ex-HYDRA.
Yeah. I would have. If you die over there, you're a hero. Nobody has to know what war does to you. That it made you hard. That it made you the sort of person who can act without mercy. They get to live their whole life thinking you died how they remembered you. If you come back, though. Everybody who goes comes back wrong. Not just me. Everybody. There's nobody who can kill a man and have it do nothing to him. It does less every time. But the first time it does something.
It would have been better for him. If I'd died before he joined up. He'd have died years ago. Old age or asthma, or one of the myriad other things that was begging to take him. But while he lived, he'd have found other people who loved him well enough. He'd think of me sometimes, and lay flowers on my headstone every Armistice Day. But it would have been a good life. While he lived, he'd have been happy. Or happy enough. He never would have had to see what the world does to people. What it did to me.