Many thanks to Aublanc, my beta for this story.

Title: Home

Prompt: "Getting home."

Warnings: Post Thor: Dark World, CA: WS; Past Major Character Death

He'd thought the advances they'd made in forty years were amazing—once he might have called them miraculous. But even the shock and awe he felt waking in the 21st century didn't compare to his never-ending wonder as the years went by and humanity evolved before his very eyes. And still the giddy feeling in his chest when flying cars became a reality (Howard would have been so proud) couldn't completely banish the hollow ache in his chest at the thought of home.

The future—maybe he should be used to calling it something else by now, but he just couldn't bring himself to leave behind the days of fairs and friends that were long gone and this strange place he called the future could never be home.

Once upon a time he'd thought that maybe, just maybe, he could have a life in this strange new world. That he could have a real family, that he could find new friends and comrades-in-arms and grow old with them and be happy.

He should've known better.

One by one they'd all left him behind. Banner had snuck away in the night, radiation poisoning finally catching up with him. Barton, he got just a little too close to the wrong person during a mission that went so bad so fast that Steve still had trouble sleeping. After Pepper lost her long fight with cancer—well, Tony got low and joined her the same night before anyone else realized she was gone. Sam got out years ago and Steve was so glad, but he didn't dare to so much as talk to him anymore. And with trouble always brewing in other realms and Jane safe in Asgard…there wasn't much call for gods on Earth anymore.

But Natasha and Bucky were still out on the frontlines and there were new heroes, of course. Young supers and mutants all too eager to throw themselves on the line and live up to the legend of the Avengers and the X-Men and G-d he felt so old.

And wasn't that a funny thing. He didn't look a day over thirty and he was over a hundred years old. Steve Rogers, the asthmatic artist from Brooklyn. The kid that wasn't supposed to ever get out of diapers, the runt that doctors were convinced would die "any day now, he's lucky to have made it this long." And if that wasn't proof that G-d had a sense of humor, he didn't know what was.

So he spent his days looking after the younger, newer models. Spent them watching out for Natasha and Bucky because they were the only ones left and they didn't really need it, but old soldiers like them were supposed to stick together and he owed them.

But he couldn't help but wonder when that day would come. The day he'd finally go home.