Captured // A Winter Soldier Story

chapter twenty seven // goodbye

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"And I want to tell you everything- the words I never got to say the first time around."
-This Town by Niall Horan

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TWO WEEKS LATER

reyna's point of view

It was grey and lonely, sitting untouched in the very corner, right along the fence line. The stone was freshly carved. I read the words etched in the granite.

Amy Hart
1967-2006
Mother to One

I reached out to touch the last piece I had of my mother. The tombstone was cold beneath my fingertips as I stared at it in surprise, grief momentarily robbing me of my voice.

"After you came back, I called in some favors from S.H.I.E.L.D. They found her body in an unmarked grave in California, and I had her transferred here so she could be closer to you," Steve's voice said quietly from behind me. When he told me that he had a surprise for me this morning, I hadn't expected something this huge. I was absolutely stunned. His voice was sullen and uneasy, but I hardly even registered it, too trapped in my own thoughts to really process anything.

My mother was here. It'd been ten long, hard years since I'd last been near her, yet here she was now, just inches beneath my feet. I read her name over and over again. Amy Hart. Amy Hart. Amy Hart. It was hard to process, because it felt like she was a figment of my imagination, a silly hallucination. It didn't feel like she'd once been real.

I thought of the brown hair she used to have, her strong gaze, the patient smile she'd given me so many times. The details of her had been engrained in my memory for years now, and the picture of her was slowly becoming complete as I stood with her again.

Steve suddenly placed his hand on my shoulder, making me jump. I hadn't realized that nearly a full minute had passed without me answering him. I cringed. I didn't want to make him worry about me again.

"Reyna?" he asked hesitantly. I placed my hand over his and leaned back into his chest. He instinctively pulled me close.

"Yeah, I'm here, sorry. Just... there's a lot of thoughts in my head right now," I whispered, staring at the tombstone in disbelief. My heart threatened to jump out of my chest. "But thank you. Steve, seriously, you have no idea what you've done for me. This means everything."

He squeezed me from behind in a friendly hug, though friendly still didn't seem quite the right word for us. He had just given me the world, and friend was definitely not enough to describe how much he meant to me. But I settled on the inaccurate term for now, because there were other things to think about.

Steve pulled away a moment later. I turned slowly to catch his glance.

"Do you want some alone time?" He asked, his eyes a somber grey rather than their usual piercing turquoise. I took a deep breath and nodded. I needed to say a proper goodbye to my mother.

He nodded and gave me one last sad smile before turning and heading down the row of graves toward the car. I knew he couldn't leave me totally alone, as we are two very dangerous people living in a very dangerous world, but I was touched that he'd ignore Fury's warning that we should stay together in order to let me say a proper goodbye. He was truly too good for this world.

I faced my mom's grave again and sat cross legged before the stone. Dead leaves crunched beneath me as I sat down, and I shivered from the sharpness of the wind. It was officially autumn, and the temperature had made a drastic drop within the last week, making it so I had to clutch my sweater closer to me to shield myself from the cool weather.