Cherry || b.barnes

𝙀𝙥𝙞𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙪𝙚

➳ James's POV

The air is cold on this cloudy Sunday afternoon, like the warmth of the earth decided to cancel this day wholly. One should think that this mass of people, with all the cameras and their flashes around would at least create a bubble that keeps the freezing temperatures away, but it isn't like that. No, the frost claws its way through the crowd and threatens to bite the bones of everyone present.

I'm in the far back of the attended, never really having been a fan of too much attention and especially not after everything that has happened. I don't even sit at my place, legs too restless, but knees almost unable from growing to week to stand.

Him leaving this world, our world almost two years ago hasn't really been surprising, not for me. I had seen it in his eyes when he went to bring the stones back, had seen that this goodbye is something close to forever. Sam may have been surprised, and so was everyone else, but I knew he wouldn't return the way he disappeared. Not because he told me, but because I'm his best friend. Always have been, and always will be. I knew this man like the back of my hand. He couldn't fool me, even after decades separated. And I think he was aware of this: No words needed, words that would clearly cut both of us into nothing but bleeding pieces.

Well, Nemy did know too. She never told me, but I bet she advised him to finally look out for himself instead of always caring for others and sacrificing every ounce of his life for anyone but himself, right before he went to bring back the stones to the right place in the right time.

Him going, nonetheless, has been a punch in my heart. Knowing he's about to go and him actually doing it are two different things, and the realization hit me even with the expectation that it's happening.

For Nemy, it wasn't as bad. At least, she didn't really show it. I know it must weigh on her, especially after them getting closer as father and daughter in the two years they knew each other, but she didn't complain once about his decision. She didn't throw around curses, didn't cry because he saw his forever-path in the past with Peggy. She cried because of their lost time, but she never judged him for going the way he found best for himself.

Nemy fought like a lioness the last years. Day for day, this made me admire her even more. After we rescued Natasha, she didn't leave her bedside once. Brought flowers now and then, even, and tried everything in her might to make it up to her. We all knew something has changed the day of the Black Widow's rescue, but no one other than Steve could point a finger to it in the beginning.
Eventually, Nat forgave her, but I think that was majorly because Nemy would join the team whether or not she did, and the atmosphere was much better with her not holding a grudge on the Captain's daughter.

She went back the next day, the next week. Nemy didn't talk about the horror she faced on the blackest of days in her life, didn't do so for a while. I didn't push her, either. Whatever she lived through in that cellar, it did something to her.

First, she locked herself up. I'd ask, but she didn't tell me. And when she did, I knew why her world crumbled. Why she risked her life going back into that base.

Why she risks her life ever since.

She isn't like the others in the team, not really, although she's mostly viewed as Steve's successor. While we, that is everyone who survived, still try to prevent terrorist attacks and massacres and things likewise, she specialized on saving children out of evil hands. Day for day, week for week, she fights to her last drop of power to free them, save them. Be it from Hydra's fangs, from containers shipping them to make them prostitutes or slaves. The majority of what she inherited from Steve, and Steve really has been richer than any of us expected, went straight to children charity. For food, for medication, for freeing them from labor. Her therapist says it's close to a coping mechanism, getting the children sight of a better life for she has, at their age, also dealt with the worst. Nemy, or as the public still calls her, knows her, Cherry, often manages charity events and somehow gets the most popular of celebrities and whoever to join, raising money for helping the young in a way barely anyone else does.