Learning to Breathe Together
The days after the transformation were quiet, but not empty.
Steve was the same in all the ways that mattered—gentle, soft-spoken, awkward when he smiled too long. But there was something new under his skin, a steady current of energy, like the world had finally caught up to the man he had always been on the inside.
And Elara… she didn’t know where to stand anymore.
She kept her distance at first, slipping in and out of the SSR headquarters, filing papers, learning how to blend into the backdrop of this history she already knew too well. It wasn’t her place to be anything more.
But Steve kept finding her.
It started with brief nods in hallways, small smiles over paperwork. Then a quiet moment in the cafeteria, when they reached for the same tray and he chuckled under his breath.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.
Elara looked up at him slowly, trying not to flinch at how much he had changed—not just the way he filled out a uniform now, but the way he carried himself, no longer hunched or hesitant. He still looked at her the same, though. Like he was trying to solve a puzzle, piece by piece.
“I’ve been… giving you space,” she replied, carefully.
Steve tilted his head. “Feels a lot like disappearing.”
She didn’t answer right away.
How could she tell him she was scared? That the moment she looked at him for too long, the weight of everything she knew came crashing down again? How could she admit that sometimes, when he walked into a room now, her breath caught—not because of the way he looked, but because of what came next?
She knew where this was heading. And he didn’t.
“You’ve got a lot going on,” she managed to say instead. “Didn’t want to be in the way.”
Steve picked up a tray and offered her one. “Then don’t be. Stay in it.”
Elara hesitated, then smiled faintly, accepting the tray. That was how it began.
They started eating lunch together. At first, it was all surface-level conversation. Him talking about his training, her asking about his team. He didn’t push, and she didn’t offer much. But slowly, cracks began to open between the silence.
She told him she liked old libraries more than archives, because books felt more alive than boxes. He told her he used to draw in the margins of textbooks to keep from falling asleep in class. She laughed and asked to see them. He promised one day.
They walked together after hours, Elara taking the long way back to her boarding house just for a few extra minutes beside him. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they didn’t.
But the quiet between them began to feel like a place to rest.
One night, they sat on a bench just beyond the edges of Brooklyn, watching the lamplight flicker on the cobblestone.
Steve glanced at her. “You never talk much about where you’re from.”
Elara’s breath hitched.
“I guess I don’t,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
He didn’t push. He just waited, like always.
She turned her face toward the soft glow of the streetlamp and tried to lie with grace. “It’s a place that feels far away now. Even when I’m in it.”
Steve looked at her for a long moment. “You speak like someone who’s carrying too much.”
Elara smiled faintly. “I am.”
“I could help, if you let me.”
She looked down at her hands, fingers tightening slightly in her lap. “What if I told you I couldn’t? Not yet.”
Steve didn’t respond right away. He just nodded. “Then I’ll wait. You don’t owe me anything, Elara. But I’ll be here.”
That was the thing about Steve Rogers. He didn’t reach too hard, didn’t demand answers. He made you want to give them. And that terrified her.
Because even now, he was starting to live in her thoughts. In the pages of the journal she kept hidden under the floorboard, words bleeding onto paper late at night, aching with everything she could never say out loud.
“I think about you a lot,” Steve admitted quietly.
Elara looked up, startled. “What?”
He smiled, soft and unsure. “When you’re not around. I wonder where you go. What you’re thinking. Sometimes, I think you’re lonelier than you let on.”
Her eyes filled, but she blinked them away.
Steve reached over slowly, his hand barely brushing hers. “You don’t have to be alone, El.”
It was the first time he ever called her that.
She didn’t pull away.
Instead, she leaned against his shoulder, both of them watching the fog roll low over the streets. And for the first time in a long time, she let herself breathe.