Ready Set Breathe (A Steve Rogers Destruction Story)

58 Pain

Hear me read this chapter here: https://soundcloud.com/blithebells/58-pain-585

Steve finished Bucky’s book that day. It didn’t end happily, and Steve knew it wouldn’t. It ended in Russia with fears of dying and Steve closed the cover and set it down on his bed and scrubbed his face tiredly with both bruised hands.

Pain is a hard thing to avoid, even when you don’t have it all written down in smudged ink in a horrible book, because pain is a chasm, it’s a vast, frozen lake. You can try to forget and sometimes, you can and you think it might be a Good Day, but it’s not. Because the second you start thinking about the pain again, start focusing on it again, start thinking about the way it’s eaten your insides, you fall hard right back into another terrible Bad Day.

After all, it was never a Good Day to begin with. It was just pretending to be one, and dancing upon the precipice of pain, tiptoeing on the ice and telling yourself not to look down is no way to live. Sometimes, you have to think about it. Sometimes, it’s all you have and all you are and sometimes, you have to look down. Putting on a smile and saying, don’t look down, don’t look down, breathebreathebreathebreathe, well, that’s a certain pain in and of itself.

That’s no way to live.

That day, as Steve considered this the nature of pain, this the lake of suffering, he was visited by Sharon. She was in tears, her eyes were red, and she knocked on his door until he yelled for her to come in and she rushed into his bedroom and collapsed next to him on the bed and kissed his bruised hands. Her mouth and cheeks were wet with tears.

“What’s wrong?” Steve said, alarmed, as Sharon gently gave him back his hands and hugged herself. “I thought you were with Bucky.”

“I think I made a mistake,” Sharon said and she swallowed and shook her head. “I don’t think I ever knew anything to begin with.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve said.

“Bucky told me everything,” she said and wiped her face. “And about what happened to Neal. And it’s horrible, horrible Steve, I can barely believe what I’ve heard, but I think I blamed him wrongly and I keep thinking of Neal.” Sharon stopped and sobbed. “He had a closed casket funeral, you know,” she said. “There was a hole right in the middle of his face.” There was a long pause as Sharon tried to collect herself enough to speak and Steve sat up and listened.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said quietly and her bottom lip wobbled and she nodded.

“I am, too,” she whispered back.

“It wasn’t Bucky’s fault,” Steve encouraged her gently and she nodded again.

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

They sat there together for a while and Steve waited while Sharon pulled herself together.

“There’s so much… Hurt,” she said and Steve looked down. “Who’s to blame? Who’s fault is this?” If not Bucky, Steve knew she was thinking. “Where did we go wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. Maybe we didn’t, he thought. Go wrong. Maybe we did everything right and pain is just a part of living and standing on the ice is just a risk we take. Maybe pain doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault, not even mine.

Pain is just a sacrifice we make in order to keep living. Maybe sometimes, it’s all we have to tell us we’re still alive.

“You know,” Sharon said now, having stopped crying, staring now at Steve. “No one’s quite who I thought they were a few months ago. Not Bucky, not you…” She made a noise that sounded like some forced laugh and looked away from him, looked down, like she was ashamed. “I’m just getting to really know everyone for the first time now.”

“Nice to meet you,” Steve said and smiled gently at her and Sharon laughed this time, for real, and she looked at him fondly before leaning over to kiss him on the cheek and stand.

“Do you need anything?” She asked before she left, as she always did, and Steve shook his head.

Maybe there’s no one to blame and maybe there’s no escaping it. But could there be dealing with it? Could there be living with it? Could there maybe even one day be more true Good Days than Bad Days?

Steve didn’t know what happiness was, but he was willing to learn.