'Who are you to change this world,

silly boy?

No one needs to hear your words.

Carnivore, carnivore, won't you come digest me?

Take away everything I am.

Bring it to an end.

carnivore, carnivore, won't you come and change me?

Take away everything I am.

Everything I am.'

- Carnivore, Starset

[One year later…]

"Steve?"

They were alone in the anechoic assessment room. The facility in Upstate New York had expanded to cover two acres. Seated in a cold, steel chair, Rogers fixed his blues out of the window at the sprawling, treelined grounds of the facility beyond. Covered with a fresh cloak of white, New York had welcomed the first snowfall of winter a few weeks before Thanksgiving.

Untouched. Sleeping. Frozen.

The jarring impact nearly rattled his teeth clean out of his skull as the ship's nose plunged into the ice capping the frigid ocean. After pushing himself up from the dented, sparking control panel, Steve's eyes fluttered open, a trail of warmth crawling down from his forehead. The irregular crackling static of the radio, where Peggy's voice used to be, filled the air. His vision swam in and out of focus—dazed as he stared at the myriad of color blooming across the horizon. Hardly daring to believe his eyes, he realized he was staring at a sunset.

He wasn't in the water.

Rogers slumped back in his chair, heaving a sigh of relief through a crooked smile.

"Steve," Helen repeated.

He had been seeing her for several weeks, due to new legislation that mandated the Avengers to undergo testing to determine the state of their mental health. Steve had submitted to it without a second thought. He had been cleared before enlisting.

He hadn't expected her to find anything.

The first sign that something was wacky should have been the phone call. Cho wanted Steve to take the tests again, claiming the machines had malfunctioned and skewed the results. Later that afternoon, he redid the entire thing. The modernized test questions were strange. None of them ever asked directly how he felt about anything. Many of them were if/then scenarios.

Bizarre, random things.

He remembered one near the middle dealt with fruit. It asked him if in the event he had planned to make a pie and realized he had forgot an essential ingredient at the store (apples) if he would run back to the store or make a different kind of pie with the ingredients available. Steve had said he'd run back to the store. The next question revealed that the store was twenty miles away. His car didn't have enough gas in the tank. Etc. Another question: If one were standing at a lever at the intersection of two train tracks and a strange was tied to one track and five of his family members were tied to the other, what would he do? It stipulated that he didn't have enough time to save both sets, and could only use the lever to save one or the other five. Steve answered that he would do neither. He would jump in front of the train and hope he could stop it before it reached anyone.

A week went by. Steve half expect for Helen to call and ask him to come in again. But no call came. Not until it was time to share the results.

Numbly, he wondered when the snow would melt.

Crunch.

Groan.

CRACK.

He felt the color drain from his face, siphoned into the distance. The ice was breaking beneath the weight of the wreckage. He had celebrated too early, something he should have had the discipline to avoid. Fear and panic like molten iron erupted into his chest, pushing bile into his throat. Wits on red alert, he went to rip his belt free. If he hurried up the ladder beyond the cockpit and got the vault door capping the hull open, he could climb out easily. But the instant his belt was supposed to come undone and free him, Steve found it jammed.

"No," he muttered, pulse skyrocketing. Hands shaking. Heart hammering.

He didn't feel strong anymore. This wasn't how he'd imagined this. He wasn't supposed to be awake. It wasn't supposed to be slow. The impact should have rendered him unconscious. It was supposed to be like permanently falling asleep.

"I know you're struggling with how to react to this. We've run the results through every rubric we could think of. We've recalibrated the machines. Updated the questions. Thrown out certain answers. Even then, they have little differentiation."

"I don't understand," he said hollowly. "I took the exam once. They cleared me. Said I was right as rain."

"The technology and the level of understanding we have about the human mind and warning signs of psychological illness has substantially increased since then. Had you taken today's examination… you wouldn't have been admitted, or able to enlist."

"That's hogwash. The questions have nothing to do with diagnosing if you've got a screw lose. I'm fine."

"I know it seems that way. Neuroscience has… managed to create tests and questionnaires in which the participant can infer very little about what they're actually being tested for. It's to remove the opportunity to answer in ways that would bias the results in your favor, ways that aren't honest—telling us what you think we want to hear and what you believe is expected of you."

"So what now?"

"I'm going to recommend that you start seeing someone. Our labs are in the process of experimental medication. In your case, it's possible no prescription will affect you."

"Hang on. You want to put me on pills?" Not amount of prying would get this out of him, but Steve's mother Sarah had been in and out of mental facilities, psyche wards, since the death of his father Joseph, clear up until her death. They had lost him to the bottle, his comfort against the inability to find work and provide for them. Steve had seen, at a very young age, what those places were like. And would rather—!

Rogers stopped. And realized.

"Steve… there's no easy way to say this. Your particular results are indicative of a preoccupation with death and self-punishment. Addiction to pain. Clinical depression. And… high risk of suicide."

"A machine told you all that," he mumbled, skin crawling.

"No. You told me all that."

"I don't want to die," he lied through gritted teeth.

"I've never thought so, Steven. Not until I looked at you through this lens. It actually makes a lot of sense. A very… disturbing sort of sense. I don't see you any differently. This isn't something you can control. You were raised in a very rigidly Christian society that only accepted certain types of men. There were scripted gender roles. I want you to know that how you feel—it's okay. It's okay to love who you love."

Steve bristled and nearly lost his lunch, sensation rushing back into him like a river. "What are you talking about?"

She licked her lip and worried at it for a moment. "It was unintentional—finding this out through the exam process."

"Finding what out?"

"I know how you see… people of the same sex as you. And I want you to know that… I think it's beautiful. I won't tell anyone. It's not going on the official report or anything. I completely understand how growing up knowing that would foster a deep sense of self hatred. I can't imagine how hard that was for you."

Steve's knuckles were white. She knew. Numbers, apparently, never lied. What was the point in defending himself? "So that came from being sick?" he managed stiffly.

With a gasp, she jumped up. "No. God, no, Steve." She stepped forward and laid her hand on his shoulder. "Being homosexual isn't an illness. It's as natural to you as heterosexuality is to me. But, like any pathogen, hate can infect you with awful things. In your case, I believe that you sought out the fights, the bullies, so they could inflict the pain on you that you thought you deserved."

Rogers stood abruptly, recoiling from her. "Goodnight, Doctor." He breezed by Helen and quickly left the room.

After a few desperate yanks, he wrenched the contraption free and surged to his feet. The aircraft lurched left. Steve lost his footing and tumbled into the wall. He scrambled to right himself, to race for the ladder. The collage of light spilling in dimmed. Steve rounded on the window in time to watch the last sliver of sunlight, shinning brilliantly into the blues of his eyes, blacken as the ship slipped beneath the ice. In the dark, he grasped wildly for the ladder. His hand clasped a rung. He climbed. At the top, Rogers reached up for the wheel locking the hatch in place. Then, he stopped. His eyes had adjusted, just enough murky blue shining in from the gagging hole the ship had created to see by. But that was fading too.

"I'll freeze," he realized. "Even if…" Even if he made it to the surface, he'd be soaked through, and facing an arctic night in a matter of minutes. He hadn't given Peggy coordinates. Even if they sent a search party, how would they find him out here? A spec on the tundra?

"I'm dead either way."

And why did it matter? He had done his duty and fulfilled his mission. His purpose. He had resigned himself to this fate at 30,000 feet. The dimming hull of the ship groaned. He could feel the weight of the outside water pressing into him on all sides as they drifted deeper into the crushing blackness.

The line had ended.

And now, it was time to be with Bucky.

Only, Bucky wasn't there. Not when he closed his eyes. Not when he opened them again.

Steve hadn't even looked for him. Hadn't even entertained the possibility that he could still be alive until the horrifying afternoon on Virginia Avenue. But Bucky didn't remember him. And there were times Bucky still didn't remember him.

Barnes had resurfaced a few months ago, cold and alone on Steve's doorstep. They had lived together for awhile. But Fury had mandated their separation after the third incident. The first time, James had taken a knife to Steve's throat. The second, Buck had put Steve through the bathtub wall. And the final round, Bucky (dead eyed and someone else entirely) had shot Steve point blank in the chest. Steve hadn't reported the abuse that went on in the bedroom. James' lapses into Winter Mode were just that. It was never really Bucky doing that to him. And it was all Steve's fault anyway. He deserved it. He needed it. He liked it.

He should have searched. Should have saved him. Should have...

Whatever cruel game God was playing, Steve wanted nothing to do with it anymore. Steve's phone dinged out an alert as he mounted his bike, upright on its kickstand in the parking lot. Fishing the device from his pocket, Rogers turned the screen on.

"Hi sunshine."

Steve turned a mellow smile. "Hey babydoll," he thumbed back.

"How did it go? We still on for dinner?"

"Yeah."

"Your place?"

"I'd rather not."

"Mine then."

"OK."

"You wanna stay over again? Spare room's ready."

"I'll see you at 7, Clark."

"Okydoke. Til then. :)"

HI FOLKS! :D

I am soooooo sorry that it took me this long to update this. A myriad of things happened. Plus, Winter Soldier came out. And I was like... "Well, fuck." Do I ship Stucky more than Clave? Should I address this? WHO EVEN AM I ANYMORE?! I've found a way to resolve that issue though, and it is hinted at in this chapter. I'll be starting on the next one tonight. Forewarning: It will involve A LOT of sex, consensual and non. And flashbacks. And the explanation of Clark and Steve's eventual relationship. Steve's first love will always be Bucky. But Kal is one determined alien.

I've been so inactive here, but I'm trying to change this. The writing bug finally bit me today. I do roleplay as Steve Rogers on rpme if you're interested in writing together there. (Yes. Spangles of Steel is completely based on the Steve I play.)

roleplayer . me / 942484 Just delete the spaces. ^_^

Starset has some of the most AMAZING songs I've ever heard. Check them out. I'm off to write some smut! /dash away, dash away, dash away all!;