Artemis (A Steve Rogers Story)

3- You were married

Steve and I eventually leave Peggy, and as we stand outside her room, Steve pulls me close to him, holding me close. I can't help it but my tears start to flow. Steve looks down at me, and placing a hand on my chin he lifts my face up to look at him. "It hurts to see her like this Steve" I say to him.
"I know, I know" he says to me.
"It's just not fair Steve, I don't know what I will do when we lose her. It hurt like bloody hell when I lost you, then to lose Howard, and now, now Peggy could go" I cry.

"You have me back now though, and I promise you I am not going anywhere. Hey, you brought me to see your friend why don't we go see our new one, get our mind off this" he says suggesting we go see Sam.
"Yeah. Maybe you can make him look good for that blonde" I smile at him, as he then wipes the tears from my cheeks.  Steve then pulls me closer, and kisses the top of my head, "At least we got each other still" he says to me.

"Yeah, each other till the end of the line right" I say to him.
"The end of the line, like me and Buck" he says his face falling.
"I'm so sorry Steve, I shouldn't have said that, that was your and Bucky's saying" I say as I place a hand on his cheek.

"Yeah...yeah but it can be ours, because it's just you and me now right" he says to me.
"You and me together again, no more going into any ice" I say smiling at him.
"No more ice for me" he smiles back as we then head for our motorcycles.

We pull up to the VA, and park our bikes, as I walk over to Steve, I take his hand and we head inside. We hear voices coming from one of the nearby rooms and head toward them. "A cop pulled me over last week. He thought I was drunk. I swerved to miss a plastic bag. I thought it was an IED" we hear a woman say as Steve and I lean against a wall.

"Some stuff you leave there, other stuff you bring back. It's our job to figure out how to carry it. Is it gonna be in a big suitcase, or in a little man-purse? It's up to you" we then hear Sam telling the group, and I look up at Steve as we take Sam's words to heart. Once we realize that the meeting was about to end, the two of us head back down the hall, not wanting to draw much attention to ourselves. We watch as Sam says good-bye to the other vets, and when he turns around, he see's us.  "Look who it is, the running man, and his nice-looking partner" Sam says to us as we walk over to him.

"Caught the last few minutes, it's pretty intense" Steve says.
"Yeah, brother, we all go the same problems" Sam says as he starts to clean up the table we were standing by, "Guilt, regret" Sam says looking over at his group.
"You lost someone didn't you?" I then ask him.
"My wingman, Riley. Flying a night mission, standard PJ rescue op. Nothing we hadn't done 1,000 times before. Until an RPG knocked Riley's dumb ass out of the sky" Sam says to us, "Nothing I could do. It's like I was up there just to watch" he goes on to tell us.

"I'm sorry" both Steve and I say to him, as memories of what happened to Bucky and Steve come to my mind.
"After that, I had a really hard time finding a reason for being over there, you know" Sam says to us.
"But you're happy now, back in the world?" Steve asks him.
"The number of people giving me orders is down to about zero" Sam says as he looks around, "So, hell yeah. You two thinking about getting out?" he then asks us.

"We're not really sure" I say to Sam.
"To be honest, I don't know what I would do with myself if I did" Steve then says surprising me a little.
"Ultimate fighting, you two could be a tag team" Sam then says and I lightly laugh at his remark, "Just a great idea off the top of my head. But seriously you could do whatever you want to do, what makes you happy?" Sam then asks Steve.