III: The Soldier and the Fairy Queen: Red Eve

XXXV: Scrape the Sky

March 19th, 2017 - 34 days after Sunny's abduction
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Steve - 8 p.m.

"Status?" Steve asked Natasha when she came back down to the ground in front of Avengers Tower. Or, at least, what used to be Avengers Tower.

Nat dusted her street clothes off. She sat beside him on the park bench, "Everything's set. Sam is on the south side, Barnes and Wanda are covering the west, Zemo and Halaye are on the east side. She'll be able to manage him."

Steve stared at the fountain in front of them, glittering from the lights of the Tower, "Let's wait." He dug around in the backpack. They'd left their prepared clothes for the party, along with several Widow's Veil's, in the car they'd rented, but Steve had wanted to wait to change. After all, the party wouldn't start until nine o'clock.

He took out his sketchbook and charcoals and heard Nat sigh. He saw her lean back in the corner of his eye.

"Whatcha drawing?" Her voice almost slurred. The exhaustion and stress had been taking a toll on all of them lately.

Steve flipped open his sketchbook and handed it to her. It was the bare bones of a scene that came back to him in a dream last night. It focused on Sunny-- as everything in his life seemed to be, lately. It had been a disturbing eighty degree day in late October, and everyone else had been busy with their own things, so Steve had tagged along with Sunny when she went to grab ice cream.

That was one of the strangest things about not being an 'Avenger' anymore. He suddenly had an abundance of free time.

Steve had insisted on paying, therefore Sunny wanted to choose his ice cream for him. She'd made him stand outside while she ordered, and she went outside while he paid. She'd ended up getting him peanut butter ice cream while she'd gotten herself raspberry sorbet. They'd walked from the ice cream parlour to the river, talking about nothing. When they'd gotten to the river, she'd leaned on the railing and looked across to the skyscrapers.

Sunny stared at them like she'd never seen them before, wistful, "So grand. So grand. It must have been marvelous. Growing up here, I mean."

Steve folded his hands and leaned over the railing and looked in the murky water, "I grew up before all that went up."

"It must have been wonderful, regardless," Sunny turned her head to look at him in the water.

"Brooklyn isn't very nice to ninety-pound asthmatics."

"You focus too much on the negatives. There are good things in everything."

Steve shrugged, "I guess."

Sunny nudged him with her shoulder, "We have ice cream. We are not sick. Snowy is safe. Your friends are safe. America is not a territory of the Axis powers. Nobody has arrested us yet."

Steve smiled, "Good point."

"See? I am always right. About these things, anyway," Sunny smirked. She looked back up at the skyscrapers, her tone dreamy again, "They literally scrape the sky, do they not?"

That was the first time Steve had noticed her. Her, her. Her smile, her hair, the way her jeans stretched across her hips and outlined her thighs. Her habit of picking at her pinkie cuticles. Her long-sleeve shirts in eighty-degree weather. Her clipped way of speaking that made her sound like she knew what she was talking about even as she said, "I don't know." Her rebelliousness. How the top of her head only reached his neck. Even silly things like the way her nose wrinkled when she squinted.

"You really like her, don't you?" Nat said softly, snapping him out of his thoughts. "The way things were going, I thought you'd never settle down."

"I still might not," Steve frowned and took back the sketchbook from her outstretched hand. He tilted the sketchbook up to catch the light from the Tower and started erasing the railing behind Sunny, redrawing it.