Reasoning the fresh air would do her good, and still raw from the ceremony the day previous (but immeasurably better than she had been), Elsa had agreed to a walk. And really, what better way to feel less guilty after the abundance of breakfast pastries mutually consumed?

Púca, her second White Wolf jogged nimbly ahead, sniffing and cocking his leg at every opportunity (a male dog is a male dog, after all), but never strayed far from his rescuer and her companion.

The location seemed inconsequential to the little vet; strolling placidly through what she assumed to be one of Steve and Bucky's trails. It had significance alright, but not quite like that.

"So, look, I've… uhh… I've got a confession to make."

Elsa, in blissful unawares, dropped her gaze behind her to where Steve lingered hesitantly; where his pace had faltered in his tortured musing and never really resumed again.

"Did you steal the cookies from the cookie jar?" The playfulness and the lift in her mood (hence the joke that would have had Bucky throw something at her) just twisted the knife. So much so, so distracted by the turn, the backwards steps to focus on him and coy beam, it was not immediately apparent.

"The cookie-? Oh. Right. Yeah, no…"

"Steve? You alright?"

Perhaps the drop in the blonde's pace was not only attributed to the turmoil in his mind but seeking something specific. Nothing tangible. Nothing that could be picked up and studied. Rather, he tried to recall it from a fizzing brain pressed with shock and incomprehension at the time. Miraculously, despite being so utterly disorientated when it happened, Steve managed to pick out a familiar tree. A tuft of grass that sat apart from the others. Scorch marks on the ground, scarring and pockmarking the landscape a year later. He'd found it.

"Yeah… Yeah, I'm fine. C'mere a second." Intrigued, she did but as she was bid not before checking that Púca had not gone too far ahead to lose sight of them. In that ticking of, perhaps, three seconds, Elsa turned back and found him sitting cross-legged on the sun-parched ground.

"What on Earth are you-?"

"Just… Trust me. C'mere." Bewildered but indulgent, the brunette complied; settling in the dust (second nature to her in the demands of her profession) before looking to the distracted Captain Rogers with bemused expectation. Whether that preoccupied twitch was specific to Brooklyn in the 30's and 40's or Bucky and Steve had spent too much time together, she could not be sure, but her certainty fell into the two men being similar when they had something on their minds. All too often, knowing her partner/fiancé/husband the way she did, the lioness had become acutely aware of the signs and trained herself in extracting his brooding ire accordingly. Usually through the animals, food, or sex.

The latter method would exclude Steve Rogers. Dear God, if only she knew…

"You have a confession to make?" She pressed, sweetly patient as she took in her internally squirming (threatening to bleed into externally) friend… confidante… brother-in-law. "Come on. Out with it."

Instead of staring, like would usually have dictated his priorities in her presence (when her attention wandered elsewhere, at least), Steve cast his eyes around and tried to formulate the words; the words that, may well get him into trouble. But… with Bucky gone… She deserved to know. She deserved the option. She deserved to do with the information what she saw fit.

How she would react, both on her own behalf and Bucky's, would be another matter entirely.

I don't wanna be your friend anymore.

I wanna be more. So much more.

I'll leave the States, leave the Shield, whatever you want.

I'll gladly take over where Buck left off, both with the farm and you; everything you two had planned.

Whatever you want or need, I'll break my back to make sure you have it. Anything.

Just a chance, half of one, is all I want.

If I'm not in love with you, Els, it won't take long, and I don't expect you to feel the same right away but I'm willing to wait…

"Steve?" Elsa prompted again with undercurrents of curious concern, dampening the temptation of waving her hand in front of his face; if she had to call him again, she might just indulge. Púca had doubled back to his mother's side and settled in the straw-like grass to include himself. "Steve, are you sure you're alright? It's like you're… glitching… or something…?"

"Yeah…" The hoarseness had little to do with the heat or the aridness of that particular day, but Elsa (ever the considerate one) unzipped the faithful backpack and loosened the lid out of habit on a bottle of water; something she always did to spare her husband's teeth. As if the Super Soldier (either of them) would be bested by a screwcap. "Thanks… Just a sip…" Goddamn it, she's really not helping me here...!

"Better?"

"Yeah… Yeah… Better."

"Come on then! I'm on tenterhooks! What the Hell did you do that's so terrible?!"

Despite fearing lapsing into another bout of guilt-fuelled, enamoured staring, it appeared her good-natured jibing had begun to descend into near-worried disquiet; reflecting in the pools of sapphire that Bucky often dreamily rambled about. So instead of laying out all he had planned (however ill-timed and clearly unrequited, though neither of those things had registered with the blonde), he simply spat it out.

"Bucky still has a living brother."This time, Steve opted to do the decent thing and spare her asking; the drop in her darling features foreshadowed so many painful questions. A living extension of Bucky and what he would ask, he knew it; their time separated left Elsa working in her husband's stead of matters that should have died with him. If she could even wrap her head around it or form the words to articulate a response, that is.

That would take time; the stunned slap-in-the-face expression proving it. Feeling the familiar plunge of blame, driven deeper by the hurt and uncomprehending silence that faced him, Steve forced himself on.

"His name is Frank. He's nearly ninety, living in a nursing home in Brooklyn." Anxiety starting to climb (and unable to convince himself he didn't deserve it, the whole secrecy thing starting to sound silly now), Steve applied a stressed, futile coating to his lips via his dry, distressed tongue. "He… He made me promise not to tell Bucky. If Buck knew he was alive, he'd do anything to see him, and Frank didn't want him to get caught just 'cause of him…"

Face half-hidden in her hands by now, Elsa's trembling fingertips shakily kneaded into her temples; grasping for some scarce source of comfort at this utterly ridiculous, outlandish and random revelation. Forcing a breath, having forgotten to do so in her stupor, Elsa managed it.

"Els?" He pleaded, like a kicked dog. "Please… Say something…"

So she did. And he was going to wish she hadn't.

"I don't believe it…"

"We felt it was for the best-"

"Jesus Christ, Steve, you knew what his identity meant to him!" Spine steeled, she reared like a cobra and went for the jugular with the same venom. Perhaps the sudden, antagonized snap came as unexpected; a near-instantaneous acceleration from the speechless, fraught disbelief. Enough for him to kick himself under the heat of her sparked gaze. Fully warranting of it, what else could he do but accept the hurl of abuse and let her continue, let her vent?

"What connections to his past meant to him! What he went through, painstakingly piecing it together in Romania! There was a direct link sitting in a Brooklyn nursing home this whole time and you couldn't even set up a bloody phone call?! How often did the two of you video chat between here and the States?! Did that not wander onto your plain of consciousness?!"

Shit…

Somewhere in the tirade, Elsa found her feet while a helpless Steve looked on forlornly from the ground. Well… He had asked her to say something… Duty and guilt dictated action, springing the (apparently) moral Captain Rogers to his feet and hurrying in her wake; spitting through the dust her provoked footsteps kicked up. He told himself she was not doing it on purpose but, of course, he could have been wrong.

"Els…!"

"Unbelievable!"

"Look, I know! I screwed up-!"

"Oh you most certainly did that!"

"I didn't think we were gonna lose Bucky-! Dammit, Els, come back!"

"And that excuses it, does it?!" Poor Bucky… My poor, poor Bucky… "What were you waiting for?! For Frank to die?! Tell him then?! End of the line or not, Steve, he would have punched you square in the bloody mouth!"

At a loss for what else to do and hope fading with her hair and her hips swinging in hostile unison, Steve scrambled for something, anything.

"Don't you wanna know why I brought you here?!" He hollered, frustrated, at her retreating back; said back hiding Elsa's rapidly deteriorating composure. And why shouldn't she? After a betrayal like that? Not necessarily perpetrated against her, but in defence of her husband and his raw emotional attachment to his past (after having it snatched from him), she could not help but take it very much to heart.

"What, not to drop that clanger?!" The bark responded, the pivot of her boots so smooth and effortless, it would infuriate a ballerina into the inescapable depths of jealousy. But no ballerina, in their trademark of elegance and grace, would be seen allowing the contortion of absolute rage in her delicate air or allowing it to corrupt her. Elsa, though… Elsa was no ballerina. "What else could you possibly add to make this worse?! Think carefully, Steve!"

Think carefully he did, enough for it to register from her vantage point; the cogs clicking away in that blonde head of his. It would go one of two ways. She would either: Get worse and storm off (again, and she had the keys to the jeep).

Or… She would crumble. And Steve couldn't decide which would be worse. Unfortunately, there happened to be only one way to find out.

"This is where he went." He finally parted with, only to watch her face change once more; the storm swiftly breezing through to a fresh wave of pain. Steve, resigned to one of two extreme reactions but also resolute in doing his best to resolve whatever she threw at him, would prioritize helping her through it at the same time. "That spot where we sat down, that's where his ashes settled. I wanted you to know where to come if you ever needed to be close to him."

The ashes, after a year subjected to a wet season of torrential downpours and winds of a fair speed, were long gone. Whether Steve told her that day or when she was well enough to leave hospital, a few days after The Snap, would have made no difference: Her husband's remains were gone.

C'mon… The blonde implored, begged, internally as they marked each other from a distance. Please… Come back…

After a few moments of wordless turmoil (on both sides), he won; which saw an overcome and heartbroken Elsa trailing back through the dust with Púca at a perfect heel. The hug… Maybe he hadn't expected the hug, but it sent his heart hammering anyway; she surely should have felt it through her chest gathered to his, his arms securing across her back.

"You really do know how to confuse me, Rogers." The sniffle broke both the silence and the melancholic stalemate; the mutual squeeze implied all had been forgiven. "You know that?"

"Yeah… Yeah, I know that. I'm sorry, and you're right. If he punched me in the mouth, I would've deserved it."

"No defence from me. Come on then…" The embrace (that meant more to one than the other) may have run its course and disentangled but not completely; not when Elsa took Steve's hand and led him back the way they'd come, to where their indents were fresh in the strangled grass. Only then, did she relinquish her hold; much to Steve's cringing disappointment.

"This is the best I can do for now, my love." Elsa, dropped in both voice and height for intimacy and practicality while her companions (one human, one canine) watched on, isolated the key to their shared, marital home. With it, she carved three simple letters into the patch of sentimental ground (undistinguishable otherwise) then sat back on the balls of her feet and gazed longingly at the initials.

J.B.B

"Just until I can organize something more permanent."

Please Note: The Next Chapter Will Contain Spoilers for Episode Four of the Falcon and the Winter Soldier.