Chapter Text
”I tried to drink it away. I tried to put one in the air. I tried to dance it away. I tried to change it with my hair.” - Solange (Cranes in the Sky)
He never took the same route twice. Making a concerted effort not to fall into a routine and retrace his steps from the day before was difficult, but a blessing in disguise. With his mind on avoiding the streets he’d taken recently, he couldn’t dwell on the world around him as it fell apart at the seams. Things had gotten better over the past eight weeks that he’d been running the streets of New York City, but they weren’t the same. Trash was still piled up in alleys and even blocking sidewalks in some areas. Cars still sat abandoned, though the city was trying to tow them. Infrastructure was difficult when half the people who made the city and the world run were gone. Life was hard, period.
Steve kept his pace much slower than he was capable of because he didn’t want his identity known. This was also why he never took the same route twice. He didn’t want some reporter catching wind that Captain America was taking a morning jog right around sunrise each day when he damn well should be trying to save the world. Steve didn’t know how to save the world. He’d tried, and he’d failed.
The survivors—Natasha, Clint, Bruce, Thor, and even Tony when he’d finally found his way back three weeks after this hell had begun—were still looking for a fix, an angle, some hope that what had happened could be fixed. The raccoon who insisted on being called Rocket and a moody woman who had more mechanical parts on her than should be possible were helping, but they were volatile and Steve didn’t really trust either of them.
His feet hit the sidewalk rhythmically. Sometimes he let them slap hard against the pavement, even though he knew it was poor form. The sound was satisfying, hypnotic. With the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head and the beard on his face, he was almost invisible to the survivors who seemed lost as they tried to pick up their old routines after three months of this hell. He was invisible as long as he didn’t push himself and run as fast as he was capable. So, instead, Steve played the long game and used distance to wear himself down. He started at three o’clock in the morning and looped around the city, trying to avoid the streets he’d run the day before. By the time his legs were fatigued, it was well past nine in the morning.
It was eight-thirty now, or at least that’s what the watch Stark had guilted him into wearing said. Tony had claimed the watch was for communication during emergency situations. Steve didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was all over now. The emergency had come and gone; they’d lost everything. The end. Tony was obsessed or possessed or both; he had tunnel vision for a solution that would take it all back. Steve was a little more realistic. Or maybe he was jaded, beaten, useless. He was spent. Nothing left in the gas tank, he thought as he turned the corner and came at Stark Tower from the back, slipping down an alley so he could enter through the loading dock tucked away in the shadows of these behemoth buildings.
The place should have been bustling with activity, with people on their way to work. It felt almost deserted, like more than half the people had been lost in that single moment when he’d failed to stop Thanos from destroying so many lives, not just the ones who vanished. Steve often wished he’d been one of those to go, especially if he could trade his life for someone else’s. He thought about that late at night more than he was willing to admit. It would have been better that way because he was useless now. He wasn’t a help with the science, and there was no army to fight, no monsters to keep at bay. The world felt empty, and he felt like a ghost, half gone already.
He ran the heel of his hand over the sweat that had gathered on his brow and weaved his way through a couple pallets of boxes. The two guards on duty nodded at him before returning to their business. Steve often wondered if they thought he was a joke or a failure. He considered that this morning as he stepped over to the service elevator and pressed the button to go up. The light showed red for a moment before his fingerprint registered and flipped it over to green.
“No! Let me in! I need to see him!”
Steve looked at the floor and swallowed his anxiety over the screaming coming from the lobby just beyond the steel door.
“Please! Please, go get him. Tell him it’s Darcy Lewis. He knows me. I swear he knows me.”
Her voice had taken on a pleading, broken quality that made his heart ache. She’d lost someone just like everyone else. He wondered who she was looking for and why the security guards wouldn’t let her enter the building. Maybe the trauma had pushed her over the edge.
“Get your fucking hands off me! I’m serious, dude! Go get Thor. He’s going to be so pissed off that you— Hey! Stop! No!”
One of the guards raised his voice and said, “Ma’am, we’re going to call the police again. They told you last time that you’d be thrown in jail for—”
“I don’t care. Throw me in jail. I need to see him! I need to tell him something. Stop! Let go, you asshole.”
Thor? Was she delusional? Her voice had a desperation to it that tugged at his heart. Steve watched the doors of the service elevator open. He should just go upstairs and take a shower and mind his own business. The woman in the lobby had likely been driven mad by what had happened. If she really knew Thor, then she wouldn’t be barging into the lobby of Tony Stark’s building.
“Thor! Thor, you motherfucker, get down here right now! It’s about Jane!”
Jane. Hadn’t that been the woman Thor was in love with? Steve watched the doors of the elevator shut as he sighed in resignation. Who was he kidding? He couldn’t look away even if he tried. Carefully, he pushed open the door and cast his gaze over the lobby. It was unnerving how empty it looked at this time of day. Normally, it would have been filled with people in suits with briefcases and work to do. Instead, it was occupied by less than ten people, three of who were trying to detain a young woman with dark brown hair and wild, red-rimmed eyes.
“Thor!” she screamed again. “Please, just call him. Please.” Now she was appealing to the guard who was on the phone. He likely wasn’t on the phone with Thor. Thor didn’t know how to operate a phone. Steve suspected he was making good on their promise to call the cops.
“What’s going on here?” Steve said, walking over to the cluster of three guards around her.
One of the guards recognized him even with the hood up. Steve watched the man’s back straighten when he said, “She’s been coming in the past three days making a scene, demanding access to Thor. She’s delusional, sir. She’s—”
“I’m not fucking delusional, you asshat! Just tell him it’s Darcy Lewis. He knows me.”
Steve pushed his hood back and looked at her. She looked right back, defiance in her eyes. If she was crazy, then she was disturbingly good at appearing coherent. “Have you asked Thor?” He directed the question at the guard holding the phone.
The guard sputtered before saying, “Well, no. If she knew him then, she’d have security clearances. She says she’s lost her family and her friend. Sir, she’s just here to ask for help.”
Help they couldn’t give, Steve thought. Instead of admitting it, he sighed and said, “Ms.—uh—Ms. Lewis, why—”
“Darcy,” she said, her muscles relaxing as the guards loosened their grip.
“Darcy,” Steve repeated after her. “Have a seat. I’ll find Thor and pass your message along to him.”
“Thank you,” she said, relief in her voice.
Steve felt bad for the woman. She looked like she’d been through the same hell he had. That they all had, he corrected himself. He wasn’t special; he was just broken. “If he doesn’t come down here, then you need to leave and not come back. Is that understood?”
“Sure,” she said, “but he’ll come down here.”
She seemed very sure of herself. Maybe she did know Thor after all.
As it turned out, that little niggling suspicion in the back of his mind was right. Thor did indeed know Darcy Lewis. When Steve had finally tracked him down in Stark’s conference room—which looked more like a disastrous war room now—Thor had nearly pushed him out of the way to get down to the lobby. For a moment, Steve almost went back to his rooms to shower, but for the first time in weeks, he was feeling something other than the weight of grief and hopelessness.
He rode the elevator down with a very agitated Thor, who had taken to pacing the small box they were in. “Who is she?”
“A good friend to my beloved Jane,” Thor replied, his voice rough and emotional. “What did she say? Was Jane with her?”
Steve felt that twist in his gut. Jane wasn’t with her, and Steve knew why. He opened his mouth to tell Thor, but the elevator door opened and the blonde god was out the door and frantically sweeping the lobby with his eyes.
“Thor!” the young brunette said, standing up from the chair she’d been sitting in, twisting her hands together like she was nervous.
“Darcy? Are you well?” Thor asked, striding across the nearly empty lobby. The people who were there were turning their heads to watch the drama. The security guards looked from Thor to Steve and back again. They all looked fearful for their jobs and lives after turning the woman away twice before.
“No, I’m not well,” she said. “Jane… she’s… gone. I can’t find my parents or my brother. I—I think they’re gone, too. I don’t understand what’s happening. What happened?”
Steve cringed as Thor’s steady strides over to her faltered. “Jane’s gone?”
The woman was crying now. “She—she was standing there and, and, and… She was standing there and then she was gone. She fell apart like ashes. What happened?”
Thor bent over at the waist, his hands on his knees. Steve knew his friend had looked for Jane shortly after it happened, but couldn’t locate her. The Earth wasn’t as big as the universe, but it was still pretty damn big and if someone didn’t really want to be found, it wasn’t too hard to stay off the radar. He knew Thor’s relationship with Jane had ended and not very happily or amicably. He knew Thor was still heartbroken, and now it was even worse because Thor had been operating under the assumption that Jane was alive out there in some corner of the world still doing her work.
“I—I don’t understand. My parents are gone. My brother is missing. I think he’s gone, too. The… The TV won’t… They’re not saying anything.” Thor was between him and the woman, but he was bent over and sucking in air as the message about Jane sunk in. Darcy’s eyes locked with Steve’s over Thor’s back. “What happened?”
Steve’s throat was tight. He’d thought he was over feeling this way. Numbness had set in over the past few weeks and the sick feeling in his stomach was surprising and unwelcome. He shook his head but didn’t know how to put into words what had happened. It was too much, too big for a sentence or two.
“We failed,” Thor said, his voice thick with grief. When he stood up straight again, he blocked Darcy from Steve’s view. “I’ll have his head, Darcy. I will have his head for taking Jane away from this world she loved so dearly.”
“Who?” Darcy asked. “I don’t understand. No one understands. Why would someone do this? How could someone do this?”
“Come with me. You’ll stay with us here,” Thor said, covering the final few feet to Darcy and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She looked defeated and so sad. Steve felt his stomach twist when her eyes met his again.
“Can we fix this?” she asked. Steve didn’t know if she was talking to Thor or him. Probably Thor. He was the one she’d come here looking for, the one she’d screamed her head off for in the lobby of the building. Her choice of wording was strange. We. Can we fix this? Like she was part of the team. Like she was taking some of the blame. Steve clenched his teeth together and turned away.
Thor maneuvered Darcy past Steve and toward the elevator. “Let us find a place where we can talk. Here is not the place.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him, and Steve’s felt his stomach twist again, guilt and sadness coursing through his veins. “Thank you,” she said softly before turning back toward the elevators.
She looked shell-shocked. Her eyes were wide, but there was no recognition in them, just a distance that was all-too-familiar to Steve. That distance and numbness had set in over the past few weeks. He’d accepted it as his life. They’d failed and this was the world now. He didn’t understand how Tony could still have the energy to search for a solution when it was obvious those who were gone were… gone. They weren’t coming back. All they could hope for now was revenge on the monster who had taken them.
He stood in the corner, one shoulder pressed against the wall and his arms folded. She was sitting at the conference table in the hellish room they’d spent most of their time in since they’d returned from Wakanda. Thor was holding her hand, but she didn’t seem to notice. It was a lot to take in. It had taken nearly three weeks after the incident—that’s what the talking heads were calling it—for the televisions to start working again. There were three channels up, and all of them were airing news programs for most of the day, though they went off the air at night. The multi-colored bars that took over the screen around ten o’clock at night were eerie and depressing.
The people who really knew what happened were few; almost all of them were residing in Stark Tower. Most of the world just knew a large portion of the population disappeared right in front of their eyes. Steve suspected in a few months they would try to do a census and figure out how many they lost. He knew they’d find it was fifty percent. Bruce and Natasha met with a Congressional Committee and informed them of what had occurred in Wakanda. Tony had met with them a week later to answer questions about what happened on a distant planet called Titan. Steve couldn’t bring himself to go, though.
The Congressional Committee and the President decided the truth would cause mass panic. People were already speculating on when another incident would happen. But Steve knew that the tenuous control the remaining authorities had over the remaining population could be tipped into anarchy if people knew the truth—that a monster had obtained a weapon so powerful he could kill the masses with just a snap of his fingers. Nevermind that the gauntlet had been irreparably damaged, Steve knew Thanos could find a way to continue the destruction if he wanted. Plus, people were looking for a reason to panic. Knowing an alien being held so much power, had killed half of their loved ones--well, that was enough to send everyone over the edge.
“Who’s this?” Tony asked, stopping in the doorway. He looked horrible. His beard had gotten almost as out of control as Steve’s. He hadn’t had a shower in three days. Steve knew because Bruce had forced Tony to take one on Monday. He had a cup of coffee in his hands because he’d mostly been living off caffeine and sugar. He’s killing himself, Steve thought, looking at the dark circles under Tony’s eyes. If Pepper were around, then maybe it would be different, but she was gone. Gone with the rest of them.
Darcy didn’t answer, though she did look up at Tony with those wide, blue eyes like she didn’t even see him. Thor probably shouldn’t have told her everything. The truth was terrible and so meaningless, such a waste.
“This is Darcy Lewis. She is a friend of Jane’s. She’s come to bring me word of Jane and Erik Selvig,” Thor said.
“Jane's dead, then.” Tony’s voice was flat.
Thor’s jaw tightened. For a moment, Steve thought he’d have to intervene and break up a fight between the two men. Thor pulled himself together and said, “She’s gone,” in a cold voice. “All the more reason for us to work harder. We must find an answer. The damage Thanos has wrought cannot stand.”
Tony’s shoulders sagged. “You need a place to stay, kid?”
“I’m not a kid.” It was the first thing she’d said since Thor had started talking. She was probably in shock.
“Yeah, yeah,” Tony said, waving away her protest. “You need a place to stay?”
“I—I don’t know. I could… I was going to go back to my parents’ house, but…”
“You can stay with me, Darcy,” Thor told her.
“I don’t want to go back to Virginia,” she whispered.
Thor squeezed her hand. “You can stay with me.”
“I’ll find her a room. We’ve got plenty of space,” Tony said before turning around and leaving.
The mood was morose, but it had been since the incident. Steve was sitting in an armchair with a glass of bourbon held loosely in a hand that was resting on his knee. Floor to ceiling windows to his right afforded him a view of the city. It was unusually dark. Losing half its inhabitants had dulled the glow of lights. Steve wondered if things would ever be back to the way they were. He wondered what Bucky had felt as he fell apart and was swept away by the wind. No, things would never be back to the way they were. This was not something you could recover from.
Tony was drunk. Sloppy drunk and probably a couple more drinks from vomiting or passing out or both. Natasha was trying to be his keeper or his parent by taking away his drink, but Tony wasn’t having it. Clint was back in his room, playing video games with his daughter. She’d survived but the other kids and Clint’s wife were gone. They should be glad the girl survived. Clint was glad, but all Steve could focus on were the ones who were gone. Bucky and Wanda and Vision and T’Challa and Fury and Maria and so many others.
The racoon—who claimed his name was Rocket—was egging Tony on. He was a spiteful little thing who didn’t have much good to say about anyone or anything, but he and Tony got on famously. If you considered constant snarking and friendly annoyance as such. Steve didn’t mind him much after he got over the fact that he was, well, a racoon who could talk. The moody woman who had returned to Earth with Tony was nowhere to be seen. Steve suspected she was back in her room; she tended to keep to herself. He was tempted to leave as well, but being around other voices sometimes made it easier. Sitting on his couch and staring at the multi-colored bars of the television station that had gone off the air an hour earlier was not appealing.
Thor and Bruce were seated in another armchair and at the end of the couch. They were deep in conversation about something that had happened on Sakaar, a world they said they’d been to just before shit had hit the fan with Thanos. Steve had seen plenty of things, but he couldn’t imagine a different world filled with aliens like that tree Thor had introduced him to.
Steve took a drink of the bourbon, savoring the way it burned all the way down his throat. It wouldn’t get him drunk, but it warmed him and tasted decent once he’d gotten used to the flavor. When he looked up, he saw her watching him from the other side of the couch. She’d been there for two days. The fiery woman who had called the guard downstairs a motherfucker wasn’t around anymore. The Darcy in her place was shell-shocked and quiet. Steve knew how she was feeling. He used to be motivated. He used to be a fighter. Now he sat in a room and despaired over the fact that the problem was insurmountable and unsolvable. People were dead and there was nothing he could do to turn back time.
She looked away when he caught her looking. Steve glanced down at her glass and found it empty. She’d been drinking rum and Coke. He opened his mouth to ask her if she wanted a refill, but nothing came out. She’d been there for two days, but he hadn’t said more than a few words to her. He didn’t have much to say to anyone anymore, but definitely not a pretty woman who looked just as heartbroken as he felt.
Tony had put her up in a small studio apartment two doors down from Nat and across the hall from Thor, whom she’d been shadowing since she arrived. That meant she was one floor below Steve. The first night she’d been in the Tower, Steve had sat on the foot of his bed and thought about what she was doing and what she was thinking. He’d wondered if she was crying or if she was worried. If she was lonely. He didn’t know her, but he didn’t want her to be lonely. It was good she had Thor; he treated her like a younger sister who he’d protect. She couldn’t have found someone better than him to be on her side and take care of her.
Steve sighed and knocked back the rest of his drink. “Hey,” he said, pushing himself out of the chair, “you want a refill?”
She looked up and shrugged before lifting the glass up for him to take. “Thanks,” she said.
“Rum and Coke?” he asked.
Darcy just nodded and slid her gaze back to the floor.
He made her drink at Tony’s bar in the corner of the room before he poured a splash of bourbon in his own glass. When Steve looked up at her again, she was nodding at Thor and smiling. There was something off in the smile. She was trying to be okay, but she wasn’t okay. Neither was he. Neither was anyone in the world. But she was trying and that was admirable. He’d stopped trying.
“That’s nice of you.”
Steve looked over his shoulder at Natasha. The woman was probably the only person who could sneak up on him like that. “Nice of me?” he asked.
“Getting her a drink,” Nat clarified.
Steve gave a non-committal hum as he put the lid back on the bottle of bourbon.
“Clint said she worked with Jane Foster and Erik Selvig. She’s been with them since Thor crash-landed in New Mexico.” When Steve didn’t reply, Nat continued with, “He said she seemed fun, that she tazed Thor when they first found him because he seemed crazy and dangerous.”
“Yeah,” Steve replied, picking up both the drinks and turning to look at Natasha.
“You okay, Steve?” Her expression was stern, but her eyes looked concerned.
“Yeah,” he murmured, looking away.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “You don’t seem okay. You’re not blaming yourself for all this, are you? Because that would be pretty stupid.”
“We failed. They’re dead because we didn’t get the job done.” It was a fact, unavoidable and terrible.
He saw her flinch at the words, but she recovered quickly. Someone who didn’t know her as well as he did wouldn’t have caught the moment. “We didn’t do this, Steve.”
“But we didn’t stop it.”
“Was it even possible to stop it? You were there. Steve, he had all the Stones. All of them. I don't know—”
“I don’t want to talk about this, Nat,” Steve said.
“You don’t want to talk about anything,” she replied.
“Ain’t nothing to talk about.”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “You’re not responsible for what happened, Steve. Get it through your thick skull and stop moping. Tony is killing himself and you’re just shutting down. We need you.”
“I can’t help. What can I do? There’s no one to fight. He’s gone. They’re gone with him.”
“Tony is trying to locate him. Nebula and Rocket are trying to help. If we can just find him, then we could find the Stones and—”
“He’s long gone, Nat. And even if we do find him—what then? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I want justice. I want revenge. But that ain’t bringing them back. They’re gone.”
She closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath. “I know,” she said before a long exhale. “I know they’re gone.”
“Then we find him or not, it doesn’t matter.”
Natasha shook her head at him. “Never thought I’d see that day when you gave up, Steve.”
“I’m cutting my losses,” he replied, walking around the bar and looking back at her. “I can’t change it, can’t fix it, can’t make it right. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You just want to sit there and blame yourself,” she snapped back.
“Yeah. So what? You surprised?”
Nat huffed out a harsh breath of laughter. “No. No, I’m not surprised.”
Steve turned away and walked back over the couch. Darcy’s eyes were on him. She’d been watching his interaction with Natasha, though he didn’t know if she’d heard anything they’d said over the drone of conversation between Thor and Bruce.
He held out her drink and said, “Rum and coke.”
“Thanks,” she replied, reaching up and accepting it. She pinched the lip of the glass, careful not to touch his fingers.
Steve sighed and said, “You okay?
She shrugged and forced a smile. “Okay as can be. This… This doesn’t seem real. Feels like a nightmare.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Who’d you lose?”
Her question was jarring. Steve opened his mouth, but he didn’t know how he could possibly give her an answer that would ever express who and what he’d lost. He shook his head at her and said, “Too many people.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She took a drink and winced.
“Too strong?” he asked.
She smiled again and this time it almost reached her eyes. “Little bit.”
“Sorry about that.” He paused and added, “And you don’t gotta be sorry for what happened. None of it was your fault.”
Darcy took another drink. “Yeah, I know that. But I’m still sorry to hear you lost people. I heard you tell, uh, Natasha that you didn’t want to talk about something.” She shifted her eyes away for a moment, looking shy and sweet. When she lifted her gaze back up to him as he stood over her, she said, “I mean, you don’t know me or whatever, but if you ever want someone to talk to… Sometimes it’s easier for me to talk to people I don’t know. And you don’t know me, so…’ She laughed softly and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I… Never mind. I’m… whatever.”
Steve nodded and said, “Thanks for the offer, but I’m good. Talking doesn’t get you anywhere. You know?”
“Yeah. I guess,” she replied. “Thanks for, uh, getting Thor a couple days ago. I didn’t know what to do or how to reach him. I’m….”
When she didn’t finish her sentence, he raised his brows in question and encouragement. He wanted to hear the end of the statement. What was she? She was…?
“I’m alone now, I think. It was good to find him. My, uh, social circle shrank when I started working with Jane. Which is pretty regrettable now because… well, the more people you know, the more chance you have of not being alone.”
“The more people you know, the more people you lose,” he said.
Her smile was grim. “Yeah.”
Steve felt like shit as soon as the comment left his mouth and her response twisted his gut. He’d never been good at talking to women outside of business, and this was just another example of his inability to say the right thing at the right time. Instead of digging the hole deeper, he nodded at her and moved back to the bar. Tony was missing. Steve suspected he and Rocket had gone to the lab. They’d end up passing out from the booze. This was Tony’s cycle nowadays. He’d work like a maniac for two or three days, then drink himself under the table, be utterly useless for a day, and then start the process over again after he’d recovered from his hangover.
Steve sat with his back to the bar and sipped on the bourbon. She was sitting there on the end of the couch, looking lost and sad and lonely. Thor and Bruce tried to engage her; she’d try to respond, but couldn’t seem to drum up the will to carry on a conversation. She finished her drink and sat the empty glass on the coffee table. When she looked up, he caught her eye and nodded at her glass. She gave him a smile and shook her head. No refill. He felt a little disappointed. He wanted an excuse to go over and try again. He wanted to make her feel better. He wanted to talk to someone who hadn’t been there and wasn’t involved, even if he didn’t know what to say.
She slipped her gaze from Thor and looked up at him again as she absently chewed on her lower lip. Steve felt his stomach twist when she looked away and cast her gaze out the windows to her left. Talking to her was probably a bad idea. She was young and pretty and seemed like she needed someone. And he couldn’t be that. He didn’t know how to be there even on his best days, and these days were not even close to his best days.
She glanced over at him again. When she met his gaze, she diverted hers away quickly, acting guilty like she’d been caught. Why did she keep looking? And why did he like it?