When the flowers wilt (Steve Rogers)

Some flowers wilt in full sun, and no one sees it coming because they bloomed so reliably every spring-because they turned their faces toward the light with such ordinary grace, because their petals never bruised under a careless touch, because they bent in every storm and stood back up again, and so no one thought to look at the roots, no one thought to dig into the soil and discover it had been poisoned long before the first seed was ever sown, long before the garden was even a thought, and by the time the stem finally snaps and the blossom falls, all anyone can say is but it looked so healthy, as if health is a thing that lives only on the surface, as if a flower cannot be dying from the ground up while still opening toward the sun each morning, as if love and water and careful hands could ever be enough to undo what was rotting underneath before the garden ever existed.

She had losses. Two of them. But she smiled anyway. She was sweet. She was jolly. She was fine.

Steve didn't think much of anything.

Until he saw her fall from the window.

How could she have committed suicide?

He goes back in time to unmake their love. To save her by becoming a stranger. But the past has teeth. And the normal girl was never quite what she seemed.

__________________