Winter Interrupted

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During the first month, Steve didn't really try to find you and Bucky, knowing that any interference would likely be met with the same result as the last time he had seen the two of you, and he didn't want that. He didn't want to fight either of you at all, and he was being honest when he said that he was only trying to do what he thought was best for you. But, of course, you were right, and he had blinded himself to any other ideas about it, and took it too far without even checking with you first. He had been chastising himself every day over it, punishing and berating himself until he was just sick to his stomach over the person that he had become. It had made him so sick of being this version of himself that he had become an automaton in his work, going through the motions just enough to make it to the next day, and the next. He thought that he was pulling it off pretty well, but that should have been a giant red flag and blaring alarms in his mind; he didn't even realize how terrible of a job he had been doing, and how the team was merely picking up his slack out of kindness.

When the date arrived that marked six months since you had run away with his best friend, still without so much as a whisper as to where you were, Steve finally snapped.

"Hey, Cap, come on," Sam called out to his friend from the gym door, "Tony wants the jet in the air in five minutes."

"Tell him that I'm not going."

"What? Why? You okay?"

"You let them go, Sam," came a quiet and measured, but cold answer. "He isn't even your friend."

Sam had been waiting this past six months for this conversation. When they had come back home that day after he had kept Nat and Steve from stopping you, Steve hadn't said a word about it. After time continued marching on, Sam began to wonder if he ever would, and as each day passed, he started to worry that it was just a time bomb building up in his friend; in this moment, he thought that maybe he was right all along. "Just because I haven't known the guy for almost a century like you have, we can't be friends?"

Steve stood silently as he allowed that thought to roll through his mind, his eyes on the shield that he held in his hands, his own reflection staring back at him in the polish of the Vibranium. It was a symbol of truth and honor, neither of which he felt that he owned anymore. "You let them go," he repeated.

"Yeah, I did. Because he asked me to."

"Have you talked to him since they left?"

Sam sucked in a harsh breath, giving away the answer before he had a second to utter a syllable, and he could see that Steve caught it just as quickly. His lips pursed as he tried to think of a way to say it without causing so much pain, but ultimately, there were no words in any of the languages that he knew that would soften this betrayal. "Yeah, I have."

All Steve could do was nod his head, slowly and silently, his voice mute beneath a tight throat that burned with the urge to scream with every last breath in his chest. His shoulders hunched and began to shake just slightly as his breathing quickened with the growth of his rage, and there was nothing he could do to stop it; honestly, he didn't even want to. He wasn't mad at Sam, or you, or even Bucky; he was irate with himself for letting it get this far, and the grip on his shield became so forceful that his fingers blanched white under the pressure. A low growl was all that he could muster, but it was enough for Sam to take a small step back through the door, yet keeping his eyes on his friend.

"Steve, don't."

Steve's growl turned into a roar; the roar of a man desperate to hold himself together as each side of himself split away and out of his reach. He spun quickly, his arm drawn back to gather the limits of his strength before releasing that shield, barely giving Sam the time to escape the hit that shattered the walls of glass like a rainstorm of sparkling shards around him.