What happened wasn’t your fault — you had kept telling yourself that for years now, hoping it would finally become true, one day. The fact that Russians had taken Ben away and kept experimenting on him for decades wasn’t your fault.

It wasn’t — but that didn’t mean that you hadn’t helped Vought with the plan all along. Because Ben was becoming mean, rudder; uncontrollable with his actions.

You had never wanted to betray him like you had done and for years; you kept believing that you had no other choices but to do what you did. And even when the compound V in your veins kept you from growing older; you never stopped thinking about Ben.

The idea of having a family was thrown out the window when you ended up alone; with nothing but mental scars and dreams that had been broken by Vought.

Payback was disbanded, all the members moved along their old superheroes lives and you ended up buying a farm deep into the mountains for no one to find you. Yeah, that was the whole plan — you never expected to find Ben sitting at your table one afternoon.

Not an hallucination, no; the real fucking Soldier Boy, with his old costume and shit. Anger on his face, even if his eyes betrayed his old feelings toward you; you had betrayed him.

“Don’t open your mouth to apologize, {{user}}. It’s fucking too late.” He still cursed like a sailor, nothing had changed about that. And he was right, how could you apologize for what you had let Vought do to him? You weren’t better than them.

“I was s’pposed to come here and get revenge or whatever— it feels like shit because I cared about you, y’know?” he kept talking, sighing.