Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel comics or characters or movies, and am making no money off of this fic.
AN: Written for the October 11th Whumptober prompt: hypothermia.
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Struggle by luvsanime02
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The odd thing about being frozen for so long is that Steve Rogers doesn't remember ever feeling cold during all of that time. Shouldn't he remember the icy feeling of his blood congealing in his veins? Shouldn't he have dreamed of drowning, of being encased in ice? Instead, there's nothing. One minute, there's no awareness whatsoever, and the next, he's waking up to a whole new world. Almost literally. Literally enough where it matters.
He feels cold now, though.
Granted, that's his fault, mostly. Steve should have known better than to jump into the river in November. He didn't have a choice, though.
(This is a lie. Steve always has a choice to make, and he always chooses to act. His mistakes are his own.)
But really, what was he supposed to do, ignore the screams? Ignore the panicked call for help from the small, weakening voice? Steve sees a kid being swept away by the river, and what, he's supposed to just ignore her?
Steve doesn't have his suit on. He's not a soldier right now. (Steve fights every minute of every day.) That doesn't stop him from plunging into the icy waters. He swims downstream, letting the river push him quicker to his destination, and manages to wrap an arm around the girl as she's coughing and choking, her eyes wide with terror.
There's been flooding lately from too much rain, and though Steve knew this intellectually, that's still a much different thing than being in the middle of a river and trying to keep a little girl's head above water. There's rocks and tree branches, and who knows what else, flowing fast around them, and Steve curls around the girl as much as possible to protect her from the debris.
She's not struggling as much anymore, and Steve knows that's a bad sign. Hypothermia. The water they're in has to be forty degrees at the warmest, but probably colder, and her body can't take the cold. Neither can Steve's, in the long run. Sure, he has more strength than her, more endurance, but the cold can still kill him in the end just as surely as it can kill the little girl gasping and clinging to his neck, her grip getting weaker by the minute.
Steve doesn't even bother to try and swim back upstream. Maybe he could, but he doesn't want to waste his energy on attempting it. The cold is making Steve feel so heavy. He holds the girl tighter, and tries to swim to shore as quickly as possible, but it's so hard. They've got to already be quite a few miles downstream from where they started, and there's trees all around, and no one's coming to help. Steve has to save this little girl on his own.
He pushes and strains, and he hasn't worked this hard just to survive in almost a century. Finally, Steve feels rocks under his feet and pulls them both up an embankment, slipping and sliding back down a dozen times, but making himself hold on to the dirt, digging his stiff fingers into the frozen ground. When they're safe, Steve takes in huge lungfuls of air, relishing his victory. That he's alive, even if he's freezing cold.
He turns to the little girl, and her lips are blue, and she's not conscious, and suddenly Steve has a whole other fight to begin now, because she's not breathing, and no, she can't die now. Not in Steve's arms. Not a little girl. She just can't.
Hypothermia. They were in the water for so long, and she's so cold, and so is Steve, and she needs to start breathing again. She needs to be warm again. She needs to-
Steve stays at the edge of that river for a long time.
(It should have been him. Steve was always the one who was meant to drown.)