I would really like to apologize for the long time between chapters. My life got extremely busy and I didn't have time to write, but I am back!

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Ch.13 My Family Owes All Our Happiness To You.

New York City hustles and bustles. People constantly moving and making deals. It's a melody as old as the city itself. I stare at it when I need to clear my mind, seeing the people moving about their lives has always been soothing to me. I'm anxious as I wait for Steve to arrive in my office. What had seemed like a good idea so recently, now made me wonder if I was doing the right thing. Almost as soon as that uneasy feeling creeps up on me, images of my smiling happy family flash across my mind's eye. While my mind may be nervous, my heart is as calm as it has ever been. A war between my heart and head, has become a major issue in my life. In my younger years my heart and head worked in tandem making decisions, but more recently my head had taken over my body in a hostile takeover. This would be the first time in over five years that I would be making a decision on what my heart was telling me to do.

My rather deep contemplation is interrupted by a knocking on my office door.
"Come in." I call over my shoulder, I watch the reflection in the window to see who is walking in my door.
"You wanted to see me?" A small uncertain smile crosses my face as I see the six foot tall blond step through my door. I turn to face Steve and try to look reassuring and calm. I gesture to the seating area in the corner of my office and move towards it at the same time as Steve.
"I'm not sure exactly what you want to talk to me about, but I'm happy to help you in any way that I can." I chuckle softly, as I take a seat across from Steve in a mahogany leather chair.
"It's not so much what you can do for me, but what I would like to share with you." I smile, and reach for the picture I have left on the coffee table between us, I hold it so that he can see the first photo.

"My Nana looks pretty good for being over 90 years old, but there are times when my family and I can see the years hanging so heavily on her." I look away from Steve's gaze and trace my hand over the edge of the frame. "She taught me so much about life, respect, and how to be happy with yourself. She taught me that family comes first, no matter what."
"Well that's good, I'm glad you had such a good role model. But I'm not quite sure what this has to do with me." I can feel his gaze drilling into the top of my head as I stare at the photo frame in my hands. I feel my anxiety rising, sharing personal or private moments of my life is not my strong suit. So I tell him that and the look of understanding on his face relaxes me a little.
"You know there is at least one guy I know of that would be extremely willing to listen if you needed to talk." I smile at Steve.
"Yeah, I know Sam is a pretty good listener when he wants to be." Steve looks confused for a second and then chuckles a little bit as he comes to a realization.
"Okay, make that two people. I was referring to Barton." I feel the strange shaky feeling in my stomach, i always feel when someone mentions his name. I need to shift this conversations direction before I lose control of this situation. The only way this conversation will happen, is if I have my control. So I open the frame and show him the first two photos, and point to the first photo.
"This is my grandfather, he enlisted in the Army when he was seventeen, with his parents' permission. At 21 he was shipped out and sent to fight in Europe. He wanted to serve his country, and then come back home to the woman he loved, and start a family." I point to the second photo, "This photo here is of that woman, my Nana Iris. You met her the other night. She was a nurse in the Army Nurse Corps. She spent most of her first year overseas tending to men in Italy fighting." Steve has been staring at the two photos the entire time I have been talking. I can see the faintest glimmer of recognition in his eyes. I can also see that he doesn't know why he remember those two faces.
"My grandfather and nana married a few days before, the two of them shipped out. They spent a little over a year separated from each other. At the time they didn't know how close they came to never seeing one another again." I look at Steve and catch his eye, wanting to look him in the eye as I told this next part of my family history. "You see my grandfather caught captured and was held behind enemy lines. Every time the Allied forces tried to stage a rescue mission, the beaten back and the mission failed. Until one Army Captain, with absolutely zero experience, disobeyed orders and saved his whole unit. This guys was just some scrappy little kid from Brooklyn, same as my grandfather, but he saved so many freaking people." The look of realization that is flashing across Steve's face is almost indescribable. Because it's not just one emotion, it's joy, sadness, confusion, anger, and so many other emotions.
"Sometimes I feel like that was one of the few truly good things I have done. I mean look at what has happened because I came back into the world. So many horrible things have happened because of me."
I am completely frozen by his words, I can't move. I can barely breathe. The level of self-loathing that was put behind those words is astonishing.
"Do you realize how many people have gotten second chances at life because of you?!" What I wanted to come calm and collected, turned slightly screechy towards the end. But still I continue, I open the frame to a different section and show him the last two pictures. "You saved my grandfather's life, he got a second shot at life. My Nana wouldn't have been the same woman without him in her life, they balanced each other and loved each other, through the good times and the bad." I feel like I am pleading for Steve to understand.

I stand up suddenly and sprint to my desk and without even looking, I grab the one picture frame off my desk. I shove that frame into Steve's very surprised face and force him to look at the photo.
"Not only did you give people a second chance at life, so many of these people in this frame you gave a first chance. You gave them a chance to be born, and make an impact on the world for the better." Steve took the family portrait from my hands, it was a picture of the entirety of my dad's side of the family. All of my aunts and uncles, cousins, husbands and wives. Children, grandchildren, and even a few great-grandchildren. I sat and told Steve about them for a couple of hours, it was only towards the end that I noticed the look of deep concern etched on his face.
"Why are you crying?" I touch my face and realize I must have been crying for a long time. I can feel the dried tear trails as well as the new damp ones, streaked across my face. The desperation that I have felt building since I had heard the story come from my Nana's mouth, has nearly reached a boiling point. I feel rage, and grief, and hatred. All for myself. This man in front of me and risked so much and I had nearly wasted his gift. He didn't understand. He didn't know what I had nearly done so long ago. I had wanted for someone to understand all of this for so long, yet I didn't want tell anyone because I didn't believe that anyone could understand. I am barely keeping hold of my tightly wound control, when I feel Steve's had close over mine, and work my hand open to remove my nails from the palm of my hand. I look up from the deep crescent shaped wounds, into Steve's eyes and see the concern resting there.

That concern on his face unleashes everything that had been building up inside of me. How my Nana's story had triggered something deep in my subconscious. It had flipped every negative emotion I had ever had and turned it on myself. I told him how happy my Nana had been telling this story, and how horrible it had made me feel. How my mind had latched on to the idea of telling him this story. Telling him how grateful my family was for what he had done. He had given my family a chance at life, past, present, and future. I then proceeded to tell him how I had nearly thrown it all away. That after Roger had died, I had gotten depressed and then suicidal. I told him how for the longest time my family hadn't let me talk about those feeling and I had just started bottling them up and pushing them down. Eventually I just dissolved into a crying mess, I kept apologizing over and over again. I became like a mantra until, he eventually calmed me down.

"You have nothing to apologize for, your family has some serious apologizing to do, but not you." I draw a long shuddery breath and look at Steve, all uncertainty gone from his face, all I can see in it is calm and strength.
"I have never seen someone so strong and determined to help others. Even when facing the staggering weight of your own problems." I scoff and then realize I am now sitting practically in the lap of Captain America. So I move away, and try to regain at least a little bit of my composure.
"Yes, it's so admirable, to see someone try and fail so miserably to help. Especially, when they turn into a weepy mess." I rub furiously at my eyes trying to remove the excess moisture from them.
"You didn't fail. You showed me a small part of some of the good I have done. You showed me the effect of my actions in the world. People since I've got back have been showing me old news reel, and have tried showing me numbers and figures, to show the good I have done. But not a single person had thought to show me the human perspective, but you." I tried to school my features back to the composed and polished look, I normally wore.
"Well, I am glad I could help." I say in a quiet, almost withdrawn tone that I don't recognize coming from myself. We sit in silence for a while, trying to figure out where to do from here. I don't look at Steve, all of the personal things I have just shared with him making me feel tiny and vulnerable.

I hear the couch shifting and feel Steve's presence move away. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye and see him moving towards the door of my office. He pauses just before he reaches the door and turns back to face me.
"I know we really don't know each other, and I get the feeling that what just happened here isn't normal for you. But if you need to do that again, come find me. It's not healthy to keep all of that bottled up, you need to talk to someone. Everybody needs a friend to talk to once in a while." I turn my face from my hands and look at the gentle giant standing near the door way to my office.
"Thank you Steve. I don't have many friends anymore, that I feel like I can talk to." He just nods and turns back toward my office door and walks out of it. I sigh and relax heavily into my couch, I hadn't expected this to happen today, and wonder silently what shift in the universe had set this string of events into motion. I could feel my life changing, without my consent and that terrified me. But a tiny voice in the back of my mind was whispering that this was the good kind of terror. The kind you got in haunted houses or on the first drop of a rollercoaster. This was the kind that left you breathless and lighting at the end.

I reached over to pick up the photo frame and looked at the last picture. Unlike the times before when I had looked at my grandparents in the picture, I looked at Steve this time. I sighed once again, before saying aloud,
"My family owes all of our happiness to you, Steve Rogers. I really hope you know that."

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