Distressed // Steve Rogers

1 - Gone

The new recruit wasn't going to last a week. His voice barely carried over the cries of the wind as he tentatively leaned out of the open hatch at the back of the jet and stared into the darkness, and what he did say often enraged Bucky.

Everything enraged Bucky these days.

The timid soldier looked over to the two men sat glaring at each other across the jet and tried to get their attention.

"Cap's in position!" He shouted, ignored by them both. "Sam, sir, are you ready?"

Sam didn't so much as flinch. His eyes were trained on Bucky. Bucky was angry. Bucky had been angry every day for a year. It was becoming a problem.

"Stop looking at me like I've screwed this up before we've even started Sam." Bucky grunted at his companion as his eyes narrowed. He focused on keeping up his facade. He focused on keeping it all projecting as anger and rage and loathing, because otherwise it was too much. It was all much too much.

"You gonna go all Winter Soldier again and mess this one up?" Sam countered cockily, folding his arms across his chest. He knew Bucky was hurting, but he also knew he would only get hurt if he didn't focus. It's what had happened the last five missions. In fact, Sam contemplated the past year and realised it was rare that Bucky would see a month through without a trip to the infirmary, and only half of those injuries were mission related.

"What do you think?" Bucky glared. "Of course not." The use of his old life as a weapon stung him. Any reference to The Winter Soldier burned him now.

Sam sighed.

"You wanna know what I think Buck? What I really think?" He leaned forwards and waited for Bucky to look back at him. "I think that whoever is behind this has taken out over twenty high-profile individuals in the last year alone. I think you being angry about life makes it really hard to talk to you which means we screw up. We screw up because we aren't talking like a team."

Bucky sighed again, twisting his head and cracking the joints in his neck as he softened. Sam was right.

"Sam, Buck. We're too late." Steve's voice was full of dejection and frustration as it crackled over the coms. "By my count we have at least 10 victims." He swung his shield onto his back as he rounded a corner and tried to drown out the screaming devastation of another failed mission. "Don't bother coming down here."

"Damn it," Sam grumbled on the jet and Steve reached up to disengage his coms. He was done listening to them complaining.

As his hand grazed across his ear, just as his fingers brushed against the small earpiece, he stilled. Movement to the left of him caught his eye and he was frozen, rooted to the ground. A figure, running into the darkness, drew his breath from him.

"Runaway?" He choked on the word and took a stumbling step forward.

"Did he just?" Sam's eyes darted to Bucky across the walkway of the jet and Bucky closed his eyes with a sad sigh.

"Steve, she's been gone for a year." He cleared his throat. "You know she's gone. Just - let's just get back to base. We're coming in on your left now."

The air pushed around Steve as he stared into the depths of the night so sure he had seen her, the ghost of his memories, and so deeply broken in his loneliness, and the jet hovered above him. A small ladder dropped down and he did as was expected: he put on his mask of strength and climbed the ladder back to the darkness of his reality.

*

Alone in his room Steve tried to erase the flash of auburn hair in the wind from his mind. He tried to scrub it from the darkness of his eyes and he tried to burn it out of his memories. It was not Talia. It could not have been Talia. And yet his heart ached for her in the emptiness of their room.