A/N: Handling a lot of characters in this chapter was a struggle but a great challenge. Hope you enjoy!
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN—Spring 2018
Steve took the tablet from Natasha, disbelieving. The census had found her—or rather, found an alias-adjacent profile. Enough matching criteria got flagged onto a shortlist that Nat sifted through one by one, but she found her. Sharon was alive.
"Whatever you want to do," Nat nodded, "I'll support."
His eyes blurred, unable to read the specifics, but she was alive. His head felt lighter as his heart tied itself in a knot.
What would he even say? Either he was the criminal who made her flee from her home, or he was the failure who lost half the universe. It was unforgivable. He had nothing to offer but his grief and his shame, and Steve would not show up empty-handed after doing so much wrong.
"Thanks, I…I'll think about—"
Alarms howled from the conference room set up as Control. A ship had appeared in orbit, no identifying transmissions.
"Is it a friendly?" Steve looked to Rhodes.
"No weapons-lock detected."
Nat opened comms. "Unknown craft, identify yourself." Static. She stepped back, checking with Rhodes for how to proceed. A full inventory of defenses wasn't complete yet. They couldn't afford more wasted resources.
"Satellite imaging?"
Nat pulled up the window. "Well, it's beat to high hell."
Rhodes scowled. "And hideous colors. What is that? A beetle-bird?"
"You found her," Rocket exclaimed, staring lazily through the glass wall. He threw his feet off the tabletop and scurried over. "The Benatar!"
Rhodes turned to Steve. "Like Pat? Aliens know about 80s music now?"
"Steve doesn't even know about 80s music," Nat muttered, trying to angle the image for a better view.
"She's a beaut, ain't she?" The raccoon climbed up a chair to slap his hand on the comms. "Quill, buddy, you made it. We're here!" He hung his head. "I mean, me and Thor, but…Groot, he…"
Static.
"Quill? You… Gamora? Drax? Anybody?"
Nothing.
Rocket turned around to Natasha. "Something's wrong."
"There's a lot wrong," Rhodes huffed.
"Yeah, I get that War Tool, but you back-water slimers need to get me up there to—"
Steve put a hand on Rocket's tactical vest and pointed to the image. Danvers was already airborne to bring the ship down. They rushed out to the lawn.
Tony needed oxygen and a once over before they could move him to the infirmary. Rocket rambled at a blue and metal woman wedged into the cargo hold wall. She looked dead—or if a robot, turned off—to Steve's untrained eye.
He swept the other compartments. No other bodies. He returned to walk Tony's stretcher inside, moving for Pepper to grab her fiancée's hand. He asked Thor to see if Rocket could pull up any sort of security footage that might tell them what happened out there.
Once Tony was stabilized, Rhodes volunteered to make dinner before Nat could opt for her usual one-ingredient sandwiches. She was grateful, quiet and contemplative with her legs folded under her in an oversized chair, nibbling at her thumbnail and focused on the infirmary hall. Steve didn't know what the hell to make of Tony's miraculous return.
Gathered around the table, he grilled Nat, Bruce, Rhodes, and Danvers on updates from deep space scans or any extra-planetary communication. He brought food out to Rocket, Thor, and Nebula, who had no memory between the dusting of her friends and Rocket waking her. Strange had given up the Stone, and in her rage, Nebula lunged for him, only to be knocked back by a spell. Whatever the sorcerer did had slowly made her vision go black and her head spin.
They had nothing. No new leads. Thanos was in the wind, exactly as he'd been for twenty days.
How much of this could he handle? When might the light come back to this dark world? Steve fell asleep reading Sharon's file and dreamt of bringing her home.
He woke to the deep voice of Bruce outside his room.
"What do you mean she's gone? Where did she go?"
"I don't know," Natasha grated through her teeth just as Steve opened the door. "She was summoned here by a pager from nineteen ninety-two. Not sure she's up on the latest social graces, ok?"
"Danvers is gone?" Steve's sleep fog hadn't burned off.
"Yeah, Thor seems to think it was a joy flight she went out for at three-thirty this morning."
In the ship, Rocket practically jumped down Steve's throat when asked to locate Captain Marvel. "What makes you think I know where blondie went? I met her the same time as you." When asked if the Benatar could follow to help if needed, Rocket gave a short raspberry. "You mean, have I even gotten out the almost dead guy smell? No. She ain't going nowhere."
Nebula shoved the panel she was working on back into the wall. A whirring sound warmed the air, and a cascade of lights turned on.
Rocket turned back to Steve, shrugging. "Give me an hour."
Steve asked again about security footage. They needed something, anything to go on.
"Watch Quill scratch his balls every fifteen minutes and you'd turn the cameras off, too." Rocket sniffled, wiping his cheek. "He's disgusting. Was. Miss that guy."
Nebula nodded. "He was quite disgusting." She made it sound like high praise.
Thor slapped his thighs to stand up, exclaiming, "I can transport us by Bifrost, Captain."
"Thank you," Steve smiled at Thor, glancing at Nat running across the grass, "but if we don't know where or what we're walking into—"
"Can you track her with this?" Nat held out Fury's pager.
Rocket turned it over in his paws deftly. "If I could figure out a cassette player…eh, probably?"
"Do it," Nat breathed, "please."
Rocket waved them off to let him work.
Pepper found them in the hall. Tony was awake, barely, hoarsely muttering about saving people and the color green. He said he lost the kid and grabbed Steve so hard Tony almost toppled off his gurney. Bruce administered a sedative, and Pepper stayed at the bedside to ensure Tony rested.
Steve's heart rate still thundered in his chest when Thor bellowed down the halls.
"The rabbit and Lady Nebula have a location!"
This was it, a lead, something to do, someone to fight, yet Steve's feet felt like lead as he rushed to get his go bag. He couldn't tell which weighed him down more: the fight that might come or the fight he'd already lost. The buzz of fluorescent light echoed everywhere, hanging in his ears even after he was outside again.
Natasha caught up to his flank as he crossed the lawn.
Then it came.
Dust fluttered everywhere, faster than the wind, lifting and clumping together. Half-flocks of birds manifested in screaming formations above. The hum of insects doubled in the woods rimming the compound. The whole world got louder.
Steve watched Nat's hopeful and terrified gaze shift to behind him.
A cloud of dust tumbled towards him, coalescing into a woman in a tailored skirt and glasses.
Steve stammered to pivot out of her way when the haze of more dust blinded him. Natasha wrenched his body backward before for a man in a suit manifested, mid-sentence.
In her shock, the woman tripped and reached for the now solid shoulder of the man beside her. Both stared at Steve and Nat, equally shocked.
"Uh, Captain Rogers," the man gulped out, "Agent Romanoff…we…we have orders to arrest you on sight—"
"So we'll—" the woman switched her briefcase between hands to pull at the man's elbow "—go…go get those handcuffs and, ya know, be back later."
Chaos erupted across the lawn. People appeared everywhere, shaken and confused.
"Steve," Nat called after him as he closed the distance to the ship.
Their eyes met.
"I can help them," she pleaded.
Iron Patriot flew past her from the opposite side of the building. "Then do it," Rhodes yelled. "We got this."
It was last month but backward, twisting the same sharp feeling around in Steve's gut. The implications were grave. Was it permanent? Was Thanos dead? Was there another fight for the Stones? Was another Snap coming? Would they disappear next time?
Steve and Rhodes ran scenarios, buckling in with grimaces.
Rocket barked orders not to puke on his ship. "I thought Drax smelled bad," he finished quietly to Nebula.
They were off, catapulted at mach-don't-tell-me with stars zipping by like a Coney Island ride off its rails. Before Steve regained control of his breathing, they'd arrived.
Delicate rings looped the colorful surface of Planet 0259-S.
Nebula analyzed her screen. "There's nothing. No life signs."
Thor bolted out of his chair—"allow me"—and exited the cargo bay, riding a rainbow bridge down to the middle of the continent below.
"If everybody's back now," Rocket muttered to Nebula, "do you think Quill's gonna be mad I raided his room?"
Nebula didn't move a muscle.
They waited in silence until a raging flash of lightning marked the sky below the equator, on the southernmost tip of a mountain range, far from where Thor landed.
"You good, Cap?" Rhodes whispered as the flames of entry licked the cockpit walls.
Forearm shields ready, Steve watched the bay door open.
Thor stood at the foot of the ramp, somber and serious, pouring dust from the tarnished golden gauntlet. "It's over. He's gone." He tossed it into the cargo hold with a heavy clank.
"Danvers?"
Head low, Thor twitched Stormbreaker toward a crevice of lava beyond.
There in the dirt, black and blue all over, body cooling slowly in the hot fumes of magma, lay Captain Carol Danvers. Alone.
Finally, the dragging albatross of fear sloughed off of him, yet Steve knelt down, placing hand on her shoulder with his head bowed in prayer. A soldier always considers the end. They envision it. They expect it. They know it will come. This was an end Steve Rogers was not prepared for, an emptiness after an epic exertion. Billions of lives saved by one human, but that soldier died alone, lightyears from Earth.
She saved them all. She deserved to be home.
All around him, the others discussed the stones, that small pile of infinite suffering beside Danvers' shriveled hand. Steve no longer cared what happened to them as long as they did right by the fallen avenger. This victory was bitter, the last three weeks more brutal an awakening than the fugitive years before them.
"Not to be a buzzkill, but that's only five," Rhodes interrupted.
"The Aether," Thor said, though he continued after an unsure silence. "The red one, the Reality Stone, without a vessel it's this…angry sludge."
"That's distressing," Rocket mumbled, lifting his paws one after the other, checking for goo.
"And…" Rhodes encouraged.
Thor pointed to the thin black crust of lava breaking under its own pressure. "I think it went in there."
Steve didn't take his eyes off of Danvers' face, but no one objected. Instead, they hurriedly found containers for the remaining stones, agreed it was too dangerous to carry all of them together on the Benatar, and planned the split. The three from Earth would go back to Earth, and Thor would spread the other two out in the cosmos. As the god strapped the gauntlet tight to his hip, Nebula handed him two vessels, cradling one of her own as they departed.
Steve carried Danvers to the ship. He didn't watch the stars; he never left her side. By the time they touched down at HQ, he resolved to make a life for himself. He would not fight and die alone far away. He would make amends. He would be honest about how he felt and what he wanted. He hoped to be forgiven. That was his new mission.
After the Return, at Steve's incessant persistence, Deputy-turned-Acting Secretary of State, Robert Cushing, negotiated with Thaddeus Ross to drop criminal charges for all Accords fugitives. The bureaucracy took another two weeks to nail down all their terms—Bucky's took the longest—but Steve was ready, pardon in hand, to knock on that door in Madripoor. This was personal. It had to be in person.
Sharon put on tea and a mask of serene stealth, forever surprising him as Agent 13, making him stew in the intensity of his feelings versus the inscrutability of hers. She listened carefully to everything he offered. Steve had never been so nervous.
Finally, after he laid it all out for her, she leaned forward in her chair. "You don't know what I've done since, Cap," Sharon joked with wry, painful humor, sitting in that shitty apartment. "It's worse than handing over a shield and a bird costume."
Steve slid the folded papers across the table. "All of that is covered."
"What if—" she shrank away "—I can't be forgiven?"
He moved his hands from the papers to hers, palms warm from the mug. "Then we'll do that together, too."
—December 2039
Resurrection rotted Steve from the inside. As suddenly as Pepper Potts appeared on the lawn a week ago, painful, dormant memories the Rogerses had buried took root and sprouted. Running water washed away the sound of sobs, but it wasn't enough.
They held each other. Without Sharon, Steve would fold beneath the heaves of his chest. Without Steve, Sharon's tears would rain down to the floor.
He watched his face warp in the bathroom mirror. His neck flushed an angry red beyond the blue of his collar, blotching patriotic patches across cheeks, crossed by streaks of tears. He had no idea how long they stood there, but when Sharon finally tugged at the hem of his sweater, he released his crushing grip across her shoulders. She raised her hands to wipe her face before Steve could see her own devastation. He shifted to let her pass and rested his forehead on the back of the door.
Behind him, Sharon plugged the tub and switched the tap to hot. Whether or not he heard them, Steve still felt her ragged cries, but there was nothing else he could do. They'd already done everything they could for years; they just never expected Tony Stark to get the miracle they'd prayed for.
Steve's skin crawled beneath the fibers of his sweater. His skull ached, pressed hard against the wood, and his breathing barely settled by the time the bath filled. He waited for sounds of Sharon sinking beneath the surface of the water.
After a sniffle that echoed in fresh silence, he heard her give the okay.
This was it. He had to go out there. He had to go on.
Steve wrenched the door open. Nothing. Of course, he couldn't see them. He couldn't hear them. Bucky couldn't even reply to Steve's hurried text from the car, but he quickly shut the door behind him just in case.
On his way to the bedroom, he glanced down the stairs, spotting their dirty tumblers. Steve and Sharon had broken their routine to get out of sight. Knowing Bucky as a respectful man, Steve confidently gauged his upstairs as still private, but not soundproof. His wife, however, the one who kept her face loving for that whole week while tortured by her own unfruitful life, didn't deserve to worry about anything, much less smelly cups in the morning. Dutifully, Steve descended and took them to the kitchen. Why not? Even if their invisible guests could see him, the numb of exhaustion was taking over anyway.
He submerged himself in the automation of lathering up the sponge, careful to get the lids and all the tiny corners, but Steve faltered when caught by the reflection in the kitchen window. It wasn't his wrecked features that stopped him, nor the photos mounted on the wall above the table. It was the thin, red ribbon knotted over the corner of one frame, the ribbon that killed a dream to make a memory.
"You want some hot chocolate," Steve asked six-year-old Samantha, joining her on a couch she'd hidden on since arriving at the compound.
The girl peeked around the back cushion to see Sharon and MJ playing with the Parkers' infant on a colorful floor mat. Tony was still down in the lab, operating a drone suit at the border of Argentina and Chile. Peter and Sam Wilson were playing air hockey in the break room, betting stupid dares for each loss. It had taken Steve a while to even find Lil'Sam, but eventually he'd spotted the bit of festive ribbon shifting around atop the dark leather couch.
"It's Christmas—" he smiled, trying to encourage the same from her"—Big Sam brought these little marshmallows. You sure you don't want some?"
She turned herself back around and stared down. "No, thank you, sir."
He frowned at the formality. Anyone could see Samantha was depressed, and Steve struggled not to take over, even knowing Clint was doing his best. That wasn't his place. Just for the day, just in that moment though, Steve could help.
He sat up straight. "So what's wrong, young lady?"
She screwed up her face. She sighed. She glanced at him briefly, holding herself up tall like him before slumping forward. Her features fell again. "Nothin'." She kicked her feet out, dangling them over the cushion, unable to touch the floor.
He wished that were true. He frowned. "We're opening presents later. You excited for that?"
Lil'Sam sniffled and wiped her nose and cheek with a flat hand. "I put Tony's present in a box—" she barreled through almost faster than Steve could follow "—but Laura hadn't wrapped it yet and Nate didn't take the trash out when he was suppose to and thought it was trash so he threw it away and now—" Her little lip quivered. She couldn't get the rest of the words out.
"Oh, okay." He panicked and wrapped his arm around her. "It's okay. I'm sure he'll understand—" Steve almost said 'your dad' but heartbreakingly followed Samantha's lead "—he's just happy you're here."
"I don't wanna do presents. Please don't make me."
Steve caved. Her huge, watery eyes were too much. "Then you don't have to. We can say you're tired. I'll put a blanket over you, yeah? It'll be your own little shield. No one will—"
Lil'Sam climbed over to sit in his lap, legs off to the side, head resting against his chest. "You won't tell him I messed up?"
"Of course not…" Steve smoothed the girl's hair before letting go of the tail of red ribbon. He rubbed her back. "I'll cover for ya."
She sank into him more. "Thank you, Uncle Cappy," Samantha mumbled.
His heart grew six sizes to hear a nickname, something less formal than everyone else, even if it did reek of Nat's influence. Steve wished he'd never volunteered to go look for clues to the Containment explosion. He wished he and Sharon hadn't wasted time tracking dead-end leads and false confessions. If they had been at HQ, if they could have taken Samantha in, they'd have had their very own miracle, and the child in his arms would call someone 'dad'—
Steve stopped cold, feeling the child shift to get more comfortable. Tony was his friend. Tony was her father. Tony was taking advantage of his grief and his job, and this little girl tucking her hands between them to warm her fingers deserved…better. But it wasn't Steve's place. This was the most he could offer and the most he could receive. Steve could only hold her to him and sit, stewing in his own fantasy of fatherhood.
The ruse continued while Sharon came to check on him. His wife stroked Samantha's hair, pretending the child's eyes weren't squinting open.
"Lil'one must have been so tired, huh? She looks so peaceful," Sharon cooed quietly, winking. "Merry Christmas, sweetheart." Steve couldn't tell if that was meant for him or Samantha, but the moment felt like a gift from God.
After a long time, he felt Lil'Sam's breathing change. She was actually asleep when Tony came up, walking all the way to the couch, quizzically holding up a thumb.
Steve didn't want to let go.
Tony wiggled the thumb then tilted it down, barely whispering "sugar crash?"
Steve nodded. He lied.
Tony put out his hands and muttered, "you good? I can—"
Steve quickly shook his head and made his own thumbs up where his hand rested at the girl's side.
After one lingering half-smile, Tony retracted and crept off to watch the air hockey battle royale down the hall.
It must have caught on his button when Steve put Lil'Sam to bed that night, but he didn't notice until Sharon pointed it out on the car ride home.
That ribbon haunted Steve. What if he hadn't lied? What if Samantha had woken up in her father's arms and told him about his Christmas gift? What if that was how they began to heal and become a family again? What if Steve had stolen that much from both of them just to live a dream for a few hours?
Steve looked down at his white-knuckle grip on the counter's edge, cups rinsed and drying upside down on a towel. He didn't remember doing that. When his eyes returned to the window, he half-expected to see that little girl teetering on top of a chair to reach her bow again. His mouth fell open, the words "merry Christmas, sweetheart" poised in his throat, before he choked them down to sour with the guilt in his gut.
The crawling snaked over his skin again, hot and irritating, while stinging tears welled up in his eyes. Steve felt exposed and confined all at once. He bolted up the stairs three at a time, ripping off the sweater in his bedroom—their bedroom—trying to catch his breath.
Samantha was just a girl. She was a child, wasn't she? Whatever she had done was their responsibility—her family's responsibility. How could he—how could Tony let this happen?
Steve's hands wouldn't stay still. He twisted the sweater over and over. It should have been him. He should have been there, should have been the father she needed, should have been the friend she wanted, should have seen this coming. He could have saved her. It wasn't his place.
He'd failed again. The buzz of tension drained from him as he considered this fate.
Steve used to think his life was plagued by bad timing. Bad timing going down in the ice. Bad timing becoming fugitives on opposite sides of the world. Bad timing stalling until after the Snap.
Bad timing became bad luck. Bad luck the super-soldier serum made him sterile. Bad luck they wasted so much time before finding that out. Bad luck their careers and notoriety made adoption impossible.
Then he realized bad luck was bad fate.
Bad fate Clint raised Samantha instead of them. Bad fate Sharon aged and he didn't. Bad fate Pepper Potts returned just in time to have her second child.
Yet this fate, bad or good, was all Steve Rogers had. They expected their own family, and photographs littered the house to prove they accomplished that. As partners, as people, Steve and Sharon had a legacy, even if it didn't look as they'd expected.
Fate, good or bad, gave Steve everything he had, and he was grateful even in this misery—their misery. We'll do this together, too.
Steve grabbed Sharon's robe from its hook and knocked on the bathroom door softly.
As if expecting him, she instantly replied. "Come in."
The bathroom swelter welcomed him back, his undershirt clinging in the humidity while he hung up his pretext for disturbing what peace she may have found.
Sharon shifted, smiling. "I'm proud of you for not yelling at the air." Her face betrayed a chronic despair behind a tentative calm. She was letting him see; she trusted him with that.
He found his way to the floor beside her, taking the outstretched hand raised and dripping from the bath. He stared at the soft mat beneath him while she focused on the ceiling, and they breathed together.
After a while, Sharon chuckled quietly, scoffing at a bad joke playing in her mind. "When you think about it," she started, turning to face him, head resting on the rim of the tub, "she's what brought us together."
He pictured it, the little girl in the red ribbon standing beside Danvers on that field, crying because even back then Samantha understood loss, understood what was left behind in death's wake. Steve let himself imagine her actually being there. It meant Danvers had not died alone, a small comfort, though she was still dead and Lil'Sam still witnessed something horrible.
But she didn't just see it; she wasn't just there, in the background. She helped. She won. The little girl did what Steve Rogers could not.
No perverse laugh escaped him, but he appreciated the irony. "So," he whispered, "two Saviors of the Universe then."
Sharon squeezed his hand. "Two women," she clarified. She knew him. She knew how his mind stuck to ideals, archaic remnants of standards ingrained in his history.
There it was: the truth. The girl never stood beside Danvers, but he could see it so clearly. She knelt down beside him on the field, picking up a glittering stone to look at, and in the green light of its glow, her face changed. She grew up, ribbon still in her hair, and just like Uncle Cappy did, the woman determined to make this loss mean something.
Steve wanted to start a real life. Samantha wanted to give her father a present. Of course, she went to get Pepper; that was all Tony ever wanted.
Young or grown, Sam Stark shouldn't have felt she had to earn her father's love. She shouldn't have been alone enough to become sweet on Bucky. Hell, she shouldn't have this much in common with an experiment-created, international fugitive, but here we fucking are.
Steve scraped his fingers through his hair like a punishment, reminding himself that despite everything, this was still not his place.
"He gets it from you, ya know, " his wife mumbled.
Steve looked up, not following.
Sharon sat up a the tub, a ring of pink across her skin where the level of hot water had been. "Stubbornness." Her gaze cut right through him, sharp yet tender, exact and clean. Pure Agent 13.
He loved that.
It was why he'd been so nervous, standing at that door in Madripoor, hoping Sharon would be there, hoping she didn't turn him away. She could take care of herself; she didn't need him. It was why Steve wanted to be there. He wanted her to know that she didn't have to do everything alone, that perfect weapons don't make perfect people. They could take care of each other. He just had to make sure she was okay.
Then Steve thought it again.
Perfect weapons don't make perfect people. He wanted to be there, so she didn't have to be alone. He made sure she was okay.
Bucky was following Steve's example. He was being kind and caring and loyal. Steve didn't have to like it, and neither did Tony. Only Sam could take or leave that offering; it was her life to choose. If ever two people had been through enough to deserve some happiness, Bucky Barnes and Sam Stark were it.
The heft of guilt in his stomach started to break down, flaking apart like the dust, making room for bitter anticipation and new possibilities.
"So…" Sharon politely dissected his silence. "Decorations tomorrow?"
Steve grunted absently before she flicked water on his face. The spray was no hotter than his tears had been but dripped just as far. He wiped them away, matched her sad smile, and kissed the back of her hand. They would do as they had always done: move on, together.
A/N: I really appreciate anyone who's gotten this far as this story is pretty near and dear to me. I've worked really hard over the past...oh gosh, almost three years (?!) to produce something I hope is entertaining and insightful. It's been hard to tell if anyone is actually enjoying it, or not, so if you have a moment to comment and let me know you're out there, I'll be forever grateful. Happy Holidays, everyone!
Next is the Starks' Christmas reunion. Do you think everyone will get along?