They were going to be happy. No, they were happy – he at least has to believe they were happy. He knows he was happy, but he also knows that sometimes he can run roughshod over people when he's in a mood. That his happiness or sorrow or anger is a screen through which he dimly sees the outlines of others. So maybe they were happy or not, but he knows she smiled and he felt her melt in his arms. And sometimes the look in her eyes… It wouldn't be fair if that look wasn't love.
The problem is that he's looking back and he doesn't know if he's seeing what he wants or not. So maybe they were happy, and then one day she was smiling with tears in her eyes. "Please say something, Steve!" And he had frozen up because the man who wanted a wife and kids and a picket fence died in the ice. And thinking like that at such a wonderful time maybe that's when it started to go wrong. Maybe it's all his fault after all.
Except the little voice, that kind of sounds like Tony and almost sounds like Bucky is screaming 'bullshite'. Because yeah it is his fault, but not because of that. And she wasn't smiling or at least it wasn't a happy sort of smile. It was the smile Peggy would give him some times when supply lines fell through or a POW wasn't gonna pull through. It was the smile Tony gave when people let him down. It was the smile Sam had given him before he left after he found out about Siberia.
It was raining and she was staring out of one of the huge windows with legs folded primly and head held high. He doesn't want to deal with this because she had been sick and Scott wasn't saying anything but he looked stressed. He can't watch another woman wither away – can't hold back her hair or wrap her hand in his or watch her push food away because it won't stay down. But – it was raining and he couldn't tell if she was crying or if it was just the reflection from outside.
Her fingers stroked the paper in her lap as though mapping a dear face she might never see again. "Scott was right it seems. I'm pregnant Steve." And somehow that's worse than if she had said cancer. So- so he doesn't know what to say, and that's no surprise because he never knows what to say. Her chin lifts the barest of inches as she turns eyes as impermeable as the dark of the ocean floor. Briefly, the chill that never quite leaves him began to steal the sensation of his limbs inch by painful inch and then – and then she smiled. "Say something Rogers."
So he said, "Are you sure? Maybe it's a mistake." The smile stayed put as she turned back to the window. "It'd be a mistake either way – I never wanted children that's why I paid for a Tijuanan Hysterectomy. There shouldn't be anything for the little parasite to latch onto. Can I please be alone?" And from the position of now he sees that he should have stayed or at least – at least something rather than almost literally run away. Except that when it comes to things he can't punch he's a bit of a coward.
Enough of a coward that Scott has to step up, and does he ever. Scott is something of a blessing because he handles Sharon's moods and needs with a deftness belied by his easy-going nature. No one can stop singing his praises including Steve, and yet Steve has probably never hated someone so much in his life. Sharon takes her pills and chokes down meals for Scott. She tangles their hands together when they go for walks. She falls asleep with her head on his shoulder or lap giving sleepy protest when he tries to leave. Sharon SMILES for Scott. They share little jokes and laughs and Scott holds her hair when she's sick and-and… And you'd think it were Scott's child.
It's stupid – it's beyond stupid. Someone needs to be there for Sharon and it isn't going to be Steven. All he can feel is a breathtaking panic at the thought of a child. He loves Sharon or he could come to love her, but he doesn't want to marry her right now. Then again he doesn't want to be the kind of deadbeat who knocks up a girl and then won't take responsibility. A stand up guy marries a girl he got in the family way, but then again a stand up guy marries a gal before he fucks a child into her. And he doesn't want to be a father at all – sometimes when she complains about cramps he hopes with everything in him that the little bastard will pass as a clump of cells and blood.
But it doesn't even as the cramps get worse and looking at Sharon is like gazing through a stain glass window she gone so damn pale. The weight keeps falling off even as her hair thins and her nail beds go a little blue. "I don't need a damn doctor Rogers!" A plate shatters by his head and then a glass at his feet. "Honey, please come here." And there's room enough for two Sharon's in the space she leaves folded in Scott's arms. So of course, Scott walks her to an appointment and stays with her overnight and the next day and the next day and a week of Sundays.
"You must understand – it is not that Mr. Rogers is Superhuman. It is more that he is not quite human." And everyone is carefully not looking at him as he stands a little apart. The presiding physician is a tiny man with a mass of white hair and a wrinkled face swallowed by his facial hair. Briefly, Steve wonders if so much would be an effective padding against the force of his fist. "What does that mean? Are we not compatible? Will the baby self-abort?" And if there is a thin ring of hope at the idea of his child dying Steve can't quite find it in himself to judge Sharon. "Ah, no. The child, unfortunately, takes after it's father in that regard." And Scott's hand doesn't quite touch her.
He's smarter than he looks because the news has pared all the softness left to her leaving something bitter and ready to draw blood. "Don't bother softening it doctor just tell what this thing is doing to me. Why am I sick?" "The specimen has integrated with the uterine wall like a parasite, but it is behaving like some mixture of a fungus and virus. It shoots off tendrils which work to convert the flesh it encounters into something matching its genome." Steve doesn't quite get the full meaning of things, but he knows what fungus and virus and parasites are so it's no surprise to see rage-filled eyes staring into his.
The bleeding stops sooner rather than later.
Her screaming tantrum does not.
Eventually, they bind her to a bed and run lines to keep her hydrated and fed. It doesn't help – her limbs are still stick-like and her eyes are huge in her skinny face. Her belly, however, is grotesque not in size but in how it visibly shifts. Sometimes it roils like a storm at sea, other times it becomes a valley ringed with jagged cliffs. One night a nurse comes across a whispered conversation – even though Sharon lies unconscious spittle dripping down her chin.
Scott sits with her during the day even though she mostly sleeps now – until the day he gathers the courage to grasp her hand and finds shoots of bone and climbing veins attempting to assimilate the limb. His screams alert the staff but they are unsure of what to do. It takes Clint coming in with a makeshift blowtorch and a bone cutter. T'Challa apologizes and promises to make the best prosthetic. All he asks in return is that Scott not leave the care of the doctors. That Scott submit to a few tests. That Scott agree to be monitored and properly secured. Scott smiles and nods – and the next day he and Pym's suit are missing.
It's been six months since things began and Sharon doesn't speak. Her eyes move without registering things while her hair has turned a cool platinum blond and her eyes are cornflower blue. Sometimes whispers are here from her room at night, but the nurses refuse to check on her without reason. Clint watches her from the air vents and he when he doesn't he drinks. He drinks and sometimes he wonders out loud how well the creature can heal from fire. Steve doesn't rise to the bait mostly because he's still not sure how he survived the pressure and cold of the deep. Seventy years of effectively being dead with no oxygen or food alone with a thousand hungry fang-filled mouths. And he's just fine.
'It's not that Cpt. Rogers is superhuman, it is that he is not quite human.' Something woke him up, something is wrong. The light switch doesn't work; the constant hum of the electric fences is silent. It's too quiet. A quiet rasping as though something were dragging a heavy object along the hallway outside. Steve exits out the window rolling to absorb the impact of falling three stories. All the lights are out and that does not bode well. There is a scream like a kettle blowing steam and then silence again. He should go and see what is wrong. He should but he is not going to. Or rather he does not have the opportunity to.
He wakes up in a transparent cage like the ones on the Raft. Across from him is Sam wearing only his skin with fingers fluttering in the air by his ears like spiders desperately weaving. Or it is partly Sam, but one eye contains multiple iris all of them a shade of blue. And splashed across his face is a swatch of sun-kissed freckled skin as though someone tossed bleach at him. The pattern repeats all over him with too many fingers on one hand and an arm as slender as a bamboo cane attached to a forearm that could belong to the hulk. Or his right leg which could be a match to Wanda's right down to the butterfly tattoo on its ankle.
Suddenly Sam screams and begins beating his head into the door of his cage. No blood splatters but a thick black substance begins to ooze out of the corner of his altered eye and his flaring nostrils. It smells of low tide and meat left to rot beneath a noon day sun in summer. It is the smell of Steve's nightmares and he finds himself curled into a corner. And of course this is somehow his fault – but he doesn't know how to fix it because he doesn't know what when wrong. He wishes… he needs Tony. Tony would know what to do.
Its hours later when he gets his wish. The entire front of Sam's cage is caked in black, but the sound of it battering the ruin of its own head comes regularly. Or as regularly as it can be considering how thoroughly Sam has made a pulp of it. Gingerly Steve's mind edges around the details of that thought even as bile edges up his throat. "Fuck. That is… yeah, that's really something. Fuck." It's Tony's voice but he wears an Ironman suit that looks like it's made of pearl and gold. It also hovers a stable six inches off the floor through no obvious means.
"Tony?" The suit turns to him easily and then comes closer – "Rogers. Like the suit? It's the best Wakanda, Pym, and my own genius could put together in a month's time. Yeah, kid you are an amazing power napper. Of course, the simple ass load of drugs we pumped into you probably helped, but man you sleep like the dead. Maybe have that looked at?"
"Anyway, you and an unfortunate number of others are in the Raft which is now referred to as the Quarantine. Somehow you and Carter the Smaller have produced the Crawling Madness and unleashed a Zombie apocalypse on us all. I would congratulate you, but I am really fucking tired of your bullshit fucking things up for all of us. And now it's time for you to go back to sleep." And a mist rains down dragging him under.
He wakes strapped down to a reinforced gurney with something being pumped into him. He has never felt so weak, and that's bad because he's being rolled through a hallway of horrors. Something that glows red and brings to mind thoughts of worms and cocoons with a jaw that literally runs to the floor. And there is the impression of a cavernous stomach and searching tongues lined with teeth. Her hair is the color of dried blood with highlights of gold, her hair because he would know Wanda anywhere.
It gets no better – Scott is wrapped tightly around by his own limbs over twenty of them from what Steven can quickly count with fingers reaching out of his eye sockets to braid the air. He has no mouth… But he doesn't need it because Clint is screaming for him flapping massive bat-like wings made from the skin that should be covering the dark glistening muscles of his body. Steve watches as the muscles double in size and each centimeter ratchets up the volume of Clint's screams. The next few rooms are dark, but in at least one something rips. Like wet leather being torn by hand and there is bright happy laughter like a child's.
"Hey look, Chuck, the poor shmuck is awake!" And Steve looks up into the dark face plate of a biohazard suit. "You know you've been out for a couple of months right? Well, congrats! You're a dad! I'd love to tell you what you had, but I ain't got a death wish." Chuck elbows the talkative one and then shrugs, "So Subject Prime is being an ass because she wants you to meet the um… "kid" or maybe the "kid" just wants to meet you. Can't nobody tell what part is her and what part is it/him/whatever. Either way Banner thinks it's worth a go – then again I don't think he's quite forgiven you for what happen to Widow. God that was ugly."
The orderlies? continue chatting as he rolls past rooms that are only curtains of flesh and rooms where bodies bind themselves into balls that roll and bounce, and rooms where people hang themselves with their own intestines his own blue eyes staring back out him from faces they don't belong to. Finally, there is a final door and then
Sharon.
The boy.
Wanda's fine hands.
Sam's kind eyes.
Scott's chest split open from Adam's apple to giblets… a heaving bowl filled to bursting with hearts.
Clint's smile as small as a tic-tac and as larger as a man's thigh repeated over and over and all of them laughing.
And Bucky taken apart like Baby's First Puzzle but still alive and screaming.
And Natasha – and Natasha's belly – and Bruce should never ever forgive him.
"Come meet the baby."
And Chuck shoves him in before they slam shut the door.