Chapter Text
Avengers Tower
August 2012
Three months after The Battle of New York
"You're leaving?"
Tony stood in the bedroom doorway, his face thunderous. Steve hunched lower over his suitcase, then turned back to the closet.
"I've been reassigned." Steve pulled his shirts off their hangers and folded them with brutal efficiency.
"Right. Sure." Tony stared at him, confused and outraged. “You’re Captain America! You can get Fury to assign you wherever you want. You don’t have to get assigned anywhere. Why are you doing this?”
“I’m going where I should be.” Steve didn’t look up.
“Where you-” Tony’s hands went to his chest, then gestured out the door towards the commons. “This is where you should be. Right here. Why are you running away?” Tony’s voice was numb with incomprehension
Steve kept his eyes closed. He felt like he had Tony’s heart held painfully tight in his hands, and he was about to squeeze until it bled. “I have to go.”
“Why?” Tony demanded. “What is there for you besides a bunch of graves and a dying old woman?”
“It’s what I need to do-”
“You need to stay here. With me.” Tony held his hands to his chest. Gestured to the door. “With us!”
“You’re not going to understand-”
“No, I don’t understand. We need you, Cap.”
“Don’t say that-”
“We do!”
“You don’t!” Steve yelled back, and met Tony’s eyes. “You’ll be fine without me! They- she won’t.” Steve swallowed. “I need to go where I belong.” He pulled out the nightstand drawer.
“This is where you belong, Cap.” That numbness was creeping back into Tony’s voice. “You can always visit her. You don’t need to leave.”
“It is what it is.”
“The past is dead, Steve. Nothing’s going to change that. Peggy Carter? She’s already a ghost. You can’t hang your hat with a ghost.”
“I’ll hang it where it damn well goes.” Steve needed to get out of here as fast as possible.
Tony finally seemed to get it. “Fine.” He turned to leave, then stopped. "Tell me again- you got reassigned, right after we get our shit together as a team, right after you get out of your funk, and, oh yeah. Right after we slept together. Then they decide to reassign you. Sure, I'll buy that."
Steve sighed, frustrated. But he wasn’t angry. “Tony, it’s not you.”
But Stark was ramping up for a full on rant. "Don't get me wrong, I totally deserve this. You couldn't be bailing on a more bail-worthy guy. I've done the same thing to, oh, probably a dozen people. I just never thought this would be your move, Cap. Good job. Run away. Congrats, Mr. Perfect is becoming a more well-balanced person!"
----
Forests of France
Summer 1944
“I say James,” Bucky said, tossing the dirty baseball.
Steve caught it. “You don’t even like James.” He threw the ball back.
Bucky caught it, and shrugged with self-satisfaction. “It’s regal.” He threw.
Steve caught. “Your ass is regal.”
“Thank you.”
Steve looked thoughtful. “What about Walter?”
Bucky made a face. “Makes me think of Walter O’Donnell. Stinky little snot.”
Steve made a face too. “Lawrence?”
“Too uppity.”
Steve shook his head at the hypocrisy.
“What about Alice?” Bucky suggested, and lobbed the ball.
Steve caught, and held on to it for a moment. “I like that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I like Evelyn too.”
Steve liked it not so much. “Maybe. Jane?”
“Plain Jane? Don’t do that to a girl, Steve.”
“What’s wrong with Jane?”
Bucky shook his head in disgust. “Herbert.”
“No,” Steve said firmly.
Bucky grinned like they were in agreement. He tossed the ball up in the air a couple times. “Curtis?” He threw.
“Curtis.” Steve tried it out. “Curt. Tim?”
From down by the campfire, Dum Dum called out, “Oh dear god, no. Not if you have any love in your heart.”
“Hah! Yeah, but our kids won’t have your big ugly mug!” Bucky hollered back.
“He could still be Timmy the Giant!” Dum Dum yelled around the curve of his hand. Behind him, Gabe shook his head and leaned over to say something to Dernier.
The reminder of his size made Steve turn inward for a second. The baseball hit him in the middle of his chest, hard. “Hey!”
“Don’t get all mopey, gorgeous.” Bucky nodded towards him. “Come on.” He wiggled his fingers, arms outstretched. Steve swung the ball with force.
Bucky caught it and swung back just as hard. “Come on!”
“Walter!”
“You said that already, dumbo!”
“James Walter!”
“That makes him Wally in my family. Come on Rogers, use that brain!”
“David!”
“And?”
“Carroll!”
Bucky scrubbed his nose. “Dailey!”
Steve thought quick. “Eames.”
“Fergus!”
“Gail!”
The rest of the team tuned them out. He and Bucky got past Quinn. Steve insisted on adding Riordan to Bucky's Rory, but they gave up after Tavon.
"Uther?"
Steve shook his head in disgust. “My mother would dunk your head in the wash bucket for that, Barnes.” Falsworth had been watching their game with a soft and almost tentative look on his face. Steve met his eyes to give him a reassuring smile. Monty gave him a respectful nod back.
The team moved in the evening, making progress towards Le Lieu under the cover of dark. They were south of Mont Tendre, and their ultimate destination was Strasbourg. This was Jacques’s mission, and they were doing the Resistance’s bidding right now, happily.
As always, they went into it knowing that they could die, that they could watch each other die. Steve had two minds, and two wishes. One for justice, for what was right, for the safety of the French people living here in danger. For the safety of those the Allies were bombing in their effort to win back land, for the Germans like Erskine who hadn’t wanted this, and for the people he wanted to protect. He and Bucky chose to fight for life and liberty and what was good.
That second wish still lived with them, barely under the surface and at the edges of their minds, a promise for the future if they could both get out of the war alive. For what he and Bucky couldn’t have before, but what they could now, in this big healthy new body of Steve’s. Surrounded by the Commandos, Morita and Dum Dum on his sides, Dernier and Gabe leading their trek, Falsworth and Bucky behind, it felt possible. It felt more possible than it ever had before.
“Whelan,” Bucky whispered in his ear, as he passed Steve in the dark, his Thompson pointed forty five degrees down, jogging into the misty forest ahead.
----
2012
Steve walked out of his apartment, down the hallway, and stopped at the wide living room. The entire team waited between him and the elevator. Hawkeye was sitting high on the bookshelf, bow and arrow sitting beside him, fingers busy with a Rubik’s cube, watching Steve and the rest of the room. Bruce leaning behind the sofa, silent and stoic, yet somehow vulnerable, like the stability in his life was about to be yanked out from under him. Natasha in the kitchen, hip against the chrome counter, a green smoothie in front of her, her face cold and emotionless. For the first time in weeks, Steve was glad Thor was gone.
And Tony, in the hallway behind him.
“I…” Steve faltered, feeling like he was about to step off a cliff, into the abyss.
“Yes?” Natasha answered, taking a sip through the straw.
“I have to go.” But they weren’t going to understand.