Six months later
Steve Rogers left therapy feeling, as he always did, a little numb and a little as though somebody had put him in a blender. Come to think of it, that was an uncannily similar sensation to when Dr Erskine had infused his body with a certain type of serum all those decades ago. Funny, that. He'd rather go through that process all over again than the hour of forced and uncomfortable conversation with other grievers that he had just been part of, but unfortunately, he didn't have a choice.
The therapy center was in Brooklyn, but Steve kept walking straight past his motorbike parked outside and let his feet follow old, familiar paths that he did not even have to think about anymore. He didn't notice where he was going, but rather listened to the white noise of a city pulling itself together after an event that nobody should ever be able to recover from, hood pulled up over his head so that nobody would recognise him.
Reactions from people seeing Captain America out and about were different to how they used to be. The angry ones he was fine with, really. Those who blamed him for what happened, who looked at him with disappointment and disgust and shouted abuse as they passed him by. He could take that. But the people he could not bear were those who gazed at him with pity that he did not deserve. They made his skin crawl.
Steve didn't realize where his feet were taking him until he found himself coming to a halt in front of a greenery-filled window in lower Manhattan. There was a sign in the window, written in a hand Steve was used to seeing scribbled on the side of coffee cups in days gone by.
JARVIS AND KRESK
GREENERY AND CAFFEINE
FOR OUR LANDSCAPING SERVICE, PLEASE ENQUIRE WITHIN
For the first time in a long time, Steve felt a smile tugging at his lips. I've got time to spare, he thought to himself, stepping inside.
The bones of the old coffee shop were still visible; the overstuffed armchairs, mismatched "vintage" tables, the counter curving around the back wall with the huge, monstrous coffee machine on one side. But where once there had only been terrible hipster art prints and the odd fake cheese plants, there were now pots and jars and boxes of plants festooning almost every available surface. Many of them had price tags scribbled on their containers, and there were badly drawn diagrams everywhere explaining the care needed for each type of succulent and herb and flower to flourish. Where there had once been blackboards listing hundreds of overly-complicated coffee orders, there were now large, framed photos of green spaces that Steve recognized easily – the HOPE graffiti gallery. The Charles Spencer Memorial Garden. The grounds of the Avengers HQ itself.
"Well, if it isn't the star-spangled man with a plan."
Steve turned to greet the woman emerging from a side door into the main part of the coffee – no, the plant and coffee shop. Although it had only been a couple months, Eva looked older than when he had last seen her, as though she had grown many years in that period. A couple of new tattoos were visible on her skin, and the freckles across her face had multiplied as the sun settled into summer. "You shaved your beard off," she said, in that familiar deadpan voice. "Good. I didn't like it."
"I missed you too," Steve said.
Eva smiled, fast as lightning, and then her face fell back into its usual cool mask. "Tea?" she asked him. "We've got the stuff that Peggy used to have – the one with the little blue birds on the box. We gotta pay to have it shipped in from England, mind, so it's not cheap."
"Friends and family discount?" Steve asked.
"You should be so lucky."
It wasn't nearly as busy in the shop as it used to be, even after one considered the fact that customers had been universally reduced by fifty percent. It meant that Eva was in no rush to serve anyone else as she boiled the kettle, and put the CLOSED sign up without needing to bother the handful of other people dotted around amongst the jungle. It had a smaller, cosier feel than what it had always used to be. Steve liked it.
"Nobody else turned up to work," Eva explained, once they had sat down with a pot of English breakfast and a plate of ginger nut biscuits between them. "I didn't know who to call, and nobody tried to come and claim the place. I ended up using it as a kind of office once I had the Central Park landscaping job, and figured that with big windows like these, the space would make a good greenhouse. I only started selling plants 'cos people kept asking for them. But I've got stuff from Wakanda that nobody else has even seen, and I get people coming in and telling that they've never had a plant be so healthy as the one they got from here. The coffee part of it is more force of habit than anything. A few people come in and stay for a drink, but mostly it's for the plants."
"Jarvis and Kresk," Steve remarked, stirring his tea.
"People trust you more if they think you've got a partner. Jarvis seemed as good a name as any."
"But you're doing okay?"
"Yeah," she said, turning her china cup around in her small, slight hands. "I'm doing okay. Alvie came back from Wakanda a few weeks ago, and I've moved in with her. We've got a dog."
"Doesn't Rachel Carson mind?"
"Rachel Carson minds everything, Rogers."
"How is Alvie, anyway? I heard she'd moved back to New York from the ambassadors M'Baku sends over to us."
"She's… been worse. She doesn't leave the house anymore, but she's always been a bit of a recluse. After the – well, you know – she got pretty bad."
"We all did."
"Yeah, but she can't cope like the rest of us. You should talk to her, y'know. About Bucky. It might do you both some good.
"Yeah," said Steve, "maybe. I'm doing a lot of talking already?"
"Therapy?" Eva asked, and he nodded. "Fun. Sam would be proud. How are the others? Thor comes by a couple times a month, but I haven't seen the rest of you, really. Sorry for not coming up to the compound. It feels weird without him."
"We're coping."
"Is that talking raccoon still there? That was really weird, you know. Even by your standards."
Steve laughed. "That's confidential."
"Aw, c'mon. It's me you're talking to."
"Come up and see for yourself, then."
"That's bribery, captain. You're supposed to be better than that."
"War changes us all, Kresk," Steve said, and Eva laughed.
She sent him away with coffee for everyone back at the base and a small, prickly cactus with bright pink flowers that reminded Steve of the woman who gave it to him. As he left, some important-looking people from the NYC parks and recreation department came in, eager to talk to Eva about their next big project.
She had grown up, Steve realized as he begun the slow walk across the city back to his motorcycle; the surly teenager that worked the Saturday shifts at the café nearest the Avengers Tower where Tony used to send one of them when he was working all night on some project with Bruce instead of preparing for the mission the next morning was gone. No – not gone, exactly, but grown. Grown into a woman who was proud of what she was good at, and kind if you gave her a chance, and fiercely loyal to those she loved. Vision had seen those qualities before the rest of them even knew they existed. No wonder they had become so close.
For all the people Steve had lost over the years, he was grateful that he still had Eva Kresk by his side. If she had gone like the rest of them, then he would have wondered what there was left to fight for.
A/N it's been a while, hasn't it? Uni work has taken over my life. But to be fair, this fic has also kind of BECOME my uni work. I've spent the last couple months adapting it into an original stage play, which is SO COOL. AND we're performing it both here in my uni city AND at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is this massive arts thing that happens throughout all of August in Edinburgh (duh) where you can see shows from all kinds of famous and amazing people. And, uh, me. So as excuses go for not updating much, I think this one works pretty well.
I don't want to say anything too soon in case I jinx it, but my cast and crew is AMAZING and I'm so proud of what they're doing. So if you, dear reader, will be in the West Country of England at the beginning of June or Scotland throughout the middle chunk of August, then I know this totally awesome play that you should go and see.