This chapter contains heartache... times, like, a lot. Don't worry - it gets better. Eventually.
I still do not own the Avengers films.
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Peggy Carter was old. She did not even need the unquestionable evidence of her mirror to know so, she could feel the fact seeping into her very bones. She wasn't all that worried about it generally - she was well over ninety, and she had been there all the way through the war effort and rebuilding afterwards, had lived and loved. Now she was an old woman, yes, and she was pleased with the time she'd spent becoming one.
Once upon a time, when she had been so very much younger, she had loved Steve Rogers. Lord knows, she thought for herself, she still loved the man, in more than one fashion. She had few regrets, and what regrets she had for the two of them, what they'd had to give up on, it was far too late to set to rights now. Indeed, those things had never been about them, had been all circumstance. Just a price they had to pay, like so many others did too, for the greater good in an impossible situation. She was glad she had lived long enough to see Steve again, but she was not glad that she held him back.
Steve lived with Tony Stark and several others in the Avengers Tower, which was right where he belonged as far as she was concerned. Yet, he came to see her as often as three or four times a week, staying for hours at a time. Much as she enjoyed it, she hated that she kept him in the past. How was he meant to move on, to get a life of his own, if she kept him fettered to a life he had lost over seventy years ago?
Pepper Potts sighed over her desk. Tony and herself had lasted all of three seconds in a relationship together, and she really ought to have known better. She was happy with Natasha, like she'd never been with anyone before, but she worried about Tony still.
That was why she had snapped that brilliant, quirky young engineer named Claire Thomas right out of interviews for a standard replacement at SI when someone retired and offered her a tailored position with thrice the pay. It did not take away the guilt though. She would always take care of Tony, it was second nature by now, but she couldn't help but think that he needed somebody. He needed to not be second best, just for somebody.
No matter how many times she looked things over, how many opportunities to make better choices - and she found plenty, during the dark nights before she started dating Natasha - she could never bring herself to regret their ill-advised romance, if it even was a romance. It was too close to regretting Tony, and that she could never do. She would be there for him, in the capacity she could, and she would hope it would be enough.
Bucky Barnes cursed and only just restrained himself from smashing his bathroom mirror. He felt increasingly like he was the Hulk, lately. He just wanted to break something.
Out of all the horrid things Hydra did, one of the worst was taking away all of his options. He appreciated the care of all the people around him: how Stark could tinker with his arm for hours without causing pain even once, or how Bruce actually asked him for his food preferences as he often cooked for all of them.
He liked his new teammates, and he loved life at the tower, but he hated how everyone stepped carefully around him. He hated how that felt like someone took away his freedom to choose, to communicate, yet again. He didn't know how much more he could handle.
Clint hid in the vents. Natasha was busy with Pepper, Bruce was likely hiding somewhere, and Stark was working. It wasn't like most of them could understand, anyway. Maybe James Barnes could, but he still had a ways to go yet to get to talking. Clint hated how everyone from Natasha's new girlfriend to the damned driver treated him differently ever since the injury. He would heal eventually, if he didn't go mad first...
Taking a deep breath, Clint leant his head backwards against the cool metal of wherever in the Tower he found himself. Not, he suspected, too far from his room. His stamina in climbing was not even close to what it had been before.
That was also unusual. Him not knowing. He had used to always know. He suspected it was the painkillers - few as those he had eventually accepted to take were - dulling his senses, making him even more useless than he was in the first place. He sighed once again and closed his eyes. Just a while more, just a little bit more of a break before he'd go back. Just a few more moments, hiding from the pity of people who had used to respect him.
Bruce sat in the Green-room Tony had made for him, breathing slowly and trying to suppress the Hulk. He usually had a better grip on it than this, but Rogers and Barnes had been shouting at each other, and... it got to him.
He did not know why, but it did. Looking at the supposedly calming blue walls, which only looked cold to him, Bruce Banner felt intensely alone. It was ironic that here, surrounded by people - perhaps the only people - who could possibly understand, he felt lonelier than in the midst of nowhere.
He should be talking to them. Allow Tony's enthusiasm and Barnes' understanding to warm him. He never spoke to Barnes about this sort of thing, had not done so even once, which might have been selfish. He could not even talk to Tony today, though that was usually easier. Even if they tended to stray to science-talk instead of anything deeper, they both knew. It helped, and it was usually reasonably easy. He happily spoke to Tony, most days, as long as it was nonsense or science. Tony, as it happened, was very good with both.