Steve's Diary

February 16, 2023

Dearest Diary,

I haven't felt like writing, if I'm being honest and I know- it's... been a while.

Almost five years, actually.

Doesn't even feel real anymore. Hell, it never did. Maybe that's because I was unwilling to accept it at first or, perhaps because I'm as helpless now as I was the second I realized what was going on. Either way, we're still in the same place as we were back then - in a dark room with no windows, no light switch and no flashlight.

Sure, we now know for certain what happened, especially those of us that were there, like Thor and I. The world now calls it The Blip, this terrible event that seems like fate now more so than ever before. I never wanted to concede and take the truth as just that, but now seems like as good a time as any, seeing as there hasn't been progress.

It was heart-wrenching to watch Bucky go like that, just as out of control then as he seemed to be for the previous fifty years of his life. He didn't get to really live. Now that I think about that, neither did I. We had each other, sure, but that was ages ago and only lasted maybe five solid years in and of itself.

To think that all the time I spent with Bucky back in the '30s amounts to the same as what has just elapsed without him (or half the Earth's population, for that matter) is unimaginable.

After Clint approached us a few days after The Decimation back in 2018, telling us  in tears that his wife and three children had disappeared into nothing and he wanted an answer as to why, we tried to let him down slowly. He didn't take it so good.

It's terrible to lose family like that, and we all understand because all of us seemed to have lost someone because of Thanos.

Clint lost his family, I lost Bucky, Thor lost his brother and his people, Banner lost himself, Wakanda lost her leader, Nat lost a friend, Wanda and Vision lost each other... as for Tony and Spider-Man, it feels like Tony lost a son, and that must feel terrible.

I've been living half a life. We all have. Too much is missing to even try to fix the likes of that.

What more is there to do? We can't move on and forget them all like it was nothing. The once booming, lively Earth is now a no man's land: empty and forgotten. There is no more normal for any of us. Not anymore.

So, I started a support group. I thought it might help others, even if I was a lost cause myself at this point. Losing someone time and time again - whether it be purposely to some bitch on the streets of your home city, accidentally from a freight car in a European mountain range, involuntarily to an organization that brainwashes people to become super-soldiers, mistakenly to a vengeful man who claims to be a doctor, or unexpectedly to a purple titan from outer space who wiped out half the population of the universe and just so happened to take the one person who was finally getting a chance to start over and really live life with the love of his life - really damages a person, even a super-abled person such as myself.

Sometimes I wish I'd gone with them. I guess that'd leave no one here to fight, though...

I suppose this group has helped some of the other members move on in one way or another and, for that, if for nothing else, I'm thankful.

—————

"So..." a man to my left started our weekly session as we all sat around in a circle together. "I, uh, went on a date the other day. It's the first time in five years. You know? I'm sitting there at dinner... I- I didn't even know what to talk about," he shrugged, looking over at me.

"What did you talk about?" I prompted him hopefully.

"Eh, same old crap," he started. "You know, how things have changed. And... My job, his job. How much we miss the Mets... And then things got quiet... then he cried as they were serving the salads."

"What about you?" another man questioned.

He thought about it. "I cried just before desert... but, I'm seeing him again tomorrow, so..."

I nodded, wondering if I had misheard him or... did he had actually just said him in that sentence? "That's great," I replied. "You did the hardest part. You took the jump- you didn't know where you were gonna come down. And that's it. That's those little brave baby steps we gotta take to... try and become whole again, try and find purpose." I paused and prepared to tell them, as I had told everyone else, my little fantasy story I had decided was my falsified, fairytale, had-to-be, new past-life. "I went into the ice in '45 right after I met the love of my life. Woke up 70 years later. You gotta move on. Gotta move on," I looked down, starting to think about Bucky again. "The world is in our hands," I forced a smile. "It's left to us, guys. And we gotta do something with it. Otherwise... Thanos should've killed all of us."

—————

But, now, I'm finally done being someone for everyone else and never myself. I need some things for me, too. That's why I had named myself The Nomad instead of Captain America for a time. Sure, I'll always be the original holder of that mantle, but I need an alter-ego for my alter-ego sometimes, too.

Steve Rogers is Captain America is The Nomad.

Just as Clint Barton is Hawkeye is Ronin.

We've all been forced to re-make ourselves, and I suppose evolving is the only way to truly adapt to the terrible hand we've all been dealt.

That's just how life is sometimes: unfair.

Even if she in no way was talking about The Decimation and really had no means of predicting the likes of it at all, I believe Peggy was the only one of any of us who really got it right- perhaps that's why what she told me really stuck with me, verbatim, for nine some-odd years.

The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best that we can do is to start over.

~ S. Rogers