"Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death."

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

OOOOOOOOOO

It was drizzling when Steve and Natasha stepped outside of the church. He automatically led her right and moved to the outside of the sidewalk so she was given some protection from the rain by the buildings. "There's a bar right around the corner. We can wait it out there." She grinned at his chivalry and allowed him to shelter them both with his coat. They rounded the corner, and he frowned. "Well, it was a bar."

Natasha watched his eyes scan the building that housed the Starbucks and wondered what he was seeing, what memories haunted him. "Come on," she nudged. "I could go for a coffee."

Warmth and the smell of coffee beans assaulted them as they pushed open the heavy door and he had her grab a table while he got their drinks. She removed her coat and laid it over her chair while studying the street outside. Some areas of London, like New York, had changed much in 70 years, but even after the Blitz, the city had retained much of its pre-war charm. She hoped it was comforting to Steve. It was comforting for her, that even in places such as Stalingrad, her own battered home, the soul of humanity survived the ashes in the beauty of its art and structures.

Steve slid her latte across the table to her along with a croissant. He sipped his regular black coffee quietly, but his eyes were still as watery as they'd been in the church. Natasha reached across the table and squeezed his forearm. "Steve, I'm so sorry."

He breathed out and wiped the corner of his eye. He was supposed to have been beside Peggy in that bed. The bitterness that he'd forced down in the past five years since being dug out of the ice was washing over him in waves. When he woke at Shield…it'd taken him awhile to fully comprehend what he'd lost. For him, the grief from losing Bucky had still squeezed his chest because it'd just been a week ago that he'd watched him fall to his death. He could remember the feel of Peggy's lips against his because he'd seen her only hours ago. He was sure traces of her red lipstick had been wiped away when they'd cleaned his face. Now time made it hard to remember the fresh scent of her hair, like dulled senses. He'd bought a bottle of Chanel No. 5 recently, catching the scent as he walked through Macy's, reminding him of Peggy when she would brush past him at HQ…and the night she'd sashayed into this very place in that red dress while he and Bucky sat at the bar where the pastry case was now. He'd wanted to smell it on her neck while they danced, but now, it rested on his dresser intimately mingled with his aftershave and other personal items, like it should've been for decades.

"It's hard for me to look at Tony sometimes," he admitted suddenly.

Natasha raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, inviting him to continue. He knew whatever he said would go no further than their table. "He's a testament to what we won, but when I look at him I see everything I lost. Howard was able to move on after the war, but I'm stuck and can't go forward. I've lost everyone. Peggy's gone, Buck's..." he trailed off, saying his friend's name opening completely different wounds. He couldn't explain why their losses affected him so. He couldn't explain that for the larger part of the world he remembered, he had only been Steve Rogers, the kid from Brooklyn that got beat up in alleys. Peggy and Bucky were the only ones left that had known that kid, and had seen him for his worth. Now that chapter was gone and he felt like a part of himself was gone as well, his history wiped away, and all that was left was a shield from a different time.

Natasha was quiet, picking at the edges of her napkin. There was nothing she could say. There were pieces of her life missing, memories that she couldn't quite remember….perhaps that's why she could go forward. At one time, the blank spaces in her history haunted her. But the grief overcoming Steve at this moment was unbearable. She'd seen Barnes at his best and worst. When Steve called out his name on the street, the flickering pain of memory caused him to stumble. It also caused him to run in denial.

That face is what haunted her now, blurring with his emotionless eyes when he very nearly killed her with his bare hands in that same street fight. The scar from the Soviet slug he ripped through her all those years ago stood as a very personal reminder of what a lack of memory could make someone capable of. Still, she also remembered the way those same hands had once gently brushed across her cheek. She was left alone to carry that memory, and in that moment she was a kindred spirit with Steve.

Memory was a curse, and time was fleeting, but life was so long. The weight could be crushing.

"It was raining like this the day I got back to London after we lost Bucky," Steve mused, breaking into her thoughts. "This place was bombed out while we were away. Peggy found me in here that night sitting in the wreckage, in a puddle, trying to forget the way he fell from the train. I can't remember anything else." Silence fell between them again and the rain continued its merciless assault against the glass. "This place was a refuge during the war. Now I'm just surrounded by ghosts."