Written to: Wrapped in Piano Strings - Radical Face, crosspost from AO3
Eleven million people. That seems...just impossible. Eleven million? No, no, Tony must have been saying it wrong. But he wouldn't lie to me, he wouldn't lie about that kind of thing just to hurt me. At least, I don't think so.
I...I just can't fathom that. How can eleven million people just, in the span of a few years, be dead? I couldn't even begin to know eleven million people in this lifetime. Not even if you counted the ones I'd know in the next life, or the one after that, or hundreds of thousands of lives after that. If you believe in reincarnation, that is. I don't know what I believe.
I think I'm sort of forced to believe in it. I must be dead. There isn't any other logical explanation for it.
I remember operating some kind of vehicle, one with lots of different levers and buttons and gadgets, but I didn't focus on anything, couldn't focus on anything because there was nothing rushing up at me. Nothing? That's not the right word to describe it. It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't something either. It was just...blackness, studded through with little specks of white that were ice. I've deduced that recently. It was ice. I'm at least eighty percent sure of that.
Eighty percent because I remember being cold. It's not so much a memory as a feeling.
But it could just be that Tony's not talking to me. He's lost his parents. I know how that feels, I remember when my mother died, not wanting to talk to anyone for ages, just wanting to sit in doorsteps and hallways and dark corners and hope that nobody would see and pay attention. That's when I took up drawing, I think, as a way to remind myself that I was still there, that I was still Steve Rogers. In retrospect, I wish I had taken it up sooner. I've all but forgotten the sound of my mother's voice, the way she would smile at me as Buck and I came running in after school. I can just barely remember the faded scent of cold cream and clean linen that always seemed to hang about her, the way she would bite at her lip as she hung up the washing in the front yard and prayed for it not to rain, how she would sit down in front of her vanity every morning and night and apply dabs of white lotion to her cheeks from a pale pink jar.
Tony hasn't been talking to me, but I've heard some things. Scuffing. Banging. Papers rustling, doors slamming, sobbing into the quietness. I really do want to talk to him, maybe I could help him feel better. But would I know just what to say? Probably not.
From conversations I've overheard in the recent past, this older man, Jarvis, has been tossing about words like "spring transfers" and "not pressing charges" and "driving under the influence." I don't know what this means. How this relates to the scuffling, and banging, and quiet crying when he thinks nobody is listening.
I've been trying to talk to him, my words scrolling out mindlessly across the universe, but I guess he's not receiving them or he's not reading them. I'm not sure which one I'd prefer. Neither, really.
And what are my words, really? Empty sentiments, letters across a surface.
Don't cry.
I care about you.
It will be okay.
I said that last one to someone once. Who was it? It was a woman, I think. Someone with bouncy dark curls and a brightly red smile. We were friends. I made a promise to her. The only reason I remember that is because I was talking to her as the nothing came towards me, and I told her it was going to be okay, even though I think she knew I was lying. My last words to her were a lie, and it's been bothering me ever since.
"So, Steven," the priest would say to me on Friday afternoons as I climbed into the latticed confessional box at the Catholic church. "What have you got for me to hear today?"
I would sit there in that musty confessional box, my toes barely touching the floor, the dusty sunlight streaming in through the tiny holes in the wood. On the other side of the lattice was Father Joseph, though I could barely see him, and, for all I know, it could have been someone else. Another priest, another little boy like myself. My mother always confessed before me, stepping out of the box looking fresh and relieved and happy. I would always come out afterwards, not feeling particularly any different.
"I've lied this week," I would more often than not say. The priest would tut, remind me of the Ninth Commandment: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbours," and send me off with a penance of three or four Hail Marys.
As I grew older, the confessional box seemed to squeeze in on me from all sides, the dusty air getting too hard to breathe, too hot to stand for more than a few moments. And I began to lie inside it as well.
"Steven, is there anything else you would like to confess?" the priest would ask.
I would trace the latticework, crumbling and dusty beneath my fingertips. I would think about my mother, waiting patiently outside and wondering what was taking me so long, what would I possibly have to confess, her patience turning to worry as the seconds ticked by. I would think about Bucky, the blossoming sprout of love inside me, and I would peek through the lattice at the priest, and tell him, "No."
I carried that love around with me, hopeful, blooming and flowering in the rays of his sunny smile, trodden by the girls he always seemed to have around. It was resilient, though, and always managed to worm its way back up to constrict at my heart, to bloom into the image of his face as I lay on my bed at night, the way his mouth would stretch around the sound of my name as I tried to ignore the heat in my face and stomach.
After my mother died, the air inside the chapel became too stifling, the pews became a prison, and one Sunday, I woke up and realised with a slow smile that I was free. The chains of verses and the shackles of Hail Marys all fell away, and the love that I held hidden inside me blossomed and grew rampant without the suffocating air of the confessional box to hold it back.
Excuse me a moment. I know you're excited to hear about my thrilling life story, and what little I can remember, but Tony is talking.
"Steve. Steve. Are you there?" His voice is thick, tired. Like he's all cried out.
"I'm here."
A silence. From both of us. Shock.
"You...you're talking." Disbelief. I can't quite bring myself to believe it either.
"I...I guess I am."
I guess my mouth, though I can't feel it at present, is moving in time with my thoughts. It tastes like pennies, like hot metal.
"Well...okay, I'll think about that later. But, Steve, I'm sorry." He's crying. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Don't cry. Please, Tony."
This only makes him sob harder, his sounds choked off as though he's biting down on his knuckles to keep himself from making noise. It hurts to listen to, and it tastes like pennies and salt.
"We don't have to talk about it. It'll be okay. I promise." And there I go again. Liar.
"Can you...can you just talk to me until I fall asleep?" he asked, and even though he's a young man, almost an adult now, his tone brings me back to his eight year old self. Crying and hiding under the covers while his father shouted and slammed doors.
"Of course we can. What would you like to talk about?" I asked.
"Something. Anything," he pleads, and against the taste of hot metal and salt in my mouth, I tell him about the penguin waiters I think about and how silly they would be slipping across the ice and balancing trays of champagne.
He listens, a little hesitant laugh slipping out as I told him about how they would accept sardines as tips, and my voice gets quieter and quieter as he hiccups once, twice, his breathing smoothing out deep and steady.
"Tony?"
After a few moments, he speaks, his voice drowsy, his vowels blurred and stuck together.
"Who's going to love me?" he asked. "I buried Mum and Dad today."
I was quiet for a few moments.
"I love you," I said, the words unfamiliar on my tongue. They tasted sweet, hopeful, and, much to my surprise, perfectly natural. As if I had been waiting all this time to say it at exactly the right moment, but I had known it all along.
He laughed, tiredly. "Thank you," he said quietly. "That means a lot to me."
I listened quietly, patiently, as his breathing smoothed out deep and even again, and hoped that he fell asleep with a smile on his face.