Distressed // Steve Rogers

3 - Too Far Gone

Talia could feel herself moving forwards. She knew every step she took: one foot after another. She let Steve hold her and move her forwards, and yet she felt nothing. It was like the world had been dulled somehow and with it, her ability to feel. Left. Then right. Then left again. She could hear him telling her things he shouldn't tell her, making promises he couldn't keep and yet the world was still dark. Talia could feel herself moving and at the same time she felt nothing.

*

"I don't - I don't understand." Her voice was a mere whisper and no one heard her speak. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't see. Her world was nothing but pain now.

Steve was frantic. He was enraged. Talia couldn't find her rage.

"How could you let this happen Buck!?" Steve bellowed as his hands locked around his hair and his eyes zoned into his childhood friend, tearstained and broken on the compound couch. "How!?"

Bucky stared at the floor, his breathing ragged and his skin burning. His pain rolled off of him and Talia could taste it in the room with them.

"St-Steve. Stop." She shook as she spoke.

"Dammit Bucky! We trusted you. She trusted you. So tell me. Tell me how my daughter is gone? Tell me how my daughter was in your care and now she's gone? Please."

Talia could taste salt. Why could she taste salt?

"I don't know." Bucky was broken. He couldn't look at them and he couldn't breathe. This was worse than every form of torture he had been victim to. This was worse than death. "She wanted ice cream. I looked away for a minute Steve. One minute. I - I'm so sorry. I'm so so sorry."

Talia closed her eyes and tried to focus on the darkness.

"Sorry doesn't bring our kid back Bucky!" Steve screamed.

"Steve." Somehow she found the voice she needed and although her heart was frozen solid, her anger burned her veins. "Stop. This isn't his-"

"Don't tell me this isn't his fault Talia!" Steve turned to her with agony in his eyes. He was fraying, splitting at the seams and nothing could piece him back together now. Not even her. "Someone has Jamie." His voice trembled and Talia stared at him. "He was supposed to keep her safe. He promised he'd keep her safe."

"No." Talia whispered as tears streamed and both Steve and Bucky watched as she fell to pieces. Her heart was gone. Not frozen, not broken, not aching. It was gone. It had gone with her baby and she had no way of finding it. "I should have kept her safe, I should have been here. So stop. Stop shouting. Stop blaming him. Because it's me. It's me. I did this. I - I-"

Pain ripped through her with such precision she felt she might fall apart and rip in half and her sobs tore from her chest. She screamed in pain. She doubled over and let the agony of reality draw her in and pull her under. The darkness was gone and in its wake was excruciating reality. A reality she could not face. Her hands clawed at her stomach, desperately tearing at that gaping hole that was ripping through her, and she cried. She cried as if her tears could shed her of the weight of her failures. She had failed. She had failed her daughter.

Hands were on her as she knelt in the place she had once called home, stroking her hair and brushing away tears that would not stop falling.

"No. No Runaway." Steve held her. He pulled her close to his chest, his arms wrapping around her as he pieced her back together, praying he could fill the holes in her chest with pieces from his, and he brushed his hands over her. Down the hall he could hear Tony shouting and Natasha barking orders. "This isn't your fault. And it's not Buck's. I know that. I know that okay?" He held her face in his hands as she struggled to find the air to breathe. "We're going to find her. We are going to find our baby and then we are done with all of this, okay? We find her and we hang it up."

*

24 Hours Missing

"It hurts."

Natasha held Talia as she clawed at her chest and screamed into the sky.

"It hurts so much. Make it stop. Please make it stop. It hurts!" Talia felt every single singe of pain as it crept over her skin and pulled her under. She felt it all and she wanted it to stop. She wanted to step off of this journey and let it come to an end. For the first time in a long time she wanted to run... and yet she had no energy to run.

Her mind swam with images of her baby girl. Her first steps; stumbling towards Talia as Steve clapped and cried, his arms outstretched as if to catch her if she needed him and his smile so beautifully proud. Her first words. She had said Dada and Talia had felt the bittersweet sting of pride and envy at her beautifully smart daughter's obvious preference for her Dada. She could tell the world the very first outfit her baby girl had worn on her first day of kindergarten and how much Talia had cried dropping her off for just half a day. She could tell the world there was a freckle on her left shoulder, a freckle that mirrored the shape of Africa, and a small scar in her right hand from the time Natasha didn't put her throwing knives away before a visit. She could tell the world all of this and yet, she didn't. She wasn't allowed to.

Someone had brought her inside and placed her in Steve's arms. She didn't know when or how. She didn't care to know. She only knew that this suffering knew no end.

He held her as she cried and he cried too. Together they broke apart one hundred times. Together they felt the loss in one million tiny ways. Together they suffered.

As he soothed the woman he loved, whose voice was hoarse from hours of tears she couldn't stem and whose emptiness screamed from her even when minutes of sleep consumed her, Steve's own mind swam with broken promises.

"I promised to look after you." He ran his hand over Talia's hair as she clung to the teddy Jamie would sleep with. "Both of you. I - I should have protected her."

*

There were sounds she did not know. Sounds of footsteps and creatures that sang and screamed. There were sounds that she didn't want to know.

When she opened her eyes she couldn't see anything and she wanted to cry. Maybe she was blind now. Maybe she would never see again. Her heart hammered in her chest as she cried and she wondered if she still had a voice. She wondered if being kidnapped meant your voice disappeared forever. Hers hadn't worked in a while.

"U-Un..." Her mouth was dry and it tasted like the time Daddy had made pancakes without syrup and Mommy snuck them into the bin without him noticing. "Uncle Bucky?"

When she blinked she knew it wasn't her. Being kidnapped hadn't left her blind: fear had. And she had plenty of that.

*

She sat staring out of the glass wall. Not much had changed. The shelves were empty now and the closet was gutted of its clothing, but everything else remained exactly as they left it. Talia wasn't sure which was worse; if it had remained filled to the brim or this desolate shelf where no life lived.

"This will be okay." Tony nodded while his hands were shoved in his pockets. He had brought them to this room hours ago. Their old room. The place Talia had once felt safe and loved and warm. Now she felt nothing. "I'm down the hall if you need me."

And he was gone. And Talia was left with Steve, and the two of them were too broken and tired to say anything to each other anymore. They were too far gone.