When Steve saved her, he didn't think he would grow so attached. When Steve left her, she didn't think she'd survive.
(AU themes)
Steve x OC. Eventual Bucky X OC.
18+.
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The five years that followed after the horrendous events that transpired in Wakanda had changed the survivors in ways they never expected. To be fair, they never expected their families to die in the blink of an eye, for them to simply wither away like the ashes of burnt wood in a campfire, gone with the wind like they were never even there, to begin with. The change that Thanos brought with him to earth - and to the rest of the universe - had been inevitable, yet unacceptable. The man was simply too strong with the infinity stones to be defeated, but none of the surviving Avengers could come to terms with the fact that they lost. Thanos couldn't have been stopped, not even by the world's mightiest heroes, and to make matters even worse, half of them died in the process, leaving the leftover survivors agonizingly empty and desperately sad and in pain.
The remembrance statues built and placed all around the world did nothing to ease the pain, and Steve refused to visit Janie's, even though he knew its exact location. People left flowers for their loved ones like placing flowers on a grave. Steve doubted he would ever accept her death.
The snap hadn't shown kindness. It had taken away nice people, people with families who grieved their absence years after their deaths. Young people with lives ahead of them succumbed to eternal darkness. People with hearts of gold had perished, snatched out of the comfort of their own homes without any sort of warning. Life had ended for them in the blink of an eye. Witnessing grief in such quantities was a painful truth to all of those still around to experience it.
To say moving on was hard would be the understatement of the century, but most people eventually gave in to their urges to rebuild their lives around six months after the Snap. Of course, nobody would ever be the same again, but they didn't really have a choice. Life went on, even without their loved ones. The sun still rose every morning, and every night, the moon would shine, Thanos or no Thanos. Time didn't come to a complete halt just because millions of lives ended abruptly, even though it did feel that way for many.
Steve Rogers pretended to be fine. The burden of being Captain America still clung to his shoulders like wet clothing even when he was inevitably part of the reason why half the population had vanished off of the face of the earth and many people hated him for it. He voluntarily organized counseling sessions for those who wanted to talk about their feelings on Tuesday and Thursday evenings every week. His efforts towards opening the conversation allowed widows and orphans across New York to spill their guts to him during their darkest times. He listened when people cried on the linoleum floor of the abandoned middle school auditorium inside which the meetings were held, listened when they poured their hearts out to him, and even listened to their silence when they didn't want to talk at all.
But Steve Rogers himself kept his own sorrow inside in the presence of other people. He hid his emotions during the sessions, avoided questions that ventured into the topic of girlfriends - if he could even call her that at all - and kept quiet about his true feelings to the only Avenger he still contacted regularly; Natasha. He didn't need to tell her though. She knew.
