In Your Eyes // Steve Rogers

Five Years Later

Steve had asked me to stay, and I did because, despite feeling as if my soul was dead, despite my hope lost, I knew I loved him. I knew my place in the world, if not up in the stars, was with him. I had spent years thinking maybe a time would come where we could give up the fight and live out our lives. When I knew it wasn't a possibility, when I became Agamotto, I spent my time begging for free reign to go home to him. He was my home, before anything else. Even if I couldn't love him at my best in the moment, I knew my place was with him.

He knew I couldn't stay at the Compound. All I thought of was Sam. All the Compound reminded me of was the time Sam I spent together, how our laughter used to echo through the walls. It reminded me of how Wanda I used to take walks along the cliffside of the Compound. It reminded me of the nights our family used to gather and share takeout together, because, truly, we were all awful cooks. I walked those halls and couldn't stop seeing the memories.

Steve bought us property in Upstate New York. It wasn't too far from the Compound. It was a small, lake front house that held a darkened red hue on its wooden exterior. A gravel driveway led to the creaky stairs up to the front door. Dark green columnar trees sat on the ends of the house, a few growing extensively over the roof. Of the other four houses that lived on the lake, ours was the smallest and the most hidden from view, but it worked for us. It was a quiet estate, it was separated graciously from the other houses, and it felt somewhere to make a home for he and I.

Inside was a single story. Immediately inside, there was an option to go left or right, or through a short hall, but they were all direct routes to the open space that held our kitchen and living room. On opposite ends of the house were two bedrooms, a guest, and our own, with their own bathrooms.

Double doors in the middle of the kitchen and living room exited out to the back patio, which provided a nice sized pad for a table, a grill. A small flight of stairs led to a secondary pad, just large enough to place two chairs across the stairs from each other, and the path continued to a lengthened dock. Bright, green grass extended from the house until it met the water, where a rock barrier was placed to separate land from the water.

It wasn't until I was at the end of the dock, nowhere left to explore, that I turned to face him. He hadn't told me until the day we moved that we were, in fact, moving. We had packed our belongings from the Compound into a couple boxes and he drove me to our new home. He bought the property, he cleaned the landscape up, and he chose the décor all by himself. As I had explored our house, he had followed behind me, watching with a grimace.

"Do you like it?" he asked, biting his cheek nervously.

I chuckled sadly. I held my hands out for him, and as he approached, I spoke, "I was young when my parents died. Never knew my house with them. I lived with foster parents, but that wasn't home. I lived at the Academy, I lived in that apartment in DC, I lived in Avengers Tower, the Compound, the Light Dimension. But I've never felt the sense of home I do right now, here, with you." Steve grasped my hands in his and a sense of relief in my words brought his shoulders to stand tall once more. I kissed him. "I love it here. I love you. This is home."

Steve hugged me. I wish I could honestly say we were happy. We were, in some sense. This is what we wanted together, the chance to settle down. At the cost it came was where we had a hard time enjoying what happiness we made at the recognition of the overwhelming depression we and everyone else felt. Nevertheless, we tried to be happy at our next step, for the few moments we could before we remembered again.

Settled in, a week later, I asked Steve to join me at the edge of the rock barrier. Together, we secured a cross into the ground. We placed rocks with the initials of our lost love ones at its feet. Bucky, Sam, Wanda. I put one for Strange and for Fury, for Peter Parker. Steve put a rock for T'Challa.