Inspired By Taylor Swift Series

I Wish You Would (Marvel)

Pairing: Sam Wilson x Reader

Summary: I wish we could go back and remember what we were fighting for. I wish you knew that I miss you too much to be mad anymore.

"Hey, I, uh, I know we're not really talking right now. And that's on me, but, uh, in case things go down today, I just wanted to tell you I love you. Always have and always will. Only so much I can say over voicemail, so for now that's it," he softly chuckles. "But I love you. End of sentence."

"You don't have to listen to that voicemail every day, you know?"

You softly chuckle, turning around to face the source of your daily pep talk, "And you don't have to tell me that every day."

"I'll tell you for as long as you need to hear it," Sarah softly replies, gently taking the phone from your hand and putting it down on the kitchen counter.

"You don't know how much I wish I would've answered the phone," you absently mumble, your voice dripping with so much guilt and remorse.

"You couldn't have known," she reminds you like she does most mornings.

"I just wish he would come back. I wish he knew that I miss him too much to be mad anymore."

"He knows that you love him," she offers, so easily speaking of him in the present tense. Only for the brutal reminder to settle in mid-sentence that neither of you can speak about him in the present tense anymore. "He'd want you to move forward."

"I wouldn't even know where to start."

"You could start by going back home?"

"Is this your way of telling me I've overstayed my welcome?" you halfheartedly chuckle.

She smiles softly, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder, "Never. You know I appreciate your help."

"But the world goes on, right?"

"It goes on," Sarah agrees. "Now, go home. It's been five years, you can do it."

"Yeah," you dejectedly sigh, mostly because you know she's right. You'd spent the better part of the last five years running as far away from painful reminders as humanly possible. "Doesn't mean I want to."

--

It's 2AM when you finally drive into D.C. city limits.

Despite driving all night, you don't immediately go home. You're not sure if it's well disguised procrastination or a genuine longing to see the city you fled five years ago.

You were glad you could help Sarah with the boys and with their family business, you were grateful that you had someone that you could lean on and in return could lean on you. But you'd be lying if you said you went for the sole purpose of helping them.

Sarah knew that, of course.

But when you got that gut-wrenching call that Sam was gone, most reminders felt like a sharp stab in the gut.

The harshest one being your home.

You don't even realize you've been driving all night until the sun is beginning to rise on the horizon, it's blinding rays in your peripheral.

And in the daylight, being back hurts even more. The warm glow of the rising sun can't disguise the ugly reality that the world was now living in nor soften the blow of what society collectively lost. Instead, it makes it all the more apparent that every single person lost that fateful day.

It's a bittersweet, sorrowful trip down memory lane.

Passing the restaurant Sam took you to for your first date.