NOTES: A 'quad' drabble - four short 100-word segments to tell a bigger story. Written for the LJ community avengers100 to the prompt lost/found.

they told me we won the war; but they never told me what we lost

The Little Things

It's the little things lost that hurt most - the habits. Dum-Dum and Falsworth drinking like fish but always on duty the next morning. Morita playing cards with the eyes of a shark, his grin bright and swift when he won. Gabe charming the ladies; Dernier telling dirty French jokes…

And Bucky. Smooth and witty, with the old drawl, but also the look of a man who'd seen the other side of hell.

Strangers who'd come together for the missions, had been thrown together again and again; had become friends.

Sometimes Steve misses them so hard it's a physical pain.

Maybe it's because the Avengers aren't his.

Tony has Pepper and Stark Industries. Natasha and Clint have jobs and contracts and missions to fulfil. Bruce still has his work in India, although he's not pushing the others away anymore. Thor is a prince in his own realm, with his own responsibilities.

They're not Steve's.

"I'm a soldier, too," he blurts to Lieutenant Hill one afternoon, out on the Avengers Tower helipad, "not just a superhero."

Hill pauses as the chopper door opens. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"Find work for a soldier?"

"I can do that."

Steve never worked with the 75th Ranger Regiment, although he'd heard of their successes in Italy.

He learned a lot more about it while taking a tailored, accelerated course at Ranger School. After that it was the Navy SEALs, then Delta forces, then the SHIELD field agent program.

Lieutenant Hill manages and monitors all this, his SHIELD handler - 'for my sins' she tells him one day in rare humour.

"Tony thinks you're trying to kill me."

Maria Hill settles in the lounge chair opposite him. "Obviously I'm failing miserably."

"As compared to failing cheerfully?"

"I try to avoid both."

Waiting for Barton's signal, Steve exhales and lets himself relax into the mission.

It's not the same. SHIELD isn't the SSR. Fury isn't Phillips. Maria isn't Peggy. The Avengers aren't the Howling Commandos.

But Steve won't live in the past. He can't linger over what he's lost - the world can't afford it now, any more than they could afford it when Schmidt sought power.

When the world needs him to be an Avenger, he'll be an Avenger.

Right now, SHIELD needs him for the mission.

The signal's given. "You have a go."

It isn't the same, but it's enough.

- fin -