LETTERS TO VIOLET [STEVE ROGERS] [✔️]

epilogue - still the only exception

As soon as Violet finished reading the letter, she sunk to the floor, letting the paper slip out of her fingers. The scream began in her lower back, working its way up her spine only to get jammed in the back of her throat, the rapidly contracting muscles unable to let go, unable to let the sound tear into space.

She cast her eyes desperately around the small living room of her Brooklyn apartment, searching desperately for somewhere to stare before the tears came, but they landed in all the wrong places, like the wedding dress in the partially open closet, the stack of letters from both Steve and Bucky, and the picture of Steve and Violet dancing together on her coffee table.

She reached for it numbly, spasms wracking her grief stricken body as the hot tears clawed their way out of her eyes and onto her face. She picked up the little photograph, holding the frame to her chest as she cried.

This wasn't supposed to happen. Violet and Steve were supposed to get married, when he came home. Not if. Never if.

She lay on her side, curled into the fetal position, rocking back and forth, clutching the picture to her. She couldn't think, she couldn't see. She couldn't breathe, oh god she couldn't breathe. The sadness was overwhelming, a sea of darkness stretching so far away from her on all sides that it was crushing.

First Bucky. Now Steve. It was too much. It was way too much.

Violet closed her eyes.

--------------

When they found her a few hours later, after she didn't come into work without telling Miss Kelly, because she always checked in, the doctor said she had died of a broken heart, of the sadness that kills.