|| W I T H O U T - M E || A STEVE ROGERS AND TONY STARK FIC

1

Steve sits on the bench as he stares across the room at the mirrors on the wall. When he sees himself in them whether he's training or whether he's going to meditate, he thinks his reflection mocks him. He thinks that he's never going to really amount to what everyone expects from him. Captain America. The one that saves everyone. The one that all the woman fall for as soon as they look at him. The man in the tights that can do anything because he's strong, because he's got the serum in him, because he's a super-soldier trained to kill. Trained to save. Trained to be the one to be happy and smile all the time, to be the one that makes everyone else happy. No one sees that he's upset and hurting. No one ever really sees the real him. The real Steve. No one except Sharon, that is until she left him. She left him when she saw the opportunity. She might have said that it was because of the job, they couldn't handle the pressure of the paparazzi or the news and the social media following them. He didn't care but she lied to him. She told him all this and now he's down in his mind, he's all in his head in the training room trying to figure out why she would leave him. The training room was built for recovering, training and making themselves stronger, because they're heroes, they have to be strong. Steve takes advantage of it, right now though, he stands and moves across the red and black mat, trudging over towards the punching bag, though he thinks that he should be the punching bag. Let someone else punch him, let them push him into the wall, make him fall of his chains and hit the floor with a loud thud.

He doesn't realize that that was exactly what he's done to the red punching bag in front of him. Steve punched it so hard that he knocked it off its chain, shattered the mirrors and now it's in the floor, he'd ran to it to straddle it and began punching it subconsciously into the floor. Steve's hands are wrapped with the white tape but he doesn't think that if he punches too hard or keeps going that it would bruise him for a while. Steve doesn't mind the bruises that he could have. He doesn't care. It's not that big of a deal. He keeps his eyes on the bag, the side beginning to split and with each punch it gets bigger, the hole opening wider and the sand bursting from the inside onto the mat. "Dammit." He mutters under his breath, seeing the sand everywhere below him and coming to a stop, eventually opening his fists before he can break his knuckles against the floor itself even though it's a soft mat below.