[The Avengers] [Stucky] A Promise Across a Century

His heart had returned to the day he was twelve, when he watched ten-year-old Bucky fall from a dawn redwood tree dozens of meters high. Inside him was the same fear and helplessness he had felt ten years before. Somewhere deep down, he believed it was God's punishment for failing to keep the promise he had made, for not protecting Bucky as he should have over the past ten years. For that, God had taken Bucky from him once more. Yet seventy years later, atop the S.H.I.E.L.D. building, amid destruction that made the world spin as if the apocalypse had come, Steve finally understood God's will. He dropped his shield and looked at the stunned man before him, his gaze calm.