The Persistence of Loss

Untitled Part 1

He dreams of blue: blue eyes and a blue uniform and blue water swallowing them up.

Steve is waiting for him; he knew he would be.  He was searching for him, but he can avoid being found if he wishes.  Maybe his years of training weren't so bad after all.  Steve takes him home, like a lost puppy.  Maybe he is one.  He doesn't know where else to go, what else to do.  HYDRA made him loyal to and dependent on them.  Now he is loyal to and dependent on Steve.  But that's probably how things were before, so it's okay.  He doesn't mind.

It takes a while before he lets Steve take him home.  He tracks Steve the same way he is being tracked, and waits.  Steve upsets him, makes his mind react in strange and unaccountable ways.  He doesn't like it.  Until he remembers enough to understand it.  Then he lets Steve and his friend, Sam Wilson, find him and take him home.  Like a lost puppy.

He doesn't remember living in New York with Steve.  He remembers going to war, and later serving with Steve.  But he doesn't remember Brooklyn.  This makes Steve sad.  He doesn't know what to do about that.  He isn't sad.  But he feels hollow, so maybe that is the same thing.

He dreams of purple: twilight and corpses and bruises of his own

There are other people who live here, with Steve.  Steve doesn't live in an apartment by himself anymore.  He has been to Steve's apartment, has shot a man through the walls.  He doesn't live there anymore.  There is a man, the son of a man he once knew, who built this tower and invited them all to live together.  All of the team.  It is like, and not like, living at camp with the Howling Commandos.

Steve was the only one who was more than just a man, then.  Now there are only two who are just human.  A man who built armor, a man who becomes a beast, a god.  Two spies are the closest to what the Howling Commandos were – just following someone greater.  He isn't just human anymore, he thinks.  He's more like Steve now.  But not like Steve.  Never like Steve.  Sam is here, too.  He isn't like Steve, either, but helps.  He helps a lot.  He understands.  Steve tries, but he doesn't.

The spies understand, too.   They know what it is to be unmade.  They aren't like Steve, but they help.  Everyone is gentle, walking on eggshells.  It grates.  He is broken, fragile, but he's always been adaptable.   Always a survivor.  Steve makes his stands and does not move, but he knows that sometimes you have to move, to back down, to live, to survive to try again later.  Everyone can't be unmovable objects.

He dreams of orange: flames and explosions, caused by his hands

The others avoid him.  He doesn't mind.  He works to remember himself, the past, what he's done.  Memories are fragmented, and take time to put together.  Some will never return.  Some only in parts.  Steve helps.  Sometimes he asks him to tell him about his memories.  This pleases Steve, who wants him to remember, wants him to be the man he was before the war.  As more memories surface, he decides he wouldn't have been that man again anyway.  Even if he had returned, not fallen into the cold and the rocks and died.

Natasha doesn't avoid him.  She looks at him, intently, not quite the way Steve does.  More understanding than willing him to be better, but no one else watches him as closely.  She comes to see him often, almost as often as Sam.  She doesn't speak much, just sits by and keeps him company.  He prefers that.  Sam and Steve do that sometimes, too.  It's what he needs.  He was alone for the last decades, valued as a tool but not a man.  His aptitude for strategy and killing was valued, appreciated.  Now he doesn't know why they smile at him, and comfort him when he is awakened by his own screaming.  He is broken, useless.  He has no value.