think of them - tried to pretend like it didn’t kill him a little inside to watch her with Banner and convince himself instead that if it made her happy he would be happy. He’d seen her in danger countless times. It came with the territory. He’d seen her bruised, bleeding, patched up on the go or in the aftermath of a fight. It rarely got to him - not like this. Sure there was worry, and he hated seeing anyone in his team hurt. But Natasha was capable, more than anyone he knew really. There wasn’t a fight that he didn’t have faith she could walk away from. There wasn’t an enemy out there that he thought stronger than her. They faced the impossible on a near daily basis and they walked away, it was what they did. Even as they stood side by side on a rock miles above the ground and stared down their certain doom, he had some faith buried in there that they could fight their way out. And if not - well - like she had said, there were worse ways to go (her view might have been the world below them, but his had been her - red curls ablaze in the sun, eyes bright and determined, standing brave instead of defeated in the face of certain doom). At least there death would have meant something. At least there she would have gone knowing that. Fear was not something Steve dabbled in too much. It would be hard - impossible, really - to do what he did with fear. He erred on the side of reckless and he knew it. Jumping out of planes without parachutes, jumping out of elevators, putting himself in the middle of a fight that most ran from - fear was an afterthought. Right then though, fear was the only thought. This wasn’t something they could fight - they didn’t even have the means to. No, this was the unfathomable, an illness that would rip through her and steal everything he loved about her, just like it had done to his mother. It would leave her something he knew she would loathe - helpless and weak. It terrified him in a way he hadn’t known for a lifetime it felt like. He hadn’t moved much from her apartment - he’d gone to get food for Joey, and once to run a quick list off the names on the doors, and to bring people supplies when needed. He knew she probably hated that he refused to leave, and he understood better than most how much you could hate having someone see you sick, weak. He knew as well though how lonely sick felt, how the hours could stretch into some meaningless clump of time, how empty a room could feel when you were stuck in a bed with nothing but your own thoughts to keep you company. So he stayed. Made sure she had water, made sure she got through the worst of the coughing fits. He talked a little, told stories of his life before the war, the things he and Bucky would get up, stories of the Howling Commandos. Anything really to fill up a bit of the silence and try to keep her mind off of things. His own injuries were healing, slower than he was used to but still quicker than others would have had. Nothing much more than a dull pain that was easy to ignore with the bigger issue of Natasha being sick. Some of the others had been healed overnight, and Steve tried to cling onto the hope that the same would happen to those who were suddenly sick. It was all he could do. He set down his journal where he had again ripped out one of the back pages to sketch idly on while he sat on a chair beside Natasha’s bed. She was asleep, which was good, she needed the rest. There hadn’t been much through the night and into the morning. Steve leaned forward and pressed the back of his hand to her cheek, which still burned with the fever and brought a frown to his face. He grabbed the cloth from her forehead and took it into the bathroom to run under cold water again. Without access to the drugs she needed all there really was to do was try to keep the fever from running out of control, be there to make sure she made it through the coughing fits, and just wait. Wait for the miracle, or wait for the outcome he didn’t want to think about. Steve returned to her room and set the cold cloth back on her forehead. He pulled the chair a little closer to her bed. Maybe it was the fact she was asleep, or that even if she did wake he could blame his actions on her being so sick and not something wrapped up in the feelings he usually kept far from the surface - either way he gently took her hand on the bed next to him and laced his fingers through hers. He hated this feeling, helpless to do anything to take the pain from her, helpless to do anything to save her from the one thing in this world she might actually not be able to save herself from. His thumb rubbed idly against the back of her hand and reached his free hand to adjust the cloth on her forehead before he tenderly brushed a few stray hairs off the side of her face. “Natasha,” he said softly, as though testing to make sure she was truly asleep. “Natasha, I - “ the words died in his throat. Was he really going to be that person - the one who couldn't say what he really wanted to say when she'd actually her it. No. Just like he thought she deserved better than the broken pieces he had somehow convinced the world was a whole person, she deserved better than his coming clean in some stolen moment when he wouldn't have to face the consequences of it all. “I’m sorry I can’t make it better for you - I’m sorry I couldn’t get us the hell out of here before it came to this - “ he paused for a moment as the very real possibility that she could die here in this place struck him again and twisted its way through the core of him. He gave her hand a soft squeeze and swallowed hard. “You’re going to be fine, Natasha,” he said and if she were awake to hear it, it might have been hard pressed to tell which one of them he was trying to convince with that. “You’re going to get better and I’ll find a way to get us out of here, I swear.” He leaned back in his chair and ran his free hand over his face lightly. The weight of the situation caught up with him after a few minutes - he’d been exhausted before, running on empty and gone for longer than this without sleep, but this was a different kind of exhaustion - and despite himself he drifted into a light sleep with his hand still entwined in hers. |