Imagine If You Assembled The Avengers: Volume 2

Trust (Rogers/Barnes/Wilson)

Warning: Reader death, a little language, heavy angst

"She moved."

"No, Steve. She didn't."

"But I saw it."

"I know you did," Bruce sighed, "but she didn't move. It's your mind making you see what it wants, and I know how much it wants that."

"Do you?" Steve snapped back with a sudden shift to an anger in his voice that startled the doctor to full attention. He was sitting in his chair on the quinjet, across from your lifeless body on the cot at its center, watching you and studying every inch so that he wouldn't miss any sign that you might be alive. The Captain had been watching for so long that his eyes were playing tricks on him now, and he frightened himself in how close he was to believing them. He closed his heavy lids, trying to soothe the sting beneath them from the tears that wouldn't stop, clenching his fists with the ebb and flow of his rage.

He wanted to reach out and shake you awake, making this just some cruel joke that was being played on him. If you woke, he would forgive Sam for telling him that you were gone; he would forgive him for bringing you back to him this way, and would even thank him for not actually killing you, but it wasn't going to happen.

"Steve..."

"No one knows a damn thing," he replied quietly, his eyes still closed. He took a long and pained breath, accentuating the rise and fall of his chest as he sunk back into the seat. Steve's body was broken and fatigued, weak and numb, though not from injuries in battle, but from grief. It was grief that he had yet to accept. "I think it best if everyone just keeps their opinions to themselves, and that they stop trying to tell me they understand, because there's no fucking way that they understand a thing about how this feels."

When Steve finally opened his eyes, Bruce expected to see the sadness that echoed in his voice, but instead he found nothing. They were cold and dark, looking back at him as if he were staring through him; like he wasn't even there.

"Cap, let us help you through this."

"When I lost Bucky," he began softly, shifting his gaze back to you, "I thought that was the worst pain I would ever feel. I didn't think I could go on after that. But I did, because I needed to fight back. I was going to stop them once and for all. But what do I do this time, Banner? When the one I need to stop is my friend? When the one who took her away from me is one of the people that I trusted the most?"

"This was an accident, Steve. Sam didn't do this with any purpose, you know that."

"Of course I know that, I'm not an idiot."

"Okay, then what are you thinking-"

"But that doesn't make it go away. He was careless, and she paid for that." Feeling the shift of the jet and hearing the scrape of the wheels as it landed in the hangar, Steve stopped and stood, resting a hand on your shoulder and shuddering at the coolness of your skin. It was still soft, and still felt like you, but he knew that you were no longer there. He ran his fingers over the curves of your cheek and lips, leaning down slowly to kiss you one final time as the man you knew; one final time before he became someone that you would be ashamed of and would have never loved. "I'm sorry," he whispered, "I'll make this right."

Clint opened the door of the jet and stood from the pilot seat to join his two teammates, pausing cautiously and looking expectantly at Steve for direction; you needed to be moved, but he didn't want Steve to take on that burden given the pain that he was already in. "Let me take her, Cap."

"Thank you. I know I can trust you with her, Clint. I also trust you to tell me where Bucky's hidden Sam."

"Come on, man. Don't do this."