Still-frames in my mind

Summary: Tony. Steve. Natasha. Grief never really fades, it lingers and resurfaces in waves. A series of scenes post the last few Marvel movies. A semi-sequel to 'Drawn from Life'.

AN: Yes, this is late for a reaction fic, so it isn't one. It's also not a fix it fic. I just needed the time to frame my response.

After Siberia.

After "Did you know?"

After, "He's my friend."

And after, "If you need me, just call."

Tony had had Happy arrange for someone to box up Steve, Wanda and Sam's things. He never asked where it went, what they did with it, but he knew Happy wouldn't just throw it away. So, one day, not too long after "If you need me… need us," Tony walked into a storage room thinking it was a short-cut, like it was supposed to be on the map, only it wasn't. Instead of a short-cut to the bathroom, it was a room full of boxes. The boxes where labelled - S Rogers.

For a good long while Tony stared at them, stared at them like he could still feel Rogers's fists. Still feel that burn of "I don't care. He killed my mom." Stared like they were alive and living and full of that smug, self-righteous, tight-ass asshole who just wouldn't… couldn't … ever…

He didn't mean to open one. Didn't plan on finding out what Steve Rogers had left behind, had walked away from because of his misguided, stubborn pride. It just happened.

The box was new, stiff and fancy. All too easy to open. Its contents were both unexpected and very unsurprising.

The sketch pad was full, thick with pieces of loose paper. Worn down pencils, nubs of charcoal, a brand new, unopened graphite set and other miscellany filled the box, along with three other sketch pads. Unable to stop himself, Tony opened one of the pads, lifting the top, battered cover.

Coulson's face stared back at him. Slight smile. Glint of mischief in his eyes. How had Rogers…. Pepper had mentioned something about Phil maybe still being alive, but Tony nonetheless felt the all too familiar kick of regret, grief at the loss of that man. Even if he was still alive, he was lost to them… him. The scrawl of notes, expressing the teams' shared grief was a fresh agony. Clint's precise print. Tasha's Cyrillic secrets, Banner's blue inked 'Thank you'. That team was as gone as Coulson was. A figment of the past. A distant memory.

He turned another page. Thor laughing. Barton asleep. An exploding cartoon Iron Man.

The sharp headache behind his eyes was familiar too and Tony slapped the book closed, hands shaking as he did so. Without looking back, he left the storeroom, half-contemplated ordering Friday to nuke it.

But he didn't.

Shuri gave him a look so expressive of 'WTAF' when he asked if there was an art supply store in the city, that Steve couldn't tell if it was because she thought he was idiotic for wanting paper, or stupid for assuming they didn't have artists in Wakanda.

When she gave him the fancy tablet and high-tech pen to draw with state of art app, he figured it was the idiot for wanting paper when he was hiding out in a high-tech heaven.

In his defence he tried it. Tried the various apps and settings geared for artists. Yes, he knew what an app was, thank you very much. Managed to get the pen to produce a near perfect look of a pencil, and drew a decent picture of the view from his window. But it took too long to tweak the pen's settings, to refine the lines and shades he wanted. He struggled to find the finesse and nuances that came from an actual graphite pencil and after several aborted attempts at portraits; he put the tablet and pen in a drawer and forgot about them.

Besides there wasn't really time to do much drawing. Especially when he, Natasha and Sam spent so much time moving, hunting, helping, all the while staying off Ross's radar, avoiding Tony, side-stepping the authorities.

When Steve thought about drawing, when the urge flashed through his fingers, as he lay awake at night remembering faces and places, he'd swallow hard. Look away. Focus on committing the moment to memory rather than paper.

Tony's face while watching that damn film. Long-ago pain made new and fresh.

Wanda's expression in Lagos. Fingers pressed against her mouth. Eyes wide, shining.

Bucky's dead eyes, flat, the Winter Soldier staring straight through him. Helicopter blades burning through the sky.

Tony lying on the concert, suit face-plate missing. Blood on his face. Anguish so profound that it burned.

Peggy grasping his hand. The grain of her casket. The stained-glass windows in the chapel.

They changed phones and numbers so often it was pointless trying to keep pictures even if he remembered to take them. Tasha sometimes snapped a selfie when they were going to casual in a crowd. She never shared them. He didn't have a permanent home in Wakanda. A nomad in so many ways, Steve buried the impulse to draw and let the faces, the swirl of regret and pain settle into the recesses of his memory, so that he dreamt about them, woke with visions of friends dead and lost, fading images of nightmares for company, the absence a gaping wound.

When Shuri contacted him about Bucky and mentioned almost in passing that he was up, working, recovering, Natasha insisted they return to Wakanda briefly. 'Come on, Steve. A mini-vacay. We could do with some down time.'

Steve hadn't argued.

As he walked into the room that wasn't his, that held the small duffle of what he had accumulated in the months since Berlin, since Siberia, it wasn't hard to spot the sketch book, and box of fine art pencils on the side table. A memento of the past in an African future state.

Shuri feigned ignorance when Steve thanked her, but her smile was as bright as a sunrise as she turned away.

He drew that smile first.

Natasha wasn't snooping when she found the sketchpad. It wasn't hidden, or tucked away, or in a drawer, cupboard, box. It was on Steve's bed when she walked into his room, looking for him. Sure, she didn't need to look, didn't need to open its pages, flip through it, stop. Pause.

She didn't need to, but a lifetime of training and experience in using opportune moments, gaining insights, checking on a friend and she barely gave it a second thought before the pad was open and her knees buckled.

People knew Steve drew. That he was good at it. It was in his SHIELD file, that he had attended art school with Bucky before joining the US Army, before the serum. Because of his fame, because of his legend, the transcripts of his year at school were in the Smithsonian, and his teachers had been effusive.

Raw, brilliant talent.

Incredible skill to capture emotion.

Will outgrow the naiveté his style evokes.

It wasn't his art that people remembered though, not when he looked the way he did, not when he could do what he did, not when he was Captain America. Honestly, had Steve never become Captain America, not even his talent in pencil and charcoal would have gained him fame. He may have been able to earn a living with it, if he had survived his asthma, and general poor health. It was more likely however that Steve would have lived a short, un-remarkable life and his sketches would never have seen the light of day, let alone the Smithsonian.

Natasha remembered that funny little cartoon he'd drawn of kid-Tony poking a dragon. Clint had photocopied it, scanned it, snapped it, instagrammed it, hell, he'd pretty much ensured that any Avenger could at any time call that little cartoon up and laugh at it.

There was nothing cute or funny about the pictures in this sketchpad.

Natasha Romanova sat down on the bed, her legs unable to support her, heart thudding in her chest, eyes wet. Page after page, the book was full, crammed, front and back.

Bucky. Sam. T'Challa. Vision. Wanda. The little tree-guy.

Tony.

It wasn't so much the faces, the ones they had lost, even though that hurt too. It was the frantic, frenzied strokes that captured their faces. Deep, dark lines, smudges from fingers, impressions of a pencil pressed hard and fast across the page. A soldier, a friend, desperate to remember, to capture, to scar into memory and time these faces. The lost. The ones who were gone.

Bucky smiling, laughing, in uniform, face blank, angry, lost.

She couldn't help the sob that rocked her as she stared at the sketch of what could only be Bucky's last moment, reaching out towards Steve, face stunned, surprised, fearful. It was both detailed and scant in refinement, like Steve had taken extra special care with Bucky's face, eyes, hand, but had left the rest to the barebones of 'there'. Like it had been too hard to draw, but it had to be done. Must be drawn.

Like Bucky there were pages and pages of Sam and Wanda. Laughing, smiling, fighting. Natasha touched the picture of Wanda and Vision looking at each other with such love, such devotion. Her fingers shook. How, when had Steve ever seen them look like that? Was it real? Or imagined, wished?

Sam glaring at Bucky, both of their expressions just … so… perfect and she was crying, the images blurred by tears. God, they hated each other so much, would snipe and snark insults at a moment's notice. United only in their devotion to Steve and Natasha struggled to stop her tears.

Vision did not feature on his own much, but Steve had taken the time to sketch the moment when Vision lifted Mjolnir and Thor's expression was spot on. T'Challa arced up off the page like he was reaching across time to claw his way back to life. Steve captured his spirit in a few lines, his grace, his passion. It was hard to study, to stare but she did. The noble Prince stared back at her, his eyes demanding a response. Why?

Page after page, Natasha turned, turned back, stared, turned again. She couldn't look away. They were there. Recreated in graphite, brought to life for a moment and the deep loss she couldn't, didn't want to shake grew inside her.

They had no idea where Tony was, if he was still… alive. Dead. Lost. Gone.

No matter, Steve drew him. Drew that annoying, lovable smirk that you wanted slap off his face and then hug off him at the same time. There was such a feeling of regret, of guilt in the pictures of Tony, like Steve was trying to reconcile with the man by drawing him, giving him life. While honest, the pictures emphasised the best parts of Stark. His love of life. His passion. His sense of right, of doing what he believed was right.

God, she hoped he was still alive. Somewhere.

Unable to see the pictures anymore, the tears were so thick, Natasha put the book down, afraid of ruining them, washing her friends away like Thanos already had. When had Steve drawn these? Last night? This morning? It had only been two days since… three? Was it three?

She wept, huddled in on herself unable to stop the flood of tears.

Distantly, like a passing shadow, she heard Steve come in, pause and then move towards her. She was stronger than this, she knew she was, but as he sat next to her and pulled her into his arms, Natasha, product of the Red Room with so much red still in her ledger, let him. Let him wrap her in those big strong arms which had failed to stop this disaster. Like hers had. Like they all had.

Steve rested his chin on the top of her head, gentle and warm. Still trying to hold herself together, still wracked with sobs, Tasha felt his arms tighten, pulling her closer. "I'm sorry," he murmured and her fingers clutched at his shirt, pulling at the soft material.

"I … I had to…"

His voice broke, and she just nodded, not wanting him to continue.

They sat like that, holding each other together until Tasha's sobs calmed, and Steve's ragged breathing evened out. In the quiet of a room in a city grieving for its dead and all it had lost, Natasha whispered more to herself, but mostly for him, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have…"

She meant the snooping. For going through his sketches. For crying. For being weak. For failing.

He was so quiet, so still, even while his arms trembled. She could feel his throat moving, they were so close, so close that she felt the rumble in his chest as he said, "It…I can't… Tasha… I…"

Hot tears fell on the back of her neck, as Steve curled around her, seeking what no one had offered, no one could give. Too close herself, too close to more tears, she let him cry, felt his tears on her back and let her own tears fall.

On the bed, Sam and Bucky glared furiously in mock hatred at one another, the page already marked with dried tears. Unable to stop herself, Natasha grabbed the book and pulled it close, clutched it and closed her eyes.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Fin