Steve means it as a joke, because he really has been getting better.
He has.
"Right? I mean, what kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?"
It isn't until the dust has settled the he remembers what he said.
The first day of training was fine. The new recruits are a little green, but all of them have some field experience already, so he has no concerns that he and Natasha wouldn't be able to whip them into shape. After the long hours of drills, he lays in his (too soft) bed, staring at the ceiling.
"…what kind of monster…"
Monster, indeed.
It's dark, too dark, and the black is more than a little suffocating. Steve verbally orders the lights to dim. Sitting up, he pushes the army green comforter off of his legs, ignoring the fact that it falls to the ground. It takes him a few minutes to stumble to the door and out into the hall, not because it's dark, but because the word keeps echoing through his head like some sort of sick chant.
"Monster…monster…."
"If you are a monster, then what does that make me?" A cool voice with a Russian accent asks. Steve turns to find that somehow he has made it to the small kitchen on his floor. Wanda sits in the dark on a barstool, her back turned to him. As he approaches her, the thin light of the moon illuminates the bottle of cheap beer in front of her; her middle finger lightly running in circles over its rim. "I apologize," she says suddenly, just as Steve opens his mouth to speak. "I do not mean to pry…you were projecting." She spits the last word out as though it were poison.
Steve leans his hips against the side of the counter perpendicular to Wanda, watching her carefully. Her shoulders are hunched forward as if pushed down by a heavy weight, her eyes underlined with bruise-like circles. "You're not a monster, Wanda," he says gently, the volume of his voice befitting the nighttime.
She huffs out a laugh and cuts him a brief sideways glance. "You say this to the one who fought against you." Her accent seems thicker in the middle of the night. "I convinced Pietro to join Hydra. I convinced him to hate Stark. I asked him to help evacuate city." Her hand closes around the brown bottle and she brings it to her lips. She tilts her head back when she swigs it in a way that shows a rebellious defeat. When she sets it back down, it thuds heavily against the silence. "It is my fault my brother is dead."
"You didn't know what would happen," Steve answers firmly.
"And you, Captain?" She asks bitterly. "Did you know what would happen?"
He opens his mouth to rebuff her, to say something to make her feel better…but shuts it again when he realizes she is right. He's lost so much that the weight of it all crushes him. He pretends to be normal for the others, but its all a lie. A horrible lie.
"I didn't," he finally responds to Wanda.
It is a few long moments before she says anything else. "The second time we met, when you came to find Ultron, the vision I caused…" She pauses, but she doesn't need to explain anymore because he has lived it a thousand times over in his dreams. Because what if. What if he hadn't crashed the plane? What if he could go home? Wanda speaks again just before the questions become overwhelming. "I did not realize how close it was to the truth. The visions…" she pauses to take a long sip of her beer. "They feed off of one's darkest memories and imaginings." Her voice is slightly slurred and her accent is just on the barrier of being too thick to understand. "You, Captain…even your happy memories are sad." She turns her head to look at him for the first time, her stormy grey eyes catching the faint moonlight. "Why?"
The single word is laced with a million emotions that Steve recognizes (because he's a monster and he's seen too much and lost a lot but they all expect him to "Fall in, Rodgers!", but somehow she seems to understand). He can't take her probing gaze for more than a few seconds, so he lowers his head to stare at his hands. The hands that have killed too many (it stopped being about bullies a long time ago) and destroyed too much (it's his fault Bucky isn't Bucky anymore; Steve should have tried harder to catch him).
"I…" he starts to answer her in an effort to push back the suffocating black that permeates his mind. But he finds the words getting tangled on their way out so all he says is, "I don't know."
Wanda sighs. "I don't know either," she whispers, but Steve knows she is talking about herself rather than him.
"Pietro made his choice," Steve says firmly after a moment. He tilts his head to look at Wanda again. Her dark hair hides her face until she turns to meet his eyes.
Her eyes search his gently with what isn't quite pity. He's glad, because he's had way too much of that already in his life. (He isn't sick anymore but he still feels like a burden and he hates that word but he can't imagine feeling like anything else. And sometimes he thinks all the pretending to be okay has made it real, but it's not and it isn't, and okay is kind of a pipe dream now.) Wanda responds gently, "You are so quick to defend others, but never yourself."
Steve gives her a gentle smile and hopes desperately that he isn't projecting his thoughts into her mind again. "I can see that you're still grieving," he answers.
"I could say the same about you." Her quiet words are like a punch in the stomach. She smiles sadly, then says, "I think…the rest of your Avengers…they do not understand this. They expect you to be okay, but you have lost."
Its strange how well she is able to explain what he is feeling since he learned a long time ago to keep his mouth shut. And she's right. He's lost, in so many definitions and variables.
She pushes back the barstool and not-so-gracefully slides off. The beer hasn't seemed to have done her any favors. "I am going to bed, Steve. But perhaps we should grieve together."
She's gone while he is still wondering if his name holds any meaning.
Because he's a monster and he's worth "Captain" and nothing more.