I don't own anything
Steve Rogers knew it was hopeless. Buying that old apartment in Brooklyn that he used so, so many years ago used to call his own. His home. The nice family of four didn't want to sell it at first. He wouldn't have either. The view was exquisite. Or at least it used to be. Who knows which wall had been built in front of the window he used to paint next to.
Eventually they sold it. Steve suspected Tony having anything to do with it since the family kept thanking him for buying the flat as they moved in a way bigger home somewhere in the city. He really wished Tony didn't do that, but he also silently thanked the genius for doing so.
Steve Rogers left that apartment seventy years ago hoping to get into the army and fight against bullies. He did so. Not exactly as planned, but he managed. The skinny short and weak young man that used to walk through the door of the flat seventy years ago was long gone. That Steve Rogers was long lost somewhere in the ice. Or maybe he died on that train with Bucky Barnes.
Yeah, that was it. The two best friends used to do everything together. The only time they weren't able to do so was when Bucky got accepted in the army and skinny Steve didn't. But Steve didn't stop trying to be with Bucky and at the same time do something good. He had been sure he would die in the war if he managed to get in. He had been right. Steve Rogers died.
Bit by bit ever since his body changed. A bit more with each Captain America show. The final straw was when Bucky was captured. Or maybe not. When Captain America left to save the soldiers lost on the other side of the border, on the enemy's border, that was when he truly felt that Steve Rogers was back. That was when he felt helpless but also like he was doing something for the first time in months. He really liked the kid, Steve Rogers. He was a good kid. Nobody expected anything from him and so people were pleasantly surprised when he actually did something useful. Captain America was expected to do everything perfectly and save everyone. Also to be the perfect human in morals and actions on top of all that. He was looked up to by everybody. He had met people, like Coulson, who were ten times the person Cap was, yet still looked up to him. He felt like a fraud for failing all of them.
Captain America opened the door to the flat and entered. He breathed in the smell, not opening his eyes to see anything yet. It smelled like newly painted walls and like burnt food. He played with the keys in his hand deciding whether he recognized anything in the smell. Of course not. For him it might have been just half a year ago that he crashed with that plane, but seventy years had passé over the apartment. Steve took a step forwards and the floor cricked, but turned on his heel and crouched down to hid the key in the same place he used to back in the day. So that Bucky would know-
He drew in a sharp breath. Bucky didn't even remember his own name. Bucky disappeared. Bucky died. Bucky-
Bucky wasn't Bucky anymore. Just like Steve wasn't Steve anymore.
The Winter Soldier and Captain America. They weren't each other's best friends. No, that used to be Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers. Other people, other times.
The Winter Soldier and Captain America were each other's missions and even though Steve had willingly let Bucky win the fight and kill him and that Bucky save Steve, that didn't change anything. It never could.
Still, Steve hid a set of keys and shut the front door behind him. The hall was empty. The other rooms were the same. What did he expect? His old bed which was broken in a corner? His old drawing place by the window? The pencils and paper where he left them? Maybe SHIELD somehow tracked down his things after they'd been, naturally, sold after his disappearance. He put down his backpack which contained all his stuff and walked up to the window. It wasn't the same window. It wasn't the same broken window through which you could have felt each pale of wind in the winter. It was new and you could see clearly through it a much different view. New buildings, new cars, new people. Everything was new and foreign. But it still kept some of the things Steve remembered. The barber shop in the corner of the street, which obviously was modernized, but still recognizable. The threes in the park on the left grew a lot since he last saw them.
Steve Rogers was home. Captain America was home at last.
Each day he came home and made sure that the key was still where he hid it. Each day he was disappointed that it was. A foolish hope, but it was still hope.
About three after moving in, he was watching the enormous plasma TV Tony insisted he bought as housewarming gift, because Tony was a stubborn son of a gun, Steve let him do as he pleased. Next to the TV were some bookshelves and some books about what had happened historically in the last seventy years and some movies Clint brought him and made sure he actually watched them by popping up every week or so to watch them with him.
Thor was still on Asgard and Nat was still off the radar, doing god knows what. Since the deal with Agent Carter, his 'neighbor', Steve was wary of the people who lived next to him. He doubted the old married couple who took a liking to rock music in the last week and a half were SHIELD agents. Fury was pretty sneaky though.
He kept zooming out during the movie, so he decided to stop it. Just as he was about to hit pause, there was a knock on the door. Clint was away on a mission somewhere in Europe and Tony and Bruce were in the middle of doing something Steve didn't really try to understand in the Avengers lab.
He walked up to the door and opened it to see a familiar red head.
"I see you've already decorated" she smirked and walked in, dropping her coat on a chair next to the table. She left her sneakers next to the door and jumped on the couch, popping her legs on the coffee table.
"Make yourself at home" Steve murmured as he closed the door and sat next to her.
"What are we watching?"
"The nightmare before Christmas I think"
"I love it. Put it on"
Steve nodded and did that. About five minutes in he decided to ask her, since she didn't seem to want to be the one to start the conversation.
"Where've you been?"
"Around" she shrugged and Steve didn't push it.
Another ten minutes and she spoke up. "I'm working on wiping off the red-"
"On your ledger. You know you kind of already did that when you saved the world in the battle of New York" he said, neither taking their eyes off the screen. "Not to mention that time you saved a lot of people from being blown off the face of the earth by an agency that would have basically enslaved the whole world"
Natasha almost flinched. "It doesn't count"
Steve's eyes widened comically "It doesn't-?How can it not count?"
She sighed. "Steve, you have no idea what I did. If you knew-"
"If I knew what? That you started the fire at that hospital, that you've been a KGB spy and that you killed countless others? Believe me I didn't find out all of this because I wanted to. It's all over the news and there are still people to say that you're a hero no matter what you've done in the past."
Natasha stood up and walked to the window. Steve didn't follow her.
"Steve, not everyone's a hero." She sighed. "Not everyone's like you. I can't wipe all that blood off my hands just because I did one good thing in my existence."
"Then when?"
"When I'm dead. Dead people are forgiven everything." She turned around and sat back down, both of them trying to focus their attention to the movie.
"Bucky's off the radar." Steve broke once more the silence.
"It's not your fault." She replied
"How can it not be? I was the one who left him after he fell off that train. I should have jumped too. Even if there wasn't any hope of finding him alive I should have. It should have been me, then-"
"Then what?" Steve looked up. Nat's tone was sharp and annoyed. "Then HYDRA would have won. We all have dead people, Steve. Yours is not dead enough to let you live in peace, but that doesn't mean you should wish you were the one brainwashed and used as a living weapon"
They went back to watching the movie and while Nat was still annoyed at him, she dropped her feet in his lap and didn't look up from the screen once.
When she left, she gave him a quick peck on the cheek, looked him in the eye and said. "If he's around, he'll come back here"
Sometimes, like that time Clint broke into his apartment and by the time Steve arrived home, he thought that the archer was a HYDRA agent waiting to attack him, Steve really wished that he didn't live most of his life surrounded by spies. Other times it turned out useful.
And after one day he got home to find the key he hid when he first moved in not there and walked in to be blinded by the sun reflecting on a metal arm, Steve really loved Nat's housewarming gift.