Steve Rogers stared at the beat up old typewriter for three days straight. What else did he have to do? Work could only occupy his mind for so long, and sweeping the streets could hardly be considered an absorbing profession—even then, amidst the dirt and grime, his mind drifted to the past. Funny to think that just a week ago, his whole life had been lined up in front of him—the job of his dreams grasped tightly in his hands, and the love of his life in his bed. That first night, alone beneath the Paris lights, he thought he could feel his lover's lips on the back of his neck—every gust of wind, the man's fingertips ghosting along his jaw.
Steve no longer entertained such fantasies.
In just a matter of a week, he'd fallen into routine: sleep, work, eat, stare at the type writer, and sleep again. The old machine taunted him. Buttons worn down from the year he'd spent pressing them to breaking point, a single sheet of blank white paper calling for answers, for words, for some small purpose in this empty and meaningless world. And oh, how he wished he meant that, how desperately he longed to feel nothing, to lock himself away, to close his heart off from the world; life would be easier, he thought, in the black and white, but he'd seen colors streaked across the world's canvas in shades too vivid to name, and he'd lived in the in between, in the spaces between words. To turn his back on that now would be blasphemy. After all, a tragic ending hardly discounted a good story.
And their story certainly had been a good one.
Steve pulled his chair closer to the table, but rather than place his hands upon the keys, he stroked his overgrown beard and stared out the window. Below him, the city stretched on for miles—Paris, 1900—and what a sight it was to behold, bustling with life, constant proof that life goes on after death, for if it did not, the city—the world, even—would certainly have stopped in its tracks—frozen, silent, still.
Tearing his eyes from the scene, for he could no longer bear to look at the brightly colored outfits or to hear their loud, joyful, songs, Steve shut the window and slowly—hesitantly—placed his hands along the keys of the type writer. His fingers pressed down upon every letter, and yet he could feel the pressure pushing up like a pounding force, pushing up, up, up into his fingers, into every nerve in his body until it made his heart race. It shouldn't be this hard—rationally, he knew this—but art wasn't made to be easy, was it? If it were, everyone would do it.
A great man once said that writing was painful—or was it a woman? Or was it many writers? Thinking back on it now, Steve wasn't sure he'd ever met a writer in his right mind (and in this city, he'd met many, many writers) who claimed to find ease in the writing process. Such a man was a fool. To write was to pour your soul onto paper, to express the inexpressible, and such impossible things could only be made possible through sacrifice. Writing hurt. Luckily, Steve had never been afraid of pain.
He choked back tears as he pressed the first letter onto the blank page before him. "The greatest thing you'll ever learn," he wrote, "Is just to love, and be loved in return." He left a space, then heaved a deep breath and continued, "SHIELD. A night club, a dance hall, a market for the future, and a bordello. Ruled over by Nick Fury. A kingdom of night time pleasures, where the rich played with the young and beautiful creatures of the underworld. The most beautiful of all these was the man I loved. A brilliant salesman, he sold his love to me. The man I loved is dead."