That's right, I'm not dead. Nope, I'm just literally the horrible kind of person who abandons a book for a year and then pops back up like nothing ever happened. Hate me if you want, I'll understand, but please let me know what you think and how to make it better.

    It felt like his brain was being ripped apart, beaten to death, stabbed over and over again. Put into as much pain as possible without killing him. Image after image hit him, clouding his vision, filling his senses.

“Eight o’clock on the dot. Don’t you dare be late.”

“You’re a hero.”

“The right partner.”

“Steve.” It was the calmness, despite obvious worry, in Nat’s voice that finally pulled him back to reality. “Come back, breathe, you’re fine.”

    He gasped air in, only then realizing he had in fact been forgetting to breathe, and stumbled a few steps forward as he tripped over nothing. Natasha’s arms wrapped around one of his helped him steady himself as she led him down the hallway and toward an elevator.

    But just moments after coming back, his heart was hammering inside his head again, and all he could see through the darkness clouding his vision was painful memory after painful memory.

    He felt himself stepping into the elevator, Natasha still guiding him, and heard the doors closing. Fresh panic welled up inside of him, and with the upward movement of the box he was in, his knees gave out and he crumpled, his back to the wall and his hands pressing into his head hard.

    Every time his heart beat, he felt like someone was punching the inside of his brain, and it took him back to allies and parking lots, punch after punch raining down on his sick, weak body. Time after time, he saw himself get up. Hopelessness overwhelmed him with the memories of blackeyes and failures, time after time that Bucky had to step in and save him before he was beaten to death. 

    He was sick of getting up. He was down again, and there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to just stay there. 

    The elevator leveled, the doors opened, he didn’t move.

    A hand touched his arm and he flinched away violently, gasping in a sharp breath as his vision cleared, just for a second. 

    Natasha’s face greeted him from where she’d just knelt beside him, and he did what he could to scoot away from her. “Stay back, please,” he croaked. “I don’t wanna hurt you.”

    His eyes started to close again, but her voice pulled them open. “Steve, look at me. You’re not gonna hurt me. Alright? You’re having an anxiety attack. Tony gets them too. Let me help.”

    He shook his head, his hands coming up to his head again, nails digging into his skin. “I don’t… I don’t…”

    “I know,” she murmured. “I know there’s too much going on right now, and you don’t know how to handle it. I can help you make it stop, okay?”

    He pulled in a shallow breath, then another, suddenly aware of the feeling that he wasn’t doing it right, that he was going to suffocate and it was both terrifying and welcoming at the same time.

    “Can I have you hand?” the woman beside him asked, reaching out slowly before gently taking it in both of hers, pulling it down from his face. 

His other only tightened its grip where it was, finding a handful of hair and pulling hard.

A gentle thumb began to massage his palm, accompanied by murmuring in Russian he didn’t understand, yet that seemed to call him away from the darkness he was teetering on the edge of. 

    “Count with me,” Natasha said after a long moment. “Now. One…”

    “One,” he gasped, not feeling fully conscious.

    “Two.”

    “Two.” He shuddered back against the wall, pulling against her grasp, but she somehow managed to stay gentle and attached.

    “Three.”

    “Three.” He swallowed down the bile that suddenly filled his mouth.

    “Four.”

    “Four.” Somehow, that one came out easier.

    “Five.”

    “Five.” He gasped again, but it was because his heart rate was calming and his breathing was struggling to do the same.

    “Six.”

    “Six.” His head dropped back against the wall as the tension began to leave his body.

    “Good,” Natasha encouraged as her thumb kept working. “Seven.”

    He took a deep, shaky breath, noticing for the first time that water was streaming down his face. “Seven.”

    “Eight.”

    “Eight,” he whispered, his hand dropping from his head. 

    “Almost there,” she murmured. “Nine.”

    The tears continued to come, but he couldn’t find it in him to fight them. “Nine.”

    With one hand still occupied holding his, her other reached up, brushing sweat-soaked hair off of his forehead. “Ten.”

    “Ten.” He detested the weakness in his voice, but it was all he could do to speak as the last breath he’d been holding left his lungs in a long sigh.

    Nat’s thumb didn’t stop working on his palm as he heard approval in her soft words. “That’s it. You’re okay.”

    Seconds of silence turned into a minute, then another, broken only by the normalized sound of his breathing as even his tears subsided. Finally, the young solider lifted his head from the wall, looking at the woman beside his with shame in his eyes.

    “I’m sorry,” he told her with painful sincerity. “I… I’m sorry.”

    She squeezed his hand once before finally releasing it, her gaze locked on his as she shook her head a little. “You don’t need to apologize, Steve.”

    “I don’t know what happened,” he confessed, his blue eyes dropping to the carpet once more. 

    Natasha exhaled slowly. “She pushed you. That’s what went wrong… that was the mistake. It wasn’t yours.”

    “I shouldn’t freak out just because someone asks me to dance,” he countered defeatedly.

    “Hey,” she replied, laying a hand on his arm this time. “we don’t get to control that about ourselves, Steve. We just don’t. You’re alright now… that’s what matters.”

    Misty tears much different than those which had streamed down his face a few minutes previously clouded his eyes. “Thanks, Nat. I don’t… I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

    She offered him a sad little smile. “I’m just taking care of my family. Thank you for letting me.”

    He didn’t answer directly, hesitating a long moment before saying with apprehension in his tone, “We should go back.”

    She shook her head quickly. “No. The party will go on without us. You’re not going back there, not tonight.”

    “Are you sure that’s okay?” he asked.

    She smiled a little as she got to her feet and offered him a hand up. “They think we’re doing super important superhero stuff. We could be saving the world right now.”

    He took her offered hand and rose as well. She didn’t let go once he had, pulling him out of the elevator and onto the floor which housed their community living rooms.

    “Has anyone introduced you to Netflix and chill?” she asked as he uncertainly trailed her into the kitchen.

    “I’ve heard the phrase, but I don't know what it means."

    The assassin used her free hand to grab an unopened bag of Smartpop from the cupboard, then made a large U-turn, still pulling her super-soldier along, and headed towards the family room. 

    “Let’s check it off your list.”