Video Games and Murder

Steve had been down on himself since his 'road trip' with Sam had turned up nothing but dead ends in the hunt for Bucky. He just wanted to talk. To try to bring the Bucky he knew back before someone else got to him. But after three months of searching, Sam and Natasha had finally managed to drag Steve back to his apartment in Washington D.C.. For a while at least. It wasn't like Steve was ever going to give up. He would keep searching for Bucky until one or both of them was dead. Really dead this time.

But for now he was 'home'. In his temporary home. Back to checking things off his list a bit less enthusiastically. Taking his runs with far less enjoyment and a more solemn mindset. At home he lost himself in the file Natasha had given him. And each day he found new things to shoulder the blame for. New ways he had failed Bucky. Failed everyone.

Natasha had come along to force him to go out on the town with her. He knew she was just trying to distract him, but he let her drag him out of his cave for a while to wander the city streets. His eyes distant with memory lane and his mind somewhere else.

It was not until they had started to pass the pet shop that he had paused to look at the kittens in the window. A small smile on his face as they tumbled over each other. It was one of those ASPCA days at the pet store, and there were pound representatives with pets from the local shelters who needed homes and got seen far less than the puppymill bred showdogs of the pet store.

Steve paused a little too long. Natasha was sure to notice even as he slowly started walking by again.

There were few times in his busy new life that Steve had free time to do with as he pleased. Usually it was while they were out somewhere, between missions. He and his frequent partner in those missions had a few days to themselves between missions now and then. Never much, but they were in San Diego, and Steve had never traveled much before the war. The San Diego Natural History Museum was on his list of things to see, even if it wasn't exactly a missed culture thing. It was something he just genuinely wanted to do.

He had lost Natasha at some point. Or more appropriately, he had wandered off to see the dinosaurs. Regular history museums were a bittersweet memory of a life he missed and left behind. But this one was mostly older cultures and animals. The world and everything in it. He had his sketchbook out, sitting on a bench to wait for her to catch up from the call she had been taking when he wandered off.

He was sketching his own approximation of the Allosaurus in front of him. While it was a skeleton, he was drawing one lost in the city with the noise all around it and the skyscrapers towering over its head.

If the war had never happened, he might have turned into a political cartoonist at some point.