.
"Steve?" Peggy asked as the radio started to crackle static.
No reply.
"Steve?" she asked again, her voice breaking.
Still nothing.
"Steve?" she whispered, knowing there would be no answer. The tears she'd been holding back finally welled up and spilled out down her cheeks, and she made no attempt to stop them. A sob surged up as everything inside her soul shattered, and she lowered her head into her arms, shoulders shaking.
Alone in the communications tower of a Hydra base, Peggy Carter wept as she never had before and never would again.
Steve drifted into semi-consciousness, floating between waves of agony and numbness. Darkness and ice surrounded him, the cold slowly muting the sharp edges of the pain. Something in him hazily pointed out that was probably bad, that his body was shutting down, dying. He didn't fight it though. Because that was good. He'd done it. He'd brought the Valkyrie down, and everyone was safe, and all this pain, it would be over soon. He'd get to see his ma again. He'd get to see Bucky.
It was getting colder, and in that brief moment where the cold had dulled the pain enough to let him move, but hadn't become so heavy that he couldn't, Steve slowly reached down into his pocket, frozen fingers fumbling until they closed around a little glass box. He squeezed it tightly, and a soft white light chased away the darkness in front of him. The ice and snow glowed blue in the light, filling the room around him and drifting in on top of him through the hole in the window. He laid the box beside him, unfolding the clumsy fingers of his other hand so he could see the compass clutched in his palm as his limbs went heavy and grew still. He looked at Peggy's face and smiled, watching her as the cold crept further into his body, until it finally dragged his eyelids shut.
Alone in the broken remains of a Hydra airship, the darkness called and Steve Rogers answered, visions of a girl with hazel eyes singing him to sleep.
The air around Jim hummed with giddy victory—Hydra was defeated and the world was safe. Grindelwald and Hitler were a mere technicality at this point. The world was safe, but at the cost of two of the best men Jim had ever known. He sat with what was left of the Howling Commandos at a table in the corner of the Hog's Head, removed from the jubilation around them.
"To the Captain and the Sergeant," Jim said, raising his glass.
"To the Captain and the Sergeant," the rest of them echoed.
Jim drained his glass and sat back in his chair, wishing the Firewhiskey would burn a little sharper and do something about the numb weight in his chest. Steve and Bucky were gone, and it made sense that they would go together, but what were the rest of them supposed to do now?
Alone in the corner of a bar, the crowds around them wondering why they were the only ones who didn't look happy, Jim Morita and the Howling Commandos mourned.
Becky was sitting on the front steps of the school waiting, and as soon as Peggy came over the rise in the hill alone, she knew. She wasn't sure how; she just knew.
"He's not coming back, is he?" Becky asked quietly.
Sorrow flooded Peggy's hazel eyes, and she shook her head. "No," she said softly.
Becky nodded. There was nothing else to say.
"He saved the world," Peggy offered, as if that was supposed to help.
Becky nodded again. That was good, she guessed, but she didn't really care. Because Steve was gone. Two days ago, she had two brothers, and now, she didn't have any. The world around her went blurry as tears pooled in her eyes, and she felt her knees giving out, though Peggy's arms caught her before she hit the ground. Peggy tucked Becky's head under her chin and pulled her in tight against her chest, and Becky shook with the sorrow surging through her body and cried, hot, salty, broken tears.
Alone in the world now, Becky Barnes cried into the arms of one of the only people who could understand what she had lost, weeping for the brothers she would never see again.
The world is safe now, but at a steeper price than anyone wanted to pay. The war is over, and our story is drawing to a close as well. Come back Friday for the final wrap-up.
