𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓲𝓹𝓲𝓽𝔂 | 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘷𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓲𝓹𝓲𝓽𝔂

Steve Rogers often finds himself alone these days.

It is to be expected of a man out of time. There is no one left for him to call his own, and there is nobody he bothers to try to get to know the way one would to call someone else a 'friend'.

He has the Avengers, but they're more his colleagues than his friends. Aside from the occasional team-building training session or mission, they don't really get together, and try to become bigger parts of each other's lives.

None of them are of that sort. Too many of them have learnt not to trust anyone wholeheartedly, and it's sad, but he feels strange about imposing his presence on them, so he doesn't.

Besides, the rest of the Avengers aren't completely alone. Tony has Pepper Potts and Colonel James Rhodes and his machines and now, Banner. Bruce, in turn, has an unquestionable friend in Tony. Thor has his own people on Asgard. Natasha has Clint, and Clint has her.

All of that boils down to Steve. Just Steve.

He wonders how fate can be so cruel. Before he went under, Steve had found something good for himself with Peggy and his Howling Commandos.

Then he'd lost Bucky.

And, soon after, he lost just about everybody else too.

The world moved on without him, and now he's left running between decades and clutching memories from an age that has long passed, but burns far too brightly in his own mind to be able to be pushed back.

But he still tries his best.

He throws himself into training at S.H.I.E.L.D and does mission after mission and desperately keeps himself busy. When he can't do that, Steve learns about the world around him. He goes through history and economics, learns about war after war after war, reads about man reaching the moon and so much more beyond that, and he spends hours on the Internet or at a library until his eyes burn and he can't bear to think.

And he does it all alone, and he tells himself that it's okay. This is okay.

He's spent a little over two years doing just this, and he thinks that he'd like to have someone to call a friend and rely on, but he's okay and maybe he'll finally find his place in the current of the 21st century where nothing waits for anyone and he barely knows how to swim.

Until he meets her. (Y/n) (L/n). The girl with a pocketful of luck and an affinity for floating, who told him that he had beautifully sad eyes the very first time she met him and knows meanings of flowers just as she knows how to breathe.

And maybe it's a little strange for a super-soldier living in the wrong era to end up befriending a seventeen-year-old girl brimming with life and wonder, but Steve puts that out of mind and lets her teach him what it means to live again, and he lets himself learn and heal.

In a time when nothing slows down, (Y/n) (L/n) chances upon a man, hurting and lost and looking for something he doesn't even know, and she decides to stick to him because what has she to lose in telling him that sometimes, you don't have to know how to swim if just know how to float.

After all, sometimes, heroes need saving, too.