Father's Day:

Tomorrow was Father's Day. George wished the universe had given them—had given Joseph—a little more time to grieve before slapping him in the face with this holiday. Steve hadn't even been dead a month. Sarah and Winnie got to visit him on Mother's Day, and he was even awake for a full two hours to talk to them. George planned to call Bucky tomorrow, knowing his son wasn't in the right mindset to remember to call him but could use a chat nonetheless. The best Joseph could do, however, was visit a grave so fresh it didn't even have a headstone yet.

George wanted to help make tomorrow easier for Joseph, but he didn't know what the other man might need. He may want to spend the day alone, or just with Sarah, or he might welcome company. Still, George worried that his company in particular—him having a living son—may not be so comforting. Well, there was no harm in asking. George grabbed his phone and texted Joseph, "Hey, I know tomorrow's going to be a really hard day, so I just wanted to let you know I'm thinking of you. Is there anything I can do?"

Joseph got back to him nearly an hour later. "Thank you. That means a lot. Do you want to come over tomorrow? I could probably use all the distraction I can get."

"Absolutely."

George put the phone down and took a deep breath, already dreading tomorrow. And if he was dreading it, he could only imagine how Joseph felt.

~0~

George left his apartment at nine in the morning and walked the few blocks to the Rogers' place. He knocked on the door and was greeted by a smiling Joseph. The smile failed to reach his eyes, though. "Hey, George," he greeted. "Happy Father's Day."

"You too," sat on the tip of his tongue, but George stopped before he could say it. Was that insensitive to say to a father with so little reason to be happy today? Probably. "Thank you," he decided to say instead. "I'm glad we could do this."

"Me too." Another fake smile graced his face. Joseph produced a set of car keys from his pocket and announced, "Let's go."

"Where are we going?"

"To visit my son."

"Oh. Do you want me to drive?"

"No thanks, I got it."

"Okay."

George should have expected a trip to the cemetery was in order for today. He climbed into the passenger seat as Joseph started the car, scanning his features for any emotion whatsoever. Joseph displayed none. His smiles were all fake, but there was no sadness in his eyes. Just emptiness.

"Have you talked to Bucky yet today?" Joseph asked.

"No. I was going to call him later."

"Sounds good."

The rest of the ride passed in utter silence. George had no clue what to say. Today was too charged for small talk, but he didn't know if Joseph was up for discussing anything heavy at the moment. His coping mechanism appeared to be withdrawing completely.

They drew into the church parking lot. Joseph turned off the car and stared out the front windshield, still expressionless. George tried to follow his gaze and decided he was most likely staring at the cross up on the roof. "Sarah still believes in God," he stated.

George wasn't sure what he intended to get across by that comment. "You don't?" he asked.

Joseph shook his head. "I stopped believing when Steve was two."

George waited for a further explanation, unsure if Joseph wanted to offer one or not.

He turned to George. "Did you ever have to hold Bucky down?"

"What do you mean hold him down?"

"I guess he was probably old enough that it never came to that."

"You mean during cancer treatment?"

Joseph nodded.

George had luckily missed witnessing the one time nurses had to restrain Bucky to access his port. He'd arrived maybe an hour after that, and listening to Winnifred recount the experience was almost as horrible as witnessing it. He couldn't imagine having to be the person who held him against his will so that near-strangers could inflict pain in the name of medicine. "I was never the one to do it," he explained to Joseph.

He grimly set his jaw. "It's enough to make you stop believing in anything."

On that note, they finally got out of the car and walked through the cemetery towards the Rogers' plot. They'd bought enough room for four people: Steve, Sarah, Joseph, and Bucky, if he chose to rest here. George imagined for a brief instant that it was Bucky they were going to visit here and almost threw up right then and there. When Bucky was first diagnosed, he and Winnifred both spiraled wondering if cancer might take him from them. Those were some of the darkest days of their lives, second only to those they were living right now.

"It'll be nice once the stone is here," Joseph remarked as they stared down at an empty expanse of grass. George only knew they were in the right place because he recognized the surrounding stones. He practically memorized them reading the names over and over again because it was less painful than watching his two best friends and his son sob so hard they shook.

"Yeah," George agreed.

They continued staring at the grass. George kept a careful eye on Joseph, waiting for any sort of reaction. No tears appeared in his eyes, but he did open his mouth to ask, "Can you keep a secret?"

George stumbled over his response. "Yeah, of course."

"Sarah…Sarah had three miscarriages before we had Steve."

George already knew this. But Joseph wasn't finished.

"And one of them saved my life."

"What?"

"I was deployed when it happened, the first one. I was supposed to come home right before her due date. We didn't…we never expected it to end like that. She was in her second trimester. We knew the sex, had a name picked out and everything."

George hadn't known all those details. He never thought he could sympathize with the Rogers more than he already did, but this…this was tragic. To lose three children they never met, then finally see one born, only to lose him twenty-seven fraught years later. Bucky's cancer ordeal had nearly broken him; he couldn't comprehend how Sarah and Joseph were still functioning.

Joseph continued his story. "I told my CO what happened, asked for leave to go home so I could be with her, but we didn't have the resources to send me home before our scheduled departure date. He did let me switch my patrol shifts around so I had a few days to rest and use the phone uninterrupted. The night after Sarah told me, the patrol—the one I was supposed to be on—never came back. Drove right over an IED. No survivors. Sarah losing the baby saved her from losing me."

Silent tears dripped down George's face. Joseph remained completely stoic, staring emptily at the grass before them.

"Not even Sarah knows that. I didn't have the heart to tell her, after all she went through."

"Why—why are you telling me?" George didn't think he had any right to know something about Joseph that Sarah didn't.

Joseph shrugged. "I didn't want to carry that burden all alone anymore. And, I, uh…I never got the chance to tell Steve." He idly scratched at the back of his head. "He…the stars really aligned to bring him into our lives."

"Yeah." George didn't know what else to say. Joseph's shoulders began to slump, then all at once he collapsed to his knees.

"I just don't understand why the universe would do this." His tone sat somewhere between molten sorrow and icy rage. "So many things fell into place for us to have him, why…why couldn't we just keep him?"

George had no answer for that. He knelt down beside his friend, now shuddering, and laid a hand on his back. He didn't think his heart could possibly hurt more, but Joseph wasn't finished.

"Why was I spared, and not him? It doesn't make any sense." On the last word, he slammed a fist into the ground.

"If you died that day, Sarah would have neither of you," George said, desperately hoping it was the right thing to say.

"I know. It's selfish of me to want it that way, but right now I'd rather be there than here." He stabbed the ground with a finger. George swallowed an anguished scream. There was nothing he could say that wasn't meaningless placation or blatant falsehood. So, he said nothing. He kept an arm around Joseph and let him rage.

Half an hour passed. Half an hour of Joseph silently quaking. George had had plenty of difficult moments in the past decade or so of his life, but nothing quite like this. No trauma had ever pushed him beyond words.

"It's genetic, you know," Joseph croaked.

George's back ached from so much time on the floor. His right foot was so asleep he probably couldn't move it if he tried. He was so exhausted it took him a few moments to piece together what Joseph was even talking about.

"We gave it to him. After three miscarriages, we should've known better. The first one…they told us the child had so many mutations that she was incompatible with life. That's why Sarah miscarried."

"Joseph, this is not your fault."

"That's easy for you to say," he growled. "Nobody knows what causes pediatric cancer."

George recoiled from the unexpected vitriol. His immediate instinct was to retort, but a quick deep breath reminded him that Joseph was not in his right mind today. He could forgive this because he knew it came not from genuine animosity but from grief so potent it erased all other sentiments. A wave of secondary survivor's guilt hit him with the force of a heavyweight boxer. Joseph had every right to be jealous of him and Winnie; frankly, of any parent with living children. The unfairness of it all threatened to crush him.

"You wanted a child. There's nothing wrong with that," George said calmly. "I'm so sorry that he was taken from you so soon. But isn't that better than never having had him at all?"

"Yeah," Joseph sighed. All the anger bled from him and he slumped over even further, nearly pressing his forehead to the ground. "I just…I miss him so much."

"We all do."