❝Whatever happens, just know that I never stopped trying.❞
. . .in which she must do whatever she can to protect the world and what's left of the ones she loves.
[BOOK THREE]
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★ ★ ★
1 YEAR AND 6 MONTHS AFTER DECIMATION
DECEMBER 2022
★ ★ ★
Steve pushed his shopping cart around the corner of the supermarket, followed by a very agitated Marlena. This was one of the few outings she actually tagged along for, and he knew that her frustration had little to do with her inability to locate the Star Wars fruit snacks as she claimed, and everything to do with her being uncomfortable back around people, around these strangers that didn't recognize them as anything other than faces in a crowd.
It'd taken so much time for Steve to convince Marlena that she was not betraying her family by taking part in a somewhat mundane life. He was hesitant to bring them up, but when he saw the opportunity fit, he did take time to remind her that Bucky and her children would not want her to live a life in solitude, isolated and unhappy. He knew she would require baby steps, but he hadn't expected it to take over a year for her to do something as simple and quiet as accompany him to get groceries. Nonetheless, he was glad she was there; he hoped it was helping her feel like herself again, even in the slightest.
"I'm not one to usually make assumptions, but I'm pretty sure Thanos snapped all the best snacks out of existence as a punishment for the remaining human population," she huffed, abruptly stopping in the cookies and chips aisle, where she then draped herself over the end of the shopping cart.
Steve let out a chuckle, watching her dramatize even the most miniscule of things just because she would rather not have been dragged along there. He could not stop his eyebrows from raising, though, at the sound of the joke surrounding one of the touchiest subjects there was when it came to their lives. He knew Marlena better than to think she actually found herself humorous; when she was uncomfortable she tended to blurt out rather inappropriate and obscure words. It was just her way of deflecting how she was really feeling, and he never once struggled to see through that part of her.
Steve propped his elbows up on the handlebars of the shopping cart, causing the end that Marlena leaned on to rise, bumping her chin. She glared at him for a moment, rubbing her jawline to make the pain pass.
"Keep complaining and I'll turn this shopping cart around, Claire," Steve teased as he resumed their stroll, looking back over his shoulder as Marlena trudged along behind.
"One could only hope for so much," Marlena muttered to herself, their eyes meeting briefly as he shot her a look.
It'd taken a long time for her to reach this point, this state of mind where she could actually crack a joke once in a while. Marlena had been empty for so long, so broken and shut off from the real world, that now Steve was her only link to it. If she didn't have him, she was sure she would never have regained the strength to go out and pretend like her life was anything but average. All the people that passed by them in the grocery store seemed so fake; she was sure they'd lost people after the snap, too, but they seemed so unphased. She wondered how easy it was for them to just continue on, to live in a world where death was inevitable for every last one of them.
