Steve's Diary

August 2, 2027

Dear Diary,

We've been planning this elongated-honeymoon for months upon months just to make it perfect, and I don't think, after finally arriving, it could have turned out any more perfect than it did.

Everything seems so wonderful. So peaceful. It's almost as if it's so much so that I'm concerned. Or at least I feel as though I should be- and, with my track record, I think this sounds reasonable.

It's all because I've never had luck like this, I've decided. When I think of all the luck I've got, I feel like I could hold it in one hand, that's how little it really is. It feels like it's not nearly enough to support all this happiness I've created for any actual time frame I'd desire.

I just- I don't want to let my guard down because, when I do, and when I'm so incredibly happy like I am right now... that's when something unimaginably terrible happens. Every damn time.

First the WWII draft, then the train in the Alps, then Zemo and the Civil War, then cryo-freeze in Wakanda, then Thanos and The Decimation... now what? It seems never-ending.

I keep trying to convince myself that I'm making it up. That the worst is already behind us. The thing is, what if I'm wrong? What if everything I've worked for my whole life was suddenly gone with the snap of my fingers (or, rather, a certain purple space titan, that is)? What then? Sure, that's in the past and that's already happened. But, there's never, in the history of all things, been only one of anything.

That rancid thought of some other being remaining out there that's just like Thanos haunts me sometimes and I just can't seem to shake it. We, as the former-Avengers or as Bucky and Steve or as a country or as a planet or as a multiverse cannot withstand another blow like that last one. We simply won't make it out alive.

Hell, we barely made it out last time unscathed.

It seems terrible for someone as happy as myself to think this way, but it surely makes a whole lot of sense, right? I mean, if I was alone and unhappy, it wouldn't make a difference to me what happened to everyone else. But, after having had the best revival I could have ever asked for pulled out from under me so incredibly unexpectedly? Loving someone like that and losing them repeatedly? It's no wonder I'm still stalked by the remnants of terror.

I'm scarred by it all, everyone who remained after The Decimation is now, too.

Bucky knows my troubles, I've told him time and time again and he's okay with everything I've mentioned. I suppose it's all the same as my having been okay with his troubles way back before Thanos was even a glimmer in my eye.

I do think about it a lot, though, the idea that he could wake up one day and not want to deal with it anymore. Not want to have to talk me down from the fear of losing him all over again. Not want to love me anymore.

Then I told him that fear too.

He told me I was being ridiculous. I agreed. We cried and kissed and it was all better.

He damn well was right.

He always is.

—————

I woke up first today and decided to stay in bed and await his eventual awakening.

My eyes wandered around the wooded room and cathedral ceiling, across arboreal animal hides and taxidermies, over antler lamps and chandeliers, and upon the translucent, corrugated window curtains burning orange by the aging, estival sun at daybreak.