Alone

                                    

                                          
Steve and Nat sat together as they tried to process what had happened in Wakanda. It had been a few days and they had made it back to the Compound in New York. As they sat together, Steve had his arms folded tightly against his chest and Nat had run a hand through her hair.
                          
"She just slipped through my arms," Steve muttered as they talked about their friends turning to dust. "Her eyes, Nat. You should have seen them."
                          
"I can imagine what it looked like," Nat frowned as she looked at him. "Do we even know what happened?"
                          
"All Thor said to me was that Thanos snapped his fingers before disappearing through a portal," Steve rubbed his temples.
                          
"Governments have started to run a census of their people," Nat sighed. "So far it doesn't look promising."
                          
They sat in silence for a moment as they each remembered what they had seen. The same memory of Allie played over in Steve's mind. Nat took notice and offered the idea of going to the kitchen to eat something. Steve absentmindedly agreed and remained silent as he tried to at least have something in his system.
                          
When Tony was returned to Earth a few weeks later, Steve and Nat had fell into an even deeper sense of defeat and sorrow. When their collective group decided to go after Thanos, Steve just hoped beyond any sense of hope he'd had before that he could get his sister back. While Nat assured him that they would succeed, he prayed that she was right. 
                          
He didn't want to feel as if he failed Allie or Bucky. 
                          
════ ⋆★⋆ ════
                          
There were very few times that the Rogers siblings felt helpless. If a person were to ask the two to pinpoint a time where they felt that they had no control, they would both admit to one thing: their mother's tuberculosis.
                          
In the cold winter of 1935, Allie had spent a morning cleaning when her mother was at work. Downstairs, her brother was finishing his final assignments for school before their Christmas break. As she cleaned in the bathroom, Allie noticed a dirtied rag on tucked behind the small bin they kept for garbage. Not thinking much of it, she reached back and grabbed it. 
                          
Allie paused as she realized that it was still drying from fresh blood. The only time that rags in their home had blood on them was when her brother had been in a fight. However, he had not been in a fight that morning. Looking at the rag in her hand, Allie's jaw dropped as she realized who the rag had been used by. She discarded the rag and made no mention of it to her brother or mother that night. 
                          
She didn't stop thinking about the rag in the weeks that came. After Christmas, her mother had long shifts at the hospital while her brother would often go to the movies, either by himself or with Bucky. Allie had begun to seclude herself at home as she thought about how to approach the conversation with her mother.
                          
On one chilly afternoon, she heard a knock on the door. She didn't know who to expect at the door with her mother at work and her brother having gone to a movie. As she opened the door, she found herself face-to-face with Bucky Barnes. He had food piled in his arms as he was tightly covered in his winter coat and scarf.
                          
"Hey," he smiled. "Is Steve here too?"
                          
"No," Allie shook her head as she looked down. "It's just me right now."
                          
"Oh," Bucky said. There was an unspoken rule in the Rogers house that Allie wasn't supposed to be alone with boys in the house and Steve wasn't supposed to be alone with girls. The latter had never been a concern, but the former had been a concern with Allie having a boyfriend. "Well, I can come back later."