This is a oneshot. For those who are following my "For the Love of a Memory" Halo/RvB crossover, I AM working on the next chapter, and am hoping I'll get it up by the end of May or early June.
Also, I'd just like to say in advance that Civil War tore my heart in two when I first watched it, and I despise character bashing with 200% of my being, so anything that appears to be character bashing isn't, it's just an attempt to stay true to the character's perception of the events of Civil War...
And also to serve as a reminder that Tony's not the only one who suffered.
Steve has nightmares.
On the good nights, he dreams of Bucky lying defenceless on the ground, dreams of sitting on his knees beside him, watching a suit of gold and red take ominous clanking steps towards them as snow swirls in the background—why is it always in the snow that he loses everything?—it's core lit by a vengeful blue fire that glows brighter.
As he begs—please Tony—no voice answers. The suit of armour is a cold, empty thing devoid of all empathy as the Arc Reactor whines. There is no voice telling him to move when it fires.
It just rips through him, unforgiving.
On those nights—the good ones—it's the pounding of Steve's heart that wakes him to the darkness of his private room in King T'Challa's palace. He just lies there, waiting for it to settle, and when he reflects back on everything that happened...
He should've told Tony. He knows that, always knew that. Feels the certainty of it in the way his heart twists like it's trying to curl up into the fetal position, that thing he refuses to allow his body to do. Maybe if he had, then things would've ended differently in Siberia. They could've taken Zemo into custody, and, yeah, maybe Steve and Bucky would have been imprisoned on the Raft, but it wasn't like Tony would have left them there...right?
On the good nights, he closes his eyes again and remembers the first time he saw Tony after everything that happened in Washington. He remembers standing by a window in the newly finished Avengers Tower, Tony coming up behind him with two glasses of his finest scotch despite knowing its alcohol content was wasted on Steve.
"How...how're you holding up?" Tony asked, and didn't meet Steve's eyes through the reflection in the window, as though avoiding eye-contact might somehow lessen the significance of him asking that question. Steve wondered who had told him what. If Natasha had said anything about what they had discovered in that bunker, the way the mind of Zola had flashed that newspaper clipping at them like a trophy he was proudly dusting off...
The words were almost out of his mouth, rushing up his throat like bile. But Steve had never been good with words, and even as his brain tried to shuffle them into the best possible order before they could spew out, he found them being replaced entirely.
"As well as I can I guess," Steve replied, "Y'know, for finding out I was working for HYDRA this whole time."
And that just...that was...
Steve would be the first to admit that's probably why the Accords worried him. He had tried, after the Battle of New York, to go back to just following orders, letting others tell him where to strike—and just look at how well that had turned out—and then...then they wanted him to entrust his soul and conscience to a board of faceless men and women that could be so easily infiltrated, corrupted, paid off. It could be the fall of SHIELD, Project Insight, all over again. It would be a board formed by an organization which already had a problem with the fact it only took one of five people saying no, and the world could suddenly do nothing, bound and gagged and forced to watch as countless people died in senseless slaughter, despite the billions of people—sometimes that representative's own citizens—who were crying out to them to do something.
"Yeah, well," Tony said, finger tapping the glass of his scotch, "We always knew that SHIELD had skeletons in the closet."
Steve remembers clearly, as though he is living the moment again, that the truth about Howard and Maria Stark almost poured out of him once more as he turned to face Tony.
But it didn't. Because another memory slammed into him then.
He remembered stopping in a diner during his tour across America after New York, ordering dinner with his motorcycle parked outside, when the face of Tony Stark and the banner "BREAKING NEWS" brought his attention to a TV in the corner. He remembered the vengeance in Tony's eyes as he rattled off his Malibu address and the realization—as he read the title Tony Stark Challenges the Mandarin—that Tony had just done something very, very stupid.
He was dialing SHIELD on his phone before he even stood up from his table, but by the time the call went through, he had already learned that Tony's challenge was hours old, that the message was a re-run, and the screen had switched to show a live-feed of the Malibu mansion falling into the ocean at that very moment.
Steve remembered how his arm had fallen to his side as he watched it crumble over the cliff, Agent Sitwell's voice a distant murmur asking "Hello? Rogers?"
He remembered slamming the phone back to his ear, mind racing—Oh-God-please-no—as he demanded to know what response SHIELD was formulating, where they needed him to go, what they wanted him to do.
Sitwell had been silent for a moment—and, God, does Steve wish now that he'd known what Sitwell was—before telling him "You just keep your head down Rogers, we'll take care of this. We'll...we'll contact you when we know about funeral arrangements," a sigh that, in hindsight, now seems so exaggerated, and a slightly choked tone full of well-practiced sympathy, "I'm sorry Captain."
And then he hung up, and Steve was left standing in a diner without any real idea of what was going on.
So—the memory of Tony Stark's "death" fresh in his mind—Steve turned away again without telling him, because he knew that Tony did stupid things when he was angry. It was probably the one thing they had in common, though Steve had learned that about himself long ago, and always kept one wary, inner eye on the process of his own thoughts in order to catch himself. It doesn't always work, but it's better than letting the rage go unchecked.
He could already see it in his mind. Tony on a rampage against HYDRA, a careless, reckless rampage that would only end with more hurt than healing.
So he answered, "Yeah, I guess we just didn't know how many," and said nothing else as he let Tony change the topic, talking about how, after everything that had happened with Steve, Tony and Thor, maybe the Avengers should consider staying closer together. For purely practical reasons of course, and, hey, there were plenty of rooms in the Tower...and the Avengers would need a new patron now anyway.
And if there was a part of Steve that worried, that knew Bucky's involvement in the assassination was at least a remote possibility, he buried it because the thought of losing one friend to another was enough to constrict his chest and lungs and make him think his asthma had somehow made a comeback. And there was no reason to jump to conclusions, it was only a possibility. HYDRA had plenty of assassins at their disposal.
On the good nights, Steve pulls himself out of that memory, and wishes he had just blurt it out. Maybe, as a team, they would have been able to temper Tony, would have been to able to keep him safe from himself and help him move on, and, at least then, Tony's target would have been HYDRA—the real enemy—and not the man they had unmade. Not a fellow victim. Not Bucky.
But those are the good nights. The good nights when it's still so easy to hope despite the self-recrimination, when he knows that Bucky is alive in the lower levels, and T'Challa has the best scientists and psychologists in Wakanda trying to dig HYDRA's claws out of him. It's still so easy to hope that, somehow, someday, he and Tony can come to an understanding, find a method of accountability that's better than the slap-shod, fear-driven Accords.
It's still so easy to hope that the phone on his nightstand—which is always in his pocket during the day, because that's as close as he can get to being there for Tony right now—will one day ring.
On the bad nights, Bucky is lying there, pinned by that vengeful, empty suit, and Steve is running as fast as he can but he never gets closer. It's like they are standing on two opposite points of an elastic band being stretched farther and farther apart.
Bucky's not fast enough either. Not fast enough to twist his head out of the way of the fist that's crashing down.
Tony, no! Please, please don't! It wasn't his fau—
The fist shatters Bucky's skull. Turns the protector of Steve's childhood into a mush of bone fragments and brain matter. Turns his brother into a headless corpse. And, when Steve has finally reached Bucky's side—like the elastic has slowly been allowed to bring their points back together—the suit of armour just looks at him, the faceplate somehow looking coldly satisfied, and then it gets up and flies away, leaving Steve to drop to his knees and just sit there, hoping that the cold will freeze him there, let him wake up in another hundred or so years—no. Let him not wake up at all. Is that what Tony wanted? Does he feel so god-damn happy now!?
In these dreams, Bucky dies more than once, in more than one way. The worst is when Steve is watching the armour—not Tony...because Tony wouldn't do this...would he?—grab Bucky by the throat and dangle him over an icy cliff, dropping him as Steve lunges, missing Bucky's hand by inches and watching his past repeat itself as Bucky falls.
On the bad nights, Steve wakes up with Bucky's name choking him but never quite making it past his lips, with his eyes burning and his face wet and reaching for a shield that's no longer there. On the bad nights, he doesn't lie there. He kicks off the sheets and turns on all the lights to chase away the demons hiding in the darkness.
He prays. He prays to a God that this modern age keeps telling him isn't real. He prays for peace, for comfort, for God to reach into him and tear out the anger and boiling heat that makes him want to take that phone and smash it, the same festering anger that almost, almost brought his—no, Howard's—shield down on Tony's neck.
He prays to God for the strength to face his own dark side. For the strength to forgive. To face his failings and do better. For the chance to bring them all back together and make them whole again.
On the bad nights, he doesn't quite believe Bucky is still alive, so he heads down to the lower levels and stares at Bucky's frozen face through the glass of the chamber. Resists the urge to ask the scientists to wake him up, so that he can see the warmth of life in Bucky's face again, can hear his voice.
Instead, he just remembers.
He remembers the wheeze and ache of lungs that had forgotten they needed to expand in order to draw in air, not contract. He remembers his small, ten year-old fist clutching tightly to fifty cents—his lunch money his mother gave him, barely able to scrape even that together—as a bigger boy kicked at him, trying to pry his fingers open, while his friends cheered him on.
"HEY!"
Bucky's fist broke the other boy's nose that day—he'd been learning to box even then—and, after chasing them away, he crouched down next to Steve, offered him back his newspaper-filled shoes that were too many sizes too big and had fallen off in the altercation, and helped him learn to breathe again.
He remembers he had been so damn embarrassed. He had scrubbed at his face to wipe away the tears that came from knowing he might very well suffocate then and there.
"I coulda taken 'em," he had said, as though he hadn't just been choking on his own lungs a second ago.
Bucky had snorted, pulling him to his feet, "Right, 'cuz you're a tough little punk ain't ya?"
Steve was still gasping slightly for air, "You're...a...jerk..."
"Name's Bucky."
"...Steve."
And suddenly Steve had a brother from whom he barely spent a day apart.
Because even when Steve had nothing—nothing to offer or give, no worth, and, eventually, no family to claim as his own—he still had Bucky. Bucky who didn't hesitate to hold him like he would a brother, no matter the occasional judging and suspicious stare it brought. Bucky who spent all his savings to buy penicillin when Steve caught pneumonia and didn't leave his side. Bucky who gave and gave and gave until HYDRA took away everything he'd ever had to give.
Steve doesn't let himself weep when he remembers, no matter how much it hurts. Instead, on the bad nights, he sits there in front of the cryo-chamber until Sam comes to find him in the morning.
"You eaten yet Cap?" It's always the first thing Sam asks, and Steve always makes the same reply.
"I'm not really hungry right now."
Sam doesn't press the issue, he just sits beside him. Sometimes they say nothing. Sometimes Steve tells him about Bucky, sometimes it's about all the mistakes he's ever made in his life, sometimes about how hard it is to live in a world that believes his morals are "antiquated," and how people would look at him as though he is somehow a lesser, unenlightened soul from an era of neanderthals for having them. It bothers him that there is no definite right or wrong in this era, that, somehow, it's supposed to be okay to look at a tormented, broken man and justify killing instead of healing him. When he says that, he stops himself, takes a deep breath because he knows he's very specifically talking about what Tony almost did. He takes everything he's thinking, that he's said, and puts it back in a box locked behind the unflappable composure of Captain America that he just can't seem to drop for even five seconds.
Sometimes, it's Sam who talks. He talks about Riley, about the missions he's flown, why he joined the military. One time, he talks about Leipzig. He talks about the moment Vision opened fire with that beam.
"He tried to kill me," Sam says, and he folds his arms to hide the shaking of his hands.
"Sam, I'm sure Viz didn't mean—"
"Maybe not. Maybe he reacted before he could think about what would happen if that beam hit me, but that doesn't change the facts, Steve. If that beam had hit..."
Sam doesn't need to finish the sentence. What happened to Rhodes when Sam dodged is proof enough...and Sam didn't have full-body armour. If the beam had even just nicked Sam's wings or the pack...
It would've been a smear on the ground below and a closed casket, instead of a crater and physical therapy.
The worst part of that conversation though, is when Sam laughs, and shakes his head.
"I ain't suicidal," he says, "but sometimes I wonder why I wasn't selfless enough to just take the hit."
"Sam, you couldn't have known it would hit Rhodey," he wants to add "it wasn't your fault," but that would be pointless and hypocritical of him, when he knows damn well what its like to blame yourself for something anyway. There was no way he could've known that Zemo never intended to wake the rest of the Winter Soldiers, no way he could've truly known what he was being manipulated into, but, just like with SHIELD, he feels like he should've known.
"Do you ever regret it?" Sam asks after a moment.
Regret what, exactly? Regret not telling Tony about his parents? Yes, so much that it hurts. Regret not signing the Accords?
...No. Steve could never regret that. He could regret that he didn't find a better way, that he wasn't there to at least propose a suitable compromise or alternative, he could regret that things spiraled so hopelessly out of control.
Did he regret trying to get to Bucky first? No, but he does regret not asking Tony to help him do it instead of just Sam and Sharon. Because Tony knew—still knows—what Bucky means to him, and maybe he could've done something to help...
Sometimes, he regrets not trusting Tony more...and sometimes, especially on the bad nights, he regrets trusting Tony at all.
Steve doesn't really need to answer Sam's question...he can see the same yes/no answers adding themselves up in Sam's head too, some holding more weight than others, and Sam sighs.
"I guess our little team's gonna need it's own name now," Sam cracks a smile that isn't truly happy, "How 'bout Neo-Avengers, or—"
"I'd prefer something without 'revenge' in it," Steve admits, feeling his innards flinch at the name of their old team.
"If we can't save...avenge..."
Because they were Avengers...and that name never did feel right. It feels, even more-so now, like a resignation to failure, to fight for something already lost in a battle that would never win anyone anything but more heartache. It's a name that invokes the image of someone who wallows in their own pain, holds it tight, and inflicts it on others because they just don't know how to let go.
On the bad nights, Steve feels like he might actually hate Tony Stark, the man who seems to fight more for the dead—for himself, for the pain and guilt the dead cause him—than for the living, for the things they still have the power to save...but Steve knows that isn't true. He only has to remember the Chitauri invasion to remind himself of that.
So sometimes, on the bad nights that turn into rough days, Steve has to remind himself that there is pain as real, deep, and aching as his own under Tony Stark's skin. He has to force himself to put the phone in his pocket when he leaves his room, just in case today is the day it rings. He has to consciously, deliberately, choose to think of Tony Stark as his friend.
He has to put the image of his friend choosing to try and kill his brother—who had gone so long without such a basic right as "choice"—out of his head. He has to take a hundred more looks at Bucky to remember he's alive.
It's harder to hope after the bad nights, harder to believe that this rift will ever be mended, harder to imagine he and Tony as anything other than two men on opposite sides of a problem that has no perfect answer.
But he still stares at the phone, and somehow still hopes.
I feel like Steve is a very misunderstood character, which is a shame. I love all the Avengers as the broken, imperfect people that they are (even if I want to shake them sometimes for doing something stupid), so it was really hard to watch them come apart like that in Civil War, and even harder to see the fans character bash the opposite side of the one they favour.