5. Quiet – Steve

"Rose, can you hear me?" I ask cautiously, the elderly woman in front of me blinks slowly and turns weakly to face me
"Steve, there's so much I wish we could do over." She chuckles
"You've done everything you can for SHIELD. I promise you, I'm trying every day to do things I won't regret."
"You've had to endure this battle much longer than any of us, Steve, I'd only hoped you didn't have to do it alone."
"I'm not alone, Rose. Maybe sometimes we don't see eye to eye but the people I work with now remind me again why I chose to be Captain America."
"Captain Amer- Steve? Oh Steve is that really you?! My goodness I thought you'd- I thought you were dead!" Rose exclaims joyfully as I smile sorrowfully.
"Me too. But I'm still here, Rose" I pull her frail hand into mine for the third time that afternoon.

I hadn't told Rose anything about the ordeal of the RgX and Hydra. She grew more and more weak each passing day and her memory was crumbling away. It'd only be a matter of months before she forgot me completely. I suppose it was better that way. I'd kept missions from SHIELD to a minimum but the memory of Schmidt's outline standing before the mirrors, decades after we thought he'd been stopped, was making me uneasy about Hydra. Things had been too quiet too long and in the world we were living in, that wasn't a good thing.