Steve is always losing people. Always.
His father died before he was born, somewhere in a trench in rural Austria. His mother died when he was 18, consumed by the TB she'd devoted her brief life to fighting. He never met any of his grandparents - all dead before he was born- and he's never had many friends.
Honestly he'd been shocked to have Bucky as long as he did before the war took that away from him too.
I don't want to lose anybody else.
That's what he'd written on the burned page. He'd put those words out into the world and the world had laughed in his face, just like it always did.
Dr. Erskine is dead, hand falling limply to his side as Steve kneels beside the body, staring down in disbelief. The lab is in an uproar, and the gunman is on the loose.
He raises his eyes, and the trembling that has rippled up his spine vanishes as if it had never been. It has taken him less a minute for shock and horror to melt into something colder, meaner.
I don't want to kill anybody.
That's what he'd said. Well that had been the old Steve. The new one is sprinting up the stairs, barefoot and blind to every good, solid, sensible reason why what he's doing is completely insane.
All he knows is that this man has killed someone who wanted to make the world a better place. He's killed the sweet old lady upstairs, and he's currently trying to kill Peggy. That's more than enough reason to see just how much of a mess this brand-new body of his can make.
It's not until the madness of the chase has died down, the assassin dead at his feet from his own cyanide capsule, that it really hits home for Steve. All of it.
He's just sprinted across half of New York, barefoot, ridden on the top of a cab, dived under water, swum at least a few hundred feet, ripped open something out of one of those terrible science-fiction novels Bucky loves so much... and he's barely even out of breath.
He glances at the froth-laced corpse on the ground, dripping sea water from limp, rapidly cooling fingertips. The first of many. That's what the man had said.
What the hell is a hydra?
He vaguely remembers the word coming up in a history class once, but other that, he's got nothing. Is he supposed to be fighting sea monsters now?
He thought he was signing up to fight a war. This is on an entire other level.
What the hell has he gotten himself into?