Breakdown | Steve Rogers

005

ELIJAH DIDN'T LOVE BEING knocked out. It wasn't the act of losing consciousness that bothered him, it was the act of regaining it. He hated the grogginess that took over his body when he woke up, and the few seconds it took him for his eyes to focus on his surroundings. 

"It was him."

And after hearing Steve repeat those same words over and over again while they sat in the back of a Hydra vehicle, being taken to God knows where, Elijah was really praying someone would smash him in the head with a gun again. 

He wasn't above paying them for such an act of service.

"He looked right at me like he didn't even know me," Steve said in disbelief and where his voice should have encouraged sympathy, Elijah's action of slamming the back of his head repeatedly into the car wall altered the atmosphere slightly.

"We get it, Rogers. Your fuckboy from the 40s is back and he doesn't remember you," Elijah said with a monotonous voice, "you've only said it repeatedly for 20 minutes in as many ways."

"Someone's jealous," Sam whispered across his best friend and before he was met with the brute of Elijah's irritation, he continued, "how is that even possible. It was, like, 70 years ago right?"

"Zola," Steve started. Elijah made the mistake of looking over at Natasha. She looked tired, weak almost, and Elijah found himself gulping every time his eyes trailed towards the blood seeping from her wound, "Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43. Zola experimented on him, whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him-"

"None of this is your fault, Steve," Natasha was quick to say, looking away after her words to try and conceal the amount of pain she was really in.

"Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky."

"You should be happy. Not many people can say their best friend came back to life... well I can but that's beyond the point," Elijah said with an out of place smile, "and if he's more than just a friend, you can get back to fu-"

"Ignore him," Sam said sharply, hissing slightly at Elijah, "he's squeamish around blood and compensating by being a bastard."

"You were in the army," Natasha said.

"We've already had this conversation, Romanoff," Elijah rolled his eyes, leaning his head against the wall, "and it's not like I joined to fight. Serving this country was never something I wanted to do."

"Than why join?" the Russian asked once more. 

"I had no other choice. No money to my name, no home I loved going back to," he answered, missing the confusion in Natasha's face. She'd known him when he was younger and had no idea he had any problems, "I was running and the army was the only place I could think of that welcomed 18-year-old runaways."

"What were you running from?" she asked once more and Elijah tensed. He moved his head slowly and looked at Steve. The captain was too preoccupied with his thoughts to pay much attention to what he was saying, unlike Sam who was hanging on to every word Elijah uttered.

He'd asked Elijah a few times why he enlisted but the Frenchman had never given him a serious answer. And with the way he folded his hands on his lap and closed his eyes, Sam thought Natasha would get the same now.

He was quickly proven wrong when Elijah answered, his voice barely audible but full of emotion.

"My father."

Another thing Elijah hated was silence and he was humble enough to admit the quiet absolutely scared him. The van succumbing to a second of silence bothered him for two reasons, unknowns tended to lurk in the quiet and it was very obvious that Sam and Natasha wanted him to elaborate.