We Belonged

And today I wake up feeling easy

And find I'm on the more familiar roads

I got a darkness wrapped inside me but now it ain't so hard to let it go

So keep your candle burning in the window

I'm almost home

-Pound of Flesh, Radical Face

Steve was hot. His body's metabolism always ramped up during healing. His first thought was, but when am I not healing these days and the second was How am I alive? And the third: AM I alive?

The blanket was suffocating, but the complaint was stuck in his throat and he gave up.

In his dreams, which could very well be his afterlife, Loki sat at his side, occupying the chair that had always been meant for him. He looked exactly the same as Steve remembered him, a fond smile on his face.

"I dreamed you were dead," Steve told Loki. The god's face was caught in twilight, gold flickering in his emerald eyes.

"Oh?" Loki asked, a mischievous grin twitching his thin lips.

"It was terrible," Steve confided.

"Was it?"

"It was," Steve insisted. "I remembered a time when I couldn't imagine living with you for an eternity, but when you died, I couldn't think of a world without you. I'm sorry."

"Whatever for?"

"Because you died thinking I believed you betrayed me."

"I never believed that."

"Oh, good." Steve smiled.

The high screeching of a flat line filled Steve's ears, and Loki's face grew anxious. There was a flurry of movement around him, but Steve couldn't concern himself with it. He grabbed the cards Bucky had just dealt to him. Beside him, Jim was scooping his own cards into his hands.

Colonel Phillips loomed over them. "Gin Rummy? I don't approve."

"Aw, since when do you approve of anything, old man?" Dum Dum asked rhetorically, secreting his cards to his chest. "Don't look at my hand!" He accused the Colonel.

"Stark's all right, if you were worried," Bucky told him as he laid a book on the table.

"Natasha and Clint, too," Jim said as he laid his own cards to the table.

"You're shit at cards, Cap," Jaques accused. "Your hand's all over your face."

"I'm tired of cards," Steve said. "Too many secrets."

"Aw, shit, I lost again."

0o0o0o

Loki was a mainstay, always by his side when the Commandos or the Avengers weren't. (And even when they were.) Steve's muddy dreams were populated by the rotational visit of his teammates, and on his particular day, Thor was sitting at his beside, talking to the man who wasn't there. For the first time in recent memory, his face was stretched in a broad smile and his voice had reached the volume that Steve had almost forgotten—all declarations and ebullience. Steve told him, "Heaven shouldn't be this loud."

It startled Thor into silence and he looked at Steve quixotically. "Are we in Heaven?"

Steve hummed, Thor's voice sufficiently hushed. "Now we are."

0o0o0o

"For someone so small, you sure are hungry," his mother told him, and there were two pies on the counter, a platter of cookies and a glass of milk. His body was as frail as it had ever been, but it didn't bother him. He ate the cookies rapidly, hand over fist, before he set in on the pies.

"I'll be big one day," he promised.

"I know you will," she laughed.

And he smiled at her, gap teeth and all, and she smiled back.

His father came in and rested a warm hand on his shoulder. "We never expected anything less from you," he said.

0o0o0o0o

Natasha had a bandage wrapped around her skull, her hair sticking out at odd angles around it. She read a story from Grimm's Fairy Tales to him.

" But at home the other brother was standing by the gold-lilies, when

one of them suddenly drooped. "Good heavens," said he, "my brother has

met with some great misfortune I must away to see if I can possibly

rescue him." Then the father said, "Stay here, if I lose you also,

what shall I do?"

But he answered, "I must and will go forth."

Then he mounted his golden horse, and rode forth and entered the great forest, where his brother lay turned to stone. The old witch came out of her house and called him, wishing to entrap him also, but he did not go near her, and said, "I will shoot you, if you will not bring my brother to life again."

She touched the stone, though very unwillingly, with her forefinger, and he was immediately restored to his human shape. And the two gold-children rejoiced when they saw each other again, kissed and caressed each other, and rode away together out of the forest the one home to his bride, and the other

to his father.

"The father then said, "I knew well that you had rescued your brother, for the golden lily suddenly rose up and blossomed out again.'

"Then they lived happily, and they prospered until their death."

"You're still beautiful," Steve told her.

She stopped reading, looking up in surprise. He could see the lines in her face, and the worry in her eyes, and he knew she would remain beautiful and distinguished as she aged.

"You always were. You always will be," he continued, when she said nothing.

0o0o0o0o

"Fishing is for the poor," his father told him, blue eyes icy and stern. They stood on the shores of a river.

"The look doesn't become you," Steve told him. His father paused, his face growing stony before it broke into an open smile.

"I never told you about my war," his father said.

"No, you didn't."

"Fish, and I will."

Steve cast a line, and listened to all the stories his father had failed to tell him in life.

0o0o0o0o

Bruce was silent as a statue. He'd pulled up a chair beside Loki, and Steve thought it was considerate to pay mind to the Man Who Wasn't There. A well-worn book was splayed across his knee, and he worried a pen in his mouth between marking lines and annotating notes in the stanzas of the pages.

"What are you reading?"

Bruce looked up, startled. "You're awake," he said with brows raised.

"What month is it?" Steve asked.

"February."

"I was never a child of winter," he said.

"Hey, wait-" Bruce began.

But Steve was all of five, catching fireflies in a mason jar that he dutifully brought back to his mother. He was tired from a day of fishing, and his mother set the glowing jar at his bedside.

When he awoke, he found she'd set them all free, and knew it was just as well: fireflies weren't meant to live in glass jars.

0o0o0o0o

They were enjoying leave in London, before they went back into Germany. Most of the Howling Commandos had headed off for the evening with a girl on their arm, but Dum Dum was still trying. Finally, he gave up, settling beside Steve.

"I don't get it, Sir. We're the best looking men in the joint."

"Do you know, I was surrounded by scores of women during my PR days?"

"Really?" Dum Dum leered.

"Really," Steve confided, leaning in close as if to tell a secret. "Do you know what they said?" Dum Dum leaned in.

"What's that?"

"That they'd rather go home with the ugly ones, because they knew they wouldn't leave them."

Dum Dum tilted his head back and laughed.

"I've missed you, sir."

"I never went anywhere."

"No," Dum Dum agreed, "I guess it's we who left you."

0o0o0o0o

Clint had taken to carving and inspecting his arrows at Steve's side. Occasionally, he'd asked if they were straight enough, sure enough to travel to their intended designation.

He had a bandage, stained red, even now, wrapped around his chest. Steve gathered it had been some time since the battle, as the wind that blew through the open windows was now tinged with warmth and the promise of better days to follow.

"The Doc's say you've sustained a hell of an injury," Clint began, in the way of one who had become accustomed used to speaking to someone that responded little, if at all. They don't know why, the wound in your back flared and they're not sure how to treat it."

Loki looked at the ceiling, and Steve grinned, but Clint didn't notice.

"Anyway," Clint continued. "I'm not sure if this arrow is straight enough? I've always been concerned. What if they weren't good enough? We almost lost the battle."

"They've always been good enough," Steve wanted to say. Clint didn't hear him.

Loki gave him a knowing look.

0o0o0o0o0o

They were all of eight, and the swimming hole they found in a lazy turn of the Hudson was both magical and brilliant. Silver fish flittered beneath the surface, and they found an ancient bullfrog in the shade of a rock. It honked at them angrily before diving into the cool depths, but before they could chase it, Bucky found a flat rock and they took turns seeing who could skip the furthest.

Bucky's father was giving a lecture at West Point, but the boys had found it tedious, and when he'd grown tired of their fidgeting, he'd allowed them to make of themselves what they would.

Steve watched as Bucky launched at the rope hanging from an old Sycamore, swinging once before he plunged into the cool depths of the river. He dove as deep as he could before surfacing. Because he knew his best friend could not going on his expeditions with him, he told Steve there wasn't much to be found below the surface, anyway.

He swam back to Steve in great strokes, the clear water splashing around him. Startled silver fish swam darted away, flashing briefly in the sunlight before disappearing beneath the river.

"We will miss these days," Bucky swore as he treaded water. Steve tossed a flat stone at him. It skipped several times before sinking.

"I know," Steve said.

"No one who is young will ever grow old," Bucky said, his eyes too old for his face.

"We did," Steve sighed.

0o0o0o0o

Tony was puttering around with some device. What it was, Steve couldn't guess, and even if Stark explained it to him, Steve was sure he wouldn't know what it all meant. But looking at him now, he realized just how old Tony looked, crows feet lined his eyes and the gray at this temples had begun an offensive on the rest of his hair. The arc reactor in his chest glowed blue against a black undershirt.

Steve wondered when time had gotten away from them.

"Pepper says it looks it makes me look 'distinguished,'" Tony confided.

"It does," Steve said.

But Tony didn't hear him. Instead, he continued. "I hated you for a long time, because you were the man my father compared me to at every turn."

Steve wasn't surprised by the news, but he was surprised by Tony's admission. He'd long suspected that a lot of their early verbal battles had stemmed from an unnamed jealousy, and as to why, he'd never quite pieced that together until the day Pepper had taken him aside and told him of Howard's life-long search for Steve's body and the missed birthdays and holidays in consequence.

His heart had ached at the news, but Pepper had sworn him to secrecy, and he didn't know how to breech the subject without betraying her trust.

"But you were worth his admiration. You are the leader I could never hope to be. I inherited too much of his selfishness. I was never worthy in Howard's eyes. I was too much like him and not enough like you. I spent my whole life trying to prove myself. I hated you when you came back. He looked for you every goddamned day until the day he died. I was glad you came back without him knowing.

"But now, I've never felt so much regret. I wish he could've lived to see your return. You are everything he said you were."

"He'd be proud of you," Steve swore.

Tony looked shocked.

0o0o0o0o

They were on the training field Steve knew well, the last obstacle looming before him.

He attacked the rope climb, his arms shaking, his legs not much better.

He couldn't make it, he was sure of it.

"Come on, Soldier!" And Peggy's curt voice cut in, past his doubts. He glanced down. Her red lips were quirked in a smiled, her dark eyes bright. The rest of his platoon had already made it over the wall, but she only had eyes for him.

"I'm not sure I can," he whispered to himself as he reached the next rung, his grip weak. He could see his fist shaking, threatening to loosen.

"Goddammit, get over the Goddamn wall!" And that was Colonel Phillips, fierce as ever. A Lifer, if he'd ever seen one.

The log loomed above him. All Steve had to do was wrap his legs over it and he'd be done. Gravity could handle the rest.

"I don't put stock into failures!" Phillips said, but it was Peggy's dark brown eyes that urged him on.

Steve swept his legs over the wall, his feet finding purchase on the far side. He managed to catch Peggy's wide grin before he fell.

"Aw-" Steve began.

0o0o0o0o0o

Loki's legs were crossed, delicate hands turning the pages of his book, his pale face vivid in the spring sun. A warm wind blew in from the west through the cracked window, promising warmth and life. The chimes Steve had set up several years ago sung softly in the evening wind.

Steve stared at Loki a long time, his head bowed, green eyes reflecting the glow of the sun. There was gold in the emerald that Steve had never noticed before.

Eventually, Loki glanced up as he turned a page. Steve could see it had grown to be a matter of habit and Loki'd almost looked back down before his eyes froze, meeting Steve's.

"Are you staying this time?" Loki asked shortly.

"I think so," Steve said, shifting to a sitting position. None of his wounds hurt-not even his back-but his unused muscles complained from the motion.

"It's been long enough," Loki complained, but his eyes were bright.

"You died," Steve accused.

"So did you," Loki closed his book, marking his pages with a curled page.

"How long have I been out?"

"We feared you wouldn't wake," Loki said carefully. And it was we not I, but Steve knew what he meant.

"I'm not that easy to take out," he said.

"No," And for the first time Steve could remember, Loki gave him an unbridled smile. "I don't suppose you are. Welcome home, Steve Rogers."

End

. /~

Grimm's Fairy Tales