Imagine If You Assembled The Avengers: Volume 3

What Makes You Happy? (Sam Wilson x reader)

"Oh, God."

Steve sat motionless, next to the equally stilled Vision, but the Captain at least had the luxury of still being alive. You crawled your way across the battlefield, your body losing blood by the minute from the uneven, shredded tear in your skin from the teeth of whatever those things were; you needed to get closer to what was left of your team, if for nothing else than to calm just a little of the fear that was overtaking you.

"No, stay still," M'Baku tried, but you waved him away. "T'Challa commanded-"

"Well, he's not here, so I don't give a shit," you snapped, hissing under your breath with each movement. You could feel the tissue in your shoulder pulling apart, hearing the tear in the muscle as it tried to hold together, but nothing could stop you from getting to your friends. You watched Sam disappear right before your eyes, and you would need them now more than ever.

You would definitely need them to keep you from choking the life out of Steve.

"This is all your fault," you snarled, collapsing against a large boulder not far from where he still sat, still silent. "He would never have been here...if it weren't...weren't for you..." you struggled. Each word was becoming harder to say, your air feeling strained to take in. The lightheadedness was beginning to become too much, but your rage kept you going just enough to make your point. "It was always...about you...Steve..."

"(Y/N), I'm sorry-"

"Shut up. I don't...I don't ever want to hear...your voice again..."

"(Y/N)," he spoke again anyway, only this time it was urgent and it wasn't to fight you. He didn't want to fight you or anyone anymore; he didn't want to do anything at all other than to catch you before you completely fell unconscious, taking you into his tremulous grip to carry you back to the palace grounds. He didn't care that you hated him, and you likely always would, but what he did care about was that Sam would expect no less of him than to do everything in his power to save you even if you didn't want him to.

Sam had heard his share of fights between the two of you, and tried to stop most of them, but this was one argument that he would insist that Steve win no matter how pissed off it would make you.

~~~

Natasha stood with Steve outside of the medical bay within T'Challa's home, watching as his staff worked on your injury quickly, not giving away any sense of how you were doing in their expressions when they took the seconds to look back. It was gnawing away at the Captain's resolve to not push his way into the room and demand an update, but he had promised Nat that he would do his best to behave, because they both knew that if you woke up to him standing any closer to you, it wouldn't end well for anyone.

"She's never going to forgive me, is she?"

"She was just upset, Steve. We all are. But Sam...that's on a whole other level of loss."

"She was right though," he sighed heavily, his body clearly defeated, "he was here because of me. He was on this team because of me. If we hadn't gone to hide at their house back in D.C.-"

"Steve, (Y/N) was a part of SHIELD long before you met Sam. We have no way of knowing that this would have ended up any differently. He told you himself, he still had the need to serve, and this team gave him that. I can't believe that he wouldn't have found his way here on his own just out of sheer determination."

"Right, but this is still on me now, Nat. I need to talk to her and take responsibility."

Natasha looked from you to him and back again, staying silent as she tried to find the right words to say, to find something that could soothe even an ounce of the pain that he was feeling when she was nearly immobile from her own. The team was in shambles, Clint wasn't answering his phone, and no one knew where Tony was or if he had even survived the snap; Steve was crumbling before her eyes and she had never felt so helpless. "Go and talk to the others for a while, maybe start on a plan to get us back home, okay? Let me talk to her first."