Stitches⚣Stony

Twenty-Nine

I'm so sorry that I've been absent, it's been a stressful couple of months due to exams, stress, revision, relationships etc but here I am, in the middle of Greece, dedicating my time for y'all to grace you with the much anticipated Steve POV chapter.

I wrote some of this back in March, other parts before chapter 28. I haven't wrote in ages so I'm a bit rusty so bare with me on spelling mistakes and if anything comes out awkward.

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Been told to start writing more dialogue? No?

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Steve would never forget the look on his mother's face the day that he told her that he was joining the army, that her son, her baby, was being jetted off to a war torn third-world country to fight a never ending battle over land, oil, money, power. It had been a look of utter heartbreak, a freeze-frame imagine that would forever be etched into Steve's mind because despite the fact that this was something he had his heart set on doing for years, he was still breaking his mother's heart by going.

A lot had changed when Steve returned and for a long time, Steve was unsure if it was the world around him that had began to change or if it was himself, and for an even longer time, he was scared to know the answer. Because change was not something that he was use to, especially when it came to his home, to his friends, to the routine that he had so regularly gotten himself wrapped up around for those years up until he met Tony, and the months after he had left.

It was the slightest of things, the smallest of things, the tiniest of things that Steve was able to notice the changes in and for some staggering reason, it had bothered him more than it should've, and it bothered him more than he was allowed to be bothered. Steve had been the one that had decided to join the army, he had been the one that had decided to get up and leave his hometown, his home, his friends, his mom, his life; so, so what if his neighbours mailbox had changed from blue to red or his mom had been miraculously gifted a new car. It doesn't matter. These changes don't matter.

But they do, the changes matter a lot because even if it's just mer objects, articles of clothing in new wardrobes or ornaments in a garden that was once cobbled with stone but was now layered with green grass, it meant that he people around you had changed too. And more so, it was Steve that had changed the most from his experiences in Afghanistan, even if he didn't know it truly himself.

He'd seen things, much like any other man or woman who has had to experience the horrors of war, and those things; the blood, the gore, the violence, the power that such a person can have just because they're the one that holds the gun or just because they seem to be fighting on the justice side of the war. It's not the criminals that had gotten to Steve, it was the civilians; the women, the children, the ones going about their life and only twisted among the violence because Steve or such put them through it.

Steve had become haunted, a ghost floating above the empty husk that was his own body, his own mind, his own conscious. But he had nowhere else to turn to because the friends that he had had gained their own lives, new and exciting and just as dangerous as his own has become, and he couldn't bare to be a burden to his mother, hardworking in her older age. And so, Steve toured again, and again.

And then came the incident

He knows of the reasons of his discharge, he knows because he was told quite frankly one dusky evening that the army was discharging him with honours, with medals and a fancy Sargent Captain title, whereas Bucky had told him of the real reason, the reason that for the life of Steve, he cannot remember is.