A/N- Thanks for all the amazing reviews and to everyone who has read this story and have favourited it or decided to follow it. It means a lot to me. Special thanks to SmokyMACE for your wonderful review and fantastic PM. I will get around to replying soon! Hope you all enjoy this chapter. Updates will be sporadic as I'm back at uni now for my last year but I'll do my best for you!
Disclaimer- I own nothing in the Marvel universe.
He didn't go to training the next day.
He called Clint from the phone in his apartment and explained that something had come up and he wouldn't be able to make it that day.
He spent the rest of the day in bed reading and re-reading Peggy's file and mourned the woman he had left behind and the life he could have had with her.
The day after he spent walking Brooklyn's streets and truly seeing them for the first time.
He went to the apartment building where he had been born and brought up in by his mother until her death when he was twelve and found it almost unrecognisable. The first floor had been converted into cafes and boutiques that sold things he didn't think anyone could ever need.
He didn't go into any of them.
Instead he walked the couple of blocks to the orphanage he had lived in until he was old enough to make his own way in life, the place where he'd met Bucky, only to find it was no longer there. A building site stood in its place.
He went back to his apartment after that and didn't leave until training with the Avengers the next week.
No one questioned his previous absence and he didn't offer any explanations.
He slipped back into the role of Captain America, strong and level and secure, and pretended that everything was okay.
Afterwards, after they had finished and he had showered and changed into fresh clothes, he found Stark waiting for him in the lobby, sunglasses on and suit jacket slung over his shoulder.
"So, I was thinking," Tony said without any preamble, "dinner?"
Steve frowned, "what?"
"Food. You, me and the rest of the gang. Assuming, of course, that socialising outside of training and saving the world is alright with you."
Steve thought of the soup waiting for him on the stove at his apartment, an ever present fixture now, and the small amount of money he had in his wallet, just enough for a subway ticket home, and shook his head, "I can't. I don't think I have enough money for wherever you guys are going."
Tony cocked an eyebrow and lifted his sunglasses so he could properly fix Steve with a disbelieving look, "you're kidding, right?"
Steve shook his head again, "sorry, Tony. Maybe next time?"
"You're precious, Cap. Don't you realise who I am?"
'Howard's son.' His mind immediately supplied. 'Howard's forty year old son.'
Out loud he repeated what Tony had said on the helicarrier when they had first met, "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."
"Which means?"
Steve floundered for an appropriate response, his mouth opening and closing several times without any sound passing his lips.
"It wasn't a trick question, Cap. Come on, dinner's on me." He let his sunglasses fall back into place and clapped a hand on Steve's shoulder, an action that Steve tried very hard not to shy away from, and guided him from the building and to a waiting car. "We go to the same restaurant every Thursday. Cute little place, great food. It's Thai, you'll love it."
Steve nodded and climbed into the car after Tony and didn't dare mention he'd never had Thai food before.
He listened intently as Tony rambled on about the upgrades he'd made to the Iron Man suit, though, he really only understood half of what the other man was saying. There were some questions he wanted to ask about the upgrades and the suit in general but he didn't give them voice. He didn't want to annoy Tony when he was being so nice to him.
If this was going to be the only opportunity he got to feel a part of the team, a part of anything, then he wasn't going to screw it up.
It didn't take long to get to their destination. The rest of the team were waiting for them, sitting at a large table that had been set up in the middle of the restaurant and sipping drinks, and Steve sat down in one of the two empty chairs so that Natasha was sat on his left and Tony was on his right at the head of the table.
Steve glanced around the restaurant, "it's empty."
"Of course it is." Tony said, fiddling with the phone he'd pulled from his pocket. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"He hires the place out for us." Natasha told him with the smallest of shrugs. "His way of showing he cares."
"I resent that remark." Tony said without looking up. "I do it so I don't have to be embarrassed by Thor's eating habits."
"Oh." Steve said and he wondered what he'd done to suddenly warrant an invite to what was obviously an Avenger ritual.
He shifted in his seat and nervous fingers fiddled with the edge of the tablecloth.
"What are you drinking, Cap?" Tony asked when a server approached the table.
There was no menu in sight and, not knowing what there was to choose from and how much anything cost, he went with the safest option, "water, please."
"Alright, Captain Fun." Tony said. He took a menu from the server and passed it to Steve without looking at him. To the waiter he said, "I'll have my usual."
Steve flipped the menu open and slowly flicked through the pages, taking the time to read the descriptions under each dish, and his stomach twisted and turned. The food was all so exotic and a lot of the dishes either used ingredients he hadn't heard of before or ones he was familiar with in combinations he didn't know was possible.
He looked around the table and saw his team mates talking and joking with one another before looking back down at the menu of strange food he held in his trembling hands and wondered if it was really him who was the alien and not Thor because Thor, dressed in civilian clothing and grinning madly as he told a tale of his home world in his booming voice, looked truly happy in his surroundings. He looked like he belonged.
Steve had never felt so lost.
A knee knocked into his own and he jumped at the contact. Natasha just smiled, "have you chosen something?"
"No." He answered, looking through the menu again. "What's good?"
"Depends on what you like."
He shrugged, "I don't know."
"You've never eaten Thai food before." It wasn't a question. She cleared her throat and Steve couldn't read the look on her face, though, there was nothing strange about this, "of course. Well, why don't you try one of these?"
She took the menu from him and pointed out a couple of the dishes and he thanked her for her help. He chose from one of her recommendations when the waiter came to take their order and offered Natasha a small smile as he did so.
He let the conversation of his team mates wash over him as they waited for their food but struggled to find something to say. They weren't talking about the Avengers or anything Steve really knew about and he found there was nothing he could really add so instead he smiled in the appropriate places and wished he was anywhere else but here with these people that should have been friends but felt more like than strangers.
He found himself longing for Bucky and Peggy and the people and the world he had known.
He wanted to go back to a time when people liked and respected him as Steve Rogers and not just what the serum had made him into. He wanted to be able to listen to one of Bucky's jokes and be on the receiving end of one of Peggy's beautiful smiles. He wanted the easy camaraderie of the Howling Commandos and the ability to trust those around him without thought. He wanted familiarity and simplicity.
He didn't want to be alone anymore.
He looked at the faces around him, really looked at them, and saw nothing that he recognised. Even Tony, with his resemblance to Howard, was nothing more than a stranger.
But the more he thought about it the more he came to realise that they weren't the strangers he imagined them to be because all of them, even Thor, fit in this time. They were at ease with their surroundings and with each other and it was Steve who was the stranger.
The odd one out.
The person that didn't fit, could never fit.
And it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.
He was adrift.
He was spinning, the world floating away from him, and he couldn't find anything to hold onto and anchor himself.
Then he was falling.
The ice was rushing up to meet him and it was so cold, he was so cold, and he was going to die. He was going to die and he was never going to dance with Peggy. He was never going to see the war won. He was never going to have the chance to find Bucky's body and give him the burial he deserved. He was never… he was never-.
And then he was drowning.
He could feel the water on his skin and filling his lungs and it burned even as it froze.
He could feel his body stiffening, his eyes slipping shut as his heart slowed.
And then, and then…
And then a plate of food was being set in front of him and everything should have been okay because he was alive and was part of a team that helped save the earth but it wasn't okay because he shouldn't have been there.
He should have died seventy years ago when he put Schmidt's plane down in the artic.
He should be dead.
He should be dead.
But he wasn't and he didn't understand why.
Everyone he had ever known and ever loved was dead, why couldn't he be, too?
He had only ever tried to be a good man, one that stood up for what he believed was right, but now he was being punished and he didn't understand why.
He hated the future.
It was all so cold and confusing and he hated it.
Though, he hated himself more because he was alive.
He didn't want to live here anymore.
Everything hurt too much and he was so cold and tired and nothing made sense because one minute he had been dying, had been making the ultimate sacrifice, and the next he was being forced to save a world he didn't know from creatures straight from fiction with people he didn't understand.
Because they were all so cold and distant and nothing like the people he had known and loved and lost.
And when he had tried to reach out and grasp onto the only thing, the only person, who was at all familiar to him it had been a failure. He had only made Tony shut down and grow angry with him without understanding the reason behind it.
And it was all so cold.
Steve was so cold.
But he made himself smile and eat the food in front of him even if it made his stomach turn and twist and bile rise in the back of his throat because he had been invited to eat with the rest of the team and he didn't want to be rude. Captain America wasn't allowed to be rude and Sarah Rogers had brought her son up better than that. He couldn't let anyone down.
So he forced the food down and lied when Natasha asked him how he had liked it once they had finished eating. He ordered a glass of lemonade when everyone else ordered fresh glasses of drinks and pretended that having a fizzy drink, something he hadn't been able to afford often in his old life, wasn't as much as novelty as he felt it was. But it, too, just like everything in the future haunted and disappointed him.
The glass was cold to touch and there were chunks of ice floating at the top.
He barely touched it.
"Come on, Cap." Tony said as he set his freshly drained glass on the table. "I'm giving you a ride home."
"You don't have to." Steve said. "I can find my way back to my apartment from here."
"It's on my way." Tony told him and shrugged his jacket on. To the rest of the group he said, "we're leaving. Catch you guys later."
There were a chorus of farewells and Steve hurried to keep up with Tony, his mind still reeling and the memory of the cold making his body shake, as he quickly excited the restaurant.
"Seriously, Tony, you don't have to."
The older man yanked the door to the car that was waiting for them open and said, "get in, Cap."
Steve slid into the car and Tony followed.
"Do you know where I live?" Steve asked, still fighting to keep up.
"Course I do." Tony replied, easily. "It's on SHIELD's database."
"Okay." Steve said and didn't ask how Tony had gotten access to that information.
The future was better when he didn't ask questions.
He couldn't get hurt if he didn't ask questions.
A brief silence followed in which Tony poured himself a glass of something from the inbuilt fridge and Steve tried not to squirm in his seat.
"You don't talk much."
Steve shrugged, heart pounding in his chest, "I don't have much to say."
"Yeah, you should probably work on that. The whole woe is me thing you have going on stopped being interesting weeks ago." He took a sip of his drink and once again started to press buttons on his phone. He didn't look at Steve as he spoke. "You woke up in the future and what? Life is better now, the war is over and the world's moved on to bigger and better things. You need to get with the times, Cap, and at least try and appear grateful that SHIELD found your frozen ass."
Steve's insides froze and he turned and looked out of the window at the streets that crawled by without really seeing them. Had he really been that obvious? Had they all seen his weakness?
Captain America wasn't allowed to be weak.
His voice was thick as he said, "I'm trying."
"Sorry to break it to you but trying isn't good enough. You're the team leader, you're supposed to be the one that holds us all together but how can you do that when you can't pull your head out of your own ass?"
"I didn't ask for this." Steve told him and he longed to be anywhere but where he was.
"So, what are you saying? You don't want to be the leader? You think you're too good for the Avengers?"
"What? No!" Steve chanced a glance at the other man and found Tony staring at him with calculating eyes and a blank face. He didn't understand. "Why are you saying these things?"
Tony ignored him, "if you're not the leader then what else is there for you to do? You're not the smartest, the strongest or even a master assassin. Do you have anything else you're good at? Or is the ability to take a hit the only thing you have going for you?"
Steve didn't answer him.
His whole body was frozen and he was finding it hard to breathe.
Had Tony worked out what Steve had known for so long? That he was useless, a waste of space?
"Yeah, I thought so. So, great, the Avengers have themselves a human shield. Awesome. Are you going to follow Romanoff and Birdbrain around and jump in front of bullets for them? Because, newsflash: the rest of us don't need you. The Hulk is pretty much indestructible, Thor's a God and my armour is made out of some of the strongest metal in the world."
He had and Steve didn't want to listen anymore. He didn't want to listen and he couldn't breathe and Tony kept going on and on.
And it hurt because the Avengers was the only thing he had in the future, never mind how much he didn't fit, and Tony was saying that he wasn't good enough and it hurt- it hurt!- to have it confirmed to him by someone else. He was so stupid because he should have known, he should have known, and it all suddenly made sense. They had all known and he was so stupid. He didn't fit with the team because he wasn't good enough to be on it, never mind lead it, and it all made sense because they had just been humouring him, hadn't they? They had known he was worthless but had put him on the team to make him feel useful when he probably did nothing more than slow the rest of them down. He wasn't from this time and he could do no good here. It would have been better if they had found a corpse in the ice because then he'd have been worth something. SHIELD would have been able to do all the experiments it wanted and he could have been useful. He should have never have woken up. He should have died.
Just like all his friends.
Bucky.
Peggy.
Like the men shredded by bombs.
He should have died.
"-down, Cap. I shouldn't have-."
But then someone was touching him and he couldn't take it anymore.
It was all too much and he had to escape.
With jerky movements he leaned forwards and wrenched the car door open, barely noticing when he ripped it off its hinges, and lunged head first out of the car.
The world swam and the wind whistled in his ears.
He vaguely heard the dull crack of his forehead hitting the road and the screeching of brakes and squealing of tires but they meant nothing to him.
Instead he staggered to his feet and started to run.
He didn't hear the voice that called for him.