Steve keeps praying for gray hairs.
But if the world has left him scarred, it has also left him ageless.
The only way out is a violent death, and he knows it.
Steve cannot quite bring himself to pray for war, though he wants to.
.
The world had mourned his loss and turned on. There is no mercy in salvation. They lifted him from the deep when they should have left him there.
.
He finds he likes music. It's strangely easy to listen to, even though the sounds are like night and day to what he knew, because music tells stories that strike hard without asking any questions.
Steve drives when he can (muscle memory is as real as any other kind), and he turns the radio up.
.
If anything, it's the familiar that hurts the most.
Ingrid Bergman looks too much like Peggy. So does Vivian Leigh. So does every actress he ever saw in celluloid and silver on the screens he once knew.
Steve can't watch old movies.
Doesn't stop everyone who knows him from dropping off stacks of DVDs, like that's going to save him.
Like Steve Rogers is someone who can be saved.
.
He takes a bullet to the chest in a skirmish in a clandestine coup in North Korea. It doesn't pierce his armor, but it leaves a dent. Steve runs his fingertips over that dent. His adrenaline won't let him give in, not in the heat of the moment. But he thinks about that bullet, thinks of every bullet that might have done it, that might have ended it, and all it leaves him thinking is—
Ended what?
.
Someday, Steve Rogers will have a gravestone (at least, so he prays).
He doesn't know what the date will be, but he knows it will be long after it should be.
.
Sokovia. New York. And the icy sea.
There is always a listing of the dead, and he lines himself up behind it as he once lined up at the recruiting offices, wondering where—and when—he fits.