"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." --Anatole France
He listened to Simon and his attorneys lay out the financial details of his disability insurance, his line-of-duty payout. This was how it ended, then. The Sentinel of the Great City, not fallen in a blaze of glory, but awarded a medal and a spread in the Sunday paper, a letter of thanks from the Mayor and a generous, if fixed, yearly salary.
In which Jim and Blair misunderstand one another on almost every level, leading to much angst and suffering and then, eventually, less suffering, and then breakfast.
After the disastrous battle in Moria, Thorin has a bitter fight with his sister and sends her away to the Iron Hills. Years after her passing, he visits the mines of the Iron Hills, and realizes that there is far more for him there than just the memory of her ghost.
A chance meeting in a graveyard seems to offer John Watson a new chance for happiness. Nick Chapin seems like the perfect man, and just what he needs after losing Sherlock. But 'Nick' is keeping a secret of his own, a past that's stripped him of everything he was and left him a nameless shell. Worse, their meeting wasn't as coincidental as John thinks...
Steve looks thin -- like he looked when they first met, actually, fresh off the plane and jet-lagged, before seventeen months of sneaking Danny’s malasadas had taken the the edge off of all his sharp angles. There’s a ratty duffel lying at his feet and a wicked-looking scar curves over his left bicep, disappearing under the sleeve of his t-shirt, skin still pink and new.
It turns out knowing that Steve's breath catches whenever you press teeth against his throat doesn't mean he can't still make you want to murder him whenever he launches himself off a roof in pursuit of a suspect or decides there's not enough time to put on his vest before busting into a meth lab and beating people up.
Steve is in this forever. Steve is Danny’s forever because they are together and that’s what people who love each other do. They stick together, no matter what. Steve won't give up.
Steve and Danny have been kidnapped. To protect Danny and buy time in hope for a rescue, Steve will have to fight with all he's got. Whatever the cost.
They'd never talked about sex in the year they'd known each other. Well, that wasn't quite correct: Sherlock had never said a word about sex; John had bemoaned his personal dearth of it on many occasions.
For someone he'd hero-worshipped for so long, Steve Rogers in the flesh is a pretty big disappointment. For one thing, he keeps looking at Tony as though he reminds him of someone else, and even if he never says anything, Tony's pretty sure it's his father. A lifetime of not measuring up to Howard's expectations is more than enough, thank you very much, and he's certainly not going to make an effort to live up to any of Steve's. Steve's pretty clearly failed to live up to his expectations, in any case, and that's not hypocritical at all.
Steve Rogers is a capable leader, a kind and cheerful man, a good friend, a strong role model, and a loyal soldier. He's also teetering on the edge of suicide.