Final chapter! This one is a lot longer, but I feel like I needed everything in here, and I didn't want to split into two chapters like I did for Natasha's. Steve's nightmares are not exactly nightmares, more terrible flashbacks. I want to thank everyone who has read, reviewed, followed, and favorited this story. You guys all mean a lot and I have loved reading everything that you have said :) Without further ado, here is Steve's chapter.

I listened to Rob Thomas' "Pieces" off of his new album, "The Great Unknown" while writing this chapter, in case anyone wanted to listen to it as well.

I don't own Marvel, and if I did, the Civil War trailer would be out already.

+1 Steve


He knew he shouldn't have taken the mission in Greenland. A small base, nothing that the team couldn't handle without him. But he was the Captain, and it was his job to keep them safe. So he charged through the snow and tried to ignore the icy flakes that clung to his uniform. The frigid wind bit through the tough fabric like knives, sucking the air from his lungs.

Instead of the cold, he focused on the objective at hand. They got rid of the enemy base in just under three hours, relatively quick for a takeover mission. At the end, they all clambered back into the Quinjet, smiles on their faces from victory. The jet shuddered as it took off and Steve tried to ignore it.

He was still cold. Looking down at his fingertips that wouldn't stop shaking, he shook his head and tucked them under his legs to try and warm them up. But it didn't help. They still felt raw and icy, even though they were warm and pink. There was nothing that could save him from the ice that seemed to be clawing its way up to his heart.

But he pushed it all down when he saw his teammates giving him worried glances. He was the captain, and they didn't need to know what demons he had. He didn't want to burden them with his coldness, as if they might catch frostbite from him. Steve was sitting in the corner of the Quinjet, his shield off to the side, trying not to shake.

In a minute, Natasha came over to him with a blanket. "Here," she said, handing it to him.

"I'm fine," Steve replied, waving his hand at the blanket. Surely Clint or Bruce could use it more; they were outside in the wind the entire attack.

But Natasha didn't take no for an answer. She unfolded the blanket and wrapped it behind Steve's back and around his front, holding it for a second so that it would stay. He looked up at her with thanks in his eyes, trying not to shake, not to yawn, not to show any signs of weakness. "You okay, Steve?" Her eyes were set to his and he shook his head slowly.

"I'm good, Nat. You guys should get some rest. It'll be a few hours before we get back to base."

She nodded and patted his shoulder a few times before standing up. "You get some sleep too, Steve."

Natasha walked back to the front of the jet to talk to Tony, leaving Steve huddled with the blanket in the corner. Even amid the cold and the shaking and the flashes of memories, he somehow managed to fall asleep.

In the Quinjet. With the rest of his teammates on board.

As a kid, the cold got to him in a way that the bullies never could. It tore him apart from the inside out. Year after year it left him bedridden and shaking, trying desperately to survive another bout of whatever sickness had decided to pay him a visit. There weren't enough blankets in the house to get rid of the chill that sat in his bones.

However, every day at exactly three o' clock, when Bucky got off work, he would hear a knock at the door. After a minute of coughing trying to get out the words 'it's open', the door would open and Bucky would be standing in the threshold. Snow hung off of his scarf and hat, clinging to his jacket and shoes, which he took off at the door.

"How you doing, Stevie?" he asked, coming to his bedside.

"Same as every year," Steve wheezed back. Every breath in was like knives and every single one out was like fire. Bucky pressed a hand to Steve's forehead for a moment and took it away.

"You're burning up."

"No, I'm freezing," Steve replied with a small smile on his face. By the way Bucky looked at him, he knew that he wasn't doing well.

"Either way, I am getting you some food." He stood up and began to exit the room.

"I don't have anything here," Steve tried, but his friend was already out the door. Of course he knew; Steve hadn't left the house in nearly two weeks. What he wouldn't give to feel the sun on his face, even through the clouds.

Bucky came back in an hour with soup that he had made at his house down the street, with some chicken in it. He poured some into a bowl and helped Steve sit up, handing him the warm broth and a spoon.

"I'm not eating until you do," Steve said, feeling the steam as it rose up and touched his face.

"You start, I'll catch up," Bucky replied from the kitchen. When he came back into the room and sat down at the chair by Steve's bed, it was only then that he started to eat.

Even during the war, they made it a small tradition to find some warm food after a cold mission. Any place that had warm soup or bread was fine for them. As long as it was different than the snow that they had been fighting in. It would be shared with laughter and jokes, not thoughts about the fight that they had just endured. Even though the war itself was something that Steve would rather not remember as vividly, some of those conversations with Bucky he would give the world to never forget.

Then came the day. With the icy wind and the black smoke pumping out of a black train in the white mountains, Steve lost his brother. Mere inches separated them, and Steve hadn't been able to go the distance.

If he had killed the operative in the suit, Bucky wouldn't have picked up the shield. Then he would not have been hanging helplessly off the side of a train.

If he had been quicker and stretched farther, the last memory of his friend would have not been falling to his death, but probably something happier. He would never have feared the cold. He would have gotten sleep at least once a week.

But he didn't do any of those things. Because he didn't save his friend.

When he got back to camp, solemn and quiet, the fires had been put out due to the rain. Everyone was served cold beans and rice. Cold. So much like the snow that had claimed his friend.

Like the frigidness that would claim him less than a month later.

Steve could hear Bucky in his ear, telling him to eat the food, reminding him that he would need it in order to keep fighting. But Steve wouldn't eat without Bucky. It was too ingrained in his soul.

But eventually he did, the bland food tasteless against his tongue. It tore him apart on the inside.

After that, he went back to his tent to find Bucky's bed made up. His belongings already gone, the bedsheets pulled tight over the cot. On the small table in-between the cots, lay Bucky's dog tags.

Steve picked them up gingerly, as if they would fragment or shatter at his touch. They clinked together with the sound of pressed metal as he sat down on his bunk and looked to the empty one next to him.. Tears burned his eyes and threatened to spill over.

Bucky wouldn't want him to cry, he knew that. But he was broken on the inside, and he knew no one to share the burden with. Looking up from the tags, he noticed a letter with the word 'Steve' written in Bucky's unmistakable writing.

He picked it up, turning the envelope over before opening it. The envelope had weight to it, and he figured out why when he pulled out photos. Seven in all, taken in all different years. One was of Steve, huddled in a blanket before the transformation, sleeping with his messy blonde hair in his face. There were a few more of Steve, the last one being him smiling in the Captain America uniform. Then there were two of the Howling Commandos, decked out in their war gear. One was serious, all of them had their mouths in straight lines, eyes dead set on the camera. But the next one was all of them in the middle of laughing, clapping each other on the back.

The last photo was one of himself and Bucky. Bucky had his hand on Steve's shoulder. They were both smiling at the camera, eyes alive and happy even in the midst of war.

Steve smiled as tears dropped onto the photo, eyes looking it over. They fell onto words written on the bottom of the picture. 'Til the end of the line, Steve. Was what it said.

In the morning when Peggy came to get him for a mission, she found him still staring blankly at the picture.

He was broken, and he knew it. Every single night, he either never slept at all or woke up shaking from the cold that was not present. Every night the gunfire and the wind and the screams would echo endlessly in his ears. Nothing helped him. But during the day, he pushed it all down because he had a job to do. He had people to protect. And he would be damned if he let anyone else die because he had not been present or fast enough.

"Steve!" the sound of his name being shouted was what finally woke him up. He looked around wildly, ready to fight whatever had attacked. Instead he found his team scattered around him. Natasha was seated on the ground next to him, while everyone else was standing.

Tremors shook his body as his eyes clenched to try and rid himself of the nightmare. "Yeah?" he whispered, voice raw. He had been screaming in his sleep, he realized. The team all had ruffled hair and sleepy eyes. He had woken them all up. A boulder of guilt settled on his chest, making it hard for him to breathe.

"Steve, you were screaming for Bucky in your sleep," Natasha said softly to him. Her voice was both caring and worried, so unlike what he usually heard from her.

"Just a small nightmare, I'm good. You should all go back to sleep," was his reply. He refused to be the reason they were all tired the next day and had stayed up all night.

"Steve, you are not okay. There is no sense in lying about it," Clint piped up. "When was the last time you slept through the night? You look like you got punched in the eyes multiple times."

Steve sat up slowly and tried to brush it off. He couldn't remember the last time he slept through the night solidly. "Guys, it's no big deal, seriously. We have a long day of reports tomorrow."

Tony sighed and spoke up from his place next to Clint. "Stop evading it."

"I don't remember," Steve said frankly, getting slightly annoyed. But it was only the tiredness talking, and the entire team knew it.

"Steve, not sleeping isn't healthy, and you know it." That time it was Bruce.

"Five weeks," Steve sighed under his breath. "Four days. Last time I slept through the night was after the mission in Bangladesh."

"Jesus," Clint whispered. A silence set over the team, blanketing them as the Quinjet rumbled through the air.

"How long have you been dealing with these demons?" Thor piped up, breaking the silence.

Steve took a long sigh and trained his eyes on the floor. He knew exactly what they would all say, but he spoke the truth anyways. "Before I went into the ice. I could handle them in the war; Bucky helped, but then I lost him. Because I wasn't fast enough. I kept fighting, then the plane went down. I lost everyone. I don't do well in the cold. It-it triggers flashbacks. Snow, ice, all of it. Reminds me of the crash. Reminds me of all of the times I almost, should have, died growing up. All of my failures, the men that I let down. I am the sole reason that Bucky didn't make it back."

"Steve, why didn't you tell us?" Natasha asked, running a hand soothingly through his hair.

"I'm the Captain. I can't show weakness. My demons are mine, and it's not right for me to bleed onto people for the mistakes I made."

"To hell with that idea man!" Clint said, turning Steve's attention to him. "You're just a guy, a kid really, not even thirty yet. And look at everything you've been through. We are your team, your friends, and your family. It's okay to show weakness, we don't judge. You helped me out a few weeks ago."

"And me just last week." The entire team sounded off on all of the times that Steve had helped them with their nightmares and demons. The conversation of voices lasted almost a full minute,

"Look, Spangles, you helped all of us. It isn't right for us to never help you back. We can tell when you don't get sleep, you aren't too good at hiding it. But we all thought you had a handle on it. You instead so much that you were okay, that we all started to believe it. We were stupid for not being able to see through it." Tony's words made everybody nod in agreement.

"You can trust us, Steve. You don't have to say what's wrong, or what you saw, but just say something. We will always be there for you. Everyone needs a shoulder every once and a while," Bruce replied.

Steve gave a small smile. He could feel the ice starting to melt away from his bones. He had a family that cared for him, although they didn't always show it. "Thanks, guys."

"We will always be there for you, no matter what. On or off the battlefield," Clint ended. "Now, get some sleep, old man." He chuckled and walked back to the pilot's seat of the Quinjet. The other members departed to their spaces on the jet, offering Steve comforting smiles as they went. Natasha, however, stayed at his side.

"Nat, go get some rest."

Natasha shook her head, red curls shaking as she did so. "I'm good here. I won't sleep until you do." Her warm lithe frame curled up under his arm, which he wrapped around her. He then spread the blanket over both of them and leaned his head back onto the cool metal wall. "No more nightmares, okay? I'm right here beside you, remember that."

Her warmth seeped into him, and he felt better than he had in a long while. Steve nodded slowly, closing his eyes from exhaustion.

"You aren't the reason he fell, Steve, you know that. We will find Bucky again. We will bring him back," were the words that soothed him into sleep.

When the Quinjet landed two hours later, Steve and Natasha were laying against each other in the corner of the jet.

"Should we open the landing platform?" Bruce asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

Clint was eyeing the soldier and the spy, smirking from ear to ear. "Nah. We can sleep here for the night. I wouldn't have the heart to wake them. Steve needs his sleep."

Everyone nodded in silent agreement. Tony reached over to grab his phone and took a quick picture. However, the sound was still on the the phone made a camera shutter noise.

"Delete it, Stark," came Natasha's tired voice from the corner. "I may be half asleep but I can still break every single bone in your body."

The picture was deleted from his phone ten seconds later, but not before he silently sent it to Clint, who grinned upon seeing the sleeping Avengers frozen in the image.


I have some ideas for another 5+1 story, since I enjoyed writing this one so much, so there may be another one on the way. If anyone has any requests or ideas, feel free to either leave them in a review or PM me. You all have been wonderful, thanks :)