Aftermath

It was over.

Their battle with the Chitauri had been more chaotic than any battle Steve had been a part of – and as Captain America he had pulled some daring stunts. But those fights had been with more of a plan than simply 'stop them' and with his trusted fellow soldiers at his back.

This time his team was even more unconventional than the one he had handpicked in the war. There were two SHIELD agents with special skills, a sarcastic man in a robotic suit – Stark's son who was just as stubborn as his father had been, Thor with his lightning, his hammer and his booming voice, and the Hulk – who couldn't really be ordered to do anything – only pointed in the right direction.

Until the point of engagement, their enemy had been an unknown. And their battlefield had been the streets, and sky, of New York.

All of those facts taken together meant that this fight was a lot more destructive and chaotic than anything he had faced before.

And now it was the morning after their battle – the battle where they saved Earth from an attack by an alien army, where Tony Stark saved New York from a missile send by their own superiors. That should have hurt, would have hurt, but Steve was already disillusioned about just when and where he ended up.

He had followed orders, would still follow orders because he was a soldier that was just about the last thing he had to hold on to. And because Director Fury, for all the secrets he kept, hadn't approved the bomb, had warned them about it, giving them a chance.

And now it was all over.

Wounds bandaged or healed, alien corpses already removed by SHIELD and Steve, Steve was left standing here, taking in the city they had fought so hard to save.

It was still a chaos. New York City was a mess – the streets cracked and broken, cars and houses destroyed. Businesses blasted away.

There was shouting, crying – people celebrating and people lamenting the state of their house, shops and city. There were people demanding that the government do something, people yelling at each other, people comparing their monetary losses - insisting that they were the worst off.

But his eyes were drawn to one person only. Through the noise of dozens of people clamouring for attention - the only one he really saw was a dark-haired, Asian, unassuming young woman.

Quietly, calmly, she was removing the rubble from a small garden - fingers tracing the scars on the one tree it now held. The small apartment complex behind it was as tattered as the rest of this neighbourhood but she did not seem to pay it any mind. Instead she carefully unearthed a bravely blooming flower from underneath a piece of metal that Steve thought might have been part of a car.

When the flower was once again freed to the sunlight she took a bottle of water from her bag and gently watered it.

And she smiled.

His breath caught in his throat and, unconsciously, he took a step closer, drawn in by that smile. It held no sorrow, no bitterness or sadness of any kind – no signs of the tragedy that had befallen her city. No, it was warm, gentle and loving and not something he had ever seen so easily bestowed on something so small. But perhaps that flower, that garden was not such a small thing at all? Because even though so many homes were in shambles, so many possessions destroyed - this flower could make a beautiful lady smile as if all was right with the world.

And a part of him was in awe. He had seen many things – in his own time, but this time period had amazing marvels as well. And he had adapted, had accepted it, the good the ugly, all of it.

He thought that nothing could catch him off guard now, not after waking up to this modern world, not after teaming up with SHIELD, with Thor, Tony, Natasha, Clint and Bruce.

Not after fighting an army of aliens.

And yet, standing in the ravage afterwards, seeing the destruction wrought on home-ground – that had shaken him, just a little bit.

And this, this shook him too, in a very different way, but to the core of his being. Somehow, this young woman's smile awakened something that he hadn't known was still asleep. It shook away the numbness that had remained even after the cold had left his bones. And he felt alive – felt like himself again, after spending all this time walking around in this new world as if it were a dream, as if he was just a soldier, not a person, not a man.

All this from a smile – not even directed at him.

But that was alright. Because this young woman had found the one beautiful thing in all of this mess.

And Steve started to think that he had as well.

A.N.: Short and somewhat sappy one-shot. Because I so wanted to write it… And yeah, Kagome is living in New York… Maybe she's going to college? Getting away from Japan for a while? :)