oblivion. ▷ captain america. [1] •••DISCONTINUED•••

xvii ▷ adjusting.

S E V E N T E E N

17. | adjusting.
you learn something new every day

steve.

•

IT HASN'T been easy. Hell, it will never be easy. Fury has been saying that I've been taking it really well, but that's only because I've been lying constantly. When he asks me what I've done that day, I completely leave out the parts that include me rewatching old World War II videos and waking up screaming. It's a struggle to keep myself together just avoiding talking about those details let alone experiencing them.

Since I've woken up, Director Fury of SHIELD has gotten me an apartment to stay at in New York while I get back on my feet. He didn't actually say that though because I assume he thinks I never will. I have a whole seven decades to catch up on, so it's not exactly going to take a week.

I sit at the small table in my small apartment, glancing out of the small window. It actually isn't that miniature, it's just that I haven't exactly been inside an apartment since before the serum, making everything seem tinier than it actually is. I never thought that I could feel any lonelier, but I am. I know of no one that is still alive yet. The majority of the files I've looked at have had a large red-inked DECEASED stamped across it. Fury has given me a few more boxes of files for me to look at, which I greatly appreciate. It makes me feel like someone is there for me in a way. He's gone through all the trouble of finding me these things and keeping track of what he's already given me, like all the tapes.

I now glance at a small box in the corner of the table. I carefully bring it over to me, sifting through it. It just contains manila folder after manila folder of just personal files. I find a few ones that I recognize, taking them out and quickly reading over them. I flip through the stack that I have created of all the Howling Commandos. Deceased, deceased, deceased. All of them have a large red stamp across them. I flip to the last file, and I knit my eyebrows at it — there's no stamp on it. I read the name, Carter, Margaret. I would know her picture anywhere too. Peggy's alive.

I smile to myself, thinking of the intense life she must've had after reading her file. She certainly has lived her life to the fullest, working for the SSR and then creating SHIELD alongside Howard Stark, who is now dead. A few files back, I even saw he had a son, so I know he must've done well.

As I go to straighten up her file by lightly taping the bottom of it agains the table, I lift it and a whole other file topples out. I raise an eyebrow and carefully peel it open, wondering what's inside. I almost drop it in surprise once I see the name clearly printed across the top, Edwards, Genevieve. My heart flutters as I glance down at the rest of the file. My stomach sinks once I see the large splotch of red that covers it — DECEASED.

What? No, she can't be gone. Peggy made it, and neither of them would've let the other one die. Gen's not gone, I'm sure of it. Then again, I read back over her file. 14 April 1919 — 27 November 1945. Gen died after the war ended, only a few months after me. That means she didn't get to grow up. She didn't get to get married and have a family like I would've hoped. She didn't live the life that I would've wanted her to have, the one that I wanted to have with her.

I feel my throat close up as I try to read the rest of it. Cause of death: assumed hypothermia. There are some handwritten words underneath that, giving me more to base this odd cause off of. Plane crash in the Arctic. Body never retrieved.

Tears stream down my cheeks. That idiot probably went out looking for me and got herself killed. It's all my fault she's gone. It's my fault. I start to really cry, having to take in struggled breaths between sobs. Through my teary vision, I look down at her picture on her file. They had to choose a picture of her that was so happy and cheerful. She had to be smiling cheekily with a twinkle of young hope in her beautiful candy apple green eyes. The young woman that had her whole life ahead of her is gone because I entered it.