Remember Me?

Epilogue

"You know what we should do Steve?" she said looking over at me. It was later at night, two days before she left for her last mission. Anna was sitting on the couch and she snickered as she asked me the question. She had her head on my shoulder and was staring ahead out of the window.

"What?" I asked enjoying her. Her eyes were lit up, and so was her smile. She was simply stunning. She had an old mischievous glint in her eyes, that only appeared when she was happy.

"We should go on a vacation"

"You taking a vacation?" I questioned skeptically. I had only been with her a little over a week and a half and she worked almost everyday for almost twelve hours a day.

"Says you!"

"I'm not sure I really want to go to Europe," I mentioned indulging on the idea of spending time with her away from SHIELD, away from the world. Just us.

"I'm thinking somewhere tropical, maybe exotic." Anna suggested wiggling her eyebrows.

"Exotic?"

"Think Fiji, or Guam, Hawaii. Just think sun and sand." And I did. I thought about us going to the beach. I thought about the sights, the smells, the food, and of course the company. Anna always loved the beach.

"I think I would like that" I told Anna looking over at her, she had a sly smile on her face. She wrapped her arm around mine and rested her head back on my shoulder. I relaxed at her touch and realized I would like to be anywhere she was.

"You think Captain America could take a few vacation days? At least one?" She joked. And that was months ago, even though it felt like years ago. She asked me when I would go on a vacation, I told her whenever she was ready to go.

She never told me she was ready to go, but I took the time off anyway.

It was the first day I've taken off since I became Captain America. It was to attend her funeral.

I guess the world is funny, in a twisted, unfair way.

The first month without her was the hardest. It felt like was a year. It felt like an infinity without her. Her laugh, her smile, her happiness, her company, her beauty, her love. It was all gone. And with it went myself.

Sometimes I thought I could hear her laugh, or I see the ghost of her smile. I felt like I could see her everywhere I went, but she wasn't there, and time slowly erased her. Her presence still lingered like an old dream, I couldn't exactly remember it, but I knew how it felt.

You truly don't know how much a person means to you until they are gone. Bucky and now Anna were gone. Everybody I loved, they were gone. I hated being that lonely. People called me the man out of time. I started to feel like it, I slowly drifted away from everything everyday. There was an unsustainable pit inside of me that seemed to suck up any hope or motivation I had. I was living but I was just going though the motions. What was the point of living if there was no one to share it with?

The Funeral

I sat in my seat quietly. I could still feel the coolness of her hand in mine. I figured everyone, even her, has to fall at some time. It just always seems to early for them to leave.

I spoke at her funeral. I got up and walked to the podium as mechanically as possible. I wanted to scream, tell her to wake up. I wanted to punch the podium into dust. I wanted to scream for help, because I was drowning and I didn't know what to do.

Her name was bittersweet on my lips. She was someone who could help shoulder the burden of the world. The best time in my life, was when it was just us. Bucky, Anna and I. It was just little us in the 1940s dreaming dreams bigger than we were. But nothing can bring them back. They carried an immeasurable part of myself, and now that part was buried six feet under.

I hadn't cried. Sometimes it hurt so much I couldn't. Sometimes you're just numb.

How can it be fair to leave the evil alive and kill the good?

How can it be fair that the living are the ones punished, not the dead?

Everyone on the team ended up saying something about her at the funeral. They all said the right thing to say at a funeral.

But all I could think about was, was this it? Is she now just a few words, and some sacred memories? Is this all? Is this all I could give her?

I stayed after. After they buried her.

"I know you can't hear me but I miss you. God I miss you. And I've loved you since I first saw you. You completed something inside of me. I loved you Anna. And I wish you were with me." I remember saying kneeling at her grave. Tears came rolling down my cheeks. The pain came crashing in like waves. It shook me, suffocated me, the storm never seized.

It wasn't fair. I hated to be selfish. It wasn't fair. It was like God brought me back only to have to say goodbye. You can only lose so much before you finally lose yourself.

I stared at the two words on her head stone, and the numbers that somehow sum up her life. They stared me back. I left thinking what if. What if. Those what ifs drive me insane, but without them I would be insane. I guess the world's funny, in a twisted, unfair way.

What if she was alive?

What if I never became Captain America, and never started us on this road?

What if I was faster to save her?

What if.

•

To be honest, I don't remember much of it. I don't remember waking up and taking my first breath of oxygen. It's not something you want to remember. The last thing I remember is this feeling like I was swimming to the top, like I was breaking through the waves of an ocean. Everything was fuzzy, then clear. When I woke up, I remember seeing two people: one who I knew was dead, so I knew then I must have died and made it to heaven, the other came after the man I knew. Coulson welcomed me back, he told me I wasn't dead. Then came the man of blue smoke. He had no eyes, and crushed a blue crystal. And then I was frozen, I don't know if it was in time, or in ice. And after that I woke up again, but this time I was somewhere like home. I was painfully alive. Reborn a new person.