Loneliness

"The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness. Memories need to be shared."

Lois Lowry, The Giver

It'd started with a simple question, a question that led to a surprising answer.

A week after the Battle of Manhattan, Tony invited all the Avengers to his mansion while Stark Tower was being rebuilt. Steve accepted, his apartment had been destroyed during the chaos and S.H.I.E.L.D. had yet to provide other options (though he suspected that they wanted him to take the offer anyway.)

A month after that, two new heroes joined the Avengers Initiative, Ant-Man and Wasp. There was story behind their draft into the Avengers, but S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn't tell them what that was.

This is going to take some getting used to, he'd thought when Ant-Man and Wasp (or Hank and Janet as they liked to be called when off duty) had first grown back to normal size. He supposed he'd seen weirder things in his life time, he just couldn't remember when.

To his surprise, it didn't take long to get used to the constant growing and shrinking of Janet and Hank. What was taking a long time to get desensitized to, however, was Clint and Natasha's habit of popping up unnoticed around him.

Steve began a schedule of his own after a while of living at the mansion. There wasn't much for him to do. He wasn't a scientist like Bruce or Hank, he wasn't an inventor like Tony, and he definitely wasn't helpful in the lab like Janet. S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't often give him a mission like they did Natasha and Clint.

So he began a routine of his own leisure. During the morning, he'd go on a jog before breakfast, then after breakfast he'd work out in the gym. After his work out, he'd spend his time familiarizing himself with the history he'd missed.

Sometimes he'd be in his room for the duration of his studies or he'd spend some of it in the extensive library of the mansion. And that was where Janet found him one afternoon.

"What'cha doing?" she asked as she zipped in beside him.

"Reading," he answered offhandedly, almost solely focused on the book in front of him.

"I can see that, but why a high school social studies textbook?" she questioned while alighting on the edge of the textbook.

"I missed a lot and I need to catch up," Steve replied, looking up from where he was reading and turned the page.

"You lived at least a chapter of what's in here," she mused. "Hey there's a question I've been meaning to ask you, you don't mind, do you?"

Steve merely smiled, he'd gotten used to being asked question about the events he'd lived through. "Sure, go ahead."

"Historians aren't reliable on this, but did Miss Victory exist?" Janet asked excitedly. Clearly, she really liked the historical figure she was talking about.

"Yes, Miss Victory did exist," Steve replied. He was thankful that his words didn't choke in his throat. While it may be a subject of interest to Janet, to him it was still an opened emotional wound.

She smiled broadly. "Thanks Steve, I was sure she existed, but historians are saying this or that, and I couldn't be sure."

Janet zipped off again, getting what she needed from the library and left.

Steve tried to return to his reading, but couldn't. He couldn't stop thinking about a young lady barely becoming a woman with a disarming, but shy smile. A young lady becoming a woman determined to fight for her country.

It was a dreary day when Steve arrived at the orphanage and the first thing he noticed about the place was that a little girl with brown hair in pig tail style braids was sitting on a window seat staring at people who happened to pass by. She'd given him a sad but somehow comforting smile and a friendly wave as he was escorted into the building.

He didn't know her name or anything else about her, but that small gesture comforted him in a dark hour. Everything was unfamiliar to him, but that friendly gesture reassured him that things might get better for him.

That night he ended up in a room with other boys his age in the empty half of a bed.

The first sad days at the orphanage turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. During the duration of that time, Steve felt lonely but he surprisingly found a friend in his bunkmate, James who preferred to be called Bucky. He saw the little girl many times, but they never spoke. Steve tried to talk with her, but she usually remained quiet and he didn't know why.

In the meantime, his friendship with Bucky flourished. They had many commonalities, but there were many differences, their health and self-preservation instincts (or lack thereof) were perfect examples of that. It didn't take long for a routine to forge itself.

If (or rather when) Steve got himself into a situation where he was getting beaten up during a failed attempt to defend someone from a bully, Bucky would jump in and save him from said beating.

Once in a while the person he was defending from being bullied was the little girl, yet he'd didn't even know her name.

"Who's that kid?" Steve asked one afternoon as all the children of the orphanage walked home from school. Ahead of him and Bucky walked most of the girls, most of them older than either of them. Among this group was the little brunette girl with braids being escorted by the older girls.

"You mean Braids up there?" Bucky asked pointing to the little girl.

"Yeah, who is she?"

"That's Molly O'Brian."

"You mean Molly O'Dumb," piped up Max, the resident bully of the orphanage, loud enough for the group of girls to hear him.

"Why's she so quiet?" Steve ventured to asked, hoping that it'd be Bucky who answered.

Instead, Max chuckled a little before saying: "That kid's either mute or too stuck up to speak to any of us."

"Why do you say that?" Bucky asked, evidently curious as to what other theories there were about Molly's silence.

"They say that before Molly came to the orphanage, her family was rich, but she wasn't an only child. She had a greedy older brother, and when her parents died her brother sent her here, because he didn't want to deal with her," Max responded in a conspiratorial tone.

"I doubt that's the real story of why Molly's here," Steve said flatly. The story he'd just been told might be plausible, but Steve thought it sounded too outlandish, besides Molly didn't seem stuck up to him.

"Trust me, that's what happened and she's too stuck up to speak with us," the bully replied in a voice that was loud enough to be heard by others walking nearby.

"How would you know if she's never talked to anyone? I bet she's just shy and lonely," challenged Steve as Max walked on with a shrug. Ahead of them Steve couldn't help, but notice that Molly had looked over her shoulder and was watching them.

After that conversation with Max, Steve resolved to become friends with Molly, but it seemed to be a herculean task. Molly hardly said a word even to those of her own gender and she had a surprising talent for slipping away unnoticed when she wanted.

"Give it up, Steve," Bucky said one evening when Molly got up from the table she'd been eating at as he and Bucky had just sat down. "Molly's a lost cause. She won't talk to anyone she doesn't want to, and she definitely doesn't want to talk to you."

Steve only sighed at this.

Becoming friends with the younger girl did seem like a lost cause, and Bucky might have been right. In fact he was partially correct, if Molly didn't want to talk to someone, she merely gave them a knowing expression and sometimes nodded while saying nothing until the person talking got bored of have a one-sided conversation.

However, if she did desire a conversation, it usually occurred on her terms and she was the one who initiated it. She always waited until she found the right moment to speak.

It took a while, but when Molly finally found the right moment to speak, it caught both him and Bucky off guard ….

"Leave him alone, Max!" her shrill cry tore through the fray as she stepped between the bigger boy and him and Bucky.

Steve had gotten himself into the usual situation again. He'd attempted to stop Max from picking on some of the newest members of the orphanage.

Of course, Bucky had stepped in and tried to help when Steve couldn't do it himself, but Max was bigger than both of them.

"What?!" Max sputtered, dumbfounded that the smallest and quietest in the orphanage had tried to break up the fight and was surprisingly succeeding.

"I said, leave them alone!" she repeated angrily. Before Max had any more time to react she charged at him and shoved Max, sending him stumbling backwards and into a laundry basket.

To say that everyone was surprised by Molly's actions would be the understatement of that century.

Steve ran a hand through his uncombed hair as he nursed a cup of almost lukewarm coffee. He'd had a hard time sleeping again. Visions of what he'd seen throughout the wartime plagued his dreams and a certain female American icon was making cameos in his dreams for the first time in a while.

He had decided to forgo sleep that night in order to keep those dreams at bay.

The click-clack of high heels against the stone floor brought Steve out of his reminiscing. He knew that one of the women in living in the mansion was coming to the kitchen.

"Good morning, Steve," greeted Pepper as she entered the kitchen. Pepper was always one of the first one up, so he often talked to her in the mornings.

"Morning, Pepper."

"How was your run?" Pepper began to rummage around the cupboards. She probably had a harder job than any of the Avengers, herding two scientists (Hank was Janet's responsibility) and running a Fortune 500 company was definitely harder than saving the world.

"The weather's gonna be nice today," he commented, taking a sip of his coffee.

"Are you alright?" Pepper asked him. She had pretty much become a big sister to every Avenger with the exception of Tony.

"I suppose so."

"Uh-huh, Steve lying is not one of your specialties. You're hurting, anyone could see that, including Tony," the strawberry blonde woman prompted in a comforting tone as she took a seat at the table expectantly. "It always lightens the load when you share it with someone."

"It's not something I like talking about," he said attempting to dodge the topic.

It wasn't as if this was an unexpected gesture. He'd talked to Pepper about a lot of things, including his almost relationship with Peggy. The only topic that hadn't been brought up was that of Miss Victory or Molly, as she was better known to him as.

"Did Janet's question bother you?" she asked suddenly.

"No, no. It's just I don't …." Steve sighed defeated; he didn't know the right words to describe how he felt about Molly.

"You miss her, don't you?"

"Yeah, I do miss Molly."

Pepper merely nodded, mulling over what he'd told her.

"You know, my mother died when I was very young and my father raised me," she said in a comforting tone. "When I got older and wanted to know more about my mother, I took a cue from Because of Win Dixie."

"'Because of Win Dixie'?"

"It's a good book and a movie. Anyway, Dad and I made a list of all the things Mom was and we added to it every year on my birthday. It became a way of remembering her," Pepper suggested. "I now do it for my father every year and treasure the list of my mom. Maybe to remember Molly, you should do something special."

Steve nodded thoughtfully, before asking: "Did it help to remember?"

"Yeah, it did. It became easier for my dad to talk about Mom," she replied, before getting up and retrieving her breakfast from the cupboards.

Steve thought for a moment as he downed his coffee and headed to his room. He decided to skip his work out session and act on Pepper's suggestion.

His room in the mansion looked like it still belonged in the 40's; he had Tony to thank for that. If it weren't for JARVIS interrupting the silence every now and then, he might actually wake up thinking he was still in the time he was born in.

From one of the book shelves of the bookcase, he selected an empty sketchbook, a permanent marker, and a few pencils. Steve set the supplies on his desk and opened the sketchbook. On the inside cover, he wrote: "Molly O'Brian" with the permanent marker and flipped opened to the second page in the sketchbook.

Sighing, Steve settled into his desk chair, he knew that he wanted to draw something that was a special characteristic of Molly, but he didn't know what to draw. He didn't often think about Molly, it was for the same reason the he didn't think about Bucky.

Steve sighed again and rotated his chair so he could stare out the window. He couldn't find the right memory to draw, most moments he could think of made him too sad to draw.

From the window, he began to glance around his room. Tony had taken the liberty of decorating his room with different pictures, they were mostly stuff that he would have seen on the walls of theaters as a kid, but one of them was a picture of fireworks.

He couldn't help but smile when the thoughts of Molly and fireworks collided. Steve swiveled his chair back to the desk and began a drawing which he planned to title: "Trust."

The incident with Max was the christening moment in the start of an unlikely friendship for the three of them, it especially surprised both of them that Molly had the courage to assist them and Molly seemed intent upon surprising them more than once.

She began talking to them more and more, but still it was only when she chose to converse. Bucky was fairly hesitant about the friendship with probably the least conversationalist person in the world, but he tolerated her and Steve was pretty sure that Bucky admired the spunk that Molly possessed when needed.

Steve did find that Molly was pretty lonely. He didn't find out why Molly was so quiet, or at least not at first, but he did find that she was quite talkative when she wanted to be or wasn't intimidated.

Eventually, when Bucky started to warm up to the less than talkative Molly, he made it his personal mission to find the one hundred and one ways to make her laugh, much to Steve and Molly's amusement.

A few months after their friendship began; one of the few things that they learned about Molly was that there was a three-way tie for her favorite day of the year. Those days would be her birthday, Christmas, and the Fourth of July.

"Bucky, Steve, come on," squealed Molly, this was the most excited they'd ever seen her before. "I really want to see the fireworks."

"Hold your horses, Molly," Steve panted as he followed Bucky and Molly into Central Park.

"Just hold on, Squirt," Bucky said, stopping the party of three just past the entrance. "Let Steve catch his breath."

"Oh, right, sorry." Molly shuffled her feet. Steve could see that she was excited to see the firework display.

"Its okay, Molly. It's the Fourth; you're allowed to be excited," Steve placated, bringing a smile onto Molly's face. "So you ready to get that spot you were talking about?"

"Yeah, but are you guys ready?"

"Of course we are, Squirt, let's go," Bucky said, patting Steve on the shoulder as they moved further into the park with Molly leading the way.

The Fourth of July was a special day for those living at the orphanage; they were given some money, and escorted to Central Park by some kindly neighbors where they were let loose for most of the afternoon.

Molly, Bucky, and Steve were trailing behind for Steve's sack, but Molly was really eager for something, and she wouldn't tell what.

"Do you think she's more excited about the fireworks or the ice cream?" Bucky muttered to Steve as Molly skipped ahead of them.

"It's probably something else if Molly is anything like she usually is."

Slowly Molly led them to a grassy knoll with some shady trees. It wasn't too far from the pathway, and a very nice place to sit and relax.

"So is this where we're gonna be spending the rest of the afternoon?" Bucky questioned as Molly reclined on the incline.

"Yep, but you don't have to if you don't want to," Molly said softly, as she played with her single braid that she wearing for the special occasion. Normally, Molly had a pig tail set of braids, but for the Fourth the older girls of the orphanage had done something special and made it in a single one held in place with a blue ribbon.

"Nah, we haven't got anywhere else to go, Squirt," replied Bucky. "Well at least for the time being."

"This is a nice spot to draw, Molly. I wish we could come here more often," Steve said.

Molly just nodded.

As the afternoon continued, Bucky went off for a while to play with some of the other boys, Steve drew their game on a small sketch pad as best he could, and Molly was content with watching everyone. When Bucky's game came to an end, the three of them get ice cream from a street vender and sat under the tree eating it.

The evening was coming and Steve and Bucky were conversion with Molly interjecting every now and again.

It wasn't too long until the firework display would begin as their conversation fizzled out when Molly revived it with a question that took them off guard especially since it was Molly who asked it …..

"So Steve, Bucky, how'd you … end up at the orphanage?" she asked sheepishly with a yawn.

"My parents died in a car accident," Bucky said bluntly.

"Oh … I'm sorry to hear that. What... What about you, Steve?" Molly turned to him with a small expectant smile. "You don't have to say if you don't want to."

She must have noticed his hesitant look. Steve knew that Molly wouldn't pry if it was something emotional and private.

"No, it's just my family wasn't the best and my dad … well," Steve trailed off. Bucky already knew the story and Molly was smart enough to fill in the blanks, even if she was quite a few year younger than them.

"What about you, Molly? Why are you here?" Bucky asked and the effects were instantaneous. Molly's face went almost void of emotion; apparently the topic was a touchy one.

"It's alright, Molly, you don't have to say if you don't want to," Steve said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Plus the fireworks are gonna start."

The first initial boom of the fireworks sent them looking to the sky and aweing over the bright colors contrasting the night sky.

Molly looked up at the sky for a moment, but her gaze returned to the ground, a very thoughtful look on her face.

"My parents had to leave with me with my brother to get work, but something happened and my brother left me at the orphanage after a few months. He promised he'd come back for me, but I don't think he's gonna," Molly said in a soft sad voice, but it captivated Steve and Bucky's attention immediately.

"I'm so sorry, Molly," Steve said.

"Your brother might've left you here, but you got us and we're gonna stick together," Bucky said.

Molly looked up from the grass patch she'd been staring at and to them, slowly a genuinely bright smile spread across face. With that smile on her face, Molly turned back to the sky and watched the fireworks explode brightly.

That night Bucky gave a sleeping Molly a piggy-back ride back to the orphanage.