Steve's Diary

August 10, 2016

Dear Diary,

Bucky and I are runaways now. Nomads, if you will.

Were we wandering? Sure. Were we lost? Not by any means.

We didn't stay in any one place longer than a few days out of the fear that we might be seen, reported, and taken away- you know, because we're fugitives, too.

It's worked out pretty good so far, I'd say. Hell, we've had fun with it.

3 July - Germany, we left and got the Hell away from anyone or anything that seemed problematic or Avengers/S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA/Sokovia Accords affiliated.

4 July - Austria, our first stop, a town called Alpbach, meaning behind the alps. It's such a nice place, with all the little log cabins and such, to spend my 98th birthday... I guess that makes me biologically 31?

9 July - Italy, where we remained at Aquileia in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia which is ancient, edged by a river and wonderfully close to the sea.

11 July - Switzerland, which felt so secluded, held us in Gündlischwand, which is a village in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Bern.

16 July - France, where we stayed in Versailles- which is 12 miles outside of Paris and is kinda well known and really isn't all that discreet. We decided to be more careful after that one.

20 July - Guernsey, the second largest of the Channel Islands and one of three British crown dependencies. We stayed at a town called St. Sampson. This is the location from which I sent Tony that package.

23 July - Ireland, a small village called Letterfrac in County Galway where we lived in a little thatched cottage.

25 July - England, a little town outside of London called Alfriston in East Sussex.

30 July - Scotland, a gorgeous green area with a lake filled with historic runes called Linlithgow. I never wanted to leave this one to be honest... it just felt so natural there.

6 August - Canada, a place I actually kind of ended up liking a lot more than I thought I would. We were in Port Hope, which is about an hour and a half from Toronto. It was very old-townie and I feel like that's something I never really saw before this. It gave me a chance to finally have a good talk with Bucky about everything that's been on my mind.

10 August - America, New York City- stupid choice, I know. It's very obviously one of the most duhh places we could have gone to... but we needed to go home before continuing on our journey.

Me and Buck have really only been living to survive throughout this. Sure, it was amazing and perfect and I wouldn't have wanted to have spent it with anyone else... but, it wasn't explicitly like that. It couldn't be like that very much needed vacation - like I wanted it to be - because we had to work on a lot of things.

First, we had to not be seen, or caught together or even, really, be out during the day. We had to live away from everyone else without drawing attention. We couldn't ever stay in one place and, wherever we were, there certainly weren't any pictures taken and we definitely couldn't do tourist stuff- especially because we weren't even in very tourist-y areas to begin with.

And, God, there were so many times - after that once on the Jet - that I wanted to kiss him. Just once more. I wanted to take that step again, but I couldn't. I could see he was working on some kind of inner torment or decision or something that had to be dealt with and sorted out first and foremost. I didn't want him going all Winter Soldier on me again for no reason.