Ready Set Breathe (A Steve Rogers Destruction Story)

37.5 ---

Loneliness feels a lot like sinking. You can feel yourself falling farther and farther and maybe, if you’d dare look up, you’d see that split in the ice where everything went wrong and you began to suffocate. People stop the sinking sometimes, because they distract you from the thoughts that bring you down and down and down. If you don’t have time to think those thoughts, you have a harder time sinking, but it’s never a permanent thing, and the moment you turn around and they leave, you can feel your throat close up again and your heart become heavier and heavier. That was why Steve was grateful for the companionship, for the constant being there. It might have made him tired and it might have felt horrible to be someone who needed something like that. After all, it hurt his pride and he hated to think that people were sacrificing for him. But truth be told, it helped. Because the fire of the guilt that swallowed him burned on, as usual, but at the least the tide lowered for a moment and for a while, Steve wasn’t drowning in the heaviness of his heart and the thickness of the tide in his mind. For a moment, he was distracted, and he was saved.