Steve Rogers/Captain America One Shots

When the Sky is Falling

(Listen to If the World was Ending by: JP Saxe ft. Julia Michaels while you read this one. This song is so beautiful and strong and makes my heart love and ache all at the same time, and I feel like it fits the essence of this one shot perfectly.)

Steve Rogers felt the crushed rubble beneath the soles of his roughed up boots. His leather boots that once resembled a warm brown shade, were now completely dusted with soot and ash. Leaving black boot-prints behind him with every step, marking the trail of destruction he'd traveled along. The crumbled cement of a nearing apartment building lined the entrance way like boulders, as though to keep the trapped souls inside and Captain America out. But as Steve exhaled deeply with each exasperated breath he took, his movements and speed unhindered by the weariness growing deep within his bones and the anxiety blooming in the pit of his stomach, he approached the ruins for even as the other buildings around him continued to crumble, he knew this building. Even as every other building looked the same as this one on this single street, there would always be something about this single structure that Steve would be able to distinguish from all the others. And even now, as he stepped over the threshold that was nearly blocked by the fallen foyer, there was something in the remains that filled him with an unnerving sense of familiarity. 

Ducking below the scraping metal pipe that hovered inches above his head, Steve gripped the large slab of the building with his right hand as he entered the destruction with caution, instantly encapsulated by darkness. Streaks of pale sunlight begged to be let in through the small cracks in the layers of rubble growing around him like vines on a terrace. But any light, even that from distant flames of a burning fire, wasn't enough to brighten the space. Steve's eyes burned as the dust replaced the oxygen in the air around him, and they were slow to adjust to the darkness that consumed his surroundings. The air was thick as he tried to take a deep breath, once he made it past the crumbling entry way, but it was like breathing in smoke. Stinging his senses and causing a dry cough to erupt within his pained lungs. His hands danced across the walls made of fallen debris, trying to be the guidance his eyes searched for as he ventured further into the once beautiful and spacious lobby. But all he found was cuts in his palms as open pipes and metal nails scraped against his flesh, and the further he brushed them against the unnervingly cold cement, he could feel as they continued to cave inward. Shortening the space and causing the air Steve searched for to become denser and scarce.    

As Steve's eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness around him, he began to familiarize with his surroundings. They were different, as they came falling apart at the seams around him, but nonetheless, the recognizable sights made his feet continue forward. His boots walked over broken glass that cracked beneath his weight, and making out the faint gold detailing in the sliver of light that glinted against it, he walked over the large chandelier that was once hung high above him. The shards grounding into the previously bright red carpeting that was now stained with blackened ash, and a shade of something darker that Steve hated to even acknowledge. But it was there, soaking into the fabric and staining the grey concrete in deep wine tones. 

His ears echoed with the sounds of the chaos ensuing just behind him on the other side of the fallen foyer, but somehow inside, it was deathly silent. He could still hear the screams of terror in his head, whether from truly hearing it in the moment or simply from the memories he could never erase, but there was something sickening about the suffocating silence that consumed him inside of the fallen apartment walls. It was as though Steve had stepped into a void, and even taking a breath sounded deafening in the quiet. The crunching of his boots over crushed glass and broken furniture rumbled around him, but no matter the noise his movements caused, it couldn't touch the unsettling silence that took over the atmosphere around him.  

Until a single pressure beneath the sole of his shoe and the soft snap beneath, halted Steve's breath and his burning blue eyes shut tightly as soon as the sound resonated through him. It wasn't as scraping as all of the moving rubble had been and it wasn't the clean crackling ping of glass or even lost belongings strewn across the ruins, this sound was small and to the normal ear, hardly heard over the destruction continuing in the street behind him. But to Steve, it was the loudest sound he'd heard since he entered the fallen building. For it didn't just echo in his ears, he felt it in the pit of his stomach and he could feel as the sound clutched his chest and squeezed. He'd seen it before, as innocent casualties were always a part of war, just as there would always be someone out in the world willing to start a fight over something they believed was right. It was inevitable... and yet it still twisted Steve Rogers's stomach into a million tiny knots.