This has been in my head for months, and so I figured it probably deserved an hour to type up. I don't own either movie.
Jack grimaced. He wasn't sure where he was, but it was empty, and very, very, cold. He had been walked through, by a little girl. More importantly, and infinitely more upsetting, there was a war, everywhere, and he couldn't do anything. He had tried taking bread from the soldiers, and giving it to the children, but that hadn't worked. No one could see him. He tried to make it harder for the planes that flew, and dropped bombs from high in the sky, asking the wind to batter them relentlessly, but he could only do so much. So at night he hid in the shadows, and tried not to listen to the children crying. But it hurt so much when they walked through him. More than crashing through trees, or falling out of the sky when the Wind dropped him. It was like his soul was being pulled out.
That's why he was having a tantrum. He believed it was more like a well deserved emotional let-out, but both he and the Wind knew it was a tantrum. Ice shards and hail stones the size of Jack's hand. He screamed into the wind, not expecting a response, because there never was one. No one ever answered.
There was a sound, like the skies being torn in two. Louder than the Wind howling in his ears. He looked up. It was a plane. It looked different than the plane that flew over the water, different than the usual fighter jets. Black, sleeker, and most definitely crashing. There was no way that that plane would not crash. The engines were smoking, and it was headed straight for the snowy ground.
Jack watched as the plane hurtled into the ground. Any fires were put out by the heavy snowfall. Tantrum forgotten, Jack walked closer to the air craft. He couldn't see any signs of life. He walked through the barren ship, and reached a large room. Probably where the pilot had flown the plane. Lots of equipment lay on tables, and there were signs of a struggle. It appeared that all the occupants were dead. Like so many others.
Jack turned to leave, when something caught his eye. A bit of sunlight reflecting on a piece of metal. He turned the disk over, and saw a blue star on the front. Probably left by a soldier. He glanced around, more carefully. He peered under a table, and saw a man. An almost dead, but actually alive man. Jack had no idea how he had survived, seeing as the ship was completely wrecked, but the man would die if Jack left him here. He reached down to pick him up, but his hand went right through the injured man. Of course he wouldn't be able to touch him, no one believed.
Jack resigned himself to the man's fate. He couldn't get help, and he couldn't help the man himself. That left only one thing that he could do. He could give the man a decent burial, like he had so many others.
The man was already lying down, so that made things easier. He placed a compass that had been lying next to the man in the front pocket of the man's jacket. Jack carefully covered the body with snow, making sure that the man was able to breathe. Better to die of natural causes than being suffocated. Once there was coffin shaped pile of snow around the man, Jack placed his hands on the snow, and concentrated on turning it into the clearest ice he could manage. When the man was encased in the ice, he stepped back, and admired the icy coffin. He grabbed the shield (if it was a shield) he had found earlier and placed it on top. He assumed it was the man's, since he didn't see anyone else in the room.
Feeling hollow and sadder than he had, Jack made his way out of the ship. He cast one more glance back at the ship, already coated in a few inches of powdery white snow. He hoped the man had lived a good life. Jack couldn't remember his own. He wondered if the man would die content. He surveyed the cold wasteland before jumping up into the sky, trusting the Wind to catch him. He always moved on.
Steve Rodgers pulled out his compass with Peggy's picture. He had always wondered how it had gotten back to him. He assumed that the people that found him had picked it up, and decided it belonged to him. He treasured that picture. It was the only piece of his past he had to hold onto. Sometimes he wondered why he couldn't have just died, like a normal person would have. But he decided it was better to move on, and hope that she had lived a good long life, and that she was happy in the end. After all, wasn't that what they all wanted?
