Asphyxiate
Disclaimer: Avengers and said characters do not belong to me.
Captain America brings a plane down into the ocean, but it is Steve Rogers who counts the years it takes him to drown.
"We need Captain America to lead the Avengers, Rogers. They need a symbol." Fury says, like there is a distinction between Steve Rogers and Captain America. Perhaps there should be.
Steve takes a breath and holds it, ice lancing into his chest. "Yes sir." He replies evenly, behind the exhale. The words roll off his tongue like it's only been moments ago that he was receiving orders from his own commanding officer. Not seventy years past.
There are ghosts and whispers roaring like the screech of twisting metal in his ears, but he blocks them out.
There is a plane in his dreams, dipping low on the horizon. It's frame strains as it arcs towards the arctic waters below, and he sees the splinter of wings and ice before he hears the thundering crash. What have you done? Steve Rogers enquires, but Captain America drowns and cannot answer.
Seventy years, his mind had counted every minute, the serum slithering through his frozen veins. Adapt, it implores, because it will not allow him to die.
This century needs Captain America, so Steve picks up the shield and is.
Anthony E. Stark, is an antagonist, picking at the layers of Steve's perfect surface with his barbed words and dark eyes. Steve would say something, in-between breaths, but every-time he opens his mouth he can feel the ice driving farther towards his heart. Instead he exhales and holds his tongue, because Captain America has no surface flaws.
"Everything special about you came from a bottle."
"Everything?" The Captain wonders.
This new century is fast, lights and numbers and voices racing behind his eyes, the serum cataloguing every weakness his vision finds. People are harder, edged in false gold, but brittle. It only takes a bullet to topple a glass skyscraper in this day and age. Metaphorically, he thinks, and does not flinch at the fierce heat in Iron Man's digital gaze or the sharpness in his computerised voice.
Tin armour, he thinks, describes this century perfectly.
"What do you plan to do now?" Stark questions, and the confrontational tone is mostly gone from his voice.
Steve offers him a smile as the Tesseract vanishes, along with it's alien keepers. "Learn to fly." He admits. Relearn to breathe.
Author's Note: A disjointed attempt at Avengers fanfiction. Something of a drabble involving vaguely internal thoughts of Captain America and Steve Rogers.