Into the War || A Captain America Love Story

10

STEVE

I pilot the quinjet, trying to keep myself quiet. Sam's words echo through my head. He said that they might not make it. He and Tori could be dead for all I know and I'm taking off in the complete opposite direction miles away from them.

I'm still I shock about Natasha. She betrayed Tony and the rest of the people on his side to help us. Why?

"What's gonna happen to your friends?" Bucky asks me, keeping his voice low.

I clench my jaw, sighing. They're all hopefully still out there, but God only knows what's happening there. They probably destroyed the airport even more since Bucky and I left. I'm just hoping nobody's dead.

"Whatever it is, I'll deal with it," I tell Bucky, careful to mask my worry and sadness.

Bucky shakes his head behind me. "I don't know if I'm worth all this, Steve."

I don't know what to say back. I debate on the words, but none seem to fit exactly in the right spots. "W-What you did all those years...i-it wasn't you. You didn't have a choice."

"I know," he replies. "But I did it."

I frown, looking back at the sky ahead of me. The view is way too familiar. It's like when I came here, when I plummeted into the ice. I've met Tori, Tony, the whole gang. I've caught up with Peggy before she died after living a fulfilling life. I've found Bucky, my old friend, who has gone through the same sort of aging as I did. I've been thrown in to this life that I've come to love, but it has finally decided to backfire on me.

•••

TORI

I lean against a wall near Tony in the hospital where Rhodey is being kept. He's being run through a medical scanning device. I'm just thankful that he's alive. I didn't think that he would make it.

My brother seems to be interrogating Vision as they watch Rhodes go through the machine, all of us separated from him by a sheet of glass. Vision looks distraught, like the rest of us. After all, he is the one who caused this.

Tony walks away from him, his jaw clenched. He leads me away to another hallway, leaning against the wall. I stand next to him, searching for at least some happiness in his eyes in short glances.

"Remember when I was hospitalized after the explosion during my first mission working for SHIELD?" I ask him softly, my melancholic voice low.

He nods. "Yeah. You were in a coma for a week."

"You know how you stayed at my bedside until I woke up?" I ask. "I was told that you could barely even function until I finally did."

"That's true," he says. "When I heard that the rest of them died and you had miraculously lived but were hanging on to life by a thread, I panicked. You are the only family I have left. I can still not even bare the thought of you dying.

"When we first met Wanda while on the mission to find Loki's scepter, she showed me something — 'my worst fear,'" he continues, shaking his head at the memory. "I saw the Chitauri, debris, and my entire team dead on the ground. I saw you and....I-I couldn't take it. You weren't breathing and your eyes were still open. Your skin was pale and blood was everywhere. I-It scares me."

"I know it does. And I can't stand the thought of you dying either," I say. It feels so good to finally tell him things that I've never said to him before; however, I have told other people that I'd die for him in a second. "But blood is blood. We share the same DNA and genetics. Even after every fight and disagreement we've had, I'd be standing at beside your deathbed, and I know that you'd do the same for me because you already have.