[ He’s right, Steve knows he’s always right about that but he’s gotten so used to carrying the burden that he doesn’t know another way. The weight of the world has only gotten worse in the last few years, and he didn’t have a lot of people that could help him carry the weight.

It hits him again how glad he is to see his friend here. ]

Probably at least two or three more times.

[ He clasps Bucky’s shoulder and squeezes. It’s more for Steve’s own benefit, he needs the weight of his friend under his hand to tell this story. ]

We thought you were dead, after you fell. We had no idea how anyone could have survived that. But I didn’t think- Zola’s experiments. That’s what we figured later.

But right after that- we captured Zola and we found the last Hydra base and we went in. Red Skull was escaping and I managed to jump on his plane. We fought, he. Well he picked up the tesseract and vaporized? [ That’s still really unclear. ] but the plane was heading to New York with bombs and the navigation system was shot and the only choice I had was to put in the water. In the Arctic. Everyone assumed I was dead, hell I assumed I was as good as dead.

[ He takes a breath because this is still not easy to talk about. ]

They found me in 2011. Frozen but still alive.