Steve.
Twenty-plus years in Brooklyn being friends. Best friends.
Sixteen months in war being brothers in arms.
Seven decades in hell trying so damn hard to remember him.
Three days in Washington trying so damn hard to kill him.
Two years in hiding reading every last scrap of news I could find on him.
A month in Wakanda, feeling – I'm not even sure what.
Safe, I guess. For the first time in a lifetime, I feel safe. I mean, do I even have a choice, what with Steve looming over everything and everybody who so much as looks at me?
Well, yeah, I do have a choice. I know I do. Steve looms because I have a choice to not feel safe.
But the people here, everybody here, is kind to me and gentle and it isn't because they're afraid of me because they aren't. It isn't even because Steve is looming. They're just kind, gentle people and I feel safe. I feel safe and I feel protected.
I feel freedom.
Not free, not that. I kinda think it's going to take another seven decades to feel that. But despite Steve's looming, or maybe, probably, because of it, I feel freedom.
Steve looms, he hovers around me and I feel his support and his encouragement.
Which maybe means that I feel cared for. That I feel friendship.
Love, even. Maybe. I think maybe I remember what that feels like. Right? Maybe?
I mean, what else would you call it when your best friend challenges the entire world to a stare-down for you?
I don't know.
I don't know what to call it.
I don't know what to call any of it.
Except to call it Steve.
The only word that means it all is Steve.
.
