Chapter Text
John doesn’t know what happened.
He’d turned away from the podium, away from the senator denouncing him, but the hallway blurs as he walks through the doorway. He doesn’t remember stepping out of the room—then he can’t. It’s like something folds in the air around him, a crack in the pressure, and the light shifts sharp and weird. His stomach lurches. The ground feels like it drops out from under him, and for one awful moment he thinks maybe he’s finally blacked out for good. That his brain’s decided it’s had enough and punched out.
Then, there’s a seat under him.
It’s leather, worn, sun-warmed, and John can feel the faint rumble of the idling engine humming beneath him, a steady vibration through his legs, and for a split second he thinks his heart is going to punch right through his ribs. It hammers against his chest like it wants out, like it knows something he doesn’t, and John hears Sam saying: It’s always that last line. His stomach flips. He remembers this: the ride back to base, and the pitch for teamwork. It was before it all went to hell. Before—
Lemar.
Whole. Breathing. Alive.
John stares.
Lemar is sitting right here, as though John hadn’t watched him get thrown, hadn’t heard his neck snap, hadn’t witnessed him die. He’s here, and the sun catches the corner of his smile, and John’s vision goes hot and wet before he even knows what’s happening. His throat tightens like a noose and his fingers twitch in his lap, aching to grab hold of something solid, to anchor himself in this moment before it shatters.
“Lemar,” he says, the name falls out before he can stop it, raw and desperate. Too soft for anyone but himself. It lands in the air between them, and Lemar tilts his head, half curious and half concerned.
His mind scrambles for footing.
It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense. His stomach is cold and his skin itches like he’s wearing someone else’s clothes. It feels like a trick. A hallucination. Something in him screams that it isn’t real, that this isn’t possible, that this isn’t fair. But it’s Lemar. It’s Lemar’s face and Lemar’s eyes and Lemar’s easy way of sitting up like a man who isn’t carrying the world on his back.
He can still remember the sound Lemar’s body made when it hit the pillar, the way the world had narrowed down to empty eyes and a scream in his throat and the hollow weight of a shield he wasn’t good enough to carry. His hands flex again, and it’s only then that he feels it, that John notices the shield’s there, heavy and cold in his grip. He stares down at it, breath hitching, and something ugly curls up inside his chest. He stares. He still has the shield. Bucky had broken his arm to wrench it out of his grasp, yet here it is.
Like nothing John’s gone through has happened at all.
It feels like his chest is being crushed from the inside. Every inch of that cold, painted metal burns like it carries all the weight of the world—or maybe just the weight of Lemar’s death. The shield was supposed to be a symbol, something pure, something good. But now it’s just a reminder. A constant, ugly reminder that Lemar believed in him, trusted him to be something greater, and he died because John didn’t listen.
Because John wasn’t enough.
It shatters him.
And he hurts.
And he hates.
He hates it. He hates the shield with a fire that scorches through his bones. He hates what it represents, and what it demanded of him. He hates that it ties him to all the grief, all the guilt, all the endless spiraling thoughts that scream you failed him. Hates that he wasn’t strong enough to carry it the way Lemar believed he could. Hates that Lemar looked at him and told him he could do this, could be this symbol, could carry it with honor—
Then, Lemar died.
He died believing in John, loving him, and John can’t imagine that sentiment would ring true if he saw what John had done after. How could he, after John lost it, after the way he let grief drown him, and crack him open like some half-broken shell of a man? Lemar trusted him. Lemar believed in him. Lemar stood by his side when no one else did. And John repaid him with a reckless, pointless death in a dirty room in a city that didn’t care.
John wants to say it. He wants to tell him now, to choke out the words: I got you killed. I’m sorry. I didn’t listen. It was all my fault. You never should’ve believed I was worthy to stand beside. He wants to say that Lemar was always the best between them, always the one who held everything together, that everything good John had left in him was because Lemar was there, and he’d had tarnished it all the moment Lemar was gone.
He wonders if he’d be forgiven if he admits it. If John says it aloud, that he traded all the good Lemar gave him for blood, for revenge, for the awful burn of grief that made his skin crawl and his mind go sharp and narrow and mean. And now he’s here—clutching a shield he never should’ve carried, sitting beside a man who should be dead, wishing so badly to believe in this impossible scene because the truth hurts too much.
More than that, John wants the shield gone.
He wants to throw it down and watch it shatter, watch the shards scatter so far that no one ever finds them. He wants to watch it splinter and twist and break the way Lemar had, and maybe then it’ll feel like penance. He’d do it right here, right now, if it meant he could keep this impossible mental picture in front of him—Lemar alive, breathing, trusting him—even if the sight of it is just a lie his broken mind is telling itself.
But it’s real enough to hurt.
He’s shaking.
John drags a hand down his face, trying to gather himself. It doesn’t work. He glances sideways at Lemar—at the shape of him sitting there, alive, solid, whole—and it hurts worse than anything. He should grab him. Should tackle him out of the seat, cling to him, tell him not to move, not to leave, not to die. But his limbs won’t work. His throat’s too tight, thick with shame and grief and regret.
Because it was his fault. All of it.
Lemar’s death, and the blood on John’s hands, on the shield. It didn’t matter if Lemar had believed in him. It didn’t matter if Olivia had believed in him. He’d failed. He’d failed them both. Failed the uniform, the title, the government who gave it to him. But he’d toss it all aside now to keep the person in front of him, and maybe, if he gave it all up now, then the weight in his chest would crack open and let him breathe.
John is so tempted to do just that.
He can imagine it: the swing of his arm, the weightless second where it leaves his grip, the clean arc through the air, the sharp clang of vibranium on concrete, rolling, spinning, coming to rest somewhere far enough away that he won’t feel its weight on his chest anymore. It’d be so easy. So damn easy to be done with it, with all of it, with the name, the colors, the impossible standard carved into every inch of it, every hour he spent trying to be what they told him a good soldier was supposed to be.
He could give it up right now.
Drop it, walk away, let whatever cruel, sick joke of whatever higher power was running this show let him have this one mercy, this one quiet minute with the man in front of him. This thing that shouldn’t exist; this fragile, precious thing he’d trade everything else for. The title, the legacy, the hollow praise, the bullshit interviews, the uniform and the empty speeches and the blood. He’d toss it all aside to keep this.
So, John does.
He turns to look at Sam and Bucky.
They’re already walking away, and John feels something sour rise in his throat, something that tastes like guilt and hurt, tangled with regret and the weight of failure, always coming up short under the expectations being Captain America had set. It breaks something loose in his chest, jagged and mean, and before he can stop himself it’s escaping out his mouth, too loud in the open air: “Why the hell’d you hand over the shield if you couldn’t stand seeing someone else carry it?”
It lands between them like a shot.
John hopes it hurts. He knows it does for him.
