"BUCKY! NO!-"
"AAAAHHHHHHHHHH…"
The screams of his best friend falling to his death echoed through his brain as Steve Rogers sat bolt upright, covered in cold sweat and gasping for air in the still apartment. Just three days out of the ice and it still felt like yesterday to him… Bucky… The Red Skull… HYDRA… for the rest of the world it had been 70 years. Seventy years….. everyone he had known or loved – gone. And not just gone – forgotten. The world now was unrecognisable and nobody cared about a super soldier returned from a war long over… nothing more than memory and novelty…
He rolled out of bed, running a hand through his sweat dampened hair. He got up and fetched himself a glass of water from the jug in the refrigerator. His new apartment here in DC was nice, plainly furnished courtesy of Nick Fury and SHIELD but adequate for his needs. It was certainly much nicer than the tiny apartment he and Bucky had rented together way back when. Good one, Rogers. Almost a full 30 seconds without thinking about him… Steve thought bitterly, shutting the refrigerator door with more force than necessary.
He balled his hands into fists and swallowed down the frustration and despair that consumed his every waking moment. The team of clinical psychologists and SHIELD agents who had debriefed him had said he just needed time to adjust. They deemed him disoriented and confused, as anyone would be, waking up 70 years in the future. And they were right, he was lost and displaced, running to catch up. What they had failed to realise, chalking it up to PTSD and grief, was that Steve was angry. So very angry.
The serum that was supposed to be his chance to serve his country had perhaps saved his life, by costing him everything that had ever meant something to him. Dr Abraham Erskine – the German scientist who was had been the first to see Steve as someone worthwhile with something to offer the world – DEAD, killed by HYDRA. Bucky Barnes, his best friend, his brother, his everything – DEAD, fallen to his death from a German train, his remains unrecoverable. Peggy Carter, the girl Steve had been head over heels for, sitting in a nursing home with Alzheimer's. His Howling Commando's – long dead and forgotten. It was a short list really –the people that were important to him. But Steve couldn't help but feel that he'd failed them. Couldn't help wishing that his nose dive into the Arctic had been a little more permanent. He knew he was being ungrateful of course, bitter.
But he felt that Steve Rogers was truly dead, a casualty of the war. All that remained was Captain America – a walking recruitment poster and symbol of a world that had ceased to exist a long time ago…. Steve sighed, there was no going back to bed now…