ever marching as to war

I feel everything I felt during the time we were trapped and reliving that day moving under my skin. Still. The sound of people going about their lives doesn't help, but it doesn't make anything worse, I guess. I lift the bottle Bucky's already taken a few shots from and turn it over in my hands.

"...You know I was never one for drinking," I say, pouring the clear liquid with its sharp wafting scent of alcohol, strong and almost antiseptic, into my own empty tumbler until it's about half full.

"During the war the most I'd manage was a brandy with the high brass or a beer with the fellas. After I woke up, though..."

I set the bottle down and turn the glass on the table, not contemplative, just fidgeting, really. It's taking all my energy not to flip the table and break my hand against the wall.

Well, probably break the wall with my hand, to be honest.

"After I had gotten through my first trial as an Avenger, once it had sunk in that everyone I knew or cared about was gone, died in the intervening years or so old that I was a memory they'd made their peace with and put to bed, I went back to the old neighborhood in Brooklyn. I walked over the bridge and down to P.J. Hanley's, and I got a bottle of schnapps." The doctor's favorite, but I don't add that, and I don't know why.

"And I drank it. The entire bottle, one sitting." I tip my glass back now, and drain it, wincing a little at the flavor, feeling the alcohol burn down my throat and then, effectively, disappear.

"That's when I figured out I couldn't get drunk."