Steve has become friends with the cold tile floor of Wakanda.
Hell, he must have been in shock for the first few days. The Aftermath only brought stress and sleepless nights through the hastily reformed Wakandan government. Useless cups of coffee, nearly avoided shouting matches, and...sweeping the floors, were the normal now. The hellish routine was already embedding itself in their minds.
He’s in the hallways connecting the guest suites when he swears- no, he knows he heard someone calling out behind him. His stomach immediately drops, and, despite his enhanced humanity, his heart starts beating out of his chest. His mouth feels thick with saliva. Steve turns slowly, scanning the corridor and tensing up in anticipation.
There’s nothing.
“Bucky?” he asks, after much hesitation. His whole body is cold. The name is nearly caught in his throat. He hasn’t said that name in four days.
His words bounce back at him from the walls, but there is no other sound.
No buzzing of fluorescent lights like back in America, no political bickering in the distance, no footsteps of those who should be nearby.
And it terrifies him to his core.
Steve suddenly can’t control the trembling of his hands. He looks down at them, but all he can see is ash, dust. His breath hitches in his throat like when he had his asthma real bad and he can’t quite control his breathing anymore either. He’s slipping and he’s desperately fumbling for a grip on his own psyche. Steve stares at his hands as he slides down to the floor. God, he can’t even feel his fingers anymore.
He’s gone through this before, even as early as after he first lost Bucky, but never this severe. Nothing feels real but at the same time it feels all too brutal. He can’t decide whether he should scream or cry, if he could even manage to ponder it more. Nothing sticks.
Is this what dying feels like?
Is this what Bucky felt like?
Steve chokes on the lump in his throat, barely swallowing it. He ignores the countless taps on the shoulder, the phantom ruffling through his hair. He desperately fights the urge to cast a glance behind him. He knows what he’ll see.
He knows this isn’t real. Goddamnit, maybe Thanos is back, maybe he’s using the stones to toy with the survivors Or maybe he’s just losing his mind.
Bucky is ash. Fucking ash.
A sob escapes his throat without warning. He’s losing his fucking mind.
And for once, he just lets it happen.
The next thing he processes is Nat’s small but calloused hands cupping his face. She removes one of them to brush away the longer strands of hair stuck to his cheek; Steve never realized how gentle her fighting hands could be. The thought of her, the sheer magnitude of her suffering, her capacity to still care, nearly brought him to tears again. He did nothing for her. Yet here she was.
Natasha hums, shushing him. Her thumbs reach up to gather falling tears he failed to control. He leans into her touch, completely giving himself over. He tries to focus on the points of contact, the precise way her fingertips linger on his skin like he was something important. Small trails of tears still streak down his face in a steady flow.
A very faint, old part of him protests in the back of his thoughts; the defiant scrawny teenager, far too eager to take on every threat in the world. Steve pushes the thought away with his little strength. Everything was different. Nothing would ever be the same again. No one would be able to fix what they’d let happen this time. What they’d done themselves.
“How long?”
“Eleven minutes.”
Steve swallows. He knows neither of them wants to be having this conversation; if they had it their way, they’d get to crumble in the peace of their own quarters. Fate had its wretched way of denying them their privacy, though, lately. He feels her hands gently glide down their resting places on his cheeks, down to his throat and to his shoulders where they remain. She maneuvers herself to be in front of him now, looking him straight in the eye. His heart stops for a moment and his gaze darts down at his hands in front of him.
“They’re getting worse, Nat.”
“Steve, you know we’ll get back up from this,” Natasha sighs. It’s incredibly hard to even begin to believe; her usual confidence and cleverness are marred by the sheer uncertainty of the past few days. She looks haggard. Stretched thin. How could she even attempt to assure him of something, when all of them had lost so much?
A brittle but bitter anger boils in Steve’s gut. “You haven’t lost your best friend!” he sneers.
“Do you remember what he was to me, too? Did you forget?” Natasha spits back, full of pure poison.
Of course Steve remembered. Last he had visited Bucky, he was greeted by newly recalled memories of a red ballerina. Spite for the world. Loneliness. Strength in numbers. The sudden and vivid recollection stung at his heart a bit, and he wondered why Natasha never bothered to tell him at all, but it faded quicker than it had taken to manifest. Nat had no obligation to tell him. Oddly enough, Steve believed the new knowledge strengthened his relationship with the two of them, knowing the two of them loved each other as much as he loved the both of them. It was still easy to slip up, though.
Steve remains quiet, and he can feel Nat’s anger fading like a light traveling farther and farther away. Her fingers subconsciously knead into his triceps as she is deep in her own thoughts.
When the air clears a bit more, Steve croaks, unexpectedly weaker, “They’re getting worse. Worse than...than when he was frozen, Nat.”
He glances up at Nat for the first time truly. Her newly-red hair falls to obscure her face, her own gaze now transfixed on the floor. It’s hard to tell,
“I promise, Steve, I’ll do everything I can to help. Just tell me.” She tears her eyes from the tile, connecting with Steve’s own with a force that nearly sends him reeling. “Please.”
Steve swallows, his skin burning.
“Please, stay with me,” Steve begs, averting her gaze.
Natasha nods. He can’t see very well still, but she’s masking her unshed tears with a sad smile. Her hand slips from his shoulders as she rises, and offers him one of her hands. Steve Rogers, superhuman nomad, takes it and still nearly falls.
They hobble the few feet to Steve’s door as they try to adjust after the long time on the ground. Steve collapses in the bed like a wet rag, utterly spent. He feels vaguely shaky, like he used to feel when he’d drink coffee before the serum. Almost like his body was on overload. He doesn’t want to push away the vivid memory of him and Bucky’s excited first taste of coffee, albeit very stale and watery. The recollection hits him like a gunshot.
He digs the bullet out and throws it away.
Natasha crawls closer to him on the other side, kicking off her jeans in the graceful process. Nat’s such a small woman, but the way she wraps around him sends warmth through his whole body. He buries his face into her neck, sighing. She smells of shea butter and rich coffee and faint hair dye. He faintly wonders if she minds his beard, and if he should shave it now that they’re finally not on the run. It’s the last thing he remembers before slipping under.
He doesn’t sleep peacefully. Bucky cries out for him every time.