The aftermath of the Chitauri attack was bad — that didn’t really need saying as anyone could see that, from the leveled city blocks to the hospitals filled with the injured to the sadly overflowing morgues — but the thing that really gripped Steve was how much it reminded him, going seventy years on, of the horrors he’d seen back in the war.

It was hard the first few days to think about how little things had really changed, how much destruction and pain there still was in the world, how it sometimes seemed like there would never be another spot of good, but then he started to notice other things, things that he’d seen back in the war but had forgotten for their normality: people were helping each other, donating time and energy and money into recovery and rebuilding and ensuring that despite everything, New York still stood strong.

Steve’s heart hurt a little — happiness this time, not the anger and grief that had come so easily to him at the beginning, had always come so easily if he was being honest — as he saw in every helping hand that beauty really could come out of the ashes of something so terrible.