Chapter Text
Pain drags Steve to the surface, rolling over him in waves that threaten to pull him back under. Every nerve ending in his body feels like it’s on fire. His muscles spasm and contract painfully beneath skin that feels too taut. There’s unbearable pressure on his chest, the full weight of an anvil bearing down on him. Every inhale sends a sharp ache through his ribs. His throat is raw and dry, the airway swollen and constricted. There are plastic prongs in his nose. He tries to reach to remove them, but finds himself incapable, his hand immobile and restrained.
Slowly, the rhythmic beeping of machinery comes into focus. The stench of antiseptic lingers in the air, making his stomach twist. Bright lights press on his eyelids, but when he tries to open them, his vision is hazy and unfocused. One of his eyes is swollen nearly shut.
The memories come in flashes — metal biting into his skin, the hum of an electrical current before it tore through him —
His entire body jerks.
AIM. The mission. He needs to finish it, he has to destory them, has to end it —
A strong hand clamps down on his shoulder, unyielding, forcing him back. Steve blinks up, surprised to find a figure hovering over him.
“Easy, brother,” a familiar voice says. Thor. “You are injured.”
Steve manages to lean forward slightly, taking in more of the world around him. He’s in a bed. A hospital? The medbay? The sterile overhead lights cut across his vision like blades. A central line is taped inside the crook of his left arm, feeding him fluids. On the right, he can’t feel anything below his elbow, his arm splinted and braced. He's dressed in a loose hospital gown, monitoring pads placed around his heart, the wires trailing around him like marionette strings. The skin around them is covered in cooling pads and gauze, patches of scorched tissue peeking through in places.
“Mission,” Steve manages to croak, his voice raspy and barely functional. He clears his throat, straining with the effort, and tries again. He needs to know. “Is it finished? Is AIM destroyed?”
Thor studies him for a moment, his mouth downturned, expression solemn. There’s something akin to disapproval in his eyes. He turns his head, seemingly focused on another point in the room, but Steve barely registers it. He keeps his attention trained on Thor, waiting for a response. He needs to know.
“You fought valiantly, my friend,” Thor finally says. “You succeeded in crippling their operation.”
Steve sags with relief, his eye slipping shut, leaning back against the too-soft pillow placed behind his head. A moment later, there’s a screeching sound, followed by something clattering to the ground.
“You stupid, reckless son of a bitch,” another voice calls out, dripping with anger. “ What the hell is wrong with you ?”
Tony.
Steve is intimately familiar with the cadence of Tony’s ire. It seems that whenever they interact these days, it’s only ever steeped in acrimony and grief. He doesn’t know what misstep he’s commited this time, what bomb he’s managed to detonate within his friend, but that’s no surprise — he’s completely adrift when it comes to Tony, having lost any and all ability to read him.
Steve opens his good eye, attempts to reorient himself, his reactions slow and his head fuzzy. As he takes in more of the room, he notices the other figures near his bed. Tony is closest, his jaw set tight and his arms crossed over his chest. The chair he must have been sitting on is turned on its side.
Bucky is seated to Tony’s right, his posture leaned forward, chin propped on his metal fist, face unreadable. Still as a statue. He’s quiet, his eyes locked onto Steve, sharp and assessing, like he’s putting together a puzzle he doesn’t like the answer to.
“You’re lying in a hospital bed, on the brink of death, and the first thing you ask about is your goddamn mission?” Tony continues, fists now clenched at his side.
Steve swallows, coating his irritated throat. “I’m fine, Tony.”
“Oh, you’re fine , are you?” Tony echoes with a bitter, hollow laugh, grabbing his hair in frustration. “Which part is fine, Steve? The experimental drugs that almost poisoned you? The multiple gunshot wounds and blood loss? The third-degree burns? How about the damage to your heart, kidneys and nerves from being electrocuted?”
Steve grits his teeth through a muscle spasm in his thigh. The fingers on his broken hand twitch without his permission or control. “I told you, I’m fi—”
“I swear to God, if you say fine one more time I’m going to strangle you with the tubing that’s currently keeping you alive, Rogers—”
Thor places a hand on Tony’s shoulder, interrupting the tirade. Tony sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“What Anthony means to say,” Thor intervenes, “is that your actions were needlessly reckless. Why did you choose to fight this battle alone?”
“I couldn’t ask anyone to risk themselves for something that was my problem to handle,” Steve says with difficulty. He can hardly look at Thor. It was only weeks ago that their positions were reversed, with Thor recovering in the medbay. Because Steve had screwed up the mission, had led them into a trap. That memory is infinitely worse than any of the present injuries on Steve’s body. No, it was on Steve alone to see this through, and he’d do it again in a heartbeat.
“Oh, that’s just rich,” says Tony, shaking with renewed fury. Thor reaches for him again, but this time Tony is not easily placated, pushing away from the contact. “No, this is bullshit . No more explanations, no more justifications, no more heroic speeches. Do you have any idea —” he cuts himself off, body flinching before going rigid with tension. “Since when is it your problem to play hero with no backup? Newsflash, Rogers: that’s not just stupid—it’s suicidal.”
Steve bristles, a familiar, defensive edge resurfacing. “It’s my job . I couldn’t let AIM get the serum. I had to act quickly. I knew the risks. And I handled it.”
“You planned this.”
Bucky’s voice is flat, his eyes trained on Steve, expression dark. It’s the first he’s spoken—in his hazy state, Steve nearly forgot he’s in the room.
“You let this happen. You meant to get captured.”
Not a question. A statement.
“What?” Thor’s voice is thunderous, etched with disbelief. He scowls from his position near the foot of the bed. “Steven, tell me this is untrue.”
Steve exhales. He clenches his free hand into the sheets. A sharp twitch in his calf muscle makes his heel slam against the mattress. “I had to.”
“No,” Thor says, stepping forward, “you chose to.” He lets out a slow, measured breath, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s not brimming with barely restrained fury like Bucky and Tony are, but his voice is laced with disappointment.
“Holy shit,” Tony mutters under his breath, the sound of it barely audible. “You actually chose this.”
Steve closes his eyes. “It was the only way—”
“Don’t,” Tony grits out.
“It worked,” Steve rasps. That’s all that matters, at the end of it.
Tony’s eye twitches. “Oh. Oh, it worked, did it?” he spreads his arms, voice dripping with something sharp and poisonous. “Well, thank God you achieved your grand master plan of getting tortured and almost fucking dying .”
Steve tightens his jaw. His teeth rattle in his skull. “I knew what I was doing.”
“Oh, did you? Because from where I’m standing, what you did was make us watch a goddamn building collapse on top of you while you crawled out of it looking like a corpse!” Tony snaps. As soon as the words are spoken, he deflates, his shoulder sagging and hunching forward. Like the admission has knocked the wind out of him.
Steve opens his mouth, hesitates. His leg jerks again, a stuttered kick under the blankets, and he clamps his jaw shut before the groan escapes.
“I can’t—” Tony starts, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I can’t fucking do this.”
He doesn’t meet Steve’s eye again before he walks out.
The silence that follows is heavy, the weight of it settling in the room like lead. Steve stares up at the ceiling, frowning at the lingering haze in his head.
“You could have died,” Bucky says, his voice deceptively even. “You almost did . Do you get that? You went in alone, and if something had gone even slightly wrong—” he stops, jaw clenching like he’s physically forcing himself not to say something worse. “I just got you back, Steve. And you pull this?”
“You used to understand.” The words escape before Steve has any control over them. He regrets them the moment they roll off his tongue. These are things they don’t speak of—what used to be, what they’ve lost, the ways in which they’ve changed.
Bucky goes still, his expression shifting into something unreadable. “What?”
Steve pushes through the ache in his ribs and straightens, ignoring the lighting bolt that shoots through his spine. “We used to do things like this all the time. Back then, behind enemy lines—you understood.”
Bucky’s mouth presses into a thin line. When he speaks again, his voice is low. “Back then, we were in a war, Steve. And you weren’t trying to get yourself killed.”
Steve opens his mouth to protest, because that wasn’t what it was about , but Thor cuts in before he can argue.
“In Asgard, we honour those who give their lives for a worthy cause,” he says, steady and firm. “But we do not seek such deaths. Nor do we make such choices alone.” He takes a step closer, meeting Steve’s eye. “You dishonour yourself by believing your life is yours alone to give.”
Steve’s breath catches in his throat. “I—” he hesitates, suddenly unsure what he’s trying to say.
“Would you have been satisfied?” Thor presses. “If you had perished? Would it have been a warrior’s death, or just another battle lost?”
The question lands somewhere deep inside him, unsettling and uncomfortably sharp. He forces himself to hold Thor’s gaze. “I wasn’t about that.”
Bucky makes another frustrated sound, burying his face in his hands. “Jesus, Steve.” He lets out a slow breath before rising from his seat. “I need some air.” Then, he turns and stalks out of the room.
Thor lingers a moment longer, examining Steve with an indescribable expression. “Get some rest, Captain,” he says. “I will inform the medical team that you are awake.”
And just like that, Steve is alone, exhaustion clinging to his bones.
The door hisses open a short time later. Three figures step in — two in white lab coats, one in blue scrubs. Their footsteps are measured and clinical, but there’s hesitation in the way they glance at him. One of them, a woman with silver at her temples, steps forward.
“Captain Rogers,” she says gently, like she’s talking to someone balanced on a wire. “I’m Dr. Park. This is Dr. Leoni and Nurse Anderson. It’s good to see you awake. You’ve been unconscious for about seventy-two hours.”
Steve tries to shift—just a little, just to sit up—but agony clamps down on his body like a vice. A jolt rips through his side. His ribs shriek in protest. There’s a tearing heat up his back, and the nerves in his shoulder snap to life, spitting sparks down his spine. His throat works once, twice, a silent gasp, and suddenly he realizes he’s panting. Quiet and sharp, like each inhale is costing him something. His arms shake. His chest burns. His fingers curl involuntarily, twitching against the rough sheets, like he’s been rewired and now everything misfires.
“Don’t push,” Dr. Park says quickly, stepping up to his right. Her eyes scan the various monitors around him, assessing the readings. The other doctor lifts the corner of the bedsheet, examining the expanse of his chest, the dressings and cooling pads. Steve doesn’t look, doesn’t need to see it when he feels it — burns stretched tight over his ribs, the fire-puckered skin hot and angry even in the cold air.
“You sustained extensive trauma,” Dr. Park continues. “Multiple gunshot wounds. The one in your shoulder shattered your collarbone. The one in your abdomen perforated the liver. The one in your thigh grazed the femoral artery. You have five broken ribs, a broken radius, ulna, and multiple fractures in the metacarpals of your right hand from repeated blunt-force trauma.”
“Noted,” Steve acknowledges with a clenched jaw. His molars grind against each other, each vibration rattling his skull like shrapnel.
“That’s not the worst of it,” she says, her tone patient. “We are most concerned about the damage from repeated high-voltage electrecution. There are second- and third-degree burns to thirty-five percent of your torso, front and back. Some of the tissue on your left side was necrotic. Your kidneys sustained acute damage from the shock and resulting muscle breakdown. There is direct trauma to the heart muscle and ongoing arrhythmia. Your body was in systemic failure when you were brought in. You flatlined on the way here. The cardiac arrest lasted for almost four minutes.”
Steve doesn’t say anything. A sharp, uncontrollable jerk of his thigh muscle nearly knocks his leg off the bed.
“The twitching you’re experiencing is due to neurological damage,” Dr. Leoni offers, not unkindly. “The electrical current forced your body into hypercontraction. We’re seeing irregular, erratic peripheral and central nerve signaling. Your nerves are firing without command. Light, noise, even air pressure—any of it could trigger spasms. You may also see loss of coordination, delayed reaction times, memory loss, even perceptual disturbances. We’re—not sure if it may be long-lasting or permanent.”
Right on cue, his broken right arm jerks. Violent, sudden. A sharp snap through his shoulder like a wrench. He exhales through it, but it comes out as a slow, rattling drag of breath.
“How are your pain levels?” Dr. Park asks, and the nurse goes to fiddle with the IV drip by his bedside. “From zero to ten?”
He doesn’t answer. The pain is constant, shifting, layered. Some of it is screaming. Some of it is whispering. Some of it is just there, low and humming, like a second heartbeat.
“We’re limited on pain management options,” her voice is almost apologetic. “Your body burns through medication too fast, and the damage to your kidneys requires us to be cautious with the dosing. You’ll get some temporary relief, but it won’t last.”
He nods stiffly. It’s enough. “It’s fine. I’ll manage.”
“With all due respect, Captain Rogers,” she says, challenging, “you are not fine. You are lucky to be alive. The serum is doing its job, but the damage is extensive. It’s prioritizing the most life-threatening concerns—organ repair, blood loss, cellular regeneration. The healing process is going to be slow, by your standards. You’ll be in pain for the foreseeable future.”
“How long until I can resume active duty?”
Park sighs. “Right now, my best guess is several weeks. We’ll run more diagnostics tomorrow. But Captain, make no mistake — you’re not out of the woods yet. If you push too hard, you could arrest again. Your heart could stop. You could seize from electrolyte imbalance. Or bleed internally from strain. You need to rest. What AIM did to you—it should’ve killed you. The only reason it didn’t is because your body is still fighting. Don’t make it fight you too.”
He tries to sleep. Even dimmed, the lights are too white, too sharp, pounding his skull with force. The sound of beeping machines around him blends with the faint ringing in his ears, interrupted only by his own guttural wheezing. His body feels heavy, muscles locking up and seizing every few minutes. It’s a cage, a reminder of what he’s always been: broken, sick, weak . A burden. He’s trapped, stuck in his own body, stuck in his own head , the same words echoing over and over.
Useless. What good are you to anybody like this?
His father’s voice. Thick, slurred with drink, but clear as glass in his head.
He needs to move. To do something. The bathroom is only a few steps away. If he can reach it, if he can just—
With a sharp exhale, he pushes the sheets off of himself, bracing his hands against the mattress. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the burning sensation in his left thigh, willing his body to cooperate until his feet touch the cold floor. His vision swims, a dizzying wave of nausea hitting him with force. The monitors around him announce his body’s betrayal with high-pitched shrieks, his vitals spiking. Still, he forces himself to stand. White-hot pain explodes through his hip, radiating upward along the line of unhealed burns and ruined muscle, bone deep. He feels the sticky drag of half-healed skin catching against itself under the gauze, the fresh warmth of blood seeping up through the bandages as the stitches give, just enough to open something inside him.
You break too easy.
He tests a small step forward.
His knees buckle. His fingers claw at the IV line, the edge of the stand, trying to steady himself, trying to stay vertical. The wires around him pull and disconnect. His left thigh is on fire. A molten, animal pain, wet and splitting, radiating up into his hip and down into his knee. His stomach lurches. The ground tips sideways.
Firm, careful hands catch him. One slides under his good shoulder, the other bracing along his back, fingers curling where his skin had burned raw. The contact causes him to stiffen. Even the lightest pressure near his ribs sends lances of pain through his chest. Steve sucks in a breath, choking on it, a broken sound escaping before he can swallow it down.
“You have got to be kidding me,” comes a dry voice.
Steve blinks, and Sam is there, expression unimpressed, brows raised.
“Not even awake for two hours, and you’re already trying to do something stupid,” Sam says, shaking his head. He doesn't let go, just tightens his grip on Steve to hold him up. “Back in bed, Cap.”
“I’m fine,” Steve mutters.
Sam lets out a laugh—sharp, incredulous. “Fine ? Man, I can see your legs shaking.” He gives Steve a pointed look. “And don’t even try to feed me that ‘super soldier’ crap. You were in a coma for days, and I don’t even want to think about the crap your body’s been through. You are not fine.”
Can’t even hold yourself up without falling apart.
Steve clenches his jaw. “I just need to—”
“You need to sit your ass down,” Sam cuts in. He guides Steve back toward the bed, firm but careful. “Now.”
Steve hesitates for a fraction of a second before relenting, lowering himself stiffly onto the mattress. A jagged breath stutters out of him, and for a second he thinks he might black out. He can’t stop shaking, the world spinning around him.
Nurse Anderson and Dr. Leoni come rushing in.
“Your vitals were spiking — what the hell happened?”
“He tried to walk,” says Sam, voice clipped.
“Jesus Christ,” Dr. Leoni mutters, exasperated. “Captain, you’re making my job a hell of a lot harder.”
Always a burden.
She snaps on a pair of gloves and comes to his side, examining his leg. When she peels back the bloodied gauze from his thigh, the dressing sticks, pulling on fragile tissue. Steve’s vision greys at the edges, but he forces himself to look.
The wound looks worse than he’d anticipated. It’s an ugly thing — a jagged, gaping hole through the meat of his thigh, oozing dark blood that clings thick and sluggish to the raw, chewed-up muscle. Half-dissolved stitches hang from the edges, some stretched, some pulled loose completely. The skin around the site is swollen and livid red, puckered and uneven where it tried to knit itself together and failed.
“Damn it,” she hisses and motions to Anderson, who opens several drawers in the room as he prepares a tray with supplies. He wheels it over before the doctor is even finished examining the wound. “You blew the stitches right out.”
“I’m fine,” Steve manages to grit out.
Anderson snorts. “Yeah? I’d hate to see you on a bad day.”
“We need to irrigate and close it again — now,” Dr. Leoni cuts in, business-like.
Steve hopes it will hurt enough to silence the ghosts in his head.
Without further preamble, she forces a syringe into the torn muscle. A sharp, relentless jet of sterile saline hits the open wound, flushing blood and broken tissue away in a clear, unmerciful stream. It feels like acid on his raw nerves, flaying him from the inside out.
His back arches. The room narrows. He squares his jaw and trains his gaze on the floor, eyes half-lidded, biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood. Next, there’s the sharp sting of a needle biting into the flesh of his thigh, a sickening tug as thread pulls muscle and skin back together. He feels every pass of it, each one sending a hot, sick ripple through his leg.
“I need to check the wound in your abdomen,” Leoni says before he feels pressure against his side, pressing too close to the raw burns at his ribs. When she pulls the gauze there free, a wet, sticky sound follows, the scent of blood and something burned rising up like smoke.
The burns on his side run in streaks of blistered, broken skin, the surface a ruined patchwork of reds and blacks and sickly yellows. Some parts ooze, wet and shining, others cracked and seared, the skin mottled and warped. The gunshot wound there had bled again, sluggish and dark, the stitches stretched and angry.
You’re a sack of broken parts.
“This one’s holding, though barely,” Leoni announces as she stands. “But you strain it again and you’ll bleed into your gut. You try to stand again, you’re going to need another transfusion.”
Steve forces a terse nod. “Noted. Thank you.”
Anderson finishes applying fresh bandages. He reinserts the IV that Steve had pulled out and cleans the trickle of blood down his forearm. He injects more medication into the central line before they turn to leave.
Leaning back into the mattress, Steve can’t stop the tremor that runs through him. His skin is slick with cold sweat, his body caught between freezing and burning, muscles locking, spasming beneath the damage. The analgesic barely dulls it; instead, it makes everything thick and slow, the pain pouring through him like tar, sticky and relentless.
Sam hasn’t left the room. The weight of his gaze is like a brewing storm, full of patience but not without a certain quiet intensity. Steve thinks about asking him to leave, but can’t seem to find the strength to speak.
“You really think you gotta prove something, don’t you?” Sam’s voice finally breaks through the silence. It’s low, almost gentle, but carries a sharpness Steve can’t ignore. It’s the voice of someone who knows him too well, who understands too much. “You gotta stop, man.”
Steve shifts in the bed, wincing as a flare of pain shoots through him. He doesn’t want to hear this. Doesn’t want to hear anything about how he messed up, how he’s constantly carrying this invisible weight of guilt and responsibility that no one can help carry.
But Sam keeps going, his tone never wavering.
“You keep thinking you’ve got to earn being alive, Steve,” Sam says, a soft but firm rebuke. “Like you’re not enough just by existing. Like you’ve got to do all these things, put yourself on the line, act like you’re some kind of martyr, just to be worth the air you’re breathing. You don’t, man. You don’t have to earn it. You never did.”
Steve’s chest tightens at the words. He swallows, feeling a lump form in his throat. For a moment, he can’t speak. His mind is a whirlwind of thoughts—he’s been doing this for years, fighting to prove that he belongs, that he’s more than just a broken boy, more than the serum in his blood, more than the uniform on his back. But he’s not sure that he is.
“I…” Steve starts, his voice strained, but the words get stuck in his throat. Because Sam is wrong.
Steve’s entire existence has been a debt. And there is always more to owe.