The Winter Warrior // Captain America

«Chapter 49»

A N N A ' S   P O V

While my mind was tormented with flashes of the events of not even two days ago, I sat in the corner of the room, watching my brother as he paced around. He mumbled words and phrases I couldn't understand and his breathing was shallow. "Steve?" I asked softly, snapping him back to reality. "You okay?" 

He let out a breath, sinking into a chair and running his hands through his hair. I stood up, sitting down next to him and placing a hand on his back. "You know there is nothing you could've done, right? This is not your fault," I told him.

He lowered his head and seconds later, I was horrified to hear heartbroken sobs coming from him. I pulled him into a tight hug and held him against me while he cried. "W-We were going to start a life. We-We were g-gonna get out of here, get a-get a place in Brooklyn," he said, his voice cracking several times. My heart broke at the sound of him sounding so hopeless. 

"I'm so sorry, Steve," I whispered. Tears blurred my vision but I didn't care. 

Steve inhaled sharply and he sat up, wiping away the tears that stained his cheeks. His eyes were red and swollen. "I'm glad you're still here, Anna," he said quietly, looking up at me. 

I nodded. "Me too." 

"Where is Buck?" he asked then.

"Outside. Said he needed some air," I answered. 

"You should go find him. I'll be okay," he said, toying with the wedding band around his finger. 

"Are you sure?" I asked, trying to catch his gaze. 

A single tear slipped down his cheek. "Yeah, I'll be fine." 

I smiled solemnly, hugging him once more before departing from the room. On my way outside, I spotted Natasha, Bruce and Thor sitting in one of the conference rooms. None of them talked and a plate of untouched sandwiches stood on the table. 

I wrapped my burgundy cardigan tighter around myself before I travelled outside. I found Bucky sitting under one of the many trees on the lawn. His blue eyes were trained on the damp grass in front of him as he twirled a blade of the grass in his hands. 

The sky was dark even though it was the middle of the day, the sun hidden by black clouds. The air was cold even though it was well into spring. The wind played with my hair and I brushed it behind my ears. 

I walked up to my husband who hadn't noticed my presence yet. 

"Buck..." I whispered and he looked up. 

"Hey, doll," he said, not making an effort to stand up, so I sat down next to him. "How's Steve?" 

I shook my head curtly. "Not good. None of them are." I wrapped my arms around his middle and cuddled into him. He put an arm around my shoulders, resting his head on mine. 

I closed my eyes. "What do we do, Buck? We can't just go on and act like nothing ever happened," I said. 

He let out a sigh. "I don't know." 

A silence fell that neither of us wanted to break, so we just sat without saying a word. The gentle thumping of Bucky's heart slightly calmed my racing mind, but the sight of Steve breaking was fresh behind my eyes. My heart ached for him. I wouldn't know what to do without Bucky and now, perhaps the most important person in Steve's life was gone. Disintegrated along with billions of others. Disappeared like she never even existed. 

America Rogers was gone and even saying that sentence to myself felt like it wasn't real. Like someone was playing a horrible game with us. Over the short period of time that I had known America, she had grown from an old ally from the past to a sister. Someone I could talk to, someone I could trust. A tear slipped down my cheek. If I felt this amount of pain, I couldn't imagine what Steve must be feeling.

"Guys?" Natasha's voice sounded and I opened my eyes, finding her standing near the entrance of the Compound. "You coming?" 

I felt myself nod before I could think and I stood up, following Natasha back inside with Bucky tightly holding my hand. 

We entered the conference room from earlier and found Steve leaning on the back of a chair. A hologram projected a rising number and above it stood, 'Global [missing]'. The number increased with millions per second and my stomach turned. 

"This is a nightmare," Steve spoke. 

"I've had better nightmares," Natasha said, her voice sounding horrified. I silently agreed with her. What I had experienced in my past was nothing compared to this.

"What do we do?" Bucky asked, crossing his arms. 

"Hey," Rhodes spoke up, entering the room. Those of us in the room turned to him. "So that thing just stopped doing whatever the hell it was doing." 

I frowned before realising they must be talking about the pager they found in the streets of New York. It had been sending out a signal but to whom, none of us knew.

Natasha sent my brother a look before we followed Rhodes to the lab where Bruce Banner stood near something that looked too technical for my liking. 

"What do we got?" Natasha asked.

"Whatever signal it was sending finally crapped out," Bruce answered. 

"I thought we bypassed the battery," Steve said.

"We did," Rhodes told him. "It's still plugged in. It just stopped." 

"Reboot it. Send the signal again," Steve ordered. 

"We don't even know what this is," Bruce spoke up. 

"Fury did," Natasha stated. "Just do it, please. You tell me the second you get a signal. I wanna know who's on the other end of that thing." 

She turned around, facing a blonde woman who hadn't been there one second ago. The six of us froze. 

"Where's Fury?" she asked, her voice harsh.

"Who are you?" Bucky was the first to find his voice again as he protectively held out an arm in front of me. 

"Carol Danvers. Who are you?" she shot back. 

"The Avengers," Steve stated slowly, stepping forward. He pointed to the pager. "Did Fury send that signal to you?" 

She held up a matching pager. "Where is Fury?" she repeated, pronouncing every word through gritted teeth.

Steve exhaled through his nose and crossed his arms. "We don't know, but we fear he disappeared with everyone else." 

"Disappeared? What do you mean?" she asked, a hint of fear lacing her words.

"Half of the universe has been snapped into oblivion. We don't know where they went or if they'll ever come back. Fury's probably one of them," Natasha explained and Carol stepped back, her eyes wide. 

"That's not possible. Who did this?" she asked, looking up again.

"He's called Thanos. He's not from around here," Bruce said. 

"Where is he?" she questioned.

"We don't know," Steve answered.

Her breathing quickened. "We need to find him. Where do we start?"