– Steve –
I walked into his room, noting the creak of the wooden door frame when I leaned against it with a feeling of nostalgia. I'd never been able to sneak up on him because of that exact sound every time I passed through his door. The terrible feeling of emptiness within the abandoned room opened a pit in my stomach and made me feel sick. Glancing around his room, I saw everything exactly as he had left it; a book placed neatly on his nightstand with the bookmark sticking out a few pages from the end, a watch on his dresser, and his favorite shirt draped across his bed. As I took in everything left from him, still and unchanging since he was gone, it left me feeling empty. The longer I was there, the larger part of me felt like I was dying inside. He had made it and been happy for one of the first times in his life.
This time, I knew he would not come back. I had felt his pulse fade under my fingers and seen the life drain from his eyes. That would suffice for me; as much as I wanted him to be alive, I also didn't want to hold onto the hope that he was living when everyone knew better.
Every night, I had nightmares about those eyes. They haunted me at every turn. I couldn't make eye contact with anyone without seeing the terrible, haunting shells of eyes I had seen in Bucky.
That night was one of those nights.
I had awoken in a cold sweat that drenched my sheets, pants, and hair. Breathing hard, I sat up and glanced at the clock on my nightstand; it was 3 in the morning. I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair and stood up, walking over to Bucky's room and looking around.
After an hour of standing in the doorway, still refusing to disturb anything, I finally went back into my room. I cranked open the windows and lay down on the window seat, staring at the ceiling. I stayed awake, though, for fear of seeing my recurring nightmare once again if I were to succumb to sleep. I also wasn't too keen on sleeping since we had an ancient Italian poet sleeping in the building. We had ordered FRIDAY to keep a close eye on Dante as he slept or wrote or did whatever it was that ancient authors did overnight. I knew for a fact that Tony would probably be awake and working in his lab, making sure everything with our new "guest" was secure for everyone else.
I propped a pillow against the headboard of my bed and leaned against it, sitting up and closing my eyes. I wanted nothing more than Bucky to come back and tell me that everything was alright, that I would be okay and move on with my life like I needed to. The only problem was that nothing was alright because he wasn't there, so he couldn't tell me that it would be okay. Catch 22.
I pulled the covers up to my shoulders and pulled my knees to my chest. I was afraid of sleep and anything that would come with it, but I succumbed to sleep once again within the comfort of my bed.
That night, I dreamt restlessly.
I dreamt that Bucky was still alive and we were fighting side-by-side as we had for my entire life. He grew to twice his normal size and eliminated anything in our path, protecting me as we went. He kept me behind him the entire time, just as he had when I was a ninety-pound asthmatic in Brooklyn. We joked, talked, and made eyes at the cute girls. We were just Steve and Bucky, Bucky and Steve. We lived our lives as we would have if we had never gone our separate ways.
My dreams were pleasant until I saw Percy. He had considerable damage to his head and the rest of his body, probably due to the incident in his bunker office. He glared at me with all the intensity that he could muster, which wasn't enough to faze me. When I met his eyes, though, I saw the sight that sent fear to my core.
The pinpoints of my dying best friend.
They followed me everywhere, even as I slept. I couldn't escape the sight or the thought of them. I woke up in a cold sweat, again, crying this time. I grabbed a pillow and held it in my arms, leaning on it as my tears fell onto it.
I heard a knock at the door and my eyes immediately jerked toward my door. I dried my eyes with the pillow and tossed it aside.
"Yeah?"
The door opened, revealing Natasha standing in my doorframe. Her arms were folded across her stomach as she studied me.
"You're not okay," she observed, keeping a straight face as she surveyed me looking like I had been hit by a truck.
"Hmm. You should apply to be an NYPD detective, Nat."
She quietly chuckled.
"Mind if I come in?"
I shrugged, looking back down at my bed. She sat down where I was looking, tilting my face up to force me to look at her. The feeling of the sheets against my skin rooted me to the moment, holding my eyes to hers without breaking contact.
"Is it Buck?" she asked, even though she already knew the answer. There was nothing else in the world that would bother me like that. She put her hand gently on my knee after perceiving my silence as an affirmative response. "It'll be okay, Steve. He would want more for you than to have you sitting around and crying all the time, and we both know that. We know it more than anyone."
I smiled half-heartedly, knowing that she was right but not ready to admit it to myself yet. Sighing, I buried my face in my knees and tried not to start crying again.
"You're okay, Steve. It'll be okay."
She rubbed my shoulder to comfort me. At that point, though, I was inconsolable; everything I saw reminded me of him or his eyes.
Eventually, she left, but I had no idea how much time had passed since she had first come in. I stayed awake for hours in the silence, welcoming it to clear my mind. Instead of clearing it, though, the silence filled my thoughts with everything I didn't want to think about. I didn't want to think about how Bucky's happiness had been taken from him just as he had found it or about how he hadn't thought twice before throwing himself into the face of danger for the sake of our friendship.
I stretched out on my bed, taking in the pure silence of the entire tower.
Eventually, I fell asleep for the last time until the morning. When I woke up again, the sun filtered through my bedroom window and onto my face. I turned over onto my stomach to keep the light out of my eyes and tried to sleep because I was still tired. After staying up half the night in tears, it felt impossible to stay awake for an entire day. Doing anything other than lying in bed seemed impossible.
That morning, one of a few since I'd lost my best friend, was the worst morning of my life. I had an odd feeling that something bad was going to happen that day, which didn't help my motivation to get out of bed. I swung my legs out over the edge of the bed and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face to wake up. Throwing a shirt on, I found my favorite pair of running shoes and laced them up to go for a run. I rested my hands on the bathroom countertop and put my weight on them. I looked up at myself and saw a man that I barely recognized; eyes laced with lethargy, fear, and grief, and a body with muscles less defined. I hadn't worked out or done much of anything in the time since Bucky's death, even though I knew he would want me to do better for myself and him.
Studying the man I saw in the mirror was a wake-up call for me. I realized that I had allowed myself to see his death as something it wasn't; an excuse to give up. In my mind, there were no excuses for giving up on something. Giving up wasn't something that Steve Rogers did.
I started my run outside the tower and wove through the New York City streets. I turned through alleyways that I wasn't familiar with, practically begging for a fight or confrontation. No one bothered me, though, probably because they didn't have time to, considering the pace I ran. I listened to the surprise and shock in the voices of people I passed, using it as energy.
Captain America's best friend died and he hadn't given up. I had nothing in this world except the people that looked up to me as an example, and even if I gave up on everything else, that was one thing that I could never give up.
I sprinted through the streets, alleys, and sidewalks, with nearly no regard for my surroundings. As far as I was concerned, the only thing that mattered was finding myself again. I needed some sense of stability and routine. One of the few things in my life I could rely on to remain constant for me was gone, so I would have to replace it. I had always found a way to be enough for myself, and I was able to do it again.
I ran thirty miles that morning, three times my usual route. I ran until I had thought long enough to make sense of my situation, and I decided that I needed to go back to the tower and start living again.
"I'm Doctor Stephen Strange, and I've come to bargain."
A glowing, orange portal opened in the alley about five feet from me. Strange stepped out and closed it behind him.
"What?" I asked, trying to catch my breath for the upcoming conversation.
"Sorry to interrupt, Captain, but I thought you should know that there have been many people sent to the tower in the past few days. They're from all different times and places in the world. I can't see the source. Something's blocking it. It seems that whoever is sending them doesn't want us to know who they are."
I looked at him blankly.
"And this concerns me how?"
"Well, it's your house, Captain. They've all mentioned an impending war, and one threatened me with death if he didn't get to you today."
He opened another portal and allowed a man out. He was in simple civilian clothes but had wire-rimmed glasses with red lenses.
"Matt?" I asked, studying him carefully. If he was who I thought he was, something had just become much more interesting.
"Yeah. Rogers?"
I studied him for a moment, his posture, his expression. He seemed fairly calm and unthreatened, which was the same as I had seen him last time.
"What are you doing?" I asked, and he smiled.
"I heard from a friend of a friend that someone was going to need me. And, as you know, I'm a really good lawyer."
I rolled my eyes at him as Stephen looked upon us with faint distaste. I glared at him to let him know that he shouldn't say anything.
"Who's going to need you?"
"I don't know. This wizard comes along and tells me that he's Doctor Stephen Strange and he's come to bargain, just like he did again here, and forcefully removed me from Run It!. Great song. That's kidnapping, by the way. I could press charges."
Strange gave him a half-smile and widened his eyes at me.
"Sorcerer," Strange corrected, and if I could see Matt's eyes, they would have been rolling.
"A sorcerer is just a wizard without a hat. Are you wearing a hat?" Matt answered with a cocky smirk.
That's exactly what Bucky used to say.
I sighed and gave Strange a small grin.
"Thanks for bringing this, uh, man to my attention."
Strange gave me an odd look and retreated to the portal through which he had come.
Matt turned to me and shrugged.
He walked up beside me and we made our way toward the tower.
"I'm still confused as to what you're doing here. No one's done anything to get sued over."
He shrugged and kept walking.
"I don't know. That cloak of his freaks me out. It's like… alive."
I laughed and opened the door to the tower, and everyone looked at him with confusion.
"Mr… Mr. Murdock, sir?"
Peter chimed in from the corner of the room, looking up from a game on his phone.
"Parker? Is that you? Please don't tell me you're the one I'm dealing with. I can't handle another high-publicity case with you."
"Not that I know of, sir. Although… never mind, that was too long ago."
"Peter Benjamin, what did you do?"
"Nothing, Mr. Stark! What are you doing here, Mr. Murdock?"
Everyone else was confused as to how Peter knew who the strange man that had just walked into their living room was. They looked back and forth between the two to see if they could try to conjure an answer.
"Let's take bets on how Peter knows this guy. Murdock, what do you do?"
Matt smiled, shaking his head and turning in the general direction of the question.
"I'm a lawyer. For superheroes."
The quizzical and confused looks passed across their faces before returning to normal again. They were silent for a moment, thinking about how Peter and Matt could be connected.
"He was your guide for a day," Sam guessed. The room fell dead silent in the wake of his guess, which was borderline politically incorrect.
"Bold of you to assume I'm blind, Sam Wilson."
Sam's eyes widened, and I studied Matt with a smirk. Peter and I knew that he was, in fact, blind, but neither of us was going to expose it.
"Peter had that entire publicity stunt with the exposure of his identity by Mysterio, and you were the one who gave him the legal advice on how to go about it," Tony guessed. Peter turned bright red and nodded at Tony, confirming his guess.
Matt shrugged. "Lucky guess."
"I would have said that you were a witness to one of Peter's mishaps, say, the Washington Monument, and you refused to talk to the police and therefore saved him a conviction," Nat chimed in, and Matt laughed.
"How would I have incriminated him? By describing what it sounded like?"
The entire room laughed while Dante sat in the corner reading, not looking up at the conversation the entire time. He was quiet, timid, and seemingly wanted to remain unbothered as he read whatever he was reading. He turned the page of his book, nearing the end.
"You never told us what you were doing here."
"Well, Doctor Stephen Strange approached me and told me that he'd come to bargain, which meant he could take me to an unknown location in exchange for me staying alive. So I agreed, naturally, and he brought me to Rogers. All I know is that someone's going to need me because of my lawyering abilities."
That got nervous looks around the room as everyone weighed the possibility of it being the person next to them.
"Pardon my interruption, but what does he mean by a lawyer?"
"When someone commits a crime or is accused of doing so, a lawyer is the person who will defend their innocence. There is a person called a judge who listens to the arguments of both the accused and the accuser. A group called the jury decides whether an accused person is innocent or not. The judge will give the punishment for a guilty person," Nat explained.
"Well said," Murdock commended.
Dante nodded, satisfied with the answer he had been given. He returned to his book, ignoring the rest of the room with a practiced silence.
When I studied him, I saw a lot of Bucky. The way he was uncomfortable in groups and would much rather be in the company of just a few people reminded me of Bucky so much that it was almost painful to see. His fascination with books, reading, writing, and everything words was incredible. He even carried himself like Bucky; deep down inside, he knew of his worth, but to an unknowing eye, it seemed like he self-depreciated incredibly.
Bucky would have loved him.
Every day, the small reminders of Bucky's absence ripped me apart from the inside out. It felt like he was right there, just out of reach, but I knew he was in another world entirely. Hopefully, he would spend the rest of his days in Elysium. Every day, I prayed that he would have an easy afterlife and be happy.
Nearly everything made me think of him. The kitchen where he went at night when he couldn't sleep, the roof where he sat to think, the pool where he swam laps when he thought no one would notice.
His bat bag leaned against the wall in his room. That was the worst. It reminded me of all the hours we had spent together playing the game, even when we were kids. I didn't think I could bear to see the pictures on his phone, so I kept myself from even going near it. I would see everything we had done together and it would rip me even further apart, and I wasn't ready to take that on yet. It killed me from the inside out, spreading through my system like poison. Even more of me had died since I had watched the life drain from him in that underground office.
I wasn't ready for him to be gone.
A/N: you have every right to hate me. i apologize. i completely forgot to update... yikes. it's been far too long. please, if it's been a while and you're ready for another chapter, please, for my sake and yours, PM me and i'll get on it faster. sometimes i lose track of time since the last update
if it ever takes me four months again, kindly punch me in the face. i welcome it. in fact, i encourage it.
if you've made it this far, thank you for sticking with my story and irregular posting schedule:)