"Nothing every really ends. That's the horrible part of the short-story business - you have to be a real expert on ends.

Nothing in real life ends."

-Mel Gussow (Kurt Vonnegut, New York Times, 1970)


By the fourth day of their laying low, Steve has found no more excuses to avoid the bed and Diana's presence. While he had managed one night by her side, it had been tense and uncomfortable. The air had been dense and her soft breathing did nothing to lull his senses to sleep. So he had lain there the second night, rigid and with heavy circles under his eyes to show for it the following day. Fortunately, everyone had been too encompassed in their own tasks and heads to comment or notice. Except for Diana. But Steve had toiled through Barton's yard that whole day until dusk to save himself from her inquiries. To this day, he still persisted the ruse - but the yard and the land beyond it had all been trimmed, planted, cleared and mowed by him and on occasion, Barton and sometimes even Bruce.

However, he suspects that today would be the last he could continue with his avoidance as even Tony had joined him now - tending to the last thing Laura could come up with for him and the others: chopping wood. He doesn't know what ghosts the Maximoff girl had given the man, but he can see their presence weigh on his shoulders with each swing of his ax.

"Thor didn't say where he was going for answers?" Silence is beyond Tony's capability, even in the midst of false haunts and mass chaos, but still, Steve tenses. Thus far, the team walked around each other as if they were time bombs, ticking, ticking, and ticking until - until what? He shakes off the descent in his thoughts and shrugs.

"Sometimes my teammates don't tell me things," he replies. However, Thor had always been the most upfront about his feelings and opinions. To have spurned Steve's concerns and disappeared without so much as a glance bank - "I was kind of hoping he would be the exception." If Thor had been that disturbed by the visions, Steve could only imagine what the others had suffered through as well. He figures himself lucky - having only Peggy's promise to taunt him every now and then in his dreams and waking hours. Vaguely, he hears Tony sound off the same line of thoughts.

"'Earth's Mightiest Heroes'," he stops from his menial task and stares at the stack of woods around him. "Pulled us apart like cotton candy."

"Seemed like you walked away all right." Steve almost reflexively tightly shuts his eyes close - but by the barest second he is able to hold himself back. What was that supposed to mean?

"Is that a problem?" he tensely asks. He reasons Stark doesn't know - isn't able to comprehend exactly what thoughts plague his mind. Heck, he reckons he doesn't even know himself. Or he does, but he doesn't want to acknowledge it. Doesn't want to understand that in his visions lies something beyond broken promises and red lips.

"I don't trust a guy without a dark side," Stark quips, resting a hand on his hip. "Call me old fashioned."

Oh, Steve frowns. "Well let's just say you haven't seen it yet." He settles for that answer because it is the only truth he can give Tony. While he has always sided on the side of justice and good - and war - he recognizes that what Tony is after is something beyond their current conversation. Briefly, he recalls the photographs and museum placards - Howard Stark's praise and therefore lack of one, a yellow photograph of the scientist and him sitting adjacent to a family picture; a shield - unsaid expectations. Or maybe in this case, said expectations and failed attempts. But Steve isn't the guy to micro-analyze Tony's and Howard's relationship. He remains quiet then, unwilling to unearth the depth of Tony's malcontent with him.

Wisely and with complete irritation, Tony backs off and runs a hand through his tousled dark hair - fingers following a well-trodden path in the past recent days. "You know Ultron is trying to tear us apart, right?"

"You would know," Steve bites out, unable to refrain from alluding to his and Bruce's deception. While the latter had admitted and pleaded guilty, Tony had yet to see his errors - preaching that this, Ultron, had only been a mistake - a wrong turn in an otherwise still progressing experiment to undo them, the Avengers.

"Banner and I were doing research," Tony seethes out, voice taut with the frustration of having to defend himself constantly and frequently in the past several days.

"That would affect the team." Steve replies. Stubborn, the man will always be stubborn and narrow-minded. No matter how intelligent Tony is, Steve is afraid of what the man can do unchecked.

"That would end the team," Tony snipes, swinging his hostile gaze back at him. "Isn't that the mission, Captain? Isn't that the "why" we fight, so we can end the fight? So we get to go home?"

Steve doesn't linger on Tony's words - refuses to and settles for what he does know. War. "Everytime someone tries to win a war before it starts, innocent people die. " He argues. Nevermind that it usually left most affected by it without a home. "Every. Time."

"Or may -"

"I'm sorry," a feminine voice loudly disrupts them. Steve takes a few reproachful steps back after noticing he had advanced somewhat closer to Tony. He gives Laura a nod, thankful for the woman's disruption. An escalation between him and Tony is the last thing that the team needed. "Mr. Stark, uh, Clint said you wouldn't mind but our tractor - it doesn't seem to want to start at all. I thought maybe you might…"

"Yeah I'll give her a kick," he feels Tony give one last simmering glance at him. "Don't take from my pile."

Don't take from my future.

Steve watches the narcissistic man saunter towards the shed, feeling a blow from his words that has left him too breathless to even grasp at Laura's heeding that dinner would be served later than usual today.

"We can go home now, Steve."

Steve lifts up his ax and for one terrifying moment, feels a dam inside him crack as he forces the cast iron tool down. It falls, slices the wood and stump easily like a saw through butter and Steve lets go - stumbles back, and heads for the nearby orchards.

His steps are impossibly fast, and once he notices the splotches of shadows and sunlight smattering the grass in a mottled fashion, he turns swiftly on his feet and smashes his fist against the nearest tree. It groans against his knuckles, branches quivering in anticipation for the next hit, but Steve - breathing heavily now, doesn't move further.

"Are you okay?" Steve doesn't turn as he body would usually have done. He won't deny that Diana has always held his interest, having been drawn to the mystique and beauty first and now - again, he shut down his thoughts.

Suddenly, he feels calloused hands gently remove his fist from the bark and slowly unfurl his fingers.

"Please -"

"Please," Steve blinks. " - don't do this. We have time." He can't see Diana, the fine but abruptly planted lines of apple trees - and he doesn't want to. "We can work it out."

He hears the silent tears in the cracks in her voice. "I'm here. I'm here, Steve."

Please.

He opens his eyes again.

Dark. The world had become so dark. His sacrifice? His life? A few pages on some history books and featured exhibits in museums. An afterthought. A sentence in an otherwise bleak novel of life. He wants to crumble, throw in his shield with the rest of his team and walk away - give up - this present time is what he forfeited his past and future for - but something, someone is still keeping him tethered to his crumbling resolve and for once, he is grateful for his anchor's resoluteness.

"Diana." the lines on her face are new to him. While he has seen the corners of her eyes crinkle in mirth, her eyebrows arch in question and forehead crease in the face of obstacles, he has yet to see these new streaks mark themselves onto her face.

Her eyes are dark as well, he observes as well. Tumultuous oceans with depths he typically has no inkling of, but here, right now, she lays her emotions out bare for him to read. Get up, they say. Shake it off.

Stay.

Through the unsettling numbness, he feels a soft caress on his palms and looks down to see both of Diana's hands cradling his once-closed fist. "I…"

"It's okay," she quietly says for him. "Just stay here with me, Steve."

He gulps and shies away from her enigmatic gaze. Unwillingly, his thoughts are once again tainted by faults and errors. If he opens his mouth now, he is afraid of what he would - could say, of what truth would come out and which people he would drive away.

"Steve…?"

It's so easy for her to say my name, he thinks back to the time where hesitation haunted her movements; the tiniest of distances she always kept between them. What had changed from then and now? His brow scrunches.

"Laura told me she saw you walk off from the kitchen window and asked me to check up on you."

He remains silent. It would be easy, Steve morosely thinks, if they had never met each other at all. For him, Diana is another echo and hurdle he has no willpower to address.

"I wasn't going to leave," he finally speaks up. That would have been a tempting thing to do, but Steve refused to let the very foundation of his character simply ebb away like that.

"Yet here you are not…" She easily picks out.

"Diana," Steve grinds out, trying to put her inquiries at bay. He would not go there, he couldn't. "Don't."

"Steve -"

"You can't do that, Diana," he cuts her off. "You can't disappear for a few years then come back now and expect me to open up and tell you everything - tell me to do something, to stay," he shakes his head and removes his hand from her hold. "You just can't."

It is hard to decipher the emotions flickering in her dark orbs now, but Steve sees enough hesitation and fear to snap once again. "You can't do this." He can't work with someone who would not trust him or the team; he can't have someone in his life who would not let him into theirs, would not let him stay in thers. He couldn -

"Well then what do you want from me, Steve? What can I do?" she cuts off his thoughts and stares at him with a clarity that has previously eluded her. More often that not, he has observed Diana's tendencies to shy away from him. He didn't think her actions were motivated by some fear, but nervousness? He had thought that was the case, but now - with her eyes laid bare and unbarred to him - he is afraid of what lies in them, waiting for his interpretation - his empathy.

"What do you want from me, Diana?" he asks, taking a step closer to her. He has sequestered her to a nearby orchard, abandoned as it was - surrounding them are enough trees to hide them from Laura's motherly eyes and the team's inquistory scrutiny. He watches her stall and takes a step closer.

Uncharacteristically, her eyes shoot down and Steve lifts a hand to tilt her chin up. No words leave his mouth, but he remains put, patient and wanting. However, there is a ghost caress holding him back from moving further, but Steve doesn't think he knows where further would even go.

Finally, Diana looks up again, a frown and fire warring on her features. She is only a breath away, Steve erringly notices, but as he is about to rectify his sudden proximity - Diana surges forward, pulling him closer and closing the gap between their lips.

Steve almost expects himself to recoil back, shoot away from the memories of ice and broken promises, but he does nothing of the sort. He meets Diana's fervor with his own, feeling the very same dam inside himself finally break as he can focus on nothing else but on how her lips move against his, as her scent encapsulates them both - erasing all memories of lost time and shattered spirits. By the time they pull away from each other, Steve has finally noticed that he has backed her into the bark of an apple tree - one hand entangled into her black hair. He moves away a fraction, enough to take his weight off her body as he rests his forehead against hers; nothing but the sound of birds and their labored breaths fill the air giving testimony to their unbridled actions.

"Diana…" Steve feels like a malfunctioning record, but he can't stop himself from repeating the very name presently plaguing his mind. His blue eyes search hers, but the contact is quickly cut off by the feeling of her hand rising to slide over his cheek. A brush of her lips, so soft and fleeting against his own, silence his upending thoughts.

"I want you, Steve," she speaks softly, voice laden with surrealness. "I want you."

"Did you have something against running away?"

Repently, a different voice is back in his head.

"I know what that's like. To have every door shut in your face."

His heart breaks.

"A week, next Saturday, at the Stork Club."

"Steve?" he looks at the woman both a breath and a lifetime far away from him and pulls away. Until now, no one had really seen him, Steve Rogers, before Peggy and Bucky and now...Diana.

If only he could say the same.


Author's note: They did it! (And sorry this was late)

Probably not the way any of you wanted but Steve is a bag of baggage that Diana now has the pleasure of choosing to either carry around or leave. Or something nicer. I looked into Steve as a character and found that you know, Peggy really was a lifeline for him with Bucky running around Hydra with no recollection of him. And SPOILER for End Game - the fact that he chose to go back and live that life with her, says something about how much she meant to him END SPOILER (do i need this?)

So realistically, Steve could be attracted to any woman yes - but to fall in love with one of them? Steve has to address his demons first before he can do that, and I tried my best to show in this chapter how much he is fighting himself from doing just that. That's my opinion. Anyway, I've got my board exams looming so I'll have to minimize the time I spend writing for a bit.

Kudos to the singer, Sam Tinnesz. His music helped me get the vibe and direction of this chapter settled out.

Thanks and stay well!