Chapter Text
Steve groaned and tried to move. Near as he could tell, he’d just been blown out of building by an explosive and landed on the roof of a car. For a second, in the sudden drift of flight, he flashed back. Back to the Valkyrie. The sensation of speed, of helplessness and despondence and victory and a thousand other things he could never name…and now, pain and metal and glass, a spike of panic—
No. No. He couldn’t. Not here, not now. Steve clenched his teeth and tried to breathe.
It took 26 seconds for the red spots to stop blinking behind his eyes. Another twenty for him to be able to get enough air to stop feeling dizzy. His eyes stung from acrid smoke and his rib cage felt caved in.
The impact had unmoored him, it seemed, from his current reality. His mind jumped to another time when the heat of a raging fire clawed at his skin and his eyes burned, pooling with defensive tears as he beheld a monster.
For weeks and months after he first saw Red Skull’s true face, Steve grappled with the question of what exactly to call his adversary. He knew from Erskine’s explanation that he was a man, however ill-suited, who had taken the serum just like him. In theory, that made them the same thing. In practice, however, they were as different as angels and demons.
But how different were angels and demons, really?
He ignored that question in airplanes, the back of trucks, in trenches, in the middle of firefights where bullets pinged off the shield mere inches from his eyes. He ignored it when those deflected bullets struck home and the shield broke necks and imploded skulls, when the blood of Hydra soaked the soles of his boots. He couldn't get bogged down in holiness on the battlefield. War made angels and demons like the sun grew plants - no serum necessary.
Steve wasn’t special. Just strong in the right ways for the situation. To this day he sometimes doubted himself, second-guessed decisions, felt like a small frail man inside a meat suit. Sure, he didn’t show it, but it was always there. Maybe one day he’d forget that he was faking.
And that was the difference; Schmidt bathed in the light of his own importance. Wanted others to beg to be cast in it. Narcissism and delusion operated a continuous circle-jerk in his brain. That was what made him vulnerable.
Truth be told, Steve felt less like he’d defeated Schmidt and more like he’d tricked Schmidt into defeating himself. It still counted, he supposed. But today he’d seen something he hoped never to lay eyes on again, something that he ignored as steadfastly as the distinction between angels and demons. Today, not sixty minutes ago, he’d seen the vastness of the universe split the sky…and instead of sucking his enemy away, it was spitting them out, legions of them. The Chitauri.
Actual aliens. From another planet. From space.
“Jesus Christ,” he said out loud, for the fourth time. He winced and forced his body to move. Steve slid gracelessly from the roof of the car and leaned against what was left of the passenger side door.
Natasha’s voice came over the con, winded but nonchalant. “Says the good Catholic boy.”
“He hasn’t been a boy in a while, Nat,” Tony said. An explosion crackled near him and he cursed, but it didn’t stop him from delivering his punchline. “Almost a century, right, Cap?”
“I haven’t been a good Catholic in a while, either,” Steve bantered, needing the normalcy of it as he tried to convince himself there was an end in sight. “Something about war and Nazis and waking up to this instead of the afterlife.”
“We’re all gonna be in the afterlife soon if we don’t figure out how to close that portal,” Clint said, with very rational irritation.
“Clint’s right. We need to regroup,” Steve said. He’d been separated from the others and lost track of things while saving civilians - something he was loathe to give up, but there really wouldn’t be anyone left to save if they didn’t get back on task.
“Okay. Where are you?” Tony asked.
Steve heard the telltale whine of Iron Man’s repulsors as Tony streaked by, on level with what must have been the fortieth floor of the nearest skyscraper.
“You just passed me.”
Just then, Steve’s ear caught something else. A human sound, the sound men made when they were wounded and laying in the mud and dying. It stirred a shaky desperation in him and he looked frantically for its source. There, in a crushed car a few feet away. Movement. There was a person still alive in there.
“Tony, give me five minutes and circle back, I have a civilian trapped in a car. There’s no way he’s getting out on his own. Everyone else, head for Stark Tower.”
He only half paid attention to the murmurs of assent. The man in the car was in bad shape. Blood clotted his hair and covered most of his face, but the head wound wasn’t what worried Steve. His left arm was, in a word, mangled.
Steve had seen it before and given the fact that the world didn’t lose its fondness for conflict or explosions while he was frozen, he’d see it again. With a growl he pried the door from the frame of the car; the metal screamed its protest. For a moment the man’s eyes fluttered open, marbled blue, unfocused until they found Steve.
“I’ve got you,” he said, eyes darting around to make sure there were no Chitauri in sight. “Just relax. I’m going to get you out of here.”
Steve expected him to pass out when he started to move him, because that arm had to hurt, but he didn’t. He held on to consciousness with gritty tenacity, eyes never wavering. The scream he let out when the twisted remains of the car finally gave him up drilled into Steve’s bones.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said when they cleared the car. “I’m so sorry.” He was running out of time; more Chitauri were headed in their direction and he had to get this man to safety. Steve lifted him as gently as he could and sprinted for cover. He felt teeth against his suit, the heat of breath and the vibration of his moans of pain. It never changed.
He hated it.
He delivered the man to the nurse and doctor who had set up triage in the subway entrance; they looked like they had just gotten off night shift before the sky started burping out aliens. The two women took him and got to work. Steve had to pry the man’s fingers from the strap that went around his back where he stashed the shield.
He didn’t like leaving people in the subway. If the buildings went down they’d be trapped underground. But at least they could probably find their way out through the tunnels - the ones who could walk, anyway. The ones who couldn’t…
“Cap, where the hell—”
“Subway entrance.”
Tony spotted him and dove down, and in another second he was up in the air with the wind and heat and smoke, borne back to battle.