16 Love
Steve had a difficult time putting into words what was going through his mind as the freezing water drowned him. Earlier he had felt relief, like everything was how it should be. But now, fear was setting in, an old fear and it reached deep into Steve, twisting his heart, wrenching at the sickly little boy in 1930 who just didn't want to die because he was scared. Steve gasped instinctively and took in a lung-full of cold water and choked. It hurt. He began to thrash. His insides were on fire, his outside was peeling away. Steve looked up and tried to find the top, but it was too dark he couldn't see anything, and he realized that he was entirely suspended in cold, suffocating darkness all alone and Steve didn't want this. He didn't want this!
Steve didn't see Bucky join him in the water, but he felt an arm around his chest and he began thrashing harder. When his head broke the top of the water, he found he still couldn't breathe because the water was everywhere, it was more than just surrounding him, it was inside him, and hands reached for him and hauled him out and he collapsed on the ground, coughing out water, choking.
He had almost done it. He had almost died. And it was actually horrible. Steve scooted away from the ice, dripping wet, hardly noticed the cold, and hugged himself, sitting there on the ground. He vaguely felt someone put arms around him, and then blankets. His cheeks grew hot with his tears. He had nearly killed himself.
He… He needed help. He didn't want to want this. He wished he was strong enough to just do it, and then wished he was strong enough not to. He wished he didn't want himself dead. He wished he didn't hate himself, wished he didn't think he should die, wished he could just figure out how to live, just learn how to live with himself. He put his face in his hands. He shook, sobbed, tried to breathe. So deeply was he entrenched in the pain of his own deep thoughts that he didn't notice Sharon trying to get him to stand, Sam walking him inside, until he looked up and over and he was sitting on Sam's couch next to Bucky and the little boy he'd saved, heaped in blankets and surrounded by space heaters and the buzzing Wilson family. Natasha was kneeling next to Bucky, she had his metal hand in between both of her own and was trying to rub the ice away from it. They were talking to each other in hushed voices. Steve heard bits and pieces from where he sat on the other side of the couch.
"Something something thaw it out it'll be something something," Natasha said.
"Yeah," Bucky said. "But something something Steve, he's not respondsomething something. Someth-he's going to get himself killed." Natasha didn't say anything and Steve looked back down at himself, still shaking, still wet, and tried to get his hand out from under his blankets to rub the tears off his cheeks before they dried.
He could have been dead. He could have been dead.
Steve leaned his head back into the couch and closed his eyes. He was used to almost being dead. He was almost numb to it, honestly, or he thought he had been. He was almost dead so many times he couldn't count them all, lying on his bed, coughing up blood, hearing his mother cry in the other room and seeing Bucky's stunned and scared expression, as if although it had happened a million times before, he was always surprised and he was never prepared.
He was used to almost being dead. He was used to thinking about death, to thinking that he might have to die, or maybe that it would be better, easier for his family, if he did die. The thing that struck Steve now, the thing that scared him, was that he had never brought himself so close to death. His death thoughts were never ones he acted on, just ones he lived with, had to face, thought were reasonable. But acting on them was new and it drove him back decades until there was no Captain America, no World War Two, no ice, just Steve Rogers and every chronic illness that scared him so bad, scared him so deeply that he tried to force it from his mind, tried to ignore it, tried to pretend everything was okay.
Steve realized that not a lot had changed over the years.
The Wilsons let Steve be after a while because there really was nothing else to do and although Steve couldn't find it in him anymore to try and smile for them, they at least gave him some peace. He sat on the couch and stared at the rug and in his head, over and over, he saw himself looking down at the ice cracking, saw himself consider even breaking it further, and shuddered with such fear and such pain that he could feel it physically affecting him, like nausea, deep in his stomach and he wanted to throw up.
Meanwhile, Sharon Carter had returned to her apartment, entrusting Steve in Sam's care, and was attempting to sort out her conflicted feelings, which could be summed up simply with two questions. The truth was, Sharon did not often act on emotion and she did not often act for people. But she had held the Winter Soldier at bay and knelt by Steve Rogers and held him and she had done it all out of emotion. She had felt overwhelming feeling rising up in her heart and these feelings controlled her, she didn't know what to do with them. This was unusual for Sharon and she didn't like it, so the questions were these: Did she do what she had done because she had grown to love Steve, something she hadn't wanted to admit to herself? Or did she do what she did because she didn't trust Barnes?
The questions still standing, the idea of loving Steve Rogers was one Sharon was almost forced to admit was at least a little bit true. It was because the things he did without thinking, she never would have done. It was because he could forgive a man who tried to kill him. It was because he reached into frozen water to save a child he didn't know. It was because he talked about being unhappy and then smiled at her. Steve was her antithesis.
Love was not a practical thing and it wasn't something Sharon partook of often and she never felt her life any less meaningful because of it. She was happy. She was dedicated to her work and she did it skillfully. But she did not love many. It simply wasn't in her nature, but Sharon Carter, well… Well, she had to admit it to herself. She was beginning to love Steve Rogers.
But, she thought to herself. She couldn't really be blamed. After all-he was Captain America. Who could help themselves?
The idea of not trusting Barnes was also, of course, undeniably true. But no one else seemed to be able to see the danger this man was, none of the Wilsons agreed with her decision to protect Steve. Sharon scowled, thinking about it. Most of them didn't even know Barnes, how could they tell how dangerous he was? And none of them had seen the bruises he had left on Steve and no matter how many times he pulled him out of water, Sharon thought, she could never forgive him for the way she had seen Steve wince when he turned his neck for a whole week, for the way he'd had a black eye a month or so ago and no way to explain it except by saying, we were both angry, for the way his nose was so crushed by his 'friend's' metal fist that he had to have reconstructive surgery and wear ice packs for ages, the way he still had the shadows of bruises just leaving across his face. Sharon could never, never forgive Bucky Barnes for the pain he caused Steve. Never.