This time, the breath he let out really was a sigh, not sad, but wistful. "Most days, it's okay. It hasn't been great, but I've gotten through it." He was resilient, as his mother had told him. He was a survivor. In more ways than one, now, and for better or worse. "It's been better, since meeting you," he confided. It felt like months instead of days since he'd first started talking with her at that community party. It hadn't even been a week, but he felt like he'd shared more of himself with Rogue than anyone barring Bucky in his whole life.

"She called today, and... it was okay, at first. She wished me happy birthday. And we talked. But then... she wished me happy birthday again, and-- I just-- I couldn't..." He couldn't handle it, especially not almost right on top of the nightmare he'd had that night about Rogue, and remembering Bucky.

"I've only been to see her once," he whispered, "and I didn't handle it very well then, either. Not afterward, anyway. But I know... time is running out, and what if I never get to see her again?" That was what he felt guilty about, because it felt like running away from the truth. Steve never ran, and he believed in facing the truth, and the consequences of your actions. Yet here he was, unable to face the one tangible link to his past, and the proof that he really was alive, so many years in the future. Facing his own mortality had been easy; facing the reality of his friends' mortality was almost unbearable.